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More "Wavering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ground, as he crept onward. Hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half-fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him, and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they were, which the old man was so sedulous to gather. Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Predisposed to believe a story of this kind, he could not reason as he might have done if fear of Barfoot had never entered his thoughts. The whole course of dishonour seemed so clear; he traced it from Monica's earliest meetings with Barfoot at Chelsea. Wavering between the impulse to cast off his wife with every circumstance of public shame, and the piteous desire to arrest her on her path of destruction, he rushed into a middle course, compatible with neither of these ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... of cowardice. But, inasmuch as consternation arises from a double fear, it may be more conveniently defined as a fear which keeps a man so bewildered and wavering, that he is not able to remove the evil. I say bewildered, in so far as we understand his desire of removing the evil to be constrained by his amazement. I say wavering, in so far as we understand the said desire to be constrained by the fear of another evil, which equally ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... they stayed, but the servants did not like to go there alone. They said the room smelt strangely of earth, and that the air struck with an insidious chill: and a gamekeeper being in full view of the attic window one night declared that from the window came a faint moving glow, and that a wavering ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... berries. A clapper bridge—that is, a bridge formed out of a single slab of granite—over twelve feet long lies across the Wallabrook near the meeting of the streams. Beside it grows a mountain-ash, and the quivering and wavering leaves, and their shadows that quiver and waver in the ripples beneath, make a profound contrast to that massive, immovable stone, that from its look may certainly be included among those Dartmoor antiquities which Sir Frederick Pollock says 'may very well have been as great ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... snow has settled our minds, which have been long wavering about future plans, and we leave this for Menaggio, Hotel Vittoria, on Thursday next, 6th. [He did not ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... with free arm and practised skill, went clean home in the packed ranks of the foe, but they caused no more than a second's wavering, as the dead went down and their fellows crowded on straight over them. A second volley from the grimly silent fighters on the plateau had somewhat more effect. Driven low, and at shorter range, every jagged flint-point found its mark, and the screaming victims hampered ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... evidence that the washerwoman was hanged. There is an instant in the battle as the ranks are wavering, when the calmness of the officers will avert the rout; and as to have held their soldiers then is deemed their highest honor, so to have been found wanting is their indelible disgrace; the people stood poised upon the panic's brink, their pastors ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... believe, that he will prefer to remain where he now is. This will, however, be ascertained in a few days, when I write to you again. I think, if all this takes place, it will be a pretty decisive answer to all the ideas that have been thrown out of the King's wavering; and in that point of view, independent of all others, it is extremely desirable. Under these circumstances, I have no doubt that you will think that I have done right in eagerly embracing the offer which has been made me; and, also, that you will be of opinion that ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... condition of human nature in which the selfish instincts are still dominant, false if taken as a representation of all the elements and possibilities of human nature. We think La Rochefoucauld himself wavered as to their universality, and that this wavering is indicated in the qualified form of some of the maxims; it occasionally struck him that the shadow of virtue must have a substance, but he had never grasped that substance—it had never been present ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Indians, Francette paced daintily here and there in the clean-swept yard, now snapping her small fingers, now coaxing with soft noises in her round throat, her sparkling eyes fixed on the gaunt grey skeleton that stood on its four feet braced wide apart, wavering dizzily. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... but true. Ever so slightly, the snub nose of the ZX-1 was swaying from side to side as it sped through the air; ever so slightly, her massive stern directional-rudders were wavering. ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... opened his eyes later, and with a clearer head, he found food and drink near. Unable to believe his sight, he fancied his wavering senses deceiving him, until he put out his hand and felt actually the substance of what he saw. He took up a bottle of milk incredulously, and sipped at it with the caution of a man not unused to periods of starvation. He ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... At first, to be sure, his sister took no pleasure in these fanciful fables and tried to shake his belief and lead back his heart to the old gods. But while she tried to guide the child, by degrees she felt compelled to follow in his path; at first with wavering steps, but dame Hannah helped her by her example and with many words of good counsel. She only taught her doctrine when the girl asked her questions and begged for information. All that here surrounded Selene breathed of love and peace, and the child felt this, spoke ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... share it. He has so done for ages, and can do so for a little longer. Moreover, he would rather not "arrest attention" or "command respect" at present. Thus he leaves his audience to first verify his statements in every case by the brilliant though rather wavering light of modern science: after which his facts may be either accepted or rejected, at the option of the willing student. In short, the "Adept"—if one indeed—has to remain utterly unconcerned with, and unmoved by, the issue. ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... scalp them. They were led by Dragging Canoe himself, and were formed very curiously, their centre being cone-shaped, while their wings were curved outward; apparently they believed the white line to be wavering and hoped to break through its middle at the same time that they outflanked it, trusting to a single furious onset instead of to their usual tactics.[35] The result showed their folly. The frontiersmen on the right and left scattered ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... but the thought of the lost treasures and all the dear memories that in her mind were identified with them seemed to overcome her. She drew her hand hastily across her eyes, and then, to his dismay, the sorrow for her loss emphasised her wavering belief in his guilt; for the first time he realised how strong that sorrow was. Impelled by emotion she turned again and came shrinkingly ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... shoulder and its sharp crack woke the echoes in the little wood. "It's a deer and I have got it," he exclaimed, dashing off after the animal which was staggering and wavering as ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... made it appear more clearly than ever that aid to Owen from herself depended entirely upon Cytherea's acceptance of her steward. Hemmed in and distressed, Cytherea's answers to his importunities grew less uniform; they were firm, or wavering, as Owen's malady fluctuated. Had a register of her pitiful oscillations been kept, it would have rivalled in pathos the diary wherein De Quincey tabulates his combat with Opium—perhaps as noticeable an instance as any in which a thrilling dramatic power has been ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... several bullets. All was in vain. His infantry was driven back with frightful slaughter. Terror began to spread fast from man to man. At that moment the fiery cavalry of Laudohn, still fresh, rushed on the wavering ranks. Then followed a universal rout. Frederic himself was on the point of falling into the hands of the conquerors, and was with difficulty saved by a gallant officer, who, at the head of a handful of Hussars, made good a diversion of a few minutes. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lost such a child at such a time, and where she lay buried, and how good she was, and how, in this or that respect, she resembles Nell. I do assure you that no circumstance of my life has given me one hundredth part of the gratification I have derived from this source. I was wavering at the time whether or not to wind up my Clock, {3} and come and see this country, and this decided me. I felt as if it were a positive duty, as if I were bound to pack up my clothes, and come and see my friends; and even now I ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... certainly, Haldane," answered the skipper, wavering a little, I thought, in his ideas. "Still, when one is inclined to believe in a thing, the imagination is often a great aid in turning a wish ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... strongest native affections, and under circumstances which led her to an irretrievable act. Had she been brought up in a Roman Catholic country she would doubtless have thrown herself into a convent, finding her stern joy in the thought that no future wavering was possible. Attempting to make a convent of her own mind, she soon knew too well that her efforts mocked her, that there was in her an instinct stronger than that of renunciation, and that she had condemned herself to ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... with anger, flashed over Gregory's shoulder to the door beyond. Then they widened with surprise. He stopped suddenly. His extended arm drooped. For an instant he stood hesitating, wavering. He took a step backward. His crooked arm unbent, dropped slowly to ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the island. My glass showed them to be boobies. An instant later thousands of rabihorcados took wing as if impelled by a common motive. Manuel ran ahead in his excitement, turning to shout to me, and then to point toward the wavering, swelling, white streams. I hurried after him, to that end of the island where we had landed, and I found the colony of boobies in a state of great perturbation. All were squawking, flapping wings, and waddling frantically about. Here was fear such as had not appeared ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... about him all the stinging danger from the half-crazed hunters. He lunged forward, slipped upon the smooth glacial floor beneath him, tried to turn again to meet his thronging foes and face the ring of flame, and then, wavering, floundering, moving wonderfully for a creature of his vast size, but uncertain as to foothold, he was driven to the very crest of the ledge, and, scrambling vainly, carrying away an avalanche of ice, snow and shrubs, went crashing to his death, a ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... taken in procession from the Hermitage, and exposed to public view in the Cathedral. The Saints of the different churches and sanctuaries were adored and exhibited daily. The Governor himself took the supreme command, and dispelled all wavering doubt in his subordinates by proclaiming Saint Mark's promise of intercession. On his ship he hoisted the Royal Standard, on which was embroidered the Image of the Blessed Virgin, with the motto "Mostrate esse Matrem" and over ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... already deeply grounded in the truth. No imaginable revelations, not even if it saw the heavens open, could make that soul swerve in any degree from the doctrine of the Church. If, however, it should at any time find itself wavering even in thought on this point, or stopping to say to itself, If God says this to me, it may be true, as well as what He said to the Saints—the soul must not be sure of it. I do not mean that it so ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... with Fate A little more to let us wait: He leads for aye the advance, Hope's forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good For nobler Earths and days of manlier mood; Our wall of circumstance Cleared at a bound, he flashes o'er the fight, A saintly shape of fame, to cheer the right And steel each wavering glance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Darkness, I turned my spy-glass upon the Giants' Pit, which lay to the South of the Giants' Kilns. And these same Kilns were tended by the giants, and the light of the Kilns was red and fitful, and threw wavering shadows and lights across the mouth of the pit; so that I saw giants crawling up out of the pit; but not properly seen, by reason of the dance of the shadows. And so, because ever there was so much to behold, I looked ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... you—but I have sworn never to touch another drop of it. I'll just rest here with you." He threw up his head and Jud Carpenter saw how eagerly he inhaled the odor which came out of the door. He saw the quivering lips, the tense straining of the throat, the wavering eyes which told how sorely ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... seldom have enjoyed much conversation, as we were compelled in most places to follow him in Indian file. Now and then he had to use his hatchet to clear the path, and we very frequently had to force our way by pressing aside the branches which met in front of us. Still he went on without wavering for a moment, or appearing doubtful of the direction he should take. After going on some way further, he again stopped, and pointed to a tree, the branch of which rose a few feet off. I knew by the way True barked that some creature was there; and looking more ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... England at his first jump on our shingle beach. But that squelch of fat citizens should be told—to the devil with them! will they ever learn? short of a second William!—there were eight-and-forty hours when the liberty of this country hung wavering in the balance with those Boulogne boats. Now look at Ulm and Austerlitz. Essling, Wagram; put the victors in those little affairs to front our awkward squads. The French could boast a regimental system, and chiefs who held them as the whist-player his hand of cards. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and speckled by galloping wind Which puffs and spurts it into tiny pashing breakers Dashed with lemon-yellow afternoon sunlight. The shining of the sun upon the water Is like a scattering of gold crocus-petals In a long wavering irregular flight. ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... rendered necessary, inevitable for the success of this campaign." And he proceeded to explain to her all the circumstances that were interwoven with Lieutenant Butler's ill-timed offence. "Thus you see that from Terence you can hope for nothing. His honour will not admit of his wavering in this matter." ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... sunlight striking in a dark place. Doris watched him with interest and concern; but Jed had no words with which to enlighten her. He only smiled wider, more often, and took to following Nancy like a wavering, distorted shadow. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... at the zenith of its splendour. The envoys sent by Vladimir to Constantinople to examine and report upon the religion which he had almost decided to adopt were dazzled with the magnificence of the ceremonial. They were wavering in their choice and weighing the merits of the different systems which had been brought before them. Rome they had not seen; Mohammedanism was foreign to their tastes; Judaism had been found wanting; but the Eastern Church appealed ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... rough from the storm, but no longer lashed into fury. Coming toward us, close inshore and from the direction of the Water City, I saw a boat speeding along over the spent waves. And as I looked, a narrow beam of light, green, shading into red, shot up from the boat and hung wavering in the air like a little search-light striving to pierce the gray ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... post lately occupied by the factotum in his talk with Mrs. Maynard, and looked down at Grace as she bent over her work. If he wished to speak to her, and was wavering as to the appropriate style of address for a handsome girl, who was at once a young lady and a physician, she spared him the agony of a decision by ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hand. But that her heart was not in the denial was also evident in the glance from her glorious dark starry eyes. These glances—veritable lightning flashes coming through her pronounced reserve—finished entirely any wavering there might be in my own purpose. I was aware now to the full that my heart was quite subjugated. I knew that I was in love—veritably so much in love as to feel that without this woman, be she what she might, by my side my future ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... many epochs. His flushed effort while talking to Mr. Farebrother—his effort after the cynical pretence that all ways of getting money are essentially the same, and that chance has an empire which reduces choice to a fool's illusion—was but the symptom of a wavering resolve, a benumbed response to the old stimuli ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... A few wavering and uncertain voices took up the cry, but it quickly died away before the uplifted hand of Prosper, the priest. He had pushed his way through the crowd and was now standing in its outmost rank directly opposite ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... with the right line of the plain, straight path in which we ought to walk. We have the same metaphor in our own language. We talk about things being right and wrong, by which we mean, in the one case, parallel with the rigid law of duty, and in the other case, 'wrung,' or wavering, crooked and divergent from it. There is a standard as well as a Judge, and we have not only to think of evil as being rebellion against God and separation from Him, and as, for ourselves, issuing in fatal missing of the mark, but also as being divergent from the one manifest law ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... for weeping, sighing Magdalens, who, when wearied with earthly loves and passions, turn half way to heaven, and swear to God the same oaths they have a thousand times sworn to men and a thousand times broken. Now, if I were in God's place, I would not accept these wavering saints. For my part I hate these pale, tearful, sighing, self-destroying beauties, and the farcical exhibition of their sufferings would never soften ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the question of heredity fascinated him as it did only because it remained obscure, vast, and unfathomable, like all the infant sciences where imagination holds sway. Finally, a long study which he had made on the heredity of phthisis revived in him the wavering faith of the healer, arousing in him the noble and wild hope of ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... answer. She gazed out of the window as if she was mildly impressed with a solicitude for the welfare of her garden. There flitted into her mind a wavering, indeterminate sort of notion that perhaps Lanigan was a better fellow than he used to be, and that if she should succeed in her great purpose it might not be necessary that he should go away. But still,—and ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... sympathies; but, afterwards, it was but natural he should, on returning to his duties, forget about her and her misery. What did she know of him? They had met but once; still her belief in him was strong, though wavering at the same time. Had he not said the unfortunate had a claim on all honorable men, and surely he was a man an unfortunate might apply to, if any man was? Such is the effect of imagination upon all poor mortals; it may be a grand gift, but is ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... Dr. Eggleston (reformed from a novelist); the literary and religious and economic essayists, Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, Mr. H. M. Alden, Mr. J. J. Chapman, and Mr. E. L. Godkin, with critics, dramatists, satirists, magazinists, and journalists of literary stamp in number to convince the wavering reason against itself that here beyond all question is the great literary centre of these States. There is an Authors' Club, which alone includes a hundred and fifty authors, and, if you come to editors, there is simply ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for a moment. JOHN is evidently wavering in his determination to kill. Slowly his whole frame relaxes. He lowers the pistol in his hand in a manner which clearly indicates that he is not going to shoot. He quietly puts it back in the holster, and WILL is obviously relieved, although he stood ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... country, he exultingly exclaimed, "Oh, what a glorious morning!" And then, amid the flashing hills, the ringing woods, the flaming roads, he smote with terror the haughty British column, and sent it shrinking, bleeding, wavering, and reeling through the streets of the village, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... the urgency of his friend, or a desire to meet with Dick Martin, that shook our skipper's wavering resolution we cannot tell, but he went into the Blue Boar, and took a glass for good-fellowship. Being a man of strong passions and excitable nerves, this glass produced in him a desire for a second, and that for a third, ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... seith / who that is inconsta[n]te A waueryng eye / glydyng sodeynly [Sidenote: an inconstant man with a wavering eye and a wandering foot] Fro place to place / & a foot varia[n]te 108 That in no place / abydeth stably These ben [th]^e signes / the wiseman seith sikerly Of suche a wight / as is vnmanerly nyce And ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... no gleam of colour on her cheeks except the wavering hues reflected from the painted windows in the low Gothic chancel—the ruddy gold of her hair shining under the Vandyke hat with its sweeping azure feather. She was the loveliest thing in that crowded church, whither people had come from ten miles ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... in his reply—completed—since he had been anticipated—at his leisure; but he only confirmed the popular conception of his materialistic errors, seeming, indeed, of wavering mind on the subject of the future life. His thought had marched on: and whereas it had been his complaint to Joseph that Rabbinism laid no stress on immortality, further investigation of the Pentateuch had shown him that Moses himself ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... In due season courts will be established to execute the laws, the confiscation act included, when we will be relieved of this duty and trust. Until that time, every opportunity should be given to the wavering and disloyal to return to their allegiance to the Constitution of their birth or adoption. I ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... been very kind to me, always. If there was anything to forgive I would forgive you," she said simply; and her face was charming with its look of innocent confidence in him, its wavering, shy smile. ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... never forget that scene in the forest—the gray arch of the heavens swimming in mist through which the sun peered shiftily, the tall pines wavering through the fog, the preoccupied mules marching single file, the foggy bell-note of the gentle dingue in its swinging basket, and Dorothy, limp kilts dripping with dew, plodding through the ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... believe it," she disputed, disappearing in the wood and returning with a pine-knot. They lighted it and its smoky flame threw wavering shadows about. She turned the leaves till she came to a picture which she ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... imperceptible gradient for the last three months, to-day she had come to a recognizable step up and taken it. Oddly enough, the thing had happened back there in the class-room as she stood before the professor's desk and caught his eye wavering between herself and the scrawny girl who wanted to ask a question about Robespierre. There had been more than blank helpless exasperation in that look of his, and it had taught her something. She ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... like your watch to keep "perfect time." If you are measured for a coat, you like "a perfect fit." You like other people to be perfect in their actions, so far as you are concerned. You wish your children to obey you; your wife to love you without ever wavering; those who owe you money to pay up twenty shillings to the pound; your servants to do their work according to order; in a word, if you served God as you wish everybody to serve you, you would be a perfect man. Is that so? Then why object ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... chores. There was to be no more wavering in my conduct. At the supper table Mr. Hacket kept us laughing with songs and jests and stories. The boy John, having been reproved for rapid eating, hurled his spoon upon ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... China is now wavering on the brink. Having despatched her two notes, and thereby proclaimed herself worthy to rank as a first-class power, with a seat at the Peace Table promised her, and all the benefits which accrue therefrom, ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... seemed afraid to look at them. Rosebud's presence somehow made things hard for him. Seth was a man whom long years of a life fraught with danger had taught that careful thought must be backed up by steady determination. There must be no wavering in any purpose. And this girl's presence made him rebel against that purpose he had in ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... glibly. Then his pinched face shaded. "If I can git back before she comes down," he hesitated, wavering between kindness and fear. "I guess I can," he decided, and ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... grave, and at this instant, just as I felt that Terry's future was wavering in the balance, outweighed probably by a bonnet-box, there was a slight stir in the restaurant, behind our backs. Involuntarily I turned my head, and saw Prince Dalmar-Kalm hurrying towards us, his very moustache a thundercloud. He could not have appeared at a less ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... for the protection of the native producer, did not bear so heavily on the consumer as the law of 1815 which they replaced; and the principle represented by them had a large following in the country. But now the argument from famine proved potent to decide the wavering convictions of some who had long been identified with the cause of Protection. The champions of Free Trade were sure of triumph when Sir Robert Peel became one of their converts; and the Corn Bill which he carried ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... strong. Her will was adequate. She took command of the domestic ship, captain and crew. Peter Taylor hung around his master deprecatingly; she sent him to Belpre on an errand. Albright, the dairyman, spoke disparagingly; she ordered him to look after the cows. She put an arm round her wavering lord, and drew him into his favorite retreat, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... important, at a meeting at a political club, or in Downing Street, he could find his tongue, take what is called a 'practical' view of a question, adopt what is called an 'independent tone,' reanimate confidence in ministers, check mutiny, and set a bright and bold example to the wavering. A man of his property, and high character, and sound views, so practical and so independent, this was evidently the block from which a Baronet should be cut, and in due time ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... beheld the prostrate form, And knew the mighty heart. Awhile he gazed, As doubtful of his purpose, and the storm, Conscious of that divine debate, withheld Its fierce emotion, in the luminous gloom Of those so dark irradiating eyes! Beneath whose wavering lustre shone revealed The tumult of the purpling deeps, and all The throbbing of the tempest, as it paused, Slowly subsiding, seeming to await The sudden signal, as a faithful hound Pants with the forepaws ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... skirmishing order, advancing towards the enemy. While they were thus advancing I distinctly saw the enemy retreating a long distance before them towards a bush in the rear. Suddenly they seemed to rally, and came down upon the line of the Thirteenth, yelling. At this moment I saw a wavering in the line of the Thirteenth. The Fenians advanced in a loose manner, but in great strength. Here the Thirteenth retreated at the double, but I did not hear the "retire" sounded for that purpose. As the Fenians ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... that the doom of Troy was even now setting thus. But Capys and they whose mind was of better counsel, bid us either hurl sheer into the sea the guileful and sinister gift of Greece, or heap flames beneath to consume it, or pierce and explore the hollow hiding-place of its womb. The wavering crowd is ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... silent. After a while he took the arm of the laborer, turned him so that the light of the moon struck his face squarely, and examined him with care. It was evident that he was wavering in spirit whether to inquire further and bring everything out with clearness, or for that time to stop with what he had learned ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... interest in Mr. Chambers, teaching; but it was not until Mr. Chambers was married that any women were baptized. At breakfast the next morning came an old chief, called Tongkat Langit—the Staff of Heaven. His son Lingire was one of the most pleasing converts, and Tongkat was wavering—had not leisure at present! The necessity of forswearing the practise of head-taking deters the old men from becoming Christians: they fear to lose influence with their tribe. The little party then fixed upon the spot where the church should be built, a permanent bilian ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... animals which stand as guards at the entrance, the multiplicity of allegorical figures which decorate the walls,—all conspire to carry us back to ages of the most remote antiquity, over which the traditions of the East shed a doubtful and wavering light." ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... lie, buried amid The long luxurious grass; The bats flit round me, born and hid In twilight's wavering mass. ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... of youth were dreams, but the waking was more glorious than they. They were only dreams,—fitful, flitting, fragmentary visions of the coming day. The shallow joys, the capricious pleasures, the wavering sunshine of infancy have deepened into virtues, graces, heroisms. We have the bold outlook of calm, self-confident courage, the strong fortitude of endurance, the imperial magnificence of self-denial. Our hearts expand with benevolence, our lives broaden with beneficence. We cease ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of light, but the flickering shadows of the trees caused by the wavering flames made the steps of the boys uncertain as they fled from the flames that were following so fast. Ned fell headforemost into a thicket of the terrible Spanish bayonet and it was only the excitement of the ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... are thrown up in the sky and distorted into the most fantastic shapes. They climb, trembling, upwards, spreading out into long lines at different levels, then contract and fall down, leaving nothing but an uncertain, wavering smudge which comes and goes. Presently the smudge swells and grows, taking shape until it presents the perfect inverted reflection of a berg on the horizon, the shadow hovering over the substance. More smudges ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... that he devoted himself to philosophical studies.[147] This induced him to undertake successively the cause of the Stoic, the Epicurean, or the Platonist, as an exercise for his powers of argumentation; while the wavering and unsettled state of mind, occasioned by such habits of disputation, led him in his personal judgment to prefer the sceptical ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... books Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobit, and Maccabees, that the church reads these "for the edification of the people, not for authority in establishing church doctrines." The same distinction is made by Rufinus, the contemporary and antagonist of Jerome. The language of Augustine was more wavering and uncertain. At the Council of Hippo, A.D. 393, at which he was present, the "ecclesiastical books," as the apocryphal books are called, were included in the catalogue of sacred books; and from that day to the time of the Reformation the extent of the Old Testament canon was regarded ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... I did love her?' said Edoardo, wavering, rather to see whether it would be a means of ridding him of Sophia than expressing the ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... casus belli. The details of the sitting of the Emperor's Council at 10 P.M. on July 14, at which it was decided to call out the French reserves, are not yet known. Ollivier was not present. There had been a few hours of wavering on this question; but the tone of the Parisian evening papers—it was the French national day—the loud cries of the rabble for war, and their smashing the windows of the Prussian embassy, seem to have convinced ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... called out Mort Fryback, the hardware dealer, wavering on one leg while he reached frantically behind him for his crutch. Mort was always looking for excitement. He hadn't had any to speak of since the day he created the greatest furor the town had experienced in ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... our political Government were extremely wavering and weak, for which an excuse can be found in the fact that many of the Southern representatives remained in Congress, sharing in the public councils, and influencing legislation. But as soon as Mr. Lincoln was installed, there was no longer any reason why Congress and the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... stood a few seconds, wavering. He did not shed a tear. He took one glance more at the blanket with the little form beneath it, and then turned suddenly to the ladder and climbed down again. A silence fell once more in the room as he entered. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... to her—Zura chattered away, of her friends and her pleasures, and though many of her words were in an unknown tongue, the picture she unconsciously drew of herself was as clear as transparency. It was an unguided, undisciplined life, big with possibilities for love or hate that even now was wavering in the balance for ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... To a friend wavering over her fitness for a piece of projected work, he said drily, "There is only one way to do a thing, and that is to do it." Late in life, the summation of this creed of action seemed to come when he confessed, "I cannot get over the feeling that we are here as conquerors, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... those in the car began to realize that something else was occurring. Somehow, they could feel the accommodation car wavering as if on the brink of a precipice. Then it began to settle slowly and the mystified performers and car hands thought it was going to rest where it was ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... show me anything special that we can do in the world?" the old man asked. His caution was wavering a little. "It is not impossible I may be with ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... Mr. Greeley strengthened the hands of the Disunionists. They were everywhere quoted as evidence that no attempt would be made to interfere with or coerce the South. The fearful and wavering were thus induced to join the ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... heart is now blamelessly with things of earth. "Sad and slow!" and most purely sweet. Almost mournful although it be, it breathes of happiness—for the joy dearest to the soul has ever a faint tinge of grief. O innocent enchantress! thou encirclest us with a wavering haze of beautiful imagery, by the spell of that voice awakening after a mood of awe, but for thy own delight. From the long dim tracts of the past come strangely blended recognitions of woe and bliss, undistinguishable now to our own heart—nor ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Mir Saheb," replied I, sitting alert with chattering teeth and shivering ague-stricken body. "Barrister-at Law.... Sit as close to me as you can, for warmth.... Hark! Is that a signal?" as a long high wavering note rose from the dry river-bed before us and wailed lugubriously upon the night, rising and ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... still alive and in the place of either of these generals, the issue of the battle would almost to a certainty have been very different from what it was. A soldier who had often followed to victory the enterprising Graham of Claverhouse, but, under a weaker leader, saw a battle wavering, cried out, "O for one hour of Dundee!" So must Lee often have sighed for Stonewall, the loss of whom at Chancellorsville made that, for the Confederacy, a sort of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... hours passed slowly. It was with a wrenching effort that he forced his mind to concentrate on the business in hand for the coming day. Yet, for his own honor and the sake of his people, it must be done, and well done. Moreover, there must be no wavering on his part, nothing to let anyone infer an unusual disturbance of mind. He must be prepared to play shocked surprise when ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... survey of the defeated man, wavering between the fear that he had killed him and the prompting to see to his hurts, if the case were not fatal, the student took to flight in the direction the beautiful girl had chosen. He well knew ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... my companions roused me: they had caught sight of their fellows in the distance! The two on Lona's horse rode on to join them. They were greeted with a wavering shout—which immediately died away. As we drew near, the sound of their sobs reached us like ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... church reads these "for the edification of the people, not for authority in establishing church doctrines." The same distinction is made by Rufinus, the contemporary and antagonist of Jerome. The language of Augustine was more wavering and uncertain. At the Council of Hippo, A.D. 393, at which he was present, the "ecclesiastical books," as the apocryphal books are called, were included in the catalogue of sacred books; and from that day to the time of the Reformation the extent of the Old Testament canon was regarded ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... one element in the very existence of the preceding act: doubt as to the facts of the case has been throughout operating to restrain him; and here first he reveals, perhaps first recognizes its influence. Subject to change of feeling with the wavering of conviction, he now for a moment regards his uncertainty as involving unnatural distrust of a being in whose presence he cannot help feeling him his father. He was familiar with the lore of the supernatural, and knew the doubt he expresses to be not without ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch—who, whether bigoted, weak, or narrow, was at least incorruptible—firmly fixed in the mind of that mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's fate; and at the break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the top ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... have a true disgust for weeping, sighing Magdalens, who, when wearied with earthly loves and passions, turn half way to heaven, and swear to God the same oaths they have a thousand times sworn to men and a thousand times broken. Now, if I were in God's place, I would not accept these wavering saints. For my part I hate these pale, tearful, sighing, self-destroying beauties, and the farcical exhibition of their sufferings ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... probable that the imagination of the Patroon of Kinderhook ever before took so high a flight; and there was reason to suspect, by the wavering and alarmed glance that he cast around him after so unequivocal an expression of weakness, that he already repented his temerity. Francois, who would not willingly disoblige a man that was known to possess a hundred thousand acres of land, with manorial rights, besides personals of no mean ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... branches of the trees, and causing a loose rose-branch to tap carelessly against the window panes. It sounded like the knock of someone anxious to come in. The candles flickered and guttered in the draught; the wavering light cast strange shadows over the dead man's face. You might have thought that his features moved from time to time; that now he frowned at the intruders, and now he smiled at ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... messenger on the neck of another to Gustavus Horn for more foot, he, finding he could not carry his point, had given it over, and was in full march to second the duke. But now it was too late, for the King of Hungary seeing the duke's men, as it were, wavering, and having notice of Horn's wheeling about to second him, falls in with all his force upon his flank, and with his Hungarian hussars, made such a furious charge, that the Swedes could ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... swimming the stream. When he was in the cabin the sounds changed, dropping off to one at a time, and expired. But when the riders came out into the air, they leaned and collided at random, whirled their arms, and, screaming till they gathered heart, charged with wavering menace at the door. The foremost was flung from the sill, and he shot along toppling and scraped his length in the dust, while the owner of the cabin stood in the entrance. The Indian picked himself up, and at some word of Jake's which the emigrants could ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... over I found to my surprise and joy, my brother and sister from Barnsley, whom I had expected to come to Bentham to accompany us to Liverpool, and their not coming to Bentham first was one of the causes which had discouraged me in leaving home; for I once had concluded, in my wavering, to leave my going for their determination, thinking if they came it would be the means of getting me off, if not, I should give it up; but it so fell out that they took the nearest way to meet us there, without writing us word, and it ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... Matcham, somewhat wavering. "Your father? and your oath to me? Ye took the saints ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Orders wavering and undecided, the leaders of the Revolution advanced still further in their requirements, and at last demanded that all classes alike, the Priests and the Women not excepted, should do homage to Colour by submitting to be painted. When it was objected that Priests and Women had no ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... telegram, and the insults of the German Press as a casus belli. The details of the sitting of the Emperor's Council at 10 P.M. on July 14, at which it was decided to call out the French reserves, are not yet known. Ollivier was not present. There had been a few hours of wavering on this question; but the tone of the Parisian evening papers—it was the French national day—the loud cries of the rabble for war, and their smashing the windows of the Prussian embassy, seem to have convinced the Emperor and his advisers ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... one of them. He was under middle height, the jaunty, alert youthfulness of his slim figure, supple without great strength, contradicted by the grey which shot with silver the thin hair falling almost to his narrow shoulders, and, as La Mothe searched him in the wavering, guttered candle-light, it flashed upon him that contradiction was the note of all his characteristics. The weak chin with the unkempt straggle of a beard gave the lie to a forehead magnificent in its abundant strength of mental power: the promise of the luminous, clear eyes ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... window-light—even if to the effect of my now asking myself why, so far from the scene of action, he was in panoply of war. I seem to see him cock-hatted and feathered too—an odd vision of dancing superior plumes which doesn't fit if he was only a captain. However, I cultivate the wavering shade merely for its value as my earliest glimpse of any circumstance of the public order—unless indeed another, the reminiscence to which I owe to-day my sharpest sense of personal antiquity, had already given me the historic ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... his clerical profession beyond drawing his revenues as prior of two abbeys; and his nearness to the Crown caused him to be suspected of ambition: moreover, he tended towards the new ideas in religion. He had met Knox in London, apparently in 1552. Morton was a mere wavering youth; Argyll was very old: Chatelherault was a rival of the Regent, a competitor for the Crown and quite incompetent. The Regent, in short, could scarcely have discovered a Scottish adviser worthy of employment, ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... you like; I'm not going to move," was his only reply, and he calmly filled his pipe and puffed luxuriously. Simpkins giggled feebly; he evidently was wavering as to his proper course, but Short's calm ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... he whimpered aloud, dropping the candle-end, the last spark of courage oozing out of his nerveless fingers. He stood up, straining his eyes down the black gully and across the dreary waste around him. "Mr. T-o-o-be!" he called, feebly, and the wavering echoes of his voice came back to him mingled with an ominous sound. "Oh, Lordy! what is that?" he stammered. He sank to the ground, grabbing wildly for his gun. "It's a cougar! I hear him trompin' up from the creek! It's a c-cougar! ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... Luyden's attitude said neither yes nor no, but always appeared to incline to clemency till her thin lips, wavering into the shadow of a smile, made the almost invariable reply: "I shall first have to talk this over ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... for him to walk upon, a precipice on either side; and his guide says, as he ropes himself to him, 'Now, tread where I tread!' Travellers follow their guides. Soldiers follow their commanders. There is the hell of the battlefield; here a line of wavering, timid, raw recruits. Their commander rushes to the front and throws himself upon the advancing enemy with the one word, 'Follow' and the coward becomes a hero. Soldiers follow their captains. Your Shepherd comes to you and calls, 'Follow ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... but he did not shoot. There was an uncertain expression in his face, as if he was wavering in his own mind as to whether he would kill this man or not. Slowly his whole frame relaxed. He lowered the pistol and quietly replaced it in his pocket, much to the relief of Brockton, who, notwithstanding the danger that confronted ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... as to ask Madison to prepare a valedictory address for him. He consented to serve another term most reluctantly, and not until he had been besought to do so by the leaders on both sides. Jefferson was as urgent as was Hamilton. While Washington was still wavering, he received a strong letter from Edmund Randolph that doubtless touched his soldierly pride. The letter closed with ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... considerations demanded that we should take the offensive and deal such a blow as would convince the rebels, as well as those whose loyalty was wavering, that the British arms were irresistible. Moreover, there was no likelihood of our force being increased. So on September 7 General Wilson issued the ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... soon see Metellus forced to take up his position in the north; and a slight incident which occurred while Metellus was at Thala showed that even cities of the distant east, which had never been under the immediate sway of the Numidian power, were wavering in their attachment to Rome. The Greater Leptis, situate in the territory of the Three Cities between the gulfs which separated Roman Africa from the territory of Cyrene, had sought the friendship and alliance of Rome from the very commencement ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... his forge stood on the brow of the hill, overlooking the lake, on a lonely part of the road to Cahir Conlish. One bright moonlight night, he was working very late, and quite alone. The clink of his hammer, and the wavering glow reflected through the open door on the bushes at the other side of the narrow road, were the only tokens that told of life and vigil for ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... said elsewhere, the charge at the trot, or at any rate the gallop should not be taken up till within a very short distance of the enemy. The charge of a compact mass at a trot is much greater than that of a wavering one at ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... Gawtrey paused, irresolute and wavering, when at that moment he heard steps on the stairs below. He started—as starts the boar caught in his ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with him at all. But how could he give due thought or discussion to such a matter before others? What chance was there of his weighing it as it should be weighed? Even if his feelings inclined him that way, he dared not show any sign of wavering when so many eyes were upon him. I was tempted to feign some other reason for my coming, and trust to fortune to give me some more favourable chance for handing him my papers. But then that chance might ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... even though it might cost them both pain. Yet in some pain there is pleasure; or, to be without it, is a worse kind of suffering. Helen was conscious of the inconsistency in her mind, and sighed, and endeavoured to be reasonable. And, to do her justice, there was not the slightest wavering as to the main point. She thought that the general might, perhaps, have some relenting towards her. Hope would come into her mind, though she tried to keep it out; she had nothing to expect, she repeatedly said to herself, except that either Cecilia would send, or the general ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... bleak northern ocean, or rising in an exhalation till they reached a sun-beam, they thus re-visited the haunts of men. These were the guardian angels, who in soft whispers restrain the vicious, and animate the wavering wretch who stands suspended ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... dozens of times. I know him to be a scoundrel of sorts; but I doubt if bald sunlight could make him blink. Liars have first to overcome the flickering and wavering of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... presence in the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, revealing it yet more intimately in the sound of the still small voice. So He sent Him out again with a new commission; and so we, too, may learn our lesson, if we care to learn it. And the lesson is this, that God renews our wavering strength, that He lifts up our drooping spirit, and opens our dull eyes and gives us afresh the hearing ear, by communion with Himself. In the solitude of the mount of God, through the symbols of His power, and in the ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... figure of her dread appeared no more before her waking eyes. Not at first did she realize the change, for it was only fitfully that her brain could register any definite impression. But one day when strong hands lifted her, something of familiarity in the touch caught her wavering intelligence. She looked up and saw a ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... house were lit by gas, this room had none, and the lamp being broken, I had to depend upon the bit of candle which might fail while I still had need of it. I separated it carefully from its bed of grease on the mantel, and as I did so the wavering light touched my hand and shirt cuff. Both were stained red, and I turned slightly sick at the sight. There was blood on my brown boots, too, and the grey tweed clothes which I had not had time to ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... beech threw a cool shadow across the small table and basket chairs; the china and silver were old and good. Beyond the belt of wavering shade, the recently mown grass gave out a moist smell in the hot sun. The grass grew fine and close, for the turf was old, but there were patches of ugly weeds. The borders by the house were thinly planted ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... Nations were by no means united in their loyalty to the crown. Brant saw that the tribe most wavering in its support was the Oneidas. He found that their missionary, Samuel Kirkland, was in league with the rebels, and sought to have this clergyman removed. Failing in this, he wrote to the Oneida chiefs, urging them ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... towards an object of love joined with envy is called "Jealousy," which accordingly is nothing else but a wavering of the disposition arising from combined love and hatred, accompanied by the idea of some rival who is envied. Further, this hatred towards the object of love will be greater, in proportion to the pleasure ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... wars between Balliol's partisans, while the patriots were led by young Randolph, by the young Steward, by Sir Andrew Murray, and the wavering and cruel Douglas, called the Knight of Liddesdale, now returned from captivity. In the desperate state of things, with Balliol and Edward ravaging Scotland at will, none showed more resolution than Bruce's sister, who held ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... arose and replenished the fire with resinous pine logs, and for a while the flames leaped high, filling the woods with strange shadows and ghostly, wavering spots of light. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... murmur came From the clear, bright heart of the wavering flame, Like the faltering thrill of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... exploits of la petite Moreau. She shot two Germans when their bayonets were very close to her, and later, snatching some hand bombs from a British grenadier's stock, she accounted for three more who were busy at the same occupation. Furthermore, "when the British line was wavering under the most terrible cyclone of shells ever let loose upon earth, Emilienne Moreau sprang forward with a bit of tricolored bunting in her hand and the glorious words of the 'Marseillaise' on her lips, and by her fearless example averted a retreat that might have meant disaster ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... in the car began to realize that something else was occurring. Somehow, they could feel the accommodation car wavering as if on the brink of a precipice. Then it began to settle slowly and the mystified performers and car hands thought it was going to rest where it was ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... to the zenith, black with bale, The Gipsies' smoke rose deadly pale; And one wide night of hopeless hue Hid from the heart the recent blue. And soon, with thunder crackling loud, A flash reveal'd the formless cloud: Lone sailing rack, far wavering rim, And billowy tracts of stormland dim. We stood, safe group'd beneath a shed. Grace hid behind Jane's gown for dread, Who told her, fondling with her hair, 'The naughty noise! but God took care Of all good girls.' ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... aunt and is counted to its father's clan.[135] It is also possible to transfer a child to the father by giving it one of the names common to his clan. There are many curious customs practised by certain tribes, wavering between mother and father descent. In Samoa religion decides the question. At the birth of a child the totem of each parent is prayed to in turn (usually, though not always, starting with that of the ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... witnessed the afternoon fight. When he put up his arms, each day, to begin, they pained exquisitely, and the first few blows, struck and received, racked his soul; after that things grew numb, and he fought on blindly, seeing as in a dream, dancing and wavering, the large features and burning, animal- like eyes of Cheese-Face. He concentrated upon that face; all else about him was a whirling void. There was nothing else in the world but that face, and he would ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... dismissed this suspicion scornfully, as slander against the ornament of the Surgical Ward of St. Isidore's. He was tired: the languid summer air thus early in the year would shake any man's nerve. But the head nurse understood well that such a wavering of will or muscle must not occur again, or the hairbreadth chance ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and leaves him in the outer darkness of the street. It may be that it must be so; but it seems a great pity; and it seems somehow as if the father and the mother might keep with him in some word, some thought, and be there to help him against himself, whenever he is weak and wavering. The trouble is that the father and mother are too often children in their way, and little more fit to ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... pressed into the fight, and showered blows as only Roland could, driving the foe before him. But, alas! the heathen hosts were thick as the sands of their native deserts, and thousands upon thousands came to reinforce their wavering ranks. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... In reality she herself would not have lived there for an hour. Her husband had launched her into the feverish life of literary, artistic, and social Paris, hurrying her to gatherings, studios, exhibitions, theatres, and other pleasure resorts—all those brasier-like places where weak heads and wavering hearts are lost. He himself, amid all his passion for show, felt bored to death everywhere, and was at ease only among his horses; and this despite his pretensions with respect to advanced literature and philosophy, his collections of curios, such as the bourgeois of to-day does not ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Colonel Elzey.) and Beauregard, with ready judgment, dispatched his staff officers to order a general advance. The broken remnants of Bee, Hampton, and Evans advanced upon Jackson's right, and victory, long wavering, crowned the standards of the South. The Federals were driven past the guns, now finally abandoned, past the Henry House, and down the slope. McDowell made one desperate endeavour to stay the rout. Howard's brigade was rapidly thrown in. But the centre had been completely ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Admiral shall happen to hull in the night, then to make a wavering light over his other light, wavering the ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... this critical period, when the Hanoverian dynasty was shaken almost to its downfall by the insurrection in Scotland of 1745, that Ireland was imperilled: 'With a weak or wavering, or a fierce and headlong Lord-Lieutenant—with a Grafton or a Strafford,' remarks Lord Mahon, 'there would soon have been a simultaneous rising in the Emerald Isle.' But Chesterfield's energy, his lenity, his wise and just administration saved ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... who, they believed, had been sent to them from heaven. I heard even, that some had commenced a new chronology from the date of my arrival. All this pleased me only so much the more, as formerly in Nazar I had been abused for my imprudence and wavering judgment, and in Martinia despised and commiserated for my ignorance. True, indeed, is the old proverb; that among the blind the one-eyed rules. I had now come to a land, where with little understanding, I could raise myself to the highest dignities. There were ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... that firm to his credit. He was, however, acquitted by a majority of three only. The greatest exertions were made to screen him. Lord Stanhope, the son of the Earl of Chesterfield, went round to the wavering members, using all the eloquence he was possessed of to induce them either to vote for the acquittal or to absent themselves from the house. Many weak-headed country-gentlemen were led astray by his persuasions, and the result was as already stated. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... floor, lighted on the back of a cockroach that was passing, and stuck. The patient hadn't seen the cockroach—what he did see was his escaped postage stamp zig-zagging aimlessly across the floor to the baseboard, wavering up over the baseboard, and following a crooked track up the wall and across the ceiling. In depressed silence he tore up the letter he had just written and dropped ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... returned the Countess; 'but we both serve the same person, as you know - or if you do not, then I have the pleasure of informing you. Your conduct is so light - so light,' she repeated, the fan wavering higher like a butterfly, 'that perhaps you do not truly understand.' The Countess rolled her fan together, laid it in her lap, and rose to a less languorous position. 'Indeed,' she continued, 'I should be sorry to see any young woman in your situation. You began with every advantage - ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anxiety in entering upon the correspondence. He rallied me upon my hesitation; occasionally assumed a tone of irony; and then more seriously declared that it had given him no little pain to observe in me "a certain scrupulous wavering, and a subtilty of conscience, which, however Christian-like, was little in accordance with true philosophy." "I shall continue to esteem you," he added, "though we should not agree upon that point; for I am bound, in all sincerity, to inform you, that I ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... equal indulgence to Protestantism in England, should she mount its throne, her marriage to one who was looked upon as an English noble, above all the hope of realizing through her succession the dream of a union of the realms, again told on the wavering body of more Conservative statesmen, like Norfolk, and even drew to her side some of the steadier Protestants who despaired of a Protestant succession. Even Elizabeth at last seemed wavering towards a recognition of her as her successor. But Mary aimed ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... conversation, as we were compelled in most places to follow him in Indian file. Now and then he had to use his hatchet to clear the path, and we very frequently had to force our way by pressing aside the branches which met in front of us. Still he went on without wavering for a moment, or appearing doubtful of the direction he should take. After going on some way further, he again stopped, and pointed to a tree, the branch of which rose a few feet off. I knew by ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... from the Mountain battery, and the fact that their rear was threatened and their retreat about to be cut off, soon produced signs of wavering amongst the Afghans. Their Artillery fire slackened, their Infantry broke, and about 2 p.m. Drew and Hugh Gough found it possible to make a move towards the Peiwar Kotal. Gough was the first to reach the crest, closely followed by Lieutenant Brabazon, his orderly officer, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... crisis; upon the events of the next few minutes would hang the issue of a hard-fought battle. Already at one end of the line the troops seemed to be wavering. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... later he might jump up briskly. Well! how about a little run up to Pelham Manor, wonderful morning—could she go as she was? Rachael would beg for ten minutes; she might come downstairs in seven to find him wavering. ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... indefinitely to that ideal, and whether it is possible for us in this life ever to have hearts so continuously fixed as that no attraction shall draw the needle aside one point from the pole or not, it is possible for us all to have them a great deal steadier than in that wavering, fluctuating vacillation ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sticking-place by an effort of will, and saying to himself that it was not for a soldier of France to quail before a ball, he deliberately wheeled his horse to the front of a position where a regiment was being shaken by the enemy's artillery fire, and by his very audacity stiffened the wavering troops and saved ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... without determining our selves one way or other in those Points which are of the last Importance to us. There are indeed many things from which we may with-hold our Assent; but in Cases by which we are to regulate our Lives, it is the greatest Absurdity to be wavering and unsettled, without closing with that Side which appears the most safe and [the] most probable. The first Rule therefore which I shall lay down is this, that when by Reading or Discourse we find our selves thoroughly convinced of the Truth of any ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... was looking haggard and tired; his face was pallid and drawn; his eyes were red, quick, and wandering; his hair was neglected and ragged; his step was wavering and uncertain. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... defiance of wind and spitting rain, was walking over the lawn the centre of a large group, with Marsham beside her. Her white serge dress and the blue shawl she had thrown over her fair head made a brilliant spot in the dark wavering line. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... deeply disappointed; she had pictured it so differently. He would have understood her, she had thought. But he seemed to be in his worst mood. She stood, the picture of distressful uncertainty, hot and wavering; her head hung, her hand moving a book about on the table. To his surprise and great discomfort he now discerned that she was silently crying. Tears were falling, she made no effort to stop them, nor to conceal them. ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... studying the lie of a golf ball. Behind her, carrying her bag of sticks, stood a small boy, chiefly remarkable for his large boots and huge tam-o'-shanter bonnet, who, as I appeared on the scene, was intently watching his young mistress's putter, wavering uncertainly in her slender hands before she ventured on what was evidently a critical stroke. But before the stroke was made the girl caught sight of me, paused, seemed to remember something, and ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... and falling down in the very centre of the circle, smashed into atoms, and the cobra di capella met their gaze, reared upon the very tip of his tail, his hood expanded to the utmost in his wrath, hissing horribly, and darting out his forked tongue,—wavering, among the many, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... thing to remember—a weird and unearthly bit of living—that war-ruined church, strewn with straw, the wounded wrapped like mummies in dark blankets, their white bandages making high spots in the wavering, irregular lights of lanterns and pocket flashes moving about. I sat on the pavement by his side, hand in hand. A big crucifix hung above, and the Christ seemed ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... over threadlike trails which climb the divide from Silver City and Toltec and Vermilion, and loop their terrifying courses down the declivities trod only by the sturdy burro or the agile, sure-footed mountain-horse. These wavering paths, worn deep and dusty once, are grass-grown now, for they were built in the days when silver was accounted a precious metal, and only an occasional hunter or prospector makes present ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... rabbit that didn't come, or a miscalculation over the length of the snow tunnel where a partridge burrowed for the night. Generally, if you follow far enough, there is also a story of good hunting which leaves you wavering between congratulation over a successful stalk after nights of hungry, patient wandering, and pity for the little tragedy told so vividly by converging trails, a few red drops in the snow, a bit of fur blown about ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... your secret, Sphinx,—for mine!— What means the colour of your eyes, Half innocent and all so wise, Blue as the smoke whose wavering line ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... produce resolution as a result. The forerunner of resolution is an act of the mind making evident the necessity of venturing, and thus influencing the will. This quite peculiar direction of the mind, which conquers every other fear in man by the fear of wavering or doubting, is what makes up resolution in strong minds; therefore, in our opinion, men who have little intelligence can never be resolute. They may act without hesitation under perplexing circumstances, but then they act without reflection. ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... Wavering Tlascala decided for Cortes and he was received with generous, royal and munificent hospitality, which accorded him everything he asked. Messengers were despatched to Hispaniola for reinforcements and every preparation ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Hurstwood, he was alive with thoughts and feelings concerning Carrie. He had no definite plans regarding her, but he was determined to make her confess an affection for him. He thought he saw in her drooping eye, her unstable glance, her wavering manner, the symptoms of a budding passion. He wanted to stand near her and make her lay her hand in his—he wanted to find out what her next step would be—what the next sign of feeling for him would be. Such anxiety and enthusiasm had not ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... of morals which then existed. If we set aside all the element derived from law and polity which runs through our current moral notions, I hardly know what we shall have left. The residuum was somehow and in some vague way intelligible to the ante-political man; but it must have been uncertain, wavering, and unfit to be depended upon. In the best cases it existed much as the vague feeling of beauty now exists in minds sensitive but untaught,—a still small voice of uncertain meaning, an unknown something ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... WEST OF A WAVERING line along the western edge of the central parts of Texas and Oklahoma the Negro is not an important social or cultural element of the Southwest, just as the modern Indian hardly enters into Texas life at all and the Mexican ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... in the palace. Everything remained gloomy and silent among the inhabitants of this last imperial residence; but, nevertheless, the Emperor personally seemed to me more calm since he had come to a definite conclusion than at the time he was wavering in painful indecision. He spoke sometimes in my presence of the Empress and his son, but not as often as might have been expected. But one thing which struck me deeply was, that never a single time did a a word escape ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... her carriage; the rain lashed the carriage-blinds. The passers-by seemed merely shadows wavering in the mire of the street; and, pressed close to each other, they observed all these things vaguely with a calm disdain. Under various pretexts, he would linger in her room for an ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... voice, evidently in a great state of excitement, but what was said could not be made out in the cabin. In fact, Oliver had his own business to mind, for at the first sound from the deck the serpent raised its head, and he could see its tongue quivering and gleaming in the light, and the neck wavering, while the whole of its great length began to glide over him in different directions, as if every ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... cattle kraals were, figures appeared, moving swiftly to and fro, looking ghostly and unreal. The Kaffirs were marshalling their men for the attack. A minute more and it had begun. On up the slope they came in long, wavering lines, several hundreds of them, whistling and screaming, shaking their spears, their war-plumes and hair trappings blown back by the breeze, the lust of slaughter in their rolling eyes. Two or three of them had guns, which they fired as they ran, but where the bullets ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... autumn dusk a chilly little wind played about the street corners and wailed softly through the thinning tree-tops. The big lamp above Joe's workbench was unlighted so the little shop was in darkness except for the fitful wavering of the ruddy wood fire in ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... essayists, Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, Mr. H. M. Alden, Mr. J. J. Chapman, and Mr. E. L. Godkin, with critics, dramatists, satirists, magazinists, and journalists of literary stamp in number to convince the wavering reason against itself that here beyond all question is the great literary centre of these States. There is an Authors' Club, which alone includes a hundred and fifty authors, and, if you come to editors, there is simply ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... come back for us, River Andrew!" cried little Sep's thin voice, as the boat swirled down stream. His wavering bull's-eye lantern followed it, and showed River Andrew and another pulling stroke to John Turner's bow, for the banker had been a famous oar on the Orwell in his boyhood. Then, with a smack like a box on the ear, another snow-squall ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... up and spread fanwise over the heavens. They quivered and sank, and flared again, and broke into innumerable rippling waves; they hung, broad banners of light, athwart the skies, then slowly faded, to give place to a wavering interplay of ghostly beams that sought the darkest places beyond the moon: celestial fingers whiter than the white glow of ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... it did," said Diana critically; and, much elated, Anne led the way to the garden, which was full of airy shadows and wavering golden lights. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... opposition, its direful effect is to divide the councils of the nation, to paralyze the executive arm in all times of great emergency, to render but half effectual every great national enterprise, to make wavering the national policy, to exasperate political parties more and more against each other, thereby dividing the people and weakening the national life and progress, preventing all concentration of effort ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... In wavering tones the man, refreshed, said, "Since yester noon have I hung here. With the morning came the dog; thrice came he sniffing. Once, before weakness overcame me, with kicking and fierce screams I frightened the brute. Again, a ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... over their coffee discussed plans. In the midst of these the Southerner picked up idly a piece of wrapping-paper. Upon it was pencilled a wavering scrawl: ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... passed as might be expected, owing to the circumstances in which we were placed, in much agitation. Clausel is every moment advancing up the town. Every thing is in confusion. The troops declare they will not fire a shot. The national guards are wavering and undecided, and this moment (five in the morning) our coachman has knocked at our door to tell us that we cannot remain another moment safe ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... she came gradually to call the Holy Dream, the years passed more swiftly, with less of inward tumult, for Sophia Ivanovna Gregoriev. It was now the close of the year 1851; and the reign of the Iron Czar was wavering towards its dark end. Meantime the son of the chief of the secret section in Moscow was eleven years and three months old: a straight-limbed, quiet child, the son of his mother. And all Sophia's recent life, that life which had entwined itself wholly about the promised ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... true the Puritan Sabbath had its disagreeable points. So have the laws of Nature. They are of a most uncomfortable sternness and rigidity; yet for all that, we would hardly join in a petition to have them repealed, or made wavering and uncertain for human convenience. We can bend to them in a thousand ways, and live ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... cry from Christina arrested them. They looked out to sea. What was this sudden and awful thing? Instead of the starboard green light, behold! the port red light—and that moving? Oh see! how it recedes, wavering, flickering through the whirling vapor of the storm! And there again is the green light! Is it a witch's dance, or are they strange death-fires hovering over the dark ocean grave? But Hamish knows too well what it means; and with a wild cry of horror and despair, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... covering when fallen the same space it filled while standing. And so he crosses the broad acres, and so each of the big black followers, stepping one by one to a place behind him, until the long, wavering, whitish green swaths of the prostrate hemp lie shimmering across the fields. Strongest now is the smell of it, impregnating the clothing of the men, spreading far throughout ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... at the mainsail halliards, the second hand at the foresail, with orders to cut away at the lift of his hand, lest the vessel get on her beam's ends and capsize. 'Twas thus that they drove her into the wind—stout hearts and stout timber: no wavering or weak complaint, whatever the wind and sea. But night caught them off our harbour—deep night: with the headlands near lost in the black sky; no more than the looming, changing shadow of the hills and the intermittent flash of breakers to guide the way. They were now beating along shore, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... hard on the trail to overtake the governor. Without a moment's wavering, Benyowsky sent the messenger with a flask of poisoned brandy back ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... On aught but being faithful. I will take This yearning self of mine and strangle it. I will not be half-hearted: never yet Fedalma did aught with a wavering soul. Die, my young joy—die, all my hungry hopes! The milk you cry for from the breast of life Is thick with curses. O, all fatness here Snatches its meat from leanness—feeds on graves. I will seek nothing but to shun base joy. The saints were cowards who ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... estadia, lay days dificultad, difficulty elevar, to raise, to enhance esta visto, it is obvious evitar, to avoid fletar, to freight mar alborotada, heavy sea mercado algodonero, cotton market mina de carbon, colliery *ofrecer, to offer oscilacion, uncertainty, wavering, ups and downs perturbar, to disturb sorprendente, surprising suma redonda, lump sum ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... must have been the entering wedge," Mr. Fenton remarked, nodding his approval of the girl's idea. "It set Hiram to thinking; and once a wavering man does that, the good in him gets a chance. But come, this doesn't look like supper. I didn't think I was one bit hungry; ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... party may learn their future, if one gets a clod of earth from the churchyard sets up twelve candles in it, lights and names them. The fortune of each will be like that of the candle-light named for him,—steady, wavering, or ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... the rocks of the mountain tops all crimson and purple with the sunset; and there were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning and quivering about them; and the river, brighter than all, fell, in a wavering column of pure gold, from precipice to precipice, with the double arch of a broad purple rainbow stretched across it, flushing and fading alternately in the wreaths of spray. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... good and evil, esteeming things according to the clearness of the desires, or the reluctation; which opinion was revived in the heresy of the Anabaptists, measuring things according to the motions of the spirit, and the constancy or wavering of belief; all which are manifest to tend to private repose and contentment, and not to point ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... else on the stairs now, climbing with an extreme slowness. A bare arm reached through the trap, wavering for a moment uncertainly. Ugly bruises showed on the white flesh. Tolliver managed to reach the trap. He grasped the arm and drew into the light the dark hair and the chalky face of his wife. Her wide eyes stared at ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... banners wavering in the winds of prayer; it hung above the Gates, the flowers of all splendours, Heaven's very rose, hung like an opal on the boundless breast of night, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... black, wavering line of wild fowl, moving in beautiful, rapid flight, crossed the line of his vision. "Geese flying north, and low. There's water here," he said. He followed the flock with his glass, saw them circle over the lake, and vanish in ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... the two candles from the mantel-shelf to the chest of drawers, put her blouse on the seat of a chair and her skirt across the back of it. Then with slow graceful movements she began to uncoil her hair, and as her smooth white arms went up and down, the candlelight sent gigantic wavering shadows across the wall-paper to the ceiling. Beneath one of her elbows he could see right out through the open window into a dark void. From his position on the bed nothing was visible out there, but he could fill it if he cared to do so—the scattered dust ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... fawn belongs to Apollo and Diana because stags are sensitive to music; (are they?). But you see the fawn is here with Athena of the dew, though she has no lyre; and I have myself no doubt that in this particular relation to the gods of morning it always stands as the symbol of wavering and glancing motion on the ground, as well as of the light and shadow through the leaves, chequering the ground as the fawn is dappled. Similarly the spots on the nebris of Dionysus, thought of sometimes as stars (apo tes ton astron poikilias, Diodorus, I. 11), as well ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... reassuring. Jimmy decided to take a chance with the Italian mother, and as fast as he could, he streaked it toward the opposite door. The shrieks and denunciations that he met from this direction were more disconcerting than those of the Irish father. For an instant he stood in the centre of the room, wavering as to which side to ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... gratification to the little man. As the latter jumped into the boat and ordered the men to push off, the Provost turned slowly to his brother magistrates with a wink and a quiet smile that convulsed them with suppressed laughter, and did more to encourage any of the wavering or timid inhabitants than if he had harangued them heroically ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... here till death so as to learn thy god- like thoughts," said Pentuer. "But tell me, can I shut myself up today in a temple when the fate of the kingdom and the future of the people are wavering in the balance, and ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... had preached a crusade; he lived to assemble the armies of Christendom against the Turks, and died at Ancona, while it was still uncertain whether the authority and enthusiasm of a pope could steady the wavering counsels and vacillating wills of kings and princes. The middle ages were still vital in S. Catherine; Pius II. belonged by taste and genius to the new period of Renaissance. The hundreds of the poorer Sienese who kneel before S. Catherine's shrine prove that her memory is still alive in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... woke up, there was a man before him. The face blurred, seemed to grow to monstrous size and then move out to infinite distances. The voice of Harris had a ripple in it, wavering up ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... although I had been for some days wavering upon the brink of these conclusions in a quiet way, I found the old keen ardor of the sportsman still burning too strongly, and I had started out with a breech-loader, intent upon doing much of the Gondwana route gun in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... will finally be saved." Mr. Dwight, in his recent publication, says, "The doctrine of the eternity of future punishments is almost universally rejected. I have seen but one person in Germany who believed it, and but one other whose mind was wavering on this subject." Universalism may, therefore, be considered the prevailing ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... If I have fancied myself at work with Yankee sailors at the guns, and poured the shivering broadside into the Guerriere, I have helped to man the breastworks at New Orleans, and seen the ranks that stood firm at Waterloo wavering before the blaze of Southern rifles. If I have read of the hardy Northern volunteers on the battle-plains of Mexico; I remember the Palmetto boys at Cherubusco, and the brave Mississippians at Buena Vista. Is it a wonder, then, that my heartstrings ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... should have been glad to have had the comradeship of that gallant company had they not firmly insisted that fellowship depends upon identity of creed. They repudiated similarity of aim and social sympathy as tests which were much too loose and wavering as they did that vague socialism which for thousands has come to be a philosophy or rather religion embodying the hope of the world and the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... wisdom of Morano, for anger had clouded his judgment. And a faint song came yet from the donkey-drivers, wavering ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... remain sane, though it give itself to every phantasy, the dreamer of the middle ages. It is 'the fool of fairy ... wide and wild as a hill,' the resolute European image that yet half remembers Buddha's motionless meditation, and has no trait in common with the wavering, lean image of hungry speculation, that cannot but fill the mind's eye because of certain famous Hamlets of our stage. Shakespeare himself foreshadowed a symbolic change, that shows a change in the whole temperament of the world, for though ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... examination of what you are, hinder you from that which is your chief duty, and his chief commandment,—to believe in him. I know many Christians are puzzled in the matter of their interest, and always wavering, because they are more taken up with that which is but a matter of comfort and joy, than that which is his greatest honour and glory. I say, to consider the precious promises; to believe the excellency and virtue of Jesus Christ, and love him in your souls, and delight in him, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... to the male and female ideal, certain distinct powers and properties belong. The lines of demarkation are not always clear, not always straight lines: they are frequently wavering, shadowy, and difficult to follow, yet on the whole whatever physical strength, personal aggressiveness, the intellectual scope and vigor which manage vast material enterprises are emphasized, there the ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... all sides angry enemies rushing towards him, and uttering cries of death. As the wild boar turns round once or twice, before resolving to stand at bay and face the devouring pack, Goliath, struck with terror, made one or two abrupt and wavering movements. Then, as he abandoned the possibility of flight, instinct told him that he had no mercy to expect from a crowd given up to blind and savage fury—a fury the more pitiless as it was believed to be legitimate. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... control himself by thinking of his mother. And, as he said, there was always comfort in those Saturday nights and blessed Sundays. A long walk in the country on those blessed Sundays, and the Testament readings to his mother, would always strengthen his often wavering faith in her prophecies of good in the end, would cheer his spirits, and nerve him with a fresh resolution for the coming week. And what was it that the widow hoped would result from this painful bondage? She ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... of the wavering and shaking young Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. He comes, he says, upon a secret mission, and pretends to have discovered a sort of conspiracy that ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... was now far advanced; so, as I was passing a cottage inn, I wavered a minute, and the result of the wavering was that I crossed the threshold. I said to myself: 'Perhaps I may walk on for miles, and not find another chance so good as this.' It was one of the poorest of inns, but it was able to give me a meal of bread and cheese and eggs, which was as much as I could expect hereabouts. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the Guide was taken in procession from the Hermitage, and exposed to public view in the Cathedral. The Saints of the different churches and sanctuaries were adored and exhibited daily. The Governor himself took the supreme command, and dispelled all wavering doubt in his subordinates by proclaiming Saint Mark's promise of intercession. On his ship he hoisted the Royal Standard, on which was embroidered the Image of the Blessed Virgin, with the motto "Mostrate esse ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Blyth's wavering health permitted her husband to open the sittings of his evening drawing-academy in ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... jeopardize his paper by such influences in any matter which might probably become interesting to the world of his readers. There was a strong belief in Melmotte. The clubs thought that he would be returned for Westminster. The dukes and duchesses feted him. The city,—even the city was showing a wavering disposition to come round. Bishops begged for his name on the list of promoters of their pet schemes. Royalty without stint was to dine at his table. Melmotte himself was to sit at the right hand of the brother of the Sun and of the uncle of the Moon, and British Royalty was ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... more unreal, fairy-like, fantastic than they are in our imaginations. There is nothing but tourneying, love-making, and enchantment. Compare the rumour of the Crusades and Richard the Lion Heart in "Der Zauberring" with the stalwart flesh-and-blood figures in "Ivanhoe" and "The Talisman." A wavering moonshine lies all over the world of the Fouque romances, like the magic light which illumines the Druda's castle in "Der Zauberring," on whose battlements grow tall white flowers, and whose courts are filled ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Lincoln Cathedral, and, as it came, the few morning worshippers—it was a week-day—inclined their faces upwards: for it seemed to pause and float overhead and again be carried forward by its own impulse, a pure column of sound wavering awhile before it broke and spread and dissolved into whispers among the multitudinous arches. To a woman still kneeling by a pillar close within the western doorway it was as the voice of a seraph speaking with the dawn, fresh from his night-watch ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to whom the work has brought its burdens, of labor, care, and long solicitude, sometimes, no doubt, of a public criticism whose imperious sharpness they may have felt, but who have followed their plans to completion, without wavering or pause; who have, indeed, expanded those plans as the progress of the work has suggested enlargement; and who, to-day, enter the reward which belongs to those who, after promoting a magnificent enterprise, see it accomplished. Among ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... at the nature of this quality of romance, we must bear in mind the peculiarity of our attitude to any art. No art produces illusion; in the theatre we never forget that we are in the theatre; and while we read a story, we sit wavering between two minds, now merely clapping our hands at the merit of the performance, now condescending to take an active part in fancy with the characters. This last is the triumph of romantic story- telling: when the reader ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... because she did not know what to say, and Grant because he knew his voice would be recognized by Miro's keen ears. He kept his eyes fixed on the Ganymedan, waiting hawk-like for one false move, for the tiniest wavering of attention. But the pencil-ray was ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... hallooing out that the white men were running, and to come on and scalp them. They were led by Dragging Canoe himself, and were formed very curiously, their centre being cone-shaped, while their wings were curved outward; apparently they believed the white line to be wavering and hoped to break through its middle at the same time that they outflanked it, trusting to a single furious onset instead of to their usual tactics.[35] The result showed their folly. The frontiersmen on the right and left scattered out still farther, so ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... friends, and watch your common good: And now, establish'd consul in this place, Old Marius will foresee advenient harms. Sylla, the scourge of Asia, as we hear, Is press'd to enter Italy with sword. He comes in pomp to triumph here in Rome: But, senators, you know the wavering wills Of foolish men—I mean the common sort— Who, through report of innovations, Of flattering humours of well-temper'd tongues, Will change, and draw a second mischief on. I like your care, and will myself apply To ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... thy restless wavering state Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit! Witness this present prison whither fate Hath borne me, and the joys I quit. Thou causedest the guilty to be loosed From bands wherewith are innocents enclosed; Causing the guiltless to be strait reserved, And freeing those that death had ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... enemy. Moreover, it is easy to form line at the moment of the charge, by leaving a small distance only between the leading and following battalions; for we must not forget that in the checkered order there are not two lines, but a single one, which is broken, to avoid the wavering and disorder observed in ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... a fine ashy dust seemed to be raining down on the great city, raining down without cessation and slowly burying it. The hollows were already hidden deep in gloom, and a line of cloud, like a stream of ink, rose upon the horizon, engulfing the last streaks of daylight, the wavering gleams which were retreating towards the west. Below Passy but a few stretches of roofs remained visible; and as the wave rolled on, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... in a low tone of voice as the boat glided nearer and nearer to where the shark was swimming slowly and wavering to and fro, and in my excitement I drew back, raising the lance high, and just as the monster was about to dash off in a fresh direction I threw myself forward, driving the point of the lance right ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... childlike, clinging woman to the man who stood there on the quay, so good-looking and efficient in his white clothes, and moreover the most important man she knew at the moment. She did not take any notice of the wavering, indistinct, lambent Birkin, who stood at his side. One figure at a time occupied ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... which had so recently placed their lives in jeopardy as a signal interposition of Providence, and they resolved to obey the warning, and return to their respective homes. Stanhope, vexed with their wavering conduct, and convinced that he could not place any reliance on their services, made no attempt to detain them. The Scots, and a few of his own people, still adhered to him: and he hired a small vessel, which lay at the island, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... beheld all that which followed. The English force was marshalled in four divisions, each commanded by a bishop and a baron. You could see the men fidgeting, puzzled by the delay; as a wind goes about a corn-field, vague rumors were going about those wavering spears. Toward them rode Philippa, upon a white palfrey, alone and perfectly tranquil. Her eight lieutenants were now gathered about her in voluble protestation, and she heard them out. Afterward she spoke, without any particular ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... wise that it was more like to Dutch than English, I could not reduce ne bring it to be understood. And certainly our language now used varieth far from that which was used and spoken when I was born. For we Englishmen be born under the domination of the moon, which is never steadfast but ever wavering, waxing one season and waneth and decreaseth another season. And that common English that is spoken in one shire varieth from another, insomuch that in my days happened that certain merchants were in a ship in Thames for to have sailed over the sea into Zealand, ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... to note that an irregular oval was traced in its center, with a crooked, wavering cross at one end. Then as he bent closer to the light a twig snapped treacherously behind him and a crushing blow upon his ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... on. The wavering gleam came from behind a thicket—an open fire, she saw at length. Beyond the fire she heard a horse sneeze. Within a few yards of the thicket through which wavered the yellow gleam she halted, smitten with a sudden panic. This endured but a few seconds. All that she knew or ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and with his love for her, his hatred of Monsoreau increased. On the other side he had not renounced his political hopes, but had recommenced his underhand machinations. The moment was favorable, for many wavering conspirators had been encouraged by the kind of triumph which the weakness of thy king, and the cunning of Catherine, had given to the duke; however, he no longer confided his projects to Bussy, and showed ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... was at all times singularly secret and elusive. I at last discovered that it was the white-throated sparrow, a common bird all through this region. Its song is very delicate and plaintive,—a thin, wavering, tremulous whistle, which disappoints one, however, as it ends when it seems only to have begun. If the bird could give us the finishing strain of which this seems only the prelude, it would ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... he remarked half to himself with dogged determination, as if he were bolstering up some inward wavering of principle. "I ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... have formed a regular and extensive organization; but a reaction has already commenced; the backbone of their power is broken. They can form branches, associations, and threaten us as they did a few months ago; but not a few amongst themselves are wavering. If the Government will act with liberality and energy, and the Home Government transmit an official decision on the question at issue, to be first submitted to the Legislature and then to the people, I believe His Excellency's exertions will be crowned with a ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Gouverneur's father was a pronounced Northern man, but his wife's relatives, as well as most of his neighbors, sympathized with the South. Soon after the outbreak of the war, while we were yet in China, and at the period when Maryland was wavering between the North and South, and to anxious spectators secession seemed almost inevitable, my father-in-law and ex-Governor Philip F. Thomas left one morning on a hurried trip to Frederick, where the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Uriel in his reply—completed—since he had been anticipated—at his leisure; but he only confirmed the popular conception of his materialistic errors, seeming, indeed, of wavering mind on the subject of the future life. His thought had marched on: and whereas it had been his complaint to Joseph that Rabbinism laid no stress on immortality, further investigation of the Pentateuch had shown him that Moses himself had taken no account whatsoever of the conception, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
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