"Elfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ashes upon the hearth and ashes upon the floor, a hair-brush upon the table and an empty plate upon the chair, with swarms of flies sipping the few drops of molasses and feeding upon the crumbs of bread left there by the elfish-looking child now in the bed beside its mother. There was nothing but poverty—squalid, disgusting poverty—visible everywhere, and Lucy grew sick and faint at the, to ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... Elfish everything seems; for everything as well as everybody is small, and queer, and mysterious: the little houses under their blue roofs, the little shop-fronts hung with blue, and the smiling little people in their blue costumes. The illusion is only ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... grace or the power to acknowledge their presence, but after staring stolidly for a moment or two at her visitors through her dishevelled hair, turned and cowered over the hearth again, her elfish locks falling forward ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... countless sparks is a tiny animal, as perfect in its substance and as well adapted to its cycle of life as the highest created being. The wonderful way in which this phosphorescence permeates everything—the jelly-fish seeming elfish fireworks as they throb through the water with rhythmic beats—the fish brilliantly lighted up and plainly visible as they dart about far beneath the surface—makes such a night on the Bay of Fundy an experience to be ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... middy blouse and the skirt flapped about her ankles in such a very grown-up manner. Mary Rose's yellow hair had always been bobbed but no one had seen that it was trimmed before she left Mifflin and it hung in rather straight lanky locks about her elfish face. Some of the locks were long enough to be drawn under one of Ella's discarded red hair ribbons and Aunt Kate pinned back the others. The result was a very different Mary Rose from the one ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... it is like Thomas Bolle, who ever wished the right thing and did the wrong. Talk no more of him, since I would not meet my end in a bad spirit. Thomas Bolle, who lets us die for his elfish pranks! A pest on the half-witted cur, say I. And after I ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... the bonnie Janet dreamed that the long-lost Robin was living in Elf-land, and that he was to pass through the streets with a cavalcade of fairies. But, alas! how should even a sister know him in the dim starlight, among the passing troops of elfish and mortal riders? The dream assured her that she might let the first company go by, and the second; but Robin would be ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... thrilling, and during it Carmencita did not speak. At the window of the taxi she pressed her face so closely that the glass had continually to be wiped lest the cloud made by her breath prevent her seeing clearly; and, watching her, Van Landing smiled. What an odd, elfish, wistful little face it was—keen, alert, intelligent, it reflected every emotion that filled her, and her emotions were many. In her long, ill-fitting coat and straw hat, in the worn shoes and darned ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... of the second day, the early evening gloaming of a chill autumnal rain-day, and I had been since morning dubiously lost in the somber trackless forest, when an elfish cry rose, as it would seem, from beneath the very hoofs ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... master, of course, was unable to find them; the effects of hunger probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length she peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the downy cheek Of the peach, and smoothed it sleek, And flushed it into splendor; And, with many an elfish freak, Gave the russet's rust a wipe— Prankt the rambo with a stripe, And the winesap blushed its reddest As ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... foreheads, and dreamy-looking obliquely-set eyes. Their head-gear is much after the Chinese style, except, that in addition to the queue, they allow the remainder of the hair to develop itself, which it does in the wildest and most elfish manner. For dress, the untanned skins of the animals caught in the chase, with the hair outboard, answers all their requirements. At first one experiences a great difficulty in distinguishing the sexes, for the ordinary bearings by ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... a vision, painted like a picture in the air, I saw the elfish figure of a man with frosty hair— A quaint old man that chuckled with a laugh as he appeared, And with ruddy cheeks like embers in the ashes ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... of the ship I watch'd the water-snakes: They mov'd in tracks of shining white; And when they rear'd, the elfish light Fell off in ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... over, looking downward after it,—every one of the innumerable wrinkles in his black face made more distinct, with his white beard and mustache, and the whites of his eyes seeming to glow in the blue elfish light,—was a caricature, half grotesque, almost terrible, of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... her father again, and then, evidently perceiving that he was not to be moved by force, she changed her tactics. Her delicate, elfish face melted into the sweetest smile; she stood on tiptoe, holding out to him her tiny arms. With a laugh of irrepressible pride and pleasure, Roger stooped to her and lifted her up. She nestled on his shoulder—a ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Prince and Princess twain are they Of all Columbia's giant woods. The sylvan songsters sing thy praise From dawn till set of sun, and then The nightingale, the queen of song, In praise of thee poureth forth her lay Till every mellow silver note, Far floating in the silent trees, Is taken by an elfish choir, And chanted softly to the moon. The eagle her wee eaglets tells Of thee, that they may freedom love; Then soaring full beyond the clouds, She looks with vaunted pride on thee. So must thy spirit fill the ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... staggered back aghast. He could see no one at all, and this peeping, elfish-like voice, rising amid the storm to his ear out of the darkness, reminded him of the days when he believed in the other world—that is, of course, the world of ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... shadow, to the cold and to the damp of the city, whereas I was fresh from the sunlight of the plain, and as I watched them peering out from behind my wash-basin, they appeared to marvel at me and to confer on my case with almost elfish intelligence. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... when we men are confronted with the living picture of some one of our dreams of them that women cease to dwell in the abstract and become issues, to be met with more or less trepidation. Back among some of his idle dreams there had been a Kitty, blue-eyed, black-haired, slender and elfish. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... is convinced that now you think her perfect," interrupted the saucy girl, with a trill of laughter. Then growing suddenly as gentle and tender as she had been elfish before, she added sweetly, "And Robert, you are right; you have won a real treasure—a perfect darling—as nobody knows better ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the door was open, he would pause for half a moment on the threshold to say, in a tone of intense self- satisfaction, "He be off. Abel! Janny's off!" and forthwith toddle out as hard as he could go. As he grew older, he dropped this form; but the elfish habit of appearing and disappearing at his ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... haste. Allowing her to keep between himself and the cavern's wall, even intrusting to her care the curious staff that now persisted in dancing along the cavern's floor in an elfish way which amazed the girl, he made a circuit of the place. At one spot he paused, and a single grunt of satisfaction escaped him. Then he seized a loaf of bread from a shelf-like niche and began to eat it eagerly. He even pointed ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... group of trees to illustrate their dainty elfish dwarfishness, but realising that no one could guess the height without a scale, I took a second of the same with a small Indian ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... something elephantinely elfish in M. Hanaud's demeanour, which left Mr. Ricardo at a loss. But he had come to notice that these undignified manifestations usually took place when Hanaud had reached a definite opinion upon some ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... and went; the riotous bees Tore the warm grapes in many a dusty-vine, And men grew faint and thin with too much ease, And Winter gave no sign: But all the while beyond the northmost woods He sat and smiled and watched his spirits play In elfish dance and eery roundelay, Tripping in many moods With snowy curve and ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... wild things of the field and wood seemed unafraid of her. At times, returning to where he had left her hidden, he would pause, wondering to whom she was talking, and then as he drew nearer would hear the stealing away of little feet, the startled flutter of wings. She had elfish ways, of which it seemed impossible to cure her. Often the good man, returning from some late visit of mercy with his lantern and his stout oak cudgel, would pause and listen to a wandering voice. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... a risk. As he looked at her across the dancing floor, as she sat there in her soft, shimmering silks, her cheeks aglow, her eyes dancing with happiness and her brown curls straying over her forehead—elfish-like rather than humanly robust—he was tempted, ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Quixotic redemption in specie was beyond him entirely. He gave it up. The counting of discs was more tangible to his philosophy. His rusty black tile, so wondrously become a cornucopia of wealth, had by that same magic upset the old fellow into a kind of hysterical gaiety, which was most elfish and uncanny. He motioned ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... and true local colour, are amazing when contrasted with what had been previously. Wearied of the excessive eulogy bestowed upon Cruikshank's illustrations to Dickens, and unable to accept the artist as an illustrator of real characters in fiction, when he studies his elfish and other-worldly personages, the most grudging critic must needs yield a full tribute of praise. The volumes (published by Charles Tilt, of 82 Fleet Street) are extremely rare; for many years past the sale-room has recorded fancy prices for all Cruikshank's illustrations, so that ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... Yeddo, and summer rain comes down in wide bands of light. With evening the mist creeps up, thrown over it like a covering, casting a spell of silence through which the yellow lanterns of the hurrying jinrikishas dance an elfish dance, and the voices of the singing-girls pierce ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... foot of the stairs. It came more faintly this time, deadened by the closed door of the staircase, but to his enlightened senses it proclaimed so clearly what it was—the echo of a cracked, shrill voice, of a laugh insane, uncanny, elfish—that he trembled lest Louis should hear it also and gain the clue. That was a thing to be avoided at all costs; and even as this occurred to him he saw the way to avoid it. Basterga and Grio were absent: if this fool could be removed, even for an ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Europe was talking. Even his wife was ignorant of his pecuniary liabilities until the crash of the Ballantyne firm told her for the first time that they were sharers in the ruin. A psychologist might trace this strange twist of his mind in the numerous elfish Fenella-like characters who flit about and keep their irritating secret through the long chapters of so many of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sort of disgrace, and scarcely knew what it was not to live in a state of perpetual mental hot water. It was privately whispered in the family circle that Polly encouraged her in her naughtiness. Whether that was the case or not, these two had a kind of quaint, elfish friendship between them, Firefly in her heart of hearts worshipping Polly, and obeying her slightest ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... air of childhood still clinging, as if from habit alone, to the outward insignia of maturity, in this mercurial, magnetic, and undaunted young person; and in her malicious elfish eyes could be read the solemn determination to force every possible claim that her double advantage, as child and adult, could, according ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... even inevitable, which entranced Banneker when it did not appall him. After the meal was over, the girl seated herself on a low bench which Banneker had built with his own hands and the Right-and-Ready Tool Kit (9 T 603), her knee between her clasped hands and an elfish expression ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the party, delighted Browning beyond measure by calling the sleepy old fishing district "White Cotton Night-Cap Country." It was exactly the kind of elfish phrase to which Browning had, it must always be remembered, a quite unconquerable attraction. The notion of a town of sleep, where men and women walked about in nightcaps, a nation of somnambulists, was the kind of thing that Browning ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... greatest opera, "Der Freischuetz," appeared in 1821. The initial force of the German romantic school, he founded his operas on romantic themes, and depicted in tones the things of the weird, fantastic and elfish world that kindled his imagination. He has been called the connecting link between Mozart and Wagner, and in many of his theories he anticipated the latter. National to the core, he embodied in his music the finest qualities ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... between Dora and Susie to the side-hill where the first grasshoppers of spring were always found, felt at peace with all the world—even Smith—and it was in his heart to hug the elfish half-breed child as she skipped beside him. Dora's frequent, bubbling laughter made him thrill; he longed to shout aloud like a schoolboy given ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... lives, fast ebbing with the sand. Long while this strife engaged the pretty band; But now bold Chanticleer, from farm to farm, Challenged the dawn creeping o'er eastern land, And well the fairies knew that shrill alarm, Which sounds the knell of every elfish charm. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... riddles. For one, her presence in the Danish camp,—for surely, as a chieftain's daughter, she would have been sent on to the care of the Lady of Northampton! Was it not thoroughly in accordance with her elfish wildness to have chosen man's attire and the roughness of camp-life in order to remain near her lover? Her lover! The young noble's lips curled as he glanced at the warrior beside him, at the coarse face under the unkempt locks, at the huge body in its trap-pings of stained gaudiness. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... gold. And a wild-rose colour descended upon the gentle sea and floated to the island, bathing the rocks, the grim and weather-beaten houses, the stones of the churchyard, with a radiance so delicate, and yet so elfish, that enchantment walked there till the night came down, and in the darkness the islanders moved on their way to church. The pageant was over. But it had stirred two imaginations. It blazed yet in two hearts. The shock of its coming, after long hours of storm, had stirred Uniacke and ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... most sad, that we cannot oblige you," Adrienne cut into the conversation, her elfish black eyes snapping. "It is not necessary, however, that we should say more about it. We are here. We shall continue to be ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... door, and pushed it; but the light Waned, faded, sank; and as she came within— Hark, hark! A spirit was it, and asleep? A spirit doth not breathe like clay. There hung A cresset from the roof, and thence appeared A flickering speck of light, and disappeared; Then dropped along the floor its elfish flakes, That fell on some one resting, in the gloom,— Somewhat, a spectral shadow, then a shape That loomed. It was a heifer, ay, and white, Breathing and languid ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... in the background. Something in the appearance of the front door suggested to Peggy that it was not intended for daily use, and she made her way around to the side and knocked. A child not far from Dorothy's age, with straight black hair, and elfish eyes, opened the door, looked her over, and shrieked ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... him look up. Soft Shoes had already raised the trap and was looking down into the room, his rather elfish face squeezed into a grimace, half of distaste, ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... when she is a bad girl and runs away." She peeped up in his face almost slyly. "Then they call her: 'You Kid, come here! Dirty little slut, take the broom and sweep out the bar! Idle little devil, fetch water for the kitchen!'" Her smile was peaked and elfish. She laid a cunning finger beside her pursed-up lips. "But though they scold and call bad names, they never come and fetch her down off the Little Kopje. Beat her when she comes in, and serve her ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... is at the bottom of all his craziness, she and that elfish daughter. Sister Ann is a very intelligent woman in some respects, but she is wild upon ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... ten or twelve years of age opened the door. The child's big black eyes, and long snaky locks falling about a pale face, gave her an elfish look quite in keeping with the character of the house. She at once ushered the callers into the front parlour, where a lady and gentleman were sitting, who proved to be Mrs. Legrand and her manager and man of ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... loved friend. The passages offered will give the unfamiliar reader a taste of the sparkle of this poet's hurrying fancy and set her before the willing mind entrancingly, it seems to me. She will always delight those who find it in their way to love her elfish, evasive genius, and those who care for the vivid and living element in words will find her, to say the least, among the masters in her feeling for their strange shapes and the fresh significance contained in them. A born ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... the rector with a shrug, 'she is as little like other people as himself. A queer elfish little creature, they say, as fond of solitude down here as the squire, and full of hobbies. In her youth she was about the court. Then she married a canon of Warham, one of the popular preachers, I believe, of the day. There is ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of his feeling, but her searching scrutiny caused him to become tongue-tied, and he assumed the self-conscious mien peculiar to the man not yet assured that his love is returned. Once more a golden moment slipped away with elfish elusiveness, and Colette, secure in her supremacy, resumed her ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... said she was lazy, and urged industry and the need of speed in the preparation of the new wardrobe. She laughed indolently and said, time enough later on. She had grown indifferent about her looks—her hair hanging elfish round her ears, her blouse unfastened at the throat, the new boots Low had brought her from Sacramento unworn in the cabin corner, her feet clothed in the ragged moccasins he had taught her ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... seventeen Must be a sprite— A dainty, fairy, elfish queen Of pure delight; But later on he sort of feels He'd like a ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... "The very thing I was coming to next—the main thing, indeed, which has led me to seek this interview with Sprigg's father. I should hardly have come a thousand miles out of my way, since set of sun, had it been merely to gratify Manitou-Echo in an elfish whim. In brief, then, and in sweet earnest, too, the object we have in view is intended mainly for Sprigg's own good; and, as the means to this end, my son Manitou-Echo has sent, as a present to your son Sprigg, a pair of red moccasins, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... incomprehensible happenings of life that she had been left still blooming on her virgin stem. It would have been difficult to guess her exact age. She owned to thirty-four, and a decade ago, when she had first joined her father in India, she must have possessed a certain elfish prettiness of her own. Now, thanks to those years spent under a tropical sun, she was a trifle ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... in his garden, resolved to do her small utmost towards balancing his injustice; so with an old shingle, fallen from the roof, which she had appropriated as her agricultural tool, she began to dig about them, pulling up the weeds, as she saw grandpapa doing. The kitten, too, with a look of elfish sagacity, lent her assistance, plying her paws with vast haste and efficiency at the roots of one of the shrubs. This particular one was much smaller than the rest, perhaps because it was a native of the torrid zone, and required ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... elfish concert, it seemed, was the birth of a fairy child, at which the fairies, with the exception of two or three who were discomposed at having nothing to cover the little innocent with, were enjoying themselves with that joviality usually ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... head of all armed with scythes—through the city, into the wide gates of the Greyfriars. Lovely is his bride in white, nor less so his widow in black—more so in grey, portentous of a great change. Sad, too, to the Sage the thought of leaving his first-born as yet unborn—or if born, haply an elfish Creature with a precocious countenance, looking as if he had begun life with borrowing ten years at least from his own father—auld-farrant as a Fairy, and gash as the Last ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... broke forth with wild, elfish voices that mimicked his merriment till it died on his lips. He preferred utter loneliness to the vague sense of companionship given by these weird echoes. Somehow the strangeness of all that had happened ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... you," he said slowly, regarding the Hun, with his elfish eyes. "I don't like you. I think you may be like the man in the English soldiers' story, who turned into a pig—a baby killer perhaps. It is because of your red hair that I think you may ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... painted like a picture in the air, I saw the elfish figure, of a man with frosty hair— A quaint old man that chuckled with a laugh as he appeared, And with ruddy cheeks like embers in ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... came to his father's house, was a rampant, noisy, cunning child, with the vivacity of French and American blood mingling in his veins, and filling him with strongest tendencies to mischief, and prompting elfish feats of activity. He was not by any means a fascinating child,—in fact, no children ever fascinated me,—but this little fellow was rather disagreeable, a wonder to his father, a horror to his mother, and a great annoyance generally; we were all rather cross with him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... before the triumphant Ada, and said sullenly, "Please accept my apology for unlady-like language, Miss Irvine. I am sorry I should have degraded myself and spoken as I did, but" (and here a mischievous light swept the gloomy cloud from the piquant face and lit it up with an elfish smile) "you provoked me, and I am ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... to turn it in the rusty, cumbersome lock. At last the bolts grated back, there was a pause, and then the door opened a little way, and Otto thought that he could see someone peeping in from without. By and by the door opened further, there was another pause, and then a slender, elfish-looking little girl, with straight black hair and shining black eyes, ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... Mrs. Vane, at lunch looked at the four bright faces before her, Vera, a small copy of herself; Elf, whose mischievous face was truly elfish; Nancy, whose gypsy beauty always pleased, and Dorothy, blue-eyed, fair-haired, whose lovable disposition shone from her eyes, and made her sweet to ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... elfish-looking hair out of her black eyes, and proceeded to scrub such of the smaller children as could not escape from her relentless grasp. Some submitted dumbly, and others struggled under her vigorous application ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... something of a pity, nevertheless, that it must be given up, for Nancy was not particularly pretty, as young men nowadays measure beauty, and were it possible, the truth might have been hidden. She was something too elfish—and then there was the Billings mouth already mentioned. Gertrude Ellis, who spent much of her time with her aunt in New York and who had a proper care for her person, thought it a ridiculous pose for Nancy not to have something done about her freckles. It was such a simple matter nowadays to have ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... must be getting home or Mother will think I have been waylaid and my watch stolen. So long, everybody, and pleasant dreams." Then thrusting his face back into the room through the narrowing crack of the door, he added with elfish leer, "Just the same, I still think that Coulter had something ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... interesting and unusual," she admitted. Then she rose and crossed over to his chair and perched herself, with odd, elfish, girlish ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... between us, and was no longer the object nearest to me. The girl whose light fingers grasped me, whose elfish charming face looked into mine—who, I thought, was betraying an interest in my feelings that she would not have directly avowed,—this warm breathing presence again possessed my senses and imagination like a returning siren melody which had been overpowered for an instant by ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... her half-wild hollowed-eyed beauty, which seemed a sickly efflorescence of the marshes, pressing to her breast another "child of iniquity" as pale and elfish as her former self, she seemed to Odo the embodiment of ancient wrongs, risen from the wasted soil to haunt the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... hasten hence," said Grace; "I like not this lonely spot. There was always a fear and a mystery about it. The tale of the invisible sylphid and Eleanor Byron's elfish lover haunts me whenever I pass by, and I feel as though something was near, observing and influencing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... it had been five years before, with Sarah and Mary beside her—they had married during the war, but nothing had prevented them from coming back to make Billabong ready. Near them the storekeeper, Jack Archdale, and his pretty wife, with their elfish small daughter; and Mick Shanahan and Dave Boone, with the Scotch gardener, Hogg, and his Chinese colleague—and sworn enemy—Lee Wing. They were all there, a little welcoming group—but Norah could see them only through a mist of happy tears. The buggy stopped, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... child of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. A piquant, tricksy sprite, as naughty as she is bewitching—a creature of fire and air, more elfish than human, at once her mother's torment and her treasure.—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of her comprehension, however, she warmed toward him. It was so good to see him lounging on the sofa again, his green-gold eyes bright, his brown face with its elfish smile radiant now that his point was won. She knew he had been unkind to her both in word and act, but it was impossible not to forgive him, now that she enjoyed again the ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Elfish daughter of Apollo! Thee, from thy father stolen and bound To serve in Vulcan's clangorous smithy, Prometheus (primal Yankee) found, And, when he had tampered with thee, (Too confiding little maid!) In a reed's precarious hollow To our frozen earth conveyed: For he swore I know not what; 20 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... walked over to press the electric button he looked at Peg in absolute disgust and entire disapproval. Peg caught the look and watched him go slowly across the room. He had the same morbid fascination for her that some uncanny elfish creature might have. If only her father could see him! She mentally decided to sketch Alaric and send it out to her father with a full description ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... the thought of debts and duels, deceit and evil luck? In that music Mozart disputes the palm with Moliere. The terrific finale, with its glow, its power, its despair and laughter, its grisly spectres and elfish women, centres about the prodigal's last effort made in the after-supper heat of wine, the frantic struggle which ends the drama. Victurnien was living through this infernal poem, and alone. He saw visions of himself—a friendless, solitary outcast, reading the words carved on the stone, the last ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... face for a moment, as she flashed her beautiful wide eyes upon him. She seemed a part of that beauteous night, elfish and delicate as a moonbeam or a flower, fragile as the song of a bird. He could not speak, but stood drinking her in with his eyes and soul, his face wearing a mixed expression of rapture and pain. She knew what he ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... seem rather elfish to look up suddenly and see a lovely lady all in white, with shining hair and a wand in her hand, sitting under what looked very like a large yellow mushroom in the middle of a meadow, where, till now, nothing but cows and grasshoppers ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... absently at him. And she began to play a rakish little air which, composed by some rattle-brain at a cafe table, had lately skipped out of the Moulin Rouge to disport itself over Paris. She played it slowly, in the minor, with elfish pathos; while he leaned upon the piano, his eyes fixed upon her fingers, which bore few rings, none, he observed with an unreasonable pleasure, upon the third finger ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... parallel for stillness, but the night silence breaks into certain mellow or poignant notes. Late afternoons the burrowing owls may be seen blinking at the doors of their hummocks with perhaps four or five elfish nestlings arow, and by twilight begin a soft whoo-oo-ing, rounder, sweeter, more incessant in mating time. It is not possible to disassociate the call of the burrowing owl from the late slant light of the mesa. If the fine vibrations which ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c.503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, fiend-like; supernatural, weird, uncanny, unearthly, spectral; ghostly, ghost-like; elfin, elvin[obs3], elfish, elflike[obs3]; haunted; pokerish [obs3][U.S.]. possessed, possessed by a devil, possessed ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... arm round her; they propelled her towards the house. They were lithe, supple creatures of twenty and twenty-one. Between them walked Neville, with her small, pointed, elfish face, that was sensitive to every breath of thought and emotion like smooth water wind-stirred. With her great violet eyes brooding in it under thin black brows, and her wet hair hanging in loose strands, she looked like an ageless ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... particular whom I noticed every day, and whom, at last, I compassionately supplied with a couple of safety-pins, after explaining their uses. She was decidedly ugly. But sometimes you may see others here, with neatly chiselled limbs and elfish eyes of a sultry, troubling charm into which, if sentimentally disposed, you can read an ocean of love; these need not be supplied with safety-pins. An enthusiastic Frenchman at Gabes actually married ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... raillery, of "malice," and would vex, tease, pique me sometimes about what she called my "bizarreries anglaises," my "caprices insulaires," with a wild and witty wickedness that made a perfect white demon of her while it lasted. This was rare, however, and the elfish freak was always short: sometimes when driven a little hard in the war of words—for her tongue did ample justice to the pith, the point, the delicacy of her native French, in which language she always attacked ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... between the south- western angle of the Cathedral and a heavy mass of old masonry forming part of the garden wall of the present abode of the Archfield family, when suddenly both children stumbled and fell, while an elfish peal ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light 275 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sinuously wave together, as if weaving spells, alternately without and within the round, now with palms upward, now with palms downward; and all the elfish sleeves hover duskily together, with a shadowing as of wings; and all the feet poise together with such a rhythm of complex motion, that, in watching it, one feels a sensation of hypnotism—as while striving to watch a flowing and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... herself nearing fifty; but her slim little wiry body and her elfish, wrinkled face, never still, but ever alive with the same vivacity that years ago had attracted William Allsopp, made her seem younger than her years; and her husband treated her as though she were still a ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... a private door was opened by an elfish-looking boy, and the earliest applicant was allowed to enter, the boy warning her, as she did so, to ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... dozen people were sitting with Lady Maxwell when Tressady was announced. She rose to meet him with great cordiality, introduced him to little Lady Leven, an elfish creature in a cloud of fair hair, and with a pleasant "You know all the rest," offered him a chair beside ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... synthetic formulas. The thought of very primitive men has hardly any tincture of philosophy. Nature can have little unity for savages. It is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical powers. 'Close to nature' though they live, they are anything but Wordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is likely to be at midnight, when the camp smoke rises straight to the wicked full moon in the zenith, and the forest is all whispering ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... said a meek voice, "it's me. Are you dressed enough for me to come out?" Without waiting for an answer the elfish face of Ann appeared through the willow tangle. "If you're looking for your boots," she remarked kindly, "they're hanging on that limb ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... said the boy, with his elfish little countenance lighting up. He was very slight and small for his age, a little shadow darting across the sunshine. The half of the terrace lay in a blaze of light, but all was cool and fresh in the corner ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... said Nan, presently, and her face looked less elfish, with its sharp eyes, inquisitive nose, and mischievous mouth. "What did your mother do to you when you ran away ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Moon looked on and laughed With a shrill and sneering jibe; Her soul grew fat to see them chaffed, This mad and elfish tribe. The big black caldron boiled so high With food for these queer mites, That it lit the world throughout the sky, And down ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... be told the same thing: what the day will bring forth. But each searcher into the dim and dangerous future has, of course, individual methods—some shuffling seven times and some ten, and so forth, and all intent upon placating the elfish goddess, Caprice. There is little Miss Banks, for example, but I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... have yer table agin the wall," she broke out, "at a five-o'clock tea; I know, 'cause I've peeked in the windows up on the avenoo, an' I've seen your folks, too." She nodded over at Phronsie. "I know what I'll do." She tossed her head with its black, elfish locks, and darted off in triumph, dragging up from another corner a big box, first unceremoniously dumping out the various articles, such as dirty clothes, a tin pan or two, a skillet, an empty bottle—last of all, a nightcap, which ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, and Polly stretched out her arms to the rice and salt fish, and began to cry. "Oh," said I, "perhaps she can eat;" and from that day the little ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... dog's name, and he appeared in a fair way of "putting a girdle round the earth," if not in forty minutes like his elfish namesake, at least in an appreciable limited space of time, Teddy never being content except he carried about the unfortunate brute with him everywhere he went, hugging it tightly in his arms and almost smothering its life out by way ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... as I looked he slid down from out of her arms; back into the pool, and began struggling to gain the edge. What grief and longing in her wild face then! But she did not wail. She did not try to pull him back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what was coming, it could not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the boughs and water, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of her own incompetence. She had not expected to understand the boys; she had never had any experience of boys; but she had expected to win the little girl to her, and make her a little friend, perhaps almost a sister. Susan D. received her advances with an elfish coldness that had something not human in it, Margaret thought. The child was like a changeling, in the old fairy stories. That evening, when bedtime came, Margaret went up with her to the pretty room, hoping for a pleasant time. She sat down and took the little girl on ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... you, anyway?" he exclaimed, much puzzled. As he asked the question his gaze happened to rest on the dog, who was peering at him through the ragged, elfish wisps of hair nearly covering its face, with ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... through the desert waste; the storm-wind drives him forward, it lifts the mantle that enwraps him like a cloud, and under that mantle is seen an angel-face, the smile of a delicate little girl, two tender childish arms clasping the form of the count, a slight elfish form tremblingly reposing upon ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... sounds of the noise and laughter a small figure stirred in the shadowy chimney-corner, the figure of a little, bent, old man, with a queer, elfish, hairy visage. He sat up and his small, red eyes blinked wonderingly. "Hech, hech, and it will be the cold night, Malcolm!" ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... maps of the far East gives one a queer, I might even say a weird feeling. It is almost the sensation received when, after climbing through miles of silence to reach some Shinto shrine, you find voidness only and solitude,—an elfish, empty little wooden structure, mouldering in shadows a thousand years old. The strength of Japan, like the strength of her ancient faith, needs little material display: both exist where the deepest real power of any great people ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... the Fairies, whose name is Oberon, and the Queen of the Fairies, whose name is Titania, had asked the Trolls to dinner. The Gnomes were very much annoyed at this, and the Elves still more so, for the chief glory of the Elves was that being elfish got you to know people; and it was universally admitted that the Trolls ought never to be asked out, because they were trollish. King Oberon said that all that was a wicked prejudice, and that the Trolls ought to be asked out to dinner just as much as the Elves, in common justice. But his ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... an elfish maiden child; She is not two years old; Through windy locks her eyes gleam wild, With ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... pretty carpet. I can remember now the sort of dazed look with which Euphemia regarded a room such as she had never seen; whilst Lois considered it to be an instalment of her good luck, and proceeded to contemplate her sharp and elfish countenance in her looking-glass, pronouncing it as her opinion that she wanted more colour. That she certainly did, and she might have added, more flesh and youthfulness, while she was about it. However, they were greatly delighted, and Euphemia who was of a grateful and affectionate ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... volunteers to show us to the great-grandfather. Our elfish little girls at once offered, and went dancing off down the trail like autumn leaves in a wind. Whether it was the Indian in them, or the effects of environment, or merely our own imaginations, we both had the same thought—that in these strange, taciturn, friendly, smiling, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... De La Mare's second article was called "The Village of Old Age." It was a charming piece of what I simply cannot and will not call "elfish" writing. The word in me, foolishly, no doubt, produces physical nausea. If, however, someone with a stronger stomach in regard to words called it elfish I should understand what he meant, and agree. But, good as were these two essays, they were nothing compared to De ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... lost nothing worth the keeping—do you think? You are just as slim and elfish, And I've grown a world less selfish; We look back on life together—and we wink. Over all those old misgivings of the heart, Growing pains of love and lover; Life's fun begins, its fevers over— Life was such a ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... and a little one—a boy of not more than seven years, with elfish brown locks, and eyelashes which swept the olive tint of his cheek. All curled up in a heap, in clothes which a man might have worn, so big and shapeless were they, with one arm under his head for a pillow, and the other tightly grasping a ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... noblemen that what they ought really to desire was a total and rapid transformation of the whole fabric of society, his efforts to found an association for the moral regeneration of mankind, and his elfish amusement of launching the truth upon the waters in the form of pamphlets sealed up in bottles. Shelley at this age perpetrated "rags" upon the universe, much as commonplace youths make hay of their fellows' ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... lightning, and all the rest Of the elements are, for some tragedy-reason, Making the "awfullest gale of the season—" See, at the sound of the prompter's tap, The fiend come up through the "Vampyre trap;" Take a mental photograph then, and there, Of that imp, with his "fixins" all complete— The elfish grin, the tangled hair, The dragon wings and the scaly feet— And you'll have a notion of him I mean, The demon of this, my opening scene. I might go to Milton, and steal, bit by bit, A description to suit my Spirit of Cant, ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... shoulder; then, as if to make every explanation of no avail, the room filled with fairy unseen folk. Books began to hurtle through the air and to fall upon the table. A banjo on the wall was strummed. The entire library seemed crowded with tricksy pucks, a bustling, irresponsible, elfish crew, each on some inconsequential action bent; until, as if at a signal, the megaphone tumbled to the floor with a clang, and all was still—a silence deathly deep, as if a bevy of sprites, frightened from their play, had ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... smiled into his face, undaunted. She was a small elfish creature with a thin face, on the slenderest of necks. But in her queer little countenance a pair of laughing eyes, out of all proportion to the rest of her for loveliness and effect, gave her and kept her the attention of the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... terror can be better imagined than described, for the wicked Irene had lifted the valance of the bed, and her bright eyes and a tiny portion of her face could be distinctly seen by any one who happened to glance in that direction. Had Lucy seen her she must have screamed, for nothing more elfish than that face could be imagined. As it was, all might have been well had not Irene, just as Lucy was reaching the door, given a low, wild whoop, and then disappeared again under the ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... light fell upon the white, elfish face of Benita, whose long dark hair streamed about her; it shone in her great eyes. Still she could see nothing, for ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... wisely. It was a very dirty face just now; his red hair, long neglected, hung in wisps over his forehead and about his ears, giving him an elfish look in ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... overhead made a merry sound as of shepherds piping on oaten straws in new grass where there are daisies; and there was a little elfish laughter of clarionets, and a fluttering among the cool flutes like spring wind blowing through crisp young leaves in April. The harps began to pulse and throb with a soft cadence like raindrops falling into a clear pool where brown ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... are you?" and Johnny was sure "Fay" was short for Fairy. Another voice was often heard talking in a strange, soft language, full of exclamations and pretty sounds. A little dog barked, and answered to the name Pippo. Canaries carolled, and some elfish bird scolded, screamed, and laughed so like a human being, that Johnny felt sure that magic of some sort was at ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... we have felt to its core the elfish mystery of your profession. And now Notting Hill ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton |
