"Flicker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... daughter was born, and her husband's grief for his loss was so great that he followed her within the year, leaving nothing in the world to this little one except an existence whose continuance was very doubtful—a mere feeble flicker of a life. A charitable neighbor took the care of the baby upon herself, and brought her up till she was nine years old. Then the burden of supporting La Fosseuse became too heavy for the good woman; so at the time ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... burn! Flicker, flicker, flame! Whose hand above this blaze is lifted Shall be with touch of magic gifted, To warm the hearts of chilly mortals Who stand without these open portals. The touch shall draw them to this fire, Nigher, nigher, By desire. Whoso shall stand on this hearth-stone, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... possible in the profound darkness, the little troop resumed its march, still under the guidance of Montbar. As they advanced, the leader noticed a smell of smoke which alarmed him. At the same time gleams of light began to flicker on the granite walls at the angles of the path, showing that something strange was happening at the opening ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... his child he loved so well, And his child's reason flicker'd, and did die. Painted (he will'd it) in the gallery They hang; the picture ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... to Max, however, as he stood there, with his eyes fixed on the planks, trying to discover an aperture, that between the cracks of the boards there glimmered a faint light. It seemed to flicker, then it ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... is very old, and very—very gentle," Doctor Prance answered, hesitating a moment for her adjective. "Under those circumstances a person may flicker out." ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... a flicker Of the Old Ford in his eyes As he watched the snow come thicker, "Are the angels warm and rosy When the snow-storms fill the skies, As in summer when the sun Makes their cloud-beds warm and cosy? And I wonder if they're sleeping Through this bitter winter weather Or aloft their watches keeping, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... was the last flicker of the lamp of despotism; it destroyed and it parodied kings as Voltaire the Holy Scripture. And after him was heard a great noise: it was the stone of St. Helena which had just fallen on the ancient world. Immediately there ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Cuba, then north again to the Lucayas and the Florida straits, looking for Spanish ships and their gold. The lights yet burned,—now brightly, now so sunken that it seemed as though the next hour they must flicker out. We, the players, flagged not in that desperate masque; but we knew that, in spite of all endeavor, the darkness ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... went round the table after Miss Minty's speech was due quite as much to the faint flush that had accented Mainwaring's own smile as to the embarrassing remark itself. Mrs. Bradley and Miss Macy exchanged rapid glances. Bradley, who alone retained his composure, with a slight flicker of amusement in the corner of his eye and nostril, said quickly: "You see, Mainwaring, how nature stands ready to help your convalescence at every turn. If Miss Minty had only followed up her healing opportunity, your ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... till he could plant a powder-bag, and as I glanced out I saw that he was rapidly laying a train by drawing a second bag of powder after him as he stepped rapidly back towards another man who was carrying a lighted lanthorn—lighted, I felt sure, though in the brilliant sunshine the flicker of the candle inside ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... plainclothesmen stationed near the entrance, gave him only a quick onceover as he passed. Inside the gates, the impassive Russian guards didn't bother to flicker ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... glow into those cavernous abysses with which all men communicate. Hence come angels or fiends into our twilight musings, according as we may have peopled them in by-gone years. Over our friend's face, in the rosy flicker of the fire- gleam, stole an expression of repose and perfect trust that made him as beautiful to look at, in his high-backed chair, as the child Pansie on her pillow; and sometimes the spirits that were watching him beheld a ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... secret consciousness—during those night-watches—had grappled with the unknown ahead, reaching impatient fingers to find and save Dhoop Ki Dhil in time. But he let no flicker of that ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... the fierce princess at a blow, if he struck her in the throat; and he had raised the weapon, when the panther, surfeited perhaps with his caresses, threw herself gracefully at his feet, glancing up at him with a look in which, despite her natural ferocity, a flicker of kindness could be seen. The poor Provencal, frustrated for the moment, ate his dates as he leaned against a palm-tree, casting from time to time an interrogating eye across the desert in the hope of discerning rescue from afar, and then lowering it upon his terrible companion, to watch ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... on inanimate objects. Ere the situation had been well realised the volcanic fires went down again, and left the world, for over a hundred surrounding miles, in opaque darkness. Only the humble flicker of the binnacle-light, like a trusty sentinel on duty, continued to shed its feeble rays on a few feet of the deck, and showed that the compass at least was still faithful ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... had produced on her when they were full of their natural light. She felt sure that her mother must have been a lovely, gentle woman. There were gleams of a beautiful nature shining through some ill-defined medium which disturbed and made them flicker and waver, as distant images do when seen through the rippling upward currents of heated air. She loved, in her own way, the old black woman, and seemed to keep up a kind of silent communication with her, as if they did not require the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bathed in a ruddy light. She felt this light like something that causes pain, and she narrowed her eyes and bowed her head lower. Gradually the light became golden, there was a flaming radiance and flicker everywhere, and a humming began in the air, and a rustling in the moss. Billy felt how a busy life had awakened about her, and she walked faster: it was like a race with this Day, that was advancing so calmly and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... off at the right offered me an opportunity for escape. I took it, and a moment later fell to berating myself for not having been bolder and played my game to a finish. My impulses always fluctuate and flicker for a moment or two before they settle down ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... hung, The proud was half disarm'd of pride, Nor cared the serpent at thy side To flicker with ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... set a trifle more sternly than usual, his handsome head was held high with fine military bearing. He came forward without faltering for even so much as the fraction of a waver. There was not a flicker in his eyes set straight ahead. One would never have known from his looks that he recognized the oncoming man, or had so much as realized that an officer was approaching, yet his brain was doing some rapid calculation. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... barrel-like body and rather sloping shoulders. His face was smooth, his jaw somewhat heavy, his eyes exceedingly keen, and he carried with him an indefinable air of authority. He observed, also, that the voice had in it something peculiarly clear and incisive. With a little thrill and a sudden flicker of the flame of hope, he pointed down the street that led to ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... wonderful. They were flying just over here, and a shrapnel burst quite close; and then one saw a thin stream of smoke come from the plane; then a little flicker. It seemed to fall so slowly. Then it burst into flames and came down like ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... from a kerosene-lamp, set on a bracket in the wall at the far end of the hall, caused weird shadows to flicker on the floor and up the narrow staircase, and for a half-minute Selwyn and I waited until we could see where we should go. From the middle room we could hear hoarse and labored breathing and the stir of footsteps on the bare floor. Putting my hand ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... indignation, there was pity, there was hope. Some day it might come to pass that I, girl as I was, might contribute by word or deed towards the vindication of that long-suffering, gallant, and romantic prodigal. It was a flicker of the Joan of Arc inspiration, common, I fancy, to many girls. I little then imagined how profoundly and strangely involved my uncle's fate would ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... more people at once have, or profess to have, the same false perception of a person who is really absent and dying, is next disposed of by Herr Parish. The same points de repere, the same sound, or flicker of light, or arrangement of shadow, may beget the same or a similar false perception in two or more people at once. Thus two girls, in different rooms, are looking out on different parts of the hall in their house. 'Both heard, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... feeding, a chance at last of feeding. For the man on the cliff, the despairing watchman, weary of fastening his eyes upon the sea, through constant fog and drizzle, at length had discovered the well-known flicker, the glassy flaw, and the hovering of gulls, and had run along Weighing Lane so fast, to tell his good news in the village, that down he fell and broke his leg, exactly opposite the tailor's shop. And this ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... mountain and move down across the gracious bosom of its forests. Below him, chestnuts twinkled and shimmered in the sun, and there were dusky stretches of hemlocks, then open pastures, vividly green from the August rains.... "It ought to be set to music," he thought; the violins would give the flicker of the leaves—"and the harps would outline the river. Eleanor's voice is lovely ... she looks fifty. How," he pondered, interested in the mechanics of it, "did she ever get me into that wagon?" Then, again, he was sorry for her, and said, "Poor girl!" Then he was ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... handkerchief wet with spring water on his hot brow, laid her head on his heart to see whether it was still beating. He was alive! Beckoning to two of his comrades, Molly commanded them to carry him to the shade of a near-by tree. And soon she had the satisfaction of seeing a faint smile flicker over his face as she bent above him. At that moment her keen ears heard General ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the roar of burning fuel above me, and immediately after a cry from below. Through the narrow stairway lattice I could see the uncertain flicker of flames lighting up the street. Men ran backward across the open square, looking up as they ran. So by that I knew that Helene had done her work, and was now watching the burning beacon, as the flames flicked upward and clapped their ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... commercial genius had spread them across the sky to beckon the public to his great new department store on Sixth Avenue. Just as at the beginning of the gesture you saw only the tips of the fingers, so Peter Rolls, Sr., had begun with a tiny flicker, the first groping of his inspiration feeling ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... (who knew what was coming) increased until it seemed that she would shortly be electrocuted by her own nervous reactions. But her "Yes, Merlin," came without a sign or flicker of interior disturbance. Merlin swallowed a stray bit of air that ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... a fire of straw which had to flicker out; but now the Lord will light you a fire of logs by which the offspring of the Philistines shall be consumed. Do you ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... by some strong theological terms. "Padre, that word must never be used out here." "Well," I said, "this is the first war I have ever been at, and if I can arrange matters it is the last, but I promise you I will never use it again." Not the least flicker of a smile passed over his face. Of course, as time went on and I advanced in military knowledge, I came to know the way in which my question ought to have been phrased. Instead of saying, "Is this a general retreat?", I ought to have ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... superior brightness appeared to flicker a moment in this gust of despair, but the next it was burning steady again. "DON'T 'cry,' Searle," I heard him say. "Remember the waiter. I've grown Englishman enough for that. For heaven's sake don't let's have any nerves. Nerves won't do anything for you here. It's ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... Lynde to be in the middle of the night, though it was in fact on the edge of daybreak, that he was awakened by some one knocking softly at his door. He lighted a match, and by its momentary flicker saw Mr. Denham standing ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... glorious hair. Wide-eyed and silent, as the train came near, she moved along by the moat to meet the procession at the drawbridge, not understanding yet, but not letting one movement of the men, one flicker of the lights, one quaver of the deep chant, escape her reeling senses. Then all at once she was aware that Gilbert walked bareheaded before the bier, half wrapped in a long black cloak that swept the greensward behind him. As she turned the last bastion before reaching the ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... alpenstock, and passed it into the fissures, we found that the bend of the fissures prevented our seeing the termination of the ice. An intermittent disturbance of the air in these fissures made the flame flicker at intervals, though generally the candle burned steadily in them, and we could detect no current in the cave. The fourth column was in the low part of the cave, and we were obliged to grovel on the ice to get its dimensions: it was 3-1/4 feet broad and 4-1/3 feet high, the roof of the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent importance. Mrs Manderson would see Mr Trent. She walked to a mirror, looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head at herself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door as Trent ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... a little grin crinkling at the corners of his mouth—a flicker of light in his general gloom. After he had placed the coat in her hands he sat down on the transom and watched her busy fingers. She worked deftly. She closed in the rents and then darned the raveled places with bits of the thread pulled ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... inward, taking with it the jamb. Brett stood staring at the gaping opening. A fragment of masonry dropped with a dry clink. Brett stepped through the breach in the grey facade. The black pool at the bottom of the pit winked a flicker of light back at him ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... king of all the forest, be, Alas, the only one of all That shall not lie where it doth fall? Shall this unflagging flame, here nurs'd By everything, yea, when reversed, Blazing, in fury, brighter, wink, Flicker, and into darkness shrink, When all else glows, baleful or brave, In the keen air beyond the grave? Beware; for fiends in triumph laugh O'er him who learns the truth by half! Beware; for God will not ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... last flicker of the lantern was gone. I sat and waited; my mind was still keen, but how long would it last? There was a limit even to the endurance of ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... not cut short a single flicker of that bright spirit; the wondrously beautiful vessel that it glorifies will be cold clay soon enough! ashes from which no future Phoenix shall arise. O," he exclaimed, "this sacrifice is too great, too great! and for nothing! Even had she perished ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... light can do the same; everybody will admit that in each case, if there is no gravitation, light will certainly extend itself in a rectilinear way. If we limit the light to a flicker of the slightest duration, so that only a little bit, C, of a ray of light arises, or if we fix our attention upon a single vibration of light, C, while we on the other hand give to the projectile, B, a speed equal to that of light, then ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... a bit wildly, leaned from the shattered window and let drive a few last pot-shots into the dark, at the faint flicker of lights along the crest of the black cliff. In the gloom of the pilot-house, his shoulders bulked huge as he fired. Captain Alden, staggering back, sat down heavily ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... once, his plumy tail began to wave. Into his sad eyes sprang a flicker of warm friendliness. Unbidden—oblivious of everyone else he trotted across to where the Mistress sat. He put one tiny white paw in her lap; and stood thus, looking up lovingly into her ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... lighted one of his lamps. As he did so, the flare revealed for an instant his face—square, rather handsome and bearded. A faint flicker of interest, for some reason undefinable to himself at the moment, swept over Mr. Heatherbloom. He had been lying where the grass was tall and now raised himself on his elbow, the better to peer over the waving tops. The car had gathered headway ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... thought his appeal was going to succeed. He could have sworn that a flicker of hesitation—of irresolution—crossed the old man's stern countenance. But the mood passed immediately, and it was in an indifferent voice that Thalassa, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... over the throng. Scurrying figures on the field announced that the expected was being carried out. Chester was making a last desperate effort for a touchdown. It would be the expiring flicker of the flame; for whether successful or not it must mark the end, since the referee would be blowing his whistle ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... amusement beaming on his face, Dick turned to Paula as if to ask her silent approval of the lad's words; but what Dick sought was the effect of the impact of such words under the circumstances he apprehended. In Paula's eyes he thought he detected a flicker of something he knew not what. Graham's face he found expressionless insofar as there was no apparent change of the expression of interest ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... brought two absolute novelties to the knowledge of the public and revived several old operas of large historical and artistic significance, which had either never been heard at all in New York, or heard so long ago that all memory of them had faded from the public mind. It saw the light of competition flicker out completely at the Academy of Music, and after a year of darkness it beheld the dawn of Italian rivalry in what had become ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... caught the sound, and, turning with the quickness of a wild creature, caught the sadness in his face. It seemed to drive away much of her fear and resentment. A half-flicker of a smile came to her lips as their eyes met. It seemed to recognize a comradeship in sorrow. But her face hardened again almost at once into disapproval as ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... beating heart, that Christian would be her escort home. Mrs. Van Pelt was not in the parlor when Mary entered, but Christian received her kindly, though with a slight embarrassment that embarrassed her. She tried to keep the love-flicker from her eyes and the love-tremor from her voice as she sat there alone with the man she loved, trying to reply indifferently to his indifferent remarks, and wondering if he could not hear the beating of her heart. She was greatly relieved at the entrance of Mrs. Van ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... mamma," said the boy gravely. "I will do ridiculous things if He command me"—and again a flicker of a smile that came like a flicker of light passed over his face. "The first thing I thought I had to do was to tell you all; he says his servants must confess him; and to-morrow I will go to my uncles." The smile had faded and he was very ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... watching your two friends. See what a fine study they make with the red flicker of the fire on their faces and the background ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... The flicker or gold-winged woodpecker lives largely on ants, of which he eats immense quantities, seeking them not only in the trees but on ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... hundred yards of me—, then she stood up for an instant on the terrace of turf that looks towards the slimy lake, and holding her flaming lantern above her head she deliberately swung it three times to and fro as for a signal. As she swung it the second time a flicker of its light fell for a moment on her own face, a face that I knew. She was unnaturally pale, and her head was bundled in her borrowed plebeian shawl; but I am certain it was Etta Todd, the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... A flicker of amusement showed in Colwyn's eyes. Really the superintendent was easily drawn, for an East Anglian countryman. "After all, it is only Sir Henry Durwood's opinion that Ronald intended violence at the Grand," he said. "Sir Henry did not give him the opportunity to carry out his intention—if ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... widely circulated poem of colonial New England was Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom (1662), a kind of doggerel Inferno, which went through nine editions, and "was the solace," says Lowell, "of every fireside, the flicker of the pine-knots by which it was conned perhaps adding a livelier relish to its premonitions of eternal combustion." Wigglesworth had not the technical equipment of a poet. His verse is sing-song, his language rude and monotonous, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... her I am what I am. Ignorant, rough man I was, with the merest flicker of spiritual life; but she cared for my soul, and was so patiently loving that she led me to know God.' Bailey was afflicted with a stammer when he was converted. Of this, he says, 'She talked to me so calm and quiet. "Go slow, now," she'd say, "Count." She would insist upon my giving ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... bedside, sometimes unable to extend his hand to touch her hand, as though his strength were wholly a reflection of her strength, so that with the latter's waning the former must flicker out. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... all billiard-balls; and did they acquire a trick of coalescing and running together; this one and that one, in the combination, becoming subordinate to another; until soon you had a little wriggling creature of a word, with his head of prefix, and his tail of suffix, to look or flicker this way or that according to the direction in which he wished to steer himself, the meaning to be expressed;—from monosyllabic becoming agglutinative, synthetic, declensional, complex—Alpine and super-Sanskrit in complexity;—then Pyrenean by the wearing down ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... stepped into the light a low, sibilant whisper reached him. At the cross-corridor doorway he was in time to see the flicker of a vanishing gray garment and a sandaled foot on a naked ankle flash over the vestibule wave-check. He shook ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... a smile wandered up, and died out like a flicker of firelight. She did not move. And then it was that June perceived under the softness and immobility of this figure something desperate and resolved; something not to be turned away, something dangerous. She tore off her hat, and, putting both hands to her brow, pressed back the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... revolver lest the excessive noise of a fowling-piece should disturb the entire forest, and how once he had shot seven times at an imperturbable partridge showing its head over a tree, and missed seven times, and how the partridge had at last flown off, with a flicker of plumage that almost said aloud, "Well, I really can't wait any longer!" And then might follow a simply tremendous discussion ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... the little kitchen, where on the hearth a fire was crackling and flashing its red flicker over the walls. He sat down on a rough wooden bench by the door, wondering if his uncle could really have forgotten that he was coming, and feeling not all light-hearted, while Hagar clattered away to "see Mas'r Dick." She came back pretty ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... one more effort, painful with unexpressed fulfilment. A flicker of awful yearning took her paling eyes. Life seemed to stammer, pause, then flush as with this last deep impulse to yield a secret she discerned for the first time fully, in the very act of passing out. The face, ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... her scarlet-lined hood, kissed her friends good-bye, and went back to Le Bocage; and the old man and the orphan sat looking at the grotesque flicker of the flames ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Antipodes." It was a bad play, and I had a bad part, but Telbin's scenery was lovely. Telbin was a poet, and he has handed on much of his talent to his son, who is alive now, and painted most of our Faust scenery at the Lyceum—he and dear Mr. Hawes Craven, who so loved his garden and could paint the flicker of golden sunshine for the stage better than any one. I have always been friendly with the scene-painters, perhaps because I have always taken pains about my dresses, and consulted them beforehand about the color, so that I should ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... one foot in the grave, whose whole feeble mind, whose pride, whose final flicker of hope was concentrated in his boy, must be told that the lad had been ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... he stopped. A wooden platform appeared on the right. At the bottom of this platform, which was a kind of wharf on piles, a black mass could be made out, which was a tolerably large vessel. On the deck of the vessel, near the prow, was a glimmer, like the last flicker ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... establishment, have come away with very vague notions of what they saw. The hollow whirr of the revolving pestles, the hazy atmosphere closely resembling a London fog in November, a phenomenon which is produced by the innumerable particles of tobacco floating about, and causing the gas to flicker and sparkle in a mysterious way, and producing a lively irritation of the mucous membrane, all combine in placing the visitor in a state of amusing bewilderment, and he is compelled to make a speedy exit, having only ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... living thing other than himself lent any flicker of motion to the scene. Not even a lizard could hope for existence amid these dead and barren heights. He was alone—the certainty of it had driven deeply into his mind before the canyon end was reached. And, desert man though he was ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... out of that covert! If this was acting it was marvelous; there had not been the slightest flicker of confusion ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... The flicker of hope died out of his face as she shook her head. He looked down the alley for a moment; then he turned toward ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... of all their branches save a few at the top; and sometimes a pole is lashed across the stem at a height from the ground and bunches of palm leaves hung upon it; a "bull-roarer," which is used by boys as a toy, is sometimes hung upon such a cross-piece to dangle and flicker in the breeze.[104] ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... careless motion of his own hand toward his hat. But Starr, with brilliant cheeks, and eyes that looked straight at Michael, continued her conversation with her companion and never so much as by the flicker of an eyelash ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... floating through the passages with a mocking allurement. The tramp of feet and laughter of many voices rose with it. A flicker of irony passed over his drawn face. He straightened his collar with absolute steadiness, and moved away in the direction of ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... yellow flame of evening sounds of music come and go, Through the noises of the river, and the drifting of the snow; In the yellow flame of evening, at the setting of the day, Sounds that lighten, fall, and lighten, flicker, faint, and fade away; What they are, behold, we know not, but their honey slakes and slays Half the want which whitens manhood in the stress of alien days. Even as a wondrous woman, struck with love and great desire, Hast thou been ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... eyes groggily. Or, rather, eye. The left one refused to do more than show a faint flicker of the lid. ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... while the child wearily coiled herself up for sleep. The rain was falling heavily, as the woman, pail in hand, emerged from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow street, that stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter; the long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking to ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... River the robin is practically absent in the winter, except in much diminished numbers close to the border. The bluebird is similarly absent; the great flocks of blackbirds are gone; the bobolink is missing entirely; the thrush and the catbird have all left; the flicker and red-headed woodpecker are also spending their winter in the South. The great mass of our bird population has left us until warmer weather shall bring back to us once more our feathered friends. It is true that ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... a quick movement of her lips, a flicker of contempt in her eyes. It seemed an age ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... Parliament began to be alarmed, and enregistered no more credits save with repugnance. Just as he was setting out on a trip to Normandy, which afforded him one of the last happy days of his life and as it were a dying flicker of his past popularity, the king scratched out on the registers of the Parliament the restrictions introduced by the court into the new loan of eighty millions presented by M. de Calonne. "I wish it to be known that I am satisfied with my comptroller-general," ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... eyes ranged about over the dull gloom of the skies until they fell again to the earth level, and then he suddenly sat up, half believing himself in a dream—down the stream, how far away he could not judge, there gleamed a steady, yellowish light. It was no flicker of a camp fire, yet remained stationary. Surely no star could be so low and large; nor did he recall any with that peculiarity of color. If such a miracle was possible in the heart of that sandy desert he would have sworn it was a lamp shining through a window. But he had never heard of any settler ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... Nat had observed her with a certain flicker of fear and hatred in his eyes. She, on the other hand, greeted him with the same formal cordiality she had used toward the others. Though utterly incongruous in such surroundings, she seemed absolutely at her ease and instantly ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... starlight, Andoo saw there were now three or four going to and fro against the grey hillside. "They will hang about me now all the night ... until I kill," said Andoo. "Filth of the world!" And mainly to annoy them, he resolved to watch the red flicker in the gorge until the dawn came to drive the hyaena scum home. And after a time they vanished, and he heard their voices, like a party of Cockney beanfeasters, away in the beechwoods. Then they came slinking near again. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... fruitful river teem with varied forms of animal life. From the caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of many-colored plumage. The cormorant, the pelican, the heron, floated on the water, or stalked along its pebbly brink. Among the sedges, the alligator, foul from his native mud, outstretched his hideous length, or, sluggish and sullen, drifted past the boat, his grim head level with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... word, but his face was pale And he prayed a silent prayer; But his heart was oak and it could not quail, And a secret oath he sware. And grim stood the warders armed all, In the torches' flicker and flare, As they watch for an hour in the gloomy hall The ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... formidable changes of aspect our hero stood watching with a motionless and riveted attention, and as though they were to him matters of the utmost consequence and importance; and only when the last flicker of life had departed from his second victim did he lift his gaze from this terrible scene of dissolution to stare about him, this way and that, his eyes blinded, and his breath stifled by the thick cloud of sulphurous smoke ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... life had gone out of her. She played in Camille Maupin's play, and contributed not a little to the success of that illustrious literary hermaphrodite; but the creation of this character was the last flicker of a bright, dying lamp. On the twentieth night, when Lucien had so far recovered that he had regained his appetite and could walk abroad, and talked of getting to work again, Coralie broke down; a secret ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... he had once more come to the window, and, looking out, fastened his eyes unconsciously but intently upon the face of a young girl who was slowly passing by,—unconsciously, yet so intently that, as if suddenly magnetized, a flicker of feeling went over it; the mouth, set with a steady sweetness, quivered a little; the eyes—dark, beautiful eyes—were lifted to his an instant, that was all. The mother beside him did not see; but she heard a long breath, almost ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... light of that chamber window, through the soft summer evening will shine here; no mournful memory of all the lovely past will it waken. The autumn blaze will flicker within those distant walls, and gather its pleasant circle again; but she will lie calmly here. For ever at her feet the river of her childhood shall murmur on, and many a lovely spring-time, like the spring-times of her childhood, shall come and go, but no yearning hope shall it waken ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... whirls by; But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a preaching of Reverend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... foremost table. A more forlorn party, in more dismal circumstances, it would be hard to imagine. The motion here in the ship's nose was very violent; the uproar of the sea often overpoweringly loud. The yellow flicker of the lantern spun round and round and tossed the shadows in masses. The air was hot, but it struck ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up, in time to see the flicker of amusement sponged from his face. It stirred vague anger in her. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... very beautiful, particularly when it occupies its present position, and, as it were, offers to weary travelers so inviting a seat. Yet often I am strangely awed, in gazing on the group so enveloped in unfathomable mystery. Who may say when another of its jewels shall flicker and go out? And when may not our own world to other planets be a 'Lost Star?' How childish associations cling to one in after years. I never looked up at Cassiopeia, without recalling the time when my ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... flame continued to flicker, but the hand holding the candlestick failed to move, and Bobby knew that the eyes didn't waver, either. He forced his glance from the searching flame. He managed to lower and ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... is the kindest of protectors, and lets me have far too many nice things. Aunt has a far better idea of what a captain's daughter should be. She doesn't spoil me. She's like a sort of animated extinguisher, and whenever I flicker up a bit she's down on me. I enjoy it, and I think she is far better pleased that I give her something to do than if I was awfully meek. It all helps to pass the time till my dear old captain comes home.' Heigho! ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... delicate face. That intent look, as he was to discover, was very constant with her. It was as though she were always watching something of absorbing interest which no one else could see. Sometimes it amused her, and and then a flicker of laughter ran up from her mouth to her grey eyes and danced there. At other times she was sorry. Her face was like still water, ruffled by invisible winds and mirroring ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... he grew tired and found no place to rest, he climbed a hill and gazed around him in every direction to try to discover a light; after a long search he saw the flicker of a tiny spark and went toward it. He walked and walked half the night, then he came to a huge fire, by which a man as big as a giant was sleeping. What was the youth to do? After thinking a while, he crept into one leg of the man's ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... parks and gardens were wholly deserted, and came and went, on either side, phantom-like in their soft, gray, faded tints. Under every bridge flashed and foamed the clear beryl-green waters. And nobody in St. Petersburg, except ourselves, saw this last and sunniest flicker of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... me (who am really getting to be a frosty bachelor, with another white hair, every week or so, in my mustache), there can hardly flicker up again so cheery a blaze upon the hearth, as that which I remember, the next day, at Blithedale. It was a wood fire, in the parlor of an old farmhouse, on an April afternoon, but with the fitful gusts of a wintry snowstorm roaring in the chimney. Vividly does that fireside re-create ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not stir nor did his eyelids flicker. He was used to the proximity of foes, and the distant report did not cause his heart to miss a single beat. Instead, he felt a sort of dry amusement that they should be so near and yet know it not. How Tandakora would have rejoiced if there had been a whisper in his ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was lighted by the fitful flicker of the fire, for the nights were still chilly, and an old man, almost decrepit, sat dozing in his chair by ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... too, in the fatal spell that removes it beyond the scope of man's actual possessions. But Donatello felt nothing of this dream-like melancholy that haunts the spot. As he passed among the sunny shadows, his spirit seemed to acquire new elasticity. The flicker of the sunshine, the sparkle of the fountain's gush, the dance of the leaf upon the bough, the woodland fragrance, the green freshness, the old sylvan peace and freedom, were all intermingled in those ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have been long closed are opened, one of two things takes place; either the torches are extinguished and the men fall first into a swoor and soon die; or, if the air is inflammable, a little flame is seen to flicker round the lamp, which spreads and multiplies till the conflagration becomes general, is followed by an explosion, and kill all who ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... morrowless. I cannot see the faces of that luxurious society, but there I imagine is the local albino, and a certain blind man, who resorts thither much by day, and makes a strange kind of jest of his own, with a flicker of humor upon his sightless face, and a faith that others less unkindly treated by nature will be able to see the point apparently not always discernible to himself. Late at night I have a fancy that the darkness puts him on an equality with other wits, and that he enjoys his own brilliancy ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... of the neighborhood, at four o'clock in the morning, was always the golden-winged woodpecker, or flicker. Though he scorned the breakfast I offered, having no vegetarian proclivities, he did not refuse me his presence. I found him a character, and an amusing study, and I never saw his tribe so numerous and so ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... eyes, which were gentle as a lady's; and his forehead (usually calm and smooth and ready for the flicker of a very pleasant smile) was as grave and determined as the brow of Caryl Carne. Captain Van Oort would have lent him 500 guilders with the greatest pleasure, but Scudamore would not take more than fifty, to support him until he could obtain a ship. Then with hearty ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... up a tortoise-shell lorgnon and examined the newcomer with a flicker of condescending interest. For Flora was a young lady of great sensibility, and though, of course, all females are filled by nature with that interesting and appealing quality, the finer amongst them educate and make an art ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... the minister gave a startled flicker and then grew comprehending. "I wondered why he gave up college after he had worked so hard ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... great disaster, as we were soon to find out, for it was but a few minutes after the last flicker had died away, and left the night looking all the blacker after the bright light to which our eyes had become accustomed, when we all distinctly heard the approaching of many feet. Apparently the impi was about ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the wall, the guide, who has not descended the steps, lights a basket of shavings or other quick combustible on the platform above. The effect is instantaneous and magical. Suddenly from an obscurity so profound that only the outline of the nearest columns can be faintly discerned by the flicker of a candle, the entire maze of columns flashes into being resplendent and white. The roof and the water send the light back to each other. Not a sound is heard save distant splashes here and there as a ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... eyes, charged with lightning, slowly turned from him to the girl on the sofa who had not moved. But in her eyes, too, a little flame began to flicker and play, and the fixed smile relaxed into an expression ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... cole. I feel-a me bahck quake; me bre't' come fahs'. I look; me ent see nuttin'; I lissen; me ent yeddy nuttin'. I look, dey de Jack-me-Lantun mekkin 'e way troo de bush; 'e comin' stret by me. 'E light bin-a flick-flicker; 'e git close un close. I yent kin stan' dis; one foot git heffy, da' heer 'pon me head lif' up. Da' Jack-me-Lantun, 'e git-a high, 'e git-a low, 'e come close. Dun I t'ink I bin-a yeddy ole folks talk tu'n you' coat-sleef wun da' Jack-me-Lantun ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris |
