"Flit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... landlady, found it wise to change her quarters. She had taken a room in an apartment house two blocks removed from her former home, and Win, not being able to afford a "flit," remained at the old address. At first, when her pay was increased by two dollars a week, she had intended to save and follow Sadie. One had, however, to live mostly on ice-cream soda in the hot ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... on his. She had seen a curious expression of mingled annoyance and contempt flit across his face as she came in. Why, why had she allowed Julian to over-persuade her? She was looking horrible, a scarecrow, a ghost of a woman. She was certain of it. For a moment she felt almost angry with Julian for placing her in such a bitter ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the men, who stood silent and grim at their quarters on the American ship, waiting for the fight to begin. At such a moment, even the most courageous must lose heart, as he thinks upon the terrible ordeal through which he must pass. Visions of home and loved ones flit before his misty eyes; and Jack chokes down a sob as he hides his emotion in nervously fingering the lock of his gun, or taking a squint through the port-holes at ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... finer than the last. Every summer hour, a messenger from heaven, is charged with the waiting landscape, and drapes it with its own garment of woven light, celestial broidery. Sunshine crowns the crests, and stamps their kinship to the skies. Shadows nestle in the dells, flit over the ridges, hide under the overhanging cliffs, to be chased out in gleeful frolic by the slant sunbeams of the mellow afternoon. Clouds and vapors and unseen hands of heaven flood the hills with beauty. They have drunk in the warmth and life of the sun, they quiver beneath ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... spirits did flit about the banished Sintram, but it was without his calling them up. In his dreams he often saw the wicked enchantress Venus, in her golden chariot drawn by winged cats, pass over the battlements of the stone fortress, and ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... fanciful, picturesque, romantic. Chivalry was the poetry of the Christ in civilization; and the knight warring to recover the tomb of God was the poem among soldiers, and in entire consonance with his nature, Tennyson's poetic genius flits back into the poetic days, as I have seen birds flit back into a forest. In Tennyson's poetry two things are clear. They are mediaeval in location; they are modern in temper. Their geography is yesterday, their spirit is to-day; and so we have the questions and thoughts of our era as themes for Tennyson's voice and lute. His treatment ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... were plenty of living men only biding their time and waiting their opportunity. It was only night that these people desired; a good black night so that no one could see them flit about. You felt in the small of your back as you rode along that ugly faces were looking at you from the silent houses, and that at any moment shots might ring out suddenly and bear you to the ground. But that was merely a preliminary feeling. Soon it added zest to the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... that exciting moment it carried me back to the old "Admiral Benbow" in a second, and I seemed to hear the voice of the captain piping in the chorus. But soon the anchor was short up; soon it was hanging dripping at the bows; soon the sails began to draw, and the land and shipping to flit by on either side, and before I could lie down to snatch an hour of slumber the Hispaniola had begun her voyage to the Isle ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from herb to herb she flies, From flower to flower, and loads her labouring thighs 490 With treasured sweets, robbing those flowers, which, left, Find not themselves made poorer by the theft, Their scents as lively, and their looks as fair, As if the pillager had not been there. Ne'er doth she flit on Pleasure's silken wing; Ne'er doth she, loitering, let the bloom of Spring Unrifled pass, and on the downy breast Of some fair flower indulge untimely rest; Ne'er doth she, drinking deep of those rich dews Which chemist Night prepared, that faith ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... of the door behind Zachariah was reassuring. At any rate he was alive and far too sprightly to have suffered a broken leg or a cracked skull. A few seconds later she saw Kenny's shadow flit hurriedly past the window as he dashed toward the kitchen. For some time she stood perfectly still, listening to the confused jumble of voices in the house across the way, debating whether she should hurry over to explain,—and perhaps to assist in ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... keeper at Whitby Saw a couple of Zeppelins flit by; Though she felt a sharp sting, It's a curious thing That she never knew ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... relations of life,—to the hour of business and the hour of repose, to the hall of audience and the garden-walk, and giving equally its deceptive coloring to the thoughts that stir him when borne on the shoulders of men through a prostrate crowd, and those that flit dimly through his brain as he lays a weary head upon a solitary pillow. And hence, too, he becomes for himself, as well as for others, an object of constant contemplation,—valuing things as they contribute to his pleasure, and men as ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the byrny all hoary, The sword stately-good, and spell after he said: This raiment of war Hrothgar gave to my hand, The wise of the kings, and therewithal bade me, That I first of all of his favour should flit thee; He quoth that first had it King Heorogar of old, The king of the Scyldings, a long while of time; But no sooner would he give it unto his son, 2160 Heoroward the well-whet, though kind to him were he, This weed of the breast. Do thou brook it full well. On these fretworks, so heard ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... weary horses had slowed down to a walk, the heavy sand retarding progress. It was a gloomy, depressing scene in the spectral gray light, a wide circle of intense loneliness, unbroken by either dwarfed shrub or bunch of grass, a barren expanse stretching to the sky. Vague cloud shadows seemed to flit across the level surface, assuming fantastic shapes, but all of the same dull coloring, imperfect and unfinished. Nothing seemed tangible or real, but rather some grotesque picture of delirium, ever merging into another yet more hideous. The very silence ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... actually been thrown into prison for her deed of madness and now the executioner's axe awaits her. She sits on the damp straw, rocking a bundle, which she takes for her baby, and across her poor wrecked brain there flit once more pictures of all the scenes of her short-lived happiness. Then Faust enters with Mephisto, and tries to persuade her to escape with them. But she instinctively shrinks from her lover, loudly imploring God's and the Saint's pardon. God has mercy on ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... out a scrap of cambric, dried her eyes like magic, and began to flit about the garden, humming a light air under her breath. Her dress was of an old-fashioned sort of book-muslin—it was made full and billowy; her figure was round and yet lithe, her hair was a mass of frizzy soft rings, and when the ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... watched her flit about the room, and listened to her gay conversation, and observed her animated face, said to herself: "A more charming companion could not fall to the lot of any woman. Now what is the matter, Bertha?" she said. "Your face quite amuses me; you burst out into ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... They flit about, the yellow birds, And rest upon the jujube trees [1]. Who followed duke Mu in the grave? Dze-kue Yen-hsi. And this Yen-hsi Was a man above a hundred. ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... what time the moonlight On her nest of shadows will sit, Out on the dim lawn gliding That shadow of shadows will flit. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... little boys and girls, but also chickens, small birds, and shrew-mice, evidently alarmed at his minatory attitude. So, too, the bumble-bee flies, which are inoffensive insects got up in sedulous imitation of various species of wild bee, flit about and buzz angrily in the sunlight, quite after the fashion of the insects they mimic; and when disturbed they pretend to get excited, and seem as if they wished to fly in their assailant's face and roundly sting him. This curious instinct may ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... brae are clad in green, An' scatter'd cowslips sweetly spring; By Girvan's fairy-haunted stream, The birdies flit on wanton wing; By Cassillis' banks, when e'ening fa's, There let my Mary meet wi' me, There catch her ilka glance o' love, The bonnie ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... sunlit plots. It might have been a deer. He studied the rolling, rounded tree-tops, the narrow strips between the black trunks, and the open places that were clear in the sunshine. He had nearly come to believe he had seen a small animal or bird flit across the white of the sky far in the background, when he distinctly saw dark figures stealing along past a green-gray rock, only to disappear under colored banks of foliage. Presently, lower down, they reappeared and crossed an open patch of yellow ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... one of her mother's dark-coloured handkerchiefs over her head and put her darkest-coloured petticoat on the top of all the others. She had also wrapped her mother's dark shawl round her shoulders, and thus muffled up she was able to flit unperceived down the street, a swift little dark figure undistinguishable from the surrounding darkness ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... thou hast mocked my hungry soul; thy gilded fruits have crumbled to ashes in my grasp. In lieu of the holy faith of my girlhood, thou hast given me but dim, doubtful conjecture, cold metaphysical abstractions, intangible shadows, that flit along my path, and lure me on to deeper morasses. Oh, what is the shadow of death, in comparison with the starless night which has fallen upon me, even in the morning of my life! My God, save me! Give me light! Of myself I can ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... reflection of the lighted windows, stretched over the dark sea. The captain of the ship was giving a ball. The gay music floated across to me in snatches at long intervals. I recall in particular the trill of a little flute in the midst of the deep blare of the trumpets; it seemed to flit, like a butterfly, about my boat. I bade the man row to the ship; twice he took me round it. ... I caught glimpses at the windows of women's figures, borne gaily round in the whirl-wind of the waltz.... I told the boatman to row away, far away, straight into the darkness.... ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Carrollton. I sent Gritty home on purpose to see if you would be annoyed, for I felt vexed because you would not humor my whim and meet me at the bridge. I am sorry I caused you any uneasiness," she continued, as she saw a shadow flit over his ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... have heard so read by another person, without an inward struggle?—In mere passive silent reading the thoughts remain mere thoughts, and these too not our own,—phantoms with no attribute of place, no sense of appropriation, that flit over the consciousness as shadows over the grass or young corn in an April day. But even the sound of our own or another's voice takes them out of that lifeless, twilight, realm of thought, which is the confine, the 'intermundium', as it were, of existence ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Like chrysalids impatient for the air, The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run Along the furrows, ants make their ado; Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek Their loves in wood and plain—and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... what time the moonlight On her nest of shadows will sit, Out on the dim lawn gliding That shadowy shadow will flit. ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... aimless existence. Sometimes, wildly as she struggled against such thoughts, there would come to Olive's fancy dreams of what her life might have been. The holiness of lovers' love, of wedded love, of mother-love, would at times flit before her imagination; and her heart, still warm, still young, trembled to picture the lonely old age, the hearth blank and silent, the utter isolation from all those natural ties whose place not even the dearest ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time, Where flit the dark spectres of passion and crime, There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, There are heroes yet silent ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... called her name repeatedly, but she was no where to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a neighboring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamor of carrion crows that were hovering about a cypress tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of a tree; with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... that they appeared to flow from so many different sources. Then, like an impetuous torrent, he seemed to unite these streams into a foaming waterfall; over the tossing waves the rainbow presently stretches its peaceful arch, while on the banks butterflies flit to and fro, and the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... dignity of high walls and guarded gateways), constitutes the great university of Massachusetts. The yard, or college-precinct, is traversed by a number of straight little paths, over which, at certain hours of the day, a thousand undergraduates, with books under their arm and youth in their step, flit from one school to another. Verena Tarrant knew her way round, as she said to her companion; it was not the first time she had taken an admiring visitor to see the local monuments. Basil Ransom, walking with her from point to point, admired them all, and thought several of them exceedingly ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... copia narium, that clothe the mountain-skirts of the silent Lautulae! Shall we rest at the Volscian Anxur,—the modern Terracina,—where the lofty rock stands like the giant that guards the last borders of the southern land of love? Away, away! and hold your breath as we flit above the Pontine Marshes. Dreary and desolate, their miasma is to the gardens we have passed what the rank commonplace of life is to the heart when it has ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... instructions of the Advocate had so highly complimented him, was not strong enough to carry him much beyond a vigorous phraseology. He had not awoke from the delusive dream of the Spanish marriage which had dexterously been made to flit before him, and he was not inclined, for the sake of the Republic which he hated the more because obliged to be one of its sponsors, to risk the animosity of a great power which entertained the most profound contempt for him. He was destined ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lesson of the cessation of the wrath of God and the return of the earth to its former state. Of this he had more certain proof however, when the dove, having been sent out the third time, did not return: for not only did it find food on earth, but was able to build nests and to flit to ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... with the foam beneath their bows, Whose streaming ensigns charm the waves by day, Whose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the night, Moor'd as they cast the shadows of their masts In long array, or hither flit and yond Mysteriously with slow and crossing lights, Like spirits on the darkness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... white owl entered the casement high, O'er the brow of the dying I saw it fly; Presager of death! I hailed its wing, She scorned the omen but felt the sting Of bitter grief, when another day Bore her angel Mother from earth away. I warned her, when on the coming blast I saw the phantom-like shades flit past; She smiled on my words as idle play, But wept when her sire, in the midnight fray, Felled to the dust by the Tory's blade, Died in the home where his bones are laid; When the cold drops stood on the forehead fair, And the curdling ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... tell Ravenhurst I want to talk to him, or I'll simply flit back to Eros, and thank him much for a pretty retainer that didn't do him any good but gave me a nice ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... not so dark; yet I could make out none of the objects I now and then ran against. I passed a mirror (I hardly know how I knew it to be such), and in that mirror I seemed to see the ghost of a ghost flit by and vanish. It was too much. I muttered a suppressed oath and plunged forward, when I struck against a closing door. It flew open again and I rushed in, turning on my light in my extreme desperation, when, instead of hearing the sharp report of a pistol, ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... manner of cool distinction and her polished, impersonal phrases, another feminine figure dared to flit between him and this lady of manifold merit. No sooner would he indignantly banish her image than she would come dancing back, a gay little figure, with too much color in her checks and too much ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... vaine labours of terrestriall wit, That buildes so stronglie on so frayle a soyle, As with each storme does fall away and flit, And gives the fruit of all your travailes toyle 515 To be the pray of Tyme, and Fortunes spoyle, I saw this towre fall sodainlie to dust, That nigh with griefe thereof my ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... learn the true remorse for crime Should watch (when slumbers innocence, and guilt Or wakes in sleepless pain, or dreams of blood) The convict stretched on his reposeless bed. Then conscience plays th' accusing angel; Spectres of murder'd victims flit before His eyes, with soul-appalling vividness; Hideous phantasma shadow o'er his mind; Guilt, incubus-like, sits on his soul With leaden weight,—types of the pangs of hell. His memory to the scene of blood reverts; He hears the echo of his victims' cry, Whose agonizing eyes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... merely a spectator, seated in the royal box, applauding now and again. There is a wrench at my heart, a pang in every nerve. When I have put out the light and am in my bed, little touches, little glances, little words flit about and fill the darkness. When I get up in the morning, I thrill with lively anticipations, my blood seems to course through me to ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... my eyes fixed on Lucy, as did Van Helsing, and we saw a spasm as of rage flit like a shadow over her face. The sharp teeth clamped together. Then her eyes ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... on the same spot, some practical joker amused himself with a magic-lantern by making a spirit form flit over the fall, against its face, or in the misty air. The whole city turned out to see it, and great was their marvelling, and greater the fear among the negroes ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Dr. Rauparaha had much writing to do, and passed his mornings and afternoons in the quiet library. Sometimes, as he wrote, a shadow would flit across the wide, sunlit veranda, and Helen Torringley would flit by, nodding pleasantly to him through the windows. Only two or three times had he met her alone since he came to Te Ariri, and walked with her through the grounds, ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... home and Joe,—from all those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the forge, and flit away. In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... musician, as well as the student of aesthetics, will do well to examine by what means these various effects are produced. In the second nocturne, F sharp major, the brightness and warmth of the world without have penetrated into the world within. The fioriture flit about as lightly as gossamer threads. The sweetly-sad longing of the first section becomes more disquieting in the doppio movimento, but the beneficial influence of the sun never quite loses its power, and after a little there ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... she returned. 'He has nobody knows what money, and every year it increases. Yes, yes, he's rich enough to live in a finer house than this: but he's very near—close-handed; and, if he had meant to flit to Thrushcross Grange, as soon as he heard of a good tenant he could not have borne to miss the chance of getting a few hundreds more. It is strange people should be so greedy, when they ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... sounds the cymbal's voice, where the tambour resounds, where the Phrygian flautist pipes deep notes on the curved reed, where the ivy-clad Maenades furiously toss their heads, where they enact their sacred orgies with shrill-sounding ululations, where that wandering band of the Goddess is wont to flit about: thither 'tis meet to hasten with ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... by lonely meres To sit, with heart and soul awake, Where water-lilies lie afloat, Each anchored like a fairy boat Amid some fabled elfin lake: To see the birds flit to and fro Along the dark-green reedy edge. ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... that now flit and hover From the blossom of white to the blossom of red, Take heed, for I was a lordly lover Till the little day of my life had sped; As straight as a pine-tree, a golden head, And eyes as blue as an austral bay. Ladies, when loosing your evening array, Reflect, had you lived in my years, my prayers ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as if she were hovering in the air and might vanish, like ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Upon her complete recovery of strength she always rose with the dawn. At the moment she was feeding the quail she had tamed. And she had begun to tame the mocking-birds. They fluttered among the branches overhead and some left off their songs to flit down and shyly hop near the twittering quail. Little gray and white rabbits crouched in the grass, now nibbling, now laying long ears flat ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... Then I got up and went out. I had forgotten "Little Frank" and hoped that she had. If she was to flit about Europe seeing "Little Frank" on every corner I foresaw trouble. "Little Frank" was likely to be the bane of ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of his article will be coming down. In an hour or so his work will be over, and he will pass out into the street exhausted, but happy with the sense of function fulfilled. Fleet Street is quieter now. The lamps gleam through the fog, a motor-'bus thunders by, a few late messengers flit along with the latest telegrams, and some stragglers from the restaurants come singing past the Temple. For a few moments there is silence but for the leader-writer's quick footsteps on the pavement. He is some hours in front of the morning's news, and in a few hours more half a million ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... to be my wife. I know not how she deceived me so terribly, but you know, and I have sought this interview to hear the story from your own lips. Will you tell it to me, darling—Miss Leyton, I mean," he added hastily, as he saw a shadow of pain flit over her face. ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... seriously a duel between a slim man of near forty who had rarely fired a shot in sport, never in anger, and a stoutly built irascible Irishman, for whom a good shot meant lynching or lasting opprobrium. Visions of Bob Acres and Sir Lucius O'Trigger flit before us. We picture Tierney quoting "fighting Bob Acres" as to the advantage of a sideways posture; and we wonder whether the seconds, if only in regard for their own safety, did not omit to insert bullets. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... passage. Once or twice, when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried past, the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its vague, mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight darkened gradually, but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its piteous look fixed in one direction,—watching,—watching; and, while the howling wind swept frantically through the chill air, it still seemed to shudder ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... breadth of light without shadow; there was a murmur of content in her voice when she spoke, and a ripple of content in her laugh when she laughed. But the light quivered on Dolly's lip, and gleamed and sparkled in her brown eyes, and light and shadow could flit over her face with quick change; they ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... stopped in the street outside, the bell rang, and she watched the figure of a trim mulatto maid flit through the hall to the door. An instant later Arthur's name was announced, and Gabriella, with her hands in his clasp, stood looking into his face. It had been eighteen years since they parted, and in those eighteen years she had carried his image like some ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... sickness, and take to thy bed. Hrut will not lose time in guessing what thy sickness can be, nor will he scold thee at all, but he will rather beg every one to take all the care they can of thee. After that he will set off west to the Firths, and Sigmund with him, for he will have to flit all his goods home from the Firths west, and he will be away till the summer is far spent. But when men ride to the Thing, and after all have ridden from the Dales that mean to ride thither; then thou must rise from thy bed and summon men to go along with thee to the Thing; and when thou art ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... on into four acres of low slop, brambles, shoots, and blackthorns, where they were winded by half the pack, while the other half were running the first fox up the fence. The crash and music of the hounds re-echoed from the trees and the enfolding hills above, the shrieking of the jays as they flit protesting from tree to tree, the hearty ring of the huntsman's voice cheering his hounds—surely all this should send each fox flying out over the fields beyond! But a fox has no nerves. He keeps his head with the coolness of a Red Indian, and a "slimness" all his ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... suspicion took me. While Trewlove tortured himself to my model, was I, by painful degrees, exchanging brains with him? I laughed; but I was unhinged. I had been smoking too many cigarettes during these three weeks, and the vampire thought continued to flit obscenely between me and the pure seascape. I saw myself the inheritor of Trewlove's cast-off personality, his inelegancies of movement, his religious opinions, his bagginess at the knees, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... day in June. Out of the town the air is soft and pure. Bird and bee flit from tree to tree, from blue-bell to rose, till at sun-set they hie away to ...
— The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Stories in Words of Three and Four Letters • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... returned with such dire tidings, they decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and all made haste to get back to their rooms ere the enemy appeared. But, alack-a-day! that enemy could flit about in a surprisingly lively manner, and, ere some of them had reached safety behind their own doors, she came in view. To get to their rooms now was out of the question, so, making a virtue of ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... for a little while, and, as usual, this time brings with it thronging remembrances of absent friends. Their forms flit before me; their spirits are around me; I feel their presence—almost; dear friends, almost I clasp you in my arms. My soul yearns for love and sympathy. I do bless and praise my God for all His goodness to me in this respect, for my many tender and faithful and devoted friends. Part of ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... while was to re-dig some wells his father had dug before him. The first time he saw his sweetheart Rebecca, whom another man had to go and get for him, he lifted up his voice and cried like a boob. He had become soft on the mutton and grape juice of his father. Tender little doves flit around the home cote, but the eagle sweeps from sun to sun. Anyhow, in these modern days children are very largely bringing ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... earth's little children pit-pat from their burrows on the hill; Hangs within the gloom its weary head the shining daffodil. In the valley underneath us through the fragrance flit along Over fields and over hedgerows little quivering drops of song. All adown the pale blue mantle of the mountains far away Stream the tresses of the twilight flying in the wake of day. Night comes; soon alone shall fancy follow sadly in her flight Where the ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... you sign anything?-Yes, I signed a paper, stating that I would rather stay and fish for him than that I would flit. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... "Going to pass that star we were headed for—too fast to stop. I'm giving it a wide berth and picking out another one. There's a big planet a few million miles off in line with the main door, and another one almost dead ahead—that is, straight down. We sure are traveling. Look at that sun flit by!" ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... locket two portraits; one the portrait of a fair English lady, and the other that of a still fairer English child. So, before the eyes of one dying on the blood-stained veldt did visions of home and loved ones flit. Life's last look turned thither! In war, the cost in cash is clearly the cost that is of least consequence. Who can appraise aright the price of ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... he would be loth to do without a dash of womanly subtlety, 'tis so piquant. Yes, he said, that must be in her; she must have womanly cleverness. "And yet I should like her to blush if only a cock-sparrow were to look at her hard," he said, "which brings me back to the girl again: and so I flit backwards and forwards. I must have what comes, I suppose," he said, "and whatever she may be, thank God she's no worse. However, if he might give a final hint to Providence," he said, "a child among pleasures, and a woman among pains was the rough ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... when he lay sleepless, sick for his mother's presence, her voice, her kisses, her soothing touch, the boy would rise to sit at the window—there to watch shadowy figures flit through the street-lamp's circle of light. Once he fancied that his mother came thus out of the night, that for a moment she paused with upturned glance, then disappeared in woe and haste: returning, halted again; ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... Certainly witches are constantly thought to ride through the air on broomsticks or other equally convenient vehicles; and if they do so, how can you get at them so effectually as by hurling lighted missiles, whether discs, torches, or besoms, after them as they flit past overhead in the gloom? The South Slavonian peasant believes that witches ride in the dark hail-clouds; so he shoots at the clouds to bring down the hags, while he curses them, saying, "Curse, curse Herodias, thy ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... my flit-pouch, I was the same. If you'd had your priming-horn, and I my flints, mind ye, we should have been there now? Then, forty-whory, that we are not is the fault o' Government for not supplying ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the first to go on guard and during the initial hour of his vigil practically nothing came to disturb him. He heard the occasional cry of the nightbirds and the booming of the surf on the reefs and the shore of the isle, and saw numerous fireflies flit to and fro, and ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... husky fellow, had been rowing a long hour when we put into a cove under the high shore of an island. I could see a moving glow back in the bushes. It swung slowly, like a pendulum of light, with a mighty flit and tumble of shadows. We tied our boat, climbed the shore, and made slowly for the light. Nearing it, his Lordship whistled twice, and got answer. The lantern was now still; it lighted the side of a soldier in high boots; ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... than that. First, with the instinctive selfishness of human nature, you will recognize your own future habitation; perhaps your eye will mark the identical spot where the body you love must lie through all seasons and weathers, through the slow centuries that will flit so fast for you, till the crash of doom. It is good that you should think of that, although it makes you shudder. The English churchyard takes the place of the Egyptian mummy at the feast, or the slave in the Roman conqueror's car—it ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... shaded with high trees and lit softly with orange glowlights; while down the centre the tramway of the road will go, with sometimes a nocturnal tram-car gliding, lit and gay but almost noiselessly, past. Lantern-lit cyclists will flit along the track like fireflies, and ever and again some humming motor-car will hurry by, to or from the Rhoneland or the Rhineland or Switzerland or Italy. Away on either side the lights of the little country homes up ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the wild bee roams, Then buried within the cowslip's cup, He murmurs his low and music tones, Till she folds the wanton intruder up; The spring bird, wakening, soars on high, Gushing aloft its melting lay; Whilst painted clouds flit o'er the sky, All ushering ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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
... the years of youth. They are the sweetest in life; and these memories constitute most of the happiness of declining life. Incidents in our pilgrimage awaken the almost forgotten, and then how many, many memories flit through the mind, and what a melancholy pleasure fills the soul! We think, and think on, calling this and that memory up from the grave of forgetfulness, until all the past seems present, and we live ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... and anon, as swiftly held they onward, other Indians, singly or in squads, would fall into the file, gliding from out the mingled gloom of forest shade and night, as suddenly and silently as the shapes which flit through troubled dreams. Among these, by and by, appeared a warrior of gigantic stature, who putting himself at the head of the file, stalked on a little in advance, and seemed to ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... then went on: "An' once I saw an Annir Choille, a girl of the green people, flit like a shade of green fire through Carntogher woods, an' once at Dunchraig I slept where the ashes of the Dun of Cormac MacConcobar are mixed with those of Cormac an' Eilidh the Fair, all burned in the nine flames that sprang from the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... and who, in all other points, appeared to consult his welfare and his wishes, it occurred to our hero, that, during the worst crisis of his illness, a female figure, younger than his old Highland nurse, had appeared to flit around his couch. Of this, indeed, he had but a very indistinct recollection, but his suspicions were confirmed when, attentively listening, he often heard, in the course of the day, the voice of another female conversing in whispers with his attendant. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... was simply obliged to accept the fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter. Sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find himself the centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the discovery. Being obliged ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... who spoke; and amongst other labels on his baggage was one marked Khartoum. His hands were sinewy and his face was bronzed, while his eyes, brown and deep-set, held in them the glint of the desert places of the earth: the mark of the jungle where birds flit through the shadows like bars of glorious colour; the mark of the swamp where the ague mists lie dank and stagnant in the rays ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... few feet of buoy and boat, the body of De-deed disappears for the last time. We search for an hour or more with grappling irons, but he is never seen again. A strange silence settles down above and below deck, and all night long two faces flit before us—the grave face of the mother calling down blessings on her boy, the rallying smile of De-deed bidding her good-by and telling her all is well. It is a brave and happy spirit which, in the "Little Lake" of the Mackenzie, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... mingling here serious and even reproachful reflections, I rather turn my look away from those beautiful times; for who is able to speak worthily of the fulness of childhood? We cannot behold the little creatures which flit about before us otherwise than with delight, nay, with admiration; for they generally promise more than they perform: and it seems that Nature, among the other roguish tricks that she plays us, here also especially designs to make sport of us. The first organs she bestows ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... flag! Up, up, betimes, and proudly speak of it; A lordly thing to see on tower and crag, O'er which,—as eagles flit, With eyes a-fire, and wings of phantasy,— Our memories hang superb! The foes we frown upon shall feel the curb Of our full sway; and they shall shamed be Who wrong, with sword or pen, The Code that keeps us free. For there's no sight, in summer or in spring, Like ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... oft-regretted Cube; and in my nightly visions the mysterious precept, "Upward, not Northward", haunts me like a soul-devouring Sphinx. It is part of the martyrdom which I endure for the cause of the Truth that there are seasons of mental weakness, when Cubes and Spheres flit away into the background of scarce-possible existences; when the Land of Three Dimensions seems almost as visionary as the Land of One or None; nay, when even this hard wall that bars me from my freedom, these very tablets on which I am writing, and ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... had been before, even though we walked from Aix-les-Bains all the way down to the Riviera shoulder to shoulder. I had the will to be the same, but he was different now; and though we left Gaeta in the flesh at her villa, entertaining guests, Gaeta in the spirit would still flit between us as we went. The Boy would be thinking of her; I should know that he was thinking of her, and—there would be ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... on the dusky plain, Where flit the shadows with their endless cry, You reach the shore where all the world goes by, You leave the strife, the slavery, the pain; But we, but we, the mortals that remain In vain stretch hands; for Charon ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... shimmering ghosts that flit around, While spade and mattock death-fields glean, Open with words from the unseen The mysteries now in ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... was playing with the letter was still for a moment, and an almost imperceptible quiver straightened the white figure. For a moment Guest saw, or imagined that he saw, a shadow flit across the girl's face, but it passed as quickly as it came. She tilted ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Holyoke, and cloud-clapped Monadnock, the cities of Worcester and Fitchburg—all these and many other beautiful objects are spread out before the spectator. But it cannot be described—it must be seen to be appreciated; and the throngs of visitors that flit through the town every summer afford abundant evidence that the love of the beautiful and grand in nature still lives in the hearts of ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... a small bronzed cubicle which began at once to rise rapidly. Just how rapidly, he was unable to tell. There were no indicators at all on the elevator, and the opaque doors made it impossible to see floors flit by. But his ears rang with the speed, and when the car finally stopped, it did so with a slight jerk that threw Forrester, stiff and worried, off balance. He almost fell out of the car as the door opened, and ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... griefs, my passions, and my powers, Made me a stranger. Though I wore the form, I had no sympathy with breathing flesh. My joy was in the wilderness—to breathe The difficult air of the iced mountain's top. Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing Flit o'er the herbless granite; or to plunge Into the torrent, and to roll along On the swift whirl of the new-breaking wave Of river, stream, or ocean, in their flow— In these my early strength exulted; or To follow through the night the moving moon, The stars, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... those old days when I was young and strong, He used to sing on yonder garden tree, Beside the nursery. Ah, I remember how I loved to wake, And find him singing on the self-same bough (I know it even now) Where, since the flit of bat, In ceaseless voice he sat, Trying the spring night over, like a tune, Beneath the vernal moon; And while I listed long, Day rose, and still he sang, And all his stanchless song, As something falling ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... humble office to all honours among the godless. He was shut out by some unknown circumstances from external participation in the Temple rites, and longs to be even as one of the swallows or sparrows that twitter and flit round the sacred courts. No doubt to him faith was much more inseparably attached to form than it should be for us. No doubt place and ritual were more to him than they can permissibly be to those who have heard and understood the great charter of spiritual ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... trees, stretching itself over the grass in shapes that seemed to spell unearthly things. And there were mystical lights on the water down there, flitting about with the movement of the stream as ghosts might flit. Because it looked so other-world-like she wondered if it knew what it had just missed. She had never thought anything about water save as something to look beautiful and have a good time on. It seemed now that perhaps it knew a great deal ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... is vast, and cold, and drear; The board with faded flowers is spread: Shadows of beauty flit around, But beauty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... fellowship of voluntary grief— He read the tear-stained book of poor men's souls, As we must learn to read it. Lady! lady! Wear but one robe the less—forego one meal— And thou shalt taste the core of many tales, Which now flit past thee, like a minstrel's songs, The sweeter for ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... we flit, One little sandpiper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, One little sandpiper ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... don't see each other often," the old fairy woman had said. "You flit in like, and flit away again as if you was a butterfly, I think sometimes when I'm sitting here alone. When you come to stay you're mostly flitting about the wood and I only see you bit by bit. But I couldn't tell you, Miss, my dear, what it's like to me. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... doan' like him?' says Liza. 'He come a sto'min' round hyah like he gwine to pull de whole place up by de roots an' transport hit ovah Lexington way. Fust he's boun' fo' to take dat hoss what's done win all dem good dollahs. Den his min' flit f'om dat to Miss Sally, an' he's aimin' to cyar her off like she was a 'lasses bar'l or a yahd ob calico. Who is dem Dillons, anyway? De Goodloes owned big lan' right hyar in Franklin County when de Dillons ain' nothin' but Yankee trash back in Maine or some other ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... roar; Or carolled in his light canoe content, As, bound from creek to creek, it grazed the shore; Gods of the storm the dreary space might sweep, And shapes of death, and gliding spectres gaunt, Might flit, he thought, o'er the remoter deep; And whilst strange voices cried, Avaunt, avaunt! Uncertain lights, seen through the midnight gloom, Might lure him sadly on ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... White shapes flit to and fro From mast to mast; 10 They feel the distant tempest That nears them fast: Great rocks are straight ahead, Great shoals not past; They shout to one another ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... a spider, who peeps out carefully, and quickly pulls it down again. On a karoo-bush a green fly is laying her silver eggs. We carry them home, and see the shells pierced, the spotted grub come out, turn to a green fly, and flit away. We are not satisfied with what Nature shows us, and we see something for ourselves. Under the white hen we put a dozen eggs, and break one daily, to see the white spot wax into the chicken. We are not excited or enthusiastic ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... there Dick saw the figure of a man flit, by him. The stranger was dressed in citizen's clothes. There was nothing suspicions in that, since there is no law to prevent citizens from visiting the Military Academy. But there was something ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... joining in an ideal sort of game, where, in place of the mawkish sentimentality of "Sally Walker," of obnoxious memory, we see all sorts of healthful, poetic, childlike fancies woven into song. Rudeness is, for the most part, banished. The little human butterflies and bees and birds flit hither and thither in the circle; the make-believe trees hold up their branches, and the flowers their cups; and everybody seems merry and content. As they pass out the door, good-bys and bows and kisses are wafted backward into the room; for the manners of polite ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... by words, as petticoats are lifted by the wind; tricks of language, cleverly disguised audacities; sentences which reveal nude images in covered phrases, which cause the vision of all that may not be said to flit rapidly before the eyes of the mind, and allow well-bred people the enjoyment of a kind of subtle and mysterious love, a species of impure mental contact, due to the simultaneous evocations of secret, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... flagged path than back flitted the bevy of girls again into the study, until the small room was full to overflowing. It was like seeing a company of fat bumble-bees, their portly bodies resplendent in black and gold, buzz heavily out of a room, and a gay flight of pale-blue and lemon butterflies flit back in their places. All the daughters fell upon their father, Margaret, Bridget, Isabel, Sarah, Mary, and Susanna; there they all were! tugging off his heavy riding-boots and gaiters, putting away the whip on the whip-rack, while little Mary perched herself proudly on his knee and put up her face ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... feelings might have identified him with all. In a word, we apprehend he was a tolerably fair example of what vague generalities, when acting on a temperament not indisposed to moral impressions, render the great majority of men; who flit around the mysteries of a future state, without alighting either on the consolations of faith, or discovering any of those logical conclusions which, half the time unconsciously to themselves, they seem to expect. When Bluewater ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... beholding his enemies bruised of his rod Beheld but the likeness of this that is fallen on the faithful, the friends of God. Northward, and northward, and northward they stagger and shudder and swerve and flit, Dismantled of masts and of yards, with sails by the fangs of the storm-wind split. But north of the headland whose name is Wrath, by the wrath or the ruth of the sea, They are swept or sustained to the westward, and drive through the rollers ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... protect her by night as well as by day. Those hideous hyenas of the midnight streets are never deceived. By one glance they can distinguish between a good woman and those poor wandering ghosts of dead modesty and honour, who flit restlessly back and forth from alleys dark to bright gas glare; but bring one of these men to book, and he will declare that "decent women have no right to be in the streets after nightfall," as though citizens were to maintain public highways for ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... affirmed the other, heartily, as he eyed the boy; and perhaps a dim suspicion that he might find the fugitive valuable as a guide began to flit through ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... Amleth that to his trick he owed his salvation, observed that latterly he had been singly devoted to Amleth. The young man's reply was apt. Not to seem forgetful of his informant's service, he said that he had seen a certain thing bearing a straw flit by suddenly, wearing a stalk of chaff fixed in its hinder parts. The cleverness of this speech, which made the rest split with laughter, rejoiced the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... not seen the rich grape grow For miles, as far as eyes can go; Thou hast not seen a summer's night When maids could sew by a worm's light; Nor the North Sea in spring send out Bright hues that like birds flit about In solid cages of white ice— Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Love-one-place. Thou hast not seen black fingers pick White cotton when the bloom is thick, Nor heard black throats in harmony; Nor hast thou sat on stones that lie Flat on the earth, that once did rise To hide proud kings ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... ready, and etiquette was waived. "Time!" she repeated, and then the two battering-rams, revolving their fists country-fashion, engaged. Half-forgotten Homeric phrases began to flit from a faraway schoolroom back into the little teacher's mind and she began to be consoled for the absence of gloves—those tough old ancients had used gauges of iron and steel. The two boys were evenly matched. After a few thundering body blows they grew wary, and when the round closed their faces ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... before. Those little clasped hands gave each other courage, for Ruth needed it as much as Eva, and her heartbeats could almost be heard in the silence. What a study her sweet little face was, as the emotions of love, pity, fear, and hope, crossed it, as shadowy clouds flit across ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... very well. Rather an imbecile old gentleman, one would say, with his mouth open; a face such as one may see hanging about railway-stations, and, what is curious, a New-England style of countenance. Let us flit again, and just take a look at the level sheets of water and broken falls of Trenton,—at the oblong, almost squared arch of the Natural Bridge,—at the ruins of the Pemberton Mills, still smoking,—and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... a duty in the face of his own scepticism that he had spoken thus, and he did not expect to see another shade of sadness flit across Alba's mobile ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... our sun is declining to the horizon? Are they the shadows of evening, or are they, as I hopefully believe, but the mists which are exhaled by the sun as it rises, but which are to be dispersed by its meridian glory? Are they but the little evanishing clouds that flit between the people and the great objects for which the Constitution was established? I hopefully look toward the reaction which will establish the fact that our sun is still in the ascendant—that that cloud which has so long covered our political ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... skilful oratory, accepted his plan by acclamation, and returned home to push with the utmost haste the preparations for their stupendous task. The idea of a migration en masse did not frighten them. They were nomads and the descendants of nomads, who for ages had been used to fold their tents and flit away. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the most tiresome things, they are so monotonous. Women crowd in the salons, shake hands, leave a pile of cards on the tray in the hall, and flit ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... had to be. And, as long as they lived or until the Procyon made port, all responsibility rested: First, upon First Officer Deston; and second, upon Second Officer Jones. Therefore Theodore and Bernice Jones came aboard Lifecraft Two, and Deston asked Newman to flit across ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... than the Parisians have been during the last two days of sunshine. The Jardins des Tuileries are crowded with well-dressed groups; the budding leaves have burst forth with that delicate green peculiar to early spring; and the chirping of innumerable birds, as they flit from tree to tree, announces the approach of ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... mullioned windows revealed shaded reading lamps and disciplined shelves of brown bound books. Now and then a dignitary in gaiters would pass him, "Portly capon," or a drift of white-robed choir boys cross a distant arcade and vanish in a doorway, or the pink and cream of some girlish dress flit like a butterfly across the cool still spaces of the place. Particularly he responded to the ruined arches of the Benedictine's Infirmary and the view of Bell Harry tower from the school buildings. He was stirred to read the Canterbury Tales, but he could not get on with Chaucer's ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... unheard commands, The abysses and vast fires between, Flit figures that with clanking hands Obey a hideous routine; They are not flesh, they are not bone, They see not with the human eye, And from their iron lips is blown A dreadful and monotonous cry; And ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... fastened their horses, and were ascending the precipitous slope which led up to the object which had excited their curiosity. They advanced rapidly and noiselessly, with the confidence and dexterity of practised scouts. The watchers from the plain below could see them flit from rock to rock until their figures stood out against the skyline. The young man who had first given the alarm was leading them. Suddenly his followers saw him throw up his hands, as though overcome with astonishment, and on joining him they were affected ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him the use of his limbs again at any rate, though they would not have been worth much to him had the ghost or hobgoblin appeared whom he half expected to see the next moment. Then came a screech, which seemed to flit along the rough meadow opposite, and come towards him. He drew a long breath, for he knew that sound well enough; it was nothing ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... artist's object was unusual; for it was his chief aim to make it as little like the original before him, as possible. Shall we reveal the fact that another image, wearing a gentler aspect than the stern, rigid features of the minister's portrait, seemed to flit before the young painter's fancy, coming unbidden, and mingling more especially with recollections of the past? As a ray of moonlight stole into the low dormer-window, the young man turned on his humble bed, a sigh burst from his lips, followed by the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... of laughter followed. In the midst of his rage and mortification Mr. Clinch fancied he saw a shade of pain and annoyance flit across the face of the maiden. He was puzzled, but pressed her hand, in spite of his late experiences, reassuringly. She made a gesture of silence to him, and then slipped away ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... from the water below to the mill pond above. The child could hardly believe his eyes, and for a little while it seemed that the whole world was turned topsy-turvy, especially as the shadows continued to flit from the water below ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their play, or see the creatures of the darkness—owls and night-hawks and heavy moths—flit with fantastic purpose over the familiar scene, so here it comes upon you suddenly that you have surprised Nature's self at her mysteries; you are let into the secret; you have caught the spirit of the April woodland as she glides over ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... "The Doldrums" will do pretty nicely. PAYN's right. With "high rank and no manners," a man His guests may "evict" at his pleasure; But BLOGGS—till he hits on some "Chamberlain" plan— Must leave 'em to flit at their leisure. I made up my mind when I came to this place; For a month, at the least, to remain meant. Though now my amusement at BLOGGS's wry face Is nearly my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... and you shall teach— Our people shall have double speech: One to be homely, one polite, As you have robes for different wear; But this is all:—'tis just and right, And more our children will not bear, Lest flocks of buzzards flit along, Where ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... cot is taken for a few weeks by a party of boating-people. Then the quaint, old-fashioned gardens blossom with a sudden luxuriance of striped tents and flaming umbrellas, while bright women in many-hued boating-costumes flit among cabbages and onions like curious tropical birds and butterflies. As a rule, however, the Dean is abandoned to its usual rustic population and to artists, numbers of the latter remaining all winter in the haunts whence the majority ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... of minor figures, graceful and poetic, brilliant and spirituelles, flit across the canvas, leaving the fragrance of an exquisite individuality, and tempting one to extend the list of the versatile women who toned and colored the society of the period. But we have to do, at present, especially with those who gathered ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... more after that, and Hester was content till a new worry came to trouble her. On her way to her room late one night, she saw a tall shadow flit down one of the side corridors that branched from the main one. For a moment she was startled, but, being a woman of courage, she followed noiselessly, till the shadow seemed to vanish in the gloom of the ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... bring And lay upon my sore and bleeding breast, Grim-visaged Recollection's thorny rose. I gained, and failed. One day could ride and walk, The next would find me prostrate: while a flock Of ghostly thoughts, like phantom birds, would flit About the chambers of my heart, or sit, Pale spectres of the past, with folded wings, Perched, silently, upon the voiceless strings, That once resounded to ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... said. The man at the reins drove rapidly, and paid little attention to anything but his horses. The sick man dozed and rested. The boy sat, wistful-eyed and silent, watching the trees and houses flit by. The sun had long ago set, but it was not dark, for the moon was round and bright, and the sky was cloudless. Where the road forked sharply the man drew his horses ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... is a phantom; the phantom gazes into the darkness with wild, baleful eyes, rises, grows bigger and blue, hovers for an instant and then speeds away to the zenith to open the door of the palace of the sun where butterflies flit from flower to flower and angels ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... last details escape me. As I put it in my pocket I remember thinking, "Some poor devil made miserable!" for there had been hint in it of the husband. But I had no thought—I swear it before God—of who that husband was till I beheld her flit back through the open doorway, with terror in her mien and searching eyes fixed on the floor. Then hell opened before me, and I saw my happiness go down into gulfs I had never before ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... our coldness grieves you sore, Ye quit betimes that solitude's cold shore Where ye forsaken dwell, And flit about in darkness' sad constraint, The while from spectral lips your mournful plaint Upon the ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... usually impossible for one on the ground to see the finest blooms, which turn their faces to the sunlight above the canopy of green. Gray apes chatter in the tree-tops; strange tropic birds of gorgeous plumage flit from bough to bough, monstrous reptiles slip silently through the undergrowth; insects buzz in swarms above the putrid swamps; occasionally the jungle crashes beneath the tread of some heavy animal—a rhinoceros, perhaps, or a wild bull, or an orang-utan. (I might mention, parenthetically, that ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom And flit from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... description; and yet, listen! I will paint it for you, if I can. It is a lovely spot. Tall mountains, crowned with verdure, rise in awful sublimity around; a river runs through, and bright flowers grow to the water's edge. But there a group of Indians gather. They flit to and fro, with something like sorrow upon their dark brows. In their midst lies a manly form, but his cheek, how deathly! His eyes are wild with the fitful fire of fever. One friend stands before him—nay, I should say, kneels; for see, he is pillowing that poor head ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... with a strange brilliancy, and a delightful grove of green leafy trees presents itself to the eyes and charms the sight with its verdure, while the ear is soothed by the sweet untutored melody of the countless birds of gay plumage that flit to and fro among the interlacing branches. Here he sees a brook whose limpid waters, like liquid crystal, ripple over fine sands and white pebbles that look like sifted gold and purest pearls. There he perceives a cunningly wrought fountain of many-coloured jasper ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... remains the same; and the same feelings fill and elevate the soul in contemplating these mighty works of an Almighty hand. The eye is never weary in watching the thousand varieties of light and shade, as they flit over the mountain and gleam upon the lake; and the ear is satisfied with the awful stillness of nature in ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... sad and sodden street, To and fro, Flit the fever-stricken feet Of the freshers as they meet, Come and go, Ever buying, buying, buying Where the shopmen stand supplying, Vying, vying All they know, While the Autumn lies a-dying Sad and low As the price of summer suitings when the winter ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pass Scatheless from war, as once did Tydeus' son. Though thou didst 'scape his fury, will not I Suffer thee to return alive from war. Ha, in thy many helpers dost thou trust Who with thee, like so many worthless flies, Flit round the noble Achilles' corpse? To these Death and black doom shall my ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... well let you know now why I can't be known in this," Thomas Smith said smoothly, even if the same gray hue did flit like a shadow a second time across his countenance—a thing that did not escape the shrewd eye of ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... deeper purpose in this than might have been supposed. There were few things he did not think over as he sat looking into the fire. What if this young man should unwittingly steal away his darling's heart and then flit away to some other flower, and leave this, his own treasure, with all the soul gone out of her life. He believed Mr. Monteith to be an honourable man, but then he would hedge this blossom of his about and guard it carefully. There should be ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... the cushions, presented a pitiful profile. She appeared much older, as though her age had been doubled by her tears. The brutal blow had made her freshness and her marvelous youth flit away with doleful suddenness. Her half-opened eyes were encircled with temporary wrinkles. Her nose had taken on the livid sharpness of the dead; her great mass of hair, reddening under the blow, was disheveled in golden, undulating ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Authors are supposed to write when they "feel like it," and at no other time. Visions of Byron with a gin-bottle at his side, and a beautiful woman hanging over his shoulder, dashing off a dozen stanzas of Childe Harold at a sitting, flit through the brains of sentimental youth. We hear of women who are seized suddenly by an idea, as if it were a colic, or a flea, often at midnight, and are obliged to rise and dispose of it in some way. We are told of very delicate girls who carry pencils ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... witness to this description of scene so frequently, that he began to believe it to be a part of the debtor's craft. As some people can regard the most beautiful varying tints of heaven, the lights and shadows which flit across the face of nature, and see nothing more in them than a part of that vast and complicated machinery that governs the world—so he, in these lights and shadows of life, only beheld the natural workings of ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... distressed it. It was, to a certain extent, occupied with the marks on the teapot; it is true that the mournful idea strove hard with the marks on the teapot for the mastery in my mind, and at last the painful idea drove the marks of the teapot out; they, however, would occasionally return and flit across my mind for a moment or two, and their coming was like a momentary relief from intense pain. I thought once or twice that I would have the teapot placed before me, that I might examine the marks at leisure, but ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... back, while I thought I perceived a slight shadow flit across his face. A singer came forward at the moment, and ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... hastning to his fall Remaines of all. O world's inconstancie! That which is firme doth flit and fall away, And that is flitting doth ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... silver frames, lighted the broad white staircase. Under the inner curve of the vaulted gateway a black-faced man on guard, with a bell-mouthed gun, rose from a stool at our passing. I thought I saw Castro's peaked hat and large cloak flit in the gloom into which fell the light from the small doorway of a sort of guardroom near the closed gate. We continued along the arcaded walk; a double curtain was drawn to right and left before me, while ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... from danger, and cherish his home as tenderly as if he were one of themselves. Robin the Red-breast and shy little Veery, Pewee the plaintive and cheerful Chewink, Long-sparrow, Bluebird, and sweet Chickadee, all glide freely in and out of their green and golden halls, flit through their winding streets, and take part in all their delights. Nor have the Leaflanders any trouble to understand bird-language. They have not, like the old Ger-men, eaten the hearts of birds, but by a more excellent way have they ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... that help might be sent me. How it was to come I could not tell. Notwithstanding what was before me, I still desired to be set free. Although I was not sleeping, strange fancies filled my brain. I saw people flit about in the darkness, suddenly coming into the light, and then disappearing. Some were people I knew, and others were strangers. Aunt Deb and Mr Butterfield came by, tripping it lightly, holding each other's hands, he in a bob wig with ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston |
