"Undercurrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never recall just when it was she discovered, or rather divined, that her husband was once more a dual being. A vague sense of change cohered into fact when she realised that for some time he had been reading aloud and pursuing an undercurrent of independent thought. His devotion increased, were that possible, but the time came when he no longer could conceal that he was often absent in mind and depressed in spirit. He took to long rambles in which she could not accompany him at that ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... international criticism, fine feasts, ostensible negotiations about projects that probably no one expected would come to pass, and an undercurrent, persistent and mandatory, of demands emphatically made on one side, feebly accepted by the other while the two principals were together, and petulantly disliked by the emperor as soon as he was alone again —such was the course of ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... us in America very little, and we smile cynically at the not altogether untruthful portraits of "Potash and Pearlmutter," and their vermin-like business methods. There is an undercurrent of feeling in America, that the virile blood is still there which will stop at nothing to throw off oppression, whether from the Jew or from any one else. If we are pinched too hard financially, if confiscation ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... comic songs there is ever in them something of the melancholy undercurrent that has been detected under the laces and arabesques of Chopin's nominally frivolous dances. Foster's ballad form was extremely attenuated, but the melodic content filled it so completely that it seems to strain at the bounds and must be repeated and repeated to furnish full gratification to ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... climatic conditions of every zone. The ocean of air is a vast maelstrom, boiling up always under the influence of the sun's heat at the equator, and flowing as an upper current towards either pole, while an undercurrent from the poles, which becomes the trade-winds, flows towards the equator ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... followed Gauguin's lead in abandoning representation both of these two groups of advance are lacking in spiritual meaning. Their aim becomes more and more decorative, with an undercurrent of suggestion of simplified form. Anyone who has studied Gauguin will be aware of the intense spiritual value of his work. The man is a preacher and a psychologist, universal by his very unorthodoxy, fundamental because he goes deeper than civilization. In ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... wonderful things, half fanciful, half very real, she could scarcely believe that a few miles away there was a garden-party in full swing, with smart frocks and smart conversation, fashionable refreshments and fashionable music, and a fevered undercurrent of social strivings and snubbings. Did Vienna and the Balkan Mountains and the Black Sea seem as remote and hard to believe in, she wondered, to the man sitting by her side, who had discovered or invented this wonderful fairyland? Was it a true and merciful arrangement of fate and life ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... ovarian congestion, for she felt that on the left side there was a network of sexual nerves, and retroversion of the uterus was detected some years later. Her life was strenuous with many duties, but no occupation could be pursued without this undercurrent of sexual hyperaesthesia involving perpetual self-control. This continued more or less acutely for many years, when menstruation suddenly stopped altogether, much before the usual period of the climacteric. At the same time the sexual excitement ceased, and she became calm, peaceful, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... segments of a panorama. The news of victories during the war for the Union could be read there in people's eyes and heard in their greetings. Sorrowful tidings seemed to magnetize with sadness the long procession. Something in the air foretold the stranger how beat the public pulse. The undercurrent of the prevalent emotion seems to vibrate, with electric sympathy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the existence of a great undercurrent of mental and emotional life, transcending the individual's conscious experience, in which the most complex processes are carried on without the individual's conscious participation. The clearest symbol by which this fact ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... seizing hold of the line he made a desperate effort to gain the beach, and was successful, as were two of the men. The others were too weak to make much of a resistance, and were carried away by the undercurrent, and nothing more was seen ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... mine. Therefore I dismissed them to the limbo of the inevitable. . . . As your world, I am told, looks upon you as the coming dramatist, it may appeal to your imagination to visualize that secret and vital and dramatic undercurrent of what was on the surface a proud and splendid life. . . . Or, if there are regrets, it is for the weight of memories, the completeness of disillusion, the slaying of mental youth—which cannot ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... before midnight the sounds became more sullen, and beneath the general uproar another note, one of those in distress, began, as it were, like an undercurrent to this pandemonium. The cause we had not long to seek, for presently flames began to shoot up, a sight we were by now well accustomed to, though not in this purely trading quarter of the city. The fire, started with savage disregard in the very centre of the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... could not allude to what those unwonted shouts and noises had betokened. "I expect you've got a chill, sir," she said suddenly. "If I was you, I shouldn't go out this afternoon; I'd just stay quietly indoors. There's a lot of rough people about—" Perhaps there was an undercurrent of warning, of painful pleading, in her toneless voice which penetrated in some way to the brain of the lodger, for Mr. Sleuth looked up, and an uneasy, watchful look came into his luminous ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... which constitute a far deeper and more abiding charm than statuesque beauty, are equally absent from an impersonation which in its earlier phases is almost distressingly labored. While the actress is entertaining her guests with improvised comedy, moreover, no undercurrent of emotion, no suggestion of suppressed anxiety is perceptible. It is not till this double role, which demands a degree of finesse evidently beyond Miss Anderson's range, is exchanged for the unaffected expression of mental torture ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... the opera, and afterwards, our plans made out, we walked to the house of the insulted and virtuous lady. She received us with great dignity, but yet there was an agreeable undercurrent in her voice and manner which I thought ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... undercurrent, and, finding that he could not reach the island, he tried to get back to the shore ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... over a bed containing hundreds that have just bloomed for the first time, and marking the finest with tags upon which are inscribed a few characters that mean much to the owner, and almost nothing to anyone else, will give one an undercurrent of joy for the rest of the day. Another special pleasure that comes to the grower of choice seedlings is that of naming one for a friend, and this pleasure has been mine a number of times. The most notable example of this is the May, ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... softly—and, in a moment, when he had realized what had taken place, the Old Man was upright, and the Liberal and Irish members were on their feet, waving their hats, cheering themselves hoarse. And yet an undercurrent and audible note of anxiety ran through all the enthusiasm. The honeymoon of Home Rule is over, and, curiously enough, the very sense of a great victory after a long struggle has always about it a solemnity too sad for tears, too deep for joy. The Liberals ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... day the party set off for Saratoga. The change was eminently beneficial, and before they reached Canada Irene seemed perfectly restored. But her father was not satisfied. Her unwonted taciturnity annoyed and puzzled him; he knew that beneath the calm surface some strong undercurrent rolled swiftly, and he racked his brain to discover what had rendered her so reserved. Louisa's joyous, elastic spirits probably heightened the effect of her companion's gravity, and the contrast daily presented ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... risen from fifty to two hundred and seventy pounds. Even Maude was for an instant daunted by the sum. The sale of their furniture would hardly meet it. It was the blackest hour of their lives, and yet, always a strange sweet undercurrent of joy was running through it, for it is only sorrow, fairly shared and bravely borne, which can weld two human ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... that is what he wants to do, and that is the work that he loves: The platform he likes for the two hours that he is on it, but all the rest of the time it grinds him, and he says he is ashamed of what he is doing. Still, in spite of this sad undercurrent, we are having a delightful trip. People are so nice, and with people Mr. Clemens seems cheerful. Then the ocean trips are a great ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... feared, was—the underworld. And here in the underworld in the last few days, here where on every twisted, vicious lip was the whisper, "Death to the Gray Seal," there had come even another menace. He could not define it, it was intuition perhaps—but intuition had never failed him yet. It was an undercurrent of which he had gradually become conscious, the sense of some unseen, guiding power, that moved and swayed and controlled, and was present, dominant, in every den and dive in crimeland. There had ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... by this intense and beautiful burst of feeling, joined in that old heart-cry, and for two or three shattering minutes the air was rent with hoarse shouts of "Vive Joffre," "Vive la France," "Vive la patrie," to the louder and louder undercurrent of music. Indifference, complacency, neutrality, gave way. There was a general uprising and uproar; and America, as represented by that olla podrida of the professions, including the one which is the oldest ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Though Francis Madigan rarely ate anything that was prepared for the family dinner, she could remember the rare times when he had absented himself from it, and feel again the usually ignored undercurrent of the realities upon which their young lives flowed ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Pearce still more amazed. Some strange, deep undercurrent was working here. There had been unmistakable hate for Kells in his dark look and a fierce implication in his portent of fatality. What had caused this sudden impersonal interest in her situation? What was ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... few of them and too little money. Too little and too damned late to do any good. I'll tell you we did our best, but it could never be good enough. And for this we get called butchers." There was a catch in Telt's voice now, an undercurrent of emotion he couldn't suppress. "At home they think we like to kill. Think we're insane. They can't understand we're doing the only thing ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... thoughts were somewhere else, and that he saw another face as he mixed his colors, and not that of the siren before him. Or it may have been that, as he looked into the eyes of the Countess, he saw too deeply into the whirlpool of passion and pain which made up the undercurrent in ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... appreciate his conduct therein, I entreat thee, O candid reader (not that any reader ever is candid), to remember that he is brimful of new ideas, which, met by a deep and hostile undercurrent of old ideas, become more ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as my carriage rattled slowly back up Montgomery Avenue. Suddenly from what had been absolutely sterile cogitation, there sprang up the full flower of an idea. All that he had said that evening had carried the same perplexing undercurrent of a thing that he could not speak of, and always it seemed to point to the Spanish Woman. "She knows!" I thought triumphantly, "and if she knows, why, she must not go away until she has told me." The whole thing opened before me complete, ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... resorts, where cultivated, scholarly men, and women of fine sensibilities, could find rest from the struggles of the outside world. The sisters, who managed this large establishment, seemed happy in the midst of their severe and multifarious duties. Of the undercurrent of their lives I could not judge, but on the surface all seemed smooth and satisfactory. They evidently took great pleasure in the society of each other. Every evening, from six to eight, they all sat in the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... which the gold, instead of being found, as you would naturally suppose, in the bottom of it, lies, for the most part, just below the rim. A good-natured individual bored me, and tired himself, in a hopeless attempt to make me comprehend that this was only a necessary consequence of the undercurrent of the water, but with my usual stupidity upon such matters I got but a vague idea from his scientific explanation, and certainly shall not mystify you ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... this good beginning. Years not untouched by trouble and trials, but with an undercurrent of good. Barmettle never became a congenial home, but Jacinth as she grew older lost her extreme dislike to it, in the happiness of being all together, and knowing that not only was her father satisfied with his work, ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... little of herself, and holding a slight reserve in her manner which seemed to him quite delightful and maidenly. Then, all too suddenly, he was gone again, but in his heart he carried a memory of her that made a continual undercurrent in ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... that whilst the vigorous imagination of the north was delighting itself in creating a stately dreamland, where it strove to blend, in a grand world-picture—always harmonious, though not always consistent—the influences which sustain both the physical and moral system of its universe, an undercurrent of sober Gothic common sense induced it—as a kind of protest against the too material interpretation of the symbolism it had employed—to wind up its religious scheme by sweeping into the chaos of oblivion all the glorious fabric it had evoked, and proclaiming—in the place ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... as far as the eye could reach, a thin stream of white and pink and blue, a tumbling river of curls and caps and bare legs, were the children. A babble of shrill cries, of chattering laughter, of fretful screams, an undercurrent of remonstrance, of soothing patience, of angry threatening, marked their slow progress up and down the walk; in the clear spaces of the little park they trotted freely after hoops and balls, rolled and ran over the green, and hid, shouting, behind the bushes. It was a giant nursery, ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... him in a dark room. One afternoon he eluded their vigilance and hurried to the office of "Campbell & Co." on the Strand. After gazing for several minutes at the empty building, he heaved a deep sigh, ran across the road, and sprang into the River Hughli. The undercurrent sucked his body in, and it was never recovered. Perhaps Mother Ganges was loath to keep a carcase so tainted in her bosom, and so whirled it ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... that point in the shore, felt the undercurrent of vague meaning in his voice, guessed what was his cue, and said: "Somewhere, sometime; but now only Belle Amour. I have had a long travel. I have found an open door. I will stay—if you please—hein? ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... now launched upon his life-work as "a writer of books." He translated Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," for which he received L180. I do not see the transcendent excellence of this novel, except in its original and forcible criticism, and its undercurrent of philosophy; but it is nevertheless famous. These two works gave Carlyle some literary reputation among scholars, but not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... let that fact be defaced. But everything connected with that time seemed now to lower her in retrospect, to fill her with a sort of horror. All his loud rebuttal of anxiety now could not cover an undercurrent of uneasiness that made the anxiety of the two women tenfold greater when ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Conne, of the United States Secret Service, had come over from Liverpool via Dover on a blind quest after an elusive spy. There had been a sort of undercurrent of rumor, with many extravagant trappings, that a mysterious agent of the Kaiser was on his way to Europe with secrets of a most important character. Some stories had it that he was intimately related ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... filled up with hungry German officers and men; every hotel room was occupied, and provision shops speedily sold out the stores on their shelves. The Germans at first paid in cash for everything ordered, and preserved an attitude of nonaggression toward the citizens. But subconsciously there ran an undercurrent of dread insecurity. At the outset a German officer was said to have been struck by a sniper's bullet. Somewhat conspicuously the wounded officer was borne on a litter through the streets, followed by the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... his cruel ferocity and coldness there was an undercurrent of something in Tars Tarkas which he seemed ever battling to subdue. Could it be a vestige of some human instinct come back from an ancient forbear to haunt him with the horror ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... broke—curled over in that curious way. For our theory—which may be entirely wrong—is that the breaking is due to the undertow of previous waves. After a wave sprawls up on the beach, it runs swiftly back. This receding undercurrent—you can feel it very strongly if you are swimming just in front of a large wave about to break—digs in beneath the advancing hill of water. It cuts away the foundations of that hill, which naturally topples ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... townspeople. The former talked in loud tones of the little force that had already started from Allahabad, and boasted how easily they would eat up the Feringhees. It seemed, however, to Bathurst that a good deal of this confidence was assumed, and that among some, at least, there was an undercurrent of doubt and uneasiness, though they talked as loudly and ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... are looking for light on the church question. A deep undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the present order of things exists in the ecclesiastical world. The historic creeds are stationary and conservative, but religious thought can not always be bound nor its progress permanently hindered. Honest Christian men and women will think, and they are ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... a literature has grown up around this small place—but indeed, the number of monographs dealing with every one of these little Italian towns is a ceaseless source of surprise. Look below the surface and you will find, in all of them, an undercurrent of keen spirituality—a nucleus of half a dozen widely read and thoughtful men, who foster the best traditions of the mind. You will not find them in the town council or at the cafe. No newspapers commend their labours, no ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Thermae was a marble court, where better known philosophers discoursed on topics of the day, each to his own group of admirers. A Christian, dressed like any other Roman, held one corner with a crowd around him. There was a tremendous undercurrent of reaction against the prevalent cynical materialism and the vortex of fashion was also the cauldron of new aspirations and ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... weeks or a month. Thus to imprisonment was added the gall and wormwood of total dependence upon others; the unthinkable prospect of parting with Paul, with the Border itself—with everything that had hitherto made life worth living; and, worse than all, the undercurrent of striving to ignore that veiled danger, which he refused to name, even in his thoughts, and which lay like a millstone upon ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... and kindliness, I was aware of an undercurrent of illiberalism and violence which ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... and overflowing humor never obscures the deep seriousness that is the undercurrent of all his writing. A high idealism characterizes all his work. One of his greatest services to his country was the effort to create a saner and sounder political life. As he himself realized, he often moralized his work too much with ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... being at all angles in a confused mass. Where these rocks were—a spot which my men called the "porteira" or gateway—the river turned sharply from 70 deg. b.m. to 290 deg. b.m. The water seemed almost stagnant there, and we had to make a great effort to get on. It seemed as if there had been an undercurrent pushing us back. The water was surely held up by some obstacle, and I feared we had at last reached the extensive rapids which I had expected for some days. Rocks were to be seen in abundance all along, and three more sets of giant boulders were reached, one after the other, in the centre of the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of the crew of the Island Princess, bound for Canton with a cargo of woolen goods and ginseng. There was much that puzzled me aboard-ship—the discontent of the second mate, the perversity of the man Kipping (others besides myself had seen that wink), and a certain undercurrent of pessimism. But although I was separated a long, long way from my old friends in the cabin, I felt that in Bill Hayden I had found a friend of a sort; then, as I began my first real watch on deck at sea, I fell to thinking of my sister and ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... gratitude by buying them whatever little dainties they desired, but such a comfortable state of affairs could not long continue with that bunch. Suddenly, without any previous consultation, as if drawn together as it were by some fiendish undercurrent, they decided to make me unhappy—me, the only guy that spoke unbroken English in the crowd. This is the way they accomplished their low ends. When the next civilian came along they all of them shouted at me in tones that could be heard ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... homes of great popular leaders like Roosevelt ... dignity and rides in parlour cars, instead of dusty, dirty box cars ... interviews of weight and speeches of consequence ... and the newspapers would drop their undercurrent of levity when I was written about in them, and treat me ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... mine not by design," she replied instantly; and there was an undercurrent of meaning in it which he was not slow to notice; but he disregarded her first attempt to justify, however vaguely, her murderous ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the cruel distinctions based on sex. Though our State laws have been essentially changed, and positions in the schools, professions, and world of work secured to woman, unthought of thirty years ago, yet the undercurrent of popular thought, as seen in our social habits, theological dogmas, and political theories, still reflects the same customs, creeds, and codes that degrade women in the effete civilizations of the old world. Educated in the best schools ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... sooner entrust Meryl and the fortune that must be hers. For though their very silence together revealed to his astute brain that neither was indifferent to the other, he could not but see also that undercurrent of grim determination in Carew. True, he was almost always silent, but Henry Pym perceived that his silence to-day was not quite of that of yesterday. Something had gone out of it—some quiet, grave, unquestioning content. In the keen, direct, steel-blue eyes now there was a shadow lurking ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... primitive joys of life. They worked, that company, and they made of their work a game that every man of them loved to play. And Dade, loving the things they loved and living the life they lived, speedily forgot that there was still an undercurrent of antagonism beneath that surface of work and play and jokes and songs and impromptu riding and roping contests (from which Jose Pacheco was laughingly barred because of his skill and in which Dade himself was, somehow, never invited to join). He forgot that the antagonism was ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... women poets of the nineteenth century, her only equal being Mrs. Browning. Besides the brief poems in Sing-Song, Miss Rossetti's "Goblin Market" and "Uphill" please young people of a contemplative mood. While there is an undercurrent of sadness in much of her work, it is a natural accompaniment of her themes and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... undercurrent of antagonism against the Quirt could not whip her emotions feeling that she was doing anything more than live the restricted, sordid little life of a poorly equipped ranch. She had ridden once with Frank Johnson to look through a bunch of cattle, but it had ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... Constantine had overruled her at a committee meeting. With a flood of disconnected talk she had overwhelmed Maggie until the girl felt as though her head had been thrust into a bag of flour. Through it all there had been an undercurrent of complaint as though ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Abercrombie's poems, the best of which are too long to quote, are founded on scriptural themes, but his blank verse is not biblical either in mood or manner. It is the undercurrent rather than the surface of his verse which moves with a strong religious conviction. Abercrombie's images are daring and brilliant; his lines, sometimes too closely packed, glow with a dazzling intensity that is warmly spiritual ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... thence into a discussion of local affairs in which they had recently acted as allies when Ryumin had been Lieutenant-Governor of the Moscow province. No undercurrent of enmity marred their intercourse. Gregoriev was certainly an adept at applying or loosening his screws. His guest had felt them sharply once or twice before to-day. He knew Gregoriev's power; and Michael asked no more. He had soon made ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... did not blind him to defects, did not seduce him into indiscriminate praise, did not deter him from exposing the tendency to verbiage in Burke and Jeremy Taylor, the excessive blankness of much of Wordsworth's blank verse, the undercurrent of mediocrity in Macaulay, the absurdities of Ruskin's etymology. And, as in great matters, so in small. Whatever literary production was brought under his notice, his judgment was clear, sympathetic, and independent. ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... should really like to do," he whispered to me, in confidence, "is to give him one for his tete, as we say in cribbage. But suppose I must speak him fair." Did his best in that direction though undercurrent of observation in lengthy paper he read decidedly set in direction of making TATE out as a cantankerous wrong-headed person who, proposing to bestow some L160,000 in way of free gift, expected to have his wishes consulted in such matter of detail as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... to repeat here instances of the Shumiro-Accadian and Chaldean myths; the last three or four chapters have been filled with them. But the instances of religious feeling, though scattered in the same field, have to be carefully gleaned out and exhibited, for they belong to that undercurrent of the soul which pursues its way unobtrusively and is often apparently lost beneath the brilliant play of poetical fancies. But it is there nevertheless, and every now and then forces its way to the surface shining forth ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... have if you go back?" asked Drouet. There was no subtle undercurrent to the question. He imagined that she would have nothing at all of the things he ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... and disposition of our lives. For it is underneath the multitude of fleeting proposals and conscious efforts, born of reason, and which, to one looking upon life from any superficial stand-point, seem to have all to do with its conduct, that there runs the undercurrent of disposition, which is born of Nature, which is cradled and nurtured with us in our infancy, which is itself a general choice, branching out into our specific choices of certain directions and aims ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... undercurrent of feeling pervaded the minds of officials that there was not at all so much real distress in Ireland as the people pretended, and that there was a great deal more food in the country than there was said to be. This was sometimes openly asserted, but more frequently ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... table. It seemed to her that everyone was feeling happy and at ease except herself and Craven. They were ill matched. She became horribly self-conscious. She felt as if people were looking at them with surprise, as if an undercurrent of ridicule was creeping through the room. Surely many were wondering who the painted old woman and the young man were, why they sat together in the corner by the window! She saw one of the musicians smile and whisper to the companion beside him, and felt certain he was ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... my remark was the impulsive fling of envy. He had found out, several weeks before, what a strong undercurrent was running toward him. He was faced by a dilemma—if he did not go to the convention, it would be said that he had stayed away deliberately, and he would be nominated; if he went, to try to prevent his nomination, the enthusiasm ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... he said, "we can put it that way if you please." Damaris hesitated detecting some undercurrent of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... lighter than that of the surface. Moreover, while a rapid superficial current is setting in (always, save in exceptionally violent easterly winds) through the Straits of Gibraltar, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a deep undercurrent (together with variable side currents) is setting out through the Straits, from the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... that Beethoven is incapable of this elevated soaring in the higher realms of the merely beautiful in song. There is generally an undercurrent of deeper pathos in all his sustained slow movements, but in the earlier symphonies, especially in the second, there is a long slow movement of heavenly depth and quality. Indeed, without pausing to individualize we may say once ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... to the golden image of Dionysus Meilichius—the honey-sweet, if the old tradition in its completeness is to be, in spite of that sophism, our closing impression; if we are to catch, in its fulness, that deep undercurrent of horror which runs below, all through [79] this masque of spring, and realise the spectacle of that wild chase, in which Dionysus is ultimately both the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... went on the Chancellor, who had not touched the undercurrent, "that you are guilty of a ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... them (of labor and capital) with the utmost efficiency." Also the best authorities, and even the government investigators themselves, are urging a speedy return to private ownership and operation at the earliest possible moment after the war. The same undercurrent of feeling, or rather conviction, is rapidly spreading among our own people in the ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... grip that weak little Reverend has already got on this town," he went on. "He's a sly one. Preaching ain't in it with the undercurrent he's let loose here. It's just sapping the foundations of society. It's setting free a lot of good stuff, but it's striking Tate ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... of her services at this time, and of the undercurrent of terror and sadness of this triumphal march, we can do no better than to give some extracts from her journal, kept during this period, and published without her knowledge in the Sanitary Commission Bulletin. It ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... emotional expression which enables it, like the chorus of the antique tragedy, to discharge the dialogue of an overplus of lyrical elements without weakening the intensity of the situation, which it accompanies like an unceasing passionate undercurrent." In an opera like this, which is intended to commingle dramatic action, intensity of verse, and the power and charm of the music in one homogeneous whole, the reader will at once observe the difficulty of doing much ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... superficial discussion, with its scarcely felt undercurrent of tragic reminiscence, had lasted through the swift sunset, and already dusk was beginning to throw its long shadows over the gaily dressed figures that streamed ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... unclosed, fully determined upon his voyage. The breath of the bright June morn as he threw open the window-shutter filled him with hope; his heart responded to its joyous influence. The excitement which had disturbed his mind had had time to subside. In the still slumber of the night the strong undercurrent of his thought resumed its course, and he awoke with his will still firmly ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... part of her attraction to the surviving salt of his dislike. There was still a savour of antagonism in his liking of her. Also his curiosity was still unsatisfied. Was that undercurrent of softness genuine? Was she really simple and tender under her hard flaunting? Was she passionate under her ignorance and naivete? Only experiment could show him, and he meant to investigate, not merely for the barren satisfaction of ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... that it was Mr. LOCKE'S idea to present a very ordinary decent sort with the common man's prejudices and frank distrust of subtleties. A sinister mystery of love, death and blackmail runs, a turbid undercurrent, through the story. The publisher's pathetic apology for the drab grey paper on which, in the interests of War Economy, the book is printed, makes one wonder how the other publishers who still issue books in black ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... hard, with the aid of the hotel porter, to make head or tail out of the narrative as recounted by the hirer of camels—a woebegone tale in which the undercurrent was a dismal foreboding as to the fate of the priceless quadruped; the fate of an Englishman seemingly being of small account when compared to that of the snarling, unpleasant brute who represented the native's entire fortune—at least so he said. "Yes, the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... walks up to the gorilla's cage and, leaning over the railing, stares in at its occupant, who stares back at him, silent and motionless. There is a pause of dead stillness. Then YANK begins to talk in a friendly confidential tone, half-mockingly, but with a deep undercurrent of sympathy.] Say, yuh're some hard-lookin' guy, ain't yuh? I seen lots of tough nuts dat de gang called gorillas, but yuh're de foist real one I ever seen. Some chest yuh got, and shoulders, and dem arms and mits! I bet yuh got a punch in eider fist dat'd knock 'em ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... the writings of Lamb, and not merely in his "Elia," the character of the writer cooperates in an undercurrent to make the effect of the thing written. To understand in the fullest sense either the gaiety or the tenderness of a particular passage, you must have some insight into the peculiar bias of the writer's mind, whether native ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... where he warns his friend, as it were with a bright twinkle in his tearful eyes and a smile on his face, not to kiss him at that moment, as he must wash himself. This joking about his friend's dislike to osculation is not without an undercurrent of seriousness; indeed, it is virtually a reproach, but a reproach cast in the most delicate form and attired in ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... soberly that afternoon. Touched as she was by what Mrs. Snow had said, there was yet an undercurrent of sadness in it all. She was thinking of Aunt Polly—Aunt Polly who played the game now so seldom; and she was wondering if she herself always played it, ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... would have alone procured me the attention I have found, I would hope it may partly have arisen from their simple, unaffected appeal to those quiet, domestic, secluded feelings, which endear the still undercurrent of existence—in short, to my being content to make the best I could of the homely and confined materials to which my situation has given me access, without affecting scholarship, or aiming at romantic embellishment. There is nothing like simple truth and nature, after all; and he who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... attention of a circle of people. How had she done it, this mysterious foreigner who could handle the English language even better than English people? Her words were simple and gestures she used almost none. It was her voice, Mary thought. There was an undercurrent of dramatic power in it, like a subterranean river. It could only be guessed at, but it was there, powerful and deep. Even Miss Campbell, unreasonably prejudiced, ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... element of pleasure prevails in a man, and the slight undercurrent of pain makes him tingle, and causes a gentle irritation; or again, the excessive infusion of pleasure creates an excitement in him,—he even leaps for joy, he assumes all sorts of attitudes, he changes all manner of colours, he gasps for breath, and ...
— Philebus • Plato
... associated with the unconscious of the race, if such a term is permissible. Gilbert Murray,[3] in interpreting this element in primitive literature states: "We have also, I suspect, a strange unanalyzed vibration below the surface, an undercurrent of desires and fears, and passions, long slumbering yet eternally familiar, which have for thousands of years lain near the root of our most intimate emotions and been wrought into the fabric of our most ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... struck me down, and was carrying me off? Was my accursed masculine beauty so attractive to this Martian girl? I did not think so. I could not believe that all these incidents were so unrelated to what I knew was the main undercurrent. They wanted me, had tried to capture me. For something else than because ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... sympathies to his favorite nephew, and before he knew where he was he found himself encircled by the group discussing its loss, and more or less carried away on the current of their excitement. But an undercurrent of query continued to run in his mind, as to what had really happened to the boy, and what was the boy's exact definition of being ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... bent the knee before her; but she was acute enough to detect the undercurrent of mockery in his tone. He came as a professed suppliant; but he came with her father's express sanction, and Joan had lived long enough to know how very helpless a daughter was if her father's mind ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... you and she make. My traditional estimate, which comes from thoughtfulness, or the putting off of responsibility, or God knows what, I find will not answer. I have been on my guard against that which everyday life might present—a lie, a theft, or a meanness; but of the undercurrent, which really bears you on, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... walking to the writing-table and seating herself. All the while there was a busy undercurrent in her, like the thought of a man who keeps up a dialogue while he is considering how he can slip away. Why should she not let him come? It bound her to nothing. He had been to Leubronn after her: of course he meant a direct unmistakable renewal of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... banners, and a band which made up in vigor what it lacked in harmony, a procession approached the train, and its leader commenced reading something awkwardly from a written paper in time to an undercurrent of semi-ironical encouragement. I saw some of the visitors' eyes twinkle at his sentiments, but for the most part they listened with becoming gravity; and when a man with gold eyeglasses had suitably replied, there was a wild scuffle for even a foothold on the train. One musician smote ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... and I had no chance of escape; I felt myself an intruder upon his time, every moment until during the last evenings of my stay, when in the lighted parlors quite a happy company gathered. I then had an opportunity of seeing a little of his thought, running as an undercurrent to his nature. Clara had been singing with such sweetness of expression and pathetic emphasis, that my eyes were filled with tears of emotion. Miss Lear, a young lady friend, followed her, and sang with such a shrill ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... said Helen, who felt that the boy was gaining upon her more and more: for, in spite of his coarseness, there was a frank, merry, innocent undercurrent that, she felt, might be brought to the surface, strengthened and utilised ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... ones—for Philippa placed them in consecutive order—were full, brimful, of joy, of triumph and satisfaction; but in the later ones, while affection was in no way lessened, there was something of appeal—or so it seemed to her as she studied them. An undercurrent as it were of longing, a desire to make the recipient understand the depth of love—to get below the surface, to obtain some deeper expression of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... celebrated people, and her personal following, and for the rest she hardly missed expressing in any of her letters her regret that he was not with her, and enjoying her varied life. Often in the letter there was a flower, or a piece of wild thyme, which betrayed an undercurrent of feeling beneath the shallowness of the words, and once she sent him her photograph with the words "Loulou to her dearest Wilhelm." So he gathered from her frivolous letters much that was unspoken, and through signs ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... hyar old pine do without the rosebush blossomin' close beside him? What would the leetle wild mountain flowers hyarabouts do without thar Smiles ter take keer o' them?" asked the old man tenderly, but with a hidden undercurrent of distress. ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... he was shocked and distressed by the sudden and horrible disaster; and yet as an undercurrent to these first natural thoughts, there ran presently a distinct notion that he would have felt the grievousness of it more keenly had Madeleine perished in that cruel manner and her sister survived to bring ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... man, shrugging his shoulders with careless indifference. "Rapid undercurrent, you know. A good many are ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... tales among both races regarding the birth of children who seemed to have remembrances of former lives on earth, which memory faded away as they grew older. Among these people there is always an undercurrent of mystic ideas about souls "coming back" in some mysterious way not fully understood. It is the inheritance from ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... [U.S.]; runnel, sike^, burn, beck, creek, brook, bayou, stream, river; reach, tributary. geyser, spout, waterspout. body of water, torrent, rapids, flush, flood, swash; spring tide, high tide, full tide; bore, tidal bore, eagre^, hygre^; fresh, freshet; indraught^, reflux, undercurrent, eddy, vortex, gurge^, whirlpool, Maelstrom, regurgitation, overflow; confluence, corrivation^. wave, billow, surge, swell, ripple; anerythmon gelasma [Gr.]; beach comber, riffle [U.S.], rollers, ground swell, surf, breakers, white horses, whitecaps; rough sea, heavy sea, high seas, cross sea, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... there was not a ruffle heard, or a rumor sounded, of what was in store for that industrious little community. We were living in the bonds of fellowship with all mankind, and we had no fear. But in all that stillness there was an undercurrent at work that would soon make itself felt. Dissatisfaction on account of grievances, real or fancied, was blowing. It had broken out in one place, why should it not in another. This disaffected spirit was prevalent in all parts of that country. Who was to blame? who was ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... struck me with such strange and immediate favor that I quite forbore to consult with my friends in regard to it. I resolved to go on the instant, and wrote my friend Mary to that effect, congratulating her, with an undercurrent of mischievous intention, on having been the happy means of setting my powers drifting in the right direction at last; and reproached her gently with having seemed to imply, once, in her letter, some occult reason why ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... were really back in the coach, piled roof-high on those of the downward mail, then it was worse fun for Guy Kentish outside than even he had anticipated. Question followed question, compliment capped compliment, and a certain unsteady undercurrent of incredulity by no means lessened his embarrassment. Had he but told the truth, he felt he could have borne the praise, and indeed enjoyed it, for he had done far better than anybody was likely to suppose, and already it was irritating to have to keep that ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... had not much to complain about, being kindly treated, according to savage ideas of kindness. But although, during those three days, the inhabitants of the village seemed to go about their business pretty much as usual, there appeared to be an undercurrent of subdued excitement, coupled with a condition of eager expectancy, which was plain to both Earle and Dick, and which somehow produced in both a considerable amount of apprehension as to their ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... cherry-blossoms. He had been better pleased with Maggie since she had been less odd and ascetic; he was even getting rather proud of her; several persons had remarked in his hearing that his sister was a very fine girl. To-day there was a peculiar brightness in her face, due in reality to an undercurrent of excitement, which had as much doubt and pain as pleasure in it; but it might pass for a ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... either. Happy and blithesome, the Farmers were, at heart, earnestly devoted to purposes held sacred. They were inspired by high ideals. Noble conceptions and beautiful beliefs found expression in fitting phrase. Rippling mirth flowed in an undercurrent of serious, sincere faith and hope ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... having her, whether consciously or unconsciously, arrogate the entire conversation, interests and viewpoint to herself. Of course, there are some teachers who can still recall with sufficient vividness their own school-girl life to feel keenly the undercurrent of restraint which an older person almost invariably starts when thrown with a group of younger ones, and who possesses the power and tact to overcome it and enter the girl-world. But these are the exceptions rather than the rule, and none knew this better than Mrs. Vincent. Consequently, ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Senators after 1840, and even Northwestern States threatened disruption of the Union as late as 1859 if the national policy should continue to run counter to their interests. There was, however, a strong undercurrent of devotion to the idea of nationality in both North and South[12] in 1860, and when South Carolina proceeded with her long-contemplated scheme of secession early in November of that year, Jefferson Davis, who had formerly talked ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... Despite the occasional joke and sally of the more youthful members, and a general conversation of camp-fire nature, Duane was not deceived about the fact that his advent had been an unusual and striking one, which had caused an undercurrent of conjecture and even consternation among them. These rangers were too well trained to appear openly curious about their captain's guest. If they had not deliberately attempted to be oblivious of his presence Duane would have concluded they thought him an ordinary visitor, somehow ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... undercurrent of water, due to the presence of the high range of mountains, becomes more apparent as the traveller advances into the interior; though the soil is still sandy and barren, and little vegetation can as yet be seen, trees and shrubs become more plentiful, and of a larger ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... play of wit and humor, there was an undercurrent of agony. So great were his kindness, gentleness, tenderness of heart, that he could not live in this cruel world, especially in the period when the times were so much out of joint, without being a man of sorrows. ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... somewhat formless and intuitive fashion she felt a slight undercurrent of distrust for Halloway, which she combated as ungenerous but ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... "An undercurrent of sympathy with the struggles of the poor, and an ability to describe their feelings, eminently characteristic of Dickens, are marked features in Mr. Gow's ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... week of it in New York—copying out instructions, taking notes of marriages and intermarriages in 1690, and writing each day a long, pleading letter to Bessie. There was a double strain upon me: all the arrangements for my client's claims, and in an undercurrent the arguments to overcome Bessie's decision, went on in my brain side ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... raconteur. She had seen much of men and women and crystallized her experiences into sparkling little sentences and epigrams which made Frances feel as if she were listening to one of the witty people in clever books. But under all her sparkling wit there was a strongly felt undercurrent of true womanly sympathy and kind-heartedness which won affection as speedily as her brilliance won admiration. Frances listened and laughed and enjoyed. Once she found time to think that she would have missed a great deal if she had not come to Bay Shore Farm that day. Surely talking to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the Balkan region as well as all of the small nations that had been absorbed but had not been digested by Austria, should cut itself from the leading strings held by the large European powers. There was a distinct undercurrent, for a federation resembling that of the United States of America between these peoples. This was expressed most clearly by M. Jonesco, leader of the Liberal party of Roumania and generally recognized as the ablest statesman ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... far lighter than she had feared it would be. There was a strong undercurrent of excitement in her heart, flushing her cheeks and sparkling in her eyes; yet never for one moment was she even tempted to forget that he was now vowed to God. It seemed to her as if she talked with him in the spirit of that place where there ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... This undercurrent of religious feeling was deepened by providential escapes from accidents which threatened his life—"judgments mixed with mercy" he terms them,—which made him feel that he was not utterly forsaken of God. Twice he narrowly escaped drowning; ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... strong and deep. The manifestations of the present, many of which seem to give cause for fear, are, after all, only the superficial evidence of a deep undercurrent of awakening. The ultimate driving force behind is shaping a social understanding in the woman's spirit. So surely from out of the wreckage and passion ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley |
