"Fitfully" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suspicious of Mr. Arbuton's behavior towards her, and observant of little things that might very well have otherwise escaped her. The bantering humor, the light-hearted trust and self-reliance with which she had once met him deserted her, and only returned fitfully when some accident called her out of herself, and made her forget the differences that she now too plainly saw in their ways of thinking and feeling. It was a greater and greater effort to place herself ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... the open park in front of Cranbury, there occurs that fitfully blooming plant, lady's-tresses—Neottia Spiralis autumnalis- -and a profusion of brown-winged orchis and cowslips. All the slopes are covered with copsewood, much of it oak, the tints of which are lovely shades of green in spring ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... dear!—devout epigrams—the sacred chime of favorite hymns—all alike were as flat as tunes beaten on wood: even the spring flowers and the grass had a dull shiver in them under the afternoon clouds that hid the sun fitfully; even the sustaining thoughts which had become habits seemed to have in them the weariness of long future days in which she would still live with them for her sole companions. It was another or rather a fuller sort of companionship that poor Dorothea was hungering for, and the hunger had ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... he woke almost immediately; the fire still burned, though low and fitfully on the hearth. Otto was sleeping, breathing quietly and regularly; the shadows had gathered close around him, thick and murky; with every passing moment the light died in the fireplace; he felt stiff with ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... away, and another attendant skilfully dressed and bandaged the second wound as he had done the first. Two baymen brought a stretcher and the lad was taken to a bunk. Here he was given a drink that, after five minutes, caused him to doze and dream fitfully of the battle through ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... candles cast a faint glimmer about our immediate neighbourhood, and far below we now hear the voices, as well as the rattling of the convicts' chains, more continuously and distinctly, and see numerous lights dancing about fitfully in small clusters. Those are the candles of the convicts who are cutting rock-salt in gangs on the floor of the cave.[75] Continuing our descent down another flight, or rather series of flights, of stairs, we at length arrive ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... injected into the attitude of each. Intuitively Joan guessed that Gulden's arising to follow her had turned their eyes inward. Gulden remained silent and inactive at the edge of the camp-fire circle of light, which flickered fitfully around him, making him seem a huge, gloomy ape of a man. So far as Joan could tell, Gulden never cast his eyes in her direction. That was a difference which left cause for reflection. Had that hulk of brawn and bone ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... the coach door, and his hat swept the ground once more. The light of a lantern played fitfully upon his dark, gaunt face, with its gallant smile and ominous patch. She hesitated, fear entering her soul once more. He looked up quickly and saw the indecision in her eyes, the ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... down upon the blanket, and, with his hand upon his knapsack, gazed at the small red ember burning amid the ashes. When the last spark faded into blackness it was as if his thoughts went groping for a light. Sleep came fitfully in flights and pauses, in broken dreams and brief awakenings. Losing himself at last it was only to return to the woods at Chericoke and to see Betty coming to him among the dim blue bodies of the trees. He saw the ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... there is the typical American girl, full of nerve. She is worn out, too, but sleeps only fitfully, starting up at every sound and dropping uneasily off again. Now and then one encountered the man and woman of restless temperament, whose sleepless eyes looked out thinking, thinking—thinking on the trees and grass and bushes, faintly showing ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... had evidently little grasp of fact, and moved in a kind of haze, through which all clear outlines would show blurred and unreal. Sometimes—most often, perhaps—that haze would be irradiated with sanguine visionary hopes and expectations. Sometimes it would be fitfully darkened with all the horrors of despair. But whether in gloom or gleam, the realities of his position would be lost. He never, certainly, contracted a debt which he did not mean honourably to pay. But either he had never possessed the faculty of ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Giver, Almoner impartial, true, Constantly doth gifts renew; Nor would fitfully deliver Aught unto the chosen few, But to all the wide world through, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... a better world. The scene was weird beyond description. Outside, the wind moaned a sad dirge; great bats and black moths, the size of birds, flitted about in the midnight darkness. These, ever and anon, made their way inside and extinguished the candles, which flickered and dripped as they fitfully shone on the shrunken features of the corpse. He had been a reprobate and an assassin, but, luckily for him, a pious woman, not wishing to see him die "in his sins," had sprinkled Holy Water on him. The said "Elixir of Life" had been brought ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... After a stare at the mild little figure with the fitfully dead-levelled large grey eyes in front of him, the pork-butcher resumed: 'Take you for the man you say you be, you're just the man for my friend Jam and me. He dearly loves to see a set-to, self ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... over the black sea, lighted fitfully by the distant lightning. There, she pronounced sentence upon him—and herself. There was no place for him in her world. He should feel her disdain—he should suffer for his presumption. Presumption? In what way had he offended? She put her hands to her eyes ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... society. Europe was just emerging from that gloom which had settled down so closely upon the older civilizations after the downfall of the glory that was Rome, and the light of the new day sifted but fitfully through the dark curtains of that restless time. Liberty had not as yet become the shibboleth of the people, superstition was in the very air, the knowledge of the wisest scholars was as naught, compared with what we know to-day; everywhere, might ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... case of Richard II, the method of death was supposed to be starvation. Sir Walter has told the story in The Fair Maid of Perth. Albany, who had succeeded him as regent or guardian, made no effort to end the meaningless war with England, which went fitfully on. An idiot mendicant, who was represented to be Richard II, gave the Scots their first opportunity of supporting a pretender to the English throne; but the pretence was too ridiculous to be seriously maintained. The French refused to take any part in such a scheme, and the pseudo-Richard ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... Madness on the part of a Waiter,—and took to his bed (leastwise, your mother and family's bed), with the statement that his eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians being in vain, your father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day and a night, when gleams of reason and old business fitfully illuminated his being, "Two and two is five. And three is sixpence." Interred in the parochial department of the neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the grave by as many Waiters of long standing as could spare the morning time from their soiled glasses (namely, ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... of an alley between high buildings afforded a retreat and the breeze blew there fitfully, and Mr. Chick stepped to that oasis of shade ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... his pale cheeks. His face was imperious, his laugh mocking and cruel. He was leaning on one elbow, holding in one hand, thinned with debauchery, a wide gold cup, enriched with pearls. He looked at it leisurely and fitfully, still fixing his piercing gaze on the two prisoners, who were placed in such a manner that ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... Contrary to his anticipations, the address of the Assembly finally proved effective, and he was permitted to walk forth from the jail a free man. His paper came forth from week to week, but its tone was evidently modified and subdued. Something of the old spirit occasionally flashed forth, but fitfully and transitorily only, like the flicker of a lamp before its extinction. It was clear that the editor had not forgotten the indignity and mental suffering he had undergone, and throughout the remaining years of his life he always dwelt ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the side of a steep hill, parallel to which, along the opposite side of a winding river, rose the dark steeps of a corresponding upland, covered with forest that looked awful and dim in the deep shadow, while the moonlight rippled fitfully ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... these, and near the west line of the new State, stretches a thin-soiled, rolling sandstone district, perhaps forty miles wide; then comes the Buffalo range, formerly covering the entire valley of the Mississippi, and even stretching fitfully beyond the Rocky Mountains, but now shrunk to a strip hardly more than one hundred and fifty miles in width, but extending north and south from Texas into the British territory which embosoms the Red River of the North. Better soil than that of the Buffalo region west of Kansas ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Ages! fitfully wise in vain; Surely the heavens shall laugh!—the long long climb Up to the stars, to dash him down again! And all the travail of slow-moving Time And birth of radiant wings, A dream of pain, an agony for naught! Highest and lowest of created things, ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... conscious of the other's presence. Old Mrs. Garstin, wrapped in a woollen shawl, sat knitting: Anthony dozed fitfully on a stiff-backed chair. ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... become gloomy as the fire failed to find any more dry fuel to feed upon, so that it gasped fitfully, and threatened to go ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... charms to lure him back. He began by giving up to Newmarket what was meant for mankind, took a share in a stable, and regulated his social and other engagements in London not by the Order Book of the House of Commons, but by the fixtures in the "Racing Calendar." He was seen only fitfully in his place at the corner seat behind his esteemed friends and leaders then in office. A year later he went off to Mashonaland, and for a full Session Westminster knew ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... doctors had informed him he was mistaken about this. Actually, they said, he did sleep, but so shortly and fitfully that he forgot. Others admitted he was absolutely correct—he never slept. His body processes only slowed down enough for him to dispel fatigue poisons. Occasionally he fell into a waking, gritty-eyed stupor; but he ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon
... over the sustained, vibrating, vigorous bass voices. It was the antiphony of the youthful promenaders to the drinkers, the diastole of the heart above the stomach, the elisire d'amore in rivalry with beer. Amid this scene I recognized my waiter, illuminated fitfully like some extraordinary firefly as he sprang into sight beneath the successive lanterns, and pouring out beer to right and left. To my indignant appeal he turned, lifting his head, and stood in that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... I slept fitfully a few hours, and then I had a most realistic dream, which began among my old surroundings on Earth: the wheat pit, the closing of a turbulent session, the drive through the parks till I came suddenly in sight of the great ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... in blinding deluges of spray and water over the stern; tearing along ten knots an hour, and yet always seeming to be left behind by the waves that tore by us,—the great waves, that obeyed the wind only to be crushed down again by it, spurting up here and there fitfully in pinnacles which were instantly driven off in foam and froth; no combing waves, such as the land dweller sees, for no wave could rise enough to comb,—only great hills of water, crystalline with wavelets, streaked with spun foam, heaving as if from ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... attack: But those behind cried "Forward!" And those before cried "Back!" And backward now and forward Wavers the deep array; And on the tossing sea of steel, To and fro the standards reel; And the victorious trumpet-peal Dies fitfully away. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... lady; she was, however, near by, not looking at the man at the grave, but first at Prosper and then at the ground. Her fingers were twisting and tangling together, and her bosom, restless as the sea, rose and fell fitfully. She was pale, save at the lips; like Prosper she smiled, but the smile was stiff. Prosper set to work with the shovel and soon filled up the grave. Then he turned ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... vaulted with thick ilex and myrtle formed a tapering vista where the shadows lay misty blue and pale shafts of light pierced through fitfully. At the far end it ran out into an open space and a splash of sunshine. A marble Ganymede with lifted arms rose in the middle like a white flame. The girls were there, intent upon some commerce of their own, flashing hither and ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On that shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam— In full glory reflected now shines in the stream; 'Tis the Star-Spangled Banner; O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... fainter as he reached the forest sward, Spreading round for many an acre over the lands which owned him lord. As he dashed along the woodland, fitfully, upon the breeze, Swept the tu-who-o of the owlet through ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... from Abel's face, and he walked up and down the room, no longer carelessly, but fitfully; stopping sometimes—again starting more rapidly—then leaning against the mantle, on which the clock pointed to midnight—then throwing himself into a chair or upon a sofa; and so, rising again, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... The sultriness pervades the air And binds the brain—a dense oppression, such As tawny tigers feel in matted shades, Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage. Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by. Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot. Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought, Balefully glares red Arson—there-and there. The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats. And rats of the wharves. All civil charms And priestly spells which late held ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... occasions when she recited or motioned or even merely looked something for him better than usual; then she quite carried him away, making him wish to ask no more questions, but only let her disembroil herself in her own strong fashion. In these hours she gave him forcibly if fitfully that impression of beauty which was to be her justification. It was too soon for any general estimate of her progress; Madame Carre had at last given her a fine understanding as well as a sore, personal, an almost physical, sense of how ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... the continuing difficulties in moving away from the former command system, the Romanian economy seems to have bottomed out in 1993-94. Market oriented reforms have been introduced fitfully since the downfall of CEAUSESCU in December 1989, with the result a growing private sector, especially in services. The slow pace of structural reform, however, has exacerbated Romania's high inflation rate and eroded real wages. Agricultural production rebounded in 1993 from the ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... meeting. Hal could hardly restrain his tears when he saw how Wolsey's sturdy form had wasted, and his round ruddy cheeks had fallen away, while the attitude in which he sat in his chair was listless and weary, though he fitfully exerted himself with ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... stand amazed at poor Rick? A young man so unfortunate," here he fell into a lower tone, as if he were thinking aloud, "cannot at first believe (who could?) that Chancery is what it is. He looks to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his interests and bring them to some settlement. It procrastinates, disappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine hopes and patience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers after it, and finds ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... The wind rose, sighing fitfully; the clouds gathered and formed an army which stormed the zenith and threatened to overwhelm the pure light of the planet. The lesser stars vanished, two or three falling in their haste and losing themselves forever in infinity. The night thickened; ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... slept but fitfully, and in his wakeful hours had regretted with self-denunciation, that his name was to be voted upon that day. In his waking dreams he had thought once of withdrawing his candidacy, even at the polls. When he slept, he was riding ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... varied and picturesque, from the human point of view, beyond his dreams. In the exchange of scraps of gossip and latest London anecdotes between Miss Guion and Drusilla Fane, on which Henry Guion commented, Davenant felt himself to be looking at a vivid but fitfully working cinematograph, of which the scenes were snatched at random from life as lived anywhere between Washington and Simla, or Inverness and Rome. The effect was both instructive and entertaining. It was also in its way enlightening, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... to be tall and broad. He was stooping forward over the mirror. His back was turned to me, but in the glass I saw the reflection of a huge head and face illumined fitfully by the flicker of the night-light. The spectral gray of very early morning stealing in round the edges of the curtains lent an additional horror to the picture, for it fell upon the hair that was tawny and mane-like, hanging about a face whose swollen, rugose features ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... and all night she slept fitfully, starting up at intervals, trembling at nameless horrors—the glittering goldsmith's shop, the Chinaman, the great eye of the sapphire, and, worst of all, Harry's face, always the same calm, ruddy, good-natured, innocent-looking face that had led her to the goldsmith's ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... which they call battles of skirmishers with armies in reserve. However this may be, all that day the plain of Breitenfeldt was filled with the fierce eddies of a hand-to-hand struggle between mail- clad masses, their cuirasses and helmets gleaming fitfully amidst the clouds of smoke and dust, the mortal shock of the charge and the deadly ring of steel striking the ear with a distinctness impossible in modern battle. Tilly with his right soon shattered ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... nights in penitential prayer. For several days, the paralysis of years has been gradually loosening its fetters, and this morning, the distressing and ghastly distortion of one side of his face almost disappeared. Though his voice is well nigh gone, it returns fitfully, and his strength seems supernatural. Fearing that you might not arrive in time, I have written down his last confession, and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... rather wearied with their journey from Billings, and very much disposed to sleep. Manning, therefore, stowed himself away in one corner of the coach, as comfortably as he was able to do, and nodded and dozed fitfully until they arrived at the breakfast station at Gallatin, a little town on ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... camp, Stephen weak and distressed, his whole body aching, his arm and shoulder throbbing in agonizing pain. The men proved attentive and considerate; but he lay down exhausted and courted sleep, hardly hearing what they said. Sleep came to him only fitfully, and he was glad when break of day brought a change. They rode on through the second day, usually in sober silence, on into another dusk and another night of torture. A third day and a third dusk followed, but there was no camp this time. Continuing forward, just before ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... handful of pebbles and was flinging them fitfully at a bit of driftwood. I wished her lips hadn't that little quiver that preluded laughter and that her eyes were not the haven of all the ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... mournful and faint like the horn of a huntsman strayed, Faint and forlorn, half drowned in the murmur of foliage fitfully fanned, Breathes in a burden of nameless regret till I startle, disturbed and affrayed: Broceliande — Broceliande — Broceliande. ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... I was doing about this time on the decorations for Genevieve's boudoir kept me constantly at the quaint little hotel in the Rue Sainte-Cecile. Boris and I in those days laboured hard but as we pleased, which was fitfully, and we all three, with Jack Scott, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... Unseen beside them, Good angels watch, that no Ill may betide them. Silence is everywhere, Save when the sighing Is heard, of the breeze's fall, Fitfully dying. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... breeze, his eyes were turned to heaven; the girl walked as in a vision, without a tremor, her wide-opened eyes fixed upon invisible things. As they moved on, the group behind set up a joyful hymn in a kind of mournful chant, in which the tall man joined with a strident voice. Fitfully the words came on the wind, in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... But when middle age arrives, often prematurely, they forget the thrill and excitements; they become obsessed by certain other lesser things that are deficient in any kind of Cosmic Vitality. The thrill goes out of life: a light dies down and flickers fitfully; existence goes on at a low ebb—something has been lost. From this numbed condition is born much of the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... I slept rather fitfully. I was awake long before the ship moved away on her fierce errand. At last, when she had been steaming some while, I stole down in the dark to the bathroom. When I came out of it the grey twilight was beginning. I crept aft ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... shorter, and the advance breath of the long, tight winter was beginning to add a new snap to the air. The noises of the camp drifted up over the grade fitfully, dreamily; some new hunger that might have been called homesickness was urging a new tone into ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... earnest; the night was wild and cold. Before the crackling stove the cat lay stretched at full length, while Pompey dozed fitfully, his nose between his paws. The red-cotton curtains that hung at the little window gave back the lamplight in a ruddy glow; the clock beat off the seconds evenly, except when drowned by the wind, which came in bouts, hurling itself against the corners ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... of night envelopes the interior of the caravanserai, and the scores of little brushwood fires smoke and glimmer and twinkle fitfully, the scene appeals to an observant Occidental as being decidedly unique, and totally unlike anything to be seen outside of Persia. Around each little fire, from four to a dozen figures are squatting, each group forming a most social gathering; ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... thro' the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes. What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream— 'Tis the star-spangled banner. O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... with the frost. Silence fell upon them, and for some time nothing could be heard but the occasional clash of steel and the continual creaking of snow and breaking of dead branches under foot. Then a hum of voices came to them fitfully, and at last the path opened into ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... clamoured for a rigorous administration of that penal legislation against Nonconformists which they had purchased with so many and such lavish supplies. As a matter of fact, these penal laws were very fitfully enforced. In London they were often totally disregarded, and we read of congregations numbering two thousand openly attending Presbyterian services. The Lord Mayor for the time being took his orders direct from ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... a pipe, and informed them by signs of my desire, they all burst into a fit of foolish laughter. But most mysterious of all was a serenade which often, and always upon the darkest nights, sounded beneath my window. A guitar was played fitfully, soft, low chords being heard from time to time. Once I imagined I heard some one down below call up, "Pst! pst!" I sprang out of bed and, putting my head out of the window, called, "Holla! who's there?" But no answer came; I only heard the rustling of the shrubbery, as if some ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... rising to our horses' noses ready to smash into us like an impalpable wall. After midnight, outspanning in a piercing wind, we formed square; main guard was posted over the General's car, and those lucky enough to escape turn of duty huddled together under cloaks and dozed fitfully until two-thirty. From two-thirty till sunrise we trekked on. Suddenly, just after good daylight, the Staff halted the column, glasses were put up, and away we swung half right into the veld. Up came the artillery and opened fire on a cluster of ant-sized figures four thousand yards ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... leave me!" And he ran toward the dark fields. The Arno formed lagoons, upon which the moon, half veiled, shone fitfully. He walked through the water and the mud, with a step rapid, blind, like that of one intoxicated. She took fright and shouted. She called him. But he did not turn his head and made no answer. He fled with alarming recklessness. She ran after him. Her feet were hurt by the stones, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... out to stand first watch with Joe Timmins. Alf Drew, finding that the Dunlop party had no room for him under the shelter they had rigged from the rear of the automobile, curled himself on the ground under a tree and fitfully wooed sleep. By daylight the little fellow was fretfully awake, his "nerves" refusing him further rest until he had rolled and smoked two cigarettes. By the time the smoke was over Jim Ferrers called to him ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... head back and scrutinized his face with half-closed lids; and about her lips there was an attempt to smile, that came and went fitfully. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... on the trail is not likely to permit any trivial cause to turn him aside, and the five Sioux made rapid progress so long as the light in the wood allowed them to do so. This, however, was a comparatively short time; and, after progressing fitfully and uncertainly for several hundred yards, they finally drew up to ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... glaring and irregular flame;—for the branches that he fed it with, were not branches from the Tree of Life,—but from another tree that grew in Paradise,—and they were wet with the unhealthy dews of night, and more unhealthy wine; and thus, amid smoke and ashes the fire burned fitfully, and went out with a glare, which ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... word by word what it says," replied she, nerving herself for the crisis till her face was like marble, though I could see she could not prevent the gleam of secret rapture that had visited her, from flashing fitfully across it. "Calmez vous, mon amie. Do not be afraid, my friend. Il vous aime et il vous cherche. He loves you and is hunting for you. Dans quatre heures vous serez heureuse. In four hours you will be happy. Allons du courage, ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... bosom flashed fitfully in the yellow gaslight, as he slowly said, "And now you know all your part. Will ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... and a strong hand could crush, but with the phantoms of dying faiths, which haunted the hearts of all living men; the superstitions, the prejudices, the hopes, the fears, the passions, which swayed stormily and fitfully through the minds of every actor in the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... too-expensive paper—scarred with great gouts of smoke, and she saw the tangled pipes of her own bathroom curve and drop down in a blackened mass, and all the time her arm encircled Anne, and the child's heart beat less and less fitfully, and Nancy's soul ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... door, and sit before the fire in our dressing-gown, musing about a great many things. At length we go to bed. Well! we can't sleep. We toss and tumble, and can't sleep. The embers on the hearth burn fitfully and make the room look ghostly. We can't help peeping out over the counterpane, at the two black figures and the cavalier—that wicked- looking cavalier—in green. In the flickering light they seem to advance and retire: which, though we are not by any means a superstitious nobleman, ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... three partners went out to hunt for it; and yet it was elusive, so that they had very little to do and soon were in extremities for living necessities, even for wood for the kitchen fire. Henry George had fitfully kept a pocket diary during 1864, and a few entries at this job-printing period tell of ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... He was smoking fitfully, and frowning to himself. She was again forgotten. It was very warm, and the curtains swayed in irregular puffs of wind; then came a rumble of ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... staring straight in front of him. His strange eyes had a fixed look, as if gazing into the distance. His brown hand rested lightly on the white tablecloth, and the great ruby on his little finger gleamed fitfully in the light. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... my final submission, though it is the faintest ghost of an impression and consists but of the bright blur of a dame's schoolroom, a mere medium for small piping shuffling sound and suffered heat, as well as for the wistfulness produced by "glimmering squares" that were fitfully screened, though not to any revival of cheer, by a huge swaying, yet dominant object. This dominant object, the shepherdess of the flock, was Miss Bayou or Bayhoo—I recover but the alien sound of her name, which memory ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... loose in our neighbourhood. And even far into the gloaming sounds of battle, boastful recriminations, the clash of swords, the trample and rally of the heavy charge, even the cries of the genuinely wounded, came fitfully from this corner and that of ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Boogles, alone, slept fitfully on his bench until the young thugs of the day watch straggled in. Then he achieved the change of his uniform to civilian garments, with only the accustomed minor maltreatment at the hands of these tormentors. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... regained his good spirits and gave hope to those who had any real wish for his recovery that the reign had not yet quite come to an end. In some of his better moods he showed glimpses of that higher nature which was wont to assert itself fitfully now and then at many periods of his career. More than once he prayed fervently in these later days that his life might be spared until the Princess Victoria should come of age. Almost to the end the usual festivities were kept up at Windsor Castle, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in a loft over the kitchen of the house, and left to her contemplations. The place was nearly dark, and she was jaded for want of sleep, the past night's excitement having shaken her nervous system, and soon she began to doze fitfully, and dream ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... what she calls ethical propaganda. Why ethics, or morals, should be good enough to inspire sympathy, but not good enough to inspire war, is one of the mysteries of German thought. No German, not even any of those few feeble German writers who have fitfully criticized the German plan, has any conception of the deep, sincere, unselfish, and righteous anger that was aroused in millions of hearts by the cruelties of the cowardly assault on Serbia and on Belgium. The late German Chancellor became uneasily aware that the crucifixion of Belgium ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... of speculation is opened by this phenomenon. Here we have a star fitfully variable to an astonishing extent, and whose fluctuations are spread over centuries, apparently in no settled period, and with no regularity of progression. What origin can we ascribe to these sudden flashes and relapses? ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... last indicted from political motives and perhaps personal also, the large minority in his favour, all show that thought was normally free, and that the mass of intolerance which existed was only fitfully invoked, and perhaps most often to serve other purposes. I may mention the case of the philosopher Aristotle, who some seventy years later left Athens because he was menaced by a prosecution for blasphemy, the charge being a pretext ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... student. The place was open, but it had no customers. He went on to the bridge, but there the sheriff's court, the Martyr's church, the society halls and all the smart shops were closed, their dark fronts lighted fitfully by flaring gas-lamps. The bitter night had driven all ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... night she lay at his feet to be ready at the first peep of dawn to buttress a purpose that she feared was still weak, and whilst he slept fitfully, she slept not at all, but lay ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the United States established here Fort Dearborn. In 1812, during the Indian War of Tecumseh, the garrison and settlers, who had abandoned the fort and were retreating toward safety, were attacked and overpowered by the savages at a point now well within the city. The fort was re-established and fitfully occupied until its final abandonment in 1837. When Cook county was organized in 1831, Chicago, then a tiny village, became the seat of justice. It became a town in 1833 and a city in 1837. By that time Chicago was confident of its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... postmaster and proprietor tilted his chair against the counter and dozed also, though fitfully, and with occasional restless changes of position and smothered maledictions against the heat. He was scarcely the build of man to sleep comfortably at high noon in midsummer. His huge, heavy body was rather too much ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the birds were all moulting, and sang only fitfully and by brief snatches. I remember hearing but one robin during the whole trip. This was by the Boreas River in the deep forest. It was like the voice of an old ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... temperament, and the philosopher's power of generalization. A hint could open a grand horizon before him, and the cathedral in its solemn beauty was the hint. Of course, he could see it all, blind as he had been before. The Irish revolution worked fitfully, and exploded in a night, its achievement measured by the period of a month; but this temple and its thousand sisters lived on doing their good work in silence, fighting for the truth without noise ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... him, he shunned the stream contaminated with the missing man's unheroic fate. Presently the light from the open window of the sitting-room glittered on the wet leaves and sprays where he stood, and the voices of the family conclave came fitfully to his ear. They didn't want him there. They had never thought of asking him to come in. Well!—who cared? And he wasn't going to be bought off with a candle and a seat by ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... ceiling which was revealed fitfully by the dying fire. She still felt dead, numb, but this was a peaceful sort of grave, so remote, so silent. That endless torturing thought—the chain of weary reproach and useless speculation, which beset every waking moment—had ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Flurry, and then Dot went too, but Mr. Lucas did not put down the book for a long time. I had ceased to follow the words; the flicker of the firelight played fitfully before my eyes. The quiet room, the shaded lamplight, the measured cadence of the reader's voice, now rising, now falling, lulled me most pleasantly. I must have fallen asleep at last, for Flossy woke me by pushing his black nose into my hand; for when I sat up and ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... blurred the outline of even the nearest hills; distance was blotted out. Thin rain fell chillingly and persistently, drip, dripping with monotonous plash from the old inn's thatched eaves; a light wind sobbed fitfully around the building, moaning at every chink and cranny of the ill-fitting window-frames. "A dismal night for any who must travel," thought the stableman of the inn, as he looked east and then west along the darkening road. No moving thing broke the monotony of the ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... who can barely manage to hobble from house to house seeking work. The pain endured while under the operation is so severe and continuous that the poor girls never sleep for long periods without the aid of strong narcotics, and then only but fitfully; and it is from this constant suffering that the peculiar sullen or stolid look so often seen on the woman's face is derived. The origin of this custom is involved in mystery to the Westerns. Some say that the strong-minded among the ladies wanted to ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... could not, since English literature is still only fitfully studied in public schools, have named the author. But he quoted the lines with fluent confidence. It was by turning them into Greek Iambics that he ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... mere blowing off of steam by an active but valveless engine of a mind. But this pretense enabled her to justify herself for long mornings and afternoons at the Country Club with Henrietta. They talked of activity, of accomplishing this and that and the other; they read fitfully at serious books; they planned novels and plays; they separated each day with a comfortable feeling that they had been usefully employed. And each did learn much from the other; but, as each confirmed the other in the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... through the long journey fitfully—she was mentally and physically exhausted. She was only thoroughly aroused by people out in the corridor moving about ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... moon's kindly beam. In this dim twilight I pushed on then, as well as I might, often running foul of unseen obstacles or pausing to loose my garments from clutching thorns. Sudden there met me a wind, dank and chill, that sighed fitfully near and far, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... bright overhead, but low down around the horizon it looked wild. The air was frightfully cold—far below zero—and the wind had been blowing almost every day for a week, and was still strong. The snow was sliding fitfully along the sod with a stealthy, menacing motion, and far off in the west and north a dense, shining cloud of ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... northwest climbed up a ragged mass of sombre clouds. Afar off the deep voice of the thunder muttered fitfully. The son of science drew up his curtains and looked out on the coming storm. There was a solemn hush and calm in the air. Nature seemed resting, and nerving herself for the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... impression of the terror out there. When they returned the moon was coming up, rising and struggling and making its way slowly through ragged masses of colored clouds. The river could be plainly seen now, smooth, deep, treacherous; the falls on the American side showed fitfully like patches of light and foam; the Horseshoe, mostly hidden by a cold silver mist, occasionally loomed up a white and ghostly mass. They stood for a long time looking down at the foot of the American Fall, the moon now showing clearly the plunge of the heavy column—a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... without a moon, was beautifully clear and cloudless. The stars had come out with all their brightness—a soft zephyr played drowsily and fitfully among the tops of the shrubbery, that lay, as it were, asleep on the circling hilltops around; while the odors of complicated charm from a thousand floral knots, which had caught blooms from the rainbows, and dyed themselves in their stolon splendors, thickly studding ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the sea-wall they have lately built along the Rada. The moon was up, but overdriven with dry smoky clouds, now thickening to blackness over the whole bay, now leaving intervals through which the light poured fitfully and fretfully upon the wrinkled waves; and ever and anon they shuddered with electric gleams which were not actual lightning. Heaven seemed to be descending on the sea; one might have fancied that some powerful ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... lies heaped along the street, Swept by a blinding storm of hail and sleet; The clouded heavens no guiding starlight lend, But o'er the earth in gloom and darkness bend; Gigantic shadows, by the night lamps thrown, Dance their weird revels fitfully alone. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... fitfully, though they arose in testy humor the following morning and took immediate recourse to their whiskey ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... the raspberry, intermixed with ferns and mosses in vast variety, covered every spot around me, and from rock and crevice the pine and the poplar hung their branches over the water. As the breeze still blew fitfully from the north we again embarked and held our way through the winding channels—at times these channels would grow wider only again to close together; but there was no current, and the large high sail moved us slowly through the water. When it became dark a fire suddenly appeared on an island ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... a minor cramming establishment, was the only person who had a definite selection for the event, but as his choice varied every three hours he was worse than useless as an inspired guide. The crowning difficulty of the problem was that it could only be fitfully and furtively discussed. Lady Susan disapproved of racing. She disapproved of many things; some people went as far as to say that she disapproved of most things. Disapproval was to her what neuralgia ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... he took morbid delight in the sight of pain inflicted; and this he could not at all understand. At this season his tales were all of war and blood and violence, of treachery and despair. When night came he slept fitfully or not at all, with uneasy half-formed dreams. And in these dreams he was always searching for a thing which had no name, starting over the river-ford upon the high southern bank, ending nowhere under gray skies and desolation. He neglected his carving, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... pulled down. On this account his face had been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he would probably have disappeared from the place altogether but for his slight business connection with Melbury, on whose premises Giles kept his cider-making apparatus, now that he had no place of his own to stow it in. Coming here one evening on his way to a hut beyond the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... fitfully as the train sped on through the darkness. He woke once to find Herr Selingman in close confabulation with his agent on the opposite side of the compartment. They had a notebook before them and several papers spread out upon the ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... daunted as I clambered down to earth, and proceeded to feel my way carefully round the house for some more likely entry. But entry there was none. Every window and door was fast. The moonlight, which swept fitfully over the stagnant swamp, struck only on sullen, forbidding walls, and the breeze, now fast rising, moaned round the eaves to a tune which sent a shudder ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... sweeps round the chapel from behind, Making the altar-light flare fitfully, While I must kneel and pray with ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... midnight. The wind howled drearily over the lonely heath; the moon shone fitfully through the driving clouds. By its gleam an observer might have noted a solitary automobile painfully jolting along the rough road that lay across the common. Its speed, as carefully noted by an intelligent constable half-an-hour earlier, was 41.275 miles an ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... sign, their trade-mark; one of these placards, fitfully illumined by a torch of resin, towers above a group of children busy tearing up scraps of old linen—their mothers', their sisters' linen —in order to ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... excused from supper on the night of her arrival, drank the glass of milk that Mrs. Carder gave her, and at an early hour laid an aching head on her pillow and slept fitfully through the night. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... cards and their bottle. It had been bad enough to find them sullen and inhospitable, but as the liquor stimulated their unhealthy imaginations it was worse to feel the covert looks stealing now and again toward them. Joyce, sleeping fitfully in the arms of Moya, woke with a start to see them drinking together ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... and ran about the house almost naked, endeavoring by every means to excite sensation in different parts of my body, and so to weaken the enemy by creating a diversion. It continued from one in the morning till half-past five, and left me pale and faint. It came on fitfully, but not so violently, several times on Thursday, and began severer threats toward night; but I took between sixty and seventy drops of laudanum, and sopped the Cerberus just as his mouth began to open. On Friday it only niggled, as if the chief ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... straining forward like a thoroughbred, its strength almost spent, with the end of the race in sight. Across the white gleaming decks, as the bows swung from port to starboard and back again, following the channel, purple-black shadows slipped like oil. A languid land-wind blew fitfully down the estuary, in warm puffs dense with sickly-sweet jungle reek. The day was hot and sticky with humidity; a haze like a wall of dust coloured the skies ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... work, containing the first eleven chapters, or "songs," was published in May 1842. For the rest of his life, largely spent abroad, Gogol worked fitfully at the continuation of his masterpiece. Ill health, nervous depression, and morbid asceticism preyed upon his mind; in 1845 he burned all that he had written of the second volume. But he soon began to rewrite it, though he made slow and painful progress, having too much of ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... the room she was fitfully engaged in perpetrating a crewel-work atrocity for one of her ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... by any chance Stampa might be mistaken. Bower stood somewhat apart, seemingly engaged in the same engrossing task. The wind was not quite so fierce as during its first onset. It blew in gusts. No longer screaming in a shrill and sustained note, it wailed fitfully. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... could settle to nothing for thinking of the Poor Travellers. When the wind blew hard against the windows,—it was a cold day, with dark gusts of sleet alternating with periods of wild brightness, as if the year were dying fitfully,—I pictured them advancing towards their resting-place along various cold roads, and felt delighted to think how little they foresaw the supper that awaited them. I painted their portraits in my mind, and indulged in little heightening touches. I made them footsore; I made them ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... twenty other whimsical things. At nearly midnight, when we go to bed, we take a last look at it. It is a ruin, like the Colosseum,—great gaps of darkness are there, with broken rows of splendor. The lights are gone on one side the dome,—they straggle fitfully here and there down the other and over the faade, fading even as we look. It is melancholy enough. It is a bankrupt heiress, an old and wrinkled beauty, that tells strange tales of its former wealth and charms, when the world was at its feet. It is the once mighty Catholic Church, crumbling away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... abysmal darkness below, I am inclined to take back the whole of that preceding paragraph, although it cost me some labor to elaborate its polite malevolence. I can even recognize some melody in the music which comes irregularly and fitfully from the balcony of the Museum on Market Street, although it may be broadly stated that, as a general thing, the music of all museums, menageries, and circuses becomes greatly demoralized,—possibly through associations with the beasts. So soft and courteous is this atmosphere that I have detected ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... Caesar Borgia. The biographer, putting together the stray jottings of his manuscripts, may follow him through every day of it, up the strange tower of Sienna, which looks towards Rome, elastic like a bent bow, down to the sea-shore at Piombino, each place appearing as fitfully as in a fevered dream.... We catch a glimpse of him again at Rome in 1514, surrounded by his mirrors and vials and furnaces, making strange toys that seemed alive of wax and quicksilver. The hesitation which had haunted him all through life, and made like one under a ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... like a young animal, and drew in deep breaths of the best smell in the world—the smell of damp, green growing things. He turned on to his back again. The mist had begun to waver, a breath was stirring fitfully but finely. It came cool upon him, and as it blew the world seemed very gently to come to life again. He could see what he had come to look at and overshot in the mist—the little harbour of Povah lying to his left. He rolled over and stared curiously ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... singular condition of the atmosphere was not without its effect on the men, who felt listless and disinclined to work. A sense of impending peril seemed to be hanging over all. The wind, too, was gradually dying away, and came fitfully and at intervals in hot, sulphurous puffs. The sea, which had been sparkling in thousands of tiny wavelets in the rays of the sun, began to assume a dark and oily appearance; and a long swell was beginning to make ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... that urged us on. But the civic conscience was not very robust yet, and required many and protracted naps. It slumbered fitfully eight long years, waking up now and then with a start, while the Bend lay stewing in its slime. I wondered often, in those years of delay, if it was just plain stupidity that kept the politicians from spending the money ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... in the morning upon the imaginations of the men; the excellence of the imitation in my person, and the uncertain and wavering light in which they beheld me, as the glare of the cabin lantern, swinging violently to and fro, fell dubiously and fitfully upon my figure, and there will be no reason to wonder that the deception had even more than the entire effect which we had anticipated. The mate sprang up from the mattress on which he was lying, and, without uttering a syllable, fell back, stone dead, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... seers to the seen, it is difficult or impossible even to suggest an hypothesis which will seem to combine the facts. The most plausible fancy is that which likens the apparitions to figures in a feverish dream. Could we imagine a more or less bad man or woman dead, and fitfully living over again, 'in that sleep of death,' old events among old scenes, could we go further and believe that these dreams were capable of being made objective and visible to the living, then we might find ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... sheltered corner, as if to get away from the wind; the changed livery of the shops—the golden tissues of summer, the delicately-tinted shawls, and gossamer ribbons, and flaunting muslins, woven of nobody knows what—whether of "mist and moonlight mingling fitfully," or of sunset shadows overshot with gold, giving way to gorgeous velvet, and fur, and sumptuous drapery glowing and burning with the tints of autumn, and, like distant fires seen through a fall of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... and water in abnormal places rather trickled than ran. We were now beginning to be in the sloppy rather than the deluged stage. There was plenty of light to see by, for the moon had begun to show out fitfully through the masses of flying clouds. The uncertain light made weird shadows with the shrubs and statues in the garden. The long straight walk which leads from the marble steps is strewn with fine sand white from the quartz strand in the nook to the south of ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... were, which to a deep musical sense are asked in one passage, and answered in another; the iteration and ingemination of a given effect, moving through subtile variations that sometimes disguise the theme, sometimes fitfully reveal it, sometimes throw it out tumultuously to the daylight,—these and ten thousand forms of self-conflicting musical passion—what room could they find, what opening, for utterance, in so limited a field as an air or song?" After this broadside permit ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... storm and darkness, only fitfully broken by the firelight, we ate our supper under what shelter the low cliff afforded. Our boyish spirits were much subdued and awed by the peril we had passed through and the ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... the moonlight. There was no mistaking the tall, broad-shouldered, handsome Englishman, and the trim, dainty little figure in fleecy white, with the ermine wrap thrown over the pretty plump shoulders and round neck, on which rare diamonds, that would have paid a king's ransom, gleamed fitfully whenever the sportive breeze tossed back ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... first he talked fitfully that night. On other occasions she had noticed how his mind seemed to veer, whimsically, from one topic to another with little apparent continuity of thought, only to swing back again, just when she was beginning ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... called that birthday dress of long ago? Accordion silk. The breeze caught Natalie's skirt and played with it, opening out the soft pleats and closing them again. The breeze seized upon the ends of the cloud and lifted them fitfully as though they were wings too tired for ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... was sick for Tomaso, whom he adored, or that he stewed in a black rage over the blows and pitchforkings, hitherto unknown to him, no one could surely say. He would do nothing but crouch, brooding, sullen and dangerous, at the back of his cage. Hansen noted the green light flickering fitfully across his pale, wide eyes, and prudently ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... musical possibilities. He saw, in orchestral terms, the sodden revelry in that staid house—with its endless cellars of Burgundy. He saw the tight-drawn terror in the girl's room where she lay in bed. He saw the room lighted fitfully by the play of searchlights over the city; the sinister entrance from a little balcony through the French widow, of the officer in uniform, his shadow flung ahead of him by the beam of the searchlight. He saw the man, blood—as well as wine—drunk, garrulous and fanatic ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to his feet, adjusted his copper-riveted hat laboriously, and drifted slowly out the door. And with another spender gone the Hotel Bender lapsed into a sleepy quietude. The rain hammered fitfully on the roof; the card players droned out their bids and bets; and Black Tex, mechanically polishing his bar, alternated successive jolts of whiskey with ill-favored glances into the retired corner ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... had drawn to a close. A wild, stormy, rainy night then set in, but still the royalist party—citizens and soldiers intermingled—all armed to the teeth, and uttering fierce cries, while the whole scene was fitfully illuminated with the glare of flambeaux and blazing tar-barrels, kept watch in the open square around the city hall. A series of terrible Rembrandt-like nightpieces succeeded—grim, fantastic, and gory. Bertoul, an old man, who for years had so surely felt ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
