"Flicker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... without a word or a movement; only, every now and then, her long, dark lashes, tipped with gold, would flicker for a moment and then droop discreetly on her cool, fresh cheeks. But the thought of her own frailty suggested an objection; and ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... unreal in itself, served to make all things dim and unreal. He did not know whether he was asleep or awake, so strange was life, so vivid were his dreams. Mummie, Uncle John, the baby, Toby himself came with a flicker of the veil and disappeared vaguely without cause. It would happen that Toby would be speaking to Uncle John, and suddenly he would find himself looking into the large eyes of the baby, turned stupidly towards the ceiling, and again ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... seemed to break from the ground at their feet, and in the flicker of an eyelash a shadow lifted up out of the scrub-encumbered level. Sophia cried aloud with alarm; Labertouche swore outright, heedless; and Amber put himself before her, drawing his revolver, heartsick with ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... with a faint flicker of venom, "I didn't, to tell you the truth. That's why I told you I was talking business; but you ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... suddenly away from Marina lest she should trace the faintest flicker of a doubt within them, as the vision rose before him of that imperious body, so relentless in its decrees, so tenacious in its traditions, so positive in its autocracy; but the threatened invincibility of this force ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... library,—a sombre, darkly-furnished apartment, large enough to seem gloomy by contrast with the gaiety and cheerfulness which were dominant throughout the rest of the house that evening. Only two or three shaded lamps were lit, and these cast a ghostly flicker on the row of books that lined the walls. A few names in raised letters of gold relief upon the backs of some of the volumes, asserted themselves, or so he fancied, with unaccustomed prominence. "Montaigne," "Seneca," "Rochefoucauld," "Goethe," "Byron," and "The Sonnets of ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... he breathes! over the snow I heard just now the crowing cock. The shadows flicker to and fro: The cricket chirps: the light burns low: 'Tis nearly twelve o'clock. Shake hands, before you die. Old year, we'll dearly rue for you: What is it we can do for you? ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... of the boy and there was a flash of eyes between them, the flicker of a smile. Hal Dozier drew a breath. "I got no kids of my own," he declared. "You're lucky, friend. And you're lucky to have ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... though the sun were hot. Its every nook and cranny was often swept and dusted by the wind. Its branches leading up and outward to the green wall were as innumerable stairways. Each separate home was out on rocking beams, with its own flicker of sky light overhead. For a time at dusk there was a continual flutter of weary wings at the lower entrance, a good night twitter, and a sound of tiny feet climbing the stairways in that gloomy hall. At last, there was a moment of gossip ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... Hawk Duck Hawk, Gray Gyrfalcon Snow Owl Barred Owl Great-horned Owl Long-eared Owl Short-eared Owl Acadian Owl Screech Owl Great Gray Owl Hawk Owl Barn Owl Richardson Owl Hairy Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Flicker Pine Grosbeak Red-winged Crossbill White-winged Crossbill Redpoll Blue Jay Horned Lark Lapland Longspur English Sparrow Winter Wren Chickadee Northern Shrike Snowflake Moose ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... could be seen by the light of the two candles, whose flicker made the shadows dance on the ceiling; but the fairest thing to see was beautiful dark Riekje sitting near the fire. She had broad shoulders, a plump neck, and strong arms; her cheeks were round and sunburnt, her eyes of a dusky brown, her lips full and red; and as for ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... There was a flicker of matches as they were applied to the fuses, and then a splutter of sparks. An instant later it seemed as if the whole heavens had been ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... heart-rending, eviscerating shrieks. Benham, still confused, lit a match. All the men about him were stirring or sitting up and listening, their faces showing distorted and ugly in the flicker of his light. "CHE E?" he tried. No one answered. Then one by one they stood up and went softly to the ladder that led to the stable-room below. Benham struck a second ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... window, and gazed out at the first lights that began to flicker in the windows of the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... future did not exist for them. They were like careless birds, who had once suffered shipwreck and had forgotten it. Many of them made their living where they could; but however down in the world they were, let the slightest ray of sunlight flicker down to them, and all was forgotten. Of the labor movement and other new things they gossiped as frivolously as so many chattering starlings, who had snapped up the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... naughty and badly behaved, always sneaking round the backyard, and never coming out where there was an audience, as The Rowdy did. And then he could beat everybody, and at his own song, too! He was at them all now, one after the other—robin, song sparrow, oriole, flicker, everything—with a medley of trills and variations worked in just to show that he had a whole lot of music of his own if he only cared to ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... down at the table opposite to him and leaned her chin on her hands, her loose sleeves falling away from her arms and revealing, to the best advantage, their rounded whiteness. Into her eyes there came the flicker of a challenge, the sparkle of mischief which gave a new character to her face, a different expression to all he had hitherto seen. There was flippant raillery in her voice as she ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... of the portals seven Above our abodes he hover'd With lances that yawn'd for carnage; But vanish'd, afore his chaps With slaughter of Thebes were glutted; Afore the flicker of pitchy flame Might to the crown of turrets climb. So fierce the rattle of war around Was pour'd on his rear by the serpent-foe Hard match'd in deadly encounter. For Jove the over-vaunting tongue Supremely hates. Their ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... him. As she opened her eyes he stayed his hand. It seemed cruel to bring her back. But the suffering and the half instinctive look of horror passed from her eyes like a shadow, as they rested upon him. There was even the very faint flicker of a ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... magnificent light? You will probably know in some degree what has happened to us—how the hideous news first came to us via Auckland, etc., and then how, in the newspapers, a doubt was raised about its authenticity—just enough to give one a flicker of hope; until your telegram to me via San Francisco—repeated also from other sources—converted my pessimistic convictions into the wretched knowledge. All this time my thoughts have hovered round you all, around you in particular, with a tenderness of which I could have wished you ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... objects rise, and break the desolate monotony of the scene? In this awful solitude, can signs appear which tell of human Life? Yes! The black outline of a boat just shows itself, hauled up on the berg. In an ice-cavern behind the boat the last red embers of a dying fire flicker from time to time over the figures of two men. One is seated, resting his back against the side of the cavern. The other lies prostrate, with his head on his comrade's knee. The first of these men is awake, and thinking. ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... glow into those cavernous abysses with which all men communicate. Hence come angels or fiends into our twilight musings, according as we may have peopled them in by-gone years. Over our friend's face, in the rosy flicker of the fire-gleam, stole an expression of repose and perfect trust that made him as beautiful to look at, in his high-backed chair, as the child Pansie on her pillow; and sometimes the spirits that were watching him beheld a calm surprise draw slowly over his features ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... when the mass is being said—inaudible, indeed, and not to be seen, at the furthest end of that dense, underground crowd, but testified to by the lighting of a thousand tapers, and by the strong desire for some flicker of ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Williams had failed since the cold spring of 1909, and how in the colder spring of 1910 he had once or twice narrowly survived influenza. In July, 1910, he was dying of heart failure. Nevertheless the return of David, his well-beloved, brought to him a flicker of renewed life, a little pink in ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... beyond the scope of man's actual possessions. But Donatello felt nothing of this dream-like melancholy that haunts the spot. As he passed among the sunny shadows, his spirit seemed to acquire new elasticity. The flicker of the sunshine, the sparkle of the fountain's gush, the dance of the leaf upon the bough, the woodland fragrance, the green freshness, the old sylvan peace and freedom, were all intermingled in those ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and neared the post, its blare and hubbub burst on him, and its torch-light and many twinkling candles. He proceeded beside the triple row of Indian lodges which occupied the entire water-front. At intervals, on the very verge, evening fires were built, throwing streamers of crimson flicker on the lake. Naked pappooses gathered around these at play. But on an open flat betwixt encampment and village rose a lighted tabernacle of blankets stretched on poles and uprights; and within this the adult Indians were crowded, celebrating the orgy of ...
— The Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the green smoke arose, their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished. Then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud, droning noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... speech to begin with an oath," Alison said, through the flicker of a smile. "And, faith, I should be slow to take offence at you. For we quarrelled before, because you were at pains to warn me. Well, sir, I humble myself before ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... not yet dark, but street-lamps had begun to flare and flicker in the gust of a cold, damp evening. A thin and slippery mud smeared the pavement. Tarrant had walked mechanically as far as to the top of Park Lane before he began to consider his immediate course. Among the people who stood waiting for ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... popular, and widely circulated poem of colonial New England was Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom (1663), a kind of doggerel Inferno, which went through nine editions, and "was the solace," says Lowell, "of every fireside, the flicker of the pine-knots by which it was conned perhaps adding a livelier relish to its premonitions of eternal combustion." Wigglesworth had not the technical equipment of a poet. His verse is sing-song, his language rude and monotonous, and the lurid horrors ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... could make out a thin gleaming of wires—a jury-rigged safety field. Within the flimsy-looking protective cage was a double bank of instruments, some of them alive with the flicker and glow of lights. Those must be the very expensive and difficult-to-build items Maulbow had brought out from the Hub. Beside them stood the machine, squat and ponderous. In the vague light, it looked misshaped and discolored. A piece of equipment that had taken a bad beating of ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... green spaces of the listening trees Pan sits at ease, Watching with lazy eyes Little blue butterflies That flicker sidelong in the fitful breeze; While on his pipe he plays Quaint trills, and roundelays With dropping cadences; And shy red squirrels rub ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... that rare flicker in Old Hickory's eyes, I gives him the grin. Oh, sure you can. ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... friends. See what a fine study they make with the red flicker of the fire on their faces and the background of dark ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... own, and she felt no need to discover any higher import in its merriment. How could she, when she sought no higher import in her own—had not as yet once suspected that every human gladness—even to the most transient flicker of delight—is the reflex—from a potsherd it may be—but of an eternal sun of joy?—Stay, let me pick up the gem: every faintest glimmer, all that is not utter darkness, is from the shining face of the Father of Lights.—Not a breath stirred the ivy leaves about her window; but out there, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... It was not in dress or in manner, for there was no sign of garishness, of the unusual anywhere—in manner she was as well controlled as any woman of fashion, in dress singularly reserved—but in the depths of the eyes there was some restless, unsettled thing, some flicker of strange banners akin to the pennant at the joining of the pink curtains. There had been something of the same look in Ingolby's eyes in the past, only with him it was the sense of great adventure, intrepid enterprise, a touch of vision and the beckoning ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Francis," she said, but not too hopefully. Perhaps she noticed that his hand and eye both strayed, as if involuntarily, towards the bottle of spirits on the table. And at that moment, the last flicker of light from the ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that he led back across Europe, and daily his retinue grew smaller. Men and horses dropped from sheer fatigue helpless by the wayside, and were left there to die, with the hungry vultures perched on trees, patiently waiting for the last flicker of life to depart before they set to work to pick the ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... mid tresses, green tresses. Slow dipping, caressing, I've heard A whisper, a chuckle of laughter, a scamper; and high, High up in the air the cry, the call of a bird. And when the night came with a flicker of wings I have heard the earth breathing quiet and slow Like a pulse in the tiny, wild ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... on the movable solenoid causes the instrument to be uninfluenced by external magnetic forces. Mr. Boys showed on the screen an image of an electric arc, and by its side was a spot of light, whose position indicated the energy, and showed every flicker of the light and fluctuation of current in the arc. He showed on the screen that if the poles are brought too near the energy expended is less, though the current is stronger, and that if the poles are too far apart, though the electromotive force is greater the energy is less; so ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... girlish interest and admiration. There was indignation, there was pity, there was hope. Some day it might come to pass that I, girl as I was, might contribute by word or deed towards the vindication of that long-suffering, gallant, and romantic prodigal. It was a flicker of the Joan of Arc inspiration, common, I fancy, to many girls. I little then imagined how profoundly and strangely involved my uncle's fate would ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Countess's conquest would have been too dearly bought by any attempt to act a comedy with this Old-Man-of-the-Mountains. And besides that, after this visit, poor Countess Satan appeared to me quite silly. Her famous Satanism was nothing but the flicker of a spirit-lamp, after the general conflagration of which the other had dreamt, and she had certainly shown herself very silly, when she could not understand that prodigious monster. And as she had seduced me, only by her intellect ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... man had spoken the truth, but he held on up the ever-steepening trail, ceasing his song only when he needed the breath to climb. A cottontail waved its beacon for a minute before him, then darted into the underbrush; the mountain jays called out a wailing cry; and the flicker clucked above. Sharp turns were in the trail, else it had faced an upright cliff or overshot a precipice; but it was easily followed and, at length, he was above the cedars. Here the horse trail ended, but a moccasin path went ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Paul!" he said, grimly, yet with a flicker of curiosity in his wrinkled face; as though a dim suspicion that there might be something out of the ordinary back of this, had begun to take possession of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... in playing this game, Things I have known that shall have no name; Forgetting the place from which I came I watch her ward away the flame, Yet warm herself at the fire—then blame Me that I flicker in the basket; Me that I glow not with content To have my substance so subtly spent; Me that I interrupt her game. I ought to be proud that she should ask it Of me to be ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... have been the light of the candle, woke a flicker in Mr. Fennessy's eye. He passed his hand ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... few moments nothing happened. The fire had died down. There was only a flicker of light in the room. Then all at once the girl gave a convulsive shudder. "I can't help it," she muttered in a ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... the candle inside the lantern's glass began to flicker feebly, and then came the certainty that perseverance had been rewarded. Light filled the narrow way, and she looked timidly down the rickety stone steps, dreading to venture into the blackness beyond. Ahead ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the October rut the deer came back plentifully to the Tonkawanda District, and Greenhow gave up the greater part of the rainy season to auditing his account with them. He spent whole days scanning the winter colored slope for the flicker and slide of light on a hairy flank that betrayed his enemy, or, rifle in hand, stalking a patch of choke cherry and manzanita within which the mule-deer could snake and crawl for hours by intricacies of doubling and back tracking that yielded not a square inch ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... gone to her room, to lie awake on the bed, fully dressed. She had left the oil-lamp burning, for Hamlin had been sitting at a table reading. She heard him get up after a while; saw the light flicker and go out; heard her father cross the floor and go to ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... lips set a trifle more sternly than usual, his handsome head was held high with fine military bearing. He came forward without faltering for even so much as the fraction of a waver. There was not a flicker in his eyes set straight ahead. One would never have known from his looks that he recognized the oncoming man, or had so much as realized that an officer was approaching, yet his brain was doing some rapid calculation. He had said in his heart ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... her whole life seems to be an apology. You read it in the face of every Indian girl or woman you meet, from the shrinking pathetic little figure in the camp to the bent old crone, whose upturned face with its sadly acceptive look gives you the flicker ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... The candle began to flicker and, turning, she saw that it was spending its last dying flame. It was impossible to write. She lay still, watching the glimmering dark square of the window. She could not see another candle there. All she could see was the little phial of tabloids. But she lay back and let ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... The heat stood still and played over the ground, sparkling, with indolent voluptuousness and soft movements like the fish in the stream. Far inland it quivered above the rocks that bounded the view, in a restless flicker of bluish white; below lay the fields beneath the broiling sun, with the pollen from the rye drifting over them like smoke. Up above the clover-field stood the cows of Stone Farm in long rows, their heads hanging heavily down, and their ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... an early hour, but hoped that Mrs. Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent importance. Mrs. Manderson would see Mr. Trent. She walked to a mirror, looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head at herself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... wonder," with a flicker Of the Old Ford in his eyes As he watched the snow come thicker, "Are the angels warm and rosy When the snow-storms fill the skies, As in summer when the sun Makes their cloud-beds warm and cosy? And I wonder if they're sleeping Through this bitter winter weather Or aloft their watches ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... of the warning flashed from the shore. "Guess there must be something hellish afoot after all," he muttered again. "The flicker of green that stopped the signals, and the green fire that got us—what can they mean?" He looked toward the looming black shadow of the island, and began divesting himself of his clinging, sodden garments. "I don't wonder somebody wanted battleships. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... dear lad," replied the old man, letting a smile flicker on his large lips, which gave to his rosy mouth the kindliest expression that the genius of a painter ever imagined, "can we not be moved to the deepest pity by the spectacle of human wretchedness which Paris holds ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... over the throng. Scurrying figures on the field announced that the expected was being carried out. Chester was making a last desperate effort for a touchdown. It would be the expiring flicker of the flame; for whether successful or not it must mark the end, since the referee would be blowing his whistle before play could ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... evidently understood part of this speech, and he was so tickled with the last remark that his habitual gravity gave place to the faintest flicker of a smile, while a twinkle gleamed for a moment in his eye. Only for a moment, however. Pointing over the side, he bade ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them there was often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above a sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to associate it with ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... moment taking Carinthia's impression of Chillon, compelled to it by an admiration that men and women have alike for shapes of strength in the mould of grace, over whose firm build a flicker of agility seems to run. For the young soldier's figure was visibly in its repose prompt to action as the mind's movement. This was her brother; her enthusiasm for her brother was explained to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... manifold spirals and shedding venom. If thou wouldst conquer him, thou must use thy shield and stretch thereon bulls' hides, and cover thy body with the skins of kine, nor let thy limbs lie bare to the sharp poison; his slaver burns up what it bespatters. Though the three-forked tongue flicker and leap out of the gaping mouth, and with awful yawn menace ghastly wounds remember to keep the dauntless temper of thy mind; nor let the point of the jagged tooth trouble thee, nor the starkness of the beast, nor the venom spat from the swift ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... his breath got short. This was the consequence of leading a soft and, in a sense, luxurious life, he thought, but when he tried to walk next day he understood the reason better. Still, he did not mean to be left behind in the frozen bush, and as he reached the curve was relieved to see lights flicker about the track. When he stopped a man flashed a lantern into ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... "Are you thinking of going up there?" He considered the question, and his guest, with a flicker in his lighted eyes. "Well, decent is a relative word, you know. However, wonders can be accomplished with a stout rope and a gang of natives, even beyond Dizful. But here you see me and my ark still whole—after a night journey, too. The worst thing is the sun. You see ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... rest. But not all nights. Nights there were when the house would be lighted from cellar to garret, when spectral forms would move in and out of doors, and when shadows would flicker across drawn shades. Such nights were always his nights, for he would hear sounds of merriment, and voices lifted in song, and above the voices, tinkling toward him on the crisp air, the music of a piano. Such nights were his nights, for he knew that his mistress was happy, and he would force ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... be too violent to last. However, it was plain that rage had overmastered the love he had proclaimed. Lida was very much woman and felt the feminine conviction that a lover would be able to find her if his heart were set on the quest. There was only a flicker of a thought along that line; it was mere irritation that was immediately swept away by her pity for him. She was able to comprehend man's talk then—she knew what Vittum meant when he spoke of the chance that was missed—and she understood how Ward Latisan would ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... skipper had ordered all our square sails forward to be set so as to take every advantage of the wind, in addition to our steam-power, the old barquey prancing away full speed ahead, with her topsails and fore canvas bellied out to their utmost extent, their leech lifting occasionally with a flicker as she outran the breeze and the clew-gallant blocks rattling as the sheets slackened and grew taut again, while the wind hummed through the canvas aloft like a thousand bees buzzing ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... and flow, chained to the wheels of moons beyond our ken. Appearances are ghosts. Life is ghost land, where appearances change, transfuse, permeate each the other and all the others, that are, that are not, that always flicker, fade, and pass, only to come again as new appearances, as other appearances. You are such an appearance, composed of countless appearances out of the past. All an appearance can know is mirage. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... not quite a rock, either, for there is grass on it, and a few stunted bushes. But the whole place cannot be much more than ten acres in extent. And, as I live, there are people upon it. I can see smoke, and the flicker of a fire." ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... lightning, slowly turned from him to the girl on the sofa who had not moved. But in her eyes, too, a little flame began to flicker and play, and the fixed smile relaxed into an expression of ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... aurora gleamed with hue so startling. But the sorrow in the hearts of his people passed not away like the fading of the northern lights. His memory lives still in Northumberland; still, when they see the gleam and flicker of the aurora, folk there call it "Lord Derwentwater's Light"; and even yet it is a tradition that dwellers by the stream which flows past Dilston were wont to tell how, on that fatal day, its ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... fighting in the neighborhood of Thiepval, where his battalion had suffered heavily, and at first he was rude and sullen in the hut. I gaged him as a hard Northerner, without a shred of sentiment or the flicker of any imaginative light; a stern, ruthless man. He was bitter in his speech to me because the North Staffords were never mentioned in my despatches. He believed that this was due to some personal spite—not knowing the injustice ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... knocked about the country for six or seven years before I met Peter M'Laughlan again. I was young yet, but felt old at times, and there were times, in the hot, rough, greasy shearing-shed on blazing days, or in the bare "men's hut" by the flicker of the stinking slush-lamp at night, or the wretched wayside shanty with its drink-madness and blasphemy, or tramping along the dusty, endless track—there were times when I wished I could fall back with all the experience I'd got, and sit once more in ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... yet refuses to accept the punishment, and swerves aside from the slum to vagabondage. The average beast in the social pit is either too much of a beast, or too much of a slave to the bourgeois ethics and ideals of his masters, to manifest this flicker of rebellion. But the social pit, out of its discouragement and viciousness, breeds criminals, men who prefer being beasts of prey to being beasts of work. And the mediocre criminal, in turn, the unfit and inefficient ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... scalp-yelp break out, and a storm of bullets struck the tavern, leaving along the forest's edge a low wall of brown vapor, which lingered as though glued to the herbage; and through it, red as candle-flames in fog, the spirting flicker of the rifles played, and the old tavern rang with leaden hail. Suddenly the fusillade ceased. Far away I heard a ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... instead, and, after having passed down stream some twenty yards or more, pushed her skilled way between the little trees of a dense thicket and into a dim, shadowy woods chamber on beyond, where lay another pool, velvety, en-dusked, save for the flicker of the sunlight ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... flicker of the Wyandotte's eyes which seemed to include everybody before him, then he said very coolly that he had seen no riffle that might indicate shallow water, but that there was a ford not far below, and we ought to ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... and I addressed Adele without a flicker of recognition in my face. I piloted them to a table a little apart, ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... indefinitely pleasant in the consciousness that, although a betrothed bride, the young lady still was fancy free: not a bit in love. It was but a marriage of convenience, with mitigations. And so there hovered in my curiosity some little flicker of egotistic romance, which helped to rouse my spirits, and spur me ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was a smuggler; others, even, that he was a wrecker. True it was that often strange lights were seen to flicker outside the bar ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... lamp o' life is burnin' with a clear and steady light, An' it never seems ter flicker, but it's allers shinin' bright; Tho' it sheds its rays unbroken for a thousand happy days— Father Time is ever turnin' down the wick that feeds yer blaze. So it clearly is yer duty ef you've got a thing to do Ter put yer shoulder to ther wheel ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... For a moment the two parties stood staring at each other; then followed a wild and savage scene. With shouts and oaths and battle-cries they fought furiously. The massive, oaken tables were overthrown, by the red flicker of the pole-borne lanterns men grappled and fell and slew each other upon the floor. A priest struck down a yeoman with a brazen crucifix, and next moment himself was brained with its ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... moon stares Time's thinning fabric through, And makes substantial insubstantial seem, And shapes immortal mortal as a dream; And eye and brain flicker as shadows do Restlessly ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... two youthful students studying one page. I see two loving spirits walking through thick darkness. Along the horizon flicker the promises of day. They say, "O Holy Ghost, hast thou forsaken thine own temples?" Aloud ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the first to lash our faces. The sunless cellars, with their mouldy walls and water-seeped floors, where our women sought refuge from shell-fire through the hours of the night, contributed no new or untried experience. In such cellars as these, in their home cities, under the flicker of a tallow candle, they have ministered to the ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... and though the origin of the conviction be of God, and though the voice in my heart be not only my voice, but God's voice there, it will obey those same laws which make human thoughts and emotions vary, and fluctuate, flicker and flame up again, burn bright and burn low, according to a thousand circumstances. The witness of the Spirit, if it were yonder in heaven, would shine like a perpetual star; the witness of the Spirit, here in the heart on earth, burns like a flickering flame, never to be extinguished, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... was little danger of being discovered. In the gable was only the one window for which they were making. Mary went first, as better knowing the path, also as having the better right to look in. Through the window, as she went, she could see the flicker, but not the fire. All at once came a great blaze. It lasted but a moment—long enough, however, to let them see plainly into a small closet, the door ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... awoke it was still pitch dark, except for the flicker of the veiled lamp; and the continual roaring and oscillation testified to the unrelaxed velocity of the train. He sat upright in a panic, for he had been tormented by the most uneasy dreams; it was some seconds before he recovered his self-command; and even after he had resumed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the doorstep and waited. How lovely it all was! How beautiful life was! If one did one's best by life, it did its best too. How steady K.'s eyes were! She saw the flicker of the match across the street, and knew what it meant. Once she would have thought that that was funny; now it seemed ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to glimmer with a flicker of surprise, As I turn it low—to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes, And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke Its fate with my tobacco and ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... suppose the two beasts knew their own business best. The old male polecat seemed to, anyway, for just as the first flicker of dawn was paling the eastern sky he went off down to the mist-hidden dike, and, in no more than ten short minutes, returned with an eel, protesting violently in that horrible way eels have, which he promptly proceeded ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... with extended hands, put his foot on the lower rung, and, turning his head, saw over the shoulder of the nearest man, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over Howard and still working at the door. Graham turned to the ladder again, and was thrust by his conductor and helped up by those above, and then he was standing on something hard and cold and slippery ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... Presently there was a flicker of light as the spark was struck, and at the same moment Roger and Harry grasped hands for a second, for bloody work was ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... gas-lights flicker and play The life of the sempstress ebbs away In the West End ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... easy pace and descended to the beach. The flicker of a match guided him to the searcher. As he drew near, the light went out, and the young man turned ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... I can refuse you nothing," she said, with a last flicker of resistance; "nothing that will make you truly happier. But will this? Are you sure, my husband? Last night, you say, you found him! He may be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... woman paused a moment, and a faint flicker of a smile showed in the wrinkles about her eyes. I asked her to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... responded, "don't be too hasty in your judgment. It's because the corrugated brow will come later that he laughs now. You'll presently find yourself accomplishing the impossible in obedience to the flicker of Rowdy Vaughan's eyelids. Man, did you never observe the set of his head, and the look of his eye? Rowdy Vaughan will get more out of this crowd than any man ever did; and if he fails, he'll fail with the band playing ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... was still some minutes before the flicker of the girl's eyelids proved Jim's words. Then he sighed his relief and for a moment ceased the bathing and examined the wound. Then he reached a cushion from one of the kitchen chairs and folded it ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the granite store-houses by the docks, On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd on each side by the barges—the hay-boat, the belated lighter, On the neighboring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night. Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and yellow light, over the tops of houses, and down into the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... took a hansom, Bob accompanying them. As they drove, Laura sitting sandwiched between the other two, it came over her with a rush what a miserable failure the day had been. A minute before, her spirits had given a faint flicker, for Bob had laid his arm along the back of the seat. Then she saw that he had done this just to pull at the little curls that grew on Tilly's neck. She was glad when the cab drew up, when Tilly ostentatiously took the fat half-crown ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... known it, then? Browne never pretended to know it. Rutowski was not candid with the conditions; the conditions never known nor candidly looked at; and THEY are now replying to him with candor enough. From the first his Enterprise was a final flicker of false hope; going out, as here, by spasm, in the rigors of impossibility and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... very well and had forgotten himself. He took a chair and set it in the open doorway, using the door-post as a rest for his head; and then the cottage was silent. The wind breathed more gently; the stars shone out; the air was soft after the storm; the moonlight made a bright flicker of light and shade over all the outer world. Now and then a grasshopper chirruped, or a little bird murmured a few twittering notes at being disturbed in its sleep; and then came a soft ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... how this presentiment of disaster had taken hold upon her, for the beginning of it must have come as imperceptibly as the first flicker of dusk across the radiance of an afternoon. Looking back, she could almost make herself believe that she had seen its shadow over her early satisfaction in her son's marriage to Diane. Certainly she had felt it there before their honeymoon ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... round the grave and chant with hollow voices, such as skeletons may be supposed to have, a funeral dirge. Meantime Mephistopheles is busy summoning his demons to keep watch over the dead body, lest the soul should escape like a mouse, or flicker up to heaven in a little flamelet. Hideous forms of demons, fat and thin, with straight and crooked horns, tusked like boars and with claws like vultures, come thronging in, while the jaw of hell opens itself, showing in the distance the fiery ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... quivered like a blood of fire. The shadow of their wings fell upon the mountain and the plains, and beneath their wings was silence. Slowly the sun sank, and the shapes of cloud gathered together like a host at the word of its captain, and the flicker of the lightning was as the flash of the spears of a host. I looked, and my heart grew afraid. The lightning died away, the silence deepened and deepened till I could hear it, no leaf moved, no bird called, the world seemed dead—I alone lived in ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard |
