"Flicker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came the ready response, and nothing loth the helmsman changed his course to follow the eccentric craft. She was evidently bound on some secret mission, for not otherwise would she thus tear through the darkness before the wind without the flicker of a light. ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... lies over the slippery floor, And the hens are busily looking around, And the sunbeams flicker, now here, now there, And the breeze blows through with ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was a fire of straw which had to flicker out; but now the Lord will light you a fire of logs by which the offspring of the Philistines shall be consumed. Do you know your ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... As Ruth half hid a pale yellow bud in her heavy, low-coiled hair, the gravity of her mien seemed to deepen. This was partially the result of her father's expressive countenance and voice. If he had smiled, it had been such a faint flicker that it was forgotten in the look of repression that had followed. In the afternoon he had spoken a few disturbing ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... Chaise and Bossuet were ever reminding him that he had topped the summit of his life, and was already upon that downward path which leads to the grave. His wild outburst over the unhappy Fontanges had represented the last flicker of his passions. The time had come for gravity and for calm, neither of which was to be expected in the company ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they kneeled and Alfred prayed, Death and Life met and fought for them. Under the door, tight as it was, and through the keyhole, struggled a hot stifling smoke, merciful destroyer running before fire; and the shadow of a gigantic figure began to flicker in from the outside, and to come and go upon the wall. Alfred did not know what that was, but it gave him a vague hope: he prayed aloud as men pray only for their bodies. (The crowd heard him and hushed ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... right. At exactly one hundred and twenty seconds the Rhamda closed his watch. He spoke something. Again the young man laughed. He lit a cigarette; from the flicker and jerk of the flame he was trembling. But he was still emphatic. The other rose from the table, walked down the aisle and out of the building. The youth spread out both arms and dropped his head ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... may never know, And we may never tell you:— These sudden flashes in your soul, Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds At midnight when the moon is full. They come in solitude, or perhaps You sit with your friend, and all at once A silence falls on speech, and his eyes Without a flicker glow at you:— You two have seen the secret together, He sees it in you, and you in him. And there you sit thrilling lest the Mystery Stand before you and strike you dead With a splendor like the sun's. Be brave, all souls who have such visions As ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... room unsteadily in the dim flicker of the night light, and took the letter held out to her—took it mechanically—wished Mrs. Lorton good night, and went ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... to shrivel up. There was a look of cold efficiency about Rachel Wynne that frightened him. She seemed to be incapable of wasting time or of waywardness. Her career at Newnham, Roger had told him, had been one of steady brilliance. "There wasn't a flicker in it," he had said to Henry. "Rachel's ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... their filthy pack of cards and few centissimi, sprawling in the unstinted sunshine, were nearer the essential truth. They were the profound, because the practical philosophers! Therefore let us gamble, gamble, gamble, be the stake small or great, as long as the merest flicker of life, or fraction of uttermost farthing, is left! And so, when Destournelle took up his lament again, she listened to him, for the moment, with ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the Cointets had come to understand David's character and habits. They did not slander him now; on the contrary, wise policy required that they should allow the business to flicker on; it was to their interest indeed to maintain it in a small way, lest it should fall into the hands of some more formidable competitor; they made a practice of sending prospectuses and circulars—job-printing, as it is called—to the Sechard's establishment. So it came about ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... met Bud's in a flicker of distaste, but she tried to conceal her feelings. "Please sit down," she invited Unger politely. "What square-dance numbers does Mr. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... pale; his eyes deep sunk, and surrounded with two dark circles, while along his worn cheek the tears had marked two channels of purple color. What need of the guillotine there; the lamp of life was in its last flicker ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... is witnessed the touching last-flicker of Etiquette; which sinks not here, in the Cimmerian World-wreckage, without a sign, as the house-cricket might still chirp in the pealing of a Trump of Doom. "Monsieur," said some Master of Ceremonies (one hopes it might be de Breze), as Lafayette, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... you come to me," he assured her. "I have long desired to revenge myself upon your impudent mistress. Often she has made sport of me with her tricking shadows. Often she has even dared to make my own form flicker and dance before me—not as it is—indeed, but twisted and misshapen to please her own mischievous fancy." His eyes glinted with malice, and Black Shadow was well pleased to find him so ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... pleasure from minute to minute of that day, and of the days following. The breath of the air, the notes of the wind instruments, the flicker of sunlight on the gravel, all come back to me as I write, and I taste them again. Dr. Sandford and I went down the road I have described, leading along the edge of the plain at its northern border; from which the view up over the river, between the hills, was very glorious. Fine young ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... In a moment she was driven into a state of mind bordering on distraction. She heard somebody run up the gangway steps. With the idea of gaining time she walked rapidly aft to the taffrail. The light of the brig faced her without a flicker, enormous amongst the suns scattered in the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... wildly, leaned from the shattered window and let drive a few last pot-shots into the dark, at the faint flicker of lights along the crest of the black cliff. In the gloom of the pilot-house, his shoulders bulked huge as he fired. Captain Alden, staggering back, sat down heavily on one ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... flicker onaisy, an' our men roared. 'Opin ordher! Double!' sez Crook. 'Blow, child, blow for the honor ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... flicker of interest Zillah Forsyth looked back across her shoulder. "Engaged? How many times?" she ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... but could not make an effort to save him; that he himself had shut and barred them out. He answered the shout—with a yell, which seemed to make the hundred fires that danced before his eyes tremble and flicker, as if a gust of wind had stirred them. It was of no avail. The strong tide filled his throat, and bore him on, upon ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... to survey the machine before him, not a flicker crossing his expression or betraying consciousness of any unusual event. Rupert's swift look of blended defiance and embarrassment directed towards his chief glided off an ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... face-to-face interview with the man himself; he was accustomed to fight his battles in the open, and to a finish. A faint hope, which had been growing dimmer and dimmer with every passing year, began to flicker once again within his heart. He desired to see this man Murphy, and to learn exactly what ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... professional gravity, tramping across flower-beds and shaking G's hands.) It'-it's-it's !—Gadsby, there's a fair chance—a dashed fair chance. The flicker, y'know. The sweat, y'know I saw how it would be. The punkah, y'know. Deuced clever woman that Ayah of yours. Stopped the punkah just at the right time. A dashed good chance! No—you don't go in. We'll pull ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... throbbing of a ship's engine. I fumed. I was facing little Germany and five littler Germanys strung out behind. You surely remember him? and how when I could n't see things his way he swore to a wrecked heart and a never-to-be-forgotten constancy. Mate! There was no more of a flicker of memory in the stare of his round blue eyes than there would have been in a newly baked pretzel. I stood still, waiting for some glimmer of recognition. Instead, he turned to the pincushion on his arm, whom I took to be Ma O., and I heard him say "Herzallorliebsten." I went straight to the hotel ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... that part of the palace—he was not a human being, but a lamplighter. They went on, down a short flight of broad steps, and then through a wider corridor where the lights were better, though the night breeze was blowing in and made them flicker and flare. ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... ignites with a flicker, and is used for stage lightning. It is the Blitzmehl, or lightning-meal of the Germans, who give it in doses of from fifteen to twenty grains for the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... opened it carefully, still with a lingering suggestion of the panic. If he had been a hero of romance, he reasoned, with a dawning grin, that box would have held exactly one match; and he would have had to light that one very slowly and carefully. Then, at the last instant, the feeble flicker would have gone out, leaving it up to him to invent some method of ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... his eyes to a flicker of myriad lights. The sound was a roaring now—like the surf on the reefs in the hurricane month; or the thunder of maddened steers above him across this flowery sea meadow. Perhaps the man he had killed rode with this stampede? Tedge shrank under the lilies—perhaps they could ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... when the plain was like a sea of liquid black, and the sky blazed with stars, we rode by a sheep-herder's camp. The flicker of a fire threw a glow out into the dark. A tall wagon, a group of silhouetted men, three or four squatting dogs, were squarely within the circle of illumination. And outside, in the penumbra of shifting half light, now showing clearly, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... night—whittled until he had reduced every stick within reach of his hand to a mass of shavings—a beaming childlike glow of satisfaction resting on his handsome face all the while, until the embers of the fire began to sink low, and only an occasional flicker of flame shot up to enlighten the increasing darkness. Then he laid the two implements down and covered them carefully with a piece of deerskin, while his countenance resumed ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... limbs of our elms, which I spare to that end, bring us the flicker every summer, and almost daily I hear his wild scream and laugh close at hand, himself invisible. He is a shy bird, but a few days ago I had the satisfaction of studying him through the blinds as he sat on a tree within a few feet ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... in common to warrant that union. In a word and in the fullest sense of the word, it is sex comradeship. Pre-nuptial love cannot survive marriage any considerable time. It is doomed inexorably to flicker out, and when it has flickered out it must be replaced by affection, or else the parties to it must separate. We well know that many men and women, unable to build up affection on the ruins of love, do separate, or if they do not, continue to live together in cold ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... a violin from a shelf and began to play, softly but with masterly execution. He caught their mood instantly. The harmony was restful and contented. Patsy turned down the lamps, to let the flicker of the firelight dominate the room, and Dan'l understood and blended the flickering light ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... the west, the sun went down in a glare of coppery thunder-rack, and the whole earth broiling under an unspeakable oppression and sultriness paused and panted for the storm. After sunset the remote fires of lightning began to wink and flicker on the horizon, but when bed-time came the storm seemed to have moved no nearer, though a very low unceasing noise of thunder was audible. Weary and oppressed by the stress of the day, Darcy fell at once into a ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... such executives are based upon emotion and not judgment, they flicker out as quickly as the emotion evaporates. Then ensues a period of suspicion, oftentimes wholly unjust. Because the executive lacks real courage, every word and every act of the employee makes him afraid that there is something ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... descended quickly thereafter. The blow had gone straight home, and the last flicker of waning life fled from the titanic form. He went down sprawling; Ben stood waiting to see if another blow was needed. Then the axe fell from ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... took his key from his pocket, opened the vault and went inside, nearly closing the door behind him. Uncle Bushrod saw, through the narrow aperture, the flicker of a candle. In a minute or two—it seemed an hour to the watcher—Mr. Robert came out, bringing with him a large hand-satchel, handling it in a careful but hurried manner, as if fearful that he might be observed. With one hand he closed ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... structure and stood ready amid the bracken. Hinchcliffe gave her a full steam and she came like a destroyer on her trial. There was a crack, a flicker of white water, and she was in our arms fifty yards up the slope; or rather, we were behind her, pushing her madly towards a patch of raw gravel whereon her wheels could bite. Of the bridge remained only a few wildly vibrating hop-poles, and those hurdles which had ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... flickers once more in the huge oven, the baker scrapes incessantly with his shovel, the water simmers in the kettle, and the flicker of the fire on the wall dances as before in silent mockery. While in other men's words we sing out our dumb grief, the weary burden of live men robbed of the sunlight, the ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... watched the flaming will flicker down to a glowing ash. One bandaged hand slowly ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... found out all the crevices in the worm-eaten woodwork that would afford it ingress to the room. But neither Marguerite nor Ffoulkes was conscious of the cold. They had wrapped their cloaks round their shoulders, and did not feel the chill currents of air that caused the lamp to flicker ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... had taken away the one last thread that bound the drowning soul to anything of decency and cleanliness. Now his devil and he no longer struggled together; they walked hand in hand. He was without love, without hope, without one iota that might bring a flicker of light into the midnight gloom of his ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Latini lingers under the burning shower to recommend his Tesoro to his former pupil. There is a comical touch of nature in an author's solicitude for his little work, not, as in Fielding's case, after its, but his own damnation. We are not sure, but we fancy we catch the momentary flicker of a smile across those serious eyes of Dante's. There is something like humor in the opening verses of the XVI. Paradiso, where Dante tells us how even in heaven he could not help glorying in being gently born,—he ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... This was the last flicker of his old enthusiasm and trust in anybody or anything, including himself. With almost the skill of genius Mr. Hunting adroitly, within the limits of the law, swindled them all, and made a vast profit out of their losses. The transaction was not generally known, but even some of the hardened gamblers ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... gathered slowly, and when I put in an appearance on deck to stand my watch, at eight bells of the second dog-watch, it had not yet broken, although an occasional faint flicker of sheet-lightning, away to the eastward, warned us that we might expect it to do so within the next hour or so. At the moment of my appearance on deck, however, there was no very immediate prospect of an outbreak, for the wind although ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... our life; Speech flees before this; Faces turn away from each other; The fire throws light on them; There, too, flames burn and flicker. ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... flicker indication for low levels and it'll fail to trip for unaided thought. Not too much chance of an ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... and Eddring noticed that of the two Mrs. Ellison seemed the more frightened. The younger one was pale, but her eye did not flicker or falter. She looked straight at each man, at Bowles and Buckner, both impassive, at Calvin Blount, now beginning to flush under his fighting choler; yes, and at last at him, John Eddring, pale and serious, but steady as the door-jamb ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... cripple, with one foot in the grave, whose whole feeble mind, whose pride, whose final flicker of hope was concentrated in his boy, must be told that the lad had ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... always neither capered or pranced, Murmex not built for such antics, Palus by nature steady on his feet. But, except that their feet moved cannily, every bit of the rest of either's body was in constant motion and moved swiftly. The gleam and flicker of thrust and parry were inexpressibly rapid. Even the upper tiers craned, breathless and fascinated; and we, further forward, were numb and quivering ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... gulf between them was black and bottomless; they would fade away into the mists of the past once more. Their voices would die, and never again would he hear them—and so the last faint spark of manhood in his soul would flicker out. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... eyes swept the eager face and slim figure of the girl at Jimmy's side. There was the barest flicker of her lids before she raised them and ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... at murder," he replied with careful indifference and no flicker of jocularity. "And it would have to be that, to earn that much money. Two hundred dollars is a fortune; so's one; so's fifty. But I'm kind of particular that way—though the offer is liberal—it is so! ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... fine poem describes the Hindoo ascetic sitting by the bank of the sacred stream and watching the legions as they pass while cannon roar and bayonets gleam. To him they are disturbing phantoms, and he longs for the time when they will flicker away like the smoke of the guns on the windswept hill. He meanwhile sits 'musing and fasting and hoping to die.' Fitzjames is the precise antithesis: his heart was with the trampling legions, and for the ascetic he might feel pity, but certainly neither sympathy nor respect. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... down in the road has been stopped by a blown-out tire. Probably they were in a hurry to get somewhere, too. Now, they're delayed perhaps a half an hour, but it doesn't give us a flicker of concern." ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... long time Ridge watched the flicker of its flames, until they finally died down, and the darkness was only illumined by the fitful flashing of fire-flies. As these were the most brilliant he had ever seen, his eyes followed their zig-zag dartings until they exercised ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... interest of the speakers, and was punctuated with many spells of silence while the two gazed dreamily out across the glass-like surface of the lagoon, indistinguishable now in the velvet blackness, save when a faint flicker of sheet lightning momentarily illuminated it. At the beginning the night was intensely still and silent; there was not even the customary hum of insects or rolling clatter of frogs to accentuate the silence, under the influence of which the white men first, and finally the Indians, fell silent. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... light. Sometimes it leaped up and sometimes it faded, but it got larger, and when they went to bed a red reflection played about the sky. In the morning there was no wind and a heavy trail of smoke stretched across the hills. In places, a bright flicker pierced the dark trail, and Carrie noted a smell of burning when she filled the kettle. Then she saw Jim watching ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... she might wash his wounds with her tears, and dry his damp brow with her glorious hair. Wide-eyed and silent, as the train came near, she moved along by the moat to meet the procession at the drawbridge, not understanding yet, but not letting one movement of the men, one flicker of the lights, one quaver of the deep chant, escape her reeling senses. Then all at once she was aware that Gilbert walked bareheaded before the bier, half wrapped in a long black cloak that swept the greensward behind him. As she turned ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... on the point of going out I throw it down. The little flame's last flicker has lighted up for me the edge of the poor black serge skirt, so worn that it shines a little, even in the evening, and has shown me the girl's shoe. There is a hole in the heel of the stocking, and we have ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... no comments," said Walker Farr with a frank smile which won an answering flicker from the face under the ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... up the mountain pass. I had studied the map so carefully that I was quite sure of my way, but though my appointment with the rascals was for eight o'clock, I wished to reach the appointed spot before the last flicker of grey light had disappeared from ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... He seemed, somehow, to survey Rudolph Musgrave and all his doings with complete and unconcerned aloofness. The man's life, seen in its true proportions, dwindled into the merest flicker of a match; he had such a little while to live, this Rudolph Musgrave! And he spent the serious hours of this brief time writing notes and charts and pamphlets that perhaps some hundred men in all the universe might care to read—pamphlets ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... came to me as with a flicker, and I cuddled down into my bed, and fell asleep in His love as in my ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... A flicker of the eyelid and Norton seemed to regain some degree of consciousness. He was living over again the ages that had passed during the seconds of ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... seemed to be amazed or to find these words wonderful and out of the common. For them the hand of approaching Doom had opened the gates of Distance, and they knew everyone that through these some light had broken on their souls, a faint flicker of dawn from beyond the clouds. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the riders flicker confusedly in a jumble. One horse careers madly along for half the distance, is with difficulty pulled up, and is ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... nor did his eyelids flicker. He was used to the proximity of foes, and the distant report did not cause his heart to miss a single beat. Instead, he felt a sort of dry amusement that they should be so near and yet know it not. How Tandakora would have rejoiced if ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... did not allow an eyelid to flicker at this assumption of superiority for the Six Nations over all other tribes. A great warrior he was, a great politician also, and he wished to unite the Iroquois in a firm league with the tribes of the Ohio valley. The ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for the effect of his solemn warning he was disappointed. Charlie's expression remained unchanged. The ghastly white of his features suggested fear, but it was not added to by so much as a flicker of ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... appear that Francis Sark was an unknown name to their guests, for no flicker of recognition passed over the countenance of any Spaniard. They sat at the long table, and foe drank to foe while fiddle and hautboy made music and the candles slowly wasted and in the hot night the garlands withered. Perfumes were lit in the room, and the ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... clustering candles, Broom and laburnum, untold torches of tremulous gold! Therefore gold-gather again from the honeyed heath and the bean field, Snatching no instant of ease, bright, multitudinous bees! Therefore, ye butterflies, float and flicker from garden to green field, Flicker and float and stay, settle and ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... absurd. I guess it seems awful foolish to you." He moved his cracked patent-leather pump in a sort of pattern on the floor. Again he looked up, this time with a freakish, an almost elfin flicker of his extravagant eyelashes. "There's something I could be real well," he said. "Only, I guess Poppa's got there ahead of me. I could be ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... flicker of lightning in the southwest continued; the wind freshened, blowing in cooler streaks across acres of rattling rushes and dead marsh-grass. A dull light grew through the scudding clouds, then faded as the mid-day sun went out in the smother, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... under the mirror, which catches now and then a flicker of the fire light, and makes it play, as if in wanton, upon the ceiling, lies that big book, reverenced of your New England parents—the Family Bible. It is a ponderous, square volume, with heavy silver clasps, that you have often pressed open for a look at its quaint, old pictures, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... understood her better if he might have met her eye; but she scarcely so much as glanced at him. "Ah here they come—all the good ones!" she said at last; and Paul Overt admired at his distance the return of the church-goers—several persons, in couples and threes, advancing in a flicker of sun and shade at the end of a large green vista formed by the level grass and the ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... answer. "I've known a derelict up-end and sift her engines out of herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weeks on her forward tanks only. We'll run no risks. Pith her, George, and look sharp. There's ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... the skipper's iron features when reference was made to his nerves, and a flicker of some sort illumined the ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... light? We've been sitting in the dark like owls. Come in. [A pause. He strikes a match and holds it above his head. The light shows the open door. A wind, blowing through the doorway, causes the match to flicker, and FREDERIK protects it with ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... seems 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 to vanish with ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... for two or three but gets the mitten." This yere last is a bluff. "Which I reckons now," says Jule, givin' me a look, "if you'd asked me, I'd been fool enough to go." Of course, with that I'm treed; I couldn't flicker, so I allows that if Jule'll caper back to the house with me I'll take ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... stronger light there is a more rapid and a greater loss of the initial intensity of the impression or effect of stimulus, and though each successive effect remains as long, or longer, in dwindling intensity, you get want of continuity, or "flicker."] ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... inference? That this poor rush-light by itself was never meant to lend the ray by which man should read the riddle of the universe. The mystery is too impenetrable and remote for its uncertain flicker to more than make the darkness deeper. What indeed if this were not a light at all, but only part of a light—the carbon point, the fragment of calcium, the reflector in the great Lantern which contains the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... pause, and the most intense silence reigned over the whole scene, which, illuminated as it was by the flicker of the lamps striking out broad patterns of light and shadow upon the rocky walls, was as strange as any I ever saw, even in that unholy land. Upon the ground before the dais were stretched scores of the corpselike forms of the spectators, till at last the long lines ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... twice that number of families, sitting, crouching, standing, or flat on the ground; old and young, women and men, children and dogs, mingled pell-mell. The scene would have been a strange one by daylight: it was doubly strange by the flicker and glare of the lodge-fires. Scowling brows, sidelong looks of distrust and fear, the screams of scared children, the scolding of squaws, the growling of wolfish dogs,—this was the greeting of ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... a swell enabled him to glance incuriously after the steamship. She seemed smaller, less genuine than ever, a shadow shape that boasted visibility solely through that unearthly light on her after deck. Even that now had waned to a mere glimmer, the flicker of a candle lost in the immensities of that night-bound world of empty sky and empty ocean. Even as he that had been named Michael Lanyard was a lost light, a tiny flame that guttered toward its ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... showed it in every quick, graceful turn he made. His partner was the type of woman that dancing might have been invented to show off; it gave her lazy, graciously built body a reason for being, and put a flicker of meaning into her shallow eyes so that she was not floridly pretty any longer, but beautiful. This was peculiarly apparent when she danced with Mr. Sebastian. She seemed to have been created for the purpose of dancing with ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... into the light a low, sibilant whisper reached him. At the cross-corridor doorway he was in time to see the flicker of a vanishing gray garment and a sandaled foot on a naked ankle flash over the vestibule wave-check. He shook ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... to uncover the prowlers, but the flareup revealed only an enlarged circle of great trees and emphasized their shadows. He sat motionless, his eyes focussed sharply upon the spot, and as the fire died down he saw the flicker of a dark form as it darted from the shadow of the tree and dissolved into the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... of peasants armed with scythes and carrying torches which flicker in the frosty air have invaded the slopes and flats of the military zone. They are yelling "Vive l'Empereur!" at the top of their voices, and from walls and bastions reverberates the answering ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... when they came to the end of the road, rose a hill with a broad plateau on its stomach. Here through the dull haze of the morning they saw smoky-orange lights beginning to flicker uncertainly as the wind that heralds the sunrise came fitfully up. The soft wet grass under their feet was flecked with little grayish-silver cobwebs, and here and there they heard the morning chirp of ground-nesting birds. As they went farther up the hill ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... was once left in the room alone with a baby who was learning to creep. On the hearth an open fire was smouldering. Suddenly there was a bright little flicker of flame and the logs blazed up once more. Pleased with the sight, the baby began to creep towards the fire as fast as he could go. The dog saw the danger at once and seized the baby's dress tightly between his teeth. Baby pulled ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... relieved by clumps of oaks with patches of short wild grass; and every mile or two was a chain of cobalt slews, with the flicker of blackbirds' ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... looked in that direction, and saw a smooth polished object with a brass pipe. The flicker from the fire reached him across the snow. The Snow-man felt wonderfully happy, and a feeling came over him which he could not express; but all those who are not ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... door thrown wide open, Jimmy, turning on his pillow, could see vanishing beyond the straight line of top-gallant rail, the quick, repeated visions of a fabulous world made up of leaping fire and sleeping water. The lightning gleamed in his big sad eyes that seemed in a red flicker to burn themselves out in his black face, and then he would lie blinded and invisible in the midst of an intense darkness. He could hear on the quiet deck soft footfalls, the breathing of some man lounging on the doorstep; the low creak of swaying masts; or the calm voice of ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... quite as much to the faint flush that had accented Mainwaring's own smile as to the embarrassing remark itself. Mrs. Bradley and Miss Macy exchanged rapid glances. Bradley, who alone retained his composure, with a slight flicker of amusement in the corner of his eye and nostril, said quickly: "You see, Mainwaring, how nature stands ready to help your convalescence at every turn. If Miss Minty had only followed up her healing opportunity, your cure would have ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... group, the big steam-tug closely flanked on each side by the barges—the hay-boat, the belated lighter, On the neighbouring 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 ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... 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 if not openly that he would never salute this man. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... shadows drink hot tea. Yearning people sway on a hardened pond Workers find a soft woman's corpse. Glowing blue snows cast a howling darkness. On high poles a scarecrow, implored, hangs. Stores flicker dimly through frosted windows, In front of which human bodies move like ghosts. Students carve a frozen girl. How lovely, the crystalline winter evening burning! A platinum moon now streams through a gap in the houses. Next to green lanterns under a bridge ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... would not come to the Louvre, I am bringing the Louvre's chief treasure to her. As it is the last, so is it the best of my copies. My hand was losing its cunning, I felt myself growing old, so I prayed to that sweet Madonna to give me one last flicker of the immortal fire ere it left me a dry cinder. Well, she listened, I think. Ave Maria! the great Spaniard himself would rub his eyes if he could see this. Now, I shall go back contented, and dream of the days ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... quarters are glorified for me. I've been fond of them before—they're the background to a good many inward struggles and a considerable amount of inward peace, but now—" He looked about him with new eyes, noting the dull gleam of gold with which the chestnut ceiling answered the searching flicker of the fire, the brighter sparkles which were struck out from the gilded lettering on the books which lined the walls, and the diamond-like flashes from the polished steel of the tools on the work-bench at ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Mr. Carter quietly. The expression on his face did not change, but Tommy caught the flicker of despair in his eyes. It convinced him as nothing else had done ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... comes, the leaves flutter and dangle idly about, as if with a languid protest against all disturbance of their perfect rest. The mocking-birds absolutely refuse to sing before twelve o'clock at night, when the air is somewhat cooled: and the fireflies flicker more slowly than I ever saw them before. Our whole world here yawns, in a vast and sultry spell of laziness. An 'exposition of sleep' is come over us, as over Sweet Bully Bottom; we won't wake till winter. Himmel, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... not to deprive me of the bed, I spread half a dozen skins upon the hearth, and giving him a pipe well filled with tobacco, retired to my couch, and lay watching his huge form by the faint flicker of the fire, which had begun to ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the time was ripe to pronounce its anathema against all peoples seeking their liberties elsewhere than in the grace of their legitimate sovereigns. Yet the spirit of revolt was abroad, and its flames continued to flicker up at widely separated points. On February 26, the Portuguese troops in Brazil rose in revolt. The king, still residing at Rio Janeiro, was compelled to appoint a new Ministry pledged to give to both Portugal and Brazil a new representative system. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... recommenced nowhere, nowhere except at Sans-Souci, nowhere except in the apartment of the king; while his people slept, the king watched, he watched to work and think for his people. Without the wind howled and blew the snow against his window, and made even the fire in his room flicker; but the king heeded it not. He had completed his toilet and drunk his chocolate; now he was working. It did not disturb him that his room was cold, that the candle on his table gave but a poor light, and even ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... hungry, 'n see a boy below him. Sumthin' tol' him t' jump. Tail went swish in the leaves like thet. His whiskers quivered, his tongue come out. C'u'd think o' nuthin' but his big empty belly. The boy was scairt. He up with his gun quick es a flash. Aimed at his eyes 'n let 'er flicker. Blew a lot o' smoke 'n bird shot 'n paper waddin' right up in t' his face. The panther he lost his whiskers 'n one eye 'n got his hide fill' o' shot 'n fell off the tree like a ripe apple 'n run fer his life. Thought he'd never see nuthin' c'u'd growl 'n spits powerful ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... 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 said: ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... A flicker of fear in her eyes told Ben that she knew he would blast her without mercy. They fell in ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston
... talked on to let her gain confidence. When he was silent she sang from memory. It was a song of flourishes: one of those be-flowered arias in which the notes flicker and leap like young flames. Others might have sung it; and though it spoke favourably of her aptitude and musical education, and was of a quality to enrapture easy, merely critical audiences, it won no applause ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... instant, as he bent over her, he thought Dalla had been killed, an assumption justified by his knowledge of the deadliness of Akor-Neb bullets. Then he saw her eye-lids flicker. A moment later, he had the explanation of her escape. The bullet had hit the game bag at her side; it was full of spools of metal tape, in metal cases, and notes in written form, pyrographed upon sheets of plastic ring fastened into metal binders. Because ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... had produced on her when they were full of their natural light. She felt sure that her mother must have been a lovely, gentle woman. There were gleams of a beautiful nature shining through some ill-defined medium which disturbed and made them flicker and waver, as distant images do when seen through the rippling upward currents of heated air. She loved, in her own way, the old black woman, and seemed to keep up a kind of silent communication with her, as if they did not require the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... reclined, was blazoned with the heraldic insignia of Granada's monarchs. His guard, and his mutes, and his eunuchs, and his courtiers, and his counsellors, and his captains, were ranged in long files on either side the canopy. It seemed the last flicker of the lamp of the Moorish empire, that hollow and unreal pomp! As Muza approached the monarch, he was startled by the change of his countenance: the young and beautiful Boabdil seemed to have grown suddenly old; his eyes were sunken, his countenance sown with wrinkles, and his voice ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Warbler appears. Once identify a Barn Swallow coursing through the air, and a long {16} stride is made toward the identification of the Cliff or Tree Swallow when one swings into view. The flight of the Flicker, the Goldfinch, the Nighthawk, and the Sparrow Hawk, is so characteristic in each case that I have often been able to name the bird for a student upon being told its approximate size and the character of its flight. Who can see a Wild Duck swimming, or a Gull flying, without at ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... did not alter by the flicker of an eyelash. She had been looking steadily at him, and she still stared steadily. But she felt her throat thicken, and the blood begin to pump ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris |
