"Fluency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... throughout the constituencies, were carried forward with redoubled energy. In the Tudley End division, Aldous Raeburn was fighting a somewhat younger opponent of the same country-gentleman stock—a former fag indeed of his at Eton—whose zeal and fluency gave him plenty to do. Under ordinary circumstances Aldous would have thrown himself with all his heart and mind into a contest which involved for him the most stimulating of possibilities, personal and public. But, as these days went over, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ignorance, and who would warn the weasel to keep awake. How should a small-eyed, feebly crowing mortal like him be quicker in arithmetic than the keen-faced forcible Aquila, in whom universal knowledge is easily credible? Looked into closely, the conclusion from a man's profile, voice, and fluency to his certainty in multiplication beyond the twelves, seems to show a confused notion of the way in which very common things are connected; but it is on such false correlations that men found half their inferences about each other, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Belwick to-day,' she began, sitting very close to Mrs. Waltham, whose lap she kept touching as she spoke with excited fluency. 'I've seen Mrs. Yottle. My dear, what do you ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... had a failing it was this: nothing on earth would induce him to talk his own language to his master. He was unmoved by encouragement, unconvinced by the fluency of Manvers' Castilian periods; he would have risked his place upon this one point ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... necessarily obtain the unbounded admiration and attachment of the virtuous and the wise. Lord Eldon's eloquence," continues Sir Egerton, "is rather adapted to cultivated and thinking minds than to a popular audience. It generally addresses the understanding rather than the fancy. It frequently wants fluency, but occasionally is tinged with a high degree ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... of the Reverend James McVean, who was born near Johnstown, New York, in 1796. He was a graduate of Union College in 1813, and of Princeton in 1819. It was said that he spoke seven languages with fluency and that the chair of Greek at Princeton was always open to him. He came to Georgetown about 1820 and married Jane Maffitt Whann in 1828. For twenty years he was the principal of a classical seminary for boys in Georgetown, the same one founded by Dr. David Wiley. ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... insolence of some low fellow, and with other advantages. But the point is, to be cool in danger and embarrassments, which, if a man cannot be, let him go into The Great Desert at his peril. It was for the same reason I would not bring with me an European servant from Tripoli, whose fluency in Arabic might have been attended with the greatest danger to us both instead of assistance. Said is pestered with questions about me or my affairs; but at times Said is stupid enough, and people get tired of asking him questions. I must mention, however, one thing to his credit ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... who came in almost immediately, was charming, speaking English with fluency, although he has never ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the vocal cords are the principal agents in the formation of the voice. The tongue, which many have supposed to be the most important organ in speaking, is not essential to sound. In several instances it has been removed, and the persons thus mutilated could speak with fluency. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... this gone out, had returned with a supply of palm leaves, and sat down to make a hat, while Lord Reginald opened one of the books, and with considerable fluency translated a portion of its contents. Dick listened attentively while he plaited away at the hat, stopping every now and then to ask ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... was an impediment to fluency of conversation, but after a moment Tommy mastered it and went on. "I say, Bicky, what's gone ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... darkness an endless, garrulous appeal for mercy. A sense of danger, of daring, had alone nerved Carthew to enter the forecastle; and here was the enemy crying and pleading like a frightened child. His obsequious "Here, sir," his horrid fluency of obtestation, made the murder tenfold more revolting. Twice Carthew raised the pistol, once he pressed the trigger (or thought he did) with all his might, but no explosion followed; and with that the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... avoit pu blesser Monsieur Mirobolant, et qu'il donnoit sa parole comme un gentilhomme qu'il ne l'avoit jamais, jamais—intende," said Pen, who made a shot at a French word for "intended," and was secretly much pleased with his own fluency and correctness in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... socket, and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louis thirty-four years and had never been across the river during that period. Then he wandered into a very flowing lecture, filled with classic names and allusions, which was quite wonderful for fluency until the fact became rather apparent that this was not the first time, nor perhaps the fiftieth, that the speech had been delivered. He was a good deal of a character, and much better company than the sappy literature he was selling. A random remark, connecting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... harshness made those in the next room tremble; yet feminine in her tastes, skilful with her needle, fond of embroidery work, striking the lute with a touch remarkable for its science and feeling, speaking many languages, including Latin, with fluency and grace; most feminine, too, in her constitutional sufferings, hysterical of habit, shedding floods of tears daily at Philip's coldness, undisguised infidelity, and frequent absences from England—she almost awakens compassion and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to suffer. It was not the pain and burden to me that it had been. I often whistled at my desk, and wrote with far more fluency than before. I accomplished my tasks impatiently, as anxious to be off to my helpful retreat as a drunkard is to ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... talked so well that the girl wondered why Mrs. Heeny had found her lacking in conversation. But though Undine thought silent people awkward she was not easily impressed by verbal fluency. All the ladies in Apex City were more voluble than Mrs. Fairford, and had a larger vocabulary: the difference was that with Mrs. Fairford conversation seemed to be a concert and not a solo. She kept drawing ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... out her hands to emphasise her helplessness, then let them drop to her sides again. There was a silence, for Maurice could not think of anything to say; her fluency made him tongue-tied. He struggled with his embarrassment until they were all but within earshot of the rest, at the bottom of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... threats against Julian, mingled with fierce cries and reproaches, calling him Asiatic, Greek, a cheat, and a fool pretending to be wise. And as it is commonly the case among soldiers that some men are found of remarkable fluency of speech, they poured forth such harangues ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... night. Cowper had a similar experience with 'John Gilpin,' and Burns's powerful dramatic tale, 'Tam O'Shanter,' was produced with great ease and rapidity. De Quincey records that, in his own case, his very best work was frequently done when he was writing against time. Scott's energy and fluency of composition are clearly indicated in the following passage in Lockharts ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... eating, with Henrietta Temple in the room, Ferdinand found that quite impossible. The moment she appeared, his appetite vanished. Anxious to speak, yet deprived of his accustomed fluency, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... still ringing in the ears of his conscience-stricken accusers, Edward O'Meagher Condon commenced to speak. He was evidently more of an orator than either of those who had preceded him, and he spoke with remarkable fluency, grace, and vigour. The subjoined is a correct report of his spirited ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... them, and they would follow him anywhere. He had been British Military Attache in Berlin for some years, and had thus acquired an intimate knowledge of the German Army. An excellent linguist, he spoke French with ease and fluency, and he used to astonish French soldiers by his intimate knowledge of the history of their regiments, which was often far in excess of what they knew themselves. His military acquirements were ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... little up the hill-side, Willie Ferrars was holding the hand of the chestnut-curled, black-eyed fairy, 'little Awk,' who was impressing him by her fluency in two languages at once, according as she chattered to him in English, or in French to a picturesque peasant, her great ally, who was mowing his flowery crop of hay, glancing like an illumination, with an under-current of ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... perfectly insensible to the labour; articles came from him as easily as ordinary talk; the fountain seemed to be always full, and had only to be turned on to the desired end. The chief fault which I should be disposed to find with these articles is doubtless a consequence of this fluency. He has not taken time to make them short. They often resemble the summing-up of a judge, who goes through the evidence on both sides in the order in which it has been presented to him, and then states the 'observations ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... labyrinth by which thou canst gain the embankment of the river, and from thence betake thyself speedily home, . . if thou hast a home..." here he paused, and a keen, questioning glance flashed in his dark eyes. "But,—notwithstanding thy fluency of speech and fashion of attire, methinks thou hast the lost and solitary air of one who is a stranger in the city ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the opening lines to herself, then turning the page began to translate from the Greek with great ease and fluency: ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... letters. It appears to me a certainty that the original sentence was written in a proper manner, and afterwards distorted by a law which we have yet to discover. Whoever possesses the key of this cipher will read it with fluency. What is that key? Axel, have you ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... and inherited sentiment, the growth of thousands of years, that English education has less effect than might be expected in loosening the bonds of beliefs which seem to every one but a Hindoo the merest superstition. Hindoos who can read English with fluency, and write it with accuracy, are often extremely devout, and Hindoo devoutness must ever appear to an outsider, even to a European as sympathetic as the author, to be no better than superstition. A Hindoo able to read English with ease has at his command all the rich stores of the knowledge ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... was lived among shadows and abstractions. He thought deeply, but he neither looked widely nor listened intently, and when all is said he remains no more than a brilliant amorist, too super-subtle for complete sincerity, whose fluency and sweetness ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... moment Tom is at his father's side. What need to describe the sacred joy of those first few minutes, even if it were possible? But unrestrained tenderness between man and man, rare as it is, and, as it were, unaccustomed to itself, has no passionate fluency, no metaphor or poetry, such as man pours out to woman, and woman again to man. All its language lies in the tones, the looks, the little half-concealed gestures, hints which pass themselves off modestly in jest; and such was Tom's first interview with his father; till ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... erect and firm. Then the pitying spectators seized Dilly Boy, and, holding him, unlocked the pinchers. He rolled over—it was the only easeful attitude—as he cursed all gins, crabs, and dynamiters with wondrous fluency. And may the potency of those coloured ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... attached, very little to do beyond an occasional forty-mile run to D.H.Q. and back over dull roads. The signal office was established in a large room on the side of the house nearest to the Germans. It was constructed almost entirely of glass. Upon this the men commented with a grave fluency. The windows rattled with shrapnel bursting 600 yards away. The house was jarred through and through by the concussion of a heavy battery firing over our heads. The room was like a toy-shop with a lot of small children sounding all the musical toys. The vibrators ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... rather opulent beauty, with large dark eyes for all men, and a luxurious manner of lying back and fanning herself. She talked, soft-voiced, in half a dozen languages, changing from one to the other without a break in either her fluency or her thought. Her little lithe, active husband sat around and adored her. He was apparently a very able citizen indeed, for he was going out to take charge of the construction work on a German railway. To have filched so important a job from the Germans themselves shows that he must have ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... promptly as parliamentary forms and mysteries would allow, there was a bill under the astonished noses of honorable lawgivers, removing the seat of legislation from Slowburg and centring it in Fastburg. This bill Mr. Thomas Dicker supported with that fluency and fiery enthusiasm of oratory which had for a time enabled him to show as the foremost man of his State. Great was the excitement, great the rejoicing and anger. The press of Fastburg sent forth shrieks of exultation, and the ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... rich enough finding their amusement in Parliament, which was regarded as the most interesting club in London, and in its debates, of which the charm, for those who take part in them, lies in the fact that for success not knowledge of a subject, but fluency, ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... And we started to do it too. And then, and then—it rained. Rained, sir, till our trains and guns were mired, and we couldn't budge! And all the time we knew that regiment after regiment was stacking arms off there at Shrevepoht. Did Little Joe rave? Opened Job his mouth? He did. His fluency gave the rain pointers. I sho'ly absorbed some myself, me, that have language tanks of my own. Well, I reckon all our hearts pretty near broke. But we had our Missouri general and our Missouri governor, and the Old Brigade just decided to come ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... discussion that require speaking without thought, on anything or nothing that can be at the moment invented, are likely to be mischievous. Thought suggests expression, and exact thought will find fit form. Sound thinking is the main thing. Practice for mere fluency tends to the habit of superficial thinking, and produces the wearisome, endless talker. In this connection emphasis may be laid upon the point of ending a speech when its purpose is accomplished, and that as soon as can be. Many speeches ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... symphony, down to pianoforte variations, rondos, and dances, and in none of them did he fail to be pleasing and intelligible, not even where, as especially in his sacred music, he made use—a sparing use—of contrapuntal devices, imitations, and fugal treatment. The naturalness, fluency, effectiveness, and practicableness which distinguish his writing for voices and instruments show that he possessed a thorough knowledge of their nature and capability. It was, therefore, not an empty rhetorical phrase to speak of him initiating his pupils "a la science du contre-point et ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the dust streaks moving southward. Down on the swampy bank, squat between the cypress knees, Steve drank again, and then again,—in fact, emptied the squat, black bottle. The stuff filled him with a tremendous courage, and conferred upon him great fluency of thought. He waxed eloquent to the cypress roots upon the conduct of the war. "Gawd! if they'd listen ter me I'd te—tell them how!—I'd bui—build a bridge for the whole rotten army to cross on! Ef it broke I'd ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... fellow as a rule, and, like the Emperor, perfectly willing to admit that his navy is closely modelled on that of Great Britain. Moreover, in addition to a thorough knowledge of his profession, he is able, in two cases out of three, to converse with useful fluency in English, French, and in some cases ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... superintending the fitting out of his new vessel. Our hero made good progress during the few months that he remained at the pension, and when McElvina returned to take him away, not only could speak the French language with fluency, but had also made considerable progress in what Sir W. C—- used to designate in his toast as "the three R's,"—viz., "Reading, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... from his trance of watching, it was to turn upon Watton with impatience. How long was this thing going on? The British workman spoke with deplorable fluency. Couldn't they push their way ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... curse with amazing fluency in French and Arabic, while his orderly fell into half-hysterical prayer. Bristol—stolid Englishman though he was—had to make a strong effort to keep his teeth from chattering. The two Italians, one with an ugly wound on the jaw, burst ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... who had drawn close to Norah, and was contemplating his right hand, which had been nearly shaken off by the four from Billabong. The Hindu's English was not equal to his sense of friendship, and conversation with him lacked fluency. It was some time before Jim could make him understand that they wanted him to return to the station—and indeed, it was Norah who made ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... dotting of his i's. I have also received your letter bearing date June 1st; and note, with great satisfaction, your statement that he has been most assiduous in his studies, and that he is already able to converse with some fluency in Spanish. ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... thought of his duplicity which these recollections aroused—thoughts which were interrupted by The Sheik, who instructed the Hon. Morison to write a letter to the British consul at Algiers, dictating the exact phraseology of it with a fluency that indicated to his captive that this was not the first time the old rascal had had occasion to negotiate with English relatives for the ransom of a kinsman. Baynes demurred when he saw that the letter was addressed to the consul ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... French valet,—that inestimable valet, Jean Desmarais,—sitting over a small fire, was watching the operations of a coffee-pot, and conversing, in a mutilated attempt at the language of our nation, though with the enviable fluency of his own, with the various loiterers who were beguiling the hours they were obliged to wait for an audience of the master himself, by laughing at the master's Gallic representative. There stood a tailor with his books of patterns ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deliberation; a free stream of ideas spontaneously obeying a sense or order, harmony, and form. Eloquence in the informal discourse of the parlour or the country walk did not mean in Diderot's case the empty fluency and nugatory emphasis of the ordinary talker of reputation. It must have been both pregnant and copious; declamatory in form, but fresh and substantial in matter; excursive in arrangement, but forcible and pointed in intention. No doubt, if he was a sage, he was sometimes ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... informs us, that Thomas Hunt, the author, was educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, and was esteemed a person of quick parts, and of a ready fluency in discourse, but withal too pert and forward. He was called to the bar, and esteemed a good lawyer. In 1659 he became clerk of the assizes at Oxford circuit, but was ejected from the office at the Restoration, to his great loss, to make room for ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... plectro. Charles d'Orleans, that captive and captivating prince, wrote thousands of rondeaux; even before his time a gallant company of gentlemen composed the Livre des Cent Ballades, one hundred ballades, practically unreadable by modern men. Then came Clement Marot, with his gay and rather empty fluency, and Ronsard, with his mythological compliments, his sonnets, decked with roses, and led like lambs to the altar of Helen or Cassandra. A few, here and there, of his pieces are lighter, more pleasant, and, in ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the Castilian with much elegance and correctness. She had an easy fluency of discourse, which, though generally of a serious complexion, was occasionally seasoned with agreeable sallies, some of which have passed into proverbs. [23] She was temperate even to abstemiousness in her diet, seldom or never tasting wine; [24] and so frugal in ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... reading of Italian, even very crabbed and ancient Italian which might have puzzled more than one "elegant scholar," became quite easy and familiar to me, but I have never attained a colloquial mastery over the language. I can talk, to be sure, with the most incorrect fluency, and I can make myself understood—at all events by Italians, whose quick, sympathetic apprehension of one's meaning, and courteous readiness to assist a foreigner in any linguistic straits, are deserving of grateful ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... look of anxiety and depression invaded her small face. He guessed that she was thinking of her pictures, and began timidly to speak to her about them. When they returned to the world of art, his fluency left him; he felt crushed beneath the weight of his own ignorance ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... astonishment soon gives way to softer emotions; all they do and say breathes the utmost frankness and sincerity. One circumstance which I cannot help remarking is, that after living so many years in this sequestered retreat, they speak French with equal fluency and purity. I was likewise much struck with the little resemblance there is between them. Lady Eleanor has a charming face, embellished with the glow of health; her whole appearance and manner announce vivacity and the most unaffected gaiety. Miss Ponsonby has a fine countenance, ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... conceived he had been some while observing me from a distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on the breech of a piece of cannon. So soon as our eyes met, he drew near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a good fluency but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this sweetness and fluency, the scientific construction of the metre of the 'Faery Queene' is very noticeable. One of Spenser's arts is that of alliteration, and he uses it with great effect in doubling the impression of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... difficulty with the left hand was remedied; after that I am sure I could make a real clavier player out of her. It is a pity; she has so much genius, reads respectably, has a great deal of natural fluency and plays with ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... be seen on horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... dress—as to spelling; spelling borrowed from Artemus Ward. The appropriator of the tale had a wide reputation in the West, and was exceedingly popular. Deservedly so, I think. He wrote some of the breeziest and funniest things I have ever read, and did his work with distinguished ease and fluency. His name has passed out ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... by this cascade of smooth fluency, Valerie, still with her deepened color, here murmured that she, too, cared for the truth, but the current bore her on. "I don't think you see it, mama, else you could hardly have hurt ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... self-knowledge, self-control" needful to make a sound race they have an encouraging share. Of artistic, poetic, or scientific talent, of wit, originality, or inventiveness, there is yet but little sign. In writing they show facility often, distinction never; in speech fluency and force of argument, and even, sometimes, lucidity, but not a flash of the loftier eloquence. Nor has the time yet arrived for Young New Zealand to secure the chief prizes of its own community—such posts and distinctions as go commonly to ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... unnecessary, for, while his speech lacked in the characteristic fluency of other speeches, while the shock and pain caused his argument to be somewhat labored, yet it was with a soldierly firmness and iron determination, which more than all things in Roosevelt's career discloses to the country the real Roosevelt, ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... The copious ridicule of the press has no effect upon this serious gathering. Its verbose platitudes and pretentious inanities continue to be repeated, furnishing almost as good an antithesis to science and philosophy as Mrs. Eddy and her disciples. There is no lack of fluency and ingenuity in the use of language, and occasionally there are glimmering and flashes of common sense, but to wander through the first report of the present session, in pursuit of a correct philosophic idea, is as unprofitable as to wander all day through wintry snows to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the musical structure of "Hansel und Gretel" in the Wagnerian manner, but has done it with so much fluency and deftness that a musical layman might listen to it from beginning to end without suspecting the fact, save from the occasional employment of what may be called Wagnerian idioms. The little work is replete with melodies which, though original, ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... into the water—to pave the way for her boy, I suppose; for she could not have deceived herself so far as to think Catherine would allow her to settle the temperature. During the ablution she kneeled down opposite the little Gerard, and prattled to him with amazing fluency; taking care, however, not to articulate like grown-up people; for, how could a cherub ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... been so kind as to favor me. The appearance and manners of the audience are more interesting to me than those of the stage-actors. Besides, I like to accustom my ear to the Spanish, which I now speak with considerable fluency and correctness. I have devoted much study to this and the French language since I have been in Spain, and am now making some progress in the Italian, through the Spanish. I am convinced that no man can properly understand a people without knowing something of their language, which ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... you should learn to write a good commercial hand, and also acquire, as soon as possible, a very thorough knowledge of the French language. For these you should employ the best teachers that can be found. Your wife can help you in many ways. She has learned to spell correctly, to read with fluency and expression, and to play quite well on the piano. You will find it very profitable to read good books aloud to each other. I advise you not to go to places of amusement oftener than once a fortnight, and always to choose such places as will be suitable and pleasant for your wife. I ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... all-important sense underlying the sound-symbols. But in works of imagination mar. wants a treatment totally different, a style which, by all or any means, little mattering what they be, can avoid the imminent deadly risk of languor and monotony and which adds to fluency the allurement of variety, of surprise and even of disappointment, when a ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... this is based the logical topic of Aristotle, of which teachers and rhetoricians could avail themselves, in order, under certain titles of thought, to observe what would best suit the matter they had to treat, and thus enable themselves to quibble and talk with fluency ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... the imagination, the heart, and the conscience of man, he should possess, or attain to, the mechanical ingenuity that can satisfy man's constructive understanding, the elegance that can please his sensuous taste, the fluency that can blend ease with instruction, and the music that can touch through the ear the inner springs of his being. Heart and genius, art and nature, sympathy with man and God, love of the beautiful apparition of the universe, and of that divine halo of Christianity which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... have mastered English remarkably well," I could not help remarking, for she was speaking with great fluency, and with hardly any accent. This seemed to please her, for she gave me one of those ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... completing his task a man reads his own composition with utter amazement at its depth, its grasp, its beauty, and force of expression, and wonders whence came the thoughts that stand on the page before him. If called to speak in public, opium gives him a copiousness of thought, a fluency of utterance, a fruitfulness of illustration, and a penetrating, thrilling eloquence, which often astounds and overmasters himself, not less than it kindles, melts, and sways the audience he addresses. I might dilate ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... eyes on Worth's face talked louder than her tongue, but that also gained fluency as he looked back at her and nodded. "Stunts!" she repeated his word bitterly. "I didn't expect you to come back asking me to do stunts. I hated it all so—working out things like a calculating machine!" Her voice sank to a ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... Signor," said the Grand Judge. "Believe me, however, the most eloquent advocate has less influence over a conscientious judge than the facts of the case, the light which illumines them, and which it is their duty to make brilliant in our eyes, rather than seek an opportunity to display their fluency and their political opinions, or, worse yet, to produce ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... white men while he listened. Of the blanket-vending, depot-haunting type was this young man, with a ready smile and a quick eye for a bargain and a smattering of English learned in his youth at a mission, and a larger vocabulary of Mexican that lent him fluency of speech when the mood to talk was on him. Half of his hair was cut so that it hung even with his ear-lobes. At the back it was long and looped up in the way a horse's tail is looped in muddy weather, and ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... seen in comparing his early prose — the war letters and "Tiger Lilies", for instance, or such essays as "Retrospects and Prospects" — with that of his maturer years. I doubt if justice has been done to Lanier's best style, its clearness, fluency, and eloquence. It may be claimed without dispute that he was a rare good letter-writer; perhaps only Lowell's letters are more interesting. The faults of his poetry are not always seen in his best letters. In them there is a playfulness, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... seated in a stiff, high-backed arm-chair, with a small round table, containing a desk and a work-basket on one side of her, and her little boy on the other, who stood leaning his elbow on her knee, and reading to her, with wonderful fluency, from a small volume that lay in her lap; while she rested her hand on his shoulder, and abstractedly played with the long, wavy curls that fell on his ivory neck. They struck me as forming a pleasing contrast to all the surrounding objects; but of course their position was immediately changed ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... its most important exhibit three portraits by J. C. Johansen, on wall B, all typical of the brilliant fluency of this remarkable painter. Among the landscapes here the most important are the two Schofields on wall D, typical of the best and sanest phase of Impressionism in America. Very important too are the canvases by Daniel Garber ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... to New York, and, if called upon to read aloud, would have shown the effects of want of practice, in his frequent blunders. But the daily lessons in reading which he now took began to remedy this deficiency, and give him increased fluency and facility. It also had the effect of making him wish that his education had not been interrupted, so that his Cousin Charles might not be ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... spoke their tongue as easily as he spoke any other that came to the post, naturally and with quiet fluency. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... may be wrong and he, right, all through. But ... 'more intense than Sappho'!—more intense than intensity itself!—to think of that!—Also the word 'poetry' has a clear meaning to me, and all the fluency and facility and quick ear-catching of a tune which one can find in the world, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... half-way, their talk lapsed, and lapsed, and lapsed. The breaks became more numerous and lasted longer. Condy began to wonder if he was boring her. No sooner had the suspicion entered his head than it hardened into a certainty, and at once what little fluency and freshness he yet retained forsook him on the spot. What made matters worse was his recollection of other evenings that of late he had failed in precisely the same manner. Even while he struggled to save the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... more than that in the brass match-safe in question, but her instinct of hoarding had led her to keep it a secret from her husband. Now she lied to him with prompt fluency. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... this winter: "The children, in whose welfare you take so kindly an interest, are making most favourable progress. The eldest, "Pussy" (the Princess Royal at three years of age), is now quite a little personage. She speaks English and French with great fluency and choice of phrase.... The little gentleman (the Prince of Wales) is grown much stronger than he was.... The youngest (Princess Alice) is the beauty of the family, and is an extraordinarily ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... two islands of an archipelago, in an ocean of heather, sat a boy and a girl, the girl knitting, or, as she would have called it, weaving a stocking, and the boy, his eyes fixed on her face, talking with an animation that amounted almost to excitement. He had great fluency, and could have talked just as fast in good English as in the dialect in which he was now pouring out his ambitions—the broad Saxon ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... stopped his fluency by inquiring whether he had been into them all; and when he said he had not, she took advantage of that admission to inform him that in two days' time she should be able to tell him a great deal more than he was likely to tell her, upon his method ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... great one—had preceded him to Rome, but it was found to fall short of his merits. He has consummate oratorical power, fluency and choice of expression, and though he always speaks extempore his speeches might have been carefully written out long beforehand. He speaks in Greek, and that the purest Attic; his prefatory remarks are polished, neat and agreeable, and occasionally stately ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... place, we find ourselves in a situation unparalleled in the world's history." Ralph had the air of one who is saying aloud for the first time what he has said to himself many times. At any rate, he proceeded with an unusual fluency and glibness. "Circumstances alter cases. We can't handle this situation by any of the standards we have formerly known. In fact, we've got to throw all our former standards overboard. There are five of these girls. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Guillaume Farel, a celebrated French reformer, was born in 1489. He died on the 13th Sept. 1565. The most remarkable features of his character were dauntlessness and untiring energy and zeal. He possessed a sonorous and tuneful voice, fluency of language, and passionate earnestness; yet, although seldom failing to arrest the attention of large audiences, he often, by imprudent torrents of denunciation, aroused against his doctrines ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... began, with fascinating fluency. "You thousand-legged, double-jointed, ox-footed truck horse! Come on out of here and I'll lick the shine off your shoes, you blue-eyed babe, you! What did you get up for, huh? What did you think this was ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... pudding-faced Tartar-physiognomied boy of fifteen, whose intellects, with fostering, if not great, might at least have been respectable, had he not lost all confidence in his own powers from the constant jeers and mockeries of those who had a greater fluency of speech without perhaps so much real power of mind. Although slow, what he learnt he invariably retained. This lad's name was Gossett. His father was a wealthy yeoman of Lynn, in Norfolk. There were at the time but three other midshipmen in the ship, of whom it can only ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... with these grandparents since his mother lost her reason and was removed to the asylum at St. John's. The child was almost destitute of clothing, and covered with vermin. He has the face of a seraph, and a voice that lisps out curses with the fluency of a veteran trooper. Ananias is David's shadow; he follows him everywhere, and echoes all his words as if they were gems of wisdom, far above rubies. Indeed, when David has ceased speaking, one waits involuntarily for Ananias to begin in his ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... subtle one of all which flames through several pages of his Defensio Secunda. It is Milton now, almost alone, that we remember as Cromwell's laureate; but among the sub-laureates there were some by no means insignificant. Old George Wither, though his marvellous metrical fluency had now lapsed into doggrel and senility, had done his best by sending forth, in 1654-5, from some kind of military superintendentship he held in the county of Surrey (Wood calls it distinctly a Major-Generalship at last, but that is surely an ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... dignity of mien and fluency of talk, was Dick Wormwood, whose sole delight is to find every thing wrong. Dick never enters a room but he shows that the door and the chimney are ill-placed. He never walks into the fields but he finds ground ploughed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... his influence over me was certainly the growing love of clearness and fluency to which he had trained me. I had already had to write the above-mentioned fugue for ordinary voices; my feeling for the melodious and vocal had in this way been awakened. In order to keep me strictly under his calming and friendly influence, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... and as the French soldiers were quite glad to beguile the time away by talking with their captives, he succeeded at the end of the journey, which lasted nearly a month, in being able to chat with a certain amount of fluency. Verdun was one of the four places in which British prisoners were confined. At that time France had fifteen thousand prisoners, England forty thousand. By an agreement between the governments these were held ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... very metropolis of this lyric realm was Mitylene of Lesbos, where, amid the myrtle groves and temples, the sunlit silver of the fountains, the hyacinth gardens by a soft blue sea, Beauty and Love in their young warmth could fuse the most rigid forms to fluency. Here Sappho was the acknowledged queen of song—revered, studied, imitated, served, adored by a little court of attendants and disciples, loved and hymned by Alcaeus, and acclaimed by her fellow craftsmen throughout Greece as the wonder of her age. ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... Iraq, military and civilian, are handicapped by Americans' lack of language and cultural understanding. Our embassy of 1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are at the level of fluency. In a conflict that demands effective and efficient communication with Iraqis, we are often at a disadvantage. There are still far too few Arab language—proficient military and civilian officers in Iraq, to the detriment of the ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... Weissenfels in 1674, he had begun his operatic career at Brunswick at the age of eighteen; three years later he took over the direction of the opera at Hamburg, where he produced a large number of operas composed by himself. As a composer, Keiser had a singular fluency of melody in a style that hovers between those of Germany and Italy; had he been a man of more solid character he might have accomplished greater things. But he had inherited from his parents a love of pleasure and debauchery; ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... procured for him, according to Macward, the name of the Scots Cicero. Along with a distinct articulation be possessed great fluency. When he preached in Glasgow, which being the minister of a neighbouring parish was frequently the case, he was much admired and followed (Koelman's "Het Leven en Sterven van Mr. Hugo Binning" prefixed to his translation of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... in his fancy; and against his lips, like water against a dam, rushed vigorous sentences from the great deeps opened in his soul by grief and change, and then leaped over in a beautiful, glittering flood. He wondered vaguely at his vehemence and fluency, at the silence in the hall, that these great people should listen to him at all. They heard him with astonishment, the leaders with interest, the Senator with tears; and Monsignor looked once towards ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... objected, that there is an argument of much force to excuse the overflowings of that zeal, which our friend shews or means for our cause. And it must be confessed, that the easy and smooth fluency of his elocution bestowed on him by nature, and cultivated by continual practice, added to the comeliness of his person, the harmony of his voice, the gracefulness of his manner, and the decency of his dress, are temptations too ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... a wild forest, compared with the gentle, limpid fluency of his [Brenz's] language. If small things dare be compared with great, my words are like the Spirit of Elijah—a great and strong wind, rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks; and his is the still small ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... his clear insight, his capacity for grasping a subject, his aptness of illustration, his quickness of retort, and, alack! the embarrassment of the wealth of language. If he could only economise that, and guard against the fatal fluency that besets him, converting what might be a sharp direct speech of twenty minutes into a windy weariness of hour-and-a-half or two hours, he would take high rank among ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... heard of their coming, he said, and gave them welcome. His wish was to be on friendly terms with them, and the people of their nation, one of whom, a great chief he seemed and full of wisdom, was even now his guest. Rolfe, who already spoke the native tongue with considerable fluency, replied, in suitable language, that he was grateful to the chief for the words he had let fall; that his guest was indeed a man of renown—his more than father and friend—and that it was with the object of visiting him, as ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... With the characteristic fluency of his nation, Mr. Clinch described his landing on those enchanted shores, viz, the Rhine Whirlpool and Hell Gate, East River, New York. He described the railways, tram-ways, telegraphs, hotels, phonograph, and telephone. An occasional oath broke from the baron, but he listened ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... little dog could she remember him, but it was especially the animal, the giver very dimly. I alluded to our excursion—her eyes sparkled, all the details, even the most minute incidents came back to her, and she related with the utmost fluency, in a rapture of delight, a picnic with breakfast in a hut built of branches and an extravagant quantity of wine—which we had ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... a little less fluently, of which I was glad. Fluency and accuracy are a bad pair. I would rather people stumbled and stammered out their ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... I asked Stella to marry me. Nearly every fellow I knew had done as much, particularly Peter Blagden; and it is always a mistake to appear unnecessarily reserved or exclusive. And this time in declining—with a fluency that bespoke considerable practice,—she informed me that, as the story books have it, she was shortly to be ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... a right to presume that Cleopatra, when she first appeared upon the stage of history as a girl of fourteen, was simply a very beautiful and accomplished Greek princess, who could speak several languages with fluency, as precocious as Elizabeth of England, skilled in music, conversant with history, and surrounded with eminent masters. She was only twenty-one when she was an object of attraction to Caesar, then ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... become more and more rare, and two months of constant conversation with Malcolm and others had enabled Ronald by this time to speak with some fluency in the French tongue. None of the soldiers paid any attention to the newcomers, whose dress differed in no way from that of Frenchmen, as after the shipwreck they had, of course, been obliged to rig themselves out afresh. Malcolm stopped ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... by repetition and rhythm. A slight movement of curiosity in the rear benches, and a whisper that it was the maiden effort of a new preacher, helped to prolong the interruption. A heavy man of strong physical expression sprang to the rescue with a hysterical cry of "Glory!" and a tumultuous fluency of epithet and sacred adjuration. Still the meeting wavered. With one final paroxysmal cry, the powerful man threw his arms around his nearest neighbor and burst into silent tears. An anxious hush followed; ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... work which rescued him from despondency. He applied for a post at Delhi; and, as soon as this was granted, he was all eagerness to leave Calcutta. But he had used the time well in one respect: he had acquired the power of speaking Persian with ease and fluency, and this stood him in good stead in his dealings with the princes and the peasants of the northern races, whose history he was to ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the Hall. The place seemed to be absolutely deserted. And, now, in the breakfast-room an almost breathless silence was broken only by the slow grumbling of one monotonous voice, undulating about the limited range of a minor third, and proceeding with the steady fluency of a lunatic's muttering. I suppose I ought to have guessed the reasonable origin of those sounds, but I didn't, not even when the muttering fell to a pause and was succeeded by a subdued chorus, that ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Thackeray,—I hope you received my note and last poem. I hope still more earnestly that you won't think I am putting my spite against your chastening hand into a presumptuous and troublesome fluency. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... was very considerable. The captain, Don Hernan Escalante, was a refined, highly-educated man. His knowledge on most matters was extensive, if not profound; he spoke several languages, and among them English, with a fluency few Spaniards attain. Few Spaniards indeed of that day were equally accomplished. His first lieutenant, Pedro Alvarez, was every inch a seaman, and like many seamen despised all who were not so. Again the captain stopped before the chart, and placing his finger on it, observed: "Here I hope ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... long speech. Voluble as Osterman himself, he, nevertheless, had at his command a vast number of ready-made phrases, the staples of a political speaker, the stock in trade of the commercial lawyer, which rolled off his tongue with the most persuasive fluency. By degrees, in the course of his speech, he began to insinuate the idea that the wheat-growers had never expected to settle their difficulties with the Railroad by the work of a single commission; that they had counted upon a long, continued campaign of many years, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... Magnus, his state of sullen fury made him indifferent even to threats of punishment. He swore with a determination and fluency worthy of a better cause. For myself, I could not endure his neighborhood. It seemed to me I could not live through the days that must intervene before the arrival of the Rufus Smith in the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... mental characteristics known to arise from traceable hereditary sources may be mentioned factors in musical ability, artistic composition, literary ability, mechanical skill, calculating ability, inventive ability, memory, ability to spell, fluency in conversation, aptness in languages, military talent, acquisitiveness, attention, story-telling, poetic ability; and, on the other hand, insanity, feeble-mindedness of many types, epilepsy. These are suggestive of ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... simple fluency in Hindustani, with her manner of not realising that she was speaking to a foreigner who could not understand her. What she explained was that, having heard that Jane's Mem Sahib came here to meditate ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... brought up in one of the Yankee settlements on the Missouri, and had, from a mere youth, spent his life as a hunter in the wilderness. He could speak English, French, or Indian with equal ease and fluency, but it would have been hard for anyone to say which of the three was his native tongue. The younger man, who occupied the stern of the canoe, acting the part of steersman, was quite a youth, apparently about ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... prospect of a lord and a duchess under his roof. Leaning on the arm of Mrs. Fry, the duchess was formally introduced to us individually. Mrs. Mott conversed with the distinguished guests with the same fluency and composure as with her own countrywomen. However anxious the English people were as to what they should say and do, the Americans were all quite at ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... was in the pulpit, Dr. Tyng was the prince of platform orators. He had every quality necessary for the sway of a popular audience—fine elocution, marvelous fluency, piquancy, the courage of his convictions and a magnetism that swept all before him. His voice was very clear and penetrating, and he hurled forth his clean-cut sentences like javelins. A more fluent ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... and persistent, and patient, and had never respected his brother one half as much as when he was stammering over the German pronunciation, which he could not well master. But he learned to read with a tolerable degree of fluency, and to speak a little, too, while he could understand nearly all Arthur ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... on a fine summer day two months after, the C—— let go her anchor in Gibraltar Harbour to await her orders. A tall, fine-looking man came aboard to solicit business of a legitimate character. He spoke English with fluency and an almost correct accent. The captain knew he had some business connection with the syndicate, but did not give him any reason to suppose he had this knowledge. He was cognisant of the characteristics of these ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... Nelly, Marion, Tom, Fred, and myself. We were plotting mischief in the shadow of the Ariadne's anchors, right in the eyes of the ship. I forget the immediate cause of this piece of foolhardiness, but I remember Fred's hated fluency about 'dolphin-strikers,' 'martingales,' and what not; and, finally, my own assertion that I would touch the ship's forefoot, where we saw it gleaming below the glassy surface of the water, and Fred's mocking reply ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Lubin," etc., and she told us the story quite through of several I never heard of, always singing the sujet when she came to the airs, and comically changing parts in the duets. She speaks French with the same fluency as English, and every now and then, addressing herself to the S. S.—"Que je vous adore!"—"Ah, permettez que je me mette 'a vos pieds!" etc., with a dying languor that ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... at her fluency of manner. "You're a bit unstrung, that's all. Look in at your club ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... apparently took place in the early 'twenties,' she was sent with a present of fruit to a neighbour's house, and there found a guest, a tall and splendid figure, arrayed in masculine costume, and engaged in smoking a narghila. The stranger, who talked Arabic with elegance and fluency, discoursed on the subject of astrology, and tried to dissuade the Emira from taking a projected journey to the west, where she declared the sun had set, and the hearts of the people retained not a spark of the virtues of their forefathers. 'Soon afterwards,' continues ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... this province [of St. Augustine] administers—in which it is necessary to know the Tagal, Pampanga, Ylocan, and Bisayan tongues, which are all different languages—each of those religious was a minister. [They were also asked to name] those who had sufficient fluency in the language to preach the gospel and declare the mysteries of the faith to the Indians; and whether there were any religious of their faction who were qualified to be preachers in this convent of Manila and in other Spanish ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... up with a strangely beaming look and broke out in a discourse of sounds that were wholly unintelligible. You need not smile. It was a true language, I am confident; it flowed forth with a moving warmth and fluency; and the gestures which accompanied it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... himself down heavily in a chair and buried his face in his hands. James began to talk, and as he talked his fluency ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... complexion is dark, but not disagreeably so; their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small. The men are taller than the English peasantry, and far more active. They all speak the English language with fluency, and in their gait and demeanour are easy and graceful; in both points standing in striking contrast with the peasantry, who in speech are slow and uncouth, and in manner ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... nothing in particular. Ted has managed to discuss the moon—it is high now, a round white lustre—the night, which is warm—the art of garden decoration, French, English and Italian—the pleasantness of Southampton after New York—all with great nervous fluency but so completely as if he had met Elinor for the first time ten minutes ago that she is beginning to wonder why, if he dislikes her as much as that, he ever suggested leaving the dance-floor ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... cacique assisted in absorbed wonder, while the dignity and Solemnity of the ceremonies and the beauty of the sacerdotal vestments impressed him by their favourable contrast to the repugnant rites and filthy robes of the priests of his own religion. Fray Luis spoke the Quiche language with fluency, and during several days he gave instructions and explanations, which resulted in the cacique's conversion; that of the others followed as a matter of course. The friar had brought with him the contract signed by the Governor, and he explained ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... that these old women—I mean women of old—were all good talkers, and they didn't speak like meek, passive, submissive girls wrought up to sudden action by wrong, indignation or revenge, but they spoke with a freedom, vigor and fluency that ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... plead the cause of the emancipation of his people and of its literary pre-eminence; David Neto, a student of philosophy; Benjamin Mussafia, Orobio de Castro, David Abenator Melo, the Spanish translator of the Psalms, and Daniel de Barrios, poet and critic—all using their rapidly acquired fluency in the Dutch language to champion the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... you that I have missed you, how I have longed for you," he went on, not speaking with the fluency for which some of his men friends envied him, but brokenly, as if the words were all inadequate to express his meaning. "All the way up to London I thought of you—I could not help thinking of you. All the time I was there, whether I was alone ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice |
