"Fluttering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to half a hundred fowls, young and old, that were squawking loudly and fluttering on the steps and even the porch floor. She disappeared in the kitchen and returned in a moment with a dish-pan half filled with corn-meal, and into this she poured a quantity of water, and with her hand stirred the mass into a ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... of March-day loves Through the flower-vine, trailing screen; A fluttering in of doves. Then a launch abroad of shrinking doves Over the waste where no hope is seen Of open hands: Dance in and out Small-bosomed girls of the spring of love, With a bubble of laughter, and shrilly shout Of mirth; then the dripping of tears ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... growling, and, like most old sailors, did not like to see a ship abused. By and by, an order is given; "Aye, aye, sir!'' from the forecastle; rigging is thrown down on deck; the noise of a sail is heard fluttering aloft, and the short, quick cry which sailors make when hauling upon clew-lines. "Here comes his fore top-gallant-sail in!'' We are wide awake, and know all that's going on as well as if we were on deck. A well-known voice is heard ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... man so much injury with the other sex; who, though they pretend to prize modesty so highly among themselves, abominate it as unnatural, absurd, and affected, in men; while the pert and obsequious fluttering of a fashionable water-fly, which is always received with a smile, is generally more prized, and rewarded more bountifully still. There is, however, some consolation in the thought, that repentance ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... crouching on the side-line, like some historic Indian, felt a thrill shake his splinter-structure, as the yell of "old Eli" rolled from the stand, across Bannister Field. In the midst of the Gold and Green flags and pennants, fluttering in the section assigned the Bannister cohorts, he gazed at a big banner of Blue, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest in rank, at length, without honor from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the expense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word, the STATE fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened to ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... are you going for?" she demanded sharply. With no consciousness of dramatic effect, his eyes turned to the Union Jack fluttering above them. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... "Minor," whom I was training to be a grand butler; he would carry the trap and, after it had been set and baited, I would make him guide me to the trees where the sweetest persimmons grew; there I would while away the morning and on the next we would find one or more birds fluttering in the trap, which, to Minor's silent disgust, ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... began to observe the signs of strange devastation. The street was scattered with the wreck of furniture and strips of precious stuffs. As he arrived at the foot of the little flight of steps that led to the entrance gate, he saw that the windows were broken and the remains of torn curtains were fluttering in front of them. Not understanding what this disorder could mean, he rushed into the house and through several deserted and wrecked apartments. At last, seeing light in one of the rooms, he went in, and there found his mother sitting on the remains of a chest made ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the garden that afternoon, and up where we sat, and over her arm was fluttering no end of gay ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... side is the vicolo, dark of wall and dank of pavement, with petticoats and shirts dangling from numerous windows and fluttering like gibbeted wretches in the air; with frowzy women sewing or knitting in the sombre doorways and squalid urchins screaming everywhere; with humble vegetables and cheap wines exposed for sale in dirty windows; with usually ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... a fluttering, fantastic dance, so agile and light and mazy in her steps that the other three members of the Carroll Comedy Company broke into applause at ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... or two who would have no hesitation in shooting at a covey of partridges on the ground, when they were within shot of the boundary hedge; and if they wounded three or four and picked them up, they would carry them home fluttering and gasping, because they are too heartless to think of putting the wretched creatures ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... not unwilling in his own person to get a little amusement out of it, who could blame him? This was the worst that Sir Tom meant. To amuse himself partly by the sight of the conventional beauty and woman of the world in the midst of circumstances so incongruous, and partly by the fluttering of the dovecotes which the appearance of such an adventuress would cause. He liked her conversation too, and to hear all about the more noisy company, full of talk and diversion in which he had wasted so ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... them, from any other spot or hill within the reach of eye. But now it commanded the landscape; and, had you been trailing over the vast plain, the bright firelight, the group of men and women moving to and fro, the picketed horses, the fluttering bits of color here and there, would have caught your gaze ten miles away; and were you tired or hungry, or even lonesome, you would have naturally turned your horse's head toward that camp as toward a cheerful reception and a ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... after nearly a week spent at sea, and as I sprang from the launch on to the rough rocks, aided by Santoris, I was for a moment faint and giddy. The dark mountain summits seemed to swirl round me,—and the glittering water, shining like steel, had the weird effect of a great mirror in which a fluttering vision of something undefined and undeclared rose and passed like a breath. I recovered myself with an effort and stood still, trying to control the foolish throbbing of my heart, while my companion gave a few orders to his men in a ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... 'Say now ye fluttering, poor assuming elves, Stark full of pride, of folly, of—yourselves; Say where's the wretch of all your impious crew Who dares confront his character to view? Behold Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, and be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... fluttering from the tunnel. It was a white handkerchief upon a stick of wood, and slowly and gingerly Raoul ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... well. The clouds hung low over the woods, the wind sighed in the trees, a drearier day you could hardly imagine. So they joined the rest at the other castle and took their seats to watch the jousting in the lists. So intent were they in watching the gay spectacle of the prancing steeds, the fluttering pennons, and the glittering armour of the knights, that they failed to mark the change, the fatal change, in the weather. For the wind was rising and had begun to disperse the clouds, and suddenly the sun broke through, and the glory of it fell like an aureole ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... train brought her through the oaks and the burdened olive orchards, past the lonely redwood Tree to the University. The brakeman's call: "Next station is Palo A-al-to!" stirred her with fluttering excitement. The crowded carriages and people at the station bewildered her. Eager 'busmen struggled for the hand-baggage of strangers, men with "Student Transfer" on their caps clamored for trunk-checks. Fellows in duck seized some ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... that fifth season, the Indian summer, when the vistas are tunnels of blue haze and the air tastes of honey and wine; then winter and the first snow (does anybody, brought up in snow country, ever outgrow the thrill of the first fluttering flakes?) the marvel of the fairy frost world into which the whole ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... at the bent figure clothed in mangy-looking furs, with a dirty capote over all, and then gave a swift glance at his companions, the eyelid nearest to them fluttering down in a slow wink. A second later he was addressing the chief in ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... Above, the sky would be of a cold blue colour, save for a fringe of flame-coloured streaks on the horizon that kept turning ever paler and paler; and when the moon had come out there would be wafted through the limpid air the sounds of a frightened bird fluttering, of a bulrush rubbing against its fellows in the gentle breeze, and of a fish rising with a splash. Over the dark water there would gather a thin, transparent mist; and though, in the distance, night would be looming, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... moor," said another. "Bright fire of coals in the coffee room, sporting prints, yellow old newspaper cutting framed on the mantelpiece describing gruesome murder committed in the house in 1760. Terrible night of storm—sleet tingling on the panes; crimson curtains fluttering in the draught; roads crusted with ice; savoury fumes of roast goose, plum pudding, and brandy. Pretty chambermaid in evident anxiety about something; guest tries to kiss her in the corridor; she's too distrait to give ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... suddenly with a gaze that pierced him through. A silence fell upon the room. Fred could feel every eye turned his way. He rose with a curious fluttering ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... trench-crossing. A stench catches my throat: some cess-pool into which these streets suspended in the earth empty their sewage? No, we see rows of stretchers, each one swollen. There is a tent there of gray canvas, which flaps like a flag, and on its fluttering wall the dawn lights ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... The change was not great in itself, and I always thought it favourable in its effects. At no time of my life did I sustain a heavier pressure of work and of anxiety. But in the spring of 1849, when I was living with my family in Germany, I fell into a low state of health, indicated by fluttering circulation in going upstairs, or up-hill; and, under medical advice, I adopted the habit of taking, daily, I suppose about half-a-pint bottle of Vin ordinam. I recovered completely, and adhered for several years to the allowance (or its equivalent) which had been prescribed ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... the white haiks disappeared under the porch, and just in time to catch a glimpse of the fluttering of their last folds, the Nabob entered through the centre door. That morning he had received the news: "Elected by an overwhelming majority;" and, after a sumptuous breakfast, at which many a toast had been ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... such a way that, had you seen it, you would have concluded that every bone in its body had been broken. Such a dilapidated bird! Its wings drooped and its legs hung as if almost lifeless. It uttered continually a shrill cry of pain, and kept just out of the reach of my hand, fluttering hither and thither, as if sore wounded and weary. At first I was amazed, and cried out, "Why, friend and gossip! What is the matter?" and then stood ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... nearer than she liked, she would fly out and attack them with beak and wings, in the hope of driving them away from her young charges. Frequently, too, after this, when neither the kittens nor her own brood required her care, and the cat went out about the garden or fields, the pigeon might be seen fluttering close by her, for the ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... affected us with far profounder emotion. It was the sight of the few sticks that are left of the frigate Congress, stranded near the shore,—and still more, the masts of the Cumberland rising midway out of the water, with a tattered rag of a pennant fluttering from one of them. The invisible hull of the latter ship seems to be careened over, so that the three masts stand slantwise; the rigging looks quite unimpaired, except that a few ropes dangle loosely from the yards. The flag (which never was struck, thank Heaven!) ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... inn at Pont, when we called there for the bags, were overcome with marveling. At sight of these two dainty little boats, with a fluttering Union Jack on each, and all the varnish shining from the sponge, they began to perceive that they had entertained angels unawares. The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so little; the son ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sorts of rubbishing articles, which are at present consigned to the Balaam-box. I could not bear to grieve and disappoint the young lady who sends her gushing verses. I should be picturing to myself the long hours of toil that resulted in the clever lad's absurd attempt at a review, and all his fluttering hopes and fears as to whether it was to be accepted or not. No doubt it is by this mistaken kindness that institutions are damaged and ruined. The weakness of a sympathetic bishop burdens the Church with a clergy-man who for many years will be ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... recovered from the shock," said "Somebody," looking first at her, and then at me as if he had a mind to swallow me. And would you believe it? all that Lady Fanny could say was, "Pretty well, I thank you, my Lord;" and she said this with as much fluttering and blushing as we used to say our Virgil at school—when we hadn't ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spongy texture, yielding to the foot— Quite full of danger is this marshy spot. To this place WILLIAM once a fishing went, And, ere his patience was completely spent, Took up a fresh position; but, alas! His foothold proved but little else than grass. While sinking fast he, with a fluttering heart, Gave one quick spring and reached a firmer part. This proved a lesson which he ne'er forgot— He visited no more that ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... cry of despair, precipitated himself into the empty air and came fluttering down like a wounded bird, to fall insensible into the arms that for the moment saved him from death or mutilation. An instant later there was a shriek from the negligent nurse, and the man- at-arms ran along the battlements, a bolt on his cross-bow which he feared to launch ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... characteristics of a race. Nature reared the Teuton like a wise but not indulgent parent. By every method known to her, she endeavored to render him fit to colonize and sway the world. Summer paid him but a brief visit. His companions were the frost, the fluttering snowflake, the stinging hail. For music, instead of the soft notes of a shepherd's pipe under blue Italian or Grecian skies, he listened to the north wind whistling among the bare branches, or to the roar of an angry northern sea upon the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... no small task of keeping his hounds in sight, and of evading the equal difficulties presented by rocks and bog holes. The offspring in question were now, with Larry, in comparative and undesired safety beneath the fluttering wing of Charles, and Bill Kirby, having faithfully delivered his message, found himself immediately adopted as an alternative protector, and repented ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... were melancholy sights enough in the streets of Boston, to draw forth the tears of a compassionate man. Over the door of almost every dwelling, a red flag was fluttering in the air. This was the signal that the small pox had entered the house, and attacked some member of the family; or perhaps the whole family, old and young, were struggling at once with the pestilence. Friends and relatives, when they met one another in the streets, would hurry onward ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the oak the sap of life is welling, Tho' to the bough the rusty leafage clings; Now on the elm the misty buds are swelling, See how the pine-wood grows alive with wings; Blue-jays fluttering, yodeling and crying, Meadow-larks sailing low above the faded grass, Red-birds whistling clear, silent robins flying,— Who has waked the birds up? What has ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... strange indeed that an invitation to court should have caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced young woman. But it was the duty of the parent to watch over the child, and to show her that on one side were only infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the other liberty, peace of mind, affluence, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mayor; and when Ferri, the mayor, told him to go about his business, he protested that he was the dictator and would, if necessary, use force. Outside in the square the Italians and the people stood face to face, and suddenly a few Yugoslav flags were fluttering, and then an old man, Dr. Sentinella's father, climbed up to the place in the town hall where the Italian flag had been hoisted. He tore it down. The soldiers were for shooting him, but the people began pulling the rifles out of their hands. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... say) less sordid; for under cross-examination there gradually emerges the story of a bygone romance so touching that the young squire, on his acquittal of the murder charge, yields the centre of the stage to his poor, foolish, fluttering mother. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... fluttering saluted my ear; and, the people being very quiet, I led on to the next apartment; and, the key being on the outside, I opened it, and looked all around it, and into ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... on with the enjoyment of a child messing with treacle. Then taking one of his huge compositions fluttering in each hand, he ran outside, and began pasting them up in prominent positions over ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... compel the Parliament and the Government to surrender at once or encounter a civil war. Peel asked himself—we quote his own words—"whether it may not be possible that the fever of political and religious excitement which was quickening the pulse and fluttering the bosom of the whole Catholic population—which had inspired the serf of Clare with the resolution and the energy of a free man—which had in the twinkling of an eye made all considerations of personal gratitude, ancient family connections, local preferences, the fear of worldly injury, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... her as he had seen her in the morning beside Horace De Craye, distressingly sweet; sweet with the breezy radiance of an English soft-breathing day; sweet with sharpness of young sap. Her eyes, her lips, her fluttering dress that played happy mother across her bosom, giving peeps of the veiled twins; and her laughter, her slim figure, peerless carriage, all her terrible sweetness touched his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... arose the tall, robust, and rosy-cheeked Lubov Mayakina with smiling eyes and with a big light golden-coloured braid. "Do not rely upon men, expect but little at their hands"—his father's words began to ring in his memory. He sighed sadly and cast a glance around him. The tree leaves were fluttering from the rain, and the air was full of mournful sounds. The gray sky seemed as though weeping, and on the trees cold tears were trembling. And Foma's soul was dry, dark; it was filled with a painful feeling of orphanhood. But this feeling ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... she sank down with a fluttering sigh beside Miss Lottie Cressy, Carlotta's aunt. The latter stared at her, a little oddly she thought, and then looked ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... possible.' Charming without a bean in the world isn't a fact—it's a farce. It simply can't be done. . . . And three new very smart ideas in their best glad rags make three long noses at the poor little dowdy fellows as they go fluttering away to try to ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... should be gay with song of birds, And the stir of fluttering wings. Surely the joy of life is hid In simple ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... mightily awkward thing for the good folk of Charleston to behold day after day a black flag with its white skull and crossbones fluttering at the fore of the pirate captain's craft, over across the level stretch of green salt marshes; and it was mightily unpleasant, too, to know that this or that prominent citizen was crowded down with the other ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... the Fairy waved her wand over him, he felt himself rising off the ground, and fluttering up against the door, and then, as if a screw ran into his stomach, he felt a dreadful pain there, and was pinned to the door; and then his arms flew up over his head; and his legs, after writhing about wildly, twisted under his body; and he felt cold, cold, growing over him, as if he ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stopping all at once, "forgetful fool that I am! I never bowed to her!" Therefore, being minded to repair so grave an omission, he turned sharp about, and came striding back again, and thus it befell that he presently espied the lace handkerchief fluttering from the bramble, and having extricated the delicate lace from the naturally reluctant thorns with a vast degree of care and trouble, he began to look about for the late owner. But search how he might, his efforts proved unavailing—Annersley ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... bears, of course, the conventional angelic form, that of the human creature, winged, beautiful, and radiant with eternal youth, yet with a grave and serious mien, in the later pictures, the drapery given to the angel is offensively scanty; his sandals, and bare arms, and fluttering robe, too much a l'antique; he comes in the attitude of a flying Mercury, or a dancer in a ballet. But in the early Italian pictures his dress is arranged with a kind of solemn propriety: it is ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... flakes of snow had begun fluttering down as the train pulled out of Washington; and as it raced across the Maryland fields and through the hills which grace that State the snow blew faster and faster and thicker and thicker. But even in ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... upon the flame. That was filled, emptied—but to me, to thee What boots it? So the man—he too, he too Was thrust, he knew not how, and the fire. I dropped, by chance, into his open arm. By chance, remained there—like a fluttering spark Upon his mantle—till—I know not what Pushed us both from amid the conflagration. What room is here for thanks? How oft in Europe Wine urges men to very different deeds! Templars must so behave; it is their office, Like better taught or rather handier spaniels, To fetch from ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... wind, Sweet-scented with the hay, Turned o'er the hymn-book's fluttering leaves That on ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... nerves; they rose upon her even on the platform, and she climbed the many stairs in a tremor from head to foot. And at the top, in the open night, and at all the many corners of a square that is nothing of the kind, from hoarse throat and on fluttering placard, it was "Trial and Verdict," or "Sensational Verdict at the Old Bailey," here as at the other end of ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... it obliterated all newer visual records. What a lady she looked when bidding him farewell at the station. He had watched her till the train carried him out of sight—a slender graceful figure; pale face and sad eyes; a fluttering handkerchief and a waved parasol; then nothing at all, except a sudden sense of emptiness in ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... about 5000 of the enemy were seen on the opposite side of the square, 400 or 500 yards distant, and seemed as if they would make a dash for our square. Dervishes on horseback, and some on foot, marshalled them, standing a few paces in front of the frantic host. With banners fluttering, tom-toms clamouring, and shouts of Allah, they began to move towards our square. The skirmisher's fire seemed to have no effect; though a few of them fell, they ultimately made a run towards us like the roll of ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... near the island the architectural details of the little town define delightfully through the faint sea-haze—curved bluish sweeps of fantastic roofs, angles of airy balconies, high-peaked curious gables, all above a fluttering of queerly shaped banners covered with mysterious lettering. We pass the sand-flats; and the ever-open Portal of the Sea- city, the City of the Dragon-goddess, is before us, a beautiful torii. All of bronze it is, with shimenawa of bronze above it, and a brazen ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the talk about ghosts carried on by the other fellows, with more or less interest and amusement, for Hugh refused to believe in spook manifestations. At the same time he admitted that his heart was fluttering at a much more rapid gait than customary when he started toward one of the doors of the room, using the little electric ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... movement is carried out. We may overlook an area in our visual field, especially when it lies far to one side from our fixation point, but as soon as anything moves in that area our attention is drawn. We notice the movement more quickly than the whole background in which the movement is executed. The fluttering of kerchiefs at a far distance or the waving of flags for signaling is characteristic. All indicate that the movement is to us something different from merely seeing an object first at one and afterward at another place. We can easily find the analogy in other senses. If we ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... re-collect his strength. He moaned and growled as he retired, frightening the moor-birds and the hares, which lay closer to earth, their little hearts quivering with fear. Young birds were tucked safely under the parent wing, as terror strode across the moor, striking dread into every fluttering little heart and shivering body. Low growled the wind, as he ran around his broken forces, gathering again new forces ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... was fluttering over the ground like a wounded bird, while so black were their surroundings that none of the party could distinguish anything of nearby objects. The clouds had broken but little, ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... spring to the telephone. The next instant, with a piercing scream that sent her canary fluttering to the top of its cage, she ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... the interview with Mr. Haim, his telegram to Marguerite and her unspeakable telegram to him, hugging close a terrific grievance. Only from pique against Marguerite had he accepted Lucas's invitation. The adventure in Piccadilly Circus had somewhat enlivened him, and now the fluttering prospect of acquaintance with the legendary Irene Wheeler pushed Marguerite into the background of his mind, and excitement became quite pleasant. "And a ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... unmolested, the stranger ranged up alongside the "Randolph," and ordered her to show her colors. This Biddle promptly did; and as the American flag went fluttering to the fore, the ports of the "Randolph" were thrown open, and a broadside poured into the hull of the Englishman. The stranger was not slow in replying, and the action became hot and deadly. Capt. Biddle was wounded in the thigh early in the battle. As he fell to the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... with the sense he so greatly needed; he was besides very profligate, and continually running into some difficulty or other by his eager pursuit after pleasure. It is related of him, that the duc de Lauragnais, wearied with seeing the prince d'Henin for ever fluttering about his mistress, mademoiselle Arnoult, drew up a consultation, to inquire whether it were possible to die of ennui: this he submitted to several physicians and celebrated lawyers, who having united in replying affirmatively, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... conceal. I knew that I could not hurt her then; for that only in the night did she enter that state of existence in which my will could exercise authority over her. But at night—at night—when I knew she lay there, and might be lying here; when but a thought would bring her, and that thought was fluttering its wings, ready to spring awake out of the dreams of my heart—then the struggle was fearful. And what added force to the temptation was, that to call her to me in the night, seemed like calling the real immortal Alice forth from ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... of some fated living victim. Forms of horror just as dreadful to the victims, if on a smaller spatial scale, fill the world about us to-day. Here on our very {161} hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that drags its length along; and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the helm obeyed the order. Releasing his hold of its spokes, the wheel made a quick evolution; and the ship, feeling a fresh impulse of the wind, turned her head heavily towards the quarter whence it came, the canvas fluttering with a noise like that produced by a flock of water-fowl just taking wing. But, met by the helm again, she soon fell off as before, powerless from having lost her way, and settling bodily down toward the fancied slaver, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... as you see, but even a sandhill looms large in Holland. In the main, it is a dreary sordid record of shillings gained and shillings spent—of scraping for this and scraping for that, with ever some fresh slip of blue paper fluttering down upon me, left so jauntily by the tax-collector, and meaning such a dead-weight pull to me. The irony of my paying a poor-rate used to amuse me. I should have been collecting it. Thrice at a crisis I pawned my watch, and thrice I rallied and rescued it. But how am I to interest ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the tents, the smell that came from the crushed grass, the sawdust, the jungle odor of wild animals—all this was as perfume to Joe Strong. He breathed in deep of it and his eyes lighted up as he saw the fluttering flags, and noted the activity of the circus men who were getting ready for the night show—filling the portable gasoline lamps, putting on new mantles which would glow later with white incandescence to show off the spectacle in the "main top." As Joe ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... completed, when he espied fairies walk out of the mansion, all of whom were, with their dangling lotus sleeves, and their fluttering feather habiliments, as comely as spring flowers, and as winsome as the autumn moon. As soon as they caught sight of Pao-yue, they all, with one voice, resentfully reproached the Monitory Vision Fairy. "Ignorant as to who the honoured guest could ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the line of gray and steel swept over the plain. Now, the evolutions were those of the field in war time. The charge brought cheers from a thousand throats, and a great fluttering of handkerchiefs. ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... so passing strange, yet as natural and true as life and death! I did sit for hours just as you imagined, looking out on the great, still mountains. Never did they seem so vast and stable, and our life so vapor-like, as when I heard that poor fluttering breath come and go at my side. There was a time when this truth grew oppressive; but later on that feeble life, which seemed but a breath, came to mean something greater and more real than the mountains themselves. But I am anticipating. As soon as Mary departed ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... neglect must be paid for and with large interest. Men can not draw drafts on their constitution without honoring them sometime. These minor symptoms I have described, grew until they were giants of agony. I became more nervous; had a strange fluttering of the heart, an inability to draw a long breath and an occasional numbness that was terribly suggestive of paralysis. How I could have been so blind as not to understand what this ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... waters of the bay the cocoanut-palms reached their crooked lengths far up into the sunshine, and as the sea-breeze stirred their fronds they filled the hot air with whispers and murmurs like the fluttering of many fans. Nature smiled boldly upon the Governor, confident in her bountiful beauty, as though she said, "Surely you cannot but be pleased with me to-day." And, as though in answer, the critical and searching glance of ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Hush! Pale Louise! The dead must not awaken. Something a twittering cry is uttering. Is that a bird there on her breast, Lost in the fragrant gloom, Wakening to morning twilight in the tomb? No bird—it is her folded hands a-fluttering! I think I should have died to see her rise Among the withered wreaths And spider-cluttered palls Of her dead uncles' funerals, While streams of horror fed the blue lakes of her eyes. I known I would have died to see ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... every country on earth. But in Africa, where there are plenty of birds, big people as well as little love them. In the Moorish cafes, in the wretchedest gourbis, cages made of reeds are hung on the walls, all rustling with trills and fluttering of wings. Quail, thrushes, nightingales are imprisoned in them. The nightingale, the singing-bird beyond all others, so difficult to tame, is the honoured guest, the privileged dweller in these rustic cages. With the rose, he is an essential part of Arab poetry. The woods round about Thagaste ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... hand still clasped in both of hers. That he had found life, no one who marked his tense, eager look, which in every waking moment lay upon the girl, could deny. His body was dead; his soul was fluttering feebly into a new sense ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Sugarman invaded the Green workroom. Rose bent over her seams, her heart fluttering. Leibel had duly apprised her of the roundabout manner in which she would have to be won, and she had acquiesced in the comedy. At the least it would save ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... dusty chamber of youth, let in the intellectual air. Happy the house of life in which such chambers still hold out, even with the draught of the intellect whistling through the passages. We were practically contemporary, contemporary with the issues, the fluttering monthly numbers—that was the point; it made for us a good fortune, constituted for us in itself romance, on which nothing, to the end, succeeds ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... is is most economically used; and all across the tops of the houses, high above your head, the cliffs are joined by wires and clothes-lines from which thousands of brightly-dyed garments are always hanging and fluttering; higher still, where the top storeys of the houses become merged in roof, there are little patches of garden and greenery, where geraniums and delicious tangling creepers uphold thus high above the ground the fertile tradition of earth. You walk ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... dry sand, and his mother covered him with a shawl. She then sat by his side, and took a bit of work from her pocket. But Diamond felt rather sleepy, and turned on his side and gazed sleepily over the sand. A few yards off he saw something fluttering. ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... him, Leah?" said Lizzie, with some hesitation. The curtain that continued fluttering with renewed force was wafted full into the face of the young Jewess, and veiled the crimson blushes that overspread it. As gently as it came, the curtain floated back, and Lizzie detected the traces of Leah's sudden emotion. Without waiting ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... and the consoling neighbours, I opened the back door, and closing it after me, sat down on the single step. I can't remember that I shed a tear or that I suffered, but I can still see as plainly as if it were yesterday, the clothes-line stretching across the little yard and the fluttering, half-dried garments along it. There was a striped shirt of my father's, a faded blue one of mine, a pink slip of baby Jessy's, and a patched blue and white gingham apron I had seen only that morning tied at my mother's waist. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... cried within herself. Looking very tiny, her knees bent so that her robe might sweep the floor, she continued with all possible dignity to the hallway. Once there, she ran for her room, her gown fluttering widely about her. In her room, though she dressed hurriedly, she still took time for a long and critical examination of two rows ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... Lebrun, the king's painter in ordinary, to express surprise. But all at once he noted two strange articles with which Rodolphe was laden—firstly, a rope ladder, and secondly, a cage, in which some kind of a bird was fluttering. At this sight, Gustave Colline's physiognomy expressed a sentiment which Monsieur Lebrun, the king's painter in ordinary, forgot to depict in his picture ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... with the wrath of Attila against all aristocracies, and especially that of England. He governs his fury, also, with an Attila discretion in many cases; but not here. Imagine this Hun coming down, sword in hand, upon Pope and his Rosicrucian light troops, levying chout upon Sir Plume, and fluttering the dove-cot of the Sylphs. Pope's 'duty it was,' says this demoniac, to 'scourge the follies of good society,' and also 'to break with the aristocracy.' No, surely? something short of a total rupture would ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... a deer, fairly lifting the narrow sleigh, and with tails fluttering from his fur robes, his cap's coon tail streaming behind, away up the tote-road went Gideon Ward on his return to the deep woods, the mighty din of his myriad bells clashing down the forest aisles. At the distant turn of the road he hooted with the vigor of a screech ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... from his hollow tree or fissure in the rocks by the conflagration, flapped past her face, almost touching her with his wings, and dashed blindly against the waterfall. He was swept down into the pool. After some violent fluttering and floundering in the water, he extricated himself, perched on a stone at its edge, shook out his wet feathers, and stared at her with large cat-like eyes, without fear. She was near enough to reach him with her hand; but either he was so dazzled and stunned that he took no notice of her, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird's efforts to extricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all day, but was finally obliged to content herself with a few detached portions. The fluttering strings were an eye-sore to her ever after, and passing and repassing, she would give them a spiteful jerk, as much as to say, "There is that confounded yarn that gave me so ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... time before, the captain had laboriously climbed the mast which was erected in the sand by the inlet, and had securely fastened an old garment to the highest point. There it was still, fluttering in the wind, when there was enough breeze to raise the irregular folds, but, alas! it had not brought the friendly sail which they longed for, and they had been forced at last to look upon an extended residence upon the island as not only ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... she did not move; she just stood staring into the darkness, her heart fluttering ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... Hill, already mentioned. There our buggy and two small, well-bred ponies swept into a smartly-kept compound surrounded by a palisade, the feature of the square being a flagstaff from which the Union Jack was proudly fluttering. As a site for a residence Constitution Hill could not well be surpassed, and many a millionaire would cheerfully have given his thousands to obtain such a view as that which met our eyes from the humble huts, and held me enthralled during the ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... state, In all the pomp of tribute sweets she sate, Wrapt in the roseate cloud! Now clustering blossoms deck her vesture's hem, Now her bright tresses gem,— (In that all-blissful day, Like burnish'd gold with orient pearls inwrought,) Some strew the turf—some on the waters float! Some, fluttering, seem to say In wanton circlets toss'd, "Here Love holds ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... plain, had set the fashion. Emulators were not wanting. Stray words she caught; by instinct was she conscious of the oglings, the fluttering of fans from the women, the flashing of quizzing-glasses from the men. And everywhere was there a suppressed laugh, a stifled exclamation of surprise at her appearance in public—yet not so stifled but that it reached her, as it was intended that ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... of beaten gold, And her fluttering banners are brave of hue, And her shining sails are of satin fold, And her tall sides gleam where the warm waves woo: While the flung spray leaps in a diamond dew From her bright bow, dipping its dance of glee; For the skies are fair and the soft winds coo, Where my ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... denying the fact that with all his confidence his colors were sinking, while hers remained as gallantly fluttering as when the struggle began. He was becoming confused and nervous; a feeling of impotence began slyly, devilishly to assail him, and he frequently found himself far out at sea. The strange inactivity ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... jewels abundant her limbs she adorns and spreads out her bed— Imagining you on her fluttering couch of leaves— And so to indulge, in a hundred ways, in the sport of love She is fully resolved, arranging her bed with every adornment; Not another night may that beautiful girl endure without you. Why so much apathy, Krishna, beside the fig tree? O brother, why not go to ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... of pregnancy are "quickening" or fetal movements. The movements are very much like the "fluttering of a young birdling." They usually are felt by the expectant mother between the seventeenth and eighteenth weeks. This sign, together with the noting of the fetal heartbeat at the seventh month, constitute ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... the fair and elegant dames of that galaxy of wit and beauty, Mesdames de Longueville, Lafayette, and de Sevigne, fluttering their fans as they listened and replied to the gallant compliments of Voiture, Menage, Chapelain, Desmarets, or De Reaux, or to the spirituelle causerie ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... across the gravel of the parade-ground; a line of dazzling tints, before which the impressive grandeur of Household uniforms with attendant cuirasses, bear-skins, scarlet and bullion, dwarfed into insignificance. The front of the Asiatic line was crested with fluttering lance pennons, and beneath these flags were stalwart frames in vermillion, rich orange, purple-drab, French-grey, and gold-tipped navy-blue, dressed shoulder to shoulder, making a nether border of snow-white or ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... very much ashamed of himself. Nothing would induce him even to look at a hat again. But he thought it was no harm to worry other things. He attacked one thing after another, the rugs on the floor, curtains, anything flying or fluttering, and Miss Laura patiently scolded him for each one, till at last it dawned upon him that he must not worry anything but a bone. Then he got to ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... (though I have not ventured to assert, until recently at Oxford,) that the pictures of Tintoret in Venice were accurately the most precious articles of wealth in Europe, being the best existing productions of human industry. Now at the time that three of them were thus fluttering in moist rags from the roof they had adorned, the shops of the Rue Rivoli at Paris were, in obedience to a steadily-increasing public Demand, beginning to show a steadily-increasing Supply of elaborately-finished and coloured lithographs, representing the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... was looking into his face. There was a bright, eager, yet subdued expression in her eyes that struck him; it had often struck him before in the village church. It was as if his words had awakened an internal angel, that looked fluttering out behind them. Rose had been from childhood one of those thoughtful, listening children with whom one seems to commune without words. We spend hours talking with them, and fancy they have said many things to us, which, on reflection, we find have been said only with their silent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... feet with an oath, and lifting the bow I held I sent an arrow through the vulture and it fell to the earth fluttering and screaming. Then I bade those with me to cut down the corpses of Guatemoc and of the prince of Tacuba and another noble who hung with him, and hollow a deep grave beneath the tree. There I laid them, and ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... two others, and I perceived the heads of several giraffes lower down the incline, that were now feeding on their way to the higher ground. The seroot fly was teasing them, and I remarked that several birds were fluttering about their heads, sometimes perching upon their noses and catching the fly that attacked their nostrils, while the giraffes appeared relieved by their attentions: these were a peculiar species of bird that attacks the domestic animals, and not only relieves them of vermin, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... there many a flourishing sweet-briar flaunted in native gracefulness, or climbed up and hung about an old cedar as if like a wilful child determined that only itself should be seen. Nature grew them and nature trained them; and sweet wreaths, fluttering in the wind, gently warned the passer-by that nature alone had to do there. Cedars, as soon as the bottom land was cleared, stood the denizens of the soil on every side, lifting their soft heads into the sky. Little else was ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... them all about her, on head and shoulders and arms, all unafraid, all content; then all fluttering with their clipped wings, about her lips, except a grey parrot who rubbed his beak ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... solace their retirement from generation to generation. They invaded the nunneries, whence the occupants, panic-stricken, fled for refuge to the houses of their friends and kindred. The streets were filled with monks and nuns, running this way and that, shrieking and fluttering, to escape the claws of these fiendish Calvinists. The terror was imaginary, for not the least remarkable feature in these transactions was, that neither insult nor injury was offered to man or woman, and that not a farthing's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... days are these! Not where the maple changing stands, Not in the shade of fluttering oaks, ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... constitute the main features of the Turkish indoor costume. On the street a shroud-like robe called yashmak, usually white, but sometimes crimson, purple, or black, covers them from head to foot. When we would meet a bevy of these creatures on the road in the dusk of evening, their white, fluttering garments would give them the appearance of winged celestials. The Turkish women are generally timorous of men, and especially so of foreigners. Those of the rural districts, however, are not so shy as their city cousins. We frequently ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... now come. The trees began to be clothed with a thick shade of leaves, which had a peculiar novelty of appearance, differing from that of the flowers of spring, or the bright dyes of autumn. The Kuina (a particular bird of summer) commenced their fluttering. The furniture and dresses were changed for those more suitable to the time of year. The comfort of the house was most agreeable. It was on one of these evenings that the surface of the broad ocean spread before the eye was unshadowed by the clouds, and the Isle ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... a leaf Hither and thither. The city about me Resolves itself into sound of many voices, Rustling and fluttering, Leaves shaken by ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... is like her frown; the row of tossing birds her girdle; streaks of foam, her fluttering garment as she speeds along; the current, her devious and stumbling gait. It is she turned in ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... the Kan-kiang, with a narrow strip of greensward between the solid gray battlements and the blue, wind-rippled waters of the river. Along the whole distance, rising and falling with the undulations of the bank, are ranged a continuous row of gayly fluttering banners-red, purple, blue, green, yellow, and all these colors combined in others that are striped as prettily as the prettiest of barber-poles-probably not less than five hundred flags. These multitudinous banners flutter from long, spear-headed bamboo-staves, and of themselves ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... ground stood a queer little square building, looking like a truncated tower roofed in with fluted tiles, and close by was a small outhouse, apparently built up against a piece of ruined stone wall. Under a large half-dead mulberry-tree that was now sending its last fluttering leaves in at the open doorways, a shrivelled, hardy old woman was untying a goat with two kids, and Baldassarre could see that part of the outbuilding was occupied by live stock; but the door of the other part was open, and it was empty of everything but some tools and ...
— Romola • George Eliot |
