"Checkered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... delicate in perception of tint, a pattern on the folded surface will help you. Try whether it does or not: and if the patterned drapery confuses you, keep for a time to the simple white one; but if it helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans and simple checkered designs are better at first than flowered ones), and even though it should confuse you, begin pretty soon to use a pattern occasionally, copying all the distortions and perspective modifications of it among the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... heaped in a rude grate. Beside it lay some cooking utensils and a bucket half-full of water. A litter of empty tins showed that the place had been occupied for some time, and I saw, as my eyes became accustomed to the checkered light, a pannikin and a half-full bottle of spirits standing in the corner. In the middle of the hut a flat stone served the purpose of a table, and upon this stood a small cloth bundle—the same, no doubt, which I ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... remembrance. And behold, they were no longer landmarks except to me. A change had come over the face of this old playground of mine. It had forgotten the withered, modest grace of the time when it was middle-aged, and when I was a boy. It was checkered and gridironed with pavements and electric lights. The Elevated Railroad roared at its doors behind clouds of smoke and steam. Great, cheerless, hideously ornate flat buildings reared their zinc-tipped fronts toward the gray heaven, to show the highest aspirations of that demoralized ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... was on her way to Toronto to see Marie. She was in a pensive mood as she sat by the car window, gazing at the farm-lands stretching far away, and the wooded hill-sides checkered by the sunlight shining through their boughs. There is always a pleasant diversion in a few hours' travel, and Beth found herself drawn from her thoughts by the antics of a negro family at the other ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... checkered. To'mentose. Covered with matted wool. Tra'ma. The substance proceeding from and of like nature with the part that bears the hymenium—the framework of the gills. Trem'elloid. Jelly-like. ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... stopped, but storm signals still showed in the south where the heavy clouds hung over the horizon. Overhead the sun shone, making kaleidoscope effects of the spring flowers in the checkered beds. Against the gray wall of the terraced garden the peach trees had been trained in foreign fashion and were full of ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... more distinct, the latter bearing south-west by west. Alone on the summit of a high peak, with surging green billows of foliage all around, dim misty mountains in the distance, and above the blue heavens, checkered with fleecy clouds, that have travelled up hundreds of miles from the north-east, thoughts arise that can be only felt in their full intensity amid solitude and nature's grandest phases. Then man's intellect strives ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... hurriedly left the gardens, his breast swelled with exultation. When he was out of sight, the hunchback whistled softly, and Cocardasse and Passepoil came out of the shadow of the trees. The lights were now rapidly dying out, and the gardens lay in darkness checkered by the moonlight. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... replied. It seemed to him that a bold course of action was the best to be taken under the circumstances. "For instance, I have a pretty accurate knowledge of the checkered past of Dr. Bentwood and the malignant scoundrel who calls himself Carl Sartoris. Of Miss Mary Sartoris I will say nothing. There are others here, too, whose past is not altogether wrapped in mystery. There are General Gastang and Countess de la ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... know the ways of the valley! That day when we rode into it every tree seemed to be waving its green arms in salute. As we swung through the gap, around the bend at the saw-mill and into the open country, checkered brown and yellow by fields new-ploughed and fields of stubble, a flock of killdeer arose on the air and screamed a welcome. In their greeting there seemed a taunting note as though they knew they had no more to ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... causes of his after-rise in the wrong-judging world, the first dawn of his reputation, his rapid and flattering successes, his present elevation, his aspiring hope of far higher office, and more patrician honours,—all these phantoms passed before him in checkered shadow and light; but ever with each stalked one disquieting and dark remembrance,—the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rocks she made and fashioned, And the hidden reefs created, Where the ships are wrecked so often, Where so many lives have perished. Thus created were the islands, Rocks were fastened in the ocean, Pillars of the sky were planted, Fields and forests were created, Checkered stones of many colors, Gleaming in the silver sunlight, All the rocks stood well established; But the singer, Wainamoinen, Had not yet beheld the sunshine, Had not seen the golden moonlight, Still remaining undelivered. Wainamoinen, old and trusty, Lingering within ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... grouse-moor overlooking the wastes of the Border. The heath was stained with the bell-heather's regal purple, interspersed with the vivid red of the more fragile ling, and where the uplands sloped away broad blotches of the same rich colors checkered the grass. In the foreground a river gleamed athwart the picture, and overhead there stretched an arch of cloudless blue. There was no wind; the day ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... glittering, awful grandeur stand, And west the same bold, rugged, cliff-crowned hills. That filled her eyes with wonder when a child. Below the snow a belt of deepest green; Below this belt of green great rolling hills, Checkered with orchards, vineyards, pastures, fields, The vale beneath peaceful as sleeping babe, The city nestling round the shining lake, And near the park and palace, her ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... of progress, and ours is emphatically a country of progress. Within the last half century the number of States in this Union has nearly doubled, the population has almost quadrupled, and our boundaries have been extended from the Mississippi to the Pacific. Our territory is checkered over with railroads and furrowed with canals. The inventive talent of our country is excited to the highest pitch, and the numerous applications for patents for valuable improvements distinguish this age and this people ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... downward through the checkered glades, his pockets stuffed with chestnuts. Like an angel with healing in his wings, Angelo comes to Gigi. When he spies him out, Gigi rises, unsteady on his little feet—rises up, forgetting all, and clasps his hands. When Angelo comes near, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... were alive with huddled humanity and bobbing umbrellas. Yellow slickers, dotted through the field of black, made Davies think of a checkered taxicab. He cursed himself for not having brought his own raincoat along. In years gone by he could have been wet to the skin and not minded it, but now he was conscious of a desire for dry comfort. Certainly ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... ornament, composed of several rows of enamels, gold and cornelian beads, and fishes and lizards of stamped gold, covered her breast from the lower part of the neck to the upper part of the bosom, which showed pink and white through the thin warp of the calasiris. The dress, of a large checkered pattern, was fastened under the bosom with a girdle with long ends, and ended in a broader border of transverse stripes edged with a fringe. Triple bracelets of lapis-lazuli beads, divided here and there by golden balls, encircled her slender wrists, delicate as those of a child; and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... for five, a GLOBE six inches in diameter. PRANG'S CHROMOS will be given as premiums at the publisher's prices. Send stamp for a catalogue. GAMES, &c.—For two new subscribers, we will give any one of the following: The Checkered Game of Life, Alphabet and Building Blocks, Dissected Maps, &c., &c. For three new subscribers, any one of the following: Japanese Backgammon or Kakeba, Alphabet and Building Blocks (extra). Croquet, Chivalrie, Ring Quoits, and any other of the popular games of the ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... hole, She heard him scream, "My soul! my soul!" While roars of fiendish laughter roll, And drown the yells of mercy! "Blood to drink," etc., etc. The ridiculous woman could stand no more— She fainted and fell on the checkered floor, 'Midst all the diabolical roar. What then, you ask me, did befall Mehitable Byrde? Why, nothing at all— She had dreamed she'd been in ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... can see the pink sunbonnet and the little, checkered dress She wore when first I kissed her and she answered ...
— An Old Sweetheart of Mine • James Whitcomb Riley
... bar none, the washstand in Mr. Hubble's store, with wet newspaper, stagnant slop jar, dirty tooth brush, filthy basin, sloppy soap—all humming with flies—is the worst I have ever seen and the most stomach turning. There is some freak from Boston in a checkered suit and goggles who walks around with some ideas for Indian betterment. I think they have reached the highest pitch in the fact that they do not scalp him! I had coffee, oatmeal and bacon all out of one ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... to shovel," admitted Sewell. He rose disconsolately. "Well, there's nothing for it, I suppose, but to put him down at the Christian Union, and explain his checkered career to everybody who ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... subjects her thoughts were turned, when, just as she attained the middle of the avenue, the imperfect and checkered light which found its way through the silvan archway, showed her something which resembled the figure of a man. Lady Peveril paused a moment, but instantly advanced;—her bosom, perhaps, gave one startled throb, as a debt to the superstitious ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... hazardous, General Toombs and his friend rode back to the mountains of North Georgia, and there remained until the early fall. It was in the month of October that the fugitives again started on their checkered flight. The May days had melted into summer, and summer had been succeeded by early autumn. The crops, planted when he started from home that spring day, were now ripening in the fields, and Northern statesmen ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... for any serious length of time, the young Hercules passing too rapidly from the gristle into the bone, any longer to suffer antics of this nature to be played in front of his cradle. But such was not his condition in the war of 1812, and the good people of Oyster Pond had become familiar with the checkered sides of two-deck ships, and the venerable and beautiful ensign of Old England, as it floated ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... pettinesses and curious contradictions; but one can scarcely grudge to his sickly sensitive nature the anodyne of feminine sympathy. Why so close and tender a friendship never ripened into marriage is an inquiry that may be consigned to the limbo of questions insoluble. It is enough that in the checkered chronicle of the loves of the poets, "blue-eyed Patty Blount" has an immortality almost as secure ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... engine-room did not afford a mirror, he was conscious that he must present about as absurd a figure as can well be conceived. He was bare-footed, and the left leg of his trousers was turned up to keep it from the floor, while the right, owing to the Captain's misfortune, barely reached his ankle. A checkered woolen shirt hung about him in folds, and over it he wore a garment that Cap'n Cod was pleased to style his "professional coat." It was a blue swallow-tail, with bright brass buttons. As worn by Winn the tails hung nearly to the ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... fateful days of the Conference preventive censorship was practised with a degree of rigor equaled only by its senselessness. As late as the month of June, the columns of the newspapers were checkered with blank spaces. "Scarcely a newspaper in Paris appears uncensored at present," one press organ wrote. "Some papers protest, but protests are ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... any ornaments? A. It has; the Mosaic, or checkered pavement; the indented tressel; that beautiful tesselated border which surrounds it, with the ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... hand, but more commonly in connection with the very highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained society. She was a splendid scowling beauty, black-browed, with a flash of white teeth which was always like a surprise when her lips parted. She wore a checkered dress, of a curious pattern, and a camel's-hair scarf twisted a little fantastically about her. She went to her seat, which she had moved a short distance apart from the rest, and, sitting down, began playing listlessly with her ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... or an occasional walnut thrusting its branches over the road. Beyond, the fields lay in cool, serrated rows, deep brown and freshly fragrant. The woodland which hung about in the background beyond the fields would occasionally sweep down and cross the road, and then would come a stretch of checkered shade on the yellow earth, and the lifting, expectant sound of high wind in top branches. And sometimes, in the heart of such an arm of woodland, the old horse's hoofs would echo hollow on the warped and mellowing boards of a tiny bridge, and there would ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... me, sweetie. Dook of Alver—and then some, eh? Ain't that just too cutey-cutey for any use? Say, I'm used to these dooks and counts—I've been around Peacock Alley at the Waldorf too long not to know 'em by their checkered pants and them canes! Say, Dook! If you was the Archbishop of Canterbury I'd run yer in and take yer ashore, if yer give me any more of ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... seen. A tale of the most pathetic kind is interwoven with low comedy—the most lofty sentiments, the most exalted virtues, and heroism and magnanimity strained almost beyond the limits of probability, are checkered by uncouth pleasantries, and the most pathetic incidents intruded upon and interrupted by the farcical conundrums of MUG, a low cockney, who has become secretary of state to the king of the Mandingoes. Thus, oscillating between Kotesbue ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... dusted his gay checkered suit, gave much attention to the crease in his jaunty little hat, adjusted his bright blue tie, daintily tapped his cuffs back into his coat sleeves and bestowed a ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... alias anything that seemed to suit the varied occasions of his checkered career, thrust aside the curtain of foliage covering the hiding place of his new raft. There was no reason why he should visit the raft just then; he could have no possible use for it until he had in his hands those two horses up in Torrance's stable. But ever since he had been ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... to the perch she had just left, apparently not a little disturbed. She hammered the beetle rather excitedly upon the limb a few times, as if it were in some way at fault, then dropped down to try for her nest again. Only vacant air there! She hovers and hovers, her blue wings flickering in the checkered light; surely that precious hole must be there; but no, again she is baffled, and again she returns to her perch, and mauls the poor beetle till it must be reduced to a pulp. Then she makes a third attempt, then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth, till she becomes very ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... first-born has come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman, clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips, from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey petticoat. For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a strong likeness between her and her son ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... English history are more pregnant with events, or more interesting to the antiquary, and general reader, than that which comprised the fortunes of Wolsey. The eventful life of the Cardinal, checkered as it was by the vicissitudes of fortune, his sudden elevation, and finally his more sudden fall and death, display an appalling picture of "the instability of human affairs." This prelate and statesman, who even aspired to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... Yudhishthira of excellent deeds, the lord of the Guhyakas, vanished from that best of mountains. And thousands upon thousands of Yakshas, and Rakshasas followed him in vehicles spread over with checkered cushions, and decorated with various jewels. And as the horses proceeded towards the abode of Kuvera, a noise arose as of birds flying in the air. And the chargers of the lord of treasures speedily coursed through the sky as if drawing forward the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... taken on an unwonted aspect of festivity. Its spaciousness was checkered by golden-lighted windows. Delivery wagons and automobiles came and went, some discharging loads of deliciousness at the back door, others discharging loads ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... the first symptom: then convulsive retchings, followed by a dreadful struggle between life and death, which generally terminated in favour of the grim destroyer. The bodies, after the spirit which animated them had taken flight, were frightfully swollen, and exhibited a dark blue colour, checkered with crimson spots. Nothing was heard within the houses or the streets, but groans of agony; no remedy was at hand, and the powers of medicine were exhausted in vain upon this terrible pest; so that within a few days the greatest ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... to the table the senator laid the roll of papers down, then he took out his snuff box and placed it beside the papers, whereupon he removed his spectacles from their case and wiped them with his big blue-and-white checkered handkerchief. After these preliminaries he glanced round the room, looking from one person to the other. Those who sat there were persons of such little importance he did not even know them ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Ballymahon. He emerged, however, unscathed from this dangerous ordeal, more fortunate in this respect than his comrade Bryanton; but he retained throughout life a fondness for clubs; often, too, in the course of his checkered career, he looked back to this period of rural sports and careless enjoyments as one of the few sunny spots of his cloudy life; and though he ultimately rose to associate with birds of a finer feather, his heart would still yearn in secret after the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... outs of politics during the first ten years of Louis Philippe's reign, which were checkered by revolts, emeutes, and attempts at regicide, I pass on to the next event of general interest,—the explosion of the "infernal machine" ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... attended the Reformation at Montbeliard, where the indefatigable Farel was the chief actor. One of those highly dramatic incidents, in which the checkered life of this remarkable man abounds, is said to have preceded his withdrawal from the city. Happening, on St. Anthony's day, to meet, upon a bridge spanning a narrow stream in the neighborhood, a solemn procession headed by priests chanting the praises of the saint whose effigy they ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... comfort from the flight of Mr. Bryant's "Wild Fowl" across the ocean, and took the best lesson of life from the Psalm of Longfellow. Since then I have ever been with you in all your intellectual progress, and in the necessarily checkered course of your constitutional history, and never more than in the late solemn years, in all the national difficulties which you have so energetically, so persistently, and so ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Owens, and published by P. W. Ziegler & Co., Philadelphia. The book bears the title of "Sword and Pen," and recounts the ventures and adventures of the subject of it in war and literature, comprising incidents and reminiscences of his childhood, his checkered life as a student and teacher, and his remarkable career as a soldier and author; embracing also the story of his unprecedented journey from ocean to ocean on horseback, and an account of his discovery of the source of the Mississippi ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... committed, and by putting up a piteous tale she was harbored on the West Side by an Irish family whose two daughters were clerks in a large retail store. Through these Claudia became a cash-girl. Thereafter followed an individual career as strange and checkered as anything that had gone before. Sufficient to say that Claudia's native intelligence was considerable. At the age of twenty she had managed—through her connections with the son of a shoe manufacturer and with ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... accompanied by a morbid sensibility almost amounting to disease. She had not been born deaf and dumb; but had lost her hearing in a fit of sickness, and with it the power of distinct articulation. Her life had evidently been checkered and unhappy; she was apparently without family or friend, a lonely, desolate being, cut off from ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... multicolored sides; or divided into panels of contrasting colors, in which different designs appear. Some display symmetric zigzags, converging and spreading throughout their length. In others bands of high color are defined by zones of neutral tints, or parted by thin, bright lines into a checkered mosaic. In many only the most subdued shades appear. Fine effects are obtained by using a short gray wool in its natural state, to form the body of the fabric in solid color, upon which figures in black, white and red are introduced. Sometimes blankets are woven in narrow stripes of black ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... hardships, dangers, and difficulties; wars with the natives, perils of the sea, discontents, disappointments; and when at last he returned to Spain, in 1504,—broken with age and infirmities, after twelve years of harassing cares, labors, and dangers (a checkered career of glory and suffering),—nothing remained but to prepare for his final rest. He had not made a fortune; he had not enriched his patrons,—but he had discovered a continent. His last days were spent in disquieting and fruitless negotiations to perpetuate ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... garden of what is termed the Schwarzpanier House, situated on a slope or glacis in the outskirts of Wahring. The evening was so far advanced, that candles already twinkled from the upper windows of the building, while the fires of the kitchens checkered the shrubs and gravel with patches of glaring light. Through the flowerbeds, and along the intricate paths of the shrubbery, the Alchemist strolled at a languid pace, musing upon the things he had already witnessed, when his vigilant ears caught the tones of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... hall where the long shadows fall On the checkered and cool esplanade; I live in a cottage secluded and small, By a gnarly old apple-tree's shade: Side by side in the glen, I and my brother Ben,— Just the river between us, with borders as green as The banks where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... right, I spose, and yet I sometimes think it's wery hard to be shut up here, a wearin' checkered clothes, a livin' on cold vittles, a sleepin' on iron beds, a lookin' out upon the world through iron muskeeter bars, and poundin' stun like a galley slave, day after day, week after week, and year after year, while my brother thieves (for to ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Harry!' cried Bob Spangles, into his brother-in-law's ear, but Sir Harry was too far gone; he could not 'come to time.' Presently a footman entered with furred coats, and shawls, and checkered rugs, in which those who were sufficiently sober enveloped themselves, and those who were too far gone were huddled by Peastraw and the man; and amid much hurry and confusion, and jostling for inside seats, the party freighted the coach, and whisked away before ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... whole proceedings, from this time forward, there is a distinct element of comedy, which comes as a welcome relief after the long tragedy of Hyde's narrative, and which, even though he wrote it looking back over an interval of checkered years, is apparent in the altered tone of that narrative. Monk had marched slowly on the capital. When he arrived at St. Albans, he halted there, and sent to Parliament to represent the inconvenience that might arise from the presence of troops that had proved ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... away she caught sight of a horse's clean limbs moving in the checkered sunlight. Its rider—her heart gave a sudden, sickening throb and stood still. He was riding like a king, with his insolent dark face turned to the sun. She stared at him for one wild moment, then shrank against her tree. It was possible, it was ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... recall of these incidents in his checkered career a new thought blazed up in his mind—rather a blinding thought. As its rays brightened he halted in his course, and stood gazing across the street as if uncertain as to his next move. Perhaps, after all, it would be best ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... population engaged in pursuits endangering the forests the risk lessens, the total activity increases at a rate which makes the smaller proportionate risk as great in actual measure. This is particularly true of the growth of slashing areas. The virgin forest becomes more and more and checkered by burned and cut-over deadenings, veritable fire-traps open to sun and wind, and, especially west of the Cascades, usually covered by inflammable debris, brush or dead ferns. Each year brings nearer the time when, unless something is done, such will ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... think could have been more helplessly sincere. He had nothing of that false self-respect which forbids a man to own himself wrong promptly and utterly when need is; and in fact he owned to some things in his checkered past which would hardly allow him any sort of self-respect. He had always an essential gaiety not to be damped by any discipline, and a docility which expressed itself in cheerful compliance. "Why do you use bias for opinion?" I demanded, in going over a proof with him. "Oh, because I'm such ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... contact with it, but he had evidently, though involuntarily, adopted it for better for worse; perhaps because a dictatorial habit is generally constrained to find companionship in a social grade lower than its own, where a loud voice and a tendency to monologue checkered by prehistoric jokes and tortured puns may meet with a more patient audience. Hester made many discoveries about herself during the first months of her life at Warpington, and the first of the series amazed her more than ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... gable room, looking solemnly at three new dresses spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which Marilla had been tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer because it looked so serviceable; one was of black-and-white checkered sateen which she had picked up at a bargain counter in the winter; and one was a stiff print of an ugly blue shade which she had purchased that week at ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... been a checkered scene, Since that midsummer's eve; Much good received our hearts to cheer, And much those ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... various other articles that would be required here, buried under a heap of stones near the stream, and on the morning of the 2d set out for the ships. The change which one week had made upon the ice it is quite impossible to conceive, the whole surface being now checkered with large and deep pools of water, where not a symptom of thawing had before appeared. This continued the whole way to the ships, which we reached at eight P.M., finding Captain Lyon and his party returned, after a laborious but unsuccessful endeavour ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... come, one morning, when Ab and Oak met as usual and looked out across the valley to learn if anything had happened in the vicinity of the pitfall. The hoar frost, lying heavily on the herbage, made the valley resemble a sea of silver, checkered and spotted all over darkly. These dark spots and lines were the traces of such animals as had been in the valley during the night or toward early morning. Leading everywhere were heavy trails and light ones, telling the story ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... the old St. Paul, one of the ships of the great Spanish Armada that Philip II. sent to England in 1588, being one of the very few of that famous flotilla that escaped destruction at the time. What a historical memento is the old wreck! After a checkered career, in which this ancient craft had breasted the waves of innumerable seas and withstood the storms of nearly three centuries, she was burned to the water's edge here in the harbor of Santiago a few ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... tedium of confinement, when, as if by magic, all was still. The rushing winds had ceased, the pelting of the storm was over, and, springing to the window, with delight pictured in her face, she saw a glorious ray of sunshine lighting the opposite wood. The foliage glittered with the checkered beauties of the October leaf, reflecting back from the moistened boughs the richest luster of an American autumn. In an instant, the piazza, which opened to the south, was thronged with the inmates of the cottage. The air was mild, balmy, and refreshing; in the east, clouds, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... when it was certain that the little foreign image-vender had indeed departed, Eve stole over to the bench beneath the lofty arches of the elm-tree, all checkered with flickering sunlight, and endeavored to read the sentence carved thereon. It was at first undecipherable, and then, the text conquered, not easy for her to comprehend. But when she had made it hers, she rose, bathed with blushes, and stole away home again, feeling only as if Luigi ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a checkered scene. But it was the peculiar lot of Theodosia to experience during the first twenty-one years of her life nothing but prosperity and happiness, and during the remainder of her existence nothing but misfortune and sorrow. Never had her ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Dad's camp thinking that the way to becoming a flockmaster was a checkered one, and filled with more adventures, harsh and gentle, than he ever had believed belonged to his apportionment in life. But he could not blame Tim Sullivan for placing Reid above him in rating on account of the encounters they had shared, or for bending down a bit in his manner, or ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... on her knees, fervently implored the blessing and guidance of Him who is very precious help in time of need. She prayed for strength to meet with Christian fortitude the trials which awaited her, and in all the vicissitudes of her checkered life to pursue unfalteringly the path of duty. She strove to collect her scattered thoughts, and with what composure she could assume, returned to the dining-room. The fire was burning low on the hearth, and the single candle gave ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... for the practical conduct of life and it needs to be considered under each of these four heads. It demands also for any proper understanding of it the backgrounds of Mrs. Eddy's peculiar temperament and checkered history. It is a growth. For her fundamentals Mrs. Eddy is, beyond reasonable debate, in debt to Quimby and in some ways Quimby's original insights have suffered at her hands. None the less, in its final form "Science and Health" ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... of mercy; the burn of the brand can never be effaced, however skilfully healed. And when the wit, the loveliness, the generosity, the fidelity of "Madame Ellen," when the memory of the well-spent evening of her checkered life, and the allowance we make for the early impressions of a young creature, called upon to sing her first songs in a tavern, and sell oranges in the depraved and depraving saloon of "the King's House;"—when all these aids are exerted to excite our sympathy, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... men most distinguished in the councils of the nation, formed the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States, an organization still in existence but now known as the American Colonization Society and having as a monument to its checkered career, the free Negro republic, Liberia, on the western coast ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... less than a year this too was abandoned by Braidwood, who soon after met his death. Kilpatrick attempted to continue the school only a year or two longer, possibly even taking a few pupils with him when he moved to Cumberland County in 1819; and so was brought to an end the checkered career of this early school for the ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... being roused was not wanting in the South Seas in those days, Jo's amiability was frequently put to the test. He sojourned, while there, in a condition of alternate calm and storm; but riotous joviality ran, like a rich vein, through all his checkered life, and lit up its most somber phases like gleams of light ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... Kit looked about. Icicles covered the idle wheel, a snow cornice hung over the flagged roof, and water splashed softly in the half-frozen race. Farther on, the snowy road was checkered by the shadows of hedges and bare trees. Low roofs, touched by hoar-frost, rose behind the trunks, and here and there a gleam of yellow light shone out. The road, however, was empty, as Kit was relieved ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... bound by innumerable threads to the ground of Lilliput. It was necessary to break severally into the lower side of each of these chambers, and allow the water to flow evenly in all. The interior of the hull was checkered by these boxes. Huge beams and cross-ties intersected each other at right angles, forming the frame for this honeycombed interior, pigeon-holed like a merchant's desk. It was necessary to tear off the skin and penetrate from one to the other in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... sky the sun benignant Looked upon them through the branches, Saying to them, "O my children, Love is sunshine, hate is shadow; Life is checkered shade and sunshine; Rule by love, O Hiawatha!" From the sky the moon looked at them, Filled the lodge with mystic splendors, Whispered to them, "O my children, Day is restless, night is quiet, Man imperious, woman feeble; Half is mine, although I follow; Rule by patience, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... open country where it had been breathing all night the quivering pines, and brown swamps, and the white and gray checkered fields that would soon be upturned by the plowshares—a vagrant wind wandered into the ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... is a pleasant place,' I said; and indeed it was so to me, I hardly know why, being a very plain apartment, with a checkered pavement of blue and white stones, and furnished only with bright oaken tables and settles, and a great chair or two; also the great fireplace was well garnished with green boughs and flowers, it being summer. I looked all ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... streams are open, go smoothly about the glacier slips and make deep bluish pools for trout. Pines raise statelier shafts and give themselves room to grow,—gentians, shinleaf, and little grass of Parnassus in their golden checkered shadows; the meadow is white with violets and all outdoors keeps the clock. For example, when the ripples at the ford of the creek raise a clear half tone,—sign that the snow water has come down from the heated high ridges,—it is time to light the evening fire. When it drops off a note—but you ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... sixteenth century followed the advance from thalassic to oceanic fields of commerce, but also purely local political events may for a time produce striking changes in the use or importance of coasts. The Piraeus, which had been the heart of ancient Athens, almost wholly lost its value in the checkered political history of the country during the Middle Ages, when naval power and merchant marine almost vanished; but with the restoration of Grecian independence in 1832, much of its pristine activity was restored. Up to the beginning of the seventeenth century, Japan had exploited her advantageous ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Regents." It appeared at first as a large 16-page pamphlet, three columns to the page. At the same time the Chronicle was established, a sophomore annual appeared, The Oracle, which had a long and checkered career ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... wet from the tub, whipped her hand under the corner of her checkered apron, and so took the note with a finger and thumb operating through the linen. By this means she avoided two evils—her fingers did not wet the letter, and the letter did not ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... administrative offices were humming with frantic activity as Walter glanced down the rows of cubbyholes. In the middle of it all sat Bailey, in his black-and-yellow checkered tattersall, smoking a large cigar. His feet were planted on his desk top, but he hadn't started on his morning Western yet. He was busy glaring, first at ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse
... have arisen. A queer fancy seems to be current that a fire exists to warm people. It exists to warm people, to light their darkness, to raise their spirits, to toast their muffins, to air their rooms, to cook their chestnuts, to tell stories to their children, to make checkered shadows on their walls, to boil their hurried kettles, and to be the red heart of a man's house and that hearth for which, as the great heathens said, ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Pierre;—there may be less money and less zeal and less remembrance of the lost. Then from the morne, over the bulwark, the green host will move down unopposed;—creepers will prepare the way, dislocating the pretty tombs, pulling away the checkered tiling;—then will corne the giants, rooting deeper,—feeling for the dust of hearts, groping among the bones;—and all that love has hidden away shall be restored to Nature,—absorbed into the rich juices of her verdure,—revitalized in her bursts of color,—resurrected in her upliftings ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... little chamber, nor was there over much of furniture, nor was that even of a high order—there was a bed with a red-checkered crazy-quilt; a washstand with severe, heavy white crockery; a rocking chair, homemade, of hickory; a rag mat, round, many-colored; and white muslin curtains on the windows. It wasn't luxurious, the little chamber—it was ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... can and should be made by our friends themselves. Europe, for example, is now marked by checkered areas of labor surplus and labor shortage, of agricultural areas needing machines and industrial areas needing food. Here and elsewhere we can hope that our friends will take the initiative in creating broader markets and more dependable currencies, to allow ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... who has studied, even in the most cursory manner, the checkered page of human life, must have observed that there are in continual operation through mankind some great secret moral agents, the powers of which are exerted within the heart, and beyond the reach ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... grand death, but by an act of cowardly treachery on the part of his American foes; it is one of the darkest stains on the checkered pages of frontier history. Early in 1777 he came into the garrison at Point Pleasant to explain that, while he was anxious to keep at peace, his tribe were bent on going to war; and he frankly added that of course if they did so he should ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... position that a man who used a deadly weapon in the commission of his crime should receive the full penalty of the law. A man who holds a pistol to shoot will take life, therefore he ought to have a life sentence. Wood, who belongs to a wealthy family in Texas, has a checkered history. He served as a soldier for a time in the Philippine Islands. Here he deserted his post and committed highway robbery. He was tried by court martial for larceny and convicted. Then he was brought to San Francisco and put in ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... them first in the little old town of St.-Pol, where always there was a coming and going of French and English soldiers. It was market-day and the Grande Place (not very grand) was crowded with booths and old ladies in black, and young girls with checkered aprons over their black frocks, and pigs and clucking fowls. Suddenly the people scattered, and there was a rumble and rattle of wheels as a long line of transport wagons ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... defending their independence during his reign, and for some time afterwards, although compelled in the end to succumb and resume a subject position under their own masters. Artabanus seems to have died in August or September A.D. 42, the year after the death of Caligula. His checkered reign had covered a space which cannot have fallen much short of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... the wind (irresolute) 605; oscillate &c. 314; vibrate between, two extremes, oscillate between, two extremes; alternate; have as man phases as the moon. Adj. changeable, changeful; changing &c. 140; mutable, variable, checkered, ever changing; protean, proteiform|; versatile. unstaid[obs3], inconstant; unsteady, unstable, unfixed, unsettled; fluctuating &c. v.; restless; agitated &c. 315; erratic, fickle; irresolute &c. 605; capricious &c. 608; touch and go; inconsonant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... into measures that were greatly mischievous to himself; and for that reason, among others, perhaps fatal to his country; measures, the effects of which, I am afraid, are for ever incurable. He made an administration, so checkered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery, so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... dutiful daughter, and that we love you as dearly as it is possible for parents to do. Take her, Captain Sinclair, from my hands, and take with her our blessings and best wishes for your happiness, which I do not doubt will be as great as we can expect in this checkered world; for a dutiful daughter will always become ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... muskets ready. But there was no sound other than their own quick footfalls upon the floor of rotting leaves, or the eager brushing of their bodies through occasional undergrowth; no sight but the serried trees and the checkered light and ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... mortality knows,—annihilates falsehood, and chills even self-delusion into awe. Come, then, and look upon the picture of a past day and of a gone being, without apprehension of deceit; and as the shadows and lights of a checkered and wild existence flit before you, watch if in your own hearts there be aught which ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was resuming his popularity, though still a prisoner. The Jacobins were exhibiting signs of terror, though still masters of every thing. The recruits were running away, though the decree for the general rising of the country was arming the people. In short, the news was exactly of that checkered order which was calculated to put us all in the highest spirits. The submission of Paris, at least until we were its conquerors, would have deprived us of a triumph on the spot, and the proclamation of a general peace would have been received ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... were more significant than in the Senate. Gilman Marston entered anew, having been absent serving with great credit as a brigadier-general in the war. General Banks resumed the seat which he had left to accept the governorship of Massachusetts in 1857. His checkered and remarkable career, both civil and military, during the eight intervening years had greatly increased his reputation. Henry C. Deming of Connecticut entered fresh from the field of war, choosing a political life rather than a return to literary labor. New York was greatly ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... to meat, each person knowing well his place. The day of the commercial traveller was not yet, and for these there was no special table, they being for the most part assigned to the Red Belt; there being a certain portion of the hall where the tablecloths were checkered red and white. It was not good to ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... to see neat rectangular patterns of roads and highways, cultivated fields and orangegroves, checkered towns and sprawling suburbs come to an abrupt stop where they were blotted out by the regimented uniformity of the onrushing grass. For miles we flew above its dazzling green until our eyes ached from the sameness and our minds ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... we last took leave of the reader, we pursued our way for some time along the narrow track, in the checkered sunshine and shadow of the woods, till at length, issuing forth into the broad light, we left behind us the farthest outskirts of that great forest, that once spread unbroken from the western plains to the shore of the ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... anecdote of the hat trade, and later, after plying her with questions regarding her life, past and present, the mood for a mutual exchange of confidences seized him and he told her something of his own checkered career. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... consisting of pictures of the Lion, the Bull, the Waterman, and the Flying Eagle, which representing the signs at the cardinal points, constituted the genii of the seasons. Besides these, we have the checkered flooring or mosaic work, representing the earth and its variegated face, which was introduced when temple worship succeeded its grove form; the two columns representing the imaginary pillars of heaven resting upon the earth at Equinoctial points, and ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... okay. We're radar operators. We track the rockets on a radar set from a field station." Big Mac pulled a red-checkered handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose violently. "Good operators are scarce. That's why no one bothers us, so long as we're on the job when ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... turned to watching the girl. She was frightened. She sat all alone, plucking nervously at the red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She sat with her back to the light, bunching the cloth up into little folds, then ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... first time in his checkered career Mr. Gibney had a sane, sensible, and serious thought. "Has it ever occurred to you, Mac, how much nicer it is to have a few dollars in the bank, good clothes on your back, an' a credit with your friends? Me, all my life I been a come-easy, go-easy, come-Sunday,-God'll-send-Monday ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... dimensions of my pan, I roll the reptile in a double spiral, or in two storeys. When the copious joint is in full process of dissolution, the pan becomes a puddle wherein wallow, in countless numbers, the grubs of the greenbottle and those of Sarcophaga carnaria, the Grey or checkered flesh fly, which are even mightier liquefiers. All the sand in the apparatus is saturated, has turned into mud, as though there had been a shower of rain. Through the hole at the bottom, which is protected by a flat pebble, the gruel trickles drop by drop. It is a still at work, a mortuary still, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Beautifully checkered stock, octagon barrel. No ramrod, nor is the gun provided with fittings for one. In the best of condition. Almost new. This gun was made for use by a member of some early German "Scheutzen" rifle club, period of 1855-'75. Mark on lock, "Rein, ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... nominal peace had fought the marauders of Europe or whipped the corsairs of Barbary in the Strait of Gibraltar. Never was a race of seamen so admirably fitted for the daring trade of privateering as the crews of these tall sloops, topsail schooners, and smart square-riggers, their sides checkered with gun-ports, and ready to ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... dual female form, Shrines the grand truth, that Might Should bravely nourish Right, Life's checkered ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... play he spent at the theatre, and at the bedside of his unconscious mother. The poor lady could not even understand whence the flowers came that he laid on her couch, the flowers thrown to the young man—yesterday unknown, and to-day the most famous of contemporary names. All this tale of triumph, checkered by enmities and diversified by duels, Dumas tells with the vigour and wit of his novels. He is his own hero, and loses nothing in the process; but the other characters—Taylor, Nodier, the Duc d'Orleans, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... of the red house, and painted up that small procession—the deep blue frock of little Gyp, the glint of gold in the chestnut of her hair; the daisy-starred grass; the dark birds with translucent red dewlaps, and checkered tails and the tulip background, puce and red and yellow. When she had lured them to the open gate, little ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... paid to talk back, to allow any sign of defiance to show. He would go through the motions as if he were a bad little boy who had realized his errors. It was a meek-and-mild act that had paid off more than once in Ross's checkered past. So he faced the man seated behind the desk in the other room with an uncertain, diffident smile, standing with boyish awkwardness, respectfully waiting for the ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... years (1865-73) his life was checkered indeed. Seriously ill for six weeks, he arose from his bed to see his mother carried off by consumption and to find himself suffering with congestion of the lungs. Slightly relieved, Lanier turned his hand to various ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... I wished much to learn something, he would not speak, but adroitly changed the conversation to the subject of my own adventures, and these he made me recount from the beginning. If the lady enjoyed all the absurdities of my checkered fortune with a keen sense of the ridiculous, the colonel apparently could trace in them but so many resemblances to my father's character, and constantly broke out into exclamations of "How like him!" "Just ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... elastic and crystalline that it had the same effect on the landscape that a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and perfection. The landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang over fairy-land. The world ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... court-yard, and, shaping their course in the direction indicated by the huntsman, entered the park, and proceeded along a glade, checkered by the early sunbeams. Here the noise they made in their progress speedily disturbed a herd of deer browsing beneath the trees, and, as the dappled foresters darted off to a thicker covert, great ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... checkering a country-side,—in movements intricate, chaotic to all but the scientific eye. Conceive them, flowing along, from the Heights of Chaber, behind Prossik Hamlet (right wing of infantry plants itself at Prossik, horse westward of them); and ever onwards in broad many-checkered tide-stream, eastward, eastward, then southward ("our artillery went through Podschernitz, the foot and horse a little on this westward side of it"): intricate, many-glancing tide of coming battle; which, swift, correct as clock-work, becomes two lines, from Prossik to near Chwala ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... had a checkered career, and lived in several smart families before, to assure her old age, she married this gentle, queer little farmer. She is a great find for me. But the thing balances up beautifully, as I am a blessing to her, a new interest in her monotonous life, and she never lets me forget how much ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich |
