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More "Flicker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fire, and that fresh explosions might at any moment take place, would render it an act of simple madness for their friends above to endeavour to clear the shaft and headings, and to restore the ventilation. The fact was further impressed upon them by a sudden and simultaneous flicker of the lamps, and a faint shake, followed by ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... swingle, swuff, Flicker, flacker, fling, fluff! Thus we go, To and fro; Here and there, Everywhere, Born and bred; ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... believe his eyes, therefore, when he saw the flame flicker and expire. His sight had surely deceived him. And now, since the light did not reappear, there must be some smoke wreath or impenetrable mist brooding about the tower's gray old head, and obscuring it from ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... swept by as steadily as the procession of the seasons. The "Dimbula" heard the "Majestic" say "Humph!" and the "Paris" grunted "How!" and the "Touraine" said "Oui!" with a little coquettish flicker of steam; and the "Servia" said "Haw!" and the "Kaiser" and the "Werkendam" said "Hoch!" Dutch ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... the mountain pass. I had studied the map so carefully that I was quite sure of my way, but though my appointment with the rascals was for eight o'clock, I wished to reach the appointed spot before the last flicker of grey light ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... had happened there, which, though the flicker of the fire had died down, she could see with her ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... above me I could make out a jet of gas which I guessed came from a street lamp, and I moved over to that, and, while I tried to recover my bearings, kept my hand on the iron post. Except for this flicker of gas, no larger than the tip of my finger, I could distinguish nothing about me. For the rest, the mist hung between me and the world like ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... In the flicker of lightning the desolation of the cleared ground on his left leaped out and sank into the night, together with the elusive forms of things distant, pale, unearthly. But in the brilliant square of the door he saw the girl—the woman he had longed to see once more as if enthroned, with her hands ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... hesitating hand across his forehead, ruffling the short curly hair. Then his preoccupied gaze wandered. Ailsa turned toward him at the same moment, and instantly a flicker of malice transformed the nobility ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... spacious garden and her garden's grant She offers in reward for handsome cheer: Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant The secret down a dewy leer Of corner eyelids into haze: Many a fair Aphrosyne Like flower-bell to honey-bee: And here they flicker round the maze Bewildering him in heart and head: And here they wear the close demure, With subtle peeps to reassure: Others parade where love has bled, And of its crimson weave their mesh: Others to snap of fingers leap, As bearing breast with love ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a flicker of contemptuous wonder in the Duke's eyes. But he only shrugged his shoulders, and turning to Sonia, said, "Will you be an angel and play me a little Grieg, Mademoiselle Kritchnoff? I heard you playing yesterday. No one plays ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... tell of pleasure from minute to minute of that day, and of the days following. The breath of the air, the notes of the wind instruments, the flicker of sunlight on the gravel, all come back to me as I write, and I taste them again. Dr. Sandford and I went down the road I have described, leading along the edge of the plain at its northern border; from which the view up ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of the last and the commencement of the present century. Except in a few isolated cases, they also failed in producing any noticeable change in either the moral, social, or religious condition of the Gipsies, and with the death of Hoyland, Borrow, Crabb, Roberts, and others, died the last flicker of a flickering light that was to lead these poor, deluded, benighted heathen wanderers upon a road to usefulness, honesty, uprightness, and industry. Third, that on the decline of religious zeal, fervour, and philanthropy on behalf of the Gipsies more than forty years ago the spasmodic efforts ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... enough to show Lord Findon that, in spite of her flicker of gaiety, Eugenie was singularly pale. And he knew well that they were both listening for the same step on the stairs. However, he tried ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when the Tricon did not want her, which too often happened, she had no notion where to bestow her charms. Then began a series of wild descents upon the Parisian pavement, plunges into the baser sort of vice, whose votaries prowl in muddy bystreets under the restless flicker of gas lamps. Nana went back to the public-house balls in the suburbs, where she had kicked up her heels in the early ill-shod days. She revisited the dark corners on the outer boulevards, where when she was fifteen years ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... no cause whatever for the fear of the runner had been shown; but now there began to be seen, far up the shore, a little flicker of something light-coloured moving to and fro with great swiftness and irregularity. Rapidly growing larger, it, too, declared itself as a figure in pale, fluttering draperies, ill-defined. There was something about its motion which made Parkins very unwilling to see it at close quarters. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... the fruitful river teem with varied forms of animal life. From the caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of many-colored plumage. The cormorant, the pelican, the heron, floated on the water, or stalked along its pebbly brink. Among the sedges, the alligator, foul from his native mud, outstretched his hideous length, or, sluggish and sullen, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... perhaps a flicker of admiration. "You are decisive. You have many good qualities, Georg Brende. I wonder if ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... which is to serve him for a retreat, he fells a few trees and builds a loghouse. Nothing can offer a more miserable aspect than these isolated dwellings. The traveller who approaches one of them towards nightfall, sees the flicker of the hearth-flame through the chinks in the walls; and at night, if the wind rises, he hears the roof of boughs shake to and fro in the midst of the great forest trees. Who would not suppose that this poor hut is the asylum of rudeness and ignorance? Yet no sort of comparison can be drawn ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... into the light a low, sibilant whisper reached him. At the cross-corridor doorway he was in time to see the flicker of a vanishing gray garment and a sandaled foot on a naked ankle flash over the vestibule wave-check. He shook open the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... mixed with snow driven against the glass, and occasionally the howl of the wind, which penetrated the chimney and scattered the ashes. A single candle placed behind the curtains lighted this dismal scene, and the irregular flicker of its flame cast weird reflections and dancing shadows an the walls of the alcove. There came a lull in the wind, the rain ceased, and during this instant of calm someone knocked, at first gently, and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... bedside, sometimes unable to extend his hand to touch her hand, as though his strength were wholly a reflection of her strength, so that with the latter's waning the former must flicker out. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Lynde to be in the middle of the night, though it was in fact on the edge of daybreak, that he was awakened by some one knocking softly at his door. He lighted a match, and by its momentary flicker saw Mr. Denham standing ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a pause, and the most intense silence reigned over the whole scene, which, illuminated as it was by the flicker of the lamps striking out broad patterns of light and shadow upon the rocky walls, was as strange as any I ever saw, even in that unholy land. Upon the ground before the dais were stretched scores of the corpselike forms of the spectators, till at last the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... laughing a bit wildly, leaned from the shattered window and let drive a few last pot-shots into the dark, at the faint flicker of lights along the crest of the black cliff. In the gloom of the pilot-house, his shoulders bulked huge as he fired. Captain Alden, staggering back, sat down heavily on one of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... pleasure in dressing her dark hair, and suffering Catharine to braid it, and polish it till it looked glossy and soft. Indiana in her turn would adorn Catharine with the wings of the blue-bird or red-bird, the crest of the wood-duck, or quill feathers of the golden-winged flicker, which is called in the Indian tongue the shot-bird, in allusion to the round spots on its cream-coloured breast: [FN: The Golden-winged Flicker belongs to a sub-genus of woodpeckers; it is very handsome, and is said to be eatable; it lives on fruits and insects.] but it was not in these ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... convulses and divides its surface. Here vast areas subside into valleys and deep abysses; there mountain peaks shoot up heavenwards. Mysterious shadows begin to throng the hollows; new tints and half-tints flicker and shift everywhere; mists hang floating over ravines and precipices; the vegetation grows more various, here slenderer, there richer and more luxuriant; whilst high over all, bright on the topmost ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... remained with her throughout the night. Just before death there came to her a brief season of long-lost animation, the last flicker of the torch before darkness. She talked to them almost continuously until the dawn. Into their hands was given the task of educating the others of the family, and on their hearts and consciences ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... production. Adelaide Crapsey's chief visitant was doom. She saw the days vanishing, and the inevitable years lengthening over her. No wonder she could write brevities, she whose existence was brevity itself. The very flicker of the lamp was among the last events. What, then, was the fluttering of the moth but a monstrous intimation. If her work was chilled with severity, it was because she herself was covered with the cool branches ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... a moment, and a faint flicker of a smile showed in the wrinkles about her eyes. I asked ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the furnace door. A bright glow filled the fire-box: he could hear a stir and singing in the boiler, and the rustle of warm pipes that chuckled quietly through winter nights of storm. Over the coals hovered a magic evasive flicker, the very soul of fire. It was a Pentecostal flame, perfect and heavenly in tint, the essence of pure ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... Cranston's equipage, basking in the life-giving sunshine and in the thrill and hope and sweet unrest of an ever-growing love, devoted and insistent in spite of vague and jealous dread, for there was not the feeblest flicker of encouragement in Miss Loomis's calm and oft-averted eyes. Langston asked himself in the still hours of the starlit night, camping on the banks of Dismal River, was it possible that her heart was following some soldier in the dusty column, riding hard, riding fast long ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... hear it than the Daggetts tramping overhead and the Ricketts children crying down-stairs. Oh, isn't it nice to be by ourselves in this quaint old room? Turn the lamp down, Robert, so we can see the firelight flicker over everything. Isn't it splendid?—just like a ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... last dim flicker of the green tail lights had disappeared Donna retired to her room and cried herself to sleep. Once more she was left to battle alone with the world, and the days would be long until ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... hovered quite round the outer edge of discussion and anxiety, leaving all analysis of their question to the ladies alone and now only feeling his way toward some small droll cynicism. It broke out afresh, the cynicism—it had already shown a flicker—in a but slightly deferred: "Well, hanged if I would if I ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the older man's deep-set eyes as he noted the flicker of a smile which accompanied ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... intently, but it was only the falling of spent shrapnel, not the patter of Dustbin's baby but quite enormous feet. A stove-pipe belching smoke and savoury fumes protruded itself through the pavement on my right. Through the chinks in the gaping slabs there came the ruddy flicker that bespoke a "home from home" beneath my feet; and then, still listening for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... refuses to accept the punishment, and swerves aside from the slum to vagabondage. The average beast in the social pit is either too much of a beast, or too much of a slave to the bourgeois ethics and ideals of his masters, to manifest this flicker of rebellion. But the social pit, out of its discouragement and viciousness, breeds criminals, men who prefer being beasts of prey to being beasts of work. And the mediocre criminal, in turn, the unfit and ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... for itself the soul should chuse For higher adoration; but in vain! Onward she moves, and as the lamp's faint hues Flicker around, her charmed eyeballs strain, For there he lies in undreamt loveliness! Softly she steals towards him, and bends o'er His slumberlidded eyes, as a lily droops Faint o'er a folded rose: one caress She ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Near her were some children, busy too, plaiting wicks for candles and lamps. Each group of workers had a lamp in its centre, and those farthest from the fire had live heat from two braziers filled with glowing wood embers, replenished now and again from the generous hearth. But the flicker of the great fire was manifest to remotest corners, and prevailed beyond the ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... they were all but looking on, while he was drowned; that they were close at hand, but could not make an effort to save him; that he himself had shut and barred them out. He answered the shout—with a yell, which seemed to make the hundred fires that danced before his eyes tremble and flicker, as if a gust of wind had stirred them. It was of no avail. The strong tide filled his throat, and bore him on, upon its ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... while the child wearily coiled herself up for sleep. The rain was falling heavily, as the woman, pail in hand, emerged from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow street, that stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter; the long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking to ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... back; clear away the jugs and glasses. Bill's right. Open the windows, Warner." The boy addressed, who sat by the long ropes, proceeded to pull up the great windows, and let in a clear, fresh rush of night air, which made the candles flicker and gutter, and the fires roar. The circle broke up, each collaring his own jug, glass, and song-book; Bill pounced on the big table, and began to rattle it away to its place outside the buttery door. The lower-passage boys carried off their small ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... masts flicker'd as they lay afloat; The crowds, the temples, waver'd, and the shore; The bright death quiver'd at the victim's throat; Touch'd; and I knew no ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... meet Harald, and of our parting I will not say more. I could not then tell that I should not see him again, and that was well: but I know that when I saw the last flicker of his sails against the sky, I felt more lonely even than ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... demurr'd at this first notice to Quit; and though death had threaten'd an ejection, His youth and constitution bore him through, And sent the doctors in a new direction. But still his state was delicate: the hue Of health but flicker'd with a faint reflection Along his wasted cheek, and seem'd to gravel The faculty—who said that ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... did not stir nor did his eyelids flicker. He was used to the proximity of foes, and the distant report did not cause his heart to miss a single beat. Instead, he felt a sort of dry amusement that they should be so near and yet know it not. How Tandakora would have rejoiced if there had been a whisper in his ear that Willet, Robert and ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and the torchlight grew dimmer, and died away as it had come in a red flicker on the roof, and the footsteps sounded fainter as they went up the passage, until the vault was left to the dead men and me. Yet for a very long time—it seemed hours—after all had gone I could hear a murmur of distant voices, and knew that some were talking ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... floating city. At midnight there was a cry of alarm passed from ship to ship. The tide was running strong from the westward through the Straits, and sweeping along on its current came eight dark masses, each defined in the night by a red flicker of fire that rose higher and spread wider as the English ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... because the path of the particles is curved. No arc would be formed unless the carbons were first touched to start incandescence. If they are separated too far for the strength of the current to bridge the gap the light will flicker or go out. The arc lamp is therefore provided with a mechanism which, when the current is cut off, causes the carbons to fall together, gradually separates them when it is turned on, and keeps them apart. The principle employed is the effort of a coil through which a current passes ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... bit of it. I was up with my squad in those divers' dresses, inside the gas-chambers, with sheets of silk for caulking. We couldn't see a thing outside except the lightning flashes. I never saw one of those American aeroplanes. Just saw the shots flicker through the chambers and sent off men for the tears. We caught fire a bit—not much, you know. We were too wet, so the fires spluttered out before we banged. And then one of their infernal things dropped out of the air on us and rammed. Didn't you ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... youth as solid in mind as in body, and ere the scene grasped him against his will he says he saw with an angry impatience the flicker of a leer on the darkened face of the Peruvian. But it did not last. In a few minutes the two young Burghers were not the only ones whom the spell had subdued—the wizard was netted too. And then, as he stood, his hands still fluttering, ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... was respectful almost to the point of humility. "The majordomo sent me with a letter, which I was to deliver into the hands of the Senor Allen," he said simply. "My hope was that I might arrive before Manuel"—he caught a flicker of wrath in the eyes of the don at the name and smiled inwardly—"but the moonlight played tricks upon the trail, and my caballo tripped upon a willow-branch and fell upon his head so that his neck was twisted. I ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... as he saw a flicker of light in the window that looked towards the track, when at last he drew near the little estancia house. It was like Toffy to remember to put a lamp where he could see it! It was worth while taking a midnight ride for such a good fellow, although he had had a very fair notion of what ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent importance. Mrs Manderson would see Mr Trent. She walked to a mirror, looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head at herself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... his lips glued tightly together in one firm, thin, straight line across his face, was glaring steadfastly at the corner of the ceiling, permitting no expression whatever to flicker in his eyes; noting which, Bobby turned to him with ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... high As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by; But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a preaching ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... told that tones well sung, even unconsciously, are enough. But that is not true. The least unfavorable circumstance, over-exertion, indisposition, an unaccustomed situation, anything can blow out the "unconscious" one's light, or at least make it flicker badly. Of any self-help, when there is ignorance of all the fundamentals, there can be no question. Any help is grasped at. Then appears the so-called (but false) "individuality," under whose mask so much that is bad presents itself to art ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... occasioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for a similar purpose—each and all of which appear by turns to the dreamer the most reasonable and the most preposterous of conceptions, just as the reasoning or imaginative faculties flicker, alternately, one above the other. At last an idea occurred to me which seemed rational, and which gave me cause to wonder, very justly, that I had not entertained it before. I placed the slip of paper on the back of a book, and, collecting the fragments of the phosphorus matches ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... breeze from the south urged them on their way. The sun soon set and a long night began, but what of that? The moon and snow lighted the earth as if by day, and with a silvery glory. And now the Northern Lights began to flicker, flash and ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... his prize, and, after looking for some time, he felt convinced that they were slowly gaining on her. Every now and then he turned to the man at the helm with some remark, and then shouted to the other forward to keep a bright look-out. At length, however, the light ahead began to flicker and dance, and now to grow larger, now to decrease, till it was scarcely visible. He was holding fast on to the side of the dhow, and found some support necessary. He looked up at the huge sail, which, bulging out, seemed to grow larger and ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Never a flicker gets through," he announced when he returned. "A man would have to come close enough to hear the wood crackle or smell the smoke to ever guess we had a fire going. And even the smoke is taken care of." They tilted back their heads to see how it crept lazing up ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... Utter night: the last flicker of the lantern was gone. I sat and waited; my mind was still keen, but how long would it last? There was a limit even to the endurance of the ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... ready response, and nothing loth the helmsman changed his course to follow the eccentric craft. She was evidently bound on some secret mission, for not otherwise would she thus tear through the darkness before the wind without the flicker of a light. ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... were devoted to the study of the manners and customs of the parents before the hidden subjects of their solicitude gave any signs of life visible from below. Though visits were about half an hour apart, and flicker babies have very good appetites, they did not go hungry, for on every occasion they had a hearty meal instead of the single mouthful that many young birds receive. This fact was guessed at on the ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... back. As he advanced, the booming sound of the waves, which had died down to a faint murmur at the distillery, grew louder and louder. At last he reached the pump-cellar, and was just about to step out of the tunnel when his eye caught the flicker of a light at the top of the step-ladder. ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... Lilac, your perfumed lamps, light, chestnut, your clustering candles, Broom and laburnum, untold torches of tremulous gold! Therefore gold-gather again from the honeyed heath and the bean field, Snatching no instant of ease, bright, multitudinous bees! Therefore, ye butterflies, float and flicker from garden to green field, Flicker and float and stay, settle and sip ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... kindred minds near to us, ourselves yet not ourselves; with primitive Teutonic strength and directness, with a sweet freshness of spring in its more delicate poetry, and both of these elements blended at times in an atmosphere as of German forests in June. In some writers the flicker of French brilliancy illumines the depth of these Teutonic woods, producing a German which, in spite of the condemnation of the Emperor, we should like to write ourselves if the choice ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... quiet night, there was not a single flicker of light, and at that time not a sound to indicate that unmentionable numbers of our men were facing one another in parallel ditches across ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... hardly realize that he had been around so long. He had been a little boy, playing soldiers. He had been a young man, breaking the family tradition of Harvard and wangling an appointment to West Point. He had been a new second lieutenant at a little post in Wyoming, in the last dying flicker of the Indian Wars. He had been a first lieutenant, trying to make soldiers of militiamen and hoping for orders to Cuba before the Spaniards gave up. He had been the hard-bitten captain of a hard-bitten company, fighting Moros in the jungles of Mindanao. ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... clasped about her knees, and a curious intent look on her pointed delicate face. That intent look, as he was to discover, was very constant with her. It was as though she were always watching something of absorbing interest which no one else could see. Sometimes it amused her, and and then a flicker of laughter ran up from her mouth to her grey eyes and danced there. At other times she was sorry. Her face was like still water, ruffled by invisible winds and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... trustworthiness of the latter as on that of the former. To refute this charge Mr. Bell had insisted that both he and Watson carefully write out whatever they heard that the two records might afterward be compared and verified. 'That is,' Mr. Bell had added with the flicker of a smile, 'if we succeed in talking at all!' Well, they did succeed, as you have heard. At first they held only a stilted dialogue and conscientiously jotted it down; but afterward their exuberance got the better of them and in sheer joy they chattered away like ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... hood, kissed her friends good-bye, and went back to Le Bocage; and the old man and the orphan sat looking at the grotesque flicker of the flames on ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... table and picked up a white paper package sealed with bold red seals. He poised it for a moment in his hands while a flicker of a smile stole into the narrow eyes and played for an instant round the thin lips. Then, with a quick movement, he thrust the little package into the side pocket of his tunic and buttoned ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... what perplexed him most, was the peculiar light, with the aid of which, though dim, he could discern every object so distinctly. It could not proceed from a candle—it was too generally diffused; nor from the fire—it was too gray, and did not flicker; nor from the moon—it was not silvery enough: from what then did it proceed? It appeared the most like daylight; but this it could not be, he reasoned, from the fact that he was wounded just before night-fall—unless—and the idea seemed to startle him—unless ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... he glanced across to the far side, his eyes attracted to something which had moved. He could see nothing at first, though from the corner of his eye he had certainly caught a flicker of movement over there. Yellow sand, gray rocks and bushes, and above a curlew circling, with long beak outstretched before, and long, red legs stretched out behind. He almost believed he had but caught the swift passing of a cloud shadow over there and was on the point of climbing ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... devours many of the above fruits, as well as those of spicebush, sour gum, cherries, grapes, blackberries. The flicker devours most of the fruits listed for the two woodpeckers named above, also hackberry, black alder, green brier, bayberries. A number of other woodpeckers possess habits much the same as the three above named. The cedar bird devours ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... was to be alone with the Virgin, who looked down, her dark face gleaming dimly in the gloom when a wick happened to flicker with short flashes ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... kind. Only, for him (poetic dream, or philosophic apprehension, it was this which never failed to evoke his wonderful genius for exquisitely impassioned speech) over all those ugly anatomical preparations, as though over miraculous saintly relics, there was the perpetual flicker of a surviving spiritual ardency, one day to reassert itself—stranger far than any ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... hatch, before it could be hastily closed, revealing the squalidness of the interior in which we were quartered. Then someone, growling and stumbling through the darkness, lit a slush lantern, dangling from a blackened beam, its faint flicker barely discernible. The hole became foul and sickening, men tossing and groaning in their uneasy sleep, or prowling about seeking some measure of comfort. There was no severe wind accompanying the storm, and the flurry of rain soon ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... top. He sent beams of yellow light shooting out to seawards. His hands quivered, and he was mumbling to himself under the influence of ungovernable excitement. His stakes were very large, and all depended on the flicker of those lanthorns out towards the men on the luggers that were hidden in the black expanse of the sea. Then he waited, and against the light of the window I could see him mopping his forehead with the sleeve of his coat; my heart ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... is very old, and very—very gentle," Doctor Prance answered, hesitating a moment for her adjective. "Under those circumstances a person may flicker out." ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... forgotten himself. He took a chair and set it in the open doorway, using the door-post as a rest for his head; and then the cottage was silent. The wind breathed more gently; the stars shone out; the air was soft after the storm; the moonlight made a bright flicker of light and shade over all the outer world. Now and then a grasshopper chirruped, or a little bird murmured a few twittering notes at being disturbed in its sleep; and then came a ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... Not a change, not the flicker of one had passed over his countenance at my utterance of the word man. Either his official habit had stood him in wonderful stead, or the police had failed so far to see any connection between this murder and the young girl whose footprints, for all ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... if he goes after them; I doubt If many of them ever come to him. His memories are like lamps, and they go out; Or if they burn, they flicker ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... journey! It had seemed long enough when we had some slight flicker of hope, or at least of expectation, before us, but now that our worst fears were fulfilled ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wife; an old man's passion Amounts to no more than this smoke that I puff; There, there, now, buss me in good old fashion; A died-down candle will flicker in the snuff. ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... with a faint flicker of venom, "I didn't, to tell you the truth. That's why I told you I was talking business; but you ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... it been, and so shall ever be The man who stands to-day a shining light, The hero who commands our fealty, To-morrow, in oblivion's dark night, Will be forgotten, or, on history's page, May flicker dimly in a ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... Mexican showed a flicker of interest. "The Lunar Film Company? Do you know a man named ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... eyes, which stared and stared, yet seemed hardly to see that at which they gazed. Rhoda stood before her for a full moment, before the light of recognition showed in their depths, and even then it was a flicker more than a light, and died ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... been something magnetic in Peter's voice and steady gaze as he said, 'Look on us!' It was a strange preface, if only some small coin was to follow. It kindled some flicker of hope of he knew not what in the beggar. He expected to receive 'something' from them, and, no doubt, was asking himself what. Expectation and receptivity were being stirred in him, though he could not divine what was coming. We have no right to assume that his state ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... especially the red admirals, often do seek a roof, going into barns, sheds, churches, verandahs, and even houses to sleep. There, too, they sometimes wake up in winter from their long hibernating sleep, and remind us of summer days gone by as they flicker on the sun-warmed panes. Mrs. Brightwen established the fact that they sometimes have fixed homes to which they return. Two butterflies, one a brimstone, the other, so far as the writer remembers, a red admiral, regularly came for admission to the house. One was killed by ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... continued to stare out of the window, seeing nothing of the scenery but the flicker of telegraph posts before his eyes that ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... vellum On the form, and plainly tell them That the art was then perfected, As he pressed the platen down, He had not the faintest notion Of the rhythmical commotion, Of the brabble and the clamor And the unremitting roar Of the mighty triple decker, While the steel rods flicker, And the papers, ready folded, Fall in thousands to ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... eyes showed their lids in an odd flicker. The attack was sudden. He brushed his moustache upwards with a thoughtful movement of the finger and thumb, regarding Rallywood ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... that can be managed. You may call me inconsistent and you may be right. But I'm not a hide-bound doctrinnaire. There are circumstances under which the loftier emanations of humanitarian principle kind of flicker out. The shooting of Smith is a circumstance of that sort. Your treatment of the ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... hands of Peter senior. His commercial genius had spread them across the sky to beckon the public to his great new department store on Sixth Avenue. Just as at the beginning of the gesture you saw only the tips of the fingers, so Peter Rolls, Sr., had begun with a tiny flicker, the first groping of his inspiration feeling its ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... staring, it seemed to me that there was a sort of flicker in the air above the man's head, and he ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... leaned in the corner of the sofa, breathing heavily. His face was not to be well seen, because of the flapping and flickering of the candle-flames, and the shadows they sent waving huge over all, like the flaunting of a black flag. Through the flicker and the shadow the laird was still peering at him, when suddenly, without opening his eyes, the old man raised himself to a sitting posture—all of a piece, like a figure of wood lifted from behind. The laird then saw his ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... compose myself. I soon felt better. The change for my lungs, from the fetid atmosphere of the gambling-room to the cool air of the apartment I now occupied, the almost equally refreshing change for my eyes, from the glaring gaslights of the "salon" to the dim, quiet flicker of one bedroom-candle, aided wonderfully the restorative effects of cold water. The giddiness left me, and I began to feel a little like a reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of sleeping all night in a gambling-house; ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... back over the years of my life, even to my first remembrances, that I might see it from first to last in a sort of whole and with a kind of measurement. But when I began to dwell upon my childhood, one little thing gave birth to another swiftly, as you may see one flicker in the heaven multiply and break upon the mystery of the dark, filling the night with clusters of stars. As I thought, I kept drawing spears of the dungeon corn between my fingers softly (they had come to be like comrades to me), and presently there flashed upon me the very first ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to see whether it was still beating. He was alive! Beckoning to two of his comrades, Molly commanded them to carry him to the shade of a near-by tree. And soon she had the satisfaction of seeing a faint smile flicker over his face as she bent above him. At that moment her keen ears heard General Knox ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... much as the flicker of an eyelid did Shere Ali betray that he heard the words. Linforth sought to revive that night so vividly that he needs must turn, needs must respond to the call, and needs must renew ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... gazing on him with a girlish interest and admiration. There was indignation, there was pity, there was hope. Some day it might come to pass that I, girl as I was, might contribute by word or deed towards the vindication of that long-suffering, gallant, and romantic prodigal. It was a flicker of the Joan of Arc inspiration, common, I fancy, to many girls. I little then imagined how profoundly and strangely involved my uncle's fate would one ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... contempt, but when the case was opened and the array of tubes and transformers was revealed, that expression disappeared; and when he added a super-power stage by cutting in a heavy-duty transformer and a five-kilowatt transmitting tube, Seaton thought that he saw an instantaneously suppressed flicker of doubt or fear. ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... soft contented noises. At the end of the October rut the deer came back plentifully to the Tonkawanda District, and Greenhow gave up the greater part of the rainy season to auditing his account with them. He spent whole days scanning the winter colored slope for the flicker and slide of light on a hairy flank that betrayed his enemy, or, rifle in hand, stalking a patch of choke cherry and manzanita within which the mule-deer could snake and crawl for hours by intricacies of doubling and back tracking that yielded not a square ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... thrush and the ruby-and golden-crowned kinglets; the song, field, fox, white throated, Savannah and Lincoln sparrows; the meadow lark, the bronzed grackle and the cowbird; the red-winged, the yellow-head and the rusty blackbirds; the wood pewee and the olive-sided flycatcher; the flicker and the sap-sucker, the mourning dove and several of the water fowl. Last week—the first week in March—a golden eagle paused in his migration to sit awhile on a fence post at the side of a timber road. Two men got near enough to see the color of his feathers and then one of them, with a John ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... slowly. "Are you thinking of going up there?" He considered the question, and his guest, with a flicker in his lighted eyes. "Well, decent is a relative word, you know. However, wonders can be accomplished with a stout rope and a gang of natives, even beyond Dizful. But here you see me and my ark still whole—after a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Lucy, with a little smile, which did not flicker naturally, but was apt to get fixed at the corners of her pretty mouth. "That would never do, papa. Mr Wentworth's private concerns are nothing to us; but, you know, there is a great work going on in the district, and that can't be interfered with," said the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... laid his hand was the will, signed and witnessed, regularly executed, all its provisions seeming, as he glanced through it, reasonable and feasible. As he laid it aside, he experienced the business man's satisfaction with a document duly capable of the ends desired. Then he opened with a sudden flicker of curiosity a bulky envelope placed with the will and addressed to himself. He read it through, the natural interest on his face succeeded by amazement, increasing gradually to fear, the chill drops starting from every pore. ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... shroud our life; Speech flees before this; Faces turn away from each other; The fire throws light on them; There, too, flames burn and flicker. ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... illumined the white and silver doublet, and glowed in the rubies, the Bishop conceived the whimsical fancy that the Knight might well be some splendid archangel, come down to force the Convent gates and carry off a nun to heaven. And the Knight, watching the leaping flame flicker on the Bishop's crimson robes and silvery hair, saw the lenient smile upon the saintly face and took courage as he realised how kindly was the heart, filled with most human sympathy, which beat beneath the cross of gold upon the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... wake up to the fact, day after day, with a trembling dismay. Now it is not like that. I can give no account of what I do. The smallest things about me seem to take up my mind. I can sit for an hour by the hearth, neither reading nor thinking, just watching the flame flicker over the coals, or the red heart of the fire eating its way upwards and outwards. I can sit on a sunshiny morning in the garden, merely watching with a strange intentness what goes on about me, the uncrumpling leaf, the snowdrop pushing from the mould, the thrush searching the lawn, the ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... room there came a slight noise, a faint breath of sound; or it might have been only an echo of silence. Their eyes were fixed each upon the others unwaveringly, with not a flicker to indicate that either had heard. After a moment Miss Thorne returned to her ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... was still pitch dark, except for the flicker of the veiled lamp; and the continual roaring and oscillation testified to the unrelaxed velocity of the train. He sat upright in a panic, for he had been tormented by the most uneasy dreams; it was some seconds before he recovered his self-command; and even after he had resumed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... restored to their old strength by Harold Blacktooth, and at last Neustrians and Scandinavians seemed in a fair way to amalgamate and produce that nation of warriors and lawyers which they afterwards became. In 954 King Louis died after a last flicker of expiring power in retrieving Laon. But though Lothair followed him as King of the French, Hugh Capet was ruling in 956 as Duke of Paris, and it was to Hugh that Duke Richard of Normandy did homage for his fief. Thirty-one years later the last Karoling was passed over, and Hugh ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... respect and zeal as if she had been a queen. A sense of authority and importance began to impress itself upon her as she sat at the head of her own table in her own dining-hall, with all the Vandykes and Holbeins and Gainsboroughs gazing placidly down upon her from their gilded frames, and the flicker of many wax candles in old silver sconces glancing upon the shields, helmets, rusty pikes and crossed swords that decorated the panelling of the walls between and above ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... mind away from apprehensiveness she moved quickly to the kitchen door and into the dimly-lighted dowdy passage-way. Somewhere beyond the gas flicker and the hat-stand lay—what? With all her determination she pushed forward, almost running to the door. Her hand hovered over the little knob of the lock: only horror of a renewal of that dreadful sound prompted her to open the door quickly. She peered into the darkness, faintly silhouetted ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... away to hide the flicker of jealousy, for she had learned long since how transparently every emotion showed in her features. "I think we ought not to waste any time now. And anyway I'd rather get acquainted with ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... the sofa's edge—she was so thin there was plenty of room—and taking her hand held it while he tried to hide the concern that seized him. After the first sentence of greeting she fell back on the crumpled pillow, and lay still, the little flicker of animation dying out. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... he caught the faint flicker of it as it curved her lips and made her eyes shine for an instant. Minute following minute, she was becoming more attractive. His voice trembled ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... and about from the western ranches to Flicker Alley and the London Music Halls, only to return in the end, as it naturally would, to the water hole at Rugged Rocks and our chances of finding lion. The discussion was lengthy on this ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... voice out of the depths cries unto me—I do not understand its words, but I know that it tells me of coming disaster, unknown but inevitable, mysterious and inexorable as death. The future is lugubrious as a cemetery full of open graves, ready to receive the dead, with here and there a flicker of pale torches which I can scarce distinguish, and I know not if they are there to lure me on to destruction or to show me ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the ever-steepening trail, ceasing his song only when he needed the breath to climb. A cottontail waved its beacon for a minute before him, then darted into the underbrush; the mountain jays called out a wailing cry; and the flicker clucked above. Sharp turns were in the trail, else it had faced an upright cliff or overshot a precipice; but it was easily followed and, at length, he was above the cedars. Here the horse trail ended, but a moccasin path ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... you," he replied, smiling at her fondly. "But I had rapped on the fence twice. I suppose you took me for a flicker. Or you were too busy with your gardening to hear me. Or, may be you were too ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Samsu-ditana, Babylon's power of resistance was so far weakened that she fell an easy prey to the rulers of the Country of the Sea. But the reappearance of the Sumerians in the role of leading race in Western Asia was destined not to last long, and was little more than the last flicker of vitality exhibited by this ancient and exhausted race. Thus the Second Dynasty fell in its turn before the onslaught of the Kassite tribes who descended from the mountainous districts in the west of Elam, and, having overrun the whole of Mesopotamia, established a new dynasty at Babylon, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... borne by such a word as the Gothic Atta for father, where a Mongolian has been adopted in preference to an Aryan word, is irresistible on this point; but that, apart from such natural assimilation, all the thousand shades of resemblance and affinity which gleam and flicker through the whole body of popular tradition in the Aryan race, as the Aurora plays and flashes in countless rays athwart the Northern heaven, should be the result of mere servile copying of one tribe's traditions by another, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... key from his pocket, opened the vault and went inside, nearly closing the door behind him. Uncle Bushrod saw, through the narrow aperture, the flicker of a candle. In a minute or two—it seemed an hour to the watcher—Mr. Robert came out, bringing with him a large hand-satchel, handling it in a careful but hurried manner, as if fearful that he might be observed. With one hand he closed and locked ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... sat looking out of the chink in the old tree, through which he had crept inside it, Daddy suddenly saw a reddish, brownish flash flicker ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Without the flicker of an eyelid the Ramblin' Kid looked into the eyes of Carolyn June. He had seen her coming from the corral and guessed correctly the reason for her second visit to the enclosure. Indeed at that moment his hand was in his pocket toying with the ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... and Eddring noticed that of the two Mrs. Ellison seemed the more frightened. The younger one was pale, but her eye did not flicker or falter. She looked straight at each man, at Bowles and Buckner, both impassive, at Calvin Blount, now beginning to flush under his fighting choler; yes, and at last at him, John Eddring, pale and serious, but steady as the door-jamb against which ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... a smile flicker on her face in the moonlight, but when she spoke, it was with almost ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... studio, chilly under its top-light, the empty fireplace, the wind blowing as though they were out of doors and making the candle flicker, the solitary light on the scene of the night's labour of a poor and lonely man, reflected on sheets of paper scribbled over and scattered about, in short, this atmosphere of habitations wherein the soul of the inhabitants lives on its own aspirations, caused de Gery to understand the visionary ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Around the walls stood other majestical Veiled Shapes that bent undivided attention upon the actual pageant: these were Life's Pities. Ever and anon they would lift their noble veils and look out upon that brief flicker of our mortal joy, and drop them and relapse into their ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... spoke again, or showed another flicker of the clear and normal intelligence that she had shown in the night. But she still breathed, and the long, wet day dragged slowly, in the big, mournful old house, until late in the unnatural afternoon. People—all sorts of people—were coming and going now, and being answered, or being ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... probably known to their neighbors of the same clan, as we are, each by his voice. And even so simple and definite a thing as the pine warbler's song may be varied by the individual singer from time to time. I heard one fine bird singing in the stereotyped form. As he sang a flicker flicked in the distance. Whereupon the pine warbler sang again, the same trill but with a tittering twang about it that just jocosely imitated the flicker. I saw no other warbler or other bird near enough to be the beneficiary of this ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... little studio, chilly under its top-light, the empty fireplace, the wind blowing as though they were out of doors and making the candle flicker, the solitary light on the scene of the night's labour of a poor and lonely man, reflected on sheets of paper scribbled over and scattered about, in short, this atmosphere of habitations wherein ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... a second, but it was enough to make my heart jump. I had never seen the great man before, and he had never seen me. But in that fraction of time something sprang into his eyes, and that something was recognition. You can't mistake it. It is a flicker, a spark of light, a minute shade of difference which means one thing and one thing only. It came involuntarily, for in a moment it died, and he passed on. In a maze of wild fancies I heard the street ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... might jump together, laugh most quietly when the din of swords and horses drowned the voice, love his neighbour most sincerely when about to cut his throat. The smell of blood, the sight of wounds, or the flicker of blades, made him drunk; but he was one of those who grow steady in their cups. You might count upon him at a pinch. Lastly, he was no fool, and was disposed to credit other people with ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... soft balmy breezes blow through the room, from one veranda to the other, making the flames of the lamps flicker. They scatter the lotus flowers faded by the artificial heat, which, falling in pieces from every vase, sprinkle the guests with their pollen and large pink petals, looking like bits ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... met Bud's in a flicker of distaste, but she tried to conceal her feelings. "Please sit down," she invited Unger politely. "What square-dance numbers does ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... scalp-yelp break out, and a storm of bullets struck the tavern, leaving along the forest's edge a low wall of brown vapor, which lingered as though glued to the herbage; and through it, red as candle-flames in fog, the spirting flicker of the rifles played, and the old tavern rang with leaden hail. Suddenly the fusillade ceased. Far away I heard a ranger's whistle calling, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... was early a foot next morning. Bob, restless with the uneasiness of the first night out of doors, saw the flicker of the fire against the tent canvas long before the first signs of daylight. In fact, the gray had but faintly lightened the velvet black of the night when the cook thrust his head inside the big sleeping tents to utter ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... A flicker of a smile crossed Dick's face, which seemed to say that if anything could bring back a momentary relish of existence the mention of Betty's name would be that thing. Nancy saw ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... long length the Cointets had come to understand David's character and habits. They did not slander him now; on the contrary, wise policy required that they should allow the business to flicker on; it was to their interest indeed to maintain it in a small way, lest it should fall into the hands of some more formidable competitor; they made a practice of sending prospectuses and circulars—job-printing, as it is called—to the Sechard's establishment. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... white hand parted the curtain an inch or two. There was the flicker of a fan held ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... of performing miracles, of healing the sick, hypnotizing the well, transforming poverty into wealth, and changing age to youth, are the rays of light which flicker through the darkness and draw them into the ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... over and over impatiently, to see if anything more was to be got out of it; then she spurned it aside, and bounced into the air with a deep hum. She had certainly been very amusing, but the Child drew a breath of relief when she was gone. He had caught the copper-red flicker of her sting, as it barely touched the victim, and it seemed to him like a ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... seemed to pass over the throng. Scurrying figures on the field announced that the expected was being carried out. Chester was making a last desperate effort for a touchdown. It would be the expiring flicker of the flame; for whether successful or not it must mark the end, since the referee would be blowing his whistle before play ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... agony began. It is now seven in the morning, and I have just myself raised her from bed. Some flicker of strength revived; she wished to sit by her window, and asked for Gaston's hand. And then, my love, the sweetest spirit whom we shall ever see on this earth departed, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... to a whisper, but his hand jerked to draw their attention to the right at deck level. Dane saw that flicker along a log. The stowaway pest was now the same brilliant color as the wood, indistinguishable until it moved, which probably explained how it had come ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... rapid flight, its courage, and its enterprise in attacking birds even larger than itself. This accords with my experience, for my only specimen was shot in the act of destroying a hen. He is about the size of our common flicker, or high-holder, which bird, with robins, pigeons, and others of similar size, is his favorite game. The sparrow-hawk is rare at this time, and is only abundant occasionally during its migrations. The red-shouldered hawk is a handsome bird, with some very good traits, and is a common permanent ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... himself as he saw a flicker of light in the window that looked towards the track, when at last he drew near the little estancia house. It was like Toffy to remember to put a lamp where he could see it! It was worth while taking a midnight ride for such a good fellow, although he had had ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... much,—of the sport of the day, of the big fish he lost and might have saved, of the distant settlement, of to-morrow's plans. An owl hoots off in the mountain and he thinks of him; if a wolf were to howl or a panther to scream, he would think of him the rest of the night. As it is, things flicker and hover through his mind, and he hardly knows whether it is the past or the present that possesses him. Certain it is, he feels the hush and solitude of the great forest, and, whether he will or not, all his musings are in some way cast upon that huge ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... gas gave a flicker and went out, turned off at the main. Kennedy lit a candle and made his way to his dormitory. There now faced him the more than unpleasant task of introducing himself to its inmates. He knew from experience the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... There was a flicker of matches as they were applied to the fuses, and then a splutter of sparks. An instant later it seemed as if the whole heavens had been ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... as none others can, Without like process, shall this tree The king of all the forest, be, Alas, the only one of all That shall not lie where it doth fall? Shall this unflagging flame, here nurs'd By everything, yea, when reversed, Blazing, in fury, brighter, wink, Flicker, and into darkness shrink, When all else glows, baleful or brave, In the keen air beyond the grave? Beware; for fiends in triumph laugh O'er him who learns the truth by half! Beware; for God will not endure ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... invidious kinsman was obliged to admit that he was just now a delightful associate. His good humour was imperturbable, his knowledge of the right fact, his production of the right word, as convenient as the friendly flicker of a match for your cigarette. Clearly he was amused—as amused as a man could be who was so little ever surprised, and that made him almost applausive. It was not that his spirits were visibly high—he would never, in the concert of pleasure, touch the big ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... not sure that he did not enforce his commands by some strong theological terms. "Padre, that word must never be used out here." "Well," I said, "this is the first war I have ever been at, and if I can arrange matters it is the last, but I promise you I will never use it again." Not the least flicker of a smile passed over his face. Of course, as time went on and I advanced in military knowledge, I came to know the way in which my question ought to have been phrased. Instead of saying, "Is ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... not a word, but his face was pale And he prayed a silent prayer; But his heart was oak and it could not quail, And a secret oath he sware. And grim stood the warders armed all, In the torches' flicker and flare, As they watch for an hour in the gloomy hall ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Sir Walter spoke to Lockhart, his biographer, were, "Be a good man, my dear!" and with the last flicker of breath on his dying lips, he sighed a farewell to his family, and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... up, and the torchlight grew dimmer, and died away as it had come in a red flicker on the roof, and the footsteps sounded fainter as they went up the passage, until the vault was left to the dead men and me. Yet for a very long time—it seemed hours—after all had gone I could hear a murmur of distant voices, and knew that some were ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... soft white glove, eternally fragrant, in your habergeon, an eternally fragrant memory; the dim vision in stone street and coppice; a word, a message, it might be, sent across the world of steel at death. And then, in the last flicker of vision, the arras and the clear insistent strings, the whispering brocade de Lyons on ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... an instant. There wasn't a flicker of an eyelash to show that Ralph was the least bit nervous. The experiences of the last few days ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... on his elbow, and listened intently. But he could hear nothing but the deep breathing of his weary army. The stars were brilliant. He glanced about his immediate vicinity with a flicker of amusement and pleasure in his eyes. The young men of his household were crowded close about him; he had nearly planted his elbow on Hamilton's profile. Laurens, Tilghman, Meade, even Lafayette, were there, and they barely had left him room to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... passengers taking their exercise. These things finally grow at once so circumstantial and so arid that, in comparison, lights on the personal history of one's companions become a substitute for the friendly flicker ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... is his answer. "I've known a derelict up-end and sift her engines out of herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weeks on her forward tanks only. We'll run no risks. Pith her, George, and look sharp. There's ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... burn out slowly at the end. But before that end comes they flicker up, once, twice, and again. The candle says:—"Think of me at my best. Remember me when I shone out thus, and thus; and never guttered, nor wanted snuffing. Think of me when you needed no other light than mine, to look in Bradshaw and decide that you had better go ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... were close at hand, but could not make an effort to save him; that he himself had shut and barred them out. He answered the shout—with a yell, which seemed to make the hundred fires that danced before his eyes tremble and flicker, as if a gust of wind had stirred them. It was of no avail. The strong tide filled his throat, and bore him on, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... would be crippled and not destroyed. The English fleet would retain its proportionate strength. No French advance into Germany would be successful, no German advance into France is likely. The war would languish for lack of funds, through sheer inanition it would flicker out, and the money of the world would flow into the treasuries of America. Russia would not be fighting for her living. With her it could be at best but a half-hearted war. She would do her duty to the alliance. Nothing more could be hoped from her. ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Pole, making a bright ring about it, were hundreds of little fires, and the flames of them did not flicker and twist, but went up blue and green and rosy and straight like ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... the last flicker of the expiring flame, for the white lids drooped over the dark eyes; the cold fingers relaxed their hold, and Gerald Goddard knew the ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... brim With the brook that ran through it where the grayling did swim; In the shallows it sparkled, in the deeps it was dim, When the race was first run it had nearly drowned Jim, And now the bright irons of twenty-four horses Were to flicker its ripples with knockings ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... dead, and in the throat of one of them there still were fastened the teeth of their slayer: a full-grown, tawny-coated stoat. The blood-drinking stoat was of no greater length than one of Desdemona's low-hanging ears, yet without the smallest flicker of hesitation the terrible little beast wheeled about to attack the bereaved mother of his quarry. With bared fangs—flecked now with blood—the stoat crouched, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... seemed to shrivel up. There was a look of cold efficiency about Rachel Wynne that frightened him. She seemed to be incapable of wasting time or of waywardness. Her career at Newnham, Roger had told him, had been one of steady brilliance. "There wasn't a flicker in it," he had said ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... (concluded the Oldest Member), "you see that golf can be of the greatest practical assistance to a man in Life's struggle. Raymond Parsloe Devine, who was no player, had to move out of the neighbourhood immediately, and is now, I believe, writing scenarios out in California for the Flicker Film Company. Adeline is married to Cuthbert, and it was only his earnest pleading which prevented her from having their eldest son christened Abe Mitchell Ribbed-Faced Mashie Banks, for she is now as keen a devotee of the great game as her husband. Those who know ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... I'll teach you to lie to me! I'll—" The match was dying out. Rorke raised it higher, and with the last flicker located the washstand, and made toward it, obviously ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... been doing his work with a candle held in his brown fingers; but as dawn-light began to enter the cabin, he quenched its dingy, yellow flicker, opened the camp-door, and ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... that removes it beyond the scope of man's actual possessions. But Donatello felt nothing of this dream-like melancholy that haunts the spot. As he passed among the sunny shadows, his spirit seemed to acquire new elasticity. The flicker of the sunshine, the sparkle of the fountain's gush, the dance of the leaf upon the bough, the woodland fragrance, the green freshness, the old sylvan peace and freedom, were all intermingled in those long breaths which ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was thinking, 'a strong impulsion brought me to this place. What for? what have I gained? why should I be sent to gaze into this well?' when the rail of the fence gave suddenly under his weight, and he came within an ace of falling headlong in. Leaping back to save himself, he trod out the last flicker of his fire, which gave him thenceforward no more light, only an incommoding smoke. 'Was I sent here to my death?' says he, and shook from head to foot. And then a thought flashed in his mind. He crept forth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a long pause—a pause that was somehow akin to the flicker of the fire, the quiver of the reading-lamp upon their hands, the white blur from the window; a pause of ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... grew tired and found no place to rest, he climbed a hill and gazed around him in every direction to try to discover a light; after a long search he saw the flicker of a tiny spark and went toward it. He walked and walked half the night, then he came to a huge fire, by which a man as big as a giant was sleeping. What was the youth to do? After thinking a while, he crept ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... burned his body. He raised himself and, resolutely seeking for distraction, once more stared at the camp-fire. Some time must have passed during his dreaming, for only three persons were in sight. Naab's broad back was bowed and his head nodded. Across the fire in its ruddy flicker sat Eschtah beside a slight, dark figure. At second glance Hare recognized Mescal. Surprise claimed him, not more for her presence there than for the white band binding her smooth black tresses. She had not worn ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... Poet, Madam, once (said he); I will relate his story to you now. While through the branches of this apple-tree Some spots of sunshine flicker on your brow; While every flower hath on its breast a bee, And every bird in stirring doth endow The grass with falling blooms that smoothly glide, As ships drop down ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... Capitol square, and wheeled, And there in the moonlight stood revealed A well-known form that in State and field Had led our patriot sires: Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp, Afar through the river's fog and damp, That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... the "little secrets," the powder bloom, the rouge "precipitated from the damask rose-leaf," the Styrian lotion that gives "beauty and freshness to the complexion, plumpness to the figure, clearness and softness to the skin." He has a faint flicker of liking for brunettes; she lays her triumphant fingers on her "walnut stain," and darkens into the favorite tint. He loves plumpness, and her "Sinai Manna" is at hand to secure embonpoint. Belladonna flashes on him from her eyes, Kohl and antimony deepen the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... of the prettiest sounds now, just as it was in February. Pretty soon a bevy of them come flitting and talking along, like a girl botany class on the search. Before they have passed out of sight the loud and prolonged "O-wick-o-wick-o-wick-o-wick" of the flicker makes us lift our eyes to the top of a scarlet oak and anon three or four of the handsome fellows alight nearer by so that we may the better admire their white-tailed coats, brown shoulders, scarlet napes and the beautiful black crescent ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... intellectual than almost any other. But, in becoming so, it loses nothing of the peculiar Indian stamp, but only carries these traits to their perfection. Irony, discernment, resolution, and a deep smouldering fire, that disdains to flicker where it cannot blaze, may there be read. Nothing can better represent the sort of unfeelingness the whites have towards the Indians, than their conduct towards his remains. He had steadily opposed the introduction ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... her dark hair, and suffering Catharine to braid it, and polish it till it looked glossy and soft. Indiana in her turn would adorn Catharine with the wings of the blue-bird or red-bird, the crest of the wood-duck, or quill feathers of the golden-winged flicker, which is called in the Indian tongue the shot-bird, in allusion to the round spots on its cream-coloured breast: [FN: The Golden-winged Flicker belongs to a sub-genus of woodpeckers; it is very handsome, and is said to be eatable; it lives on fruits ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... his guest. Sleeping still, he half lay, half leaned in the corner of the sofa, breathing heavily. His face was not to be well seen, because of the flapping and flickering of the candle-flames, and the shadows they sent waving huge over all, like the flaunting of a black flag. Through the flicker and the shadow the laird was still peering at him, when suddenly, without opening his eyes, the old man raised himself to a sitting posture—all of a piece, like a figure of wood lifted from behind. The laird then saw his face, and upon it the expression ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... arrived.[511] If angry before, he was now incensed; for he knew for a certainty at last that Hindman had been a sort of usurper in the Trans-Mississippi District and, with power emanating from no one higher than Beauregard, had never legally possessed a flicker of authority for doing the many insulting things that he had arrogantly done to him.[512] Next, from some source, ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... crick, I don't reckon," she hazarded, but even as she spoke there was a flicker of light flashed through the darkness and, lantern in hand, Watts rose from his comfortable seat in a niche of rock near the fork of the trail and greeted them with his kindly drawl. "I 'lowed yo' all ort to be 'long d'rec'ly. I'll take 'em now, Miss; the trail's kind of roughish ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... divan. Her hands were folded; she sat very erect; her chin was tilted ominously; there was so little expression on her pale face that she might have been an incomplete statue. But Max was almost certain that there was just the faintest flicker of a smile in her eyes as she saw him enter. Glorious eyes! (It is a bad sign when a man begins ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... comprehension over the angry face before him, and an answering flicker of anger sprang up in them for an instant; but he ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... know that as soon as the door was shut on him and the little flicker of gas, Bernard fell into an anguish of sobs and tears, the work of her persevering love, softening and lessening the obstinate pride so far that the next visitors met with a much better reception than they might have done. The first came stumbling up with a weary step, and pushed ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... apartment of the king; while his people slept, the king watched, he watched to work and think for his people. Without the wind howled and blew the snow against his window, and made even the fire in his room flicker; but the king heeded it not. He had completed his toilet and drunk his chocolate; now he was working. It did not disturb him that his room was cold, that the candle on his table gave but a poor light, and even ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... men. Women are perhaps better trained; they think it more ill-mannered not to show interest. They will listen to stories about servants, or reports of the inane sayings of infants, they will hear you through, without the flicker of a yawn, but with ejaculations and noddings, while you tell them about your children's diseases. They are well-bred; they drive themselves on a tight rein, and endure. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... funny had happened there, which, though the flicker of the fire had died down, she could see ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... dear lad," replied the old man, letting a smile flicker on his large lips, which gave to his rosy mouth the kindliest expression that the genius of a painter ever imagined, "can we not be moved to the deepest pity by the spectacle of human wretchedness which Paris holds within her walls? Did Saint Vincent ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... small thing, the fault, only a little break in the armour wire, and yet it had induced the most severe nerve paralysis in that sentient thread of copper in the cable's centre. "Words and words of men" could not "flicker and flutter and beat" until the wound had been healed, which was promptly done, accompanied by vigorous language concerning the aforesaid ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... Betsy's standby light quivered hysterically from bright to dim and back again. The rate of quivering was fast. It was very nearly a sine-wave modulation of the light—and when a Mahon-modified machine goes into sine-wave flicker, it is the same as ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... hung, The proud was half disarm'd of pride, Nor cared the serpent at thy side To flicker with his double tongue. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... it is that men do nothing but torment and persecute poor creatures which never do them any harm!" said he, and he took out his knife and cut the cords of the net, and the owl flitted away into the darkness, but then turning, with one flicker of her wings, she came back to Charming ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... called, the maid said; he apologized for coming at such an early hour, but hoped that Mrs Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent importance. Mrs Manderson would see Mr Trent. She walked to a mirror, looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head at herself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door as ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... face was pale, the lines on it standing out in sharp ridges; but not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did he betray the slightest nervousness. Yet Tad Butler realized fully the perilous nature of his undertaking, and that the least mistake on his part or on the part of those above him might mean a sudden end to ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... the Second Nurse; but later in the evening she brought the purse, and set it on the table where the patient's eyes might rest on it. For aught she could detect, they expressed no thanks, gave no flicker of recognition. But the child had been watching them too, and was quicker—by one-fifth of ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... second there was something strange in the air. The partners exchanged the merest flicker of a look, which Wayne, as far as he thought of it at all, supposed to be a recognition on their part of his carefulness in ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... am not mistaken, Spanish chestnuts, and used for hop-poles in those parts. Their leaves decay gradually, the fleshy part, so to speak, dropping away from the articulation till at last bleached skeleton leaves remain and flicker at every sigh of the wind. The ground was densely carpeted with other leaves in the same state, or about to become so. The silver grey was cross-hatched by the purple lines of the serried stems, and as the view receded this dipped into blue and there lost itself. It was very quiet—a windless ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... sabbath-train whirls by; But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a preaching of Reverend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... was crossed. The lane began, smoky and dark. Women in shawls and men's tweed caps hurried by. Men hung over the palings; the children played in the doorways. A low hum came from the mean little cottages. In some of them there was a flicker of light, and a shadow, crab-like, moved across the window. Laura bent her head and hurried on. She wished now she had put on a coat. How her frock shone! And the big hat with the velvet streamer—if only it ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... of the portals seven Above our abodes he hover'd With lances that yawn'd for carnage; But vanish'd, afore his chaps With slaughter of Thebes were glutted; Afore the flicker of pitchy flame Might to the crown of turrets climb. So fierce the rattle of war around Was pour'd on his rear by the serpent-foe Hard match'd in deadly encounter. For Jove the over-vaunting tongue Supremely hates. Their full fed stream Of gold, of clatter, and of pride He saw, and smote ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... arrives shortly after Robin-Redbreast, with whom he associates both at this season and in the autumn, is the Golden-Winged Woodpecker, alias, "High-Hole," alias, "Flicker," alias, "Yarup." He is an old favorite of my boyhood, and his note to me means very much. He announces his arrival by a long, loud call, repeated from the dry branch of some tree, or a stake in the fence,—a thoroughly melodious April sound. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... about eleven o'clock he came in and found Francie alone. She noticed, for strangeness, that he was very pale at the same time that he was sunburnt; also that he didn't for an instant smile at her. It was very certain there was no bright flicker in her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnatural meeting. He only said as he arrived: "I couldn't come last evening; they made it impossible; they were all there and we were up till three o'clock this morning." He looked as if he had been through terrible ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... burn low, and flicker in final sickliness; the great bell called Conscience, hanging in the dome, strikes an alarm that rocks the building. How oft the solemn tocsin sounds! It drives us to our duty! Let us be thankful its ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... five old men tottering away to their final resting place be enthusiastic on the reception of a stranger? What could Mr. Quiverful be to them, or they to Mr. Quiverful? Had Mr. Harding indeed come back to them, some last flicker of joyous light might have shone forth on their aged cheeks; but it was in vain to bid them rejoice because Mr. Quiverful was about to move his fourteen children from Puddingdale into the hospital house. In reality they did no doubt receive advantage, spiritual as well as corporal, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... in the short space of time before the tournament, for he met her daily, and as he marked her,—the flicker of her eyelashes upon her cheeks and the quick in-drawing of breath through her sensitive nostrils when the tales of the trouveres and jests of the jongleurs offended her exquisite modesty—his heart swelled with pain intolerable that so pure a flower ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... car. He squeezed himself beneath its front end. There was a small, fugitive flicker of flame. It went out and he ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Mr. Perry told upon his constitution to such an extent that at one time it was feared the gentle bard would fade and flicker out altogether; wherefore, the solicitude of influential officials was aroused in his behalf, and through their generosity he was provided with an asylum in Sing Sing prison, a quiet retreat in the state of New York. Here he wrote his ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... can do nothing that the sun and rain Will not erase at last. Not even Voltaire Can hurt that noble memory. Think of him As of a viper writhing at the base Of some great statue. Let the venomous tongue Flicker against that marble as it may It cannot wound it. I am far more grieved For you, who sit there wondering now, too late, If it were some suspicion, some dark hint Newton had heard that robbed him of his sleep, And almost broke his mind up. I recall How the town buzzed that Newton had gone mad. ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... said Pierce, with a flicker of amusement at the man's brief sermon. This Doret was evidently a ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... exclaimed the leader. There was just the flicker of a smile in his eyes now (Johnnie noted that those eyes were exactly ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... soundlessly, set down the chota hassri on a small table at his master's elbow without betraying his surprise and concern by so much as the flicker of an eyelash. For not even your immaculate family butler can excel, in dignity and true reserve, a bearer of the old school, whose Sahib stands only second to his God, and who would almost as soon think of defiling his caste as of entering another ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... mingle with the kneeling crowd. Rags flutter beside the most costly laces; youth kneels with crabbed old age; rich and poor meet upon the same level before the sacred altar. Priests by the half dozen, in scarlet, blue, gilt, and yellow striped robes officiate hourly before tall candles which flicker dimly in the daylight, while boys dressed in long white gowns swing censers of burning incense. The gaudy trappings have the usual theatrical effect, and no doubt serve, together with the deep peals of the organ, the dim light of the interior, the monotone of the ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... murmured that Prince Saradine was from home at present, but was expected hourly; the house being kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card with the scrawl of green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face of the depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky courtesy that he suggested that the strangers should remain. "His Highness may be here any minute," he said, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... that possibly this was the woodpeckers' ritual,—a kind of High Church service, with antiphonal choirs. But I dismissed the thought; for, on the whole, the shouting seems more likely to be diagnostic, and in spite of his gold-lined wings, I have set the flicker down as almost certainly ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... existence, but they no longer ruled him. One thing was paramount, his determination to know everything of the crime that had been perpetrated in the main drive of the Silver Stream. Fragments of thoughts seemed to flicker up like flames within him and die out again instantly, and he repeated constantly under ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... blood of fire. The shadow of their wings fell upon the mountain and the plains, and beneath their wings was silence. Slowly the sun sank, and the shapes of cloud gathered together like a host at the word of its captain, and the flicker of the lightning was as the flash of the spears of a host. I looked, and my heart grew afraid. The lightning died away, the silence deepened and deepened till I could hear it, no leaf moved, no bird called, the world seemed dead—I alone ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them there was often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above a sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was difficult to imagine. I was at ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... bank of the stream which in its overflowing formed shallow muddy puddles something dark began to flicker among the trees, and the enemy soldiers in light grey cloaks, and varnished helmets protected with linen covers came forward. This was an enemy detachment which had also strayed away from its regiment. ...
— The Shield • Various
... the flicker of a candle came up stairs, and a pale lady, with a sweet sad face, appeared, bringing a pair of red and a pair of blue mittens for her Dolly and Polly. Poor Mrs. Blake did have a hard time, for she stood all day in a great store that she might earn bread for the poor children ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... nearer Cynthia's eyes swept the eager face and slim figure of the girl at Jimmy's side. There was the barest flicker of her lids before she raised them and smiled ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... was foolishly vacant. Then, a lurid blaze began to flicker behind his ice-blue eyes, and a brickish color surged into his face. Wheeling on Gavin, he cried, his ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Cloom as never before, because this time he was not working for himself. As the baby grew and became more and more of a delight and a companion—and a baby can be an excellent companion—he felt within him a steady gleam that did not flicker with the mood of the hour as so many gleams will. He told himself, as he settled into a manner of life and thought of which the child was the inalienable centre, that this was indeed the greatest thing in life. Before this, desire paled and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... then walked to the balustrade and glanced down. The hospital ship had gone, and there was no one visible on the wharf. The stars were hidden, and there was a suggestion of mist on the harbour, through which the distant lights seemed to flicker. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... night after night, I strained my eyes to see if it were ablaze. I was only eight at the time, but it is an age when one takes a grief to heart, and I felt as though the fate of the country hung in some fashion upon me and my vigilance. And then one night as I looked I suddenly saw a little flicker on the beacon hill—a single red tongue of flame in the darkness. I remember how I rubbed my eyes, and pinched myself, and rapped my knuckles against the stone window-sill, to make sure that I was indeed awake. And then the flame shot higher, ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were yet in the mouth of the youth, when something seemed to twinkle and flicker among the trees, in advance of the point where he had turned aside from the path. A second look allowed that two Indian warriors were returning ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... "Ah—" A flicker of light from the point ahead. One ... two ... three flashes, a pause, then two more together. He had been read. Buck had dispatched scouts to meet them, and knowing his people's skill at the business, Travis was certain the Tatars would never suspect their flanking unless the Apaches ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... Aurora Borealis when neither the superintendent nor the foreman appeared for breakfast. Later, a telephone message to Doctor Slayforth having elicited the startling intelligence that neither man had been seen in town during the night, there came a flicker of excitement. This excitement blazed to white heat when Slayforth rode up on a muddy horse, accompanied by the town marshal and the chief of police. Followed more telephoning and some cross-examination. But the men were gone. They ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... gave a startled flicker and then grew comprehending. "I wondered why he gave up college after he had worked so hard ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... he started back, but did not begin to breathe freely till the angle of the rock wall was passed and they found themselves again in silence, just too as another candle began to flicker. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... battle line. It was an eery sort of night ride in the ambulance, going without lights, up the zigzags of the hill to the battle front of Verdun. The white clay of the road was sloppy and the car wobbled and skidded along and we passed scores of other vehicles going up and coming down—with not a flicker of light on any of them. The Red Cross on our ambulance gave us the right of way over everything but ammunition trucks, so we sped forward rapidly. It was revitalment time. Hundreds of motor trucks and horsecarts ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... accomplished everything he seriously attempted; never pressed any advantage; had supposed that by occupying the principal cities, affording protection to the loyal, and by moderation winning the lukewarm, the flame of rebellion would burn low for want of fuel and in good time quite flicker out. Too faithfully followed by half, this policy had ended in the humiliation of Saratoga and in the added burden of a war with France. News of Burgoyne's surrender scarcely reached England before offers of conciliation, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... he, too, thought of this as the weird flicker of the candle-light showed him her unflinching face, for the next moment, with another muttered curse, and a careless shrug of the shoulders, he turned on his heel, and slowly went upstairs, candle ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... the black horses which carried Mephistopheles and Faust to the abyss. It died away almost at once, and she knew it for an imagination. To-night she was peopling the desert with phantoms. Even the fires of the nomads were as the fires that flicker in an abode of witches, the shadows that passed before them were as goblins that had come up out of the sand to hold revel in the moonlight. Were they, too, waiting for a signal from ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... and in unity find strength. I should have loved to be a Milton—like one of your English cathedrals, austere, breathing sacred memories, resonant with the roll of a great organ, with painted windows, on which the shadows of the green boughs outside wave and flicker, and just hint of Nature. Or one of your aristocrats with a stately home in the country, and dogs and horses, and a beautiful wife. In short, I should like to be your husband. Or, failing that, my own wife, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that suburb were lonely: he went down them, the new-fallen snow dulling his step. It had covered the peaked roofs of the houses too, and they stood in listening rows, white and still. Here and there a pale flicker from the gas-lamps struggled with the ashy twilight. He met no one: people had gone home early on Christmas eve. He had no home to go to: pah! there were plenty of hotels, he remembered, smiling grimly. It was bitter cold: he buttoned up his coat tightly, as he walked slowly along ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Goddess' name grew Helen pale, Like golden stars that flicker in the dawn, Or like a child that hears a dreadful tale, Or like the roses on a rich man's lawn, When now the suns of Summer are withdrawn, And the loose leaves with a sad wind are stirr'd, Till the wet grass is strewn ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... be enjoying of the cool of the evening in a poetical sort of way. He was as big as four cart-horses, and all covered with shiny scales—deep-blue scales at the top of him, shading off to a tender sort o' green below. As he breathed, there was that sort of flicker over his nostrils that you see over our chalk roads on a baking windless day in summer. He had his chin on his paws, and I should say he was meditating about things. Oh, yes, a peaceable sort o' beast enough, and not ramping or carrying on or doing anything but what was ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... urge Ovid to start. His carriage was ready, he must run no risk of not clearing Rome by daylight. Why should he go, he asked with a flicker of his old vivacity, when to go meant leaving Rome and turning toward Scythia? He called the children to him and talked low to them of their mother. Again his friends urged him. Three times he started for the door and three times he came back. At the end Fabia clung to him and beat upon his ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... occupied in its construction, and the tower was anchored to the rock by means of long, heavy irons. The light, merely a flicker, flashed out from this tower in 1699, and for the first time the proximity of the Eddystones was indicated all around the horizon by night. Winstanley's critics were rather free in expressing their opinion that the tower would come down with the first sou'wester, but the eccentric ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... of a ship's engine. I fumed. I was facing little Germany and five littler Germanys strung out behind. You surely remember him? and how when I could n't see things his way he swore to a wrecked heart and a never-to-be-forgotten constancy. Mate! There was no more of a flicker of memory in the stare of his round blue eyes than there would have been in a newly baked pretzel. I stood still, waiting for some glimmer of recognition. Instead, he turned to the pincushion on his arm, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... morning. I was alone with mother, looking at her lying there so still and helpless—dead, all but the little flicker of breath that seemed just about ready to go out. It came over me all of a sudden that I couldn't disappoint her, living or dead; that I'd have to go on and be what she has always wanted me to ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... up and down the roof, growing higher as they stole along. He saw them flicker over the eaves, lap the walls of the house, and finally clasp it like a red, flaring robe. But Whitey did not think of the fire in those terms, but as a thing of horror, ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... good enough to show Lord Findon that, in spite of her flicker of gaiety, Eugenie was singularly pale. And he knew well that they were both listening for the same step on the stairs. However, he tried to ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is dun! The tiranikle government which hez sway at Washington hez finelly extinguished the last glimerin flicker uv Liberty, by abolishin slavery! The sun didn't go down in gloom that nite—the stars didn't fade in2 a sickly yeller, at wich obstinacy uv nachur I wuz ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... disaster, as we were soon to find out, for it was but a few minutes after the last flicker had died away, and left the night looking all the blacker after the bright light to which our eyes had become accustomed, when we all distinctly heard the approaching of many feet. Apparently the impi was about to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... came forward, and squatted close to the cook, watching the process with a careful eye. He made a sharp contrast with the rest of the group. From one side his profile showed the face of a good-natured boy, but when he turned his head the flicker of the firelight ran down a scar which gleamed in a jagged semi-circle from his right eyebrow to the corner of his mouth. This whole side of his countenance was drawn by the cut, the mouth stretching to a ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... not you—live with James?" he asked, and I thought I detected a mocking flicker in his ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... recesses, mid tresses, green tresses. Slow dipping, caressing, I've heard A whisper, a chuckle of laughter, a scamper; and high, High up in the air the cry, the call of a bird. And when the night came with a flicker of wings I have heard the earth breathing quiet and slow Like a pulse in the tiny, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... depths cries unto me—I do not understand its words, but I know that it tells me of coming disaster, unknown but inevitable, mysterious and inexorable as death. The future is lugubrious as a cemetery full of open graves, ready to receive the dead, with here and there a flicker of pale torches which I can scarce distinguish, and I know not if they are there to lure me on to destruction or to show me ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... beginning to stand forth from the rest of the wood, and the whole picture getting dappled over with the flecks of sun that slip through the leaves overhead, and, as a wind goes by and sets the trees a-talking, flicker hither and thither like butterflies of light. But you know it is going forward; and, out of emulation with the painter, get ready your own palette, and lay out the colour for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chamber, where they usually took their dessert. This part of the house had been lately re-built, but the old woodwork had been re-used, and the pale oak panels, each crowned by an elaborate foliated head, gave back the pleasant flicker of the fire that burned between the polished sheets of Flemish tiles on either side of the hearth. A great globe stood in the corner furthest from the door, with a map of England hanging above it. A piece of tapestry hung over the mantelpiece, representing Diana bending ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... mustard plaster at the back of her neck, obediently sipped hot milk from a teacup. Mrs. Carr had surrendered to the conquering spirit of her daughter, but her surrender, which was unwilling and weakly defiant, gave out presently a last feeble flicker of resistance. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the cup the soul lights up, Inspirations flicker; Nectar lifts the soul on high With its heavenly ichor: To my lips a sounder taste Hath the tavern's liquor Than the wine a village clerk ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... without malice, as though he were relating his experiences at a foreign university. He addressed himself to Bateman and Bateman was confused and then confounded. He saw Edward's eyes fixed on him and there was in them a flicker of amusement. He blushed scarlet, for it struck him that Jackson was making a fool of him, and then because he felt absurd—and knew there was no reason why he should—he grew angry. Arnold Jackson was impudent—there was no other word for it—and his callousness, whether ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... is on the point of going out I throw it down. The little flame's last flicker has lighted up for me the edge of the poor black serge skirt, so worn that it shines a little, even in the evening, and has shown me the girl's shoe. There is a hole in the heel of the stocking, and we have both seen ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... electric light. There was a shilling-in-the-slot meter in the bath-room that acted eccentrically. Sometimes one shilling would supply light for a week, at other times after two days the lights would flicker spasmodically and expire. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... breathing gave evidence of life. Manella's pitiful gazing on this ruin of the man to whom she had devoted her heart and soul, her tender sorrow, her yearning beauty, might have almost moved a stone image to a thrill of response,—but not a flicker of expression appeared on the frozen features of that terrible fallen pillar of human self-sufficiency. Standing beside the bed with Manella was Marco Ardini, intensely watchful and eager to note even a quiver of the flesh or the tremor of a muscle,—and ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... from The Queen's Lace Handkerchief. Bright uniforms and handsome gowns flashed by the opened windows. Sometimes a vagrant puff of air would find its way in, and suddenly the ball-room dimmed and the dancers moved like phantoms. The flames of the candles would struggle and, with many a flicker, right themselves, and the radiant colors and jewels would ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... enough; but poor little Sylvia, sitting on a stone hard by, shook with terror. She had a dim notion that death must be accompanied by violence. As the sun sank, Bates rallied; but the two watchers knew that it was but the final flicker of the expiring candle. "He's going!" said Frere at length, under his breath, as though fearful of awaking his half-slumbering soul. Mrs. Vickers, her eyes streaming with silent tears, lifted the honest head, and moistened the parched lips with her soaked handkerchief. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... man set his expression as one indomitably fixed upon the course of honor, cost what it might; and, in the very action, his lurking pleasure in doing it hopped out in the flicker of a twinkle in his eyes, and as instantly sought cover again—the flea in ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... the yumari soon becomes tiresome, in spite of its greater animation. Yet the spectacle has something weird in it, especially when seen by the fitful flicker of the fire, which throws a fantastic light upon the grotesque figures, like goblins moving about on the same space. Many mothers carry their sleeping infants on their backs. Sometimes, the blanket which supports the baby loosens, and the little thing hangs half out of it, following every movement ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... afternoon passes to night, and the lamps in the roof are lighted. The cards flicker upon the seat; the boors gather round to watch; they pass the French frontier, and see from their windows the forges of Belgium, throwing fire upon the river Meuse. Still, hour after hour, though their eyes are ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... Christendom, and when the mass is being said—inaudible, indeed, and not to be seen, at the furthest end of that dense, underground crowd, but testified to by the lighting of a thousand tapers, and by the strong desire for some flicker of the holy flame. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the shoulder of the boy and there was a flash of eyes between them, the flicker of a smile. Hal Dozier drew a breath. "I got no kids of my own," he declared. "You're lucky, friend. And you're lucky to have ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... night when the plain was like a sea of liquid black, and the sky blazed with stars, we rode by a sheep-herder's camp. The flicker of a fire threw a glow out into the dark. A tall wagon, a group of silhouetted men, three or four squatting dogs, were squarely within the circle of illumination. And outside, in the penumbra of shifting half light, now showing clearly, now fading into darkness, were the sheep, indeterminate in ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... might have been expected to lose my patience disastrously, a flicker of interest appeared in McGeorge and his connection with the Meekers. A normal, sentimental recital would, of course, be insupportable; but McGeorge, I realized, lacked the cooerdination of instincts and faculties which ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Watching the flicker of a fire Were the Colonel played the outdoor host In brave old hall of ancient Night. But ever the dame grew shyer and shyer, Seeming with private grief engrossed— Grief far from Mosby, housed ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... mechanical power depends on constant speed for steady pressure—since the electric current, when analyzed, is merely a succession of pulsations through a wire, like waves beating against a sea wall. Water-power delivers these waves at a constant speed, so that electric lights made from water-power do not flicker and jump like the flame of a lantern in a gusty wind. On the other hand, to accomplish the same thing with steam or gasoline ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... a miracle of cunningly-arranged shadows. It fell away from water colour and etching without hint of ulterior interest, and came to rest upon the book-shelves. There was more than politeness in his glance at the books, more than mere curiosity. There was, plainly enough, connoisseurship. In the flicker of an eyelid you can tell it. He turned to meet me as ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... cold glitter had produced on her when they were full of their natural light. She felt sure that her mother must have been a lovely, gentle woman. There were gleams of a beautiful nature shining through some ill-defined medium which disturbed and made them flicker and waver, as distant images do when seen through the rippling upward currents of heated air. She loved, in her own way, the old black woman, and seemed to keep up a kind of silent communication with her, as if they did not require ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his cards and went out, shutting the door. In a few minutes the men heard two horses pass the end of the bunk-house toward the trail, but no one looked up nor spoke. You could not have told by the flicker of an eyelash that they knew where the ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... invader, above all; how loud and unpleasing his voice is! The eternal malice in the depths of our soul pounces upon this tendency of grass to be "a common weed," of gnats to bite, of dogs to bark, of shadows to flicker, of a man to have an evil temper, of a woman to have an atrocious shrewishness, or an appalling sluttishness; and out of these annoyances or "faults" it feeds its desire; it satisfies its necrophilistic lust; and it rouses in ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... eyes. She moved slowly and with great exertion, spoke softly and with shortness of breath, and seemed weary and sad. She looked as if she had some hidden sickness, and as if her feeble lamp of life might soon flicker out. As a matter of fact she had never had a day's illness; her appearance gave the impression of weakness, and increasing age made her neither better nor worse. Even now she was the first to rise in the morning and the last to go to bed; had the best appetite at table; ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... William! What a jewel he was, all the way through! And he'd have marched straight to the altar, too, with never a flicker of an eyelid, I know—self-sacrificing ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... my own coffin! Why not? It would be a novel experience. The sense of fear had entirely deserted me; the possession of that box of matches was sufficient to endow me with absolute hardihood. I picked up the church-candle and lighted it; it gave at first a feeble flicker, but afterward burned with a clear and steady flame. Shading it with one hand from the draught, I gave a parting glance at the fair daylight that peeped smilingly in through my prison door, and then went down—down again into the dismal ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... unutterable influence, use that influence for brightening the encompassing gloom. Let them not be wrapped in their own selfishness or sorrow, but let their voice be filled with hope and love. For, by so doing, the waters of Life will grow smoother, and the signals will never flicker. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... depicted by the writer. A peep into the tube showed only a greenish haze as the rays of the sun seemed trying to follow the Dewey into the depths. Against the eye of the periscope streamed a faint flicker of greenish particles in the water that reminded the boy of myriad shooting stars. And then—-nothing but a blur ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... end of this unwholesome, wretched place, he fancied he saw the faint flicker of a light from one of the windows, and he hurriedly made his ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... last pathetic flicker in his "John, don't let the awkward squad fire over me," was he thinking of actual brother-volunteers, or of possible biographers? Did his words betray only the rhythmic sensitiveness of poetic nerves, or were they a ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... patter of Dustbin's baby but quite enormous feet. A stove-pipe belching smoke and savoury fumes protruded itself through the pavement on my right. Through the chinks in the gaping slabs there came the ruddy flicker that bespoke a "home from home" beneath my feet; and then, still listening for signs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... to the rescue of the pheasants about four in the afternoon, and all of us, men and women, were sitting at afternoon tea in the firelit study, drowsily watching the flicker of the flame on the black panelling. The characters will introduce themselves, as they ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... of hell!" cried the cripple with frantic energy. "Already the first pale streaks of dawn begin to flicker in the east. A little time, and thy power to curse will be no more; a little time, and nothing will remain of thee but a heap of noisome ashes; and a name, which will be mingled with that of the arch-enemy of mankind, in the execrations of thy victims—a name ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... sky burned bright with stars that seemed to flicker like candle-flames in the wind. A half-grown moon rode down the west and threw a faint radiance across the heaving seas. It was blowing harder now. The wind boomed loud in the taut stays and the rising waves broke smashingly over the bow at ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... foot, and then I envy every soul in it,—so tranquil it seems, so cool, so careless, so morrowless. I cannot see the faces of that luxurious society, but there I imagine is the local albino, and a certain blind man, who resorts thither much by day, and makes a strange kind of jest of his own, with a flicker of humor upon his sightless face, and a faith that others less unkindly treated by nature will be able to see the point apparently not always discernible to himself. Late at night I have a fancy that the darkness puts him on an equality with other wits, and ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... and in a way lived on a while; but its life was so feeble, and, so to say, illogical, that it could not resist any change in external circumstances, still less could it give birth to anything new; and before this century began, its last flicker had died out. Still, while it was living, in whatever dotage, it did imply something going on in those matters of daily use that we have been thinking of, and doubtless satisfied some cravings for beauty: and when ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... a bell that was a signal to the stable (the stable was very near the house), and in almost a moment's time two men, beside Kilian, were following him out into the tempest. We saw their lanterns flicker for an instant, and then they were swallowed up in the darkness. The fury of the storm increased every moment. The flashes of lightning were but a few seconds apart, and the roll of thunder was incessant. ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... coincidental collective hallucinations, as when two or more people at once have, or profess to have, the same false perception of a person who is really absent and dying, is next disposed of by Herr Parish. The same points de repere, the same sound, or flicker of light, or arrangement of shadow, may beget the same or a similar false perception in two or more people at once. Thus two girls, in different rooms, are looking out on different parts of the hall in their house. 'Both heard, at the ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... and sometimes it faded, but it got larger, and when they went to bed a red reflection played about the sky. In the morning there was no wind and a heavy trail of smoke stretched across the hills. In places, a bright flicker pierced the dark trail, and Carrie noted a smell of burning when she filled the kettle. Then she saw Jim watching ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... her uplifted paw. Then, shying away from the light, they entered a street which was like a canal of shadow. The houses bounding it were all dark, except the steep roof slopes of the southern row, which seemed to palpitate in the bonfire's flicker. ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... sympathizing yet questioning glance that was fixed on her. It was curious how Eleanor's eye met it; how her eye roved over Mrs. Caxton's face and looked into her quiet grey eyes, with a kind of glinting of some spirit fire within, which could almost be seen to play and flicker as thought and feeling swayed to and fro. Her eye said that much was to be said, looked into Mrs. Caxton's face with an intensity of half-speech,—and the lips remained silent. There was consciousness of sympathy, consciousness of something that required sympathy; and ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... peepul's leaves go flicker, flicker: The banyan's leaves are thick and fleshy: Of the fan palm's leaf, brother, make a cup. And we will drink the ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... print. Hurriedly he thrust it aside and rang for a fresh galley. But the red spots rose between his eyes and the work, like an accusation, like a prophecy. Of a sudden he beheld this great engine of print which had been, first, the caprice of his last flicker of irresponsible and headlong youth, then the very mould in which his eager and ambitious manhood was to form and fulfill itself—he beheld this vast mechanism blazingly illumined as with some inner fire, and now become a terrific ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he could plainly perceive the flicker of torches moving about the wharves and piers of Chhung-ju, and presently a few of those same lights appeared on the bosom of the river. The rebels had evidently rowed out in small boats, and were towing the barges left anchored in mid-stream to the shore. ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... when a breeze comes, the leaves flutter and dangle idly about, as if with a languid protest against all disturbance of their perfect rest. The mocking-birds absolutely refuse to sing before twelve o'clock at night, when the air is somewhat cooled: and the fireflies flicker more slowly than I ever saw them before. Our whole world here yawns, in a vast and sultry spell of laziness. An 'exposition of sleep' is come over us, as over Sweet Bully Bottom; we won't wake till winter. ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... flicker and, turning, she saw that it was spending its last dying flame. It was impossible to write. She lay still, watching the glimmering dark square of the window. She could not see another candle there. All she could see was the little phial of tabloids. ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... streets in that suburb were lonely: he went down them, the new-fallen snow dulling his step. It had covered the peaked roofs of the houses too, and they stood in listening rows, white and still. Here and there a pale flicker from the gas-lamps struggled with the ashy twilight. He met no one: people had gone home early on Christmas eve. He had no home to go to: pah! there were plenty of hotels, he remembered, smiling grimly. It was bitter cold: he buttoned up his coat tightly, as he walked slowly along as if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... The light gave a great flicker. "What the bloody hell!" exclaimed John Widger. The day-dreamers awoke, as if from a light sleep. An everyday look came quickly into their eyes and each one shifted in his seat. Some even shook themselves like dogs. A joke was made ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the two women was the second to enter the car. As she stood waiting, she glanced round quickly. Her eyes met Anthony's, rested a moment of time, and then swept on without a flicker.... A second later the door had slammed ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... lingered for a moment on the big-shouldered figure of Drew, erect in his box. At last his glance came back with an intent frown to Woodbury. Something in the keen eyes of the laid raised a responsive flicker in ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... impatiently, his hand moving feebly to tweak his nose, but failing by the way. "There I been an' gone an' made another mistake! Sure, 'tis awful! Will you tell me, Davy Roth, an you can," he demanded, now possessed of the last flicker of strength, "how I could be wicked without hurtin' some poor man? Ecod! I'm ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... met mine without a flicker. The full mouth was curved at the corners in a tolerant, unsuspecting smile. It was hard to have to make an enemy of so handsome and good-humoured a woman. And was it necessary, was it even wise? As I hesitated she turned ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... his chair around to face the screen let into a side wall, and colors began to flicker and run in the field almost immediately. They steadied and sharpened, and the ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... from Mrs. Dudgeon's he is astonished to find the room apparently empty and almost in darkness except for the glow from the fire; for one of the candles has burnt out, and the other is at its last flicker. ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... at a cafe downtown today," Herr Domber said without the flicker of an eye. "I have a special cafe in mind where the sea food is excellent and ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... that Tommy couldn't help opening one eye the least bit, just to see him. That was when Mr. Gray Squirrel noticed that his eyelid quivered. And Tommy saw at once that Mr. Gray Squirrel had caught that flicker of his eyelid, and that he was frightened. Tommy knew then that he ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... picture of his childhood come to life, smiling drowsily in the morning sunlight with shuttered windows that were its sleeping eyes—the great white house of Fairfield. Its high pillars reached to the roof; its big wings stretched away at either side; the flicker of the shadow of the leaves played over it tenderly and hid broken bits of woodwork, patches of paint cracked away, window-panes gone here and there. It stood as if too proud to apologize or to look sad for such small matters, as serene, as stately as in its prime. And its master, looking at ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... reached the women and children. Yielding to a professional instinct, he stooped, and saw that the prostrate form was that of old Aunt Jane Letlow. She was not yet quite dead, and as Miller, with a tender touch, placed her head in a more comfortable position, her lips moved with a last lingering flicker of consciousness:— ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Divine trust, I regard your appeal as a call from God Himself. Besides, you could not have demanded from me a more congenial service. You shall have all the help I can give; and between us," he added, with a reviving flicker of his previous facetiousness, "we shall ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... the river, and I swam the flooded bend With a little cash and comfort for my literary friend. Brown was sitting sad and lonely with his head bowed in despair, While a single tallow candle threw a flicker on his hair, And the gusty wind that whistled through the crannies of the door Stirred the scattered files of paper that were lying on the floor. Charlie took my hand in silence — and by-and-by he said: ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... sluggishness of mind and body the next day. It is very dangerous to risk them before a hard match. The moving pictures immediately before playing tennis are bad, owing to the eye strain caused by the flicker of the film and the strong light of the camera. Lead a normal, healthy life, and conserve your nervous force wherever possible, as you will need it in the ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... the brunt of the situation on her husband's hands, as if too absorbed in a grievance of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one herself. To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the weak flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling structure of "appearances," her own attention was perpetually distracted by the question: "What on earth can she be driving at?" There was something ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... gave a last flicker, spluttered, and went out. Someone, it must have been Merik, came into the room and sat down on the bench. He puffed at his pipe, and for an instant lighted up a dark cheek with a patch on it. Yergunov's throat was irritated by the horrible fumes of ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the little kitchen, where on the hearth a fire was crackling and flashing its red flicker over the walls. He sat down on a rough wooden bench by the door, wondering if his uncle could really have forgotten that he was coming, and feeling not all light-hearted, while Hagar clattered away to "see Mas'r Dick." She came ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... bedchamber, and softly approached the bedside by the dim flicker of the night-lamp, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Nuthin immediately released their hold on Ward. The last flicker of the expiring match showed that the recent prisoner was scowling most hatefully, as if angry at the way he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... windows. Sometimes a vagrant puff of air would find its way in, and suddenly the ball-room dimmed and the dancers moved like phantoms. The flames of the candles would struggle and, with many a flicker, right themselves, and the radiant colors and ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... thought that Naomi, daily handling sick little Three Legs, might have caught the malady that first darkened the vision of the poor little animal, and then caused the frail life to flicker out altogether. ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... eyes swept the eager face and slim figure of the girl at Jimmy's side. There was the barest flicker of her lids before she raised them ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... dim recesses, mid tresses, green tresses. Slow dipping, caressing, I've heard A whisper, a chuckle of laughter, a scamper; and high, High up in the air the cry, the call of a bird. And when the night came with a flicker of wings I have heard the earth breathing quiet and slow Like a pulse in the tiny, wild ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... answer, he brushed past Mary and strode up to his house. The girl stood motionless for a little while, gazing after him with a flushed face, twitching lips and a flicker of amusement in her ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... something besides smoke makes itself visible, as also audible. Here and there flames flicker up, with a sharp crackling noise, which continues. The one is not flashes from the guns, nor the other a snapping ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... light—such expedients precisely as a man in the perturbed sleep occasioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for a similar purpose—each and all of which appear by turns to the dreamer the most reasonable and the most preposterous of conceptions, just as the reasoning or imaginative faculties flicker, alternately, one above the other. At last an idea occurred to me which seemed rational, and which gave me cause to wonder, very justly, that I had not entertained it before. I placed the slip of paper on the back of a book, and, collecting the fragments of the phosphorus matches ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... distinct advantages of the Horse Show. It had three rings and two platforms; and, for another thing, the drivers and riders in the races, when they won, bore the banner of victory aloft in their hands, instead of poorly letting a blue or red ribbon flicker at their horses' ears. The events were more frequent and rapid; the costumes infinitely more varied and picturesque. As for the people in the boxes, I do not know that they were less distinguished than these at the Horse Show, but if they were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... its words, but I know that it tells me of coming disaster, unknown but inevitable, mysterious and inexorable as death. The future is lugubrious as a cemetery full of open graves, ready to receive the dead, with here and there a flicker of pale torches which I can scarce distinguish, and I know not if they are there to lure me on to destruction or to show me ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... which border the bunch upon the back denote sunbeams penetrating storm clouds. The black circle zigzagged with white around the head is a cloud basket filled with corn and seeds of grass. On either side of the head are five feathers of the red shafted flicker (Colaptes cafer); a fox skin is attached to the right side of the throat; the mountain sheep horns are tipped with the under tail feathers of the eagle, tied on with cotton cord. The horns are filled with clouds. The rainbow goddess, upon which these gods ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... or pranced, Murmex not built for such antics, Palus by nature steady on his feet. But, except that their feet moved cannily, every bit of the rest of either's body was in constant motion and moved swiftly. The gleam and flicker of thrust and parry were inexpressibly rapid. Even the upper tiers craned, breathless and fascinated; and we, further forward, were numb and quivering ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... woman had asked me such a question there would have been short shrift with her. Charmion herself had never before attempted such personalities; but now, when she deemed it necessary, she spoke without a flicker of hesitation, her grey eyes staring full into mine. It would have seemed ridiculous ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... burrowed with mines; the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, thickens the lower sky, and lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It leaves the upper blue clear and the head of Orion, but dims the flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady ray of the evening star. The people scattered about are not mining people, but half-hearted agriculturists, and very poor. Their cottages are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... not answer. He lifted the latch and pulled the door open. A howling gust of wind-driven rain beat in upon him, drenching the carpet and causing the lamp to flicker and smoke. For a moment Solomon gazed out into the storm; then he relinquished ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... them over—not counting them, he was too much amazed and excited to do that—when the candle in the lantern gave a final flicker and went out, leaving the boys and the mystery of the compass and the money and Rad's pantaloons enveloped ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... jaw somewhat heavy, his eyes exceedingly keen, and he carried with him an indefinable air of authority. He observed, also, that the voice had in it something peculiarly clear and incisive. With a little thrill and a sudden flicker of the flame of hope, he pointed down the street that ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... Japan, White butterfly moon! Where the heavy-lidded Buddhas dream To the sound of the cuckoo's call.... The white wings of moon-butterflies Flicker down the streets of the city, Blushing into darkness the useless wicks of round lanterns in the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... his hot brow, laid her head on his heart to see whether it was still beating. He was alive! Beckoning to two of his comrades, Molly commanded them to carry him to the shade of a near-by tree. And soon she had the satisfaction of seeing a faint smile flicker over his face as she bent above him. At that moment her keen ears heard General Knox give ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... faintest flicker of a smile moving about her lips now; she had turned a little and the light was playing ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... anything; the look of his eyes was always so strange. Newman paused again, and then went on. "You and your mother have committed a crime." At this M. de Bellegarde's eyes certainly did change; they seemed to flicker, like blown candles. Newman could see that he was profoundly startled; but there was something admirable in ...
— The American • Henry James
... with distinguished grace. Not a flicker of relief had disturbed the calm serenity of his aspect, yet when a moment later, he stepped among his shouting admirers in the street, his air and glance betrayed a bounding joy for which another source must be found than that of gratified pride. A chain had slipped from his spirit, and ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... closed, revealing the squalidness of the interior in which we were quartered. Then someone, growling and stumbling through the darkness, lit a slush lantern, dangling from a blackened beam, its faint flicker barely discernible. The hole became foul and sickening, men tossing and groaning in their uneasy sleep, or prowling about seeking some measure of comfort. There was no severe wind accompanying the storm, and the flurry of rain soon ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... of a job too, but they managed to get me up somehow or other, and I found myself in a large sparsely furnished hall lit by one ill-burning gas jet. There was a door half open on the left, and through the vacant space I could see the flicker of a freshly ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... elms, which I spare to that end, bring us the flicker every summer, and almost daily I hear his wild scream and laugh close at hand, himself invisible. He is a shy bird, but a few days ago I had the satisfaction of studying him through the blinds as he sat on a tree within a few feet of me. Seen so near and ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... shudder of death Flicker'd fast through the wood:— And they found the Red King Red-gilt in his blood. What wells up in his throat? Is it cursing, or prayer? Was it Henry, or Tyrrell, Or demon, who there Has dyed the fell tyrant Twice crimson in gore, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... smallest hole it went (like the thrill in a troublesome tooth) that here was a chance come of feeding, a chance at last of feeding. For the man on the cliff, the despairing watchman, weary of fastening his eyes upon the sea, through constant fog and drizzle, at length had discovered the well-known flicker, the glassy flaw, and the hovering of gulls, and had run along Weighing Lane so fast, to tell his good news in the village, that down he fell and broke his leg, exactly opposite the tailor's shop. And this was on St. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... marvellous little family circle of children of genius in Charlotte Street, he had also the power of looking at it from the outside. It would be strange, indeed, if this or any other power should be found lacking in him. I have often heard Rossetti—by the red flicker of the studio fire, when the gas was turned down to save his eyesight—give the most graphic and fascinating descriptions of the little group and the way in which they grew up to be what they were under the tuition of a father whose career can only be called romantic, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... awake again, and Miss Dare, satisfied with her success, allowed herself to become more reasonable, until a slight shade of sentiment began to flicker about their path. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... paraffine on the scullery floor, and instantly a nest of snaky, wavering blue flame became agog for prey. He went up the stairs three steps at a time with one eager blue flicker in pursuit of him. He seized the lamp at the top. "Now!" he said and flung it smashing. The chimney broke, but the glass receiver stood the shock and rolled to the bottom, a potential bomb. Old Rumbold would hear that and wonder what it was!... ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... and then turned to see what had startled him so. But all he saw was an old feathered acquaintance headed towards the Old Orchard. He seemed to bound along through the air much as Peter bounds along over the ground when he is in a hurry. It was Yellow-Wing the Flicker. ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... folks may well marry) for sometimes a man hath most need of a wife, according to Puccius, when he hath no need of a wife; otherwise it is most odious, when an old Acherontic dizzard, that hath one foot in his grave, a silicernium, shall flicker after a young wench ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... When the flicker of summer falls faint on the Clubroom's gold and green, The sons of Adam sit them down and boast of strokes unseen; They talk of stymies and brassie lies to the tune of the steward's cough, But the Devil whispers in their ears, "Gadzooks! But that's ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... union of male and female who find enough in common to warrant that union. In a word and in the fullest sense of the word, it is sex comradeship. Pre-nuptial love cannot survive marriage any considerable time. It is doomed inexorably to flicker out, and when it has flickered out it must be replaced by affection, or else the parties to it must separate. We well know that many men and women, unable to build up affection on the ruins of love, do separate, or if they do not, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... it a matter of extreme danger. His medical skill was small, but he contrived to wash and bind the wound roughly. Then he quietly reloaded his guns, and, with the aid of a stiff horn of whisky, roused some life in his patient. He knew it would only be a feeble flicker, but while it lasted he wanted to get him on to the Lady ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... outset he was confronted by a condition that was not only disappointing, but exerted a most depressing influence. There was no draught, such as he had believed would issue from the winze. In vain did he hold up a wetted finger, in vain watch for the slightest flicker in the flame of his candle. The air was as stagnant as that of a dungeon. And yet there certainly had been a decided current at that very place only a few hours before. Puzzled and disheartened, he was still determined to press forward, and, stooping ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... and were peering upwards at the black vault overhead, when an indescribable rushing sound filled the air of the cavern, and caused the flame of our torches to flicker with such violence that we could not see any object distinctly. We all came to a sudden pause, and I confess that at that moment a feeling of superstitious dread chilled the blood in my veins. Before we could discover the cause of this strange effect, several large black objects passed through ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... other light than the light of the fire. The unkindled lamp stood on the table. She sat on the ground, looking at the brazier, with her face leaning on her hand. There was a kind of film or flicker on her face, which at first he took to be the fitful firelight; but, on a second look, he saw that she was weeping. A sad and solitary spectacle, as shown him by the rising and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... on Hanson's arm pleadingly, and he shrugged. He groped about for some answer that could be phrased in their language, letting his mind flicker from the modern electronic gadgets back to the ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... as he could be—you could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards. He didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners —everybody was always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... but they no longer ruled him. One thing was paramount, his determination to know everything of the crime that had been perpetrated in the main drive of the Silver Stream. Fragments of thoughts seemed to flicker up like flames within him and die out again instantly, and he repeated constantly under ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... spoke, was foolishly vacant. Then, a lurid blaze began to flicker behind his ice-blue eyes, and a brickish color surged into his face. Wheeling on Gavin, he cried, his voice choked ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... rain was falling heavily, as the woman, pail in hand, emerged from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow street, that stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter; the long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking to or from ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the trustworthiness of the latter as on that of the former. To refute this charge Mr. Bell had insisted that both he and Watson carefully write out whatever they heard that the two records might afterward be compared and verified. 'That is,' Mr. Bell had added with the flicker of a smile, 'if we succeed in talking at all!' Well, they did succeed, as you have heard. At first they held only a stilted dialogue and conscientiously jotted it down; but afterward their exuberance ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... though something told him that the hour was noon; the gold put out the sun. "All mine!" he thought, and was preparing to gather it, but some one stopped him with an iron hand; and then he woke, to hear his mother's snores and see the flicker of ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... very slightly. If she felt any flicker of interest, of surprise, that Hume was here, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... that his outline was lost in darkness; but I saw that round his neck was a short white ruff, and that heavy leather boots hung in folds, cavalier-fashion, from his knees. He wavered there in the dark, against the flicker of the bamboo shadows, like a picture by that Dutch fellow—What's-his-name-again—a ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... he bent over her, he thought Dalla had been killed, an assumption justified by his knowledge of the deadliness of Akor-Neb bullets. Then he saw her eye-lids flicker. A moment later, he had the explanation of her escape. The bullet had hit the game bag at her side; it was full of spools of metal tape, in metal cases, and notes in written form, pyrographed upon sheets of plastic ring fastened into metal binders. Because ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... the outer edge of discussion and anxiety, leaving all analysis of their question to the ladies alone and now only feeling his way toward some small droll cynicism. It broke out afresh, the cynicism—it had already shown a flicker—in a but slightly deferred: "Well, hanged if I would if I ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... that we regularly count upon in winter, there are more or less irregular visitors at this season, some of them summer birds also,—as the purple finch, cedar-bird, gold-finch, robin, the flicker, or pigeon woodpecker, and the yellow-bellied and hairy woodpeckers. Others, again, linger on from the autumn, and sometimes through the winter,—as the snow-bird, song-sparrow, tree-sparrow. Still others ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... journey it seemed as if the child were really rallying; the air, the sunlight, the novel motion, the smiling mother by her side, the big black horses she had already learned to love, all roused her to an animation she had not shown for days. But it was only the last flicker of the expiring flame. The eyes drooped, closed; a strange pallor came over the face. Alessandro saw it first. He was now walking, Ramona riding Benito. "Majella!" he cried, in a tone which told ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the neighborhood, at four o'clock in the morning, was always the golden-winged woodpecker, or flicker. Though he scorned the breakfast I offered, having no vegetarian proclivities, he did not refuse me his presence. I found him a character, and an amusing study, and I never saw his tribe so numerous and so ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... noble way, and in unity find strength. I should have loved to be a Milton—like one of your English cathedrals, austere, breathing sacred memories, resonant with the roll of a great organ, with painted windows, on which the shadows of the green boughs outside wave and flicker, and just hint of Nature. Or one of your aristocrats with a stately home in the country, and dogs and horses, and a beautiful wife. In short, I should like to be your husband. Or, failing that, my own wife, a simple, loving creature, whose idea of culture is cabbages. Ach, why was my soul wider ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... coins on a table before him, and he would sit for hours together with his eyes fixed upon them, like a child who, at the moment it first begins to see, gazes in stupid contemplation at the same object, and like the child, a distressful smile would flicker ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... as we were soon to find out, for it was but a few minutes after the last flicker had died away, and left the night looking all the blacker after the bright light to which our eyes had become accustomed, when we all distinctly heard the approaching of many feet. Apparently the impi was about to attack us ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... conscience, such as it is, to declare that the birds on it alone are worth more than it cost: wood-thrushes and robins, golden orioles, scarlet tanagers, blackbirds, bluebirds, oven-birds, cedar-birds, veeries, vireos, song-sparrows, flycatchers, kinglets, the flicker, the cuckoo, the nuthatch, the chickadee and the rose-breasted grosbeak, not to mention jays or kingfishers, swallows, the little green heron or that cock of the walk, ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... and it struck me that even on his iron nature the events of the night had made some impression. I read, or thought I read, in his countenance, signs of emotions not quite in accordance with what I knew of him—emotions strange and varied. I could almost have sworn that as he looked at us a flicker of kindliness lit up his stern and cruel gloom; I could almost have sworn he smiled with a curious sadness. As for Louis, riding with a squad who stood in a different part of the yard, he did not see us; had not yet seen us at all. His side face, turned ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... thought of this as the weird flicker of the candle-light showed him her unflinching face, for the next moment, with another muttered curse, and a careless shrug of the shoulders, he turned on his heel, and slowly went ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... say that for her. There is not a man in town who dare look me in the eye and take a rise like that out of me, but she did it without a flicker. So I know I had her mad or she wouldn't have said it, but wasn't she smooth ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... a trifle more sternly than usual, his handsome head was held high with fine military bearing. He came forward without faltering for even so much as the fraction of a waver. There was not a flicker in his eyes set straight ahead. One would never have known from his looks that he recognized the oncoming man, or had so much as realized that an officer was approaching, yet his brain was doing some rapid calculation. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... that must not be either misunderstood or misquoted. At such times oratory is unhappily elbowed to a back bench, the manuscript is solemnly withdrawn from the capacious inner pocket of the new frock coat, and everyone settles himself resignedly, with only a feeble flicker of hope that the so-called speech may not be as long as it is thick. The words may be golden, but the hearers' (?) eyes are prone to be leaden, and in about one instance out of a hundred does the perpetrator really deliver an impressive address. His excuse is his apology—he is not to be blamed, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... from the south urged them on their way. The sun soon set and a long night began, but what of that? The moon and snow lighted the earth as if by day, and with a silvery glory. And now the Northern Lights began to flicker, flash and shoot across ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... it. Obstinate one, you saw the look on your husband's face as he left you. It is the studio light by which he paints and still sees to hope, despite all the disappointments of his not ignoble ambitions. That light is the dower you brought him, and he is a wealthy man if it does not flicker. ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... ever-steepening trail, ceasing his song only when he needed the breath to climb. A cottontail waved its beacon for a minute before him, then darted into the underbrush; the mountain jays called out a wailing cry; and the flicker clucked above. Sharp turns were in the trail, else it had faced an upright cliff or overshot a precipice; but it was easily followed and, at length, he was above the cedars. Here the horse trail ended, but a moccasin path went on. It turned abruptly from a sheer descent, then followed a narrow ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... darkened its faces, and crowded its recesses. The line of sky, seen through the jagged and sinuous opening above, changed slowly to gloom and then to blackness. There was no light in this rocky intestine of the earth except the red flicker of the camp-fire. It fought feebly with the powers of darkness; it sent tremulous despairing flashes athwart the swift ebony river; it reached out with momentary gleams to the nearer facades of precipice; it reeled, drooped, and shuddered as if in hopeless horror. Probably, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... where the dreams left off and the real began. He was vaguely conscious of his left foot being tied to the right bedpost, of a lock of his hair being cut off and burned on the hearth, and of a low monotonous chant that seemed to rise and fall with the flicker of the flames. And when he cried out with the pain in his sleep, a kindly black face bent over him, and the chant changed into a ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... describes the Hindoo ascetic sitting by the bank of the sacred stream and watching the legions as they pass while cannon roar and bayonets gleam. To him they are disturbing phantoms, and he longs for the time when they will flicker away like the smoke of the guns on the windswept hill. He meanwhile sits 'musing and fasting and hoping to die.' Fitzjames is the precise antithesis: his heart was with the trampling legions, and for the ascetic ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... him he wronged Fight for her, who should have her! We stood Upon the walls, and she with her hood Close to her cheek. But I saw the flicker ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... There was a furtive flicker of the Wyandotte's eyes which seemed to include everybody before him, then he said very coolly that he had seen no riffle that might indicate shallow water, but that there was a ford not far below, and we ought to strike it ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Lights flicker out in the gloom, like diminutive goblins that beckon; Onward we stagger and gasp in the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... spade, one writing in a large book, and one shaping a jewelled box to hold the book; and among the rushes at their feet lay the scholars, who would one day be Brothers, and whose school-house it was, and for the succour of whose tender years the great fire was supposed to leap and flicker. One of these, a child of eight or nine years, called Olioll, lay upon his back looking up through the hole in the roof, through which the smoke went, and watching the stars appearing and disappearing in the smoke with mild eyes, ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... the folds of his long robe, and, while he feeds her with bread and sweetmeats, keeps up a running comment of remarks and laughter at all around her, and the unspeakable solemnity of old Father Abraham's face is lit up, now and then, with the flicker of a ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... her sisters stopped her, and even Billiard had to smile, though he felt grateful toward the little twin who was sorry he was hurt. By this time the pale candle flame had ceased to sputter and flicker uncertainly, but burned with a steady light, and with a thrill of exultation Billiard looked curiously about him, relieved to find no snakes or crawly things in the abandoned shaft, and pleased beyond measure to think he had actually braved the terrors of the dark to ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the children watched, Toby gave his tail a flicker and a twist, and the fly, which had been biting ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... Vera, as she approached. "Aha! Now I know why you left us all of a sudden!" She smiled winningly at Marjorie's companion, who allowed the barest flicker of a smile to touch her slightly ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... turned, saw El Tigre, and charged him straight. El Tigre was not even facing him, for the bull was approaching from his left. But there he stood without the twitch of a muscle or the flicker of an eye lid, still as ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... roar of burning fuel above me, and immediately after a cry from below. Through the narrow stairway lattice I could see the uncertain flicker of flames lighting up the street. Men ran backward across the open square, looking up as they ran. So by that I knew that Helene had done her work, and was now watching the burning beacon, as the flames flicked upward and ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... tried to compose myself. I soon felt better. The change for my lungs, from the fetid atmosphere of the gambling-room to the cool air of the apartment I now occupied, the almost equally refreshing change for my eyes, from the glaring gaslights of the "salon" to the dim, quiet flicker of one bedroom-candle, aided wonderfully the restorative effects of cold water. The giddiness left me, and I began to feel a little like a reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of sleeping all night in a gambling-house; my second, of the still greater risk of trying ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... not hear me! Where are they going that they do not hear me? Nay, then, dear Gran'am, rest on me. Step slowly. They've left off dancing at the maypole, and gone I know not whither. Will you not rest you, while I blow this flicker o' fire? (Leads Goody Gleason to bed of pine.) I'll make thee broth, and season it right pleasantly when the lads come back from their traps; for, now that I think on it, it may be to their traps they have gone. (Sees Goody Gleason placed in comfortable fashion ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... had reduced every stick within reach of his hand to a mass of shavings—a beaming childlike glow of satisfaction resting on his handsome face all the while, until the embers of the fire began to sink low, and only an occasional flicker of flame shot up to enlighten the increasing darkness. Then he laid the two implements down and covered them carefully with a piece of deerskin, while his countenance resumed ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... serious; but presently he regarded her with a flicker of humor in his eyes, she thought. "You didn't say that as if you meant it, Sylvia," he declared. "You didn't say it as if you quite believed it. But I'm going to show you that you're right. What we've been together, Sylvia, you ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... chance of meeting a man like Sir Lionel. I don't think there is another in the world. And to-morrow I am to have the honour of informing him that I'm in love with that little worm, Dick Burden. Having seen the sun, I love a flicker of ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... river teem with varied forms of animal life. From the caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of many-colored plumage. The cormorant, the pelican, the heron, floated on the water, or stalked along its pebbly brink. Among the sedges, the alligator, foul from his native mud, outstretched his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... know, mamma," said the boy gravely. "I will do ridiculous things if He command me"—and again a flicker of a smile that came like a flicker of light passed over his face. "The first thing I thought I had to do was to tell you all; he says his servants must confess him; and to-morrow I will go to my uncles." The smile had faded and ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... retired, and he was all by himself in this large room, with the subdued twilight all through it, and the flicker of the flames on the ceiling. He went to the fire more from habit than anything else, and suddenly came on a big armchair, drawn up close to the side, in which ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... With a palpable flicker of interest Zillah Forsyth looked back across her shoulder. "Engaged? How many times?" she asked ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... The faintest flicker of a smile crosses her lips. She lays her knitting on her knee for an instant, that she may the more readily let her tapered fingers droop until they touch the pale brow of the child at her feet; then she resumes it again, with a face ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... swish in the leaves like thet. His whiskers quivered, his tongue come out. C'u'd think o' nuthin' but his big empty belly. The boy was scairt. He up with his gun quick es a flash. Aimed at his eyes 'n let 'er flicker. Blew a lot o' smoke 'n bird shot 'n paper waddin' right up in t' his face. The panther he lost his whiskers 'n one eye 'n got his hide fill' o' shot 'n fell off the tree like a ripe apple 'n run fer his life. Thought he'd never see nuthin' c'u'd growl 'n spits powerful es thet boy. Never ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... been of late so joyful, were now grown old with sorrow in but an hour or two; for they feared that the fresh coming of the Earth-Current had been but the final flicker and outburst before the end. And, even in this short while of our speech, did it seem to me that the voice of Naani grew further off from me; and I felt like to have broken my heart with the trouble of ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... would be dark and still, except for a belated guest going to his banquet, a Scythian constable, or perhaps a cloak thief. For your Athenian, when he had no supper invitation, went to bed early and rose early, loving the sunlight far better than the flicker of his ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... let her gain confidence. When he was silent she sang from memory. It was a song of flourishes: one of those be-flowered arias in which the notes flicker and leap like young flames. Others might have sung it; and though it spoke favourably of her aptitude and musical education, and was of a quality to enrapture easy, merely critical audiences, it won no applause from these men. The effect produced ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was time for the girls to return to school. They took a hansom, Bob accompanying them. As they drove, Laura sitting sandwiched between the other two, it came over her with a rush what a miserable failure the day had been. A minute before, her spirits had given a faint flicker, for Bob had laid his arm along the back of the seat. Then she saw that he had done this just to pull at the little curls that grew on Tilly's neck. She was glad when the cab drew up, when Tilly ostentatiously took the fat half-crown from her purse, and Bob left them at the gate with a: "Well, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... she said; "and—and this time I will not ask for the bill." The faintest flicker of a smile crossed her lips, and then was gone, and he thought that in its place a look of weariness and unhappiness ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... least believed so. And when at Elizabeth's knock she woke with a start, and saw—not the sweet sea-shore and Robert Lyon, but the dull parlor, and the last flicker of the fire, she thanked God that her dream was not all a dream—that, sharp as her misery was, it did not touch this—the love of her heart: she believed ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... scarce—only obtainable in the East, and even in the East months might have passed before I could have increased my supply. I had no months to waste. Replenish, then, the light only when it begins to flicker or fade. Take heed, above all, that no part of the outer ring—no, not an inch—and no lamp of the twelve, that are to its zodiac like stars, fade for one moment ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... for many sleepy minutes while her light fell dimmer and dimmer, lower and lower. When it was just a tiny flicker he dropped to sleep. ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... time, the situation began to affect him personally. In the hours after midnight, as the forces of the physical body ebbed toward the lowest point, those of the mind seemed to increase. Staring at the low night light, that by its feeble flicker exorcised the thousand phantoms that beset him, he could think clearly. In a rocking chair, across the room, the night nurse dozed, with a white shawl wrapped around her. He could hear her deep, ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... when the case was opened and the array of tubes and transformers was revealed, that expression disappeared; and when he added a super-power stage by cutting in a heavy-duty transformer and a five-kilowatt transmitting tube, Seaton thought that he saw an instantaneously suppressed flicker of ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... discordant mirth. Their owner also possessed a cockatoo with a great musical reputation, but I never heard it get beyond the first bar of "Come into the garden, Maud." Ill as I was, I remember being roused to something like a flicker of animation when I was shown an exceedingly seedy and shabby-looking blackbird with a broken leg in splints, which its master (the same bird-fancying gentleman) assured me he had bought in Melbourne as a great bargain for only 2 ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... day, going the rounds of the dry-goods stores, giggling with the men clerks—a picture of sin that made men wet their lips. She was big, oversexed, and feline; rattling in silks, with an aura of sensuousness around her which seemed to glow like a coal, without a flicker of kindness or shame or sweetness, and which all the town knew instinctively must clinker into something black and ugly as the years ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... a shutter and the light touched her face. Such a face it was, with a flicker of laughter over it like the wind on a June meadow, and a singular tender pliancy of mien, as though one of Tiepolo's lenient goddesses had been busked into the stiff sheath ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... old men tottering away to their final resting place be enthusiastic on the reception of a stranger? What could Mr. Quiverful be to them, or they to Mr. Quiverful? Had Mr. Harding indeed come back to them, some last flicker of joyous light might have shone forth on their aged cheeks; but it was in vain to bid them rejoice because Mr. Quiverful was about to move his fourteen children from Puddingdale into the hospital house. In reality they did no doubt receive advantage, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... noted anything unusual in my request, he did not show it, not so much as by a flicker ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... yellow windows shadows drink hot tea. Yearning people sway on a hardened pond Workers find a soft woman's corpse. Glowing blue snows cast a howling darkness. On high poles a scarecrow, implored, hangs. Stores flicker dimly through frosted windows, In front of which human bodies move like ghosts. Students carve a frozen girl. How lovely, the crystalline winter evening burning! A platinum moon now streams through a gap in the houses. Next to green lanterns under ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... and looked down at him, questioningly. Then the import of it reached her and she involuntarily drew back. The sun shot a last failing flicker across the earth and vanished. The fire went out of the air, and the day darkened. Far above, the hearse-dogs ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... dark, but street-lamps had begun to flare and flicker in the gust of a cold, damp evening. A thin and slippery mud smeared the pavement. Tarrant had walked mechanically as far as to the top of Park Lane before he began to consider his immediate course. Among the people who stood waiting for ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... slowly, showing a sort of lethargic reluctance towards effort which extended even to the muscles of his almost expressionless face. To some he might have appeared dull and stupid, but Esther knew this was not true. There was life in the flicker of his small eyes, deep-set, bilious in tinge, and as she looked into them she received the impression of a great inner concentration ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the picture of the sad, reproachful eyes of my poor wife, fixed upon me as they might be when the film of death passed over them. I knew that I must do the thing in a way which would prevent her sensing my purpose, even in the last flicker of time in ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... abruptly, and with passion;—and the King, turning on his elbow, glanced with a touch of curiosity at the face of his Queen. There was not a flicker of emotion on its fair cold calmness,— not a quiver on the beautiful lips, or a sigh to stir the quiet breast on which the lilies rested, white and waxen, and heavily odorous. He withdrew his gaze with a half smile at his own folly for imagining that she could be moved by a mere ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... of that. He was not listening. He was seeing, not the picture she painted but that which she made, there in the sunshine. She was whiter than ever. Deep shadows were under her eyes. But the eyes themselves were very steady, her voice never quavered, nor did the smile flicker. Where did she get her spirit, this slender fragile girl who seemed so in need ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... Naomi, daily handling sick little Three Legs, might have caught the malady that first darkened the vision of the poor little animal, and then caused the frail life to flicker out altogether. ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... from his pocket, opened the vault and went inside, nearly closing the door behind him. Uncle Bushrod saw, through the narrow aperture, the flicker of a candle. In a minute or two—it seemed an hour to the watcher—Mr. Robert came out, bringing with him a large hand-satchel, handling it in a careful but hurried manner, as if fearful that he might be observed. With one hand he closed and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... creep up and down the roof, growing higher as they stole along. He saw them flicker over the eaves, lap the walls of the house, and finally clasp it like a red, flaring robe. But Whitey did not think of the fire in those terms, but as a thing ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... recommenced nowhere, nowhere except at Sans-Souci, nowhere except in the apartment of the king; while his people slept, the king watched, he watched to work and think for his people. Without the wind howled and blew the snow against his window, and made even the fire in his room flicker; but the king heeded it not. He had completed his toilet and drunk his chocolate; now he was working. It did not disturb him that his room was cold, that the candle on his table gave but a poor light, and even seemed to increase the appearance of discomfort in his apartment; it gave sufficient light ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... knows. He is the one man able to discriminate between truth and falsity, yet he must not reveal the cruel stab of fact or the harmless buffet of fiction by so much as a flicker of an eyelid. He surveys the honest blunderer and the perjured ruffian—I mean the counsel for the defense and the prosecution respectively—with impartial scrutiny. If he is a sublime villain, he will ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... the flask, and they both bent over Rope, forcing a generous portion of the liquor down his throat. Then, alternately bathing the wound and his forehead, they watched. They were rewarded presently by a faint flicker of the eyelids and a slow flow of color in the pale cheeks. Then after a little ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... must not cut short a single flicker of that bright spirit; the wondrously beautiful vessel that it glorifies will be cold clay soon enough! ashes from which no future Phoenix shall arise. O," he exclaimed, "this sacrifice is too great, too great! and for nothing! Even had she perished on the destined altar, an accepted sacrifice, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... so as to take every advantage of the wind, in addition to our steam-power, the old barquey prancing away full speed ahead, with her topsails and fore canvas bellied out to their utmost extent, their leech lifting occasionally with a flicker as she outran the breeze and the clew-gallant blocks rattling as the sheets slackened and grew taut again, while the wind hummed through the canvas aloft like a thousand bees ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... brown bird flies up before you, showing a flash of white on his rump, you may know him for the flicker, the most unwoodpecker-like of his family. He is more or less deserting the tree-climbing method for ground feeding, and if you watch him you will see many habits which his new mode ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Frederick stepped forward, the movement closing the door with a bang, and causing the candles to lift their smothered flames and flicker smokily. The wind shrieked through the broken window and the cracks between the shanty boards. A storm played with the water, casting its grayness into white capped rollers which beat upon the shore like the restless spirits of an ocean. Still the girl ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... broke up, and the torchlight grew dimmer, and died away as it had come in a red flicker on the roof, and the footsteps sounded fainter as they went up the passage, until the vault was left to the dead men and me. Yet for a very long time—it seemed hours—after all had gone I could hear a murmur of distant voices, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... loathsome insect, which he assured me was that very force, that very almighty, dumb, irresistible Power, and laughed at the indignation with which I received this information. In my room they always light the little lamp before my icon for the night; it gives a feeble flicker of light, but it is strong enough to see by dimly, and if you sit just under it you can even read by it. I think it was about twelve or a little past that night. I had not slept a wink, and was lying ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... He was vaguely conscious of his left foot being tied to the right bedpost, of a lock of his hair being cut off and burned on the hearth, and of a low monotonous chant that seemed to rise and fall with the flicker of the flames. And when he cried out with the pain in his sleep, a kindly black face bent over him, and the chant ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... placed before his visitor a box containing cigars of a brand which that gentleman keenly appreciated but generally regarded as unattainable, and the matter-of-fact ease and certainty with which the blind man had brought the box and put it before him had sent a questioning flicker through Carlyle's mind. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... The flicker of a smile crossed her odd, fine, strong face. "This is grand opera," she said. "It is the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... last, not only of his having the papers, but that they were in the room, somewhere on that left side, where his glance had flashed. It was hard to keep still, without the flicker of an eyelash; but she believed, as O'Reilly came back to her, that she had stood the test of ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Green continued to stare out of the window, seeing nothing of the scenery but the flicker of telegraph posts before his eyes that were visioning ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... he added, "why half of me is sorry that it let the other half smash up that cast. What claim has a puny person against one flicker ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... large and beautifully domed, his hands tapering and aristocratic. When he speaks it is of subtleties. But when he speaks his dignity drops from him. His eyes shift quickly from one end of their little slit to the other, his mouth, his full brown mouth, moves over-fast, his hands flicker ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... seemed as if vaguely in his mind some strong purpose had already taken birth and was struggling to subjugate his will. His bronzed face marked clearly the workings of his thoughts: at first there had been a dulled, sombre look in his dark, deep-set eyes; then gradually a flame seemed to flicker in them, feebly at first, then dying down for awhile, then rising again more triumphant, more glowing than before, even as the firm lines around the tightly-closed lips became more set and more ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to the northeast there came the flicker of a squadron of warships waving white swords of light about the sky. I kept them hull-down, and presently they were mere summer lightning over the watery edge of the globe.... I fell into thought that was nearly formless, into doubts and dreams that have no words, and it seemed good to ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... silence," he murmured. "If Chunky were here he would say I was getting softening of the brain. Hello!" Tad froze himself. There was scarcely a perceptible flicker of the eyelids as his gaze became fixed on a point of rock just across the pass. There, poised with one foot in the air, stood an antelope. It was a young doe, as Tad surmised it to be. His position was not a favorable one for shooting because he was in plain sight, and the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... hand till she is properly emancipated. Not only must she be emancipated, but she must be emancipated from her present thralldom. Thralldom of this kind is liable to break out in any community, and those who are now in perfect health may pine away in a short time and flicker. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... hills, leaving nothing for the larger wave to do but complete the work of devastation on inanimate objects. Ere the situation had been well realised the volcanic fires went down again, and left the world, for over a hundred surrounding miles, in opaque darkness. Only the humble flicker of the binnacle light, like a trusty sentinel on duty, continued to shed its feeble rays on a few feet of the deck, and showed that the compass at least was still faithful ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... conversation in French and English, Basque and Spanish. At lunch my talk grew more fluent and Mariquita went more deeply into matters. She desired to know what I thought of the Basques, of whom she was one, and a sudden flicker of the deceitful imagination set me inventing. I told her that I was a Basque myself, though I was also an Englishman. She exclaimed at this. She had never heard of English Basques. How was it I did not speak it? This was a sore point with me. I assured her of ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... said the boy gravely. "I will do ridiculous things if He command me"—and again a flicker of a smile that came like a flicker of light passed over his face. "The first thing I thought I had to do was to tell you all; he says his servants must confess him; and to-morrow I will go to my uncles." The smile had faded and he ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... in despair, he tried to think of other doctors. He thought of telephoning to Jonesboro. Just as he decided he must turn away there came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached the door. The door opened, and Dr. Jallup's head and breast appeared, ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... was closed; a board covered the window, but a murmur of voices came from within. Maurice stole close and listened. Through a crack he could see the flicker of a candle-flame, and he heard the voice ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... its recesses. The line of sky, seen through the jagged and sinuous opening above, changed slowly to gloom and then to blackness. There was no light in this rocky intestine of the earth except the red flicker of the camp-fire. It fought feebly with the powers of darkness; it sent tremulous despairing flashes athwart the swift ebony river; it reached out with momentary gleams to the nearer facades of precipice; it reeled, drooped, and shuddered as if in hopeless horror. Probably, since ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... equal number of turns in opposite directions on the movable solenoid causes the instrument to be uninfluenced by external magnetic forces. Mr. Boys showed on the screen an image of an electric arc, and by its side was a spot of light, whose position indicated the energy, and showed every flicker of the light and fluctuation of current in the arc. He showed on the screen that if the poles are brought too near the energy expended is less, though the current is stronger, and that if the poles are too far apart, though the electromotive force is greater the energy is less; so that the apparatus ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... didn't really care. Mrs. Hilary found that women were better listeners than men. Women are perhaps better trained; they think it more ill-mannered not to show interest. They will listen to stories about servants, or reports of the inane sayings of infants, they will hear you through, without the flicker of a yawn, but with ejaculations and noddings, while you tell them about your children's diseases. They are well-bred; they drive themselves on a tight rein, and endure. They ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... honey-drops; oh, for a song to be set to the melody! Tra-la-la, tro-lo-lo, up again, Butterfly. Little silk handkerchief, little lace neckerchief, fluttering, fluttering! Feathery wings of her, bright little eyes of her, flit, flit, flicker! Now, she blushes, blushes, blushes; deep crimson; oh, what a colour! Paint it, painter! Now she speaks. Oh, what laughter! Silvery, silvery, treble, treble, treble; trill away, trill away, silvery treble. Musical, beautiful; beautiful, musical; little Miss Butterfly—fly—fly—fly away!' ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the ice. If he meet not the ice cart on the road, let him borrow all they will lend him at the houses of the sahibs," said the cook. "Jhut!—lose no time. In these illnesses the life of a child is as the flicker of a candle. A breath, and it is out; and once dead, who can restore it ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... at the table opposite to him and leaned her chin on her hands, her loose sleeves falling away from her arms and revealing, to the best advantage, their rounded whiteness. Into her eyes there came the flicker of a challenge, the sparkle of mischief which gave a new character to her face, a different expression to all he had hitherto seen. There was flippant raillery in her voice as she ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... here we found them in their native land and heard not a few sweet melodies, of which in faraway Ontario, New Jersey, and Maryland we had been favoured only with promising scraps when wintry clouds were broken by the sun. Nor were the old familiar ones away—Flicker, Sapsucker, Hairy Woodpecker, Kingfisher, Least Flycatcher, Alder Flycatcher, Robin, Crow, and Horned Owl were here to mingle their noises with the stranger melodies and calls of Lincoln Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Snipe, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... is absurd. I guess it seems awful foolish to you." He moved his cracked patent-leather pump in a sort of pattern on the floor. Again he looked up, this time with a freakish, an almost elfin flicker of his extravagant eyelashes. "There's something I could be real well," he said. "Only, I guess Poppa's got there ahead of me. I could be ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... such an unutterable influence, use that influence for brightening the encompassing gloom. Let them not be wrapped in their own selfishness or sorrow, but let their voice be filled with hope and love. For, by so doing, the waters of Life will grow smoother, and the signals will never flicker. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... her throughout the night. Just before death there came to her a brief season of long-lost animation, the last flicker of the torch before darkness. She talked to them almost continuously until the dawn. Into their hands was given the task of educating the others of the family, and on their hearts and consciences the charge was graven. Charlie, who was born during the early Kansas troubles, had ever been a delicate ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... went down by Hastings Mill I saw while I stood dreaming The flicker of her riding light along the ripples streaming, The bollards where we made her fast and the berth where she did lie (Shipmate, my shipmate!) ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... glance that was fixed on her. It was curious how Eleanor's eye met it; how her eye roved over Mrs. Caxton's face and looked into her quiet grey eyes, with a kind of glinting of some spirit fire within, which could almost be seen to play and flicker as thought and feeling swayed to and fro. Her eye said that much was to be said, looked into Mrs. Caxton's face with an intensity of half-speech,—and the lips remained silent. There was consciousness of sympathy, consciousness of something that required ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... her own disappointment, discovering only now, perhaps, that there could never be any other man in her life who could make her feel the extremes of emotion. In two weeks she had gone through every stage from eager expectation to apathy; and then, suddenly, during the last, vague flicker of dying hope—he came; and her life grew red again. She was even content that he should evince most interest in men—her brother and the fellow-students that thronged their rooms at all hours. Of these, one and all regarded the visitor as a great and wealthy ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... on, the two men leading the woman by the arms till they were out of the flicker of the flames both outside and under the shadow of ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... possible you won't come back," she cried, and he was happy to see a flicker of alarm in her eyes. "What—what could happen ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... a little too much for Israel. An irresistible flicker of laughter twitched his wrinkles and bubbled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... it was still pitch dark, except for the flicker of the veiled lamp; and the continual roaring and oscillation testified to the unrelaxed velocity of the train. He sat upright in a panic, for he had been tormented by the most uneasy dreams; it was some seconds before he recovered his self-command; and even after he had resumed a recumbent ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... back of his hand across his mouth, fixed his eyes upon the corner of the ceiling, and bellowed forth, in a voice which made the torches flicker, the southland ballad for which ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thunder-storms among the Alps; and one who has seen lightning only in the sombre sky of Britain can scarce imagine its intense brilliancy in these more southern latitudes. With us it breaks with a red fiery flicker; there it bursts upon you like the sun, and pours a flood of noonday light over earth and sky. One evening, in particular, I shall never forget, on which I saw this phenomenon in circumstances highly favourable to its finest effect. I had walked out from Geneva ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... eyes, only to shut them quickly. The white brilliancy of the cabin hurt. Across the ceiling ran a constant flicker of silver—reflected sunshine on the water. Southward—they were heading southward. She jumped out of bed and stepped over to the port. Flashing yellow water, a blue sky, and far off the oddly ribbed sails of a Chinese junk ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... bear my misfortunes like a man, and, folding my arms, I sat down on a chest to abide my fate, whatever that might be, with as much composure as I could command, when half—a—dozen cockroaches flew flicker ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... he was all by himself in this large room, with the subdued twilight all through it, and the flicker of the flames on the ceiling. He went to the fire more from habit than anything else, and suddenly came on a big armchair, drawn up close to the side, in ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Melts into light, and window blinds are rolled, I hear a bounce upon the bed, I feel a creeping toward me—a soft head, And on my face A tender nose, and cold— This is the way, you know, that dogs embrace— And on my hand, like sun-warmed rose-leaves flung, The least faint flicker of the warmest tongue —And so my dog and I have met and sworn Fresh love and fealty ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... long since vanished as structures," he commented. "Only steel and concrete have stood the gaff of uncounted years! Where all that fashion, wealth and beauty once would have scorned to notice us, girl, now what's left? Hear the cry of that gull? The barking of that fox? See that green flicker over the pinnacle? Some new, bright bird, never dreamed of in this country! And even with the naked eye I can make out the palms and the lianas tangled over the verge of what must once have ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... went by Cuckoo, hesitating more and more each time he came in front of her with strange feelings of one being vaguely criminal. He longed to touch the puppet, to see if any quiver would convulse its limbs, any light flicker into its eyes. And he was so fascinated and interested that at last he did furtively stop precisely in front of it. For a second both of them were motionless, he from contemplation of the outward, she of the inward. Then Cuckoo's thoughtful jealousy came to a ghastly crisis. Her imagination had ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... trouble at Linda's house; trouble so terrible that Harriet's unexpected arrival caused no comment, caused no more than a weary flicker of Linda's heavy eyes. Pip, the adored first- born son, lay dangerously ill, and the whole household moved on tiptoe, heartsick with dread. Fred, a white and unshaven Fred, was home in the cold gray midday; the telephone was muted, the hall door stood ajar, the maid was red-eyed. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... quite. There was a real dimple in her chin and another at each corner of her mouth, where the full scarlet lips drooped a little from sadness. Star-like, her brown eyes searched the far shadows and sometimes the flicker of the candle brought a dancing glint of gold into their depths. And as always, like a halo, stray gleams hovered about her head, bent slightly forward now and full into the light, throwing into faint relief the short straight nose, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... is temperamental. There is an impression that the man truly brave is he who can face sudden, unexpected misfortune or calamity without a tremor or a flicker to suggest his hurt. That is but a single phase and indicative of physical rather than moral qualities; or, perhaps, merely the callousness born of long exposure to danger. One of the bravest men I've ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Sir Alfred Lyall's fine poem describes the Hindoo ascetic sitting by the bank of the sacred stream and watching the legions as they pass while cannon roar and bayonets gleam. To him they are disturbing phantoms, and he longs for the time when they will flicker away like the smoke of the guns on the windswept hill. He meanwhile sits 'musing and fasting and hoping to die.' Fitzjames is the precise antithesis: his heart was with the trampling legions, and for the ascetic he might feel pity, but certainly neither sympathy nor respect. He goes ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... protesting and headshaking, at last ended by the glint of a daric. The man grumbled, departed, returned after a tedious interval with a pot of ointment, found Hermes knew where. By a rush-candle's flicker Sicinnus applied the dark dye with ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the top that the eggs frequently roll off. They are located near the ground in bushes or low trees. The three or four eggs are deposited at intervals of several days, and frequently young birds and eggs are found in the nest at the same time. Like the Flicker, this bird will frequently continue laying if one egg is removed at a time, and as many as twelve have been taken from the same nest, by this means. The eggs are light greenish blue. Size 1.20 x .90. They are usually laid during ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the which she lay when the fierce war Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor In many a mimic moon and bearded star O'er woods and lawns;—the serpent heard it flicker In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar— 285 And when the windless snow descended thicker Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came Melt on the surface of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... pace the ground, gnawing his thick lower lip, and if ever the infernal fire darted from human eyes, I saw its baleful flicker then. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... portals seven Above our abodes he hover'd With lances that yawn'd for carnage; But vanish'd, afore his chaps With slaughter of Thebes were glutted; Afore the flicker of pitchy flame Might to the crown of turrets climb. So fierce the rattle of war around Was pour'd on his rear by the serpent-foe Hard match'd in deadly encounter. For Jove the over-vaunting tongue Supremely hates. Their full fed stream Of gold, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... music, nodding his grizzled head to mark the time as well as to emphasize his evident approbation. Patsy had played this same piece from start to finish seven times since dinner, because it was the only one she knew; but the Major could have listened to it seven hundred times without the flicker of an eyelash. It was not that he admired so much the "piece" the girl was playing as the girl who was playing the "piece." His pride in Patsy was unbounded. That she should have succeeded at all in mastering that imposing looking instrument—making ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... tantalizing devil of desire to know the feelings that really lay behind that deferential gravity, to make him show her how much he really cared. She kept her eyes demurely lowered, but she let the glimmer of a smile flicker about her lips; she knew too that her cheeks were glowing, and for that she was not sorry. Was she not to have any—any—was he calmly to go away—without——And she thought: "He shall say something! He shall show me, without that horrible ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... men and two women boarded the stage; and Mat Bailey took in charge a small leather valise, smuggled out of the back door of the bank and handed to him carelessly. Mat received it without the flicker of an eyelash. Nevertheless, he scrutinized the eight new passengers, with apparent indifference but with unerring judgment. All except two, a man and a woman, were personally known to him. And these excited less suspicion than two well-known gamblers, ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... down the chota hassri on a small table at his master's elbow without betraying his surprise and concern by so much as the flicker of an eyelash. For not even your immaculate family butler can excel, in dignity and true reserve, a bearer of the old school, whose Sahib stands only second to his God, and who would almost as soon think of defiling ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... and the touch soothed the fretted beast, who bowed his head, and Purun Bhagat very softly rubbed and ravelled off the velvet. Afterward, the barasingh brought his doe and fawn—gentle things that mumbled on the holy man's blanket—or would come alone at night, his eyes green in the fire-flicker, to take his share of fresh walnuts. At last, the musk-deer, the shyest and almost the smallest of the deerlets, came, too, her big rabbity ears erect; even brindled, silent mushick-nabha must needs find out what the light in the shrine meant, and drop out her ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... glimmer with a flicker of surprise, As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes, And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... Ridge watched the flicker of its flames, until they finally died down, and the darkness was only illumined by the fitful flashing of fire-flies. As these were the most brilliant he had ever seen, his eyes followed their zig-zag dartings until they exercised a hypnotic influence, and his ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... by a strong bodily odor, a stout and sturdy smell that came near to sickening Mr. Thompson. He was extraordinarily glad when he got outside. That closeness—to speak mildly—coupled with the heavy, copper-red faces, impassive as masks, impersonally listening with scarcely a flicker of the eye-lids, made Thompson forswear another attempt to preach until he could speak to them in their own tongue and speak to them in a goodly place of worship where a man's thoughts would not be imperiously distracted by a pressing ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... coiled hair's brown crown, for that sweet and seemly way, The straight thoughts, the eager words, the dazzle of your day, Shall I turn base then and learn to whine and curse? Not though daggers of memory flicker through this verse! ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... not grant that," the prince cried; "but you are a sensible, clever woman, and you know my heart is easily excited. It is only the meteoric light of the ignis fatuus, soon extinguished. Let it dance and flicker, but remember that the only warmth which cheers and brightens my heart is your love and friendship. You are my first and only love, and you will be my last—that I swear to you, and upon it you can rely. Every thing is uncertain and wavering in life. They have ruined me, ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... pleasure from minute to minute of that day, and of the days following. The breath of the air, the notes of the wind instruments, the flicker of sunlight on the gravel, all come back to me as I write, and I taste them again. Dr. Sandford and I went down the road I have described, leading along the edge of the plain at its northern border; from which the ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... hurt," he repeated. But a vague dissatisfaction like a yeast stirred within him, and a flicker,—beaten down immediately, it is true, ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... drift over me before the disintegration was finished, the last bone turned to gas and blown away! I wish I knew what it is going to feel like, to lie helpless such a weary, weary time, and see my faculties decay and depart, one by one, like lights which burn low, and flicker and perish, until the ever-deepening gloom and darkness which—oh, away, away with these horrors, and let me ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a preaching ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... last thread that bound the drowning soul to anything of decency and cleanliness. Now his devil and he no longer struggled together; they walked hand in hand. He was without love, without hope, without one iota that might bring a flicker of light into the midnight gloom ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... unable to affect the strength and resisting power of the enemy's front line. Each advancing wave of the Manchesters was swept away by machine-gun fire. A few of them gallantly reached the Turkish trenches and fell there. Long afterwards, during the last flicker of a British offensive in December, some Lowland Scots soldiers of the 52nd Division found in trenches on the west of the nullah the bodies of some of the Manchester men, who had also this day fought a way to their ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... have heard of Miss Howe," Alicia said, and the negative, very readable in Arnold's silent bow, brought Hilda a flicker of happiness ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... trembling. The flame continued to flicker, but the hand holding the candlestick failed to move, and Bobby knew that the eyes didn't waver, either. He forced his glance from the searching flame. He managed to ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... wonderful. They were flying just over here, and a shrapnel burst quite close; and then one saw a thin stream of smoke come from the plane; then a little flicker. It seemed to fall so slowly. Then it burst into flames and came down like ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... known it, then? Browne never pretended to know it. Rutowski was not candid with the conditions; the conditions never known nor candidly looked at; and THEY are now replying to him with candor enough. From the first his Enterprise was a final flicker of false hope; going out, as here, by spasm, in the rigors of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... remember my promise to you. If, like a cat, I had lost my ninth life, I would live after your words. Indeed I imagine that you were the only reason I did live. It was your will that saved me, for I hadn't enough sense or spirit left to do more than flicker out." ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... Rags flutter beside the most costly laces; youth kneels with crabbed old age; rich and poor meet upon the same level before the sacred altar. Priests by the half dozen, in scarlet, blue, gilt, and yellow striped robes officiate hourly before tall candles which flicker dimly in the daylight, while boys dressed in long white gowns swing censers of burning incense. The gaudy trappings have the usual theatrical effect, and no doubt serve, together with the deep peals of the organ, the dim ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Pole, making a bright ring about it, were hundreds of little fires, and the flames of them did not flicker and twist, but went up blue and green and rosy and straight like ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... Lace Handkerchief. Bright uniforms and handsome gowns flashed by the opened windows. Sometimes a vagrant puff of air would find its way in, and suddenly the ball-room dimmed and the dancers moved like phantoms. The flames of the candles would struggle and, with many a flicker, right themselves, and the radiant colors and jewels would ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... up for sleep. The rain was falling heavily, as the woman, pail in hand, emerged from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow street, that stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter; the long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Mrs. Fowler were opposite Mrs. Smiley. The room was lighter than at any other of our sittings—both on account of the infiltering light of day, and also because an open grate fire in the north wall sent forth an occasional flicker of ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... the rim of the firelight, he threw on a handful of dry twigs hoping to uncover the prowlers, but the flareup revealed only an enlarged circle of great trees and emphasized their shadows. He sat motionless, his eyes focussed sharply upon the spot, and as the fire died down he saw the flicker of a dark form as it darted from the shadow of the tree and ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... hour, but hoped that Mrs Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent importance. Mrs Manderson would see Mr Trent. She walked to a mirror, looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head at herself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door as Trent ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... structure and arrangement of the neurones is such that we are obliged to make some movement in response to objects affecting our sense organs. The extent of movement may vary from the wide-spread tremors that occur when we are frightened by a thunderstorm to the merest flicker of an eye-lash. But whatever be its extent, movement invariably occurs when we are stimulated by some object. This has been demonstrated in startling ways in the psychological laboratory, where even ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... done? He could not see them drown before his eyes. Yet—yet, if he were to leave Hibbert, what would happen to him? It was true that he had opened his eyes and spoken, but perhaps that was only the last feeble flicker of the candle. Paul's hand went quickly to the boy's heart. It was still beating, though feebly. Again his eyes went to where Baldry and Plunger were making a desperate fight for life. Three lives were trembling in ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... doing all he could for others. His interviews with Byron had secured a return of the friendly feeling which nought but death was henceforth to sever, and the two great names, which nothing can divide, are linked by the unbreakable chain of genius—genius, the fire of the universe, which at times may flicker low, but which, bursting into flame here and there, illumines the dark recesses of the soul of the universe—genius which has made the world we know, which, never absent, though dormant, has changed the stone to the flower, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... is witnessed the touching last-flicker of Etiquette; which sinks not here, in the Cimmerian World-wreckage, without a sign, as the house-cricket might still chirp in the pealing of a Trump of Doom. "Monsieur," said some Master of Ceremonies (one hopes it might be de Breze), as Lafayette, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... silence for a few moments, and a faint flicker of color crept into Mrs. Colston's face while the girl mused. Her sister had got all she asked for, but Muriel suspected that she was not content; now and then, indeed, she had seen a hint of weariness in her expression. Harry Colston made ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... answer. He lifted the latch and pulled the door open. A howling gust of wind-driven rain beat in upon him, drenching the carpet and causing the lamp to flicker and smoke. For a moment Solomon gazed out into the storm; then he relinquished his hold ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... over the royal cushions on which Boabdil reclined, was blazoned with the heraldic insignia of Granada's monarchs. His guard, and his mutes, and his eunuchs, and his courtiers, and his counsellors, and his captains, were ranged in long files on either side the canopy. It seemed the last flicker of the lamp of the Moorish empire, that hollow and unreal pomp! As Muza approached the monarch, he was startled by the change of his countenance: the young and beautiful Boabdil seemed to have grown suddenly old; his eyes ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... on,—southwards to Cuba, then north again to the Lucayas and the Florida straits, looking for Spanish ships and their gold. The lights yet burned,—now brightly, now so sunken that it seemed as though the next hour they must flicker out. We, the players, flagged not in that desperate masque; but we knew that, in spite of all endeavor, the darkness was ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Nurse; but later in the evening she brought the purse, and set it on the table where the patient's eyes might rest on it. For aught she could detect, they expressed no thanks, gave no flicker of recognition. But the child had been watching them too, and was quicker—by one-fifth ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... indoors when so mighty a struggle was going on almost within sight, and at ten o'clock in the evening he and Mary went out to the Trocadero. The flashes of fire from the Loyal and Communist batteries were incessant. Away on the south side was a constant flicker of musketry as Cissey's troops struggled with the defender of the barricades. An incessant fire played along the end of the Champs Elysees, flashed from the windows of the Tuileries and fringed the parapet of the south side of the ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... its last pathetic flicker in his "John, don't let the awkward squad fire over me," was he thinking of actual brother-volunteers, or of possible biographers? Did his words betray only the rhythmic sensitiveness of poetic nerves, or were they a foreboding of that helpless future, when the poet lies at the mercy ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... year was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I had never seen, but I had had a futile theory that, should she survive him long enough to be decorously accessible, I might approach her with the feeble flicker of my petition. Did she know and if she knew would she speak? It was much to be presumed that for more reasons than one she would have nothing to say; but when she passed out of all reach I felt that renouncement was indeed my appointed lot. I was shut up in my obsession for ever—my gaolers ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... brightness appeared to flicker a moment in this gust of despair, but the next it was burning steady again. "DON'T 'cry,' Searle," I heard him say. "Remember the waiter. I've grown Englishman enough for that. For heaven's sake don't let's ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... have been a wild spark of the mad meteor from which he sprang; and as Heaven in its wisdom forbade that, I think it much of its mercy that it extinguished him early and utterly, and did not leave him to flare and flicker and burn himself out with foul gunpowder smoke, and smell of dead men slain in battle, in the middle of the smoldering ashes of his father's ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... beggar-girls was dancing to it on the floating quay down below us by the flicker of the arc-lamp. She was a tiny mite, with a shock of black hair and brown face and arms. She wore a pink dress with some brass buttons hung round her neck. She danced with all the supple gracefulness of the out-door tribes of the desert, never out of step, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... been a calm turquoise blue, but which was flickering from dark blue through violet to mauve. That was simple nervous tension and guilt and anger at the humiliation of being subjected to veridicated interrogation. Now and then there would be a stabbing flicker of bright red as he toyed mentally with ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... gravely, without the flicker of an eyelash: "nothing." Then he smiled cheerfully. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... oriental divan. Her hands were folded; she sat very erect; her chin was tilted ominously; there was so little expression on her pale face that she might have been an incomplete statue. But Max was almost certain that there was just the faintest flicker of a smile in her eyes as she saw him enter. Glorious eyes! (It is a bad sign when a man begins to use ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... not for Madonna in a baggage), who, by discreetly coughing, brought his master back to his senses. The prior cleared his throat once or twice, looked at the young woman, and felt quite himself. Ridiculous what tricks a flicker of sunlight will play ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... not disturb the calm vision of the thinker. To Nicolai, the paroxysm he contemplates seems the last flicker of the torch. Just as, he declares, horse-racing and yachting are undergoing their fullest development in our own day, when horses and sails are ceasing to have any practical use, so likewise patriotism has become a fanatical cult at the very moment when it has ceased to be a factor in ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... Commissioner for Foreign Affairs. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" was thus begun. Kerensky's attempt to rally forces enough to put an end to this dictatorship was a pathetic failure, as it was bound to be. It was like the last fitful flicker with which a great flame dies. The masses wanted peace—for that they would ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... the Mexican had been sent to relieve Roberts because the latter was needed to take charge of a trail herd. Not by the flicker of an eyelash did the line-rider show that this news meant anything to him. It was promotion—better pay, a better chance for advancement, an easier life. But Jack Roberts had learned to take good and ill fortune with the ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... your cats'-eyes in honor of the cat-headed deity of the Pagans, Mrs. Greyson?" Rangely asked, as she paused near his chair, watching a burner which seemed disposed to flicker. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
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