"Fitful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rugged winds of March were overblown—the first fresh smiling days of April had come at last—the days of sunshine and shower, of fitful breezes, the breath of blossoms, and the newly-awakened song of birds. Spring was there in all the green and glory of her youth, and the bosom of Kentucky heaved with the prolific burden of the season. She had come, and her messengers were everywhere, and everywhere busy. The ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... his mind with some agreeable volume provided by his vigilant companion,—the best energies of his mind and the freshest hours of life were absolutely given to Art. This is the great lesson of his career: not by spasmodic effort, or dalliance with moods, or fitful resolution, did he accomplish so much; but by earnestness of purpose, consistency of aim, heroic decision of character. There is nothing less vague, less casual in human experience, than true artist-life. Rome is the shrine of many a dreamer, the haunt of countless inefficient enthusiasts. But there, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... English invasion of 1689, in which a pretty girl (as had been prophesied by a seer) was brutally ill-treated. The most interesting cases are those in which strangers are seen, and peculiarities in their dress observed before their arrival. In the Pirate Scott shows how Norna of the Fitful Head managed to utter such predictions by aid of early information; and so, as Cleveland said, 'prophesied on velvet'. There are a few cases of a brownie being seen, once by a second- sighted butler, who observed brownie directing ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... in fitful beauty, Every moment fraught with change, Every break and mystic chasm Opening up a Heaven-range: Now the eastern peaks are kindling Glow as though the Morning's heart Throbbed against them, while the formless Clouds to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... lamp, as a drinker examines his bottle at the end of a repast, he had not seen his father's eye pale. The cowering dog looked alternately at his dead master and at the elixir, as Don Juan regarded by turns his father and the phial. The lamp threw out fitful waves of light. The silence was profound, the viol was mute. Belvidero thought he saw his father move, and he trembled. Frightened by the tense expression of the accusing eyes, he closed them, just as he would have pushed down a window-blind on an autumn night. He stood ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... brother!" Mr. Beaufort's arm fell to his side: kneeling before him, and by the outcast's side, was his own young daughter; she had crept into the room unobserved, when her father entered. Through the dim shadows, relieved only by the red and fitful gleam of the fire, he saw her fair meek face looking up wistfully at his own, with tears of excitement, and perhaps of pity—for children have a quick insight into the reality of grief in those not far removed from their own years—glistening in her soft ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Driwis, "poverty," etc.; but no one of these seems to occupy a parallel place in the evil world to that which is assigned to Serosh in the good. Perhaps we have here a recognition of the anarchic character of evil, whose attacks are like those of a huge undisciplined host—casual, fitful, irregular—destitute wholly of that principle of law and order which gives to the resisting power of good a great ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... whirled her through an evening's dances, Ralph was not seriously disturbed. Husband and wife had grown closer to each other since they had come to St. Moritz, and in the brief moments she could give him Undine was now always gay and approachable. Her fitful humours had vanished, and she showed qualities of comradeship that seemed the promise of a deeper understanding. But this very hope made him more subject to her moods, more fearful of disturbing the harmony between them. Least of all could he broach the subject of money: he had too keen a ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the awning, I dozing lay and yawning; It was the grey of dawning, Ere yet the sun arose; And above the funnel's roaring, And the fitful wind's deploring, I heard the cabin snoring With universal nose. I could hear the passengers snorting, I envied their disporting: Vainly I was courting The pleasure ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his food is nearly gone, the cold tortures him; with lowered head and clenched teeth he fights the implacable winter, calling to aid his every reserve of strength and high courage. He thinks of the road he must follow, the miles to be overcome, measures his chances of life; and fitful memories arise of a house, so warm and snug, where all will greet him gladly; of Maria who, knowing what he has dared for her sake, will at length raise to him her truthful eyes ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... of the City Hall clangs three in the morning as a young man emerges from Thiel's, and hurries, then saunters, up Broadway. His motions are fitful, his dress is deranged, and his hair matted. His face, in the full moonlight, is dogged and dangerous. It is the Prince of the feast, who had told Grace Plumer that he was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... pictorial effect rarely to be met with out of Italy, and in Italy only at this season of the year. Continuing our walk, we pass under the rose-crowned aqueduct, and strike into the green avenue that darkens beyond; listening to the distant water bubbling up from the deepest recesses, and to the fitful whistle of blackbird and thrush, as they flit athwart the moss-grown gravel, and perch momentarily on the heads of mutilated termini and statues; whilst the clipt trees vibrate under the wings of others extricating themselves on a piratical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... quite dark by the time they reached the ruins of the old house. The lantern threw its fitful light over the charred sticks and ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... people to whom scrupulous cleanliness was a second nature. But the captives were allowed to take exercise within a limited range; they had among them a few books, and an old newspaper occasionally came on to them from Jellalabad, with which place a fitful correspondence in cypher was surreptitiously maintained. They had a few packs of playing cards; they made for themselves backgammon and draught-boards, and when in good spirits they sometimes played hopscotch and blindman's-buff ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... lamentable plaint the fear of the future, the anguish of lurking death, the terror of shadows. Not far from the brig's boat Hassim and Immada in their canoe, letting their paddles trail in the water, sat in a silent and invincible torpor as if the fitful puffs of wind had carried to their hearts the breath of a subtle poison that, very soon, would make them die.—"Have you seen the white woman's eyes?" cried the girl. She struck her palms together loudly and remained with her arms extended, with her hands clasped. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... perceived a great darkness lying upon a multitude of white flashes; on the starboard beam a few amazing stars drooped, dim and fitful, above an immense waste of broken seas, as if seen through a ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... had settled prematurely down, black and stormy; and though the fury of the gale seemed at one time to have spent itself, the wind veered to the implacable east, and instead of fitful gusts, a steady roaring blast freighted with rain smote the darkness. The officer conducted his prisoner across the dim corridor, and opened the door of the small anteroom, which frequent ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... covered a wide literary and scientific territory. Humped over my fitful register I discussed the Nebular Hypothesis. My poets and scientists not merely told me of things I had never known, they confirmed me in certain conceptions which had come to me without effort in the past. I became an evolutionist in the fullest sense, accepting Spencer as the greatest ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... velvety blackness of the heavens was powdered with star dust; in the wash of the ship there gleamed a profound phosphorescence, as from a decaying ocean. The coast hung like a mass of inky vapor above the fitful shimmer of the surf from which was wafted a faint, interminable booming that suggested the roaring of lions and ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... sound, something between a croon and a chant. It came nearer and nearer, and the next moment a grotesque figure showed clearly in the moonlight. This was no other than Paddy Wheel-about himself. He was a tall man, with a long shaggy beard, penthouse eyebrows, and eyes which were lit now with a fitful and uncertain gleam. He was dressed in rags, his hat was pushed far back on his head, his hair streamed over his shoulders. The savage and yet pathetic-looking creature stopped now ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... wealth of his love, Mildred began to ask herself should she not urge her father to let "Gov" return to America. At last, one sweet July evening, late in the month, the brother and sister were wandering along the lovely shore of Lucerne. He had been unusually fitful, restless and moody all day. No letter had reached him in over a fortnight, and he was miserably unhappy. They stopped at a grassy bank that ran down to the rippling water's edge, and she seated herself on a stone ledge, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... the first night is one of restlessness. But Chester troop was tired. For a while voices sounded faintly. They grew fitful and yawny. Finally they ceased. The camp was asleep ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... of high wind, with clouds and fitful bursts of sunshine in which the waves shone white and sparkling. Jimmie was standing by the fail with his "wobbly" friend, watching the white-caps, when his companion called his attention to a sparkle that seemed to persist, hitting one in the eye. ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... screech owl would raise a momentary and damnable din. At intervals, the tinkle of a cow-bell sounded faintly in the distance. I tossed restlessly, thinking of various things, till I must have dropped off into an uneasy fitful sleep. I know not how long I had been dozing, but of a sudden I felt myself wide awake, though with my eyes ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... of the scene, except the low plashing of the waves; the fitful gleams of light thrown first on the walls and ceiling, as the men moved to and fro along the side of the stupendous cave; the appearance of the varied roof, where different stalactites or petrifactions are visible; the vastness ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... where her two companions slept heavily, Chloe sat late into the night staring through the mosquito-barred entrance toward the narrow strip of beach where the dying fires of the scowmen glowed sullenly in the darkness, pierced now and again by the fitful flare of a wind-whipped brand. Two still forms wrapped in ragged blankets, lay like logs ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... rock pavement and kissed her hands in its dusk and had passed its threshold, like a shadow, to return no more. And here, too, was the other faithful suggestion of her lost love—the pet ape. How his fitful fidelities had directed themselves to her! She caught him up as he passed her. He struggled, turned in her arms, and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... of my own dear home under a moonlight far more radiant, happy in loved companionship, listening with delight to the voices of the night, which murmured only of love and joy and hope, inhaling the perfume of a thousand flowers. To-night, as the south wind swept by in fitful gusts, it seemed to bear to my ears the sound of sorrow and mourning from homes and shrines where hope lay dead amid the ruined idols cast down and broken by that ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... is this long-continued oblivion of the soul of law that has reduced the Criminal Question to such a pass among us. Many other things have come, and are coming, for the same sad reason, to a pass! Not the supreme scoundrel have our laws aimed at; but, in an uncertain fitful manner, at the inferior or lowest scoundrel, who robs shop-tills and puts the skin of mankind in danger. How can Parliament get through the Criminal Question? Parliament, oblivious of Heavenly Law, will find itself in ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... defalcating debtors could suggest. But the Roman Jews were merely pestilent heretics. Perhaps it was the comparative poverty of the Ghetto that made its tragedy one of steady degradation rather than of fitful massacre. Nevertheless bloodshed was not unknown, and the song died on Rachel's lips, though the sterner Manasseh still ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... up the fire as long as it might serve as a beacon to our friends, and the further they were off the larger I was anxious to make it. For some time I had been aware that the wind was again getting up. It continued to come in fitful gusts, but each of them grew stronger and stronger. I feared that a regular gale was coming on; and if it did, I knew that our boat must be exposed to very great danger. As morning approached I began anxiously to look out for the return of the boat. I got up over ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and decorous as if rats were subjects foreign to his meditations. His part it was to lie at Jud's feet, his nose between his paws, his eyes twinkling sagaciously behind his shaggy eyebrows, while occasionally, as a token of approval, he wagged his tail. Once or twice, during a fitful slumber, he had been known to give vent to his feelings in a sharp bark, but he never failed to awaken immediately, with every appearance of the deepest abasement and confusion at ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... eaten a few berries a very strange thing happened. While Dot had been alone in the bush it had all seemed so dreadfully still. There had been no sound but the gentle stir of a light, fitful breeze in the far-away tree-tops. All around had been so quiet, that her loneliness had seemed twenty times more lonely. Now, however, under the influence of these small, sweet berries, Dot was surprised to hear voices everywhere. ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... moment the contemplation of a domestic history lighted up at present by such few and fitful gleams of sunshine, and glance at the married life of another pair who have figured in this story, and who have not been without their influence upon whatever there may have been of ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... Marie herself was not unwilling to be talked to by Sir Felix. He had never bullied her, had never seemed to scorn her; and then he was so beautiful! She, poor girl, bewildered among various suitors, utterly confused by the life to which she was introduced, troubled by fitful attacks of admonition from her father, who would again, fitfully, leave her unnoticed for a week at a time; with no trust in her pseudo-mother—for poor Marie, had in truth been born before her father had been a married man, and had never known what was her own mother's fate,—with ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... and other nobles came and pressed her, and Jean whispered to her not to show herself a fule body, and disgrace herself before the English, setting the harp before her and attending to the strings. Eleanor's fingers then played over them in a dreamy, fitful way, that made the old Earl ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ghastly scene, lit up by fitful glances of moonlight as clouds scudded over the sky, two companies moved forward, a long line of shadowy forms, to act as a covering party while the remaining half-battalion dug ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... prejudiced in favor of the simian side. Curiosity may be as debasing, I grant you, as craft. And craft might turn into artifices of a kind which would be noble and fine. Just as the ignorant and fitful curiosity of some little monkey is hardly to be compared to the astronomer's magnificent search, so the craft and cunning we see in our pussies would bear small relation to the high-minded planning of some ruler of the ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... and he found himself in a gloomy and lonesome valley. Jagged mountains, black as night, rose on either side, and huge rocks seemed ready to topple down upon him at every step. Through broken clouds a watery moon shed a faint, fitful light, that came and went as the clouds, driven by a moaning wind, passed over ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... puzzled anybody, except, perhaps, Lady Cynthia herself, to have detected the slightest alteration in Sir Timothy's demeanour during the following day, when he made fitful appearances at The Sanctuary, or at the dinner which was served a little earlier than usual, before his final departure for the scene of the festivities. Once he paused in the act of helping himself to some dish and listened ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... followed him, accompanied by a crowd of people whose acclamations and delight seemed a happy omen for the success of that project with which they were yet unacquainted. The wind was blowing strongly from the harbor, and moaning in fitful gusts. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is now N. N. E., and blows very irregularly. It has changed to fitful gusts. The temperature is exceedingly high. We are now progressing at the average rate of about ten miles and ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... capital in manufacturing establishments, or in any other leading pursuit of life, if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal to-morrow what it has enacted to-day. Fitful profits, however high, if threatened with a ruinous reduction by a vacillating policy on the part of Government, will scarcely tempt him to trust the money which he has acquired by a life of labor upon the uncertain adventure. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... began in his throat, very softly and rhythmically, broken only by interruptions in which a last instinctive effort appeared to revive the flickering life of the intelligence, and to rouse fitful gleams of consciousness ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... rakes and rogues of all kinds, and their patrician perfume and social splendor, remained with me; they may have been better or worse; I will not attempt to say. If I may call my fascination with them a passion at all, I must say that it was but a fitful fever. I also read many volumes of Zschokke's admirable tales, which I found in a translation in the Library, and I think I began at the same time to find out De Quincey. These authors I recall out of the many that passed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... they ceased awhile, as languidly The head of Argo fell off toward the sea, And through the water she began to go; For from the land a fitful wind did blow, That, dallying with the many-colored sail, Would sometimes swell it out and sometimes fail, As nigh the east side of the bay they drew; Then o'er the waves ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... with bursts of rain and fitful flashes of lightning, which lighted up the decks of the American ship as she tossed on the waves. The storm had left her in a sadly disabled condition. The shattered top hamper had fallen forward, cumbering up the forecastle, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... experience in the new western lands. I remembered the shock it gave me to hear after my return from a barbarous country of the calamity that had overtaken the fond man whom I called father, and the hot fitful life that followed it. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... to the right of him, and far across the space the platform running in the opposite direction was coming crowded and passing away bare. With incredible swiftness a vast crowd had gathered in the central space before his eyes; a dense swaying mass of people, and the shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminous incessant clamour: "The Sleeper! The Sleeper!" and yells and cheers, a waving of garments and cries of "Stop the Ways!" They were also crying another name strange to Graham. It sounded like "Ostrog." The slower platforms ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Church, controlled by a dominant section of the British Conference, would be a prey to internal feuds and jealousies. In the conflicts that would then ensue spiritual life would die out, missionary zeal would be fitful in its efforts, and every Church interest would partake largely of a sectional and partizan character, destructive alike to the symmetry, growth and harmony of development of a living Church, endowed with rich spiritual life and free and vigorous in ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... our fitful climes And laughed when tempest drenches, And shaken off the dust that grimes Pews, cushioned stalls and benches, Survived the counterblasting Row, And Summer gales that roar so— I ne'er imagined such a foe Could trounce me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... watched them a long, long time, and it seemed incredible that they should still remain cracks. Beyond that I would not go, into speculation I dared not venture. They remained cracks, and I went to sleep thanking God. When I awoke a breeze came in cool, fitful gusts, and on it the scent of camellias. I thought of turning my head, and I remember wondering for a long time over the expediency of this move. What would happen if I did! Perhaps the visions would come ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and the waiting weeks became at last a single day, I hardly knew my mother. She was so full of fitful moods, and little fantastic jokes! such a flush on her cheeks too, as she ran to the window every five minutes, like a child! I remember how we went all over the house together, she and I, to see that everything looked neat, and bright, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... two strange and solemn lights in which we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep and constant tone of individual religion characterizing the lives of the citizens of Venice in her greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... came wavering and fitful, as the wind took them up, and carried them struggling over the moorland; and all that Father Letheby could hear was about a certain Miss Brady, who was reared up a lady, and who was requested to accept the name of Mrs. McGee. This suit must have been successful, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... had gathered below. Until that weariness which no terror is proof against set in, sleep was impossible, nor could we keep our anxious gaze from that glowing inferno beneath, where one would have thought all the population of Tartarus were holding high revel. Mercifully, at last we sank into a fitful slumber, though fully aware of the great danger of our position. One upward rush of any of those ravening monsters, happening to strike the frail shell of our boat, and a few fleeting seconds would have sufficed for our obliteration as if ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... their personalities is the peculiarity of the timid, which their fitful efforts of will only heighten, alienating from them the sympathy which might ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... sleep was fitful. It was broad daylight. I swear to you that the succubus came, irritant and palpable and most tenacious. Happily, I remembered the formula ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... only one or two stars were seen at intervals struggling through the ragged masses of cloud. The wind howled in fitful gusts, and as their road led by the sea-side, Montagu shuddered to hear how rough and turbulent the sea was, even on the sands. He stumbled once or twice, and then the Doctor kindly drew his trembling arm through his own, and made him describe the ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... Van Rensselaers, Pruyns: I pick them up again at hazard, and all uninvidiously, out of reverberations long since still—everyone without exception had at last taken a turn as far as possible from edifying. And what they had most in common, the hovering presences, the fitful apparitions that, speaking for myself, so engaged my imagination, was just the fine old Albany drama—in the light of which a ring of mystery as to their lives (mainly carried on at the New York Hotel aforesaid) surrounded them, and their charm, inveterate, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... same reason they leave their boundaries undefined; a mile nearer or farther, what does it matter? Moreover, their fitful or nomadic occupation of the land leads to oscillations of the frontiers with every attack from without and every variation of the tribal strength within. Their unstable states rarely last long enough in a given form or size to develop ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... new departure in eighteenth-century England. Hitherto working men had taken only a fleeting and fitful interest in politics. How should they do so in days when newspapers were very dear, and their contents had only the remotest bearing on the life of the masses? The London mob had bawled and rioted for "Wilkes and Liberty," but mainly from ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... those who have eaten oatmeal porridge in the wayside cottages of bonny Scotland, or who love to linger over "The Cotter's Saturday Night," there is a touch of tender pathos in the picture. The stone floor, the bare, whitewashed walls, the peat smoldering on the hearth, sending out long, fitful streaks that dance among the rafters overhead, and the mother and son sitting there watching the coal—silent. The woman takes a small twig from a bundle of sticks, reaches over, lights it, applies it to her pipe, takes a few whiffs and passes the light to her son. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... flushed. Muttering something about a "pain in his innards," he apparently went to sleep, and I climbed into my own bunk. The lantern swung more and more irregularly, and Bill tossed with ever-increasing uneasiness. When at last I dozed off, my own sleep was fitful, and shortly ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... pleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who had visited him that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... accomplishments soon conquered the first place in her heart; and he kept that place until his death in 1848,—thirty years of ardent and reproachless friendship. Her other friends felt great inquietude in view of this friendship, fearing that the incurable melancholy and fitful moods of the Viscount would have a depressing influence on her; but she could not resist his fascinations any easier than he could resist hers. The Viscount visited her every day, generally in the afternoon; and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... poet promptly declares, the burden of a Lapland song, which "is haunting his memory still," which "murmurs and whispers still," which "is singing and saying still," which "is mournful" and "sweet" and "fitful" and "fatal" and "strange" and "beautiful." Yet he seems not to have known, as our friend now thinks he himself knows, that they express a difference, unrecognized hitherto, between youth and age, and rightfully attribute to the young a steadfastness ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... hot water which had to be removed by the condensation of the steam proceeding from the pan, was a constant quantity. In this engine, too, which was a high pressure one, the irregularities of the engine consequent upon the fitful catching of the water by the pump, was more conspicuous, as the working of this vacuum pump was the only work that the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... northward. Porto Rican guides led the way over paths so rough and narrow that the men could move only in single file. It was toilsome progress. Absolute silence was enjoined; no smoking was permitted lest the fitful flash of a match should betray the movement to the watchful Spaniards on the hills. For hours the men toiled on. The officers were compelled to walk and lead their horses. Creeks and rivulets were waded; lofty hills were climbed or skirted; yawning ravines were crossed. The men dripped with ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... again haunted by the signal resemblance he bears, both in mental characteristics and in history, to Byron. Both were powerful in satire, and still more so in purely poetic composition. Both were irregular in life, and unfortunate in marriage. Both were distinguished by fitful generosity, and careless tenderness. Both obtained at once, and during all their career maintained, a pre-eminence in popularity over all their contemporaries. Both were severely handled by reviewers, and underrated by rivals. Both assumed an attitude of defiance ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... light save the strange, fitful glow from that uncanny sky to guide them; no lights from the inky carpet of the Thomahlia, lights such as one would expect for the benefit of fliers. But the soldier touched a button, and instantly another and larger dial was illumined ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... had during her life but one veritable passion, which she admitted nobody to share with her. Her daughter, Madame de Grignan, the prettiest girl in France, clever, virtuous, business-like, appears in her mother's letters fitful, cross-grained, and sometimes rather cold. Madame de Sevigne is a friend whom we read over and over again, whose emotions we share, to whom we go for an hour's distraction and delightful chat. We have no desire to chat with Madame de Grignan; we gladly leave her to her mother's ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... helpless oars. She only succeeded in getting the boat into the trough of the sea, where, after a lurch that threatened to capsize it, it providentially swung around on its short keel and began to drift stern on. She was almost abreast of the battery now; she could hear the fitful notes of a bugle that seemed blown and scattered above her head; she even thought she could see some men in blue uniforms moving along the little pier. She was passing it; another fruitless effort to regain her ground, but she was swept along steadily towards the Gate, the whitening bar, and ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... so black that he could not see the spar to which he clung. At no time could he see more than the fitful gleam of dark water as some mysterious glimmer was produced by the weird machinery of the air. He could hear the roar of the mighty waves, could feel the uplifting power and the dash downward from seemingly ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... the West, Whose spired domes hold priceless stones, And censers' fumes lull sighs and moans As barriers dank, flee their fold, Betrayed by crystals on a crest That ride this kingdom's batter'd gnomes, A fitful syrinx stills all groans As chasms roar with devils' glee. Then fancies greet each goblin's eye, Each donga's depth and mount unsunned: A quire's rune, in onyx dress, And black-linkt harps with eyes that see Each blood-set jazel in a sky, Where heights eternal reign ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... dark by this time, the village being lighted by the fitful glare of many fires, and now she saw a number of warriors approach and enter the hut Zu-tag had been watching. A moment later they reappeared, dragging between them two captives, one of whom the girl immediately recognized as ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the morning the eager pilots, tossing on their beds in a sleeplessness induced by the promise of the coming of dawn, were more fully awakened by the deep and sullen thundering of thousands of big guns hammering at the lines. It was no fitful, momentary outburst; it was the constant earth-shaking roar that presages a drive. To the north and east the sky flickered with the light coming from thousands of cannon mouths. It was like the coming of a summer storm when the thunder god growls his wrath ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... every indication of a heavy gale. The commander knew that his safest course would be to run back to Constantinople, but his orders were to proceed to Balaclava without loss of time. Soon after sunset a heavy squall struck the ship, followed by fitful gusts, gradually increasing in strength, while the hitherto calm sea was covered with foaming waves, through which the Tornado forced her way. Most of the officers were on deck, for few felt inclined to turn in; the lieutenants stood near the ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... voices, in an indistinct, fitful way, reached him where he sat. At first there was nothing peculiar in the tone, but in a few minutes it was evident that Maggie was getting angry. Allan rose then and went slowly toward them. Where ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... he would have seen a curious sight; for there are few more picturesque scenes than the "forecastle interior" of an ocean steamer at night, lit by the fitful gleam of its swinging lamp. This grim-looking man, fumbling in his breast as if for the ever-ready knife or pistol, must be dreaming of some desperate struggle by his set teeth and hard breathing. That huge scar on the face of the gaunt, sallow figure beside him, whose soiled ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... pale That haunt the hollow sky, Ask of the fitful gale That mourns and passes by, Invoke the spirits' home, Unsearchable, unseen— Where do the wanderers roam? Are they as they ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... displeased with its magnificence. It seems to me that a cemetery should not be so much a repository of art, as a place of great natural beauty and quiet, where one would long to rest after "life's fitful fever." ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... As he stood there talking in a sneering voice, in full flesh, shaved and clean, he certainly did not look like a man stricken with paresis. Yet the doctor knew that this fitful mood of sanity was deceitful. The feeble brain had given ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... A few fitful gleams of sunlight mocked their shiverings with promise of warmth—promise unfulfilled. Their brandy was now exhausted, and some ship's biscuits in the boatswain's pocket were sodden and uneatable. Thirst began to add to the horrors of the situation. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... rioting all through a spot always hushed 'in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.' The fire raged across the walls, in and around the sides and the beautiful curving tops of the windows that for so many springs and summers had framed spaces of green grass on which fitful shadows had fallen, to be dreamed over by generations of students. In the chapel, tremendous waves swelled and glowed, reaching almost from floor to ceiling, as they erased the texts from the walls, demolished the stained-glass windows, defaced, but did not completely destroy the college ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... that night king M'Bongwele dismissed his followers with but scant ceremony, and at once retired to rest. He passed a very disturbed night of alternate sleeplessness and harassing fitful dreams, and arose next morning in a particularly bad temper. He was anxious, annoyed, and uneasy in the extreme at the unexpected and unwelcome presence of these extraordinary visitants to his dominions— these spirits, or men, whichever they happened to be, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... front of the Union Station, I passed out on to the platform of the car, and peered intently through the darkness. Suddenly my heart gave a great bound. There, sure enough, standing in front of the door of the waiting-room, was my uncle, plainly discernible by the fitful glare of the overhanging lamps. Before the train came to a stand-still, I sprang from the car and advanced towards him. He was looking out for me, but his eyes not being as young as mine, he did ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... October day stepped lightly over the garden, little red tongues of fire might be seen to leap and vanish in the smoke. Harold, anon staggering under armfuls of leaves, anon stoking vigorously, was discernible only at fitful intervals. It was another sort of smoke that the inner eye of Selina was looking upon,—a smoke that hung in sullen banks round the masts and the hulls of the fighting ships; a smoke from beneath which ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... difficulty that the little couple succeeded in reaching the high road, for the ground was covered with ice, on which a continual sleet fell, and the wind, in fitful blasts, howled about them, threatening at almost every step to overthrow them. But they had no time to think of these things; slipping and running, giving each other all the aid in their power, they pressed ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... have the making of a great novelist in you. It may take years and years, and—and I'm afraid you'll always have to be helped; but if you can only get the right kind of help...." She looked away, out across the lake where a fitful breeze was turning the molten-metal dimples into laughing wavelets. Then, with one of her sudden topic-wrenchings: "Speaking of help, reminds me. Why didn't you tell me you had gone into the foundry ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... found his wife's head empty and furnished it according to his own taste. She was always quoting Tyson; and as there was not the least indication of inverted commas, it was hard to tell which was quotation and which was the original text. This creature of fitful, unbalanced mind and reckless speech was certainly the Mrs. Nevill Tyson he had sometimes seen at Thorneytoft; but it was not the Mrs. Nevill Tyson of last night, nor even of the other day, that afternoon when her eyes said, as unmistakably as eyes could say anything, that she would ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... is the physical meaning. It is now easy to find the mental one. You must all have felt the expression of ignoble anger in those fitful gusts of storm. There is a sense of provocation in their thin and senseless fury, wholly different from the nobler anger of the greater tempests. Also, they seem useless and unnatural, and the Greek thinks of them always as vile ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... only a few stars showing. A fitful wind moaned unearthly through the spruce. An occasional thump of hoof sounded from the dark woods. No cry of wolf or coyote or cat gave reality to the ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... 30, 1744, at his house in Twickenham, where "Thames' translucent wave shines a broad mirror," to use his own famous words. He died quietly; death was indeed a relief to him from pain which he had borne with a patience hardly to be expected from one of so fitful a temper. Pope's life had been all a struggle against ill-health and premature decrepitude. He was deformed; he was dwarfish; he was miserably weak from his very boyhood; a rude breath of air made him shrink and wither; ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... and ravines in all directions. Three days passed away, and I gave up all hope of them. We were sitting at dinner one night, the fire was blazing cheerfully within, but the rain was pouring without, the wind was howling in fitful gusts, and neither moon nor stars relieved the pitchy darkness of the night, when the conversation naturally turned to the lost dogs. What a night for the poor brutes to be exposed to, roaming about the wet jungles ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Pilgrim to the Inner Shrine of Truth which I have sought from St. Petersburg to Lisbon, from Taormina to Christiania. I have lived in a spiritual shadowland, dreaming elusive dreams, my better part stayed by the fitful vision of things unseen. Such an exquisite wild-goose-chase has never man undertaken before or since the dear Knight of La Mancha. And now I come to think of it, I don't know what the deuce I have been after, save that instead of pursuing ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... all that came within the ken of her keen eyes and ears. The growing moon lighted up half the enclosure, the rest, so far as the shadow fell, lay in darkness. But in the middle of a large semi-circle of free servants a fire was blazing, throwing a fitful light on their brown faces; and now and again, as fresh pine-cones were thrown in, it flared up and illuminated even the darker half of the space before her. This added to her trepidation; she had to cross the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wind. And every shallow place in the ground held a chilly puddle. The government buildings always seemed big and bare and cold to me. And this morning they seemed drearier than ever, beaten upon by the fitful ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... daggers drawn." I am sorry to say that John Broom's fitful industry was still kept for his own fancies. To climb trees, to run races with the sheep dog, to cut grotesque sticks, gather hedge fruits, explore a bog, or make new friends among beasts and birds—at such matters he would labor with feverish zeal. But so far ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... had time to get the fact of winter fairly into his head. The cold comes year after year, but it comes in a brief and fitful way that sets our northern conceptions at defiance. The stranger who flies for refuge to the shores of the little island in November may find himself in a blaze of almost tropical sunshine. If a fortnight of dull weather at the opening ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... sure, the herds are left untended, the mealie-heads ungathered, for the herdsmen and the reapers have come hither to answer to the summons of their chief. Little reck they whether it be for festival or war; he needs them, and has called them, and that is enough. Higher and higher rose the fitful distant chant, but no one could be seen. Suddenly there stood before us a creature, a woman, who, save for the colour of her skin, might have been the original of any one of Macbeth's "weird sisters." Little, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... a Talleyrand in love matters; and, so completely versed in the pathology of the "fitful fever," as to be able to diagnose it at a glance; besides nursing the patient through all the several stages of the disease—watching every symptom, anticipating each change, bringing the "case," finally, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... various dainties met with slight honour from their abstemious guest; and, for though habitually reserved he was rarely gloomy, they remarked that he seemed unusually fitful and sombre in his mood. Something appeared to rest upon his mind, from which, by the excitement of wine and occasional bursts of eloquence more animated than ordinary, he seemed striving to escape; and at length, he apparently succeeded. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... incessant palls the sense; And love, unchanged will cloy, And she became a bore intense Unto her love-sick boy! With fitful glimmer burnt my flame, And I grew cold and coy, At last, one morning, I ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... and the camp grew quiet. The boys and their unexpected guests, sandwiched closely together on the floor and in the bunks, drifted off into fitful slumber. But John P. Whittington's ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... away from the rail. For the next hour he handled his little vessel in the intricate and narrow channel with careless certitude, as if every stone, every grain of sand upon the treacherous bottom had been plainly disclosed to his sight. He handled her in the fitful and unsteady breeze with a matter-of-fact audacity that made Shaw, forward at his station, gasp in sheer alarm. When heading toward the inshore shoals the brig was never put round till the quick, loud cries ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... fitful breaths. The sea still beat furiously on the outer ledges of the island, but in the reach between the island and the distant main there was a living chance for a small boat. It was not a chance that unskilful rowers would want ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Life is neither a tragedy nor a farce. Men are not all either knaves or heroes. Women are neither angels nor furies. And yet if you depended upon much of the literature of the day, you would get the idea that life, instead of being something earnest, something practical, is a fitful and fantastic and extravagant thing. How poorly prepared are that young man and woman for the duties of to-day who spent last night wading through brilliant passages descriptive of magnificent knavery and wickedness! The man will be looking all day ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Laura's guests were fain to abandon their picnics and forest excursions, their botanical researches and distant-race meetings—nay, even croquet itself, that perennial source of recreation for the youthful mind, had to be given up, except in the most fitful snatches. In this state of things, amateur concerts and acted charades came into fashion. The billiard-room was crowded from breakfast till dinner time. It was a charmingly composite apartment—having one long wall lined with bookshelves, sacred to the most ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... house near it, and craved a night's hospitality. The church was one of those strongholds of religion and loyalty which I rejoice to see in the colonies. There, Sabbath after Sabbath, the inhabitants of this peaceful locality worship in the pure faith of their forefathers: here, when "life's fitful fever" is over, they sleep in the hallowed ground around these sacred walls. Nor could a more peaceful resting-place be desired: from the graveyard one could catch distant glimpses of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and tall pine-trees ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... trail of the cattle until he saw that they certainly had gotten across the Happy Family claims and into the rough country beyond; then he turned and rode over to Patsy's shack, where a blue smoke column wobbled up to the fitful air-current that seized it and sent it ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... extinguished, the crowd is gone. The cough and suppressed sigh are no longer heard from the deep aisles, and the footsteps of the ever-changing crowd have ceased to clatter on the marble pavement. The solitary lamp in the sanctuary cast a fitful shadow through the silent and abandoned church, and was the only indication of the presence of Him who rules in the vast spheres of the heavens. Alvira felt happier in this lonely moment before the Most Holy Sacrament. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... day in the ante-chapel of his old college, through a morning service, listening, as in a dream, to the sweet singing within; it seemed but a day since he had sate in his stall, a fitful-hearted boy. The service ended, and the procession streamed out, the rich tints of the windows lighting up the faces and the white surplices of the men, old and young, that issued from the dark door of the screen. Hugh felt within himself that he would not ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the open fields: these are the nuns that have taken themselves away from the world and tell their griefs to the infinite listening Silences of the wilderness,—for the one deep inner silence that Nature breaks with her fitful superficial sounds becomes multiplied as the image of a star in ruffled waters. Strange! The woods at first convey the impression of profound repose, and yet, if you watch their ways with open ear, you find the life which is in them is restless and nervous as that ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... paddock below the orchards she had adjudged, after ample and cautious probation, to be of docile temper; to-day, however, she decided to leave his docility untested, for the usually tranquil beast was roaming with every sign of restlessness from corner to corner of his meadow. A low, fitful piping, as of some reedy flute, was coming from the depth of a neighbouring copse, and there seemed to be some subtle connection between the animal's restless pacing and the wild music from the wood. Sylvia turned her steps in an upward direction and climbed ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... have engaged in war; but war's loud trade Rings with a roar unnatural, fitful, forced, Practised by ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... resignation to his fate. His hands were bunched on the head of his walking-stick, his chin propped on his hands; his eyes were bent on a certain spot on the carpet with a fixed stare. And when Allerdyke entered he sprang up as if roused from a fitful slumber. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... as he strips and runs, With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day with a hope that's dead In the glare of ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... he was silent while they were spoken. A faint smile played around his lips, and the far-away expression of his eyes told that the smile belonged to the memory of other days. It was dark now in the little shop; only the flickering light of the fitful fire in the tiny grate enabled the Young Comrade to ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... and rainy weather, and with poor insulation, they may rise to such a point at which it would be dangerous to touch the circuit even with one hand, the leaks being sometimes so great as to cause the lamps to burn in a fitful, desultory manner, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... physical powers, and should spend as much as possible of their leisure time in the open air. We must, however, use good judgment in this matter as well as in eating. Too much exercise at once, or that which is fitful and violent, is often exceedingly injurious to those whose occupations have accustomed them to little physical exertion ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... gave a tenseness to the atmosphere, as if it were charged with the electricity of a coming storm, a tingling waiting which made the men prone to become silent and then talk again in fitful outbursts. Or it might be said that it was like a glass full of precipitate which only waits for the injection of a single unusual substance before it settles to the bottom and leaves the remaining liquid clear. It ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... Froude had a fitful and uncertain admiration for Disraeli. Gladstone he never liked or trusted, and did not take the trouble to understand. He had been brought up to despise oratory, he had caught from Carlyle a horror of democracy, he disliked the Anglo-Catholic party in the Church of England, and Gladstone's ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... be? Confident in himself, ardent in his desires, unchecked by those fears which are the offspring of true delicacy, his passions violent, and his pride almost insufferable, he thinks he loves. But he is ignorant of the alarms, the tremors, the 'fitful fevers' ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... him from his farm and his team to his general's tent and to his Protector's throne, in his transformation and in his development, in his struggles of conscience and in his statesman's resolutions, in such a way that the mechanism of his thought and action becomes visible and the ever renewed and fitful tragedy, within which wracked this great gloomy soul, passes like the tragedies of Shakespeare into the souls of those who behold them. We see how, behind convent disputes and the obstinacy of nuns, we recover one of the great provinces ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... to the heart! Now from her eastern clime the golden Moon, Set in a frame of azure, lifts her shield, And all creation wakes to life renewed! Not long she holds supreme her joyous course; Her foes in sullen vapors fitful rise, And envious, hovering over her splendid path, Now thin—now dense, impede her kindly ray. In hasty, partial gleams, of light and shade, She holds her purposed way.—Now darker clouds Collect, combine, advance—she falls—'twould ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the disappointment of not being set ashore as he had hoped, had brought even his determined courage to a low ebb. He was on the verge of a fever, and Bob's prescription of rest and sleep was what he most needed. Made snug at the back side of the berth, where little or no light came, he fell into a fitful slumber. Bob took a last look to see that his friend was comfortable and ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... lose my Nesta for a month?' Nataly said, after catching here and there at the fitful gleams of truce or comfort dropped from his words. And simultaneously, the reproach of her mind to her nature for again and so constantly yielding to the domination of his initiative: unable to find the words, even the ideas, to withstand ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his fathers were. Of Hebrew descent, and by a line of actors, he united in himself that strong Jewish physiognomy which, in its nobler phases, makes all that is dark and beautiful, and the combined vagrancy of all men of genius and all men of the stage. Fitful, powerful, passionate, his life was a succession of vices and triumphs. He mastered the intricate characters of dramatic literature by intuition, rather than by study, and produced them with a vigor and vividness which almost passed the depicting of real life. The stage on which he raved and fought ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... ran along the front of the house. The Hopper heard the sash moving slowly in the frame. He reached the steps, deposited the jar in a pile of snow, and was soon peering into a room where Wilton's presence was advertised by the fitful flashing of his lamp in a ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... we had sadly to disillusionise them); if our glasses could show us Belgrade, and so on—questions sometimes so difficult to answer that we had to give them up. Then they would talk of themselves; the older men would tell of past deeds, of fighting and bloodshed, and the fitful glow of the fire would light up their animated faces and ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... the fire's fitful flashes, The last line has withered and curled. In a tiny white heap of dead ashes Lie buried the hopes of your world. There were mad foolish vows in each letter, It is well they have shriveled and burned, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and concentrated rivalship. Columns of smoke turned from this vortex of battle as from a volcano: "it was," said my guide, "like a little hell upon earth." Not far off, two or three broad spots of rank, unwholesome green still marked the places where these rival warriors, after their fierce and fitful struggle, slept quietly together in the lap of their common mother earth. Over all the rest of the field peace had resumed its sway. The thoughtless whistle of the peasant floated on the air, instead of the trumpet's clangor; the team slowly labored up the hillside, once shaken by the hoofs of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... heavy, with only a white blur where the moon was smothered. Fifty yards away the gray gloom became opaque. Over the thousand miles of drift to the north there came a faint whistling wind, rising at times in fitful sweeps of flinty snow, and at intervals dying away until it became only a lulling sound. In one of these intervals both ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... will intense and fixed, so easy To thee, cut off from life and love, whose powers In one close channel must condense their stream: But I, to whom this life blooms rich and busy, Whose heart goes out a-Maying all the year In this new Eden—in my fitful thought What skill is there, to turn my faith to sight— To pierce blank Heaven, like some trained falconer After his game, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... hollows about the eyes, and was tensely drawn around the mouth. She was like one of the earth-forces, or an earth-servitor, scarred by work and trouble, and yet so unused to patience that when it was forced upon her she felt suffocated by it. She hurried out into the fitful weather, and closed her door behind her. With her shawl hugged closely, she took the path across the fields, a line of dampness in the spongy turf, and, head down, made her way steadily to the little white house where Still Lucy, paralyzed for over thirty years, lay on the sofa, knitting lace. Hetty ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... peculiar to the inhabitants of the South Sea islands, and those chiefs who were inclined to favour Christianity. This war continued to rage more or less violently for several years, frequently slumbering, sometimes breaking out with sudden violence, like the fitful eruptions of the still unextinct volcanoes ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... manhood in fruitless action, and devoting the moments of reflection to the playful current of the muse's fancy, forsooth, to the delectation of the more prosaic humanity in this his locality. A life of pleasure was ever his treasure, and he agrees, after experience of life's fitful dream, that ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... disappointed, owing perhaps to the dampness of the climate; for it was not until the sun was pretty high that the mists cleared away, and by noon we were generally clouded up again, so that there was seldom more than an hour or two of fitful sunshine. We searched in every direction for birds and other game, but they were very scarce. On our way I had shot the find white-headed pigeon, Ptilonopus cinctus, and the pretty little lorikeet, Trichoglossus euteles. I got a few more of these at the blossoms of the Eucalypti, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Polly, shortly. Then she turned to and packed in a vigorous manner, and very soon after the little party started on their return walk home. It was decidedly a dull walk. Polly's gay spirits were fitful and forced; the rest of the party did not attempt to enjoy themselves. David lagged quite behind the others; and poor Maggie confided to George that somehow or other, she could not tell why, they were all turning their eyes reproachful-like on ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... everlasting life for body and soul emerged in the Psalms and in the prophetical writings, but sometimes side by side with such gloomy views regarding death and its consequences as to leave the impression that belief in it was weak and fitful. In the long period that passed between the time when Old Testament prophecy ceased and the advent of Christ, the fierce persecutions to which the Jews were subjected appear to have strengthened their faith in a future life of blessedness, in which the body, delivered from the grave and ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... like a wither'd flower, Blown o'er the plain by every blast, Impell'd by fancy's fitful power, The lovely, luckless, ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... march of the days of Ferdinand and Isabel,' whispered Clara; 'could you not guess its stately measures were pure old Castilian? Now mark the change—that is a Moorish serenade; is it not like the fitful breathings ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the heavy south-westerly gale that had raged throughout the long-drawn summer's day gradually dropped, and blew now only in fitful gusts. Instead of the sullen, unending roar of artillery, which till past mid-day had stunned the ear, there was now to be heard only the muttering of distant thunder; the flash of guns was replaced by the glare of lightning flickering ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... same intensity, but little mellowed or softened with the years. The gaunt old room that had entertained so many guests, emptied of its last one, with nothing but the faint chill that had come through the opened window to remind one of their presence—the fitful light of the two candles that had begun spluttering in the tall brass sticks—Brutus with quiet adroitness clearing away the bottles and the dishes—and a sudden burst of flame from the back log in the fireplace that made his shadow jump unevenly ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... broken only when the monotony grew unbearable. Stovik, lost in wonderment at his future regal state, and a trifle awed at the high-bred girl beside him, added but little to the conversation. The Countess Muhlen-Sarkey awoke only when there was a fitful attempt to break the embarrassment which held all the others. The quondam Parisian openly welcomed each stopping-place as an excuse to escape from such uncongenial companionship. In the throngs on the platforms he found both transient ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... like a crew of spectres, sailing beneath the scorching sun that beat down from the pale blue of the cloudless sky upon a sea hardly less blue in its greater depths. Only the hope that they would soon reach Timor seemed to rouse them from a state of babbling delirium or fitful slumber. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... much of the physical fatigue and the nerve-racking strain of these hours that lay between the daring deed and the hope of safety. Therefore he was conscious of an acute tingling of his nerves, which went on even during the brief patches of fitful sleep, and through the numbness that invaded his whole body while the hours ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Dutton in this fitful, disjointed talk, and as there was really nothing to be done or to be inquired into, I ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... the same again to-night. After several hours of fitful dreaming, Sahwah wakened, and in her half-consciousness there lingered an impression of eyes staring intently at her and a dream of being back in the railway train on the way to Nyoda's. The spell of the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... against the background of stars; and the white cloud that ever floated about its summit like the ghost of dead fires was crawling down the slopes to the little town at its base. From this small but teeming capital came fitful sounds of music and of less decorous revelry, and its lights seemed to flit through the groves of palm and cocoanut trees, gently moving ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... Widow Miller's, the rain had stopped and the clouds had broken. Back of them was a discouraged moon, which sometimes showed its face for a fitful moment, only to disappear. The wind was noisily floundering through the treetops. Near the stile, Samson gave his whippoorwill call. It was, perhaps, not quite so clear or true as usual, but that did not matter. There were ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... now began to fall, and the wind blew with fitful gusts. He did not care for either himself, but he was sorry that Jeannette should be exposed to the storm. He felt nearly sure that she would come, in spite of it. If not, he made up his mind to wait till dark, and then to go on to her cottage. There was no great risk in ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... infinite space"; a purely scientific intelligence would have applied himself to the patient mastery of facts; in the hero of Pauline the despotic senses and intellect of science and the imperious imagination of the poet appear to coexist and to contend, and he tosses to and fro in a fever of fitful efforts, continually frustrated, to find complete spiritual response and expressiveness in the intractable maze of being. There had indeed been an earlier time when the visions of old poets had wholly sufficed him; ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... were really true that men acquired all such qualities by these fitful manipulations of their souls, it would suffice to apply a little more energy to the process when these souls are evidently feeble. But ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... people, combined with the excitement of the new scenes and the marching music to banish the acuter sense of disappointment from Duchess Susan's mind; so she very soon held herself erect, and wore a face open to every wonder, impressionable as the blue lake-surface, crisped here and there by fitful breezes against a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fitful early April wind howled dismally, swaying the leafless branches of the old elm, and causing them to rub complainingly against the gable end of the farmhouse. Two or three inches of fine snow had fallen the day before and the wind tossed it about ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... his own couch, a large, four-posted affair, sleep soon overpowered the stranger; but sleep, broken and fitful! Nor did he dream only of France and of kings running away, of American land barons and of "bolters." More intrusive than these, the faces of the strollers crept in and disturbed his slumbers, not least among which were the features ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... friend, that I may not pass such another night as the last. While I am awake and retain my reasoning powers the pang is gnawing, but I am, except for a fitful moment or two, tranquil; it is the howling wilderness of sleep that I ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... In my fitful sleep of the night before I had dreamed vividly that I saw the Honourable George being dragged shackled to the altar. I trust I am not superstitious, but the vision had remained with me in all its tormenting ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... all, but stood quietly, with a half smile, while a young man with a Russian name played a strange minor prelude. Then she sang, her voice a wonderful contralto, cold at times, and again lit up with gleams of passion. The music itself was fitful, now full of joy, now tender, ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... winter ice. The shadow of death hung over the institutions and survivals of the various civilizations and epochs which were being dissolved in the common melting-pot, and even the man in the street was conscious of its chilling influence. Life in the capital grew agitated, fitful, superficial, unsatisfying. Its gaiety was forced—something between a challenge to the destroyer and a sad farewell to the past and present. Men were instinctively aware that the morrow was fraught with bitter surprises, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the window, peering through the gathering dusk until the anxious heart was stilled by the sight of tired little legs dragging down the street past the postoffice. We'll stay here in the twilight, and watch the fire-flies light their fitful lamps, and the first stars blinking through the afterglow; and when the night drops down see the black bats careening weirdly across the moon.... And we'll stretch out again on the wild grass—soothed by the fragrance of the Mayapple ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright |
