"Flutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down the stairs, as fast as possible. Evidently a crisis had occurred below. All the girls in their white dresses and pink or blue sashes, all the boys in their white collars of ceremony, were grouped about on the lawn, around the base of a big shade tree. Pink hair bows were a-flutter with excitement. The patent leather pumps of the boys trod upon the white slippers of the little girls in their efforts to see what ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... die away, and come again, banging the doors of the empty rooms, and setting timbers all strangely to creaking as under sudden trampling feet; then lift into the air with a rustling sound like the stir of garments and the flutter of wings, calling out weirdly in the great voids of the ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... around, and spring around and lilacs around and a moon and music and joy around,—what is more natural in all this world than that in the fire struck by the simple joy of youth there should be the flutter of unseen wings around, and when the two had finished singing, with something passing between their hearts not in the words, what is more natural than that the girl, half frightened at the thrill in ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... destruction, as a child With giants huge, or giants with a Jove. The statesman's arts to conjure up a peace, Or military phantoms void of force, But scare away the vultures for an hour; The scent cadaverous (for, oh! how rank The stench of profligates!) soon lures them back On the proud flutter of a Gallic wing Soon they return; soon make their full descent; Soon glut their rage, and riot in our ruin; Their idols grac'd and gorgeous with our spoils, Of universal empire sure presage! Till ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... authoress and politician. She patronizes Roulette, and at every turn of the wheel her money passes on the board. She is a good gambler—smirking when she wins, and smirking when she loses. She dresses as splendidly as any of the dames of Paris. The other night she excited a flutter among the ladies assembled in the salons of the "Conversation" by appearing in a robe flaming red with an exaggerated train which dragged its slow length along the floor. But the greatest of the feminine players is the Leonie Leblanc. When she is at the Rouge et Noir table a larger crowd ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Terriss was still under thirty, but doing the best work of his life. He never did anything finer than Squire Thornhill, although he was clever as Henry VIII. His gravity as Flutter in "The Belle's Stratagem" was very fetching; as Bucklaw in "Ravenswood" he looked magnificent, and, of course, as the sailor hero in Adelphi melodrama he was as good as could be. But it is as Thornhill that I like best to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... kite, will scare most animals of the deer tribe, by their fluttering; and, in want of a sufficient force of men, passes may be closed by this contrivance. The Swedes use "lappar," viz. Pieces of canvas, of half the height of a man, painted in glaring colours and left to flutter from a line. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... very best effect; and there was, people said, such a nobleness about him (his cleverness was undisputed) that when he rose to propose or reply to a toast, there was not a lady at the table who was not in a flutter of inward admiration. With his social advantages he could not, of course, fail to be in a position of considerable influence in the town, which again heightened his welcome ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... as the French head of the great historic ferry between England and the Continent, and as the seat of sundry thriving factories, it is both a busy and prosperous town. I found its streets swarming with people and its houses a flutter of flags and banners, when I came to it on June 3, 1889, to see the 'inauguration,' by President Carnot, of the works on which the French Government has been spending millions of francs during the past decade, with an eye to deepening and enlarging ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... who flutter for a time. And struggle with captivity in vain; But by-and-by they rest, they smooth their plumes. And to NEW MASTERS sing their former notes. [Footnote: Agis, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... one is sleeping, the thunder rolls and the storm bursts, it often happens that the sleep is not troubled; then suddenly, at a certain moment, the imperceptible flutter of a passing ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... arrested the attention of every one on the grounds. They saw him throw his arms around Stransky and then rush to the automatic. "One thought! One duty! Oh, that is easy now!" he breathed, caressing the breech with a flutter ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... draw curved lines from them to the opposite point, Fig. 4; and I have a reptilian or dragon's wing, which would, with some ramification of the supporting ribs, become a bat's or moth's; that is to say, an extension of membrane between the ribs (as in an umbrella), which will catch the wind, and flutter upon it, like a leaf; but cannot strike it to any purpose. The flying squirrel drifts like a falling leaf; the bat flits like a black rag torn at the edge. To give power, we must have plumes that ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... among the figures that lined the deck rail behind a flutter of handkerchiefs, he went to the smoking-lounge where for two hours he busied himself with his author's ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... is the matter of a few moments, then he hurries up-stairs. The tower door is open, and there is no one to be seen. He keeps on and on until he catches a flutter of a white dress. Cecil is running around the observatory, and his heart beats as he glances at the dazzling little sprite, with her sparkling eyes and her hair a golden mist about her face. He could watch forever, but it is a ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... as transient guests of spring and autumn in the Middle States, are in their summer home and breeding-place. Warblers, named for the magnolia and the myrtle, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, blue-backed, and black-throated, flutter and creep along the branches with simple lisping music. Kinglets, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned, tiny, brilliant sparks of life, twitter among the trees, breaking occasionally into clearer, sweeter songs. Companies of redpolls and crossbills pass chirping ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... and there was blood on the sacks and on the stony floor. It oozed from her side, and her hand was cold as the rocks, and there was no flutter at ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... attempt, turned aside, as if not to see Dick's movements—a circumstance which did not escape the notice of the group, and confirmed all their suspicions, Mr. Avenel, with a serious, thoughtful air, and a slow step, approached the group. Nor did the great Roman general more nervously "flutter the dove-cotes in Corioli," than did the advance of the supposed X. Y. agitate the bosoms of Lord Spendquick and his sympathizing friends. Pocket-book in hand, and apparently feeling for something formidable within its mystic recesses, step by step came Dick Avenel towards ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Saturday evening, a fortnight after that disastrous one, and Miss Quincey was taking the air in Primrose Hill Park. She was walking to keep herself warm, for the breeze was brisk and cool. There was a little stir and flutter in the trees and a little stir and flutter in her heart, for she had caught sight of Dr. Cautley in the distance. He was coming round the corner of one of the intersecting walks, coming at a frantic pace, with the tails of his frock-coat waving ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... sheep look into the mouth of the empty cannon on a dismantled fort. These are the days for revery, and your thoughts fly forth, gliding without friction over this smooth expanse; or, rather, they are like yonder pair of white butterflies that will flutter for an hour just above the glassy surface, traversing miles of distance ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... visibly stronger, and his nurse brings people into the room to see him. They look at him with wonder and admiration, while the good lady is all in a flutter of delight. He hears himself spoken of always as the "lieutenant," and hesitates to ask an explanation. The physician comes but seldom, the lady explaining that all the doctors in town are busy in the hospitals. The truth flashed ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... does not wear so much as the lightest shawl. She is clad only in spring sunshine. It glitters in the soft darkness of her hair. It touches the diamonds, the opals, the pearls, that cling to her arms, and neck, and fingers. They flash back again, and the gorgeous silks glisten, and the light laces flutter, until the stately Aurelia seems to me, ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... bearing the spear, thanks to the gratuities of the open-handed Van Cleft, Senior. She pleaded to remain out of the white lights, meaning it as she spoke. But Shirley wisely felt that the butterfly would emerge from the chrysalis, shortly, to flutter into certain gardens where he would fain cull rare blossoms! Pat Cleary deputized a "shadow" to diarize her ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Amidst all the flutter and emotion which this promise of pleasure, for such I conceived it, stirred up in me, I preserved so much of the woman, as to feign just reluctance enough to make some merit, of sacrificing it to the influence of my patroness, whom I likewise, still ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... good-byes had become nothing but a flutter of white handkerchiefs from deck to shore, and shore to deck, William ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... stockings; his coat was 'some kind of a lightish colour—or betwixt that and dark'; and he wore a 'mole- skin weskit.' As if this were not enough, he presently haled me from my breakfast in a prodigious flutter, and showed me an honest and rather venerable citizen passing ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a seat halfway between door and pulpit. By some miscalculation of Unity's they were very early, a fact which presently brought a whispered ejaculation of annoyance from Miss Dandridge. "I love a flutter when I come in and the knowledge that I've turned every head—and here we've entered an empty church! Heigho! Nothing to do for ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... freshness, chafers whirring, A little piping of leaf-hid birds; A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring, A cloud to ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... an end to his criticism, and looking round at us all. "Make your own flies. It's impossible for a fellow in the Strand to put a fly together which would suit fishermen like you. Observe the flies and insects of the country as they flutter under your nose, and imitate them the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... red-painted reaper, cracking his whip over the horses, and mowing down the thick, waving grass, as a war hero mows down his enemies. And as he stepped into the office he seemed to hear the clicking noise of the reaper, the soft swish of falling grass and the shrill chirp and light flutter of ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... then I, who had, according to custom, stood up on the announcement being made, and felt quite faint with astonishment, was told to go by the back stairs and get a clean frill on, before I repaired to the dining-room. These orders I obeyed, in such a flutter and hurry of my young spirits as I had never known before; and when I got to the parlour door, and the thought came into my head that it might be my mother—I had only thought of Mr. or Miss Murdstone until then—I drew back my hand ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... evening came; and the children, ready dressed for their parts, were in a tremendous flutter. Even the little wee ones were to do something. They were stationed at the parlor door with baskets, and charged not to let a soul come in, unless the pair of mittens were paid into one of the baskets. ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... eyes and beard, And shaken voice, the suitor re-appeared, And said, 'He's come.'—Mahmoud said not a word, But rose and took four slaves each with a sword, And went with the vext man. They reach the place, And hear a voice and see a female face, That to the window flutter'd in affright. 'Go in,' said Mahmoud, 'and put out the light; But tell the females first to leave the room; And when the drunkard ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... to marry, and who was not a viscount's widow, as it turned out, but a brewer's relict at Southampton, with a couple of thousand pounds to her fortune: for honest Tom's heart was under such excellent control, that Venus herself without a portion would never have caused it to flutter. So he rode away on his heavy-paced gelding to pursue his jog-trot loves, leaving Esmond to the society of his dear mistress and her daughter, and with his young lord for a companion, who was charmed, not only to see an old friend, but to have ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... contents seemed a trifle too liquid for mud and a trifle too solid for water. On the nearer bank was a small village populated by short people and long dogs. Out in midstream, making poor headway against the semi-gelid current, was a little flutter-tailed steamboat panting and puffing violently and kicking up a lather of lacy spray with its wheelbuckets in a manner to remind you of a very warm small lady fanning herself with a very large gauze fan, and only getting hotter at ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... it hurt me just as much," persisted the maid. "And they've no business, 'aven't the young gentlemen, to play pranks like this. You never know what you'll be let in for next. I shall be in a heverlasting flutter now. It's worse than living ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... herself lightly with expectation, I have but to request that she favor me with a little singing, and soon the air is vocal with every note of the village songsters. After this, Mrs. Walters usually begins to flutter in a motherly way around the subject of ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... convinced yourself that there is not a mosquito in the inclosure, and so blown out the candle and prepared to sleep, it requires a mind of singular equanimity forthwith to hear without emotion the too familiar whiz. At Bordighera the mosquitoes, disdaining strategic movements, openly flutter round the lamps on the dinner-table, and ladies sit at meat with blue gauze veils obscuring their charms. Half measures were evidently of no use in these circumstances, and I tried a whole one. Having shut the windows of the bedroom, I smoked several cigars, tobacco ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... serious manner, there were few of us whose hearts did not flutter responsively to this surmise, for the danger became every minute more imminent, and we knew what a terrific surf there must be then running on the shingle beach. But we now rapidly approached the shore; we were near to the floating light, and in the roadstead not ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... wings of Love. For he said, 'It becomes thee not to approach men's eyes as with the noise of chariots, and the rushing of a swift courser, but in placid and merciful flight, as upon the wings of a swallow—nay! with not so much as the flutter of the dove.' Besides all this, that he might be yet pleasanter to men, he committed to him also a multitude of blissful dreams, according to every man's desire. One watched his favourite actor; another listened to the flute, or guided ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... and kissed, not the hand, but the wrist where the marks of his fingers still remained faintly. He squared himself, and gazed long and steadfastly into her eyes. In that moment he seemed to her positively handsome; and there was a flutter in her heart that she was unable to define. On his part he realized the sooner he was gone the better; there was a limit to his self-control.... He gained the street somehow. There he stopped and turned. Did the curtain move? He wasn't sure; but he raised his hat, settled it firmly on his ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Bordeaux to join Louis XVIII. in Paris, was received in every town through which he passed with ovations inspired by the enthusiasm felt throughout old France at the return of the Bourbons. Touraine was aroused for its legitimate princes; the town itself was in a flutter, every window decorated, the inhabitants in their Sunday clothes, a festival in preparation, and that nameless excitement in the air which intoxicates, and which gave me a strong desire to be present at ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... perhaps, may be remembered in the next; while of the creations which were honoured with the diploma of immortality a very much smaller proportion as a rule survive. Only some fifty per cent, of the prematurely laurel-crowned reach the goal; and often even upon their brows there flutter but a few stray leaves of the bay. A single poem, a solitary drama—nay, perhaps one isolated figure, poetic or dramatic—avails, and but barely avails, to keep the immortal from putting on mortality. Hence we need think it no disparagement to Sterne to say that he lives not so much ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Tuileries gardens, each afternoon, A little old man comes walking along: Now watch what happens! for just as soon As they see him, the birds begin their song, And flutter about his hands and head, And perch on his shoulder quite at their ease, For he fills his pockets with crumbs of bread To feed his friends who live in the trees, And well they know he loves them so That into his ...
— Abroad • Various
... answered, and her fine hands had come to Wycherley, as white birds flutter homeward. But even then she had to deliberate the matter—since the habits of many years are not put aside like outworn gloves,—and for innumerable centuries, it seemed to him, her foot tapped ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... flutter of the flag on its staff above the Forest Service building, his heart went out to the men who unselfishly wrought beneath that symbol of federal unity for the good of the future. "That is civilized," ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... the street were in the windows; the little maidservant flew to the wicket-gate; the Mesdames Clapp looked out from the casement of the ornamented kitchen; Emmy, in a great flutter, was in the passage among the hats and coats; and old Sedley in the parlour inside, shaking all over. Jos descended from the post-chaise and down the creaking swaying steps in awful state, supported ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and make use of their bill as a third foot, climbing and ascending with ridiculous caution. All the gallinae parade and walk gracefully, and run nimbly; but fly with difficulty, with an impetuous whirring, and in a straight line. Magpies and jays flutter with powerless wings, and make no dispatch; herons seem incumbered with too much sail for their light bodies; but these vast hollow wings are necessary in carrying burdens, such as large fishes, and the like; pigeons, and particularly the sort called smiters, have a way of clashing their ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... rush to the flame, and flutter round every luminous idea only to perish miserably at the last. We imagine that the idea is the expression of the world's will, whereas it is nothing but the consuming ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... decks. The screen showed a race of boats which melted without warning to a mass of white uniforms packed about the raised square of a roped-in Platform below guns and a turret clouded with men. Two tanned giants in wrestling tights scrambled under the ropes. There was a flutter of caps. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... near her that she saw the regular quick flutter of the blue vein on his fair temples, and as the musical mastering voice so well remembered and once so fondly loved stole tenderly through the dark, lonely, dreary recesses of her desolate, aching heart, it waked for one instant a wild, maddening temptation, an intense longing to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Prescott presented himself at the hotel that evening, and sent up his card to Mrs. Bentley and the girls. Greg was with his chum, of course, but Greg was not in a flutter. He was to escort Belle Meade—-an arrangement of chumship, for Belle wore the engagement ring of Dave Darrin, one of Greg's old ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... gray, like scalp-locks and feathers upon Indian heads. Near them were the gayly-painted vans, in which I at once observed a difference from the more substantial-looking old-country vardo. The whole scene was so English that I felt a flutter at the heart: it was a bit from over the sea; it seemed as if hedge-rows should have been round, and an old Gothic steeple looking over the trees. I thought of the last gypsy camp I had seen near Henley-on-Thames, and ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... hours passed up to luncheon time Dorothy never afterward realized, her foolish little heart was in such a flutter of excitement. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... be done thinking of the young ladies. It put my heart in a flutter when I looked back at the castle from the wood's edge and saw one of them waving her handkerchief in a window. I lifted my hat, and put my spurs to the flank with such a pang in me I dared not look again. ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... penetrates them with his burning splendor, illuminates them with a marvelous radiance, and crowns them with glory. But the Sun is generous. Having showered benefits upon these gorgeous celestial butterflies that flutter round him as round some altar of the gods, he grants them liberty to visit other ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... the flutter! And good riddance! I just abhor school—notice how I have improved? Last ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... get on with the evening. Octavia and I wanted to see everything, gambling saloons, dance halls, fights, whatever was going, and as Lola has done it all before, she said she would stay with the girls, and have a little mild flutter in the saloon of the hotel at roulette while our stalwart cavaliers escorted us "around." Gaston, too, remained behind with them; the Senator manoeuvred this, because he said, it was not wise to be with people who were quarrelsome, ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... almost sure that land was not far off: the sea grew shallower, and early every morning flocks of land birds began to flutter around them, and these all left the ship in the evening, as if to roost on shore. One of the vessels had picked up a cane newly cut, and another a branch covered with fresh red berries; and the air blew softer and warmer, and the wind began ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... Druid bards and the firm belief in reincarnation which sent the Celtic warrior laughing to his death; but in the traditions of the peasantry, abounding with nature myths, sorcerers still haunt their mountain caves, fairies and May maidens still flutter about their crystal streams. ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... the box the rustles will escape, whether you are wearing a silk dress or not," said the man, seriously. Then he picked up another box. "In this," he continued, "are many assorted flutters. They are invaluable to make flags flutter on a still day, when there is no wind. You, sir," turning to the Wizard, "ought to have this assortment. Once you have tried my goods I am sure you will never be ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... people who have homes on Central Park West, to the frail winged moths who flutter up and down Broadway, this section does not exist. Its poor are not the picturesque poor of the city's Latin quarter, its criminals seldom win to the notoriety of a front page and inch-high headlines; it almost never produces ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... time!" So saying, Robin laughed and led the way out into the sunny green. And here, surrounded by a ring of merry forest rogues, they beheld a knight right gallantly mounted and equipped, his armour blazing in the sun, his gaudy bannerole a-flutter from long lance, his shield gaudy and brave with new paint; beholding which, Robin chuckled ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... which the six couples were presently posed by the clergyman, in front of us and himself. That done to everybody's satisfaction, the Colonel stationed to give away the brides—an arrangement that caused a visible flutter of delight among them—and as many lookers-on accommodated within the building as could crowd in, the ceremony was proceeded with, the clergyman using an abbreviated form of the Episcopal service, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... man he had assisted on the previous night, and he knew that no one could afford him more precise information than his brisk landlady, to whom was known all the gossip of the neighbourhood. His first word made Miss Greeb flutter back to the table like a dove to ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... his friends as they stood together in the shelter of the dell. The green bank at the entrance hid the road and the world, and now, as in spring, they could see nothing but snow-white ramparts and the evergreen foliage of the firs. Only from time to time would a beech leaf flutter in from the woods above, to comment on the waning year, and the warmth and radiance of the sun would ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... only change owners subject to the payment of 'fines' and to the feudal consent of a 'court' presided over by the agent of a lord of the manor. Most of the dwellings were owned by their occupiers, who, each an absolute monarch of the soil, niggled in his sooty garden of an evening amid the flutter of drying shirts and towels. Freehold Villas symbolized the final triumph of Victorian economics, the apotheosis of the prudent and industrious artisan. It corresponded with a Building Society Secretary's dream of paradise. And indeed it was a very real achievement. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... their way to the parlor, where a great handshaking took place. Mrs. Stanhope and Dora were there, and also Grace and Nellie with Mrs. Laning. The latter was not used to traveling and was in quite a flutter. ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... making her appearance, she observed that there was an unusual flutter among the wilder members of the league, and that she at once became the ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... whisk of her skirts, and a footfall on the gravel path, she was gone. He stood dumbfounded, poor comedian, having come to play the chief role, but to find the scene taken out of his hands. Then catching the flutter of her wrap, as she disappeared into the darkness of the veranda, he cried in a ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... and looking about in a flutter, till she discovers her husband: "Good gracious, Edward! Is that our train? I ran all the way from the station door as fast as I could run, and I'm perfectly out of breath. Did you ever hear of anything like my meeting Amy on the very instant? She was getting out of her ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... engine company in Seamont! He made a stir generally in the old place, starting a gymnasium and organizing a "reading circle," and putting things generally in a whirl. He had a "voice," and he had a guitar, so that his "serenades" were famous; and he set Aunt Stanshy's heart all in a flutter one night when, awaking about twelve, she heard his well-known voice leading off in a serenade, while he twanged his guitar to the tune, "O dearest love, do you remember?" Will Somers was popular ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... moved nearer the fireplace. Watching narrowly Roger noticed the big man put out his hand towards the blazing logs, then saw a small scrap of something flimsy and white—it might have been paper, or perhaps a tiny piece of the medical gauze he had been using—flutter into the flames. The gesture was so negligent that in the ordinary way one would not have given it a second thought, yet now, because of Esther's unintelligible reference to a bandage, it awoke in Roger a vague uneasiness. Again the incredible suspicion ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... because he was in such a hurry for it to go by. But Friday night came at last; and, as he counted the stars for the seventh time, the little flutter of excitement in his veins made them seem to dance ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... evil company and trouble. He sinned and repented and sinned again. We find him writing to his father, "As for this world, I despair of ever making a figure in it. I am not formed for the bustle of the busy, nor the flutter of the gay. I shall never again be capable of entering into such scenes." Burns knew himself to be a man of faults. The knowledge of his own weakness, perhaps, made him kindly to other. In one ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... below them. The black embers fly, and rolling into one body, they thicken, and take a form, and assume heat and life from the flames. Their own lightness gives them wings; and first, like birds, {and} then real birds, they flutter with their wings. At once innumerable sisters are fluttering, whose natal origin is the same. And thrice do they go around the pile, and thrice does their clamour rise in concert into the air. In the fourth flight they separate their company. Then ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... came to them would banish any such tendency in people less kindly than the Cliffords; but their home-life meant so much to them all that they were naturally solicitous concerning one who must, from the intimate relations she would sustain, take from or add much to it. Therefore it was with a flutter of no ordinary expectancy that they waited for her appearance. The only one indifferent was Leonard's youngest boy, who, astride his grandpa's cane, was trotting quietly about, unrestricted in his gambols. Alfred had thawed out since his return from the station, and was eager ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... a flutter of successive excitements, now certain that it was invulnerable, now fearing an immediate descent of the enemy, and always longing for peace. In England the Orders in Council which provoked the war were now revoked, and Malcolm Fraser wrote that this must soon bring peace ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... unexpected incident. But, when I went upstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh about it and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry about it. In short, I was in a flutter for a little while and felt as if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been since the days of the dear old doll, long buried ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... her person. She possessed the indefinable property of charm. Such women, he knew, stirred life profoundly, reanimating it with extraordinary efforts and desires. Their mere passage, the pressure of their fingers, were more imperative than the life service of others; the flutter of their breath could be more tyrannical that the most poignant memories ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... needn't argue; I've no intention—" Once more he paused. The same shadow had flitted across the dark space outside, this time with a distinct flutter of a white dress. He could only think it was some one getting help together; and while he went on to finish his sentence in words, all his subconscious faculties were at work, seeking an escape from the trap in which he ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... had been sought after and displayed. The air was a-flutter with party-colored streamers. Garlands rioted over colossus, peristyle, obelisk and sphinx without conserving pattern or moderation. The dromos, or avenue of sphinxes, was carpeted with palm and nelumbo leaves, and copper censers as large as caldrons had been set at equidistance ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... And now, above the roaring undertone of the cars, from far ahead floated back the treble bell-notes of the locomotive; there came a gritting vibration of brakes; slowly, more slowly the cars glided to a creaking standstill beside a sun-scorched platform gay with the bright flutter of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... each leaning on his stick, walked down a path lined by clipped yews, shaded by cypresses, and almost overgrown with crocus, anemone, and violet. Suddenly from the bushes there came a flutter of wings, followed by the scream of a bird, and in a moment the Pope's cat had leapt on to a marble which stood in the midst of the jungle. It was an ancient sarcophagus, placed there as a fountain, but the spring that had fed it was dry, and in its moss-grown mouth ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... running to meet me in a flutter of excitement and Mistress Aileen followed more demurely down the path, though there was a Highland welcome in her frank face not to be denied. I slid from the horse and kissed Cloe. Miss ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... past. Its late painters, whose human figures had no lack of weight upon the comfortable ground, yet kept a sense of buoyancy for this hovering childhood, and kept the angels and the loves aloft, as though they shook a tree to make a flock of birds flutter up. ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... amongst them, and the usual peeping and spying, and eyeing of the 'creatures.' 'What impudence!' 'Well, I think!' ''Pon my word!' 'What next!'—exclamations that were pretty well lost upon the fair objects of them amid the noise and flutter and confusion of the scene. But ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... What a flutter you have put me into: now get away do, Master Percy. You ought not to kiss me ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... man," he began again, "see how three or four strokes of the brush and a thin glaze of blue let in the free air to play about the head of the poor Saint, who must have felt stifled and oppressed by the close atmosphere! See how the drapery begins to flutter; you feel that it is lifted by the breeze! A moment ago it hung as heavily and stiffly as if it were held out by pins. Do you see how the satin sheen that I have just given to the breast rends the pliant, silken softness of a young girl's skin, and how the brown-red, blended with ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... There was a flutter in the little dining-room—the sensitiveness of habitual solitude makes hearts beat for preternaturally small reasons—and a guessing as to who the visitor might be. It was some military gentleman from the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... involuntary. If I had my way, I never would cause a single flutter in any body's breast—not I. But you see how it is, I can't help it, and therefore it is not my fault. These fish do not bite well. There is one, he will weigh four pounds, that has been playing round and round the hook, but won't touch it. Haven't you got some kind ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... state of repentance and flutter that he could not let me take a decent farewell. The sound of the others' horses had long died away down the hill when he began to tell me what he ought ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and gave me a high satisfaction. We are once more transported into Faust's study, where Mephistopheles finds all just as he had left it. He takes from the hook Faust's old study-gown, and a thousand moths and insects flutter out from it. By the directions of Mephistopheles as to where these are to settle down, the locality is brought very clearly before our eyes. He puts on the gown, while Faust lies behind a curtain in a state of paralysis, intending to play the doctor's part once more. He pulls the bell, which gives ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was beating slowly, calmly, even faintly. He caught her wrist, pressing his fingers on her pulse—there was not the suspicion of a flutter. He let her go then. She stood before him; her eyes were ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... of far more costly fabrics; her hat, perked up with puffs of grenadine (how all these things do rhyme and repeat their little Frenchy tags of endings!) put you in mind of lace and feathers, and a general float and flutter of gay millinery; her step and expression, as she came airily into this second-rate old car, put on for the "journeymen" train, brought up a notion, almost, of some ball-room advent, flushed and ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... free and unchecked man; so utterly to Mr Pinch's wonder and confusion, that like the wretched captive who recovered his liberty in his old age, he could make but little use of his enlargement, and fell into a strange kind of flutter for want of some kind hand to scrape his bread, and cut him off in the article of sugar with a lump, and pay him those other little attentions to which he was accustomed. There was something almost awful, too, about the self-possession of the new pupil; who 'troubled' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... The soft flutter of her dress disappeared, and he was left to pace up and down the loggia in alternations of hope and despair. He, too, felt with Eleanor that these days were fatal. If he lost her now, he lost her for ever. She was of those natures ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... land's sake!" screamed Mrs. Higbee, "why, that's my 'Liza!" She was in a flutter of surprise and delight, and so absorbed was Tilly in getting her and her unwieldy luggage into the car, that Jane's daughter forgot to kiss ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... dance upon the line, And flutter to and fro: My faithful clothes-pins hold them fast, And will ...
— The Nursery, July 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 1 • Various
... crumpled shirt frills and the cravat twisted about a throat like a turkey gobbler's; altogether, his appearance set people wondering whether this outlandish ghost belonged to the audacious race of the sons of Japhet who flutter about on the Boulevard Italien. What devouring kind of toil could have so shriveled him? What devouring passions had darkened that bulbous countenance, which would have seemed outrageous as a caricature? ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... occasioned in her a little flutter of joy, a little exaltation of the senses, and she walked on without speaking, deep in her pleasure, and as the sensation died she became aware that she was very happy. The quiet silence of the Spring morning corresponded to her mood, and the rustle of last year's leaves communicated ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... work and yet he has it very deeply; he has it even better than the man who works in it or owns it. Then for natures that like to feel emotion without the trouble of having any suffering, it is very nice to get the swelling in the throat, and the fullness, and the heart beats, and all the flutter of excitement that comes as one watches the people come and go, and hears the engine pound and give a long drawn whistle. For a child watching through a hole in the fence above the yard, it is a wonder world of mystery and movement. The child ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... them clearly, every bird well defined against the sunny heavens. I watched them eagerly. Suddenly one turned over; a cloud of feathers streamed off down the wind; and then, before the sound of the first shot had reached my ears, a second pitched a few yards upward, and, after a heavy flutter, followed its hapless comrade. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... little remaining modesty, which was nearly all the good which her unhappy education had left her, prevented her, until she found that she had no time beyond the present instant left for satisfying her curiosity on so important a point, when, in a considerable flutter of spirits, she whispered to Ellen, but in a voice sufficiently articulate to be heard by others—"Pray what did your papa say ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... learning vain, Beholds the fop with deep disdain: The fop, with spirit as discerning, Looks down upon the man of learning. The Spanish Don—a solemn strutter— Despises Gallic airs and flutter: Whilst the Gaul ridicules the Don, And John Bull looks with like disdain On manners both of France and Spain: They hold, indeed, a deed tripartite To see each other in a tart light. 'Tis thus the bard is scorned by those ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... Such a flutter as we are in! The whole house is being cleaned and all the curtains washed. I am driving to the Corners this morning to get some new oilcloth for the entry, and two cans of brown floor paint for the hall and ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... times. Louder and stronger sang Mr. Quaver. Miss Gamut cleared her throat, with the determination to sing as she never sang before, and to show the people what a great difference there was between her voice and Azalia Adams's. But the excitement of the moment set her heart in a flutter when she came to the duet, which ran up out of the scale. She aimed at high G, but instead of striking it in a round full tone, as she intended and expected, she only made a faint squeak on F, which sounded so funny that the people down stairs smiled in spite of their ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... bearing the royal emblem of Oogaboo, and this flag Files flew upon its staff every night, to show that the country they were in had been conquered by the Queen of Oogaboo. So far, no one but themselves had seen the flag, but Ann was pleased to see it flutter in the breeze and considered herself ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... in the bay to coal, and the passengers took themselves off to the shore, Mlle. Trebizond in a wild flutter of excitement. This meant for her the nearest approach to Paris, I suppose, that was available. At least she was in great spirits, and talked with the officers. As we entered the harbour we heard the sound of music pouring from the saloon, which had never yet been used by the party, and on that the ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... set eyes on)—"your ordinarily handsome face wore an expression that was by no means pleasing. You grinned at the individual just as you did at me when you went up to the cei—, pardon me, as I THOUGHT you did, when I fell down in a fit in your chambers"; and I qualified my words in a great flutter and tremble; I did not care to offend the man—I did not DARE to offend the man. I thought once or twice of jumping into a cab, and flying; of taking refuge in Day and Martin's Blacking Warehouse; of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the hospitable meaning of my uncle's invitation and his sensitiveness in respect to its reception. So I got the ill-seeming black bottle from the locker, the tray and glasses and little brown jug from the pantry, the napkin from Agatha, in a flutter in the kitchen, and having returned to the best room, where the tutor awaited the event in some apparent trepidation, I poured my uncle's dram, and measured an hospitable glass for Cather, but with less generous hand, not knowing his capacity, but shrewdly suspecting its inferiority. The glasses ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... strain upon the best of nerves. Dick and his friend Davis rode out of the valley to meet the Santa Fe stage with a very sensible relief. For a few days, anyhow, they would be back where they could see the old Stars and Stripes flutter, where feudal retainers and sprouts of Spanish aristocracy were not lying in wait with fiery zeal to ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... and followed a path, deep in leaves, which led from the west wing of the house to the outside kitchen beyond a paved square at the back. Half intelligible words floated to him as he approached, and from an old pear-tree near the door there was a flutter of wings where a brood of white turkeys settled to roost. Beyond the bole of the tree a small negro in short skirts was "shooin'" a large rooster into the henhouse, but at the muffled fall of Gay's horse's hoofs on the dead leaves, she turned with a ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... went out and the acceptances came in. The English were flattered. Count Malagaski was buoyed by new hopes and the daughters were in a day-and-night flutter, for neither of them had ever come within speaking distance of the real young ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... me, madam." And he rose and proceeded to flutter about the room, counterfeiting Otto both in voice and gesture not unhappily. "What is there to-day, Herr von Gondremark? Ah, Herr Cancellarius, a new wig! You cannot deceive me; I know every wig in Gruenewald; I have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his situation; so also at the first abashed and confounded, we remain on the mesh we are urged upon, ignorant, as yet, of the toils around us, and the sly, dark, immitigable foe that lieth in yonder nook, already feasting her imagination upon our destruction. Presently we revive, we stir, we flutter; and Fate, that foe—the old arch-spider, that hath no moderation in her maw—now fixeth one of her many eyes upon us, and giveth us a partial glimpse of her laidly and grim aspect. We pause in mute terror; we gaze upon the ugly spectre, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pausing for half a second (during which he was calling on himself to be cool) he pulled the trigger. To his inexpressible satisfaction the bird stopped in mid-air and came down with a thump on the heather, where it gave but one flutter and then lay still. He turned to see what his companions had done, with their brisk fusillade. But he could not make out. They were still watching the setter, that was again being encouraged to go on, lest a stray bird or two might still be in hiding. However, the quest was fruitless. The ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... government of the Regent and of Dubois, it was a little scared at the liberties taken by Voltaire with the Catholic church. He was required to make excisions in order to get permission to print the poem; the author was here, there, and everywhere, in a great flutter and preoccupied with his literary, financial, and fashionable affairs. In receipt of a pension from the queen, and received as a visitor at La Source, near Orleans, by Lord Bolingbroke in his exile, every day becoming more brilliant and more courted, he was augmenting his fortune by profitable ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... she could not recognise any one as she looked round upon Turks, clowns, Indians, the tinselled, sequined, beaded, ragged flutter of the room, then from the coloured and composite clothing of a footballer, clown or jockey grinned the round face and owlish eyes of little Duval, who flew to her at once to whisper compliments and stumble on the swelling fortress of her white skirt. ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... the crowns and fills the air with pollen; a part of it fulfils its destination and creates new life, a part sinks to the ground and dies. What is a handful of pollen more or less in the inexhaustible store-house of nature! The fertilised blossom casts off its delicate petals which flutter to the ground and wither; they decay in the rain and are ground to dust, to rise again through the sap and re-appear as blossoms, and this time, perhaps, to become fruit. But now the struggle begins: those which a kind fate has placed on the sunny side, thrive and prosper; the ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... knows when there is danger near her—she does not know how, exactly, but ''pears like my heart go flutter, flutter, and den dey may say "Peace, Peace," as much as dey likes, I know its gwine to be war!' She is very firm on this point, and ascribes to this her great impunity, in spite of the lethargy before ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... forbidden to teach them other truths before they be baptized? This text as fairly denieth to the unbaptized believer heaven and glory. Nay, our author, in the midst of all his flutter about this 28th of Matthew, dare venture to gather no more therefrom, but that it may be strongly supposed. Behold therefore, gentle reader, the ground on which these brethren lay the stress of their separation ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... down the road from early morning onward, filled with flannel-coated or befrilled holiday makers or laden with farmers and farmers' wives and farmers' children. Janet and Mrs. Brown, the one an excited flutter of white organdie skirts, the other a ponderous rustle of tight brown taffeta, departed at ten o'clock and by one the great house was empty of all save ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... has found out the loss of the paper?" he thought. "He must have discovered it, and that's why he is in such a flutter. If it's spoilt his chances, so much the better. I owe him a grudge, and, if I've put a spoke in his wheel, I ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... conventions of acting. The player in the "apron" of a Queen Anne stage resembled a drawing-room entertainer rather than a platform orator. Fine gentlemen and ladies in the boxes that lined the "apron" applauded the witticisms of Sir Courtly Nice or Sir Fopling Flutter, as if they themselves were partakers in the conversation. Actors like Colley Cibber acquired a great reputation for their natural representment of ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... men. It is beautiful how the chrysalis governing-soul, shaking off its dusty slough and prison, starts forth winged, a true royal soul! Our new Abbot has a right honest unconscious feeling, without insolence as without fear or flutter, of what he is and what others are. A courage to quell the proudest, an honest pity to encourage the humblest. Withal there is a noble reticence in this Lord Abbot: much vain unreason he hears; lays up without ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... giggled Delia. Gypsy, all in a flutter at having her name read right out in school, and divided between her horror lest the kitten she had tied to a spool of thread at recess, had been discovered, and an awful suspicion that Mr. Jonathan Jones saw her run ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... plainly a great house, and my uncle lived there in style. The fame of it rose as we approached, like a chain of mountains; at Bedford they touched their caps, but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. "You're probably expected, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron 'as dead leaves flutter from a bough', he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that these are souls, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... startled by my first approach. Occasionally, without any cause which I could detect from my present position—certainly in no way connected with my presence—a small swarm of the butterflies would rise in a flutter above the bush, as though actuated by a common whim—a brief winged tangle in which a beautiful sprite of velvety black hovering in a globular halo, shot through with two white semicircular arcs, was always a ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... boy who had been the general pet and plaything in early years, much as his own "Tilly Ann" was now; the dashing soldier, whose occasional visits to his native place in all the glories of uniform had caused on each occasion a flutter of excitement which had endured long after his own departure; the hero of romance, whose sudden appearance with a beautiful bride, wedded secretly somewhere up the country, had made more than one pretty ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... young ass," said one boy, whom the child, even in his flutter and misery, recognised as the boy who had accosted them at the door of Westover's that morning, "can't you answer without blubbering like that? Nobody's going ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... but his ears now would be his surest signals. He could not see deep in the thickets, but he could hear any movement in the underbrush a hundred yards away. So far there was nothing but the hopping of a rabbit. The bird over his head sang on. There was no wind among the branches, not even the flutter of leaves to distract his attention from anything that might come on ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... provinces, where the Union had struck widest root. Town after town sent its whole population to greet him. Roaring thousands met him at the railway stations, and he passed under triumphal arches and through streets a-flutter with flags, where working-girls welcomed him with showers of roses. "Such scenes as these," he wrote to the Countess, "must have attended the foundation of new religions." And, indeed, as weeping working-men fought to draw his carriage, and as he looked ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... brushing and ironing to restore its pristine brilliance; carried neither name nor initials on its lining; and lacked every least hint as to its ownership—or so it seemed until the prying fingers of P. Sybarite turned down the leather and permitted a visiting card concealed therein to flutter ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Here was some one who knew Dick as well as she did—should she say a partisan or an accomplice? A dim jealousy stirred beneath Mrs. Peyton's other emotions: she was undergoing the agony which the mother feels at the first intrusion on her privilege of judging her child; and her voice had a flutter ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... some want of affinity upon the little grey hood which lay on the chair in the corner. Still she listened and responded as became her, though for the most part with eyes that did not venture from home. The little hood itself could never have kept its place with less presumption, nor with less flutter of self-distrust. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Amid a flutter of flags and the cheers of onlookers, the 'ocean policeman,' H.M.S. Speedy, first took to the water on May 18th, 1893. Its birthplace was the banks of the Thames at Chiswick, but hardly had it settled itself on the smooth surface of the river when ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... sailor hat in one hand and swung her whip with the other. "I think not," she cried, and disappeared with a flutter of skirts and a scurry ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... blue violets flutter on the hill, but who would change for these who would change for these one root of the ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... grey, And all the body's lovely line In wrinkled meanness slipped astray; The limbs so round and ripe and fine Shrivelled and withered; quenched the shine That made your eyes as bright as day: So, ladies, hear these words of mine, Love, ere love flutter far away." ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of affectation, lest it should obscure the brightness of his virtue and so hinder its usefulness. "Fabius and Regulus would have accepted such marks of esteem, without feeling in them any hurt to their disinterestedness and frugality."[9] Perhaps there is a flutter of self-consciousness that is not far removed from this affectation, in the pains which Rousseau takes to tell us that after dining at the castle, he used to return home gleefully to sup with a mason who was his neighbour and his friend.[10] On the whole, however, and so far as we know, Rousseau ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... me think, Billy!" she pleaded, in a flutter of joy and amazement. "Go away, boy dear!—Go away for a little and let me think! I'm not an emotional woman, but I'm on the verge of hysterics now, for—for several reasons. Go in to breakfast, Billy! I—I want to be alone. You've made me ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... arrival of the little troupe of peculiar passengers on the Hamburg in mid-ocean produced a flutter of excitement in both captain and crew. It was a feeling of mingled solemnity and gaiety. For the benefit now of the captain, now of the boatswain, or the first mate, or the cook, or the engineer, the physicians had to repeat again and again the account of how they had been sighted ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a great flutter of excitement over the Queen's Fancy Dress Ball, which took place in the Throne Room of Buckingham Palace on 12th May. Its leading feature was the assembling and meeting of the two Courts of Anne of Bretagne (the Duchess of Cambridge) and Edward III. and Queen Phillipa (The ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... her already, or had he not? She knew she would be able to guess the truth by his voice and manner the moment he answered her. No man can hide that secret from a woman who loves him. Yet it was not without a thrill and a flutter that she asked him, for she thought to herself, what must she seem to him after all the grand people he had been mixing with so lately at Dunbude? Was it possible he could see anything in her, a little country village girl, coming to her fresh from the great ladies ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... After the oysters, came a fish nearly three feet long all done up in sea-weed, then a big silver bowl was brought in covered with pie-crust. When the carver broke the crust there was a flutter of wings, and "four and twenty black birds" flew out. This it seems was done by the Japanese cook as a sample of his skill. All sorts of queer courses followed, served in ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... tomatoes that didn't pay for the plants, nothing but soft corn and no potatoes compelled Uncle and Aunt Tompkins to open an account at the corner grocery. The first month the bill came in, Aunt Sally was all in a flutter when she audited the items: Sugar, 60; coffee, 40; oatmeal, 50; sugar, 75; ditto, 80. "Lige, you go right back to the store and tell that cunnin' clerk that he's charged us fer what we never got. We ain't had no 'ditto' in this house." ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... house after the minister sat down was broken by the sounding of the trombones: then from beneath the trees Leonhard saw the beautiful procession again following the bier; and as he watched the flutter of garments between the dark-green cedar walls, it had been no difficult thing to see in that company not a company of mourners, but the ransomed sons and daughters ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... direction at any time, he had removed the top of the jeep. Now he had to crouch below the windshield to avoid overhanging branches. Once three deer—a buck and two does—stopped in front of him and stared for a moment, then bounded away with a flutter of white tails. ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... happiness, and Love to be the desire of happiness, although the meaning of the word has been too often confined to one kind of love. And Love desires not only the good, but the everlasting possession of the good. Why then is there all this flutter and excitement about love? Because all men and women at a certain age are desirous of bringing to the birth. And love is not of beauty only, but of birth in beauty; this is the principle of immortality in a mortal creature. When beauty approaches, then the conceiving power is benign and diffuse; ...
— Symposium • Plato
... the moonlight had transformed into elfin playhouses. Perplexity as to Terry's whereabouts gave way to deep anxiety. Then his eyes caught the flicker of something white in the shadowy grove that fronted Ohto's house. Looking closely, he watched it flutter away among the trees, then a darker figure emerged ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... most becoming though sable garments, allowing her veil of thinnest gauze to flutter artfully and display her beautiful face while the long velvet sleeves open to the shoulder showed the double manacles at the wrist and above the elbow, made purposely too tight and cutting into the lovely ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... he kept the knowledge to himself. It was boyish weakness. He choked it out of thought on Sundays as sacrilege: how could he talk of the Gurney house and Lizzy to that almighty, infinite Vagueness he worshipped? Stalking to and fro, in the outskirts of the churchyard, he used to watch the flutter of the little girl's white dress, as she passed by to "meeting." He could not help it that his great limbs trembled, if the dress touched them, or that he had a mad longing to catch the tired-looking child up to his brawny breast ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various |
