"Flytting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Raven, never flitting, still is sitting—still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a Demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the ...
— Le Corbeau • Edgar Allan Poe
... for the future of his favorite humanistic studies—a solicitude, some will think, only too well justified. "Cambridge at all times is full of ghosts," said Emerson. But no ghost from the past, flitting along the Old Road from Elmwood to the Yard, and haunting the bleak lecture-rooms where it had recited as a careless boy and taught wearily as a man, could wear a more quizzical and friendly aspect ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Mrs. Johnson descended into our kitchen, she conjured from the malicious disorder in which it had been left by the flitting Irish kobold a dinner that revealed the inspirations of genius, and was quite different from a dinner of mere routine and laborious talent. Something original and authentic mingled with the accustomed flavors; and, though vague reminiscences of canal-boat travel and woodland camps arose from ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... the ruts and started toward Sabbath Valley, with the driver pulling again at his almost empty flask, and swaying giddily in his seat. Half a mile farther down the mountain, the car gave a gasp, like the flitting soul of a dying lion, and came with sudden grinding breaks to a dead stop in the ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... little light-infant of the river, with body armor of gold or silver spangles, slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of the tail, half in the water, half in the air, upward and ever upward with flitting fin to more crystalline tides, yet still abreast of us dwellers on the bank. It is almost dissolved by the summer heats. A slighter and lighter colored shiner is found in one of ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... travelers are extremely numerous; it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this period some of the characteristics of an American watering place. There are sights and sounds which evoke a vision, an echo, of Newport and Saratoga. There is a flitting hither and thither of "stylish" young girls, a rustling of muslin flounces, a rattle of dance music in the morning hours, a sound of high-pitched voices at all times. You receive an impression of ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... Boar Inn was stirring like an ant-hill, with firefly lanterns flitting up and down, and a cheery glow about the open door. The horses of the company, scrubbed unreasonably clean, snorted and stamped in little bridled clumps about the courtyard, and the stable-boys, not ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... lights glimmering through the beautiful shade trees, and could catch sight of the gayly-dressed figures flitting ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... But, unfortunately, the wind blew directly toward the cruiser, and instead of exposing a surface of any breadth to the vision of those on board her, it must, at most, have offered little more than a flitting, waving line. ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... day it is! Golden light everywhere; and the sounds of singing birds, and the perfume of the late mignonette and stocks. Who shall say summer is gone? Tita, flitting gaily through the gardens and pleasure-grounds of her old dear home, her beloved Oakdean, tells herself that it is summer here at all events, whatever it may be in other ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... Silent House, and formed quite a feature of the place. Murder had been done long ago in one of its empty, dusty rooms, and it was since then that the victim walked. Lights, said the ghost-seers, had been seen flitting from window to window, groans were sometimes heard, and the apparition of a little old woman in brocaded silk and high-heeled shoes appeared on occasions. Hence the Silent ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale, As driven by a beating storm at sea; Thy cry is weak and scared, As if thy mates had shared The doom of us. Thy wail,— What doth ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... private dream; thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and skepticism; there are enough of them; stay there in thy closet and toil until the rest are agreed what to do about it. Thy sickness, they say, and thy puny habit require that thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. Thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the universe, which holds thee dear, shall ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... be delightful to have them? It will add ever so much to the life of the post," said Mrs. Turner, with visions of hops and parties innumerable flitting through her pretty head. It was a week since the —th had broken camp and marched away. Already they were far across the Platte and up out of reach of all telegraphic communication somewhere among the breaks ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... died from his face she was gone, pattering lightly over the sand, flitting like a day-dream into the blinding sunshine that seemed to drop a veil behind her, ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... was gold and purple like an autumn sunset, and long walls of brilliant clouds lay round him. A rosy light shone through the silver mist, on gleaming columns and the rainbow roof; soft, fragrant winds went whispering by, and airy little forms were flitting to ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... which greatly retarded their movements. As they painfully retraced their steps, the darkness of the night was partially dispelled by numerous fires, which blazed along the hill-tops, and which showed the figures of their enemies flitting to and fro like so many spectres. It seemed, says Bernaldez, as if ten thousand torches were glancing along the mountains. At length, the whole body, faint with fatigue and hunger, reached the borders of a little stream, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... ruddy shrub is as lively as a merry-go-round with the feasting and antics of flitting gems, and there are others by the dozen attentive to less seductive fare. For half an hour the courtship of a perfect Ulysses has interfered with the staid ways of those not in holiday humour. Unlike Cassandra, there is little in appearance ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... ever so far away. I'm carrying home mother's corn." With that the little man trudged on his way, and we went flitting here and there, I picking corn-flowers, and Jemmy looking for fat toads and shrews. And all the while our shadows standing by our sides warned us of what ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... your meaning, Thad," Davy replied, without showing the least concern, for he was a fearless chap; "which is, that they've got the boat, and could chase after me if they thought I was going to get 'em in a peck of trouble by flitting. Never you fear, I'll keep low down, and out ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... of snow-birds came flitting through the air. As was very natural, they avoided Violet and Peony. But,—and this looked strange,—they flew at once to the white-robed child, fluttered eagerly about her head, alighted on her shoulders, and seemed to claim her as an old ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... strict; she would not hearken to my going to th' funeral; and indeed I would have been too late, for George set off that very night by th' coach, and the letter had been kept or summut (posts were not like th' posts now-a-days), and he found the burial all over, and father talking o' flitting; for he couldn't abide the cottage ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Ross. I thought we should see you before your flitting. I am sorry I stepped out for a bit, and so lost your company. Prissy, my girl, I don't want to find fault with you, but I'll not deny that it hurts me to hear you speak against Mat, poor old chap! when he is not here to answer for himself. It is woman-like, but it is not ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... up to her room, they told me, and would be down presently. There was a good deal of flitting about going on. Maids on mysterious errands shot up and down stairs. Old Mr. Gunton-Cresswell, looking rather wry, was taking cover in his study when I arrived. Mrs. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... You were always beautiful, but now your face has gained in beauty, although I should have said that would be impossible. You were so—oh, I don't know how to describe it—so illusive, like a streak of fairy gold flitting through life, but now you are so steadfast and so dear—such a strength to me in my weakness. So thoughtful and so tender to me when I have been thrown a ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... Flitting, fairy Lilian, When I ask her if she love me, Claps her tiny hands above me, Laughing all she can; She'll not tell me if she ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... of a white hand, the flutter of a garment's edge? He could not tell, but it did not belong to any of those sights which he had seen so often in that place. It was neither the glancing of a moth's wing, the nodding of a wind-touched blossom, nor the noiseless flitting of a bat. It was a gleam merely, faint, elusive, impossible of definition, an intangible agitation, in the vast, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... in remembrance of the past, which I scarcely was when that past was the present. To my sensitive heart the surprise of being with thee, the coming and going and returning in a few blessed days—this was all like clouds flitting across my heaven; through my too near presence I feared it might be darkened by my shadow, as it is ever darker when it nears the earth; now, in the distance, it is mild and lofty ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... passing across the quadrangle, in which scores of students were flitting to and fro, under the elms, and in and out of the shadows ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... so rapid, so unaccountable: one day, one hour, all hope, the next all despair! The lamp of life, now bright, starting up high and brilliant, then sinking suddenly almost to extinction; the flame flitting, flickering, starting, leaping, as it were, on and off by fits. Some day we shall talk it over in security; now I can hardly bear to ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... greater spirit and dash than these, their descendants, facing the slope of Vaalkranz. In open order they moved across the plain, with a superb disregard of the crash and patter of the shrapnel, and then up they went, the flitting figures, springing from cover to cover, stooping, darting, crouching, running, until with their glasses the spectators on Swartz Kop could see the gleam of the bayonets and the strain of furious rushing men upon the summit, as the last Boers were driven from their trenches. The ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the palm leaves subsided for an instant, allowing more distant sounds to reach his ears, he intermittently caught what seemed to be the sounds of picks and shovels at work at no very great distance; moreover, there were lights flitting about the distant camp, and much movement there, though what it portended Jack was quite unable to discover, even with the help of his night glasses. At length, however, the period of darkness came to an end, for sheet lightning began ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... dislike the stir and noise of the world about them, there is still always a vague sense of depression in the dispersion of a great party; the house seems so strangely silent, the rooms seem so strangely empty, servants flitting noiselessly here and there, a dropped flower, a fallen jewel, an oppressive scent from multitudes of fading blossoms, a broken vase perhaps, or perhaps a snapped fan—these are all that are left of the teeming life crowded here one little moment ago. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... back in their dreams to those who are left, that long night's march in the desert. It was like a dream itself, the silence of it as they were borne forward upon those soft, shuffling sponge feet, and the flitting, flickering figures which oscillated upon every side of them. The whole universe seemed to be hung as a monstrous time-dial in front of them. A star would glimmer like a lantern on the very level ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... little distance from the unpretentious thoroughfare that had grown up in a day, and my duties were so arduous that I had scarcely leisure for a weekly flitting to a certain mansion on the hill where dwelt Ellen Morris, my promised wife. In fact, it was with the hope of lessening the distance between us that I had ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... I'm richer than Pete that you won't take me in?" asked Mathilde, visions of bestowing her wealth in charity flitting across her mind. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... as if the birds of spring, just flitting past, had carried the word, or some presentiment of evil had found its way to the Peevy's mother, she inopportunely made her appearance. Rad Cates privately touched my elbow and nodded back, up the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... bl-r-r-r-r-oo-ow!... A flock of Foelkers heading east like wild ducks toward a few faint specks zigzagging in the firmament away to the northeast.... Now there are a number of specks from the south speedily joining these and ALL seem to be flitting higher and higher out of sight.... Now the Foelkers are circling rapidly upward.... The tramp and rattle of an Army can be heard coming up the road behind my villa.... Ah! here comes a daring plane like a streak of lightning over the Alex Nevsky Church directly ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... wide outlet, fathomless and dim To wild uncertainty and shadows grim. There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before, And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore The journey homeward to habitual self! A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf, Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar, Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire, 280 Into the bosom of ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... this way, for some time, Mr Swiveller softly opened the office door, with the intention of darting across the street for a glass of the mild porter. At that moment he caught a parting glimpse of the brown head-dress of Miss Brass flitting down the kitchen stairs. 'And by Jove!' thought Dick, 'she's going to feed the small servant. Now ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... audience, was seated in her big rocking chair that Ben had brought out from the kitchen and placed in the best spot on the grass to see it all, and Polly and Ben and Joel and David and Phronsie were in the depths of excitement, and flitting here and there, Polly, as chief director, having a perfectly awful time to get them into their parts, particularly as Phronsie would keep rushing up, the old white fur rug nearly tripping her up every step, to lay her soft face against Mother Pepper's, and cry out, "I'm to be ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... wine," said Wulf. Then, catching sight of more women flitting round them, looking like ghosts amid the moonlit glades, they pressed forward till they reached an open sward where there were no rugs, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... The ladies were flitting about the tree, giving it final touches that were never final. The Spangled Sisters were there in costume as Lady Violet de Vere and Marie, the maid, in their new drama, "The Miner's Bride." The theatre did not open until nine, and they were welcome assistants of the Christmas ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... up town in the street cars, filled, at that hour, with women and boys, folding newspapers and throwing off bundles of them from time to time, which are caught by other boys and women in waiting. Carriers are flitting in every direction, and the town is alive with the great business of getting two hundred ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the open window to watch. He knew that the thing calculated to help them most of all would be the flitting of the Uhlan troop. If the raiders would only gallop away from town there would be an opportunity for the three Boy Scouts to make their way from the ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... before I reach thee, Wallace?" was the question her almost flitting soul uttered, as she, trembling, yet with swift steps, ascended the stone stairs which led from the water's edge to the entrance to the Tower. She flew through the different courts to the one in which stood the prison of Wallace. One of the boatmen, being bargeman to the Governor of the Tower, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... removal of the high furze bushes which lent such convenient shelter at that date. Partly, too, it may be due to another circumstance. For it is said by present shepherds in that district that during the nights of Christmas week flitting shapes are seen in the open space around the trilithon, together with the gleam of a weapon, and the shadow of a man dragging a burden into the hollow. But of these things there ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... rolls, One through separated souls; And the sunny Aeon sleeps Folding Nature in its deeps, And every fair and every good, Known in part, or known impure, To men below, In their archetypes endure. The race of gods, Or those we erring own, Are shadows flitting up and down In the still abodes. The circles of that sea are laws Which publish and which hide ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... man's life, at least, Good luck knocks at his door; And wit to seize the flitting guest Need never hunger more. But while the loitering idler waits Good luck beside his fire, The bold heart storms at fortunes ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... was still sweet to him. His quick, darting gaze registered a dozen impressions in as many seconds: of the silver splendour spilled so lavishly upon the soulless corpse of the city, of the high, bright sky, of dead black shadows sharp-edged against the radiance, of the fleet flitting spectre that ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... bats with white heads flitting around in zigzag flights—assuredly new and strange ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... us forward toward a long, dark shadow that transformed itself into a temple wall as we drew closer, and in a moment we were once more groping our way downward amid prehistoric foundation stones, with bats flitting past us and a horrible feeling possessing me, at least, that the worst was ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... the woods were very still. With his cabin almost within sight, the trapper had begun to breathe more freely when suddenly the howl was repeated, this time so close that he stopped in dismay. A moment later he saw them coming, flitting silently along his trail or from tree to tree, like gray shadows ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... sat there on the April night nine years ago, but the younger brother, with Cousin MAY facing him through the grille of Ladies' Gallery. Many other gaps filled up on floor of House, the biggest those created by the flitting of BRIGHT and PARNELL. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... agreeable, motherly, comfortable as she might be, wasn't his affair; that child with the mop of black hair who combined so magically the charm of mouse and butterfly and flitting bird, who was daintier than a flower and softer than a peach, was no concern of his. Good heavens! what were they ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... traveller, who many days Hath journeyed 'mid Arabian deserts still, A dreary solitude far on surveys, And met, nor flitting bird, nor gushing rill, But near some marble ruin, gleaming pale, Sighs mindful of the haunts of cheerful man, And thinks he hears in every sickly gale The bells of some approaching caravan; At length, emerging o'er the dim tract, sees Damascus' ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... brimming with life, with vigor, with purpose. The nations, it seemed, were there. For the types were many, and called up before the imagination a great vision of the world, not merely a conception of New York or of America. Charmian looked at the faces flitting past and thought: ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... said, "When my mother was dead; And many a time have I stood. In that beautiful wood, To dream that through every woodland noise, Through the cracking Of twigs and the bending of bracken, Through the rustling Of leaves in the breeze, And the bustling Of dark-eyed, tawny-tailed squirrels flitting about the trees, Through the purling and trickling cool Of the streamlet that feeds the pool, I could hear her voice. Should I wonder to hear it? Why? Are the voices of tender wisdom apt to die? And now, though I'm very old, And the air, that used to feel fresh, strikes chilly and cold, ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wandering, Blithesome, meandering, Sweet was thy flitting o'er moorland and lea; Emblem of restlessness, Blest be thy dwelling place, Oh, to abide in ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... out," she advised. "Remember Poe's Raven who still is sitting, never flitting, on the pallid bust of Pallas, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... and yet as the sight of him flashed on her sense before recognition, the nothingness she always found gave way to a feeling as of something real, that almost might have been the right thing. As for him, though he saw her flitting figure, she did not for the twinkling of an eye pass for the ghost he had come to look for. He roused himself up in an instant. "Whew!" was his inward thought, "she is alone; what could be so lucky! I'll do the business at once, and get ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... shipped in those big cases; but it'll all be rusted now by this water. The poor fellow is harmless, for all he looks so fierce. Why, at the smell of coffee the tears trickled down his dirty cheeks like rain; it seemed to be just one last link that bound his flitting memory to something in the far-away past. We gave him an old saucepan to cook it in, and showed him how. Ever since he's visited us often, and we supplied him with food, because it seemed as though he was the one who had first right to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... middle of November when at last the family made their flitting. They had no dear friends to leave, and nothing particular to regret, except that one low mound in the churchyard; yet Esther felt sober as they drove away. The only tangible reason for this on which her thoughts could fix, was the ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Shifting, flitting, Round me sitting In my old arm chair — Rising, sinking Round me, thinking, Till, in the maze of many a dream, I'm not myself; and I almost seem Like one of the shadows there. Well, let the shadows stay! I wonder who are they? I ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... or a hundred, for aught he saw of them. That some of them took to the trees and travelled along through the jungle roof he was certain; but at the most he never glimpsed more than an occasional flitting of shadows. No bow-strings twanged that he could hear; but every little while, whence discharged he knew not, tiny arrows whispered past him or struck tree-boles and fluttered to the ground beside him. ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... returned through Boa Vista we passed many groups enjoying like ourselves the pleasant air, and gazing idly on the reflections of the white houses and waving trees in the water; while the fire flies flitting from bush to bush, seemed like fragments of stars come down to adorn ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... The blueberry-bushes made patches of dull red along the hillsides. The ferns were whitish-gray and brown at the edges of the woods, and the asters and golden-rods which had lately looked so gay in the open fields stood now in faded, frost-bitten companies. There were busy flocks of birds flitting from field to field, ready to start ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... too much, You love the dance and cup too much, Your years are quickly flitting— To your knitting, Right about! Forget the incidental things That keep you from parental things— The World, the Flesh, the Devil, On the ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... woman enters, As wan as the lamp's waning light, which concentres Its dull glare upon her. With eyes dim and dimmer, There, all in a slumb'rous and shadowy glimmer, The sufferer sees that still form floating on, And feels faintly aware that he is not alone. She is flitting before him. She pauses She stands By his bedside all silent. She lays her white hands On the brow of the boy. A light finger is pressing Softly, softly, the sore wounds: the hot blood-stained dressing Slips from them. A comforting quietude steals Thro' the racked weary frame; and throughout ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... meddlesome, inquisitive man, who poked his nose into everything. This was why the news of the fresh "miracle" performed by Father Zossima reduced him to extreme perplexity. Alyosha remembered afterwards how their inquisitive guest from Obdorsk had been continually flitting to and fro from one group to another, listening and asking questions among the monks that were crowding within and without the elder's cell. But he did not pay much attention to him at the time, and ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... gleam Of the departing sun's environ'd beam; While all was hush'd, save that the lone death-bell Would seem to beat, and pensive smite mine ear Like spirit's wail, now distant far, now near: Then the night-breeze would seem to chill my cheek, And viewless beings flitting round, to speak! And then, a throng of mournful thoughts would press ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... unbounded; and some one observed, that the Finanzrathin and Mozart had put me quite in a blaze. I smiled with downcast eyes, very stupidly. I could but acknowledge it. And now all talents, which hitherto had bloomed unseen, were in motion, wildly flitting to and fro. They were bent upon a surfeit of music; tuttis, finales, choruses must be performed. The Canonicus Kratzer sings, you know, a heavenly bass, as was observed by the gentleman yonder, with the head of ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... spoke a word to the Oriental, who bent over the metal bed which had been set up in the middle of the room. As he did so the air again darkened and the figures of the magician and his assistants were discernible only as flitting shades in the obscurity. Suddenly a soft pure light overflowed the room, the perfume of flowers filled the air, and music seemed to steal out of the very walls. Heiligenstern whispered to the governor and between them they lifted the little prince from ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... yellow apparel, foretells approaching gaieties and financial progress. Seen as a flitting spectre, in an unnatural light, the reverse may be expected. You will be fortunate if you dream of ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... might think, had fallen into the young girl's hands. He had felt sure, from the quizzing to which Louis Hamblin had subjected him at Hazeldean, that that young man's suspicions had been aroused, and possibly this sudden flitting to the South had been but a plot, from beginning to end, to entrap Mona into a marriage with the young man in order to secure the ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... in Green Valley is gossip. The mornings may be ever so full of meadow larks, the woods moistly sweet and carpeted with spring's frail and dainty blossoms, but no one dreams of letting the furnace go out or their base burner get cold until they see Fanny Foster flitting about town at all hours of the day and behold the array of shiny armchairs standing so invitingly in front ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... household, made it seem quite in order that she should pause to look cautiously this way and that and make sure that nobody else was astir to spy upon her or challenge the purpose of this as yet aimless nocturnal flitting. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... decreasing elegance below the waist—his cloth-topped shoes but little more than distressing memories—and announced that he was now an able operator of this wondrous machine; and the harried editor of the Advance, stung to enterprise by flitting wastrels who tarried at his case only long enough to learn the name of the next town, had sought relief in machinery, even if it did take bread from the mouths of honest typesetters. Their lack of preference as to ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... refreshing sleep for weeks, to behold in sunshine and solitude, that which during a weary period of gestation had been either mysteriously moving in his brain, or, like a vision—sometimes of good omen, and sometimes of evil—had, by night as well as by day, been flitting across his mind. ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... excitement. The diners looked about them as they talked, some talked loudly and seemed to be expressing sentiments. Newspaper vendors appeared at the intersection of the arcades, uttering ambiguous cries, and did a brisk business of flitting white ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... practiced this exercise enough, but before you start another I want you to write a summary of just how successful you were in controlling the flitting impulses of the mind and will. You will find this an excellent practice. There is nothing more beneficial to the mind than to pay close attention to its own ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... see each other often," the old fairy woman had said. "You flit in like, and flit away again as if you was a butterfly, I think sometimes when I'm sitting here alone. When you come to stay you're mostly flitting about the wood and I only see you bit by bit. But I couldn't tell you, Miss, my dear, what it's like to me. You do love the wood, don't you? It's a fairy ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... one of the wagons beneath its weight. They had escaped unhurt, being buried beneath the falling canvass by its splitting in the centre. Gradually the storm spent itself, and by morning, but a few flitting clouds were seen ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... alas! how very soon This silly little Fly, Hearing his wily, flattering words, Came slowly flitting by; ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... parrot screamed, And "Pretty Poll," repeated I, The while I stole a merry glance Across the room all on the sly, Where some one plied her needle fast, Demurely by the window sitting; But I beheld upon her cheek A multitude of blushes flitting. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... thus saving the lives of many evergreen monarchs. Around ten and eleven thousand feet there were campbirds, Canada jays, friendly and inquisitive; on first acquaintance they often took food from my hands, and helped themselves freely of any food accessible in camp. They were unruffled, flitting softly from tree to tree, with little flapping, calling low, and ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... when thou and I Side by side were sitting, Watching o'er the moonlit sky Fleecy cloudlets flitting. Close our hands were linked then; When will ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... pounding as it had not pounded for six years and more—(not since the days when he had gone up other stairs, in another land, to see an Evelyn)—Hugh followed the flitting figure of ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Clare watched her slim dark figure and the long black shadow that moved with it across the platform towards the open door of the hotel. But when it had disappeared the white fancies came flitting back through the silent light, and in the shade the young eyes fixed themselves quietly to meet the vision and see it all, and to keep it for ever if ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... side of a mountain; but as he is, from a little distance (whence the ducks and their pond are not visible) he is sublime. Myriads of fire-flies sparkled in every bush; they are beautiful in a night journey, flitting about like meteors and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... joined the main stem, they set to work to build in right good earnest. Small twigs, the waifs and strays of last autumn, strewed the ground in a little wilderness hard by, and thither the Blackbirds repaired. Hour after hour both might be seen flitting between the wood and their chosen bush, with twigs in their yellow beaks. These they neatly laid on the branch, and then twisted them in and out, and round and round each other, and then a little moss and a few soft fibres were added to the harder twigs. The whole fabric ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... Dick stood a few moments looking back at the camp. The dusk had fully come, but the fires were not yet lighted, and he saw only the shadowy forms of the wagons and flitting figures about them. But much talked reached his ears, most of it coarse and rough, with a liberal sprinkling of oaths. Dick sighed. His regret was keener than ever that Albert and he were in such company. Then ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... appeared of gigantic size, and came down upon her like the ceiling falling. But for long spaces of time she would merely lie conscious of her body floating on the top of the bed and her mind driven to some remote corner of her body, or escaped and gone flitting round the room. All sights were something of an effort, but the sight of Terence was the greatest effort, because he forced her to join mind to body in the desire to remember something. She did ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... distinguishable. These served to outline the framework of the several stories, where the seats were so many stains of red velvet turned black. The chandelier had been let down as far as it would go, and it so filled the region of the stalls with its pendants as to suggest a flitting and to set one thinking that the public had started on a journey from which ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... the only thing for a family of young children and for those who really enjoy the country, there is a larger number needing rational housing which will be left behind, let us hope with more room because of the flitting ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... hickory logs alone lighted up the large room, for my aunt liked thus to sit at or after twilight, and as yet no candles had been set out. As I stood at the door, the leaping flames, flaring up, sent flitting athwart the floor queer shadows of tall-backed chairs and spindle-legged tables. The great form of my Aunt Gainor filled the old Penn chair I had brought from home, liking myself to use it. Just now, as usual, she was sitting ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... At that the flitting shadows on Mr. Slocum's face settled into one grave look. He did not reply immediately, but let his glance wander from Margaret to Richard, and back again to Margaret, slowly digesting the fact. It was evident he had not relished it. Meanwhile the girl had risen from the chair and ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... were whitewashed; the chairs, table, and bed were of polished oak; a good fire of logs crackled in the fireplace, and between the opening of the white window-curtains could be seen a slender silver crescent of moon gliding among the flitting clouds. The young man went at once to his bed; but notwithstanding the fatigues of the day, sleep did not come to him. Through the partition he could hear the clear, sonorous voice of Reine singing her father to sleep with one of ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... too beside him: rich was he in fields; In wide extent no lands with his could vie; Nor equal his in hoarded heaps of grain. Obliquely in his groin, the missive spear Stuck deep,—a mortal spot: his Bactrian foe His rolling eyes beheld, and dying breath In sobs convulsive flitting, and exclaim'd;— "This spot thou pressest, now of all thy lands, "Possess,"—and turning left the lifeless corse. Avenging Perseus hurls at him the spear, Torn from the smoking wound; the point, receiv'd Full in the nostrils, pierces through the neck: ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the side of our waggon watching the flitting scenery. At one point we passed a train in which were other English people, who stared amazed at us and waved their hands as we disappeared. Dusk was down when we passed Vrntze, and we reached the gorges of Ovchar ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... not be denied that birds often do serious damage through their food habits; but the great mistake that has been made in man's treatment of birds has been in hastily deciding that if birds are seen flitting about fields of grain they are destroying the crop. A better knowledge of their food habits will lead to proper measures for destroying the harmful kinds and ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... I came to the bridge, and loitered for a moment to rest and watch the boats flitting about below. There went a four, smartly manned by youngsters no older than myself. There lolled a big fellow in a canoe. There swished by a senior in a skiff, calling on the four-oar to get out of the way as ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... by one flitting, Like a mournful bird Whose song is tired at last For no mate heard. The loving voice is silent, The useless word; One by one flitting, Sick with ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... a moment I looked around. I stood in a vast, rock-bound chamber—an immense hall—faintly illuminated by reflection from the direct sun-ray which fell upon a vein of quartz, and sparkled, lively with flitting rainbow-colors. I could see the openings in the inner wall, many of them a hundred feet high, nearly all very narrow, and for the most part vertical. On the right, the wall was unbroken, with the exception of the little hole, through which the blessed ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... metamorphosed is called 'Uvengwa.' At one time in Benito an intense excitement prevailed in the community. Doors and shutters were rattled at the dead of night, marks of leopard claws were scratched on door-posts. Then tracks lay on every path. Women and children in lonely places saw their flitting forms, or in the dusk were knocked down by their spring, or heard their growl in the thickets. It is difficult to decide in many of these reports whether it is a real leopard or only an Uvengwa—to native fears they are practically the same,—we were certain this time the Uvengwa was the thief ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... said: "I am not able to see you now. When I tell you that I will see you before I leave England, I insist upon your believing me. I have no head for seeing anybody now. Emilia"—was the simple signature, perused over and over again by this maddened lover, under the flitting gate-lamp, after Tracy had left him. The coldness of Emilia's name so briefly given, concentrated every fire in his heart. What was it but miserable cowardice, he thought, that prevented him from getting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... livelier. "Ah, to be sure—you're not over the honeymoon yet. How's the bride? Stunning as ever? My regards to her, please. I suppose she's too deep in dress-making to be called on? Don't you forget to look up Clare!" He hurried on in pursuit of a flitting petticoat and Ralph ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... in Rousseau's golden age of stupidity. And, considering the question of human happiness, where, oh where does it reside? Has it taken up its abode with unconscious ignorance or with the high-wrought mind? Is it the offspring of thoughtless animal spirits or the dye of fancy continually flitting round the ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... to Balmain; and there, sure enough, he found wrens and titlarks flitting about everywhere, cheeping amid the furze-bushes on the low stone hedges and the granite boulders, where the winter rains had hollowed out little basins for themselves, little by little, working patiently for hundreds of years. The weather was cold, but still and sunny. As he ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... its foot were green, too, with the tufted salt grass, and glittering with the silver threads of tide braided among its winding creeks. Beyond was the city, misty and gray, stretching its wan arms to the phantom ships flitting ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... would, so I sat down to wait, in the utter silence. I could scarcely hear the ice-stream, the silence seemed frozen, the house empty. The woman seemed to be flitting aimlessly, scurriedly, in reflex against the silence. One could almost touch the stillness as one could touch the walls, or the stove, or the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... our horses' hoofs are scattering the sparks all around us," cried Paddy. One of the more knowing of the party, however, discovered that the sparks were fire-flies, flitting about above a damp spot through ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the silent night intrude, And with false flitting shades our minds delude Jove never sends us downward from the skies; Nor can they from infernal mansions rise; But are all mere productions of the brain, And fools ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the bees With lowly cassias and with rosemary; Rough tufa and chalk too, by black water-worms Gnawed through and through, proclaim no soils beside So rife with serpent-dainties, or that yield Such winding lairs to lurk in. That again, Which vapoury mist and flitting smoke exhales, Drinks moisture up and casts it forth at will, Which, ever in its own green grass arrayed, Mars not the metal with salt scurf of rust- That shall thine elms with merry vines enwreathe; ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... bosom companions had been heard to hint, that Miss Philly, who had refused two or three good matches in her bloom, repented her of this cruelty, and would probably be found less obdurate now that suitors had ceased to offer. This, if true, was one hidden grievance, a flitting shadow upon a sunny destiny; whilst another might be found in a circumstance of which she was so far from making a secret, that it was one of her most ...
— Miss Philly Firkin, The China-Woman • Mary Russell Mitford
... appeared absurd to an ordinary observer. Most of the time, he kept a step or two in advance of Edith, trailing his rifle in his left hand, while his form was half bent, and his head projected forward, giving him the attitude of constant and intense attention. His eyes were flitting constantly from tree-top to ground, from side to side, ahead and behind him, kindling with admiration and fire as they rested upon the form of his companion. The latter was enveloped in a large shawl, a portion of which covered her head, while her ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... magnificent bow lifted and melted into the sky, until the eyes of the earnest watchers saw only fleecy clouds flitting across ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... heliotrope and purple waterlilies, gleaming through a graceful fringe of palms and rushes and scented shrubs, touched here and there with shafts of sunlight, and murmuring and rustling with an attendant host of gorgeous butterflies and flitting ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... are murky shadows flitting. A mortal youth, with blood of Asa crimson'd! The fight and death of gods, the fall of Asgara! Hear, son of Odin, wretched slave of passion, Think not that dreams, that magic's foul deception, That spectres of the night ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... ring the bell at the grille, unless I should meet one of the monks before reaching it. I mounted the steps, entered the wide doorway which had framed the dog's head, and found myself in a vast, dusky corridor, resonant with strange echoings, and mysterious with flitting shadows, which might be ghosts of the past, or live beings of the present. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I saw that there were numerous persons in this great hall: tall monks in flowing robes of black, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... suits of armor and warlike relics of ancient times which lay around on all sides: there was a grace in all her movements, a softness and purity in her aspect, which made her ever seem like a moving light, and now, in that shadowy expanse, her glancing form was almost the flitting of moon-beams along the wall. She paused one moment at the door, and though her thoughts were busy with the recollection that amongst those she was about to meet there was to be found, she knew not where, a dangerous foe, yet did not her heart ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... in their excitement and activity, resembled good-humoured, brown demons, there were many other figures in English dress moving about, directing and encouraging, running from point to point, flitting to and fro like wills-o'-the-wisp, for all bore lights, and plunged ever and anon out of sight in the trench. Between three and four o'clock the work was completed; tests were taken, the portion of cable was pronounced perfect, and communication was thus established between the cable-house and ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... as to intercept the heavenly bodies at the moment of transit across that plain; or it may be arranged so as to follow the daily revolution of the sky, thus keeping the object viewed permanently in sight instead of simply noting the instant of its flitting across the telescopic field. The first plan is that of the "transit instrument," the second that of the "equatoreal." Both were, by a remarkable coincidence, introduced about 1690[336] by Olaus Roemer, the brilliant Danish astronomer ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... The stars sink from bluish white to yellow, and on to deep red. The immortal fires of the Greeks are dying. Piercing the depths with a dull red glow, here and there, are the dying suns; and if you look closely you will see, flitting like ghosts across the light of their luminous neighbours, the gaunt frames of dead worlds. Here and there are vast stretches of loose cosmic dust that seems to be gathering into embryonic stars; here and there are stars in infancy or in strenuous youth. You detect all the chief ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... which is essential to the ideal. Not that we can escape into the ideal by merely emigrating into the past or the unfamiliar. As in the German legend the little black Kobold of prose that haunts us in the present will seat himself on the first load of furniture when we undertake our flitting, if the magician be not there to exorcise him. No man can jump off his own shadow, nor, for that matter, off his own age, and it is very likely that Daniel had only the thinking and languaging parts of a poet's outfit, without the higher ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... distant, and in all this weary, weary fruitless waiting; and these men, who lived their life through, drunken with blood, deafened by the cries of their victims, satiated with the moans of the helpless and the innocent, hardly dared to look around them, lest they should see ghoulish forms flitting ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... and ornaments, were but dreary memorials of the content and security that had so lately reigned within. The roof, together with the rest of the woodwork, had tumbled into the cellars, and a pale and flitting light, ascending from their embers, shone faintly through the windows. The early flight of the Skinners left the dragoons at liberty to exert themselves in saving much of the furniture, which lay scattered in heaps on the lawn, giving the finishing touch of desolation to the scene. Whenever ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... since Maddy's flitting. The skimped delaine was sadly rusty,—Miss Wimple very poor. The profits of the Hendrik Athenaeum and Circulating Library accrued in slow and slender pittances. A package of envelopes now and then, a few lead pencils, a box of steel pens, a slate pencil to a school-boy, were all its sales. Almost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... I should like to work for that," said Frank. "Are those cash boys?" he asked, pointing out some boys of apparently ten to twelve years, old, who were flitting about from desk ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... herds and flocks Along the frontier moors and rocks From eve to morn may roam: Nor shriek, nor shout, nor reddened sky, Shall warn the startled hind to fly From his beloved home. Nor to the pier shall burghers crowd With straining necks and faces pale, And think that in each flitting cloud They see a hostile sail. The peasant without fear shall guide Down smooth canal or river wide His painted bark of cane, Fraught, for some proud bazaar's arcades, With chestnuts from his native shades, And wine, and milk, and grain. Search round the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ever loved thee more! Fair queen, I'll meet woe's fearfulest frown—and smile; If mid the scene severe Thou'lt drop on me one tear, And let thy flitting form sometimes beguile The present of its ills—I'll scorn them ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... him switch off and sat for a moment trembling with rage. But he ended by grinning wryly. Everyone was in the same boat, of course. For the most part, people avoided thinking about it. But he could now see himself as if from above, spending his life flitting back and forth between home and plant, plant and home; wracking his brain to devise labor-saving machines while at the plant, then rushing home to struggle with the need ...
— Waste Not, Want • Dave Dryfoos
... said he, "you have everything ready, and you can make tea here just as nicely as in the parlour at the hospital." So Eleanor took off her bonnet and made the tea. After this manner did the late Warden of Barchester Hospital accomplish his flitting, and change ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... maruell though from banke of Baian shore hote Baths, or veines of skalding licour flow: For Vulcans forge incensed euermore doeth teach vs plaine, that heart of earth below And bowels burne, and fire enraged glow. From hence the flitting flood sends smokie streames, And Baths doe boil with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... than the priest himself, for her reply. None came. I thought she gave a flitting look toward me, and so I shrugged my shoulders and thrust myself again ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... at length with the gay scene around her, she had strolled off alone into the conservatory, and leaning against a pillar watched from a distance the giddy whirl of the waltz—the waving of feathers, the flashing of jewels, and the flitting of airy forms through those magnificent apartments. A few moments before she left the crowd, she had observed a stranger of very dashing air attentively regarding her, and then joining a friend of hers appeared to request an introduction. But young Allan was ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... here has heard it. Some of the negroes and even some of the more ignorant crackers declare they have heard screams from the swamp on dark nights and that white figures have been seen flitting—" ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... mind as I keep watch while the men are sleeping around me. Still the night continues dark; but as I peep through the obscurity, I fancy that I see against the sky some objects flitting here and there over the rocks. I step cautiously back into the boat, rouse up the men, who seize their arms, and with the oars ready to shove off, if necessary, we wait prepared. The figures approach ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... sufficient amount of water to prevent them suffering. As Ned looked out over the dark plain, he could see objects flitting by. Sayd thought that they were deer, which, fleet of foot, were passing across the desert to some more fertile region. Several times the roars of lions were heard, but none ventured near the camp, being scared by the bright blaze ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... Flitting like a shadow almost, Tobasco ran from his hiding-place into the office that the prince had hurriedly left; and seeing the paper and envelope lying upon his table, hastily secured it and ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold |
