"Roving" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... joy to which you may reasonably aspire. The splendid possibilities of youth are yours. My tenderest regards, Hannibal!" and he nodded over the rim of the cracked glass his shaking hand had carried to his lips. Twice the glass was filled and emptied, and then again, his roving, watery eyes rested meditatively on the child, who sat very erect in his chair, with his brown hands crossed in his lap. "Personally, I can drink or not," explained the judge. "But I hope I am too much a man of the ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Sara! I'm main glad you've come! Whatever's happened? Miss Molly was here in bed not three parts of an hour ago!" Then, her boot-button eyes still roving round the room, she made a sudden dart towards the dressing-table. "Here, miss, 'tis a note she's left for you!" she exclaimed, snatching it up and ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... their lemonade pieces of rag steeped in lemon-juice and dried; in this way the juice is preserved from evaporation. Essnousee had just lost his wife. "Have you any other wives?" I said. "Oh yes," he replied, "one here and one in Ghat." Many of the merchants, like the roving tar who has a sweetheart at every port, have a wife at every city of The Desert and Soudan where they trade. Several of the children now in Ghadames were born either ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... as in the earth the spirit of life must move and put forth in gladness. A flock of swallows passed suddenly like a streak of smoke on the blue sky overhead, and as his eyes followed them the old roving instinct pulled at his heart. To be up and away, to drink life to its dregs and come home for rest, were among the impulses which awoke with the return ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Ye wild roving breezes, I charge you, forbear To wantonly tangle The braids of her hair; Breathe not o'er her rudely, Nor sigh on her breast, Nor kiss you the sweet lip Of her I ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... exceeded in a painful degree the standard of pretensions under which such people could feel themselves at their ease. He was not naturally of a reserved turn; far from it. His disposition had been open, frank, and confiding, originally; and his roving, adventurous life, of which considerably more than one half had been passed in camps, had communicated to his manners a more than military frankness. But the profound melancholy which possessed him, from ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... ponds, and the diatoms that crowd the waters, exemplify plants that are as free as animals; and many of them, besides, in their young state especially (e.g., the seaweeds), swim about freely in the water as if they were roving animalcules. On the second count, also, science gains the day; power of motion is no legitimate ground at all for distinguishing one living being as an animal, while absence of movement is similarly no reason for assuming that the fixed organism must of necessity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... convoy, and twice he was told it was too insignificant a charge for a camp-marshal to undertake. The third time that he asked this favour, he obtained it by pure importunity. He carried the money safely into Landau, without meeting with any obstacle. On his return he saw some hussars roving about. Without a moment's hesitation he resolved to give chase to them. He was with difficulty restrained for some time, and a last, breaking away, he set off to attack them, followed by only two officers. The hussars dispersed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... within him. Nan was just a loyal little friend whom he loved and was ready to serve as he might love and help a sister, but regard of her broke off at that. So, as he rode, the pictures of her failed to hold him, and, finally, his roving gaze became caught and held by a sudden and striking anachronism ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... by the roving line? Why, by it I mean such conduct as is not tatcheno. When ryes and rawnies lives together in dingles, without being certificated, I calls such behaviour being tolerably deep in the roving line, everything savouring of which I am determined not to sanctify. I have suffered too much by my own ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... disposition that first sent him to sea, kept him roving about. He did not know of his father's death, until four years after it had taken place, and he heard at the same time that he had been disinherited. When he came home, after that event, he found that he was generally believed to have been lost in the Jefferson, wrecked ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... possessed by the latter, are the exaggerated and glowing descriptions of poetic fancy. Evidence enough can be had to show that they were degraded and wretched, engaged in petty exterminating wars with each other, often times in a state of starvation, and leading a roving, indolent and miserable existence. Their government was anarchy.—Properly speaking, civil government had never existed amongst them. They had no executive, or judiciary power, and their legislation was the result of their councils held by aged and experienced ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... you're from the country yourself," Peter hazarded. She was prettier even than he had thought. Her glance had left his, however, and was roving up and down the hurrying crowd as though testing it for some plunge she was ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... Roving has always been, and still is, my ruling passion, the joy of my heart, the very sunshine of my existence. In childhood, in boyhood, and in man's estate, I have been a rover; not a mere rambler among the woody ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... intentions were still unknown, fresh relays of ambassadors were sent out to him. But meanwhile French officers and men passed the gates in little bands of fifteen or so at a time, and were seen roving about the town unarmed, jaunty, and gallant, bearing pieces of chalk in their hands to mark the houses on which their troops were to be billeted. While affecting an air of contemptuous indifference, they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... and Gnatty in their general appearance. The common mosquito is remarkable for its strong attachments. It follows man with more than canine fidelity, and in some cases, the dog-like pertinacity of its affection can only be restrained by Muslin. It is of a roving disposition, seldom remaining settled long in one locality; and is Epicurean in its tastes—always living, if possible, on the fat of the land. As the mosquito produces no honey, mankind in general are not as sweet upon it as they are upon that bigger hum-bug, the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... his father's that he consented to the drudgery. A little poem which has been reproduced in leaflet form, Felix and Galathea, is practically his earliest offering to the muse. Like most beginnings of fanatics and realists, it fairly swims and shimmers with idealism. His father dead, a roving existence and a precarious one began for the youthful Frank. He lived by his wits in Paris and London, learned two languages, met that underworld which later was to figure in his vital dramatic pictures, wrote advertisements for a canned soup—in Hauptmann's early play, Friedensfest, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... use the word "blood," but that is what he implied. And his brother knew the thought—that Bud might have been shot by some rustlers or roving desperados and so had been dropped from the saddle. But there were no evidences of foul play, and no signs of a struggle. No marks showed on ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... of when crossing the bed itself, now began again. The Wadi went rushing past before the broom of moonlight. Again, the enormous and the tiny combined in one single strange impression. For, through this conception of great movement, stirred also a roving, delicate touch that his imagination felt as bird-like. Behind the solid mass of the Desert's immobility flashed something swift and light and airy. Bizarre pictures interpreted it to him, like rapid snap-shots of a huge flying panorama: he thought of darting dragon-flies ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... 's I should particularly like to lay abed in this room," said Osh, his eyes roving about the chamber judicially. "I shouldn't hev no comfort ondressin' here, nohow; not with this mess o' live stock lookin' at me every minute, whatever I happened to be takin' off. I s'pose that rooster'd ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... soon as I had arrived at the age which allowed me to take possession of my property, I sought the element so congenial to my disposition. For some years I continued the profession, and was fortunate in my speculations; but I cared little for gain; my delight was in roving from clime to clime, flying before the gale,—in looking with defiance at the vast mountainous seas which threatened to overwhelm me,—in the roaring of the wind,—in the mad raging of the surf,—in the excitement of battle, even in the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... John A. Harris, pitied the boy; whose sprightliness, social accomplishments, and good conduct, had made a favorable impression. He was taken into Mr. Harris' family, and assiduously nursed during an indisposition which lasted more than two months. This circumstance appeased his roving disposition for a time, and he remained upon the farm of his good friend, Mr. Harris, for two years, making himself practically acquainted with the life and toils of an agriculturist. In 1839, he concluded to return to Philadelphia, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... was to be frank, he declared, his pale blue eyes roving from place to place, his nervous fingers incessantly playing with his thin, uncertain lips. This mania for truthfulness, he asserted, was natural, in that it offered him the one sure path to freedom and the establishment of his innocence of all connection with ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... territory covered, at the opening of the sixteenth century, with numerous tribes, of divers languages, existing in the mere hunter state, or at most, with some habits of horticulture superadded. They had neither cattle nor arts. They were bowmen and spearmen—roving and predatory, with very little, if any thing, in their traditions, to link them to these prior central families of men, but with nearly every thing in their physical and intellectual type, to favor such a ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... willing to remain under her wing and protection. Indeed, in character he was as unlike his brothers and sisters as he was in appearance. They were good, obedient chickens, and when the old hen chicked after them they chirped and ran back to her side. But Medio Pollito had a roving spirit in spite of his one leg, and when his mother called to him to return to the coop, he pretended that he could not hear, because he ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... friend of dogs. The newcomer who had joined the roving Rishis had a dog with him. Hence, he is called by the name ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to Antiquities, roving, magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased: and being exceedingly credulous, would stuff his many Letters sent to A.W. with ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... which we rode quivered; I myself felt a thousand needle-pointed roving arrows prick me, urging me on to some jubilant, reckless orgy ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... enough that I am obliged to sell the beast? Now you want me to sell everything. If you want me to leave, carry me out into the churchyard. It is nothing to you Germans to move from place to place, you are a roving people and have no country, but a peasant is like a stone by the wayside. I know everything here by heart. I have moved every clod of earth with my own hands; now you say: sell and go elsewhere. Wherever I went I should be dazed ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... wife to manage the inn; and as she is a woman of colour, a pair of old bachelors like you and I may be excused for guessing that it is the wife, quite as much as the health, that sends him back to roving. J. T. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sort of Castilian Rothschild, with a noble brother, or cousin, in every great trading town of South America. The alleged Don Benito was in early manhood, about twenty-nine or thirty. To assume a sort of roving cadetship in the maritime affairs of such a house, what more likely scheme for a young knave of talent and spirit? But the Spaniard was a pale invalid. Never mind. For even to the degree of simulating mortal disease, the craft of ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... case with the first home of my grandfather, and his seven sons could turn their hands to any trade, and do pretty good work. If the men's clothes were not made by a member of the household, they were made in the house by a sewing girl, or a roving tailor, and the boots and shoes were made by cobblers of the same itinerant stripe. Many of the productions of the farm were unsaleable, owing to the want of large towns for a market. Trade, such as then existed, was carried ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... Mark's eyes were roving all about, but he saw nothing in any direction save a little dark triangular piece of something, with the forward side a little curved, and this was moving slowly through ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... Imbecile, may the devil take you! What are you afraid of? Say? A lantern and a mirror. That's all! Softly with those oars, miserable wretch! They incline the mirror at will and light the sea to find out if any folks like us are roving over it. They're on the watch for smugglers. We're out of reach; they're too far away, now. Don't be afraid, boy, we're safe! ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... no roving eye. He seemed, indeed, steady of hearing to the verge of stolidity, yet in a few seconds he had noted and drawn rapid conclusions from the environment. The cheerlessness of the house had struck him and the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... of Spring, the garden's queen, Yon peach-tree charms the roving sight; Its fragrant leaves how richly green! Its blossoms how ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... services the German emperor created him "Captain Guardian" of his artillery, and would have loaded him with further honours, but a roving spirit was upon him, and he started for Sicily to visit his noble friends who were resident in that island. On his route he was everywhere received with the utmost respect by the Princes of Germany and Italy; and when he arrived ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... that all who could afford the expense built castles to live in, with stone walls so thick that even the giants of Spor could not batter them down. And the children were not allowed to stray far from home for fear some roving band of robbers might steal them and make their parents pay large sums ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... of these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is small. As for the sons and the daughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters must take care of themselves; at least, with only the maternal help. For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for the bower; and so, being a great traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless, as ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and also that two boats, containing many fugitives, had effected an escape. She must then be in one of those, and if she were, what might she not be suffering, without food or shelter, and liable at any moment to fall into the hands of some roving band of savages? For her sake, he must regain his freedom. Yes, he must, and he would. Why not strike for it at that very moment? Would he ever have a ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... determination to trust all in a sentence and have it over with, for it was clear the savages were in no mood for diplomatic evasion: "to ask your guidance and protection on our march eastward on the morrow. I come to the Pottawattomies as friends; for I fear we may meet with trouble on the way, from roving bands of Wyandots and Miamis, and we are greatly burdened by our women and children. It is to ask this that I and the Long Knife ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... to her strongly atavistic instincts far more directly than membership in a disciplined regular army. The guerilla fighter must of necessity be put to shifts—even moral shifts—which the common soldier, trained and commanded by others, can be spared; but her heart was with the man roving in the hills on his own account. That Ford should deliberately seek chains in barracks, when by her surrender on the subject of Evie she had made it possible for him still to keep the liberty of the field, was to her at once incomprehensible and ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... small turret, rather resembling a pepper-box than a Gothic watchtower. Neither did the front indicate absolute security from danger. There were loop-holes for musketry, and iron stanchions on the lower windows, probably to repel any roving band of gypsies, or resist a predatory visit from the caterans of the neighbouring Highlands. Stables and other offices occupied another side of the square. The former were low vaults, with narrow slits instead of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... than to desolate hostile provinces, till in the end provisions and winter quarters formed the principal object of the summer campaigns." "Disease, famine, and want of discipline swept away whole armies before they had seen an enemy." Soldiers deserted the ranks, and became roving banditti. Law and justice entirely vanished from the land. Germany, it is asserted by Mitchell, lost probably twelve millions of people. Before the war, the population was sixteen millions; at the close of the war, it had dwindled to four millions. The city of Augsburg at one time had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... begin the laughing at the affair, which she had pathetically intimated that she would rather some one else should begin. He recoiled from his imprudence with a shock, but he had the pleasure of having mystified Miss Macroyd. He felt dismissal in the roving eye which she cast from him round the room, and he willingly let another young man replace him at ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... brought to and sent through a series of machines termed "Bobbin and Fly Frames." There are usually three of these machines for the cotton to pass through, to which are given the names of "Slubbing," "Intermediate," and "Roving" Frames. ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... mediaeval times, and at this moment is almost exclusively confined to these subjects in France, the class of works to which we are now referring differs entirely in subject and style. In England and America the roving life of the colonies, the backwoods, the Western States, and the Indian frontiers has created an unique school of realistic fiction in which Mr. Kipling is at this moment the chief professor. There is moreover a manifest affinity between these ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... father was a Manche man from Cherbourg, who happened to get wrecked on the Hanois, and settled and married in Peter Port. Paul Martel had grown up to the sea. He had sailed to foreign parts and seen much of the world. He was an excellent sailor, and when he tired of a roving life turned his abilities to account in those peculiar channels of trade which the situation of the Islands and their ancient privileges particularly fitted them for. The Government in London had, indeed, tried, time after time, to suppress the free-trading, ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... beer: it seemed the only message the people cared to hear. Even among the sirens of the pavement, she noticed that the quiet and merely pretty were hardly heeded. It was everywhere the painted and the overdressed that drew the roving eyes. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... For Norton's eye, roving round the room, caught the rich lace drapery which lay upon one of Matilda's chairs. He went closer to look at it, and then turned an amazed ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist belted suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... gently, "it must have been hard sometimes." He pictured to himself that roving existence lived among such people as O'Hara must have known, and it sent a hot wave of anger and distress over him from ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... us, there are many such vast and flowery meads in the interior of America, to which the roving tribes of Indians repair once or twice in a century to settle the rights of the chase, and lead their solemn dances; and so deep an impression do these assemblies leave on the minds of the savages, that the highest ideas they entertain of future felicity consist ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... bellows-mender's touch. Yet, sprightly to the scratch, both Buffers came, [4] While ribbers rung from each resounding frame, And divers digs, and many a ponderous pelt, Were on their broad bread-baskets heard and felt. [5] With roving aim, but aim that rarely miss'd Round lugs and ogles flew the frequent fist; [6] While showers of facers told so deadly well, That the crush'd jaw-bones crackled as they fell! But firmly stood Entellus—and still bright, Though ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... experiment in Antigua shows that such sentiments are groundless prejudices. There a large body of slaves were "turned loose;" they had full liberty to leave their old homes and settle on other properties—or if they preferred a continuous course of roving, they might change employers every six weeks, and pass from one estate to another until they had accomplished the circuit of the island. But, what are the facts? "The negroes are not disposed to leave the estates on which they have formerly lived, unless they are forced away ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... "The roving sight Pursues its pleasing course o'er neighbouring hills, Of many a different form and different hue: Bright with the rip'ning corn, or green with grass, Or dark ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... either more fertile, more beautiful, or more healthful—but in compliance with that feverish restlessness of mood—that sleepless discontent of temper, which, perhaps, more than any other quality, is the moral failing in the character of the Anglo-American. The roving desires of his ancestor, which brought him across the waters, have been transmitted without diminution—nay, with large increase—to the son. The creatures of a new condition of things, and new necessities, our people will follow out their destiny. The restless energies which distinguish ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... property of Fladge, he allowing the generous stipend of one shilling a week to the artist. Here, then, Mr. Fladge becomes sensible of the fact that some good always come of great evils, for indeed his criminal was so far roving a mine of wealth that he only hoped it might be his fortune to receive many more such enemies of the state: he cared not whether they came from Fetter or Fuddle's court. With sense enough to keep ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... meet in yonder bowers, Perhaps my soul's too prone to roving, But older, firmer hearts than ours, Have found ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... of men, not natives by extraction, but newly come from the sea and speaking Greek or another Aegean tongue. These men had ventured so far to seize the rich lands at the mouths of the long Anatolian valleys, from which their roving forefathers had been almost entirely debarred by the provincial forces of some inland power, presumably the Hatti Empire of Cappadocia. In earlier days the Cretans, or their kin of Mycenaean Greece in the latest Aegean ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... her to see if she was in her senses: it was not the first time he had suspected her of being deranged on this one subject. But no: she was pale as death, she was cringing, wincing, quivering, and her eyes roving to and fro; a picture not of frenzy, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... whitewashed board-fence and scanned the group, seeking a familiar face. But those before him had a strange look. He was wondering if he could be mistaken in the place, after all, when, his glance roving to the nearest row of trees, he saw an aged man emerge with his arms full of peaches, which he took to the nearest negro packer. Dick Wrinkle didn't recognize him under his broad hat and in his fine clothes, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... white man. It is impossible to describe the rush of mingled feelings that filled the soul of the young hunter as he leaned on the muzzle of his rifle and looked at this solitary resting-place of one who, doubtless like himself, had been a roving hunter. Had he been young or old when he fell? had he a mother in the distant settlement who watched and longed and waited for the son that was never more to gladden her eyes? had he been murdered, or had he died there and been buried by his sorrowing ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Leelina was never more seen, except by a fisherman on the lake shore, who conceived that he had seen her go off with one of the tall fairies known as the fairy of Green Pines, with green plumes nodding o'er his brows; and it is supposed that she is still roving with him ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... narrative, let us glance briefly at the early career of Captain James Cook. He was born in 1728. After receiving the very slight education already referred to, he was bound apprentice to a shopkeeper. But the roving spirit within him soon caused him to break away from an occupation so uncongenial. He passed little more than a year behind the counter, and then, in 1746, went ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... occupy a man,—when divided with the oversight of his farm, overtasked his powers, and left him no leisure for poetic work, except from time to time crooning over a random song. Then the habits which his roving Excise life must have induced were, even to a soul less social than that of Burns, perilous in the extreme. The temptations he was in this way exposed to, Lockhart has drawn with a powerful hand. "From the castle to the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... hill streams were reduced to a trickle among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The second growth of stunted timber, showing everywhere the scars of the wasting rapacity of man, stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving life, from the cattle to the woodchucks and even the field mice, had moved down to hide itself in the thicker growths near the water courses or had stolen away into the depths ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... half watched in the trenches, Captain Freeman read the prayers and the service for the dead. Three volleys were fired over the graves after the slain men had been laid in them. Bugler Swanson blew "taps," after which the graves were carefully filled and the tops sodded so that roving Moros would not afterwards find and desecrate these graves, sacred to the American people. All in good time the American military authorities would send and exhume these remains, transferring them to marked resting places ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... her and truss her up with her own girdle[FN161]!" He kept walking in the direction of the sound and when he reached the further side he looked and behold, a stream was gushing and flowing, and antelopes at large were frisking and roving, and wild cattle amid the pasture moving, and birds expressed joy and gladness in their divers tongues, and that place was purfled with all manner flowers and green herbs, even as a poet described it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... every one of you!" said the convalescent, smiling eyes roving about her. "Grass paper, Kane, and such a dear border!" she said. "And everything feeling so clean! And my darling girl writing letters and seeing people all these weeks! And my boys so good! And dear ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... Siberia. His account of them, published in 1802, shows the Gipsy to be the same in Northern Russia as with us in England. He describes them as follows:—"I was surprised at the appearance of detached families throughout the Government of Tobolsk, and upon inquiry I learned that several roving companies of these people had strolled into the city of Tobolsk." The governor thought of establishing a colony of them, but they were too cunning for the simple Siberian peasant. He placed them on a footing with the peasants, and allotted ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... appeared before the board of the Association, February 12, 1855, in behalf of his people. He had been a Baptist missionary to the Ojibways, but had found that he could accomplish little while the Indians continued their roving life and their wars with the Sioux. He therefore wished to have his people adopt a settled agricultural life. The Baptist Home Missionary Society, with which he was laboring, would not accede to his plans in this respect, and desired that he should confine himself to the preaching ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... word, however, that they were off to Africa had been sufficient to arouse the old man's roving instinct and here he was on deck once more as active as a boy and almost as impatient for the start for the Dark Continent. Ben slept at the Chester's home that night and if his dreams were not as populated with visions of elephants, leopards, deer, huge snakes and pigmy savages ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... mysteriously as he came. "In Liberty County," says history, "there lived during the Revolution a man by the name of Robert Sallette, distinguished for his opposition to the Tories. It is not known with certainty to what particular command he was attached. He appears to have been a sort of roving character, doing things in his own way." Here is the mystery of romance to begin with. Here is the wanderer,—the character so dear to ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... from your long, long roving, On life's sea so bleak and rough; Come to me tender and loving, And I ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... times when, roving high and low, I have been harassed with the toil of verse, Much pains and little progress, and at once Some lovely Image in the song rose up, Full-formed, like Venus ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... flattered himself. The horse whinneyed because he inhaled the faint odor of his kind. He drew down on the rein and settled into a swinging trot, which to Maurice's surprise was faster and easier than the canter. They covered a mile this way, when Maurice's roving eye discovered moving shadows, perhaps half ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... for, by their aid, the sight of man is raised nearly to a par with that of night-roving animals; therefore, a sportsman would find them of great service when watching for game at night. A small and inexpensive glass is as useful for this purpose as a large one; but there is a considerable difference between the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... comfortable than perhaps she had ever been in her life. But it was only her illness that made her capable of prizing such comfort. In health, the heather on a hill-side was far more to her taste than bed and blankets. She had a wild, roving, savage nature, and the wind was dearer to her than house-walls. She had come of ancestors—and it was a poor little atom of truth that a soul bred like this woman could have been born capable of entertaining. But ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... where the hearths and altars of New England were first placed; where Christianity, and civilization, and letters made their first lodgement, in a vast extent of country, covered with a wilderness, and peopled by roving barbarians. We are here, at the season of the year at which the event took place. The imagination irresistibly and rapidly draws around us the principal features and the leading characters in the original scene. We cast our eyes ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... not know, Wilfred; but in roving round the world for more than eleven years I have learnt to take care of myself. Depend upon it, I shall use that knowledge, not only to care for myself, but for others. Be careful then. Justice is sometimes as strong a feeling as revenge, and if needs ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... had been painstakingly lashed to a trimmed shaft of wood. Since he had emerged from that clouding of mind which still gripped the Hunter, he had done what he could to prepare for another attack from any roving beast. And he also had Hume's ray tube—its single charge to be ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... the barge would make, was visible. The lantern still shone at the cruiser's peak. Once, indeed, she thought the sound of oars was again to be heard, and much nearer than before; and yet no effort of her quick and roving sight could detect the position of the boat. But to all these doubts succeeded an alarm which sprang from a new and very ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... sovereign of one peaceful hour! Not dull art Thou as undiscerning Night; But studious only to remove from sight Day's mutable distinctions.—Ancient Power! Thus did the waters gleam, the mountains lower, 5 To the rude Briton, when, in wolf-skin vest Here roving wild, he laid him down to rest On the bare rock, or through a leafy bower Looked ere his eyes were closed. By him was seen The self-same Vision which we now behold, 10 At thy meek bidding, shadowy Power! brought forth These mighty barriers, and the gulf between; ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... cure the ague, palsy, and the gout, And that's a roving pain that goes within and out; A broken leg or arm, I soon can cure the pain, And if thou break'st thy neck, I'll stoutly set it again. Bring me an old woman of fourscore years and ten, Without a tooth in her head, I'll ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... are floating that move with the tide, Which, sterile at first, are soon covered with flowers, And thus o'er the bright waters fairy-like glide. Thus the mind the most vacant is quickly awakened, And the heart bears a harvest that late was so bare, Of him who in roving finds objects of loving, Like the fawn of the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... midst of a vast and fertile plain, extending to Palmyra on the east, and to the Orontes on the west. With the exception of a few mud-built villages along the east and near the city, there is no settled population between Hums and Palmyra. The wild roving Bedawin sweep the vast plains in every direction, and only a few years ago, the great gates of Hums were frequently closed at midday to prevent the incursion of these rough robbers of the desert. On the west of the city are beautiful gardens ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... firmly, his keen, fiery eyes roving over the group before him, the gray-haired colonel of infantry closed ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... discovered too late the error he had committed in cultivating the roving propensities of his son, to the exclusion of steady, nobler pursuits. He had intended merely to give him a holiday, and a taste of a seafaring life; but after revelling in the joys of freedom, he found it ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... have thought that he was a German spy. Why did she not ask him point blank what he was doing in that galley. She has never supplied me with a credible explanation, She pleads, with obvious insincerity, the instructions of Dawson, which in the most reprehensible way granted to her the vaguest of roving commissions. She parades her duty before me in ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... unfamiliar: not only the flora, but the maritime wealth of this singular country. He would set out of a morning, visiting the coves and creeks, roving along the beaches of this magnificent gulf, a lump of bread in his pocket, quenching his thirst with sea-water in ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... could not concentrate her thoughts upon the page before her; they went roving after a coal black steed and its handsome rider, until finally her book dropped from her hands, her eyes fixed themselves dreamily upon the lofty, far-off peaks of the Humboldt Mountains, and she was lost to time and place—everything save her ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... and looked over. Did the light show through the tarpaulin? Alack!—there must be a rent somewhere—for he saw a dim glow-worm light beyond the cliff, on the dark rib of the mountain. It was invisible from below, but any roving eye from the top would be caught by it in an instant. In a second he had raced along the edge, dived in and out of the blocks, guiding his way by a sort of bat's instinct, till he reached the rocky stairway, which he descended at imminent risk ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and the sunset was fading from the French sky beyond the Italian shore when he got out of his car and looked round for a porter to take his valise. His roving eye lighted on the anxious figure, which as fully as the anxious face, of a short, stout, elderly man expressed a sort of distraction, as he stood loaded down with umbrellas, bags, bundles, and wraps, and seemed ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... steps, suddenly sank to earth. Willock unfastened the halter from its neck, tied it with the lariat about his waist, and without pause, set out afoot. If the pony died from the terrible strain of that unremitting flight, doubtless the roving Indians of the plains would find it and try to follow his trail; if it survived he would be safer if not found near it. In either case, swift flight was still imperative, and the shifting sand, beaten out of shape by the constant wind, ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the man wheedled in a small, caressing voice, "where is your greeting to your glad padre? Dios mio!" he muttered, his eyes roving over her full figure, "but the Virgin herself was never more lovely! Come, daughter," he purred, extending his arms; "come to a father's heart that now, praise the Saints! shall ache no more for its ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... cataclysmic changes after an absence of three weeks. "Dogs overrunning the place, and Big Liza warbling at the top of her lungs in the kitchen, and you in your second-best riding skirt at this hour in the afternoon—naughty mother! Everything just the same as if—" Her roving eyes chanced to rest on her sister's face, and she ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... eyes again took in the silent Charlie in their roving glance. At that instant the poker game broke up, and the men gathered at ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... Tom, quickly, at the same time motioning to Mr. Jenks to agree with him. The eyes of the young inventor were roving about. He saw what looked like a second trail, leading down the mountain, from the far side of the cave. He was convinced now that there was another way to get to it. Possibly they might find it. At any rate nothing more could be done now. They must go back, for the cavern was too ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... respite at times when the Vikings fought amongst themselves. In early days there were frequent struggles for supremacy in Norway, between local kinglets and ambitious chiefs. Fighting was in the blood of the Northmen. Two sea-roving squadrons would sometimes challenge each other to battle for the mere sake of a fight. As Norway coalesced into a single kingdom, and as the first teachers of Christianity induced the kings to suppress piracy, there was more of peace and order on the Northern Seas. But in this transition period ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... stranger fired a gun and hoisted Roman colours. Boldheart then perceived her to be the Latin-grammar master's bark. Such indeed she was, and had been tacking about the world in unavailing pursuit, from the time of his first taking to a roving life. ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... "rushed" about nine years since, when some twenty thousand diggers were drawn together, with even more than the usual proportion of grog-shanty keepers, loafers, thieves, and low men and women of every description. In fact, the very scum of the roving population of the colony seems to have accumulated in the camp; and crime upon crime was committed, until at length an affair occurred, more dreadful and outrageous than anything that had preceded it, which thoroughly roused the digger ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... the protestant interest at present stands upon a much stronger basis than it did a century ago. The Irish, who formerly led an unsettled and roving life, in the woods, bogs, and mountains, and lived on the depredation of their neighbours, they who, in the morning seized the prey, and at night divided the spoil, have, for many years past, become quiet and civilized. They taste the sweets of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... more his throat seemed to choke up and his ears to fill with buzzing sounds. The camp fire showed him Celeste tied to a tree. She looked pale and dejected, and her head rested against the tree stem, but her eyes kept roving the darkness in every direction as if she expected rescue. Her bridal finery had been torn by the bushes and her hair was loose, but Gabriel had never seen Celeste when ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... there of a Christian kingdom, pilgrims flocked to the holy places. Soon, however, piteous stories reached Jerusalem of the cruel spoliation and murder of unarmed pilgrims, on their journey from the coast, by hordes of roving lightly-armed Bedouins, against whom the heavily-armed Franks were powerless. The evil was growing well-nigh intolerable when, in 1118, two young French nobles, Hugh of Payens and Godfrey of St. Omer, with other ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... on slavery, race, etc., were only aware of the fact that such people as the primitive Greeks, or the ancestors of classical Greeks, that the ancestors of the Latins, that even the roving, robbing ancestors of the Anglo Saxons, in some way or other, have been anthropophagi, and worshipped fetishes; and even as thus called already civilized, they sacrificed men to gods,—could our great pro-slavers know all this, they would be ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... Feng, whose father Gerwendil had been governor of the Jutes, were appointed in his place by Rorik to defend Jutland. But Horwendil held the monarchy for three years, and then, to will the height of glory, devoted himself to roving. Then Koller, King of Norway, in rivalry of his great deeds and renown, deemed it would be a handsome deed if by his greater strength in arms he could bedim the far-famed glory of the rover; and cruising about the sea, he watched for Horwendil's fleet and came up with it. There was an island ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... whose roving eye had just caught Cimon and Democrates in the audience, seemed never to ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... kept up, failed me. I made many sad reflections on my former life, and looked back with horror and detestation to actions which before I disliked, but now I trembled at the remembrance of. I had long before this repented me of that roving course of life, but never with such concern as now. I did also call to mind the many miraculous acts of God's providence towards me in the whole course of my life. For all these I returned thanks, and once more desired God's assistance, and ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... instructions by telegram to proceed at once to Kurland and Livonia, where Citizen Browning was abroad again, and town and country-side blazed in revolt. It was a roving commission, and for two months Trent followed his luck. It served him not less well than usual. He was the only correspondent who saw General Dragilew killed in the street at Volmar by a girl of eighteen. He saw burnings, lynchings, fusillades, hangings; ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... out its ocean-like expanse, embellished with groves, garlanded with flowers of gorgeous colors waving in the summer breeze, checkered with sunshine and the shade of passing clouds, with roving herds of the stately buffalo and the graceful antelope. And again the gloomy forest would appear, extending over countless leagues, where bears, wolves, and ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... of happiness which I could conceive of, though I had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to admit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had compared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in "wandering up and down upon the earth"; and indeed a crafty disposition, which operates not in deep-laid plans, but in disconnected tricks, ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and Bill Jones were hungry a hasty meal was prepared for them, during the eating of which they told of their experiences since landing from the airship. They had been on a farm until fired with a desire to go roving once more. ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... stolen," the housekeeper said, in reporting the mischief to Captain Atherton, "and all the queer doin's are on the first floor. Do you see that it looks as if the same person that went all over Captain Seaford's house, has been roving through this one? Nothing was stolen there, but everything had been ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... ignorance and uncertainty about it, not filled up by any recorded opinion; and curiosity, impertinence, and vanity rush eagerly into the vacuum. A new book is the fair field for petulance and coxcombry to gather laurels in—the butt set up for roving opinion to aim at. Can we wonder, then, that the circulating libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and their grand-daughters, when a new novel is announced? That mail-coach copies of the Edinburgh Review are or were coveted? That the manuscript of the Waverley ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... strategy for you!" he whispered. "That wily Jack-at-a-pinch of ours will befool them into believing that he is a runner from the Cowee Towns. 'Tis our cue to lie close; he will halt them just here, and there will be roving eyes in the heads of the two who have ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... wheel. He said his name was Crannish, and he spelled it for the captain, who examined the crew list to verify him. He said that he was known as "Long Jim" by his mates. He did not seem to take the murder as a serious matter, but answered Captain Riggs's questions calmly, his eyes roving over the interior of the saloon, taking us all in ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... which the hunters had been lately employed. Both were well enough known, though but little notice was taken of their movements, which lay generally beyond the observation of the citizen community. It was supposed they had been out upon one of their usual hunts, and had fallen in with a roving ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... family from a natural relation grew into a highly unnatural social anachronism. The loose ties of a roving life became fetters of a fixed conventionality. Bonds originally of mutual advantage hardened into restrictions by which the young were hopelessly tethered to the old. Midway in its course the race undertook to turn round and face backwards, as it journeyed on. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... off, taking bites from the sandwich as he went. He vanished. Haney leaned back against a sapling, his eyes roving about the shoreline and the ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... market for a country rich in natural produce, and, above all, Egypt's marvellously good geographical position stood her in good stead in time of war. Surrounded nearly on all sides by desert land, the few inhabitants, roving Bedouins, offered no danger. The land of the Nile was accessible to an enemy in one direction only, along the coast of Syria. This even teemed with difficulties. Transports there could only be managed with the greatest ingenuity, and, in case of defeat, retreat was almost ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... traditions, heaven was a scene of endless festivity, the ghosts dancing to the sound of the rattle and the drum, and greeting with hospitable welcome the occasional visitor from the living world: for the spirit-land was not far off, and roving hunters ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... with the {8} lamentable condition of those who are driven about by every wind of novelty. The condition of such a man may doubtless be far more enviable than theirs, who have no settled fixed principles, and who wander from creed to creed, and from sect to sect, just as their fickle and roving minds suggest some transitory preference. But the believer must not be driven by the evils of one extreme to take refuge in the opposite. The whirlpool may be the more perilous, but the Christian mariner must avoid the rock also, or he will equally make ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... south-western side running out into the sea. The sleepy town of Poole stands on the shore, having dim recollections of its ships and commerce of centuries ago. It was a nursery for privateersmen, and many are the exploits recorded of them. It was also, from the intricacy of its creeks and the roving character of its people, a notorious place for smuggling. Poole is an old-fashioned, brick-built town, with a picturesque gateway yet remaining as a specimen of its ancient defences. In the vale of the Stour, which here debouches, is the ancient minster of Wimborne, founded in the reign of ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... to sea. He cannot himself be with them as in their first action, for he knows well that Guthrum will seize the first moment of his absence to sally from Exeter, break the Saxon lines, and scatter his army in roving bands over Devonshire, on their way back to the eastern kingdom. The Saxon fleet puts out, manned itself, as some say, partly with sea-robbers, hired to fight their own people. However manned, it attacks bravely a portion of the pirates. But a mightier power than the fleet fought ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Indifferent well; that is to say, not well. A damsel has ensnared him with the glances Of her dark, roving eyes, as herdsmen catch A steer of Andalusia with a lazo. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... put a stop to the general tumult, though it delivered this particular family. For the rabble, by this time, were prodigiously increased, and went roving up and down the town, breaking the windows of the Members of Parliament and insulting them in their coaches in the streets. They put out all the lights that they might not be discovered. And the author of this had one great stone thrown at him for but looking ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the mouth of the river a yawl-rigged craft with an auxiliary engine had just entered it. Her captain was sitting on deck with his right hand grasping the wheel, his body leaning forward, rigid as bronze, while his roving eye scanned water and sky, reefs, banks and keys. A roll of the wheel, and the launch darted toward him. When within a hundred yards the whir of the big engine and the chugging of the two-cycle motor of the yawl stopped, and as the boats were passing ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... had buried the last of my companions my stock of provisions was so small that I hardly thought I should live long enough to dig my own grave, which I set about doing, while I regretted bitterly the roving disposition which was always bringing me into such straits, and thought longingly of all the comfort and luxury that I had left. But luckily for me the fancy took me to stand once more beside the river where it ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... one of no common difficulty: the country they had to traverse was untrodden even by the feet of former missionaries, inhabited by wild, roving tribes, beggared by Chinese extortions, rendered barren by long misgovernment, and lastly, infested in many parts by bands of armed robbers. These latter are, it is true, far different, in manner at least, from what their name would lead most of our readers to expect, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... and I heard his door closing, very gently. Long before his arrival, however, I had been certain of his identity with the figure I had seen gazing up at the terraces of Quesnay from the borders of the grove. Other questions remained to bother me: Why had Keredec not prevented this night-roving, and why, since he did permit it, should he conceal his knowledge of it from Oliver? And what, oh, what wondrous specific had the mighty man ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington |
