"Chequered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arise from amid the nodding fern; the silvery shafts of the old birch trees; the knotted trunks of the hoary oak, the grotesque but graceful branches which never shed their honours under the tyrant pruning-hook; the soft green sward; the chequered light and shade; the wild luxuriant weeds; the lichen and the moss—all, all are beautiful alike in the green freshness of spring, or in the sadness and sere of autumn. Their beauty is of that kind which makes the heart full with joy—appealing to the affections with ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and earnest, who carried the union of the British, separated, Provinces, and made the "Dominion," no man gave more soul and substance to the cause, by his eloquence, than Mr. d'Arcy McGee. His had been a chequered career. Beginning, like Sir George Etienne Cartier, in revolt against what he believed to be British tyranny, he ended his life, one of the most loyal, as he was one of the most eloquent, of Her Majesty's ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... Ah, my sister—lovely in person but lovelier far in heart and mind—adorably innocent—troubled and destined to infinitely deeper distress before the end—brave and true and hopeful through all the chequered course of love! You had not known, dear heart, but then discovered, all in a heavenly flash, what sickness ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... doubtless referred to him at different parts of his chequered career, and as a god under different manifestations of his divine nature. The religious art of the Aztecs did not demand any uniformity in ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... conduct. I have been to school in both countries, and I found, in the boys of the North, something at once rougher and more tender, at once more reserve and more expansion, a greater habitual distance chequered by glimpses of a nearer intimacy, and on the whole wider extremes of temperament and sensibility. The boy of the South seems more wholesome, but less thoughtful; he gives himself to games as to a business, striving to excel, but is not readily transported ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... built partly of a warm brown sandstone, partly of stone of a pale yellow or drab colour, the two kinds being in many places mixed so as to give the walls a chequered appearance. This may be noticed both outside and inside the building. In some of the walls the stones are used irregularly, in others they are carefully squared. The red stone is to be met with in the neighbourhood: some of that used for raising the transept ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... who from the time she left the country town led a chequered life. The various episodes are cleverly connected, and the descriptive ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... Mildman, whose appearance I studied with an anxious eye, was a gentlemanly-looking man of five-and-forty, or thereabouts, with a high bald forehead, and good features, the prevailing expression of which, naturally mild and benevolent, was at times chequered by that look which all schoolmasters sooner or later acquire-a look which seems to say, "Now, sir, do you intend to mind me or do you not?" Had it not been for this, and for an appearance of irresolution about the mouth, he ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... a large bird, not much unlike the Frigate-Bird, as light, but not so swift. The under-part of its plumage is chequered brown and white, but the upper-part is ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... our minorities the appointment of the government. To state it in another form; it is merely a question, whether we will divide the United States into sixteen or one hundred and thirty-seven districts. The latter being more chequered, and representing the people in smaller sections, would be more likely to be an exact representation of their diversified sentiments. But a representation of a part by great, and a part by small sections, would give a result very different from what would be the sentiment of the whole ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... flying at the royal mast-heads of King's ships, in the nineteenth century, as the distinguishing symbols of flag-officers, who had to look for their birth-places among ourselves. In the course of a chequered life, in which we have been brought in collision with as great a diversity of rank, professions, and characters, as often falls to the lot of any one individual, we have been thrown into contact with no less than eight English admirals, of American birth; ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the well-conditioned city of Rotterdam. The day was warm—unusually so for the season—there was hardly a breath of air stirring; and the multitude were in no bad humor at being now and then besprinkled with friendly showers of momentary duration, that fell from large white masses of cloud which chequered in a fitful manner the blue vault of the firmament. Nevertheless, about noon, a slight but remarkable agitation became apparent in the assembly: the clattering of ten thousand tongues succeeded; and, in an instant ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... old beeches scattered about it; he walked slowly towards the gates, lighting his cigar as he went, and thinking. He was thinking of his past life, and of his future. What was it to be? A dull hackneyed course of money-making, chequered only by the dreary vicissitudes of trade, and brightened only by such selfish pleasures as constitute the recreations of a business man—an occasional dinner at Blackwall or Richmond, a week's shooting ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... earlier season lead, To the tanned haycock in the mead. Sometimes, with secure delight, The upland hamlets will invite, When the merry bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth and many a maid Dancing in the chequered shade, And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday, Till the livelong daylight fail: Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat, How Faery Mab the junkets eat. She was pinched and pulled, she said; And he, by Friar's lantern led, Tells ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... the whole hog." George, who had laid off every penny, and a few besides, and stood to win, however it came out, grinned down on him from his bulky height, with the words: "So ho, my wild one!" for after a chequered apprenticeship weathered with the money of a deeply complaining Roger, his Forsyte blood was beginning to stand him in good stead ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... right down upon the borders of the clearing. The western end was already steeped in moonshine; the rest, and the block house itself, still lay in a black shadow chequered with long silvery streaks of light. On the other side of the house an immense fire had burned itself into clear embers and shed a steady, red reverberation, contrasted strongly with the mellow paleness of the moon. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a natural aversion to give you the history of my own life, which has been chequered with such a variety of different adventures, yet I had rather sacrifice my reputation to the commands of a lady for whom I have so peculiar a regard than not disclose the most secret springs of my actions and the inmost recesses of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... no breathing time for thee? No pause upon thy many-chequered lands? Now resting on my bed with listless hands, I mourn thee resting not. Continually Hear I the plashing borders of the sea Answer each other from the rocks and sands. Troop all the rivers seawards; nothing stands, But with strange ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... knowledge, which I fancy had been suggested by Goldsmith's trip with his flute. It happened that in the early days of 1870, the proprietor of the Pall Mall Gazette began the first of the series of chequered changes in the history of the journal, by starting it as a morning paper. I had been an occasional contributor in a humble way to the evening edition, and thought I might have a chance of an appointment on the staff ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "So you are broke? Well, in my chequered career I have breakfasted on much worse fare ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... view at sunrise of the Basquiau Hill, skirting half the horizon with its white sides chequered by forests of pine. It is seen from Pine Island Lake at the distance of fifty miles and cannot therefore be less than three-fourths of a mile in perpendicular height; probably the greatest elevation between the Atlantic ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... Incidents and Reminiscences of His Childhood; His Chequered Life As a Student and Teacher; and His Remarkable Career As a Soldier and Author; Embracing Also the Story of His Unprecedented Journey from Ocean to Ocean on Horseback; and an Account of His Discovery of the True Source of the Mississippi ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... wooden vessel, of about our own tonnage, painted black with a broad white ribbon chequered with false ports; she had a Dutch look about her; and, from her model, was evidently somewhat elderly. She had been ship-rigged, and from the appearance of the wreckage alongside had been caught unawares, very probably by the recent hurricane, ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... the floor of chequered marbles, black and white, stood a carved table of black oak. By this he halted, leaning lightly against it whilst she sat enthroned in the great crimson chair ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and yet too early to get up. A little wandering of the voice, a little wandering of the feet.... The may tree in the middle of the garden seemed to be her partner. A small blot moved up and down the chequered trunk of the tree, and that was the shadow of a grey squirrel, watching the dancing. The squirrel wore the same fur as the two-and-a-half-guinea young lady wears, and sometimes it looked with a tilted head at the witch, and sometimes it buried its face in ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... earliest periods, among powerful nations, this linear decoration is more or less filled with chequered or barred shade, and begins at once to represent animal or floral form, by filling its outlines with flat shadow, or with flat colour. And here we instantly find two great divisions of temper and thought. The Greeks look upon all colour first as light; they are, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... for a moment on the features of your humble adorer. I am a European, one who has moved in the first circles of his native land, and after commencing life as a military man, was compelled by persecution to flee to the hospitable shores of America. Chequered as my life has been, happy, thrice happy shall I consider it, if you will but permit me to devote its remaining years to your service! Without your smiles, the last days of my career will be more gloomy than all that have gone before. But I cannot ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... at length came a perfect moment when Narcissus was separated from his companions in the chase and, stopping suddenly where the evening sun chequered the pathway of the forest with black and gold, heard the nymph's soft footfall ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... ought, he was detained a prisoner of war, and yet this unfortunate man exposed his life in fighting for the British off Cape St. Vincents, as much as the noble Lord himself. Such is the difference of rewards in this chequered world! ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... evil was going on in the breast of her boy, how she would have agonised in prayer for him! But she did not know. There was, however, One who did know, who loved him better even than his mother, and who watched and guarded him throughout all his chequered career. ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... verge of the morass was attained, and their path lay on the declivity. Green-sward it was, and, viewed from a distance, chequered with its narrow and verdant line the dark-brown heath which it traversed, though the distinction was not so easily traced when they were walking on it. [Footnote: This sort of path, visible when looked at from a distance, but not to be seen ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... during the autumn and winter of 1854, gives a very pleasing and distinct idea of the domestic life there during that brief period of happiness, which, however (as we shall see presently), was already chequered by sorrow destined in the Divine providence to become yet deeper and sadder. To this letter I am indebted for the following particulars, which I have ventured slightly to rearrange, yet keeping as closely as possible to the words of ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... "'December 27, 1838. "'My Dear Father,—Through all the chances, changes, and vicissitudes of my chequered life, I never had a task so painful to my mangled feelings as the present one, of addressing you from this doleful spot—my sea-girt prison, on the beach of which I stand a monument of destruction, driven by the adverse winds of fate to the confines ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... a less trembling heart. And now, adieu, my dear young friend. If by Emmeline's long silence you have ever permitted yourself to entertain a suspicion that I did not approve of your correspondence, let this letter from me prove your error, and remember, if ever sorrows in your young yet chequered life should assail you, and you would conceal them from your revered parent, fearing to increase her griefs, write to me without hesitation, without fear, and I will answer you to the best of my ability; for sympathy, believe me, you will never appeal to me in vain, and if you require advice, I will ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... that field of the precarious, the ambiguous Paris over parts of which the great Arch at the top of the Champs-Elysees flings, at its hours, by its wide protective plausible shadow, a precious mantle of "tone." They gather, these chequered parts, into its vast paternal presence and enjoy at its expense a degree of reflected dignity. It was to the big square villa of the Rue Balzac that we turned, as pupils not unacquainted with vicissitudes, from a scene swept bare of M. Lerambert, an establishment ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... fixed design, without a preconceived choice, what inspiration spontaneously dictated to him; it is thus that there arose in his music, without solicitation, without effort, the most idealised form of the emotions which had animated his childhood, chequered his adolescence, and embellished his youth...Without making any pretence to it, he collected into a luminous sheaf sentiments confusedly felt by all in his country, fragmentarily disseminated in their hearts, vaguely perceived ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... to attend upon travellers and necessitous persons. I have likewise spent three days at every halting place, and the fourth day, when I wished to take my leave, no one said with good will, "You may depart;" and whatever articles and furniture had been [applied to my use] at those places, such as chequered carpets, [219] &c., &c., I was told that they were all mine, and that I might either take them away or lock them up in a room, and put my seal on it; that, should it be my pleasure, whenever I came back I might take them away. I have ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... met, she struck immediately into the course it demanded, cheerfully, without repining, and with as little attention as possible to forebodings. Her voice died away toward the back of the house. The moon was shining, and the lawn lay chequered beneath the trees. Corbin Wood, who had been standing in a brown study, began to descend the steps. "I'll take a little walk, Judith, my dear," he said, "and think it over! I'll let myself in." He was gone walking rapidly, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the half-mile to the right smooth as a floor, bounded by a broad band of curling waves, which crept slowly shorewards with the advancing tide. Right underneath us the sand was drifted for miles into fantastic hills, which quivered in the heat, the glaring yellow of its lights chequered by delicate pink shadows and sheets of grey-green bent. To the left were rich alluvial marshes, covered with red cattle sleeping in the sun, and laced with creeks and flowery dykes; and here and there a scarlet line, which gladdened Claude's eye as being a 'bit of positive colour ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... that they had asked me there on purpose, being his friends. Ah, George! what a happy time that was! How, in the sweet days of the sweetest of summers, I laughed at your "presentiment"! How you told me that the joy had come, and, reminding me of my own sermon on the chequered nature of life, asked if the sorrow would yet tread it down. Too soon, ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... moon rose in great beauty, throwing a silvery light upon the surface of the water chequered by the dark shadows of the surrounding trees. Suddenly the hoarse bark of an elk sounded within a short distance, and I could distinguish two or three dark forms on the opposite bank. The shrill and continual barking of spotted ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... executed her plans conscientiously, perseveringly. It was very hard work at first—it was even hard work to the end—but it helped her to stem and keep down anguish; it forced her to be employed; it forbade her to brood; and gleams of satisfaction chequered her gray life here and there when she found she had done good, imparted pleasure, or ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... noontide as he leans on it in the twilight; he can still see the strong sweep of the unruined traceries drawn on the deep serenity of the starry sky, and watch the fantastic shadows of the clustered arches shorten in the moonlight on the chequered floor; or he may close the casements fitted to their unshaken shafts against such wintry winds as would have made an English house vibrate to its foundation, and, in either case, compare their influence on his daily home feeling with that ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... street—"nescio quid meditans nugarum"—sometimes humming the fag end of an Irish melody; anon stopping to stare in a print-shop window; and then I would trudge on, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy as I conned over the various ups and downs that had chequered my life since Jack Withers and I were thoughtless lads together "a long ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... leading incidents in the history of this plucky little town, which formerly returned two members to Parliament. Relatively, its eminent position is entirely lost, but it has an eminence for loveliness of situation that can never be taken from it, and it can educate its sons in a glorious though chequered tradition. It has memories of occupation long before days of Cinque Port emulation. Close to Menabilly Park (Menabilly is the seat of the Rashleighs, a Cornish family of ancient repute) is a granite pillar known as the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... clouds, that pass, With varying shadow, o'er the grass, And imitate, on field and furrow, Life's chequered scene of joy and sorrow; Like streamlet of the mountain North, Now in a torrent racing forth, Now winding slow its silver train, And almost slumbering on the plain; Like breezes of the Autumn day, Whose voice inconstant dies away, And ever swells again ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... you a circumstantial detail of my Italian expedition, during which I was exposed to a great number of hardships, which I thought my weakened constitution could not have bore; as well as to violent fits of passion, chequered, however, with transports of a more agreeable nature; insomuch that I may say I was for two months continually agitated either in mind or body, and very often in both at the same time. As my disorder ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... our traveller found himself in the neighbourhood of his deceased uncle's habitation of Milnwood. It rose among glades and groves that were chequered with a thousand early recollections of joy and sorrow, and made upon Morton that mournful impression, soft and affecting, yet, withal, soothing, which the sensitive mind usually receives from a return to the haunts of childhood and early youth, after having experienced the vicissitudes ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... these acquirements amount to if the owner were sent into the City among his brethren! Behold a fourth in much and deep conversation with himself, biting his thumbs at proper junctures, his countenance chequered with business and design; sometimes walking very fast, with his eyes nailed to a paper that he holds in his hands; a great saver of time, somewhat thick of hearing, very short of sight, but more of memory; a man ever in haste, a great hatcher and ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... associated. Passages from Camoens were frequently in his mouth, and in bitterest moments, in the times of profoundest defection, he could always find relief in the pages of him whom he reverently calls "my master." Later in life he could see a parallel between the thorny and chequered career of Camoens and his own. Each spent his early manhood on the West Coast of India [74], each did his country an incalculable service: Camoens by enriching Portugal with The Lusiads, Burton by his travels and by presenting to England vast stores of Oriental ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... be paying a call at the house of a lady, when I took up from a table two lovely squares of brocade. They were beautiful specimens of Eastern workmanship—both of the same design, a delicate chequered pattern. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... lovely eventide of the sunny month of May, and the declining rays of the sun penetrated the thick foliage of an old English forest, lighting up in chequered pattern the velvet sward thick with moss, and casting uncertain rays as the wind shook the boughs. Every bush seemed instinct with life, for April showers and May sun had united to force each leaf and spray into its fairest development, and the drowsy hum of countless insects told, as ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... two Members to Parliament, and its political history had been chequered. When first I came to know it, the two members were Mr. Samuel George Smith and Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild (afterwards Lord Rothschild). Mr. Smith was a Tory. Sir Nathaniel professed to be a Liberal; but, as his Liberalism was of the sort which had doggedly supported ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... ceaseless sighs; In dire distress, in whelming ill Their manly looks are hopeful still. To this, great chief, thy reason bend, And earnestly the truth perpend. By reason's aid the wisest learn The good and evil to discern. With sin and goodness scarcely known Faint light by chequered lives is shown; Without some clear undoubted deed We mark not how the fruits succeed. In time of old, O thou most brave, To me thy lips such counsel gave. Vrihaspati(512) can scarcely find New wisdom to instruct thy mind. For thine is ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... happiness which cannot be restored, is pain, but of a softened kind. Our recollections are unfortunately mingled with much that we deplore, and with many actions which we bitterly repent; still in the most chequered life I firmly think there are so many little rays of sunshine to look back upon, that I do not believe any mortal (unless he had put himself without the pale of hope) would deliberately drain a goblet of the waters of Lethe, if he had it in ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Italy claims to have led the van of modern European civilization, but who in their own estimation belonged wholly and exclusively to their own city. If Dante, the range of whose intellectual sympathies can hardly be deemed a narrow one—Dante the exile, whose chequered life made him the denizen of so many foreign homes—could speak of the degeneration of the pure Florentine blood by the admixture of that of foreigners whose native place was some five or ten miles outside the walls of Florence ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... black, chequered all over; and it was very large, and opened its mouth very wide, and showed its red tongue. It would have killed me if it had bitten ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... with herself, and to Charteris seemed, as she sat in the chequered sunlight, far more desirable than a married woman has any ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... for the players, each of whom was furnished with a foil, with which he strove to seize the greatest number of rings from the centre; this was, indeed, a chivalrous exhibition. Stilt-walkers, mountebank families, and jugglers, "chequered in bulk and brains," lent their aid to amuse the crowd; and, occasionally, two or three fellows contrived to enact scenes from plays, and with their vulgar wit to merit the applause of their audience. Portable clock-work exhibitions swarmed, and mummeries ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... draining the labour market, could only itself have been at proportionate cost. Nevertheless, Mr. Trenchard, a Melbourne solicitor, projected "The Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway," an enterprise which, after some months' flutter of chequered life, expired for want of support from the over-busy colonists, who had other far more immediately pressing needs ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... may, perhaps, be instanced as the best specimen of its class,—and its class in our opinion, is the best—to be met with in Cheshire, considered with reference either to the finished decoration of its exterior, rich in the chequered coloring we have alluded to, preserved with a care and neatness almost Dutch, or to the consistent taste exhibited by its possessor to the restoration and maintenance of all its original and truly national beauty within doors. As ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... measure explained by them. He is convinced that uncertainty is essential to the spiritual life; and his works are saturated by the idea that where uncertainty ceases, stagnation must begin; that our light must be wavering, and our progress tentative, as well as our hopes chequered, and our happiness even devoid of any sense of finality, if the creative intention is not to frustrate itself; we may not see the path of progress and salvation clearly marked out before us. On the other hand, he believes that the circumstances of life are as ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... our caps, all conscientiously battered, Hatherleigh's flopped like an elephant's ear and inserted quill pens supported the corners of mine; the highlights of the picture came chiefly as reflections from his chequered blue mugs full of audit ale. We sat on oak chairs, except the four or five who crowded on a capacious settle, we drank a lot of beer and were often fuddled, and occasionally quite drunk, and we all smoked reckless-looking ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... new brown cycling suit—a handsome Norfolk jacket thing for 30/(sp.)—and his legs—those martyr legs—were more than consoled by thick chequered stockings, "thin in the foot, thick in the leg," for all they had endured. A neat packet of American cloth behind the saddle contained his change of raiment, and the bell and the handle-bar and the hubs and lamp, albeit a trifle freckled by ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... an expectant world. Once in the tree-chequered gardens, it was as though she crept through the aisles of an unlit cathedral already garnished for its sacred pageant. Matthiette heard the querulous birds call sleepily above; the margin of night was ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... houses low upon the water. One by one, as we rowed steadily, the fishing-boats passed by, emerging from their harbour for a twelve hours' cruise upon the open sea. In a long line they came, with variegated sails of orange, red, and saffron, curiously chequered at the corners, and cantled with devices in contrasted tints. A little land-breeze carried them forward. The lagoon reflected their deep colours till they reached the port. Then, slightly swerving eastward on their course, but still in single file, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... said, "Oh, indeed!" Mr. Chalk's mother, dead some ten years before, had taken a strange pride—possibly as a protest against her only son's appearance—in hinting darkly at a stormy and chequered past. Pressed for details she became more mysterious still, and, saying that "she knew what she knew," declined to be deprived of the knowledge under any consideration. She also informed her daughter-in-law that "what the eye don't see the heart don't grieve," and that ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Vritra in days of yore by Indra in the battle between the gods and the Asuras, let king Duryodhana call to mind the words thou hast spoken for bringing about peace. Today let the son of Subala, O Krishna, know that my shafts are dice, my Gandiva the box for throwing them, and my car, the chequered cloth. O Govinda, slaying Karna with keen shafts I will dispel the long sleeplessness of Kunti's son. Today the royal son of Kunti, upon the slaughter of the Suta's son by me, shall be gratified and be of cheerful heart and obtain happiness ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Cordoba was in reality a little pleasure trip, got up for the special delectation of our aunt and young Mrs. Moncrieff. It formed part and parcel of the Scotchman's honeymoon, which, it must be allowed, was a very chequered one. ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... In the protracted and chequered existence of this pioneer among Canadian literary associations, one day, above all others is likely from the preparations—pageant and speeches which marked it, to be long remembered among Quebecers as a red letter day in the annals of the society. The celebration in ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... and fashions optimists; at any rate in their earlier writings. They stood outside the Churches; dogmatic beliefs they tacitly put away; they were in sympathy with the Christian ideal apart from its supernatural element; they professed a vague trust in an unseen Power, chequered here and there by intimations of pantheism; they made no frontal assault upon the central positions of theology. When we turn to their emotional poetry we find that they were always decorous; there is much discourse of love, often passionate, never ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... depended on them to rescue from death the poor boy who was suffering beneath their eyes. Gideon Spilett had not passed through the many incidents by which his life had been chequered without acquiring some slight knowledge of medicine. He knew a little of everything, and several times he had been obliged to attend to wounds produced either by a sword-bayonet or shot. Assisted by Cyrus Harding, he proceeded to render the aid ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... its course, until it swells into a broad expanse, gradually checking its career as it approaches, and at last mingles with the ocean of Eternity. I have been led into this somewhat trite metaphor, to account to the reader for the contents of this chapter. As in the river, after many miles of chequered and boisterous career, you will find that its waters will for some time flow in a smooth and tranquil course as almost to render you unconscious of the never-ceasing stream; so in the life of man, after an eventful and adventurous career, it will be found that for a time he is permitted to glide ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... was at day-break my thought said: "The moon makes chequered chestnut-shade There by the south-side where the vine Grapples the wall; and if it shine This evening thro' the boughs and leaves, And if the wind with silence weaves More silence than itself, each stalk Of ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Larbert he writes: "I had no idea that travelling in the wilderness was so dreadful a thing as it is. The loneliness I often felt quite solemnized me. The burning sun overhead,—round and round a circle of barren sand, chequered only by a few prickly shrubs ('the heat of the wilderness,' of which Jeremiah speaks), no rain, not a cloud, the wells often like that of Marah, and far between. I now understand well the murmurings of Israel. I feel that our journey proved and tried my own ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... fell into reverie. In her day dreams she wandered through the saloons and corridors of the old chateau, where her mother had spent so many years, chequered with sunshine and shade. She rambled over the park and cooled her fevered head and hands in the water that dripped from the tresses of the marble Aphrodite. Fancy took her over the route of foreign travel, her mother had pursued with ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... Defiance coach, his heart swelling at the thought of being so soon in his father's arms. It was a lovely summer morning, cool and dewy, fit for any Sunday—whence the eyes and mind of Cosmo turned to the remnants of night that banded the street, and from them he sank into metaphysics, chequered with the champing clank of the bits, the voices of the ostlers, passengers, and guard, and the perpendicular silence of the coachman, who sat like a statue in ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... get. Then I called a council—that is to say, in my thoughts—whether I should take back the raft; but this appeared impracticable; so I resolved to go as before, when the tide was down; and I did so, only that I stripped before I went from my hut, having nothing on but my chequered shirt, a pair of linen drawers, and a pair ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the pony's hoofs sounded through the silence, in a cheerful trot upon the white roads. They were traversing an open, breezy country, chequered with wooded hollows, where generally a village sought shelter from the winds. And these patches of foliage were golden and red in the meditative autumn sunshine, which seemed as if it were a little sad at the thought of parting with the old earth for ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... cloths for the sick child, and watched with delight the diminishing hoarseness and difficulty of his breathing. From time to time she was overcome by a slight drowsiness, and closed her eyes for a few minutes, but only for a short while; and this half-awake and half-asleep condition, chequered by fleeting dreams, and broken only by an easy and pleasing duty, this relaxation of the tension of mind and body, had a certain charm of which, through it all, she remained perfectly conscious. Here she was in her right place; the physicians ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which he could not have done if he had been mounted on Billy's back. Edward walked quick, followed by his dog, which he had taught to keep to heel. He felt happy, as people do who have no cares, from the fine weather—the deep green of the verdure chequered by the flowers in bloom, and the majestic scenery which met his eye on every side. His heart was as buoyant as his steps, as he walked along, the light summer breeze fanning his face. His thoughts, however, which had been more of the chase than anything else, suddenly changed, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... taste for metaphor, was pleased with this, and said, 'Very good, Toots! Very well said, indeed, Toots!' and nodded his head and patted his hands. Mr Feeder made in reply, a comic speech chequered with sentiment. Mr Alfred Feeder, M.A., was afterwards very happy on Doctor and Mrs Blimber; Mr Feeder, B.A., scarcely less so, on the gauzy little bridesmaids. Doctor Blimber then, in a sonorous voice, delivered a few thoughts in the pastoral style, relative to the rushes among ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... vales, the woodland and the plain, Here earth and water seem to strive again; Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised, But, as the world, harmoniously confused: Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree. Here waving groves a chequered scene display, And part admit, and part exclude the day; As some coy nymph her lover's warm address Nor quite indulges, ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... domestic novel. As a refuge from the compiling of books was this book undertaken. Simple to baldness are the materials used, but Goldsmith threw into the midst of them his own nature, his actual experience, the suffering, discipline, and sweet emotion of his chequered life, and so made them a lesson and a delight to all men. The book silently forced its way. No noise was made about it, no trumpets were blown for it, but admiration gathered steadily around it, and by August a third edition ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... neglected all decorums; everything except that I have never forgot a friend, whose good head and heart have made me esteem and love him. What appearance there may have been of neglect, arises from my manner of life; chequered with various designs; sometimes in London, sometimes in remote parts of the country; sometimes in France, and shortly, please ...
— Burke • John Morley
... dreary day pass tolerably. His services as waiter-general were admirably performed, and he really did more by resolute helpfulness than could have been done by any quantity of exhortation. He ventured to take a long view at sundown, and he found the experience saddening. The enormous chequered floor of the sea divided with turbulent sweep two sombre hollow hemispheres. Lurid red, livid blue, cold green shone in the sky, and were reflected in chance glints of horror from the spume of the charging seas. Cold, cold it was all round; cold where ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... the House, and a patron of the lad's family. The boy was an orphan, and described, twenty years after, with a sweet pathos and simplicity, some of the earliest recollections of a life which was destined to be chequered by a strange variety of good ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... equally well-intentioned, perhaps, but whose policy was on wholly different lines, thus undoing the work of his predecessor. This has introduced not only confusion, but sometimes an appearance of real injustice into our management of the colony. In all this chequered history, the interests of the native races have been too often postponed to those of the ruling races. This was certainly the case in connexion with Mr. Gladstone's well-intentioned act in giving back to ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... a giant of a man, and the other two were only a little behind. As they sprang over the rocks one after the other, it took Anerley back to the school sports when he held the tape for the hurdle-race. It was magnificent, the wild spirit and abandon of it, the flutter of the chequered galabeeahs, the gleam of steel, the wave of black arms, the frenzied faces, the quick pitter-patter of the rushing feet. The law-abiding Briton is so imbued with the idea of the sanctity of human life that it was hard for the young pressman to realise that these men had every intention ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dotted by a few scattered villages, but no one of repute lived there; and the refinement, religious advantages, and social life of the metropolis, were altogether absent. Perea was to Jerusalem what the Highlands, a century ago, were to Edinburgh. There our Lord spent the last few months of his chequered career. ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... for example, are indications of the same {243} belief and assurance with regard to the statue of the Virgin Mary? These thoughts would force themselves again and again on my mind; and though since I first witnessed such things many years have intervened, chequered with various events of life, yet whilst I am writing, the scenes are brought again fresh to my remembrance; the same train of thought is awakened; and the lapse of time has not in the least diminished the estimate then formed of the danger, the awful peril, to which ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... clothes to my bride two full suits, consisting of two shifts, one of crimson silk, the other of blue cotton; two pairs of trousers, one of silk, the other of striped cotton; two jubbehs, or robes, fitting tight to the body, of chintz; two veils, one of white cotton, the other of chequered blue; two pair of slippers, one of green shagreen skin and high heels, the other of brown leather, with flat bone heels and shod with iron; and I was also to add a printed muslin handkerchief, and a ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... unhoped-for successes, and both Philip V. and the cabinet of Versailles equally testified their gratitude to her. She had manifested an inflexible devotedness in the midst of reverses, and adversity had taken its full measure of her. Never, throughout the course of her chequered career, had Madame des Ursins shown more activity than during the six months which intervened between the return of the Court to Madrid and the battle of Almanza. Her position was as delicate as it was perilous. It was necessary to stigmatise flagrant defections, but without ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... their hilltop in the light of a baby moon puddles of water shone like silk, hedges were bending lines of listeners, far on the horizon a black wood, there in one of those precipitous valleys cottages cowering, overhead the blue night sky suddenly chequered with solemn pompous slowly moving clouds. But here on the hilltop at any rate, a bustle of wind—such a noise amongst the hedges and the pools instantly ruffled and then quiet again; and so precipitous a darkness ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... and the crimson chapels, and rows of little red houses with amber chimney-pots, and the gold angel of the blackened Town Hall topping the whole. The sedate reddish browns and reds of the composition, all netted in flowing scarves of smoke, harmonised exquisitely with the chill blues of the chequered sky. Beauty was achieved, and none ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... close by which we lay, was, being Sunday morning, crowded by a chequered assemblage of European, Quadroon, Negro, and Indian, all gabbling, pushing, and purchasing in company. We unmoored in very capital style, though pretty closely jammed, for a ship of seven hundred tons, and in one ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... the scaffold was reared at Tyburn, where so many other malefactors had looked their last on the world; and at nine o'clock in the morning Lord Ferrers started on his last journey—the most splendid and most tragic of his chequered life. He was allowed, as a last favour, to travel to his death, not in the common hangman's cart as an ordinary criminal, but in his own landau, drawn by 'six beautiful horses; and thus he made his stately progress ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... until they stopped, at length, before the light windows of the Hall, which were blazing and comfortable with Christmas welcome. The hall-door was flung open—a big fire was burning in the great old fire-place—a carpet was down over the chequered black flags—"It's the old Turkey one that used to be in the Ladies' Gallery," thought Rebecca, and the next ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... semicircus, and absorbing into its gigantic shadows the minor hills which lay round its base: all were melted into perfect unity: and from the height of its main range the whole seemed within a quarter of a mile from the spot which he himself occupied. Between this and the abbey lay a level lawn, chequered with moonlight and the mighty shadows of Snowdon. Of the abbey itself many parts appeared in the distance; sullen recesses which were suddenly and partially revealed by the fluctuating glare of the fire; aerial windows through which the sky gleamed in splendour, unless when it was obscured for a ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... only say that it has been, in the highest aspects, ideally happy, and that the sorrows which have chequered it have added a new significance to the saying of Ecclesiastes that "A threefold cord ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... "Cavern of the Peak," with a fine entrance in a gloomy recess formed by a chasm in the rocks. This entrance makes a Gothic arch over one thousand feet wide, above which the rock towers nearly three hundred feet, and it is chequered with colored stones. Within is a vast flat-roofed cavern, at the farther side being a lake over which the visitors are ferried in a boat. Other caverns are within, the entire cave extending nearly a half mile, a little ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... however, I have no complaint to make, for I owe you a letter. Still I live here by my own self, and have had of late very bad nights; but then I have had a pig to dinner, which Mr. Perkins gave me. Thus life is chequered." ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... man told us the story of his life. It was a truly strange and chequered one. When quite a young man he had been flogged, and then deserted from H.M.S. Blossom, Captain Beechy, in 1825, and ever since then had remained in the South Seas, living sometimes the idle and dissolute life ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... anxious for its prosperity, and earnest in keeping it friendly with Great Britain, which he had found a hospitable home in the days of his obscurity, which was again to offer an asylum to him in a day of utter disaster and overthrow, and where his life, chequered by vicissitudes stranger than any known to romance, was to come to a quiet close. It has been the singular fortune of Her Majesty to receive into the sacred shelter of her realm two dethroned monarchs, two fallen fortunes, two dynasties cast out from ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... as a new-minted coin. It was not yet wholly aired, not wholly free from the damp savour of night, but low in the east the sun was taking heart. A mile-long shadow footed it with Billy Woods in his pacings through the amber-chequered gardens. Actaeon-like, he surprised the world at its toilet, and its fleeting ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... will rise upon a birth-day, and many more of chequered hopes and fears. How long will these flowers, now blossoming so fairly, be permitted to remain with us? Will they be mowed down before another birth-day, or will they be permitted to live to pass through the ordeal of this life of temptation? How will they combat? ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... friends, he had once matured his purpose, it was an attempt of no ordinary difficulty to divert him from the pursuit of it. To this may, perhaps, be attributed the perpetual disappointments with which his life was chequered. Certain it is, that his matrimonial infelicities may be traced to this source. His first adventure of the kind alluded to, had the warning voice of his surviving parent against it, and it may naturally be supposed, the dissuasive arguments of all his thinking and judicious friends. And as to ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... which the old constitution and religion could awaken. Dio has depicted her, doubtless according to the reports which reached Rome. A tall form, with the national decoration of the golden necklace and the chequered mantle, over which her rich yellow hair flowed down below her waist. She called on her peoples to defend themselves at any risk, since what could befall those to whom each root gave nourishment, each tree supplied shelter: and on her gods, not to let the land pass into ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... acknowledging here, that in collecting materials for this task we have been greatly assisted by Mr. Bung himself, who has imposed on us a debt of obligation which we fear we can never repay. The life of this gentleman has been one of a very chequered description: he has undergone transitions—not from grave to gay, for he never was grave—not from lively to severe, for severity forms no part of his disposition; his fluctuations have been between poverty in the extreme, and poverty modified, or, to use his own emphatic language, 'between ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... dropped a little; he looked out with veiled eyes upon the lake chequered with the blue and white of its inverted sky. Nelly guessed—trembling—at the procession of images that was passing through them; and felt for a moment strangely separated ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sword. The procession then made the entire circuit of the church. The king wore a gown of purple satin and gold in chequer, and a jewelled collar; his cap of purple velvet had two jewelled rosettes, and his doublet was of gold brocade. The nobles wore massive chains of gold, and their chequered silk gowns were lined with sables, lynx-fur, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... thirsting for more glory than they had already won, while the invaders feared to find themselves in even worse plight than before. The all of the Athenians being set upon their fleet, their fear for the event was like nothing they had ever felt; while their view of the struggle was necessarily as chequered as the battle itself. Close to the scene of action and not all looking at the same point at once, some saw their friends victorious and took courage and fell to calling upon heaven not to deprive them of salvation, while others who had their eyes turned ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... would not a little straightforward treachery be not only very expedient, but rather moral? Were high principles a sine qua non to such a humble individual as himself, a "bookmaker" on race-courses, a billiard-marker elsewhere in their breathing-times? Though indeed Mr. Jerry in his chequered life had seen many other phases of employment—chiefly, whenever he had the choice, within the zone of horsiness. For he had a mysterious sympathetic knowledge of the horse. If pressed to give an ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the height of their enjoyment, turned loose the Praetorian guards[11] among the company, and had them tossed into the sea. This is no bad miniature of the dealings of nature with the transitory race of man. Only, what a chequered picnic we have of it, even while it lasts! and into what great waters, not to be crossed by any swimmer, God's pale Praetorian throws us over ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the passions of her kind, and the cravings of her sex, had been as happy as the chequered circumstances of her outer life would permit; but now for the first time her peace of mind was disturbed, and she felt the heaving of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... haunted apartment. I have, as a great modern said, seen too many ghosts to believe in them, so betook myself seriously to my repose, lulled by the wind rustling among the lime-trees, the branches of which chequered the moonlight which fell on the floor through the diamonded casement, when, behold, a darker shadow interposed itself, and I beheld visibly on the floor of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... flattery that in the pursuit of knowledge he affords them an example. His subjects number about 14 millions, but when in conversation I happened to allude to a remote border village, his subsequent remarks made me wonder whether he had just been reading an article about the chequered history of that little place. He is, in fact, like his late grandfather of Montenegro, the father of his people. But they have different ideas about the duties of a father; and while Nikita's laugh was pretty grim, the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... is for most of us no well-arranged story with a happy termination; it is a chequered affair of shade and sun, and for one beam of light there come very often wide patches of shadow. Men seem to have known this so far back as Shakespeare's time, and to have observed that one woe trod on another's heels, to have battled not with a single wave, but with a 'sea of troubles,' ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... "Beheld the alternate light and shade "Sweep the long vale. Here, hovering, lowers "The shadowy cloud; there, downward pours, "Streaming direct, a flood of day, "Which from the view flies swift away; "It flies, while other shades advance, "And other streaks of sunshine glance. "Thus chequered is the life below "With gleams of joy, and clouds of woe. "Then hope not, while we journey on, "Still to be basking in the sun; "Nor fear, though now in shades ye mourn, "That sunshine will no more return. "If, by your ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... himself—wore in summer trousers made of linen cloth, for which the yarn was spun at home by the maids, and was then taken to the weaver's to be made into cloth. Part of the linen yarn was dyed blue, and, mingled with white or unbleached yarn, was woven into a chequered stuff for the curtains of servants' beds and for dresses for the maids and aprons for their mistresses. In view of the fact that all the bed-linen and most of the table-linen was thus made at home, one cannot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... as a school prize. The tone is healthy, the characters are lifelike, and the narrative of the great discoverer's adventures through his chequered career is replete with incidents ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... accented by twin rows of flickering fire, the rear jets seen with a blurred halo of mist round each of them, the halo crawling feebly within itself, tormented by a feeble wind. The long vista of pavement became chequered like a chessboard, with patches of light from shop windows. Gable Inn, staring at the growing darkness with a single fiery eye, looked like a Rip Van Winkle. It had been old when Chaucer and the knights and ladies ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... he cried, "how mortifying! seven minutes too early! The dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the clockwork, fickle clockwork, has once more betrayed me. Alas, can there be no success unmixed with failure? and must even this red-letter day be chequered by a shadow?" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at Bayeux, the see of her husband's half-brother, Odo, who shared in all the toils and dangers of the expedition, and whom she has taken especial care to represent for the benefit of the townspeople of Bayeux; for wherever we find his broad face, large person, shaven crown, and the chequered red and green suit by which she expressed his wadded garment, his name is always found in large letters; and he is evidently in his full glory when we find him, club in hand, at the beginning of the battle, and these words worked round him: Odo Eps. (episcopus) baculum tenens, confortat ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... o'clock passed, one o'clock, two o'clock—and still the fire was kept up; and still the burning rays of the sun were scorching us. Clouds! But they threw no shadow over us. Everywhere small patches of shadow chequered the hills and valleys, but they seemed to avoid us. But a black mass of cloud is rising in the west, and we know that everything will soon be wrapped in shadow. Nearer and nearer to the zenith ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... handsome chequered birds were sent me from Madras by Sir W. Elliot. They are rather larger than the largest rock-pigeon, with longer and more massive beaks. The skin over the nostrils is rather full and very slightly carunculated, and they have some naked skin ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... too—throbbing wildly. She halted, and went on again, precipitately, but once more slowed her steps as she came to West Street and the glare of light at the end of the bridge; at a little distance, under the chequered shadows of the bare branches, she saw something move—a man, Ditmar. She stood motionless ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... since been troubled by nothing of the sort; indeed, his nights were for some while like other men's, now blank, now chequered with dreams, and these sometimes charming, sometimes appalling, but except for an occasional vividness, of no extraordinary kind. I will just note one of these occasions, ere I pass on to what makes my dreamer truly interesting. It seemed to him ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the affair is the efforts he made to ingratiate himself with the lower classes of the Corsicans, his admiration of whom is sometimes chequered by a wholesome fear of their wild instincts. “I got a Corsican dress made,” he says, “in which I walked about with an air of true satisfaction. The general did me the honour to present me with his own pistols, made in the island, all of Corsican wood and iron, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... generally ranked with Li Po, the two being jointly spoken of as the chief poets of their age. The former had indeed such a high opinion of his own poetry that he prescribed it for malarial fever. He led a chequered and wandering life, and died from the effects of eating roast beef and drinking white wine to excess, immediately after a long fast. Po Chue-i, A.D. 772-846, was a very prolific poet. He held several high ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... "Few incidents chequered the monotony of our existence. 'Who has got a piece of steel in his eye?'—'Who has gone to the hospital?'—'How many came to-day in the carry-all?' were almost the only questions we could ask. A man falling from the new prison, and breaking his bones in a fashion not to be approved, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... below the cliffs would come faint to the ear. In the hall the maids mould be spinning, while their dark-haired mistress would be casting swift glances to the doorway, lest it might be filled any moment by the form of her returning lord. Outside in the chequered sunlight of the orchard the child would be playing with his nurse, crooning in childish syllables the chanty his father had taught him. And at the thought of his home a great passion welled up in Atta's heart. It was not regret, but joy and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... troubles, or whatever the enjoyments, of old age, they are, in their very nature, even above our other troubles or enjoyments, brief and transitory. The aged warrior of Australia can plead no exemption from the common lot of mortality, and death draws a veil over the chequered existence,—the faults and follies, the talents and virtues, of every child of Adam. The various customs and superstitions, connected with the death and burial of their friends, are very numerous among the tribes of Australia, and some of them are curious and peculiar. ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... it must take at least ten years to add double the amount to the first capital, allowing no increase to the spare capital required for working the estate. A rapid fortune can never be made by working a coffee estate. Years of patient industry and toil, chequered by many disappointments, may eventually reward the proprietor; but it will be at a time of life when a long residence in the tropics will have given him a distaste for the chilly atmosphere of old England; his early friends will have ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... rouge and no powder, and the brown of lashes and brows was free from the black water-paint. She raked under the bed with a faded sunshade till she found an old brown portmanteau. Her smart black and white dress was changed for a black one, of a mode passee these three years. A gray chequered golf cape and the dulled ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... aisle was chequered with light and shade in broken outlines; the shades seeming cooler and more soothing than ever shade was, and the lights like patches of amber diamond animated with heavenly fire. And above, from west to east the blue sky vaulted the lofty aisle, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... some hundred and fifty of the people of faery. There were two of them, he said, in dark clothes like people of our own time, who stood about a hundred yards from one another, but the others wore clothes of all colours, "bracket" or chequered, and ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... Elizabethans Sir Walter Raleigh is the most romantically interesting. His splendid and varied gifts, his chequered fortunes, and his cruel end, will embalm his memory in English history. But Raleigh's great accomplishments promised more than they performed. His hand was in everything, but of work successfully completed he had less to show ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude |
