"Elfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. A piquant, tricksy sprite, as naughty as she is bewitching—a creature of fire and air, more elfish than human, at once her mother's torment and her treasure.—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... that he was the man about whom the whole of Europe was talking. Even his wife was ignorant of his pecuniary liabilities until the crash of the Ballantyne firm told her for the first time that they were sharers in the ruin. A psychologist might trace this strange twist of his mind in the numerous elfish Fenella-like characters who flit about and keep their irritating secret through the long chapters of so many ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lives, fast ebbing with the sand. Long while this strife engaged the pretty band; But now bold Chanticleer, from farm to farm, Challenged the dawn creeping o'er eastern land, And well the fairies knew that shrill alarm, Which sounds the knell of every elfish charm. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wild dark creature, slim and elfish, with a queer little smile that flashed sudden as ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... admirable bits of the work of Richard Doyle, among other things a weird and grotesque, but charming cartoon of an elfish procession passing through a quaint and picturesque mediaeval city. It is a conte fantastique in colour—a marvel of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... background. Something in the appearance of the front door suggested to Peggy that it was not intended for daily use, and she made her way around to the side and knocked. A child not far from Dorothy's age, with straight black hair, and elfish eyes, opened the door, looked her over, and shrieked ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... boy, with his elfish little countenance lighting up. He was very slight and small for his age, a little shadow darting across the sunshine. The half of the terrace lay in a blaze of light, but all was cool and fresh in the corner where Lady Markland's light chairs and table ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... superannuated mastiff or bulldog grown old in office surpassed this fluffy midget in stoic dignity. He sometimes reminded me of a small, squat, unshakable desert cactus. For he never displayed a single trace of the merry, tricksy, elfish fun of the terriers and collies that we all know, nor of their touching affection and devotion. Like children, most small dogs beg to be loved and allowed to love; but Stickeen seemed a very Diogenes, asking only to be let alone: a true child of the wilderness, holding the even tenor ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... whose greatest opera, "Der Freischuetz," appeared in 1821. The initial force of the German romantic school, he founded his operas on romantic themes, and depicted in tones the things of the weird, fantastic and elfish world that kindled his imagination. He has been called the connecting link between Mozart and Wagner, and in many of his theories he anticipated the latter. National to the core, he embodied in his music the finest qualities of the folk-song, and noble tone-painter ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... came to his father's house, was a rampant, noisy, cunning child, with the vivacity of French and American blood mingling in his veins, and filling him with strongest tendencies to mischief, and prompting elfish feats of activity. He was not by any means a fascinating child,—in fact, no children ever fascinated me,—but this little fellow was rather disagreeable, a wonder to his father, a horror to his mother, and a great annoyance generally; we were all rather cross with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... to the banisters, she went upstairs and lay down on her bed, and presently, through her subsiding sobs, there came a trickle of laughter born of the elfish humour which would not be suppressed. She could not kill George, but she must pay him out, and she was laughing at herself because she had discovered his real offence. It was not his kisses, not even his disdain of what he took, though that enraged her: it was his words as he cast her ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Sarah and Mary beside her—they had married during the war, but nothing had prevented them from coming back to make Billabong ready. Near them the storekeeper, Jack Archdale, and his pretty wife, with their elfish small daughter; and Mick Shanahan and Dave Boone, with the Scotch gardener, Hogg, and his Chinese colleague—and sworn enemy—Lee Wing. They were all there, a little welcoming group—but Norah could see them only through a mist of happy tears. The buggy stopped, and Evans sprang out over ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the bonnie Janet dreamed that the long-lost Robin was living in Elf-land, and that he was to pass through the streets with a cavalcade of fairies. But, alas! how should even a sister know him in the dim starlight, and among the passing troops of elfish and mortal riders? The dream assured her that she might let the first company go by, and the second; but Robin would ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Elfish everything seems; for everything as well as everybody is small, and queer, and mysterious: the little houses under their blue roofs, the little shop-fronts hung with blue, and the smiling little people in their blue costumes. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... wailed pitifully and almost constantly; while pressed against the warm, loving heart he sank into comfort and peace. When he was awake his elfish eyes were fixed in solemn stare upon the mother-face. Not knowingly nor indifferently, but intently, as if from the depths of past experience he was ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... grace or the power to acknowledge their presence, but after staring stolidly for a moment or two at her visitors through her dishevelled hair, turned and cowered over the hearth again, her elfish locks falling ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... malignant and elfish, Seems present whispering close, "All motives of life are selfish, All instincts of life are gross; And the song that the poet fashions, And the love-bird's musical strain, Are jumbles of animal passions, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... tattered clouds a hidden host thrust forth their spears of gold. And a wild-rose colour descended upon the gentle sea and floated to the island, bathing the rocks, the grim and weather-beaten houses, the stones of the churchyard, with a radiance so delicate, and yet so elfish, that enchantment walked there till the night came down, and in the darkness the islanders moved on their way to church. The pageant was over. But it had stirred two imaginations. It blazed yet in two hearts. The shock of its coming, after long hours of storm, had stirred Uniacke and his guest strangely. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the field and wood seemed unafraid of her. At times, returning to where he had left her hidden, he would pause, wondering to whom she was talking, and then as he drew nearer would hear the stealing away of little feet, the startled flutter of wings. She had elfish ways, of which it seemed impossible to cure her. Often the good man, returning from some late visit of mercy with his lantern and his stout oak cudgel, would pause and listen to a wandering voice. It was never near enough for him to hear the ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... standing still, looked straight ahead of her at a man and a young woman crossing the street some little distance from us. Then she looked up at me. The man was Selwyn. The girl with him was the odd and elfish little creature who had been hurt in Scarborough Square and whom he had helped bring ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... boisterous pattern, but was now a mere suggestion of former splendor; while round her head was twisted, in fantastic fashion, a silk handkerchief of green ground spotted with bright crimson. This strange headdress gave her an elfish appearance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... dog's name, and he appeared in a fair way of "putting a girdle round the earth," if not in forty minutes like his elfish namesake, at least in an appreciable limited space of time, Teddy never being content except he carried about the unfortunate brute with him everywhere he went, hugging it tightly in his arms and almost smothering its life out by ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... not be reminded that a wet boat is an abomination; what, then, must it be when it is caused by hours of snowfall, large flakes softly wet? Everything gets drenched and sopping, and it really appeared as if these white hazelnut flakes were possessed by an elfish desire to baffle your most careful efforts to keep them out. My waterproof bag was to the human eye impervious; but there was one unnoticed opening not an inch long by half an inch wide, and the flakes discovered it at once. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the "awfullest gale of the season—" See, at the sound of the prompter's tap, The fiend come up through the "Vampyre trap;" Take a mental photograph then, and there, Of that imp, with his "fixins" all complete— The elfish grin, the tangled hair, The dragon wings and the scaly feet— And you'll have a notion of him I mean, The demon of this, my opening scene. I might go to Milton, and steal, bit by bit, A description ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... addressed smiled into his face, undaunted. She was a small elfish creature with a thin face, on the slenderest of necks. But in her queer little countenance a pair of laughing eyes, out of all proportion to the rest of her for loveliness and effect, gave her and ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the door was open, he would pause for half a moment on the threshold to say, in a tone of intense self- satisfaction, "He be off. Abel! Janny's off!" and forthwith toddle out as hard as he could go. As he grew older, he dropped this form; but the elfish habit of appearing and disappearing at his own whim was ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... women cease to dwell in the abstract and become issues, to be met with more or less trepidation. Back among some of his idle dreams there had been a Kitty, blue-eyed, black-haired, slender and elfish. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... missing, and in a moment the palace was like a beehive in a garden; and in one minute more the queen was brought to herself by a great shout and a clapping of hands. They had found the princess fast asleep under a rose-bush, to which the elfish little wind-puff had carried her, finishing its mischief by shaking a shower of red rose-leaves all over the little white sleeper. Startled by the noise the servants made, she woke, and, furious with ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... vision, painted like a picture in the air, I saw the elfish figure of a man with frosty hair— A quaint old man that chuckled with a laugh as he appeared, And with ruddy cheeks like embers in the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... times something elephantinely elfish in M. Hanaud's demeanour, which left Mr. Ricardo at a loss. But he had come to notice that these undignified manifestations usually took place when Hanaud had reached a definite opinion upon some point ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... a wonderfully interesting walk, all by herself, alone on the plain. It was really so queer and elfish to find one's self where one could see nothing above or around one anywhere but stars. Stars above one, to right and left of one, and some so low down they seemed as if they were picketed on the plain. It was so odd to find the horizon line at one's very feet, like a castaway at sea. And ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... suspicion flared into a flame. That would solve so many riddles. For one, her presence in the Danish camp,—for surely, as a chieftain's daughter, she would have been sent on to the care of the Lady of Northampton! Was it not thoroughly in accordance with her elfish wildness to have chosen man's attire and the roughness of camp-life in order to remain near her lover? Her lover! The young noble's lips curled as he glanced at the warrior beside him, at the coarse face under the unkempt locks, at the huge body in its ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no more, probably. You had not enough of the artist's skill and science to give it full being: yet the drawings are, for a school-girl, peculiar. As to the thoughts, they are elfish. These eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream. How could you make them look so clear, and yet not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays. And what meaning is that in their solemn ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... armed with scythes—through the city, into the wide gates of the Greyfriars. Lovely is his bride in white, nor less so his widow in black—more so in grey, portentous of a great change. Sad, too, to the Sage the thought of leaving his first-born as yet unborn—or if born, haply an elfish Creature with a precocious countenance, looking as if he had begun life with borrowing ten years at least from his own father—auld-farrant as a Fairy, and gash as ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... wet, elfish-looking hair out of her black eyes, and proceeded to scrub such of the smaller children as could not escape from her relentless grasp. Some submitted dumbly, and others struggled under her vigorous ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... you, anyway?" he exclaimed, much puzzled. As he asked the question his gaze happened to rest on the dog, who was peering at him through the ragged, elfish wisps of hair nearly covering its face, with eyes that ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... he said slowly, regarding the Hun, with his elfish eyes. "I don't like you. I think you may be like the man in the English soldiers' story, who turned into a pig—a baby killer perhaps. It is because of your red hair that I think you may ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... Lane. It is something of a pity, nevertheless, that it must be given up, for Nancy was not particularly pretty, as young men nowadays measure beauty, and were it possible, the truth might have been hidden. She was something too elfish—and then there was the Billings mouth already mentioned. Gertrude Ellis, who spent much of her time with her aunt in New York and who had a proper care for her person, thought it a ridiculous pose for Nancy not to have something done about her freckles. It ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... deep, a phosphorescent and flashing cloud. It came inboard, and was suspended over the deck, a bulging mass, its bottom was unfastened, and out gushed our catch, slithering over the deck, convulsive in the scuppers. The mass of blubber and plasm pulsed with an elfish glow. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... 'Tis May, the elfish maiden, the daughter of the Spring, Upon whose birthday morning the birds delight to sing. They would not sing one note for you, if you should so command, Although you are a princess, a princess of ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... they were trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the country. A mole throwing up its mound at the end of its burrow and making its way out at last with the long-nailed paws which looked so like elfish hands, had absorbed him one whole morning. Ants' ways, beetles' ways, bees' ways, frogs' ways, birds' ways, plants' ways, gave him a new world to explore and when Dickon revealed them all and added foxes' ways, otters' ways, ferrets' ways, squirrels' ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... particular whom I noticed every day, and whom, at last, I compassionately supplied with a couple of safety-pins, after explaining their uses. She was decidedly ugly. But sometimes you may see others here, with neatly chiselled limbs and elfish eyes of a sultry, troubling charm into which, if sentimentally disposed, you can read an ocean of love; these need not be supplied with safety-pins. An enthusiastic Frenchman at Gabes actually married ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... her last vain pilgrimage to the Church of the Sacred Heart and stood before the glass, removing a thick black veil from the pale despair of her face, she was suddenly aware of a strange, unfamiliar smile lifting the drooped lines of her lips—an elfish smile which transformed her face to something different from her own. And immediately those smiling lips uttered words that fell as unexpectedly on her ears as though they had proceeded from ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... he slid down from out of her arms; back into the pool, and began struggling to gain the edge. What grief and longing in her wild face then! But she did not wail. She did not try to pull him back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what was coming, it could not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the boughs and water, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... girl moving by the side of her giant escort seemed like a slender ray of light, a radiant, elfish form, transparent, intangible, gliding softly along with a huge, black shadow. She was simply clad, all in white. About her neck hung a string of pearls, and at her waist she wore the rare orchids which Ames had sent her that afternoon. But no one saw her dress. No one marked the pure ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... own incompetence. She had not expected to understand the boys; she had never had any experience of boys; but she had expected to win the little girl to her, and make her a little friend, perhaps almost a sister. Susan D. received her advances with an elfish coldness that had something not human in it, Margaret thought. The child was like a changeling, in the old fairy stories. That evening, when bedtime came, Margaret went up with her to the pretty room, hoping for a pleasant time. She sat down and took the little girl on her knee. ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... not knowing what was expected of him, made no answer. At first he had been almost repelled by the girl, but he was becoming mildly interested in her. She could, he thought, be daring to the verge of coarseness, and he did not admire her pessimism, which was probably a pose; but there was a vein of elfish mischief in her that appealed to him. Sitting among the heather, small, lithe, and felinely graceful, watching him with a provocative smile in her rather narrow ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... hasten hence," said Grace; "I like not this lonely spot. There was always a fear and a mystery about it. The tale of the invisible sylphid and Eleanor Byron's elfish lover haunts me whenever I pass by, and I feel as though something was near, observing and influencing every movement and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... on and laughed With a shrill and sneering jibe; Her soul grew fat to see them chaffed, This mad and elfish tribe. The big black caldron boiled so high With food for these queer mites, That it lit the world throughout the sky, And down came ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... Thomas Bolle, who ever wished the right thing and did the wrong. Talk no more of him, since I would not meet my end in a bad spirit. Thomas Bolle, who lets us die for his elfish pranks! A pest on the half-witted cur, say I. And after I had kissed ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... is convinced that now you think her perfect," interrupted the saucy girl, with a trill of laughter. Then growing suddenly as gentle and tender as she had been elfish before, she added sweetly, "And Robert, you are right; you have won a real treasure—a perfect darling—as nobody knows better ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... like a picture in the air, I saw the elfish figure, of a man with frosty hair— A quaint old man that chuckled with a laugh as he appeared, And with ruddy cheeks like embers in ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... an air of childhood still clinging, as if from habit alone, to the outward insignia of maturity, in this mercurial, magnetic, and undaunted young person; and in her malicious elfish eyes could be read the solemn determination to force every possible claim that her double advantage, as child and adult, could, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... staggered back aghast. He could see no one at all, and this peeping, elfish-like voice, rising amid the storm to his ear out of the darkness, reminded him of the days when he believed in the other world—that is, of course, the world of spirits ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, fiend-like; supernatural, weird, uncanny, unearthly, spectral; ghostly, ghost-like; elfin, elvin^, elfish, elflike^; haunted; pokerish [U.S.]. possessed, possessed by a devil, possessed by a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... course, was unable to find them; the effects of hunger probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length she peered at him through the leaves in an elfish ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... glimpse of her, with the strange mockery and an almost elfish malice in her fine eyes, went home with me later to cause vague disquiet and fresh suspicion of her truth. The spell of her extraordinary, personal charm removed, doubt would assert itself. Was she quite sincere? Was her fascination not a questionable one? ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... opposite to the man who loved him so dearly. His figure and appearance had always been singular, but now it was more so than ever. He had been sleeping in his clothes, and he had that peculiar look of discomfort which always accompanies such rest. His black, elfish, uncombed locks, had not been cut since he left Durbelliere, and his beard for many days had not been shorn. He was wretchedly thin and gaunt; indeed, his hollow, yellow cheeks, and cadaverous jaws, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... her lap, the smallest, saddest specimen of infantile deformity. It had a large head—larger than most infants have—but its body was thin, elfish, and distorted, every joint and limb being twisted in some way or other. You could not say that any portion of the child was natural or perfect except the head and face. Whether it had the power of motion or not seemed doubtful; at any rate, it made ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... subtle poem. Another of Beatrice's proteges was Serafino, the famous improvisatore of Aquila in the Abruzzi, a short and ugly little man, whom Cardinal Bibbiena once laughingly compared to a carpet-bag (valigia)! But in spite of his dwarfed stature and elfish appearance, Serafino sang his own strambotti and eclogues so well, and had so fascinating a way of accompanying himself on the lute, that the Este and Gonzaga ladies all entreated him for new verses, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... nearing fifty; but her slim little wiry body and her elfish, wrinkled face, never still, but ever alive with the same vivacity that years ago had attracted William Allsopp, made her seem younger than her years; and her husband treated her as though she were still a child, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... round the walls, and all over the floor—among them a plain deal table, with leaves of manuscript piled high on every part of it—among the leaves a head of long, elfish white hair covered with a black skull-cap, and bent down over a book—above the head a sallow, withered hand shaking itself at me as a sign that I must not venture to speak just at that moment—on the tops of the bookcases glass vases full of spirits of some kind, with horrible objects ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... quiet weather mesa days have no parallel for stillness, but the night silence breaks into certain mellow or poignant notes. Late afternoons the burrowing owls may be seen blinking at the doors of their hummocks with perhaps four or five elfish nestlings arow, and by twilight begin a soft whoo-oo-ing, rounder, sweeter, more incessant in mating time. It is not possible to disassociate the call of the burrowing owl from the late slant light of the mesa. If the fine vibrations which are ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... ride, if I read right. Some buckled on a bunewand, and some on a been, Ay trottand in tronps from the twilight; Some saidled a she-ape, all grathed into green, Some hobland on a hemp-stalk, hovand to the hight; The king of Pharie and his court, with the Elf queen, With many elfish incubus was ridand that night. There an elf on an ape, an unsel begat. Into a pot by Pomathorne; That bratchart in a busse was born; They fand a monster on the morn, War faced ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... ideal at seventeen Must be a sprite— A dainty, fairy, elfish queen Of pure delight; But later on he sort of feels He'd like a girl ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... extreme end of the boat. With a quick turn, Madge ran after the escaping form. As it poised itself for a leap toward the shore, Madge caught at the cloak and dragged it away from the face, and for a brief instant she saw the face of a boy a little older perhaps than she was. It was a wild and elfish face, while a pair of ears, ending almost in points, stuck up through the masses of thick, curly hair that covered his head. But before she could get a distinct impression of his face the young man was gone, racing ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... lonely, imaginative Marjorie had named her "The Picture Girl," and had decided that she was a darling. She had noticed that the pretty girl was always the center of a group and she had also noted that one small, black-haired girl with an elfish face, who wore the most exquisite clothes invariably walked at the tall girl's side. There was a pink-cheeked girl, too, with laughing blue eyes and dimples, and a fair-haired, serious-faced girl, who reminded Marjorie of Alice Duval. They usually ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... Mare's second article was called "The Village of Old Age." It was a charming piece of what I simply cannot and will not call "elfish" writing. The word in me, foolishly, no doubt, produces physical nausea. If, however, someone with a stronger stomach in regard to words called it elfish I should understand what he meant, and agree. But, good as were these ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... songsters sing thy praise From dawn till set of sun, and then The nightingale, the queen of song, In praise of thee poureth forth her lay Till every mellow silver note, Far floating in the silent trees, Is taken by an elfish choir, And chanted softly to the moon. The eagle her wee eaglets tells Of thee, that they may freedom love; Then soaring full beyond the clouds, She looks with vaunted pride on thee. So must thy spirit fill the hearts Of ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... the dressing room. The light was on her face. Her usual expression of elfish impertinence was not there. She was the girl of the stolen meetings once more, the girl whose eyes reflected the open beauty of what Martin had called the big cathedral. For all that, she was the girl who had hurt ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... "An elfish mood is upon her," he thought. "She doth hold herself so safe in her chamber that she may venture on words she had not sung nearer at hand. She is not without mischief in her blood, no doubt." And Willan's own look began to grow ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... in answer to this mental question a peal of elfish laughter greeted his ear,—a mirthless, falsetto cackle, like that of a parrot, and half hidden behind one of the great marble lions in the shade of the loggia he discerned a grotesque little creature, with the figure of a child and a woman's ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... these groves too dim, and sing faintly; being sun-lovers, they prefer the trees outside the village. I forgot to say that you may sometimes hear a viewless shuttle—chaka-ton, chaka-ton;—but that familiar sound, in the great green silence, seems an elfish happening. The reason of the hush is simply that the people are not at home. All the adults, excepting some feeble elders, have gone to the neighboring fields, the women carrying their babies on their backs; and most of the children have gone to the nearest school, perhaps not less than a mile ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... insanity &c.503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, fiend-like; supernatural, weird, uncanny, unearthly, spectral; ghostly, ghost-like; elfin, elvin[obs3], elfish, elflike[obs3]; haunted; pokerish [obs3][U.S.]. possessed, possessed by a devil, possessed by a demon. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... long grass, where it was found by an English sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, and Polly stretched out her arms to the rice and salt fish, and began to cry. "Oh," said I, "perhaps she can eat;" and from that day ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... noblemen that what they ought really to desire was a total and rapid transformation of the whole fabric of society, his efforts to found an association for the moral regeneration of mankind, and his elfish amusement of launching the truth upon the waters in the form of pamphlets sealed up in bottles. Shelley at this age perpetrated "rags" upon the universe, much as commonplace youths make hay of their fellows' ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... Hill we have felt to its core the elfish mystery of your profession. And now Notting ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... her half-wild hollowed-eyed beauty, which seemed a sickly efflorescence of the marshes, pressing to her breast another "child of iniquity" as pale and elfish as her former self, she seemed to Odo the embodiment of ancient wrongs, risen from the wasted soil to haunt the dreams of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Quixotic redemption in specie was beyond him entirely. He gave it up. The counting of discs was more tangible to his philosophy. His rusty black tile, so wondrously become a cornucopia of wealth, had by that same magic upset the old fellow into a kind of hysterical gaiety, which was most elfish and uncanny. He ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... covered from head to foot in a long robe of white serge, with a high-peaked cap of the same material drawn completely down over his head and face. Two round holes cut in this ghostly head-gear revealed simply two black glittering eyes, which shone with that singular elfish effect which belongs to the human eye when removed from its appropriate and natural accessories. As they passed out, the figure rattled a box on which was painted an image of despairing souls raising imploring hands ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... years sooner. Ah! there's that wicked girl Yarakna—she's been hiding from me all the day. I must punish her, too!" and before Van Hielen could speak the indignant parent waddled off—with surprising swiftness for one of her vast proportions—and reappeared dragging by the wrist an elfish-looking girl of about ten. She gave the urchin one blow, and was about to give her another, when Van Hielen, whose heart was particularly tender where children were concerned, interfered, and by dint of bribery persuaded her to desist. ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... most sad, that we cannot oblige you," Adrienne cut into the conversation, her elfish black eyes snapping. "It is not necessary, however, that we should say more about it. We are here. We shall continue to be ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... volumes of lyrical verse. Some of it possesses the lightness of these elfish tales. The Barrel Organ, The Song of Re-Birth, and Forty Singing Seamen are among his finest lyrics. They display much rhythmic beauty and variety. He strikes a deeply sorrowful and passionate note in The Haunted Palace ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Oberon, and the Queen of the Fairies, whose name is Titania, had asked the Trolls to dinner. The Gnomes were very much annoyed at this, and the Elves still more so, for the chief glory of the Elves was that being elfish got you to know people; and it was universally admitted that the Trolls ought never to be asked out, because they were trollish. King Oberon said that all that was a wicked prejudice, and that the Trolls ought to be asked out to dinner ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... a little one—a boy of not more than seven years, with elfish brown locks, and eyelashes which swept the olive tint of his cheek. All curled up in a heap, in clothes which a man might have worn, so big and shapeless were they, with one arm under his head for ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... not oppressed with care, She has her sleepless fits; Then, blanket-swathed, in that round chair The elfish mortal sits;— ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... upon a slab of stone that stretches some distance beyond the side of the pit! Bushes with twisted and fantastic arms, growing, they or their ancestors, from time immemorial in the clefts of the rock, reach towards the light, and the elfish hart's-tongue fern, itself half in darkness, points down with frond that never moves in that eternal stillness which all the winds of heaven pass over, to a thicker darkness whence comes the everlasting wail and groan of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... in "Wilhelm Meister"—the wonder and delight of the reader—is Mignon, the child-woman,—a pure creation of Goethe's genius, without a prototype in literature. Readers of Scott will remember Fenella, the elfish maiden in "Peveril of the Peak." Scott says in his Preface to that novel: "The character of Fenella, which from its peculiarity made a favorable impression on the public, was far from being original. The fine sketch of Mignon in Wilhelm Meister's ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... interest in this man and his family. There was something about them which marked them out a bit from their fellows—whether it was the husband's strange but not repulsive deformity, contrasted with the touch of plaintive grace in the wife, or the charm of the elfish children, with their tiny stick-like arms and legs, and the glancing wildness of their blue eyes, under the frizzle of red hair, which shone round their little sickly faces. Very soon she had begun to haunt them in her eager way, to try and penetrate their peasant lives, which ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thought, looking down into her proud face. I cannot describe how very odd and elfish it did seem to have those sonorous words rolling out of the smiling mouth. The band striking up put an end to the quotation and to the confidences. As the exercises progressed and approached nearer and nearer the effort on ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... as he walked between Dora and Susie to the side-hill where the first grasshoppers of spring were always found, felt at peace with all the world—even Smith—and it was in his heart to hug the elfish half-breed child as she skipped beside him. Dora's frequent, bubbling laughter made him thrill; he longed to shout aloud like a schoolboy given an ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... thrilling, and during it Carmencita did not speak. At the window of the taxi she pressed her face so closely that the glass had continually to be wiped lest the cloud made by her breath prevent her seeing clearly; and, watching her, Van Landing smiled. What an odd, elfish, wistful little face it was—keen, alert, intelligent, it reflected every emotion that filled her, and her emotions were many. In her long, ill-fitting coat and straw hat, in the worn shoes and darned gloves, she was a study that puzzled and perplexed, and at thought ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher |
