"Elusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instead of serving to elucidate, seemed only more completely to obscure the issue. Mystery revealed itself within mystery, and this was indeed a labyrinth, to the heart of which I sometimes despaired of penetrating. Who was this woman whose elusive figure appeared at every turn in the case? Was she one and the same with the visitor to my cottage who had purloined the green enameled statuette—and could it be that I had actually sat in conversation with her in the coffee-room of the Abbey Inn and had ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... the faithful Fred; Jane Andrews, neat and sensible and plain; Ruby Gillis, looking her handsomest and brightest in a cream silk blouse, with red geraniums in her golden hair; Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane, both trying to keep as near the elusive Anne as possible; Carrie Sloane, looking pale and melancholy because, so it was reported, her father would not allow Oliver Kimball to come near the place; Moody Spurgeon MacPherson, whose round face and objectionable ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... which only occasionally produced what it seemed capable of. He began under the influence of the Parnassiens, but his most characteristic work is as far removed as possible from the plastic objectivity of that school. He pursues the expression of the most elusive sensations, and is so little concerned about clear ideas and precise forms and outlines that even grammatical coherence often fails, and the mind gropes in a mist of unintelligibility—in which direction, however, ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... were searching his very diligently, as though in quest of something elusive; and he gazed serenely back, the most unsuspicious of smiles touching ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... woodsey the ferns smelled! How softly the great feathery boughs of the firs waved and murmured over her! How elfinly rang the bells of the "Tree Lovers"—just a tinkle now and then as the breeze swept by! How purple and elusive the haze where incense was being offered on many an altar of the hills! How the maple leaves whitened in the wind until the grove seemed covered with pale silvery blossoms! Everything was just the same as she had seen it ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... usual Mrs. Carstairs wore white, the fittest setting, Anstice thought, for her pale and tragic grace; but to-night she had thrown a wonderful Chinese scarf round her shoulders, and the deep blue ground, embroidered with black and green birds and flowers, gave an unusually distinctive note to her elusive personality. Opposite to her Iris, in her filmy grey-green frock, a big bunch of violets at her breast, wore the look of a nymph, some woodland creature whose fragrant charm and youthful freshness were in striking contrast to ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... English translations have been made. No one of these that we have been able to find, seems entirely satisfactory. There is an elusive quality to Pascal's style, and in losing this you seem to lose something of Pascal's thought. For with Pascal the thought and the style penetrate each other inextricably and almost indistinguishably. You cannot print a smile, an inflection ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... freely and tied cards on to presents but she felt unaccountably depressed. This, of course, was because dear little Vera whom she had known since a child, whom she had loved as a child, was leaving them and plunging into this strange, unknown adventure. What an uncertain thing marriage, what an elusive thing happiness! At nights she would dream of white satin figures shrouded in white tulle veils, of shy, passionate bridegrooms and shy, radiant brides. Sometimes she would see Vera's face and sometimes her own and often in the morning, she would find her pillow wet. "It will be you and Simpson ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... a naval skirmish in the Baltic, where the elusive Goeben has been engaged by the Russians with the usual result—the escape of the fugitive battle-cruiser behind the mined defences of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... completely under Government control. If the State can monopolize the manufacture and sale of spirits, as Russia has done, if it can, after the manner of Great Britain, control the making and sale of such a small, elusive substance as saccharin, it is ridiculous to suppose that it cannot keep itself fully informed of the existence of such elaborated machinery as is needed to make a modern rifle barrel. And it demands a very minimum of alertness, good faith, and good intentions for the various manufacturing countries ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that. He had talked to two or three police officials and detectives that morning, and had found them singularly elusive and uncommunicative. One of them was the police-inspector who had been called to the Herapath Estate Office on the discovery of the murder; another was the detective who had accompanied him. Since the murder Triffitt had kept ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... forward and closed the door. A faint perfume stole to my nostrils—a vague, elusive breath of the East, reminiscent of strange days that, now, seemed to belong to a remote past. Karamaneh! that faint, indefinable perfume was part of her dainty personality; it may appear absurd—impossible—but many and many a time I had ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... to imitate them, but there is always something lacking. The flavor, the "bouquet," the aroma, is gone. The sun, the soil, the air, and even the spring water, seem to have something to do with it. Just what, nobody knows. Wit and humor are elusive,—they are unsubstantial. On the other hand, the Georgia watermelon is something solid. It may be handled and felt. It may be "thumped" and "plugged" and tested. Those who know what a watermelon is and should be, know that there is none to compare with the melons that are grown in Georgia, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... the family? Those words, "head of the family," plunged him immediately into one of those internal combats in which interest and conscience struggled for the mastery—the one brutal, substantial, attacking vigorously with straight thrusts, the other elusive, breaking away by subtle disengagements—while the worthy Jansoulet, unconscious cause of the conflict, walked with long strides close by his young friend, inhaling the fresh air with delight at the end ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Bad Lands in that hour of his small triumph, and left her perfumed token of appreciation in his hand. The Duke put it away in the pocket of his shirt beneath the calfskin vest, the faint delicacy of its perfume rising to his nostrils like the elusive scent of a violet for which one searches the woodland and ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... enter upon this great episode, truly the turning point in American history, without pausing for a glance at the character of Seward. The subject is elusive. His ablest biographer* plainly is so constantly on guard not to appear an apologist that he ends by reducing his portrait to a mere outline, wavering across a background of political details. The most recent study of Seward** ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... vanquished the other, too, except that this startled individual, waving his heat beam wildly in an attempt to catch the elusive, vanishing and reappearing figure, scored a lucky hit. There was a tremendous flare of flame, and the extraordinary form of Shadow appeared for the last time, a charred, flat body lying on the floor of the corridor like the shadow for which he ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... took the little handkerchief, which wrapped the leaf, once part of her bed. A faint, elusive scent still hung about it—something of her, still it seemed. He closed his eyes, there on the hard park bench, and let his fancies rove whither they would; and for a time it seemed to him a ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... friend, broad-shouldered, swinging along, pass down the street with the orange lamps throwing chains of light about him, was confronted again by that old elusive spirit that he had known so well at school. Peter liked him, Peter was glad to see him again, but there were so many other Peters, so many doors closed against intruders.... Bobby would always, to the end, be for Peter, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... possible development of style which shall come into being when realism or naturalism, ceasing to describe the ignoble, shall occupy itself with the attempt to render refinements, reticences, subtleties, and half-tones of a more elusive order. It is an aspiration, a counsel of perfection offered to a younger school by an artist in experiment, who declares the quest to be beyond his powers. It is ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... aware of what he did, he was in the opening of the alcove, handling that awkward fold—and again he drew breath, deep and slow through the nose; again the vague memory—again the elusive association. Was the scent—sweet as well as musty—was it in the curtain? But as he stooped, he saw what made him forget that vague odour: a crumpled bunch of the soft linen had been squeezed together, and ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... up the boy's schoolbook and was looking at the writing on the flyleaf again. Then he raised his head, eyes narrowing on the boy as though searching for some elusive memory connected with him—with his name in the Latin book—perhaps with the writing, which, somehow, had stirred in him, once more, the same odd and uncomfortable sensation which he had experienced when he ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... engaged couples in the class to which Elizabeth belongs; nevertheless I felt it was the moment for judicious advice, knowing how ephemeral are the love-affairs of Elizabeth. No butterfly that flits from flower to flower could be more elusive than her young men. Our district must swarm with this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... funnel of clear air in which I stood, and they would, in a slow, graceful motion, accelerated somewhat towards the last, describe a downward and inward curve towards the lower part of my body before they dissolved. I thought of that elusive and yet clearly defined layer of mist that forms in the plane of contact between the cold air flowing from Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and the ambient air of a sultry summer day. [Footnote: See Burroughs' wonderful description of this ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... straight ahead, comprehending none of these things which lay before him as in a panorama. Instead, his memory was conjuring up a pair of subtle, blue-gray eyes, now pleading, now coquettish, now frankly defiant; two slim, white, wonderful hands; the echo of a pleasant, throaty laugh; a splendid, elusive, radiant-haired phantom. Truly, a woman of mystery! Who was this Isabel Thorne who, for months past, had been the storm-center and directing mind of a vast international intrigue which threatened the world with war? Who, this remarkable young woman who with ease ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... could report good luck. The woods goats, swift and elusive at best, were vanishing with the unicorns. The last cartridge had been fired and the bowmen, while improving all the time, were far from expert. The unicorns, which should have been their major source ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... is often elusive, for it is frequently difficult to appraise the effects of early environment in determining a man's bent. That ability can be transmitted there is no doubt, for this is borne out by general experience, as well ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... on the day before Christmas, I arranged with the Director of the Lister Institute for the loan of Dr. Arkwright of his staff and for the necessary apparatus to equip a laboratory at Bulford Cottage Hospital. It was a forlorn hope, but it was the only thing that could be done to try to get this elusive disease under control. I spent Christmas day in camp, and it was a melancholy day indeed. The men were all well looked after, and for those in the hospitals the day was made as bright as possible. It seemed years since we ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... the "red-backs" of the north had become a desirable luxury item for Terran tables. If a school of them were to be found in the vicinity no wonder this village was now deserted as its fleet went out to garner in the elusive but ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... these young people who had carved their own Fate in the very rock which now had shattered their lives, seemed to be searching for something vague, unavowed and mysterious which instinct told them was there, but which was so elusive, so intangible that the soul of each recoiled, even whilst ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... peered round the edge. He saw them laughing, flushed, silhouetted against the green, distant trees. Austin was looking at her with the light of passion in his eyes. She looked up at him, radiant, elusive, triumphant, with parted lips. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... there arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth for ever chase That flying and elusive shadow, rest. An air of coolness plays upon his face, And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. And then he thinks he knows The hills where his life rose, And the sea where ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... forebodings, and all day they could be seen in groups about the village discussing ways and means. Quarrels broke out, and parties disbanded in discouragement and bitterness. The road to the golden river seemed to grow longer, and the precious sand more elusive, from day to day. Here at Hazleton, where they had hoped to reach a gold region, nothing was doing. Those who had visited the Kisgagash Mountains to the north were lukewarm in their reports, and no one felt like stopping to explore. The cry ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... has been variously described as satanic, electric, and elusive. "Serpentine" would be far more accurate. Anyone in the least familiar with the famous Indian's style will at once see the ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... the summit of the rock was still shooting, though intermittently. It seemed to the rider that the man's target must be elusive or concealed, for the shooter's actions showed that he was irritated. The other man, too, was still shooting. The rider noted that he, too, seemed to be meeting with failure, for as the rider drew nearer he ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... lukewarm naturalist, now waxed enthusiastic in the collection of specimens. She was running one day in pursuit of a gorgeous dragon-fly through the little wood that skirted the playing-fields, and, with her eyes fixed on her elusive quarry, she almost tumbled over Chrissie, who was sitting by the side ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... French woods and fields and gardens in full flower; swift, soft, moist equinoctial gales, blowing from the far-off orchards of Meudon, or the old market gardens of Suresnes in their autumnal decay, and laden, we do not know why, with strange, mysterious, troubling reminiscence too subtle and elusive to be expressed in any tongue—too sweet for any words! And then the dark December wind that comes down from the north, and brings the short, early twilights and the snow, and drives us home, pleasantly shivering, to the chimney-corner and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the southern sunlight of the town. The brown sails of the fishing-boats waved in translucid green; and the white field of the sheer cliff, and all the roofs, gables, spires, balconies, and the green of the verandahs were exquisitely indicated and elusive in the bright air; and the beach was loud with acrobats and comic minstrels, and nurse-maids lay on the pebbles reading novels, children with their clothes tied tightly about them were ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... and the earliest chroniclers of war recorded their observations, strategists and generals have been tantalized and confounded by the elusive goal of destroying the adversary's will to resist before, during, and after battle. Today, we believe that an unusual opportunity exists to determine whether or not this long-sought strategic goal of ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... may be called a political poem, from its elusive reference to Home Rule. I was not sure on the point myself; for I thought the wearer of the 'blue cloak and birds' feathers,' must be a fine lady, perhaps laying enchantment on the fields. But I heard some one ask the Craoibhin ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... sure enough of Kitty, at first, to dare risk telling her about that little mistake of hers. She is such an elusive person that I spend all my time in wooing her, and can never lay flattering unction to my soul ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... doubt that now I am safe," he thought. His fine ear could detect the faintly accentuated murmurs of the current breaking against the point of the island, and he forgot himself in listening to them with interest. But even to his acute sense of hearing the sound was too elusive. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the work—introduced in connection with the demoniac characters—are inferior to the rest. They have occasionally a quaint, antique flavor, suggesting the diction of the Elizabethan lyrists, but without their delicate, elusive richness of melody. Here most we perceive the absence of that highest, ripest intellectual culture which can be acquired only through contact and conflict with other minds. It is not good for a poet to be alone. Even where the constructive faculty is absent, its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... sunset they came back and sat down on the old garden bench. Before them a sea of splendour, burning like a great jewel, stretched to the gateways of the west. The long headlands on either side were darkly purple, and the sun left behind him a vast, cloudless arc of fiery daffodil and elusive rose. Back over the orchard in a cool, green sky glimmered a crystal planet, and the night poured over them a clear wine of dew from her airy chalice. The spruces were rejoicing in the wind, and even the battered firs were singing of the sea. Old memories trooped into their hearts ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... attending to our wells for twenty years. In fact, long before our wells came into being, and I can honestly say that, though I am not by any means an unintelligent man, I know just as little about the Russian to-day as I did when I went there. He's the most elusive creature. You think you know him two days after you have met him. Two days later you find that you have changed all your opinions about him; and by the end of the first year, if you have kept a careful note of your observations and impressions in a ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... portrait of Vard is a failure," she admitted, "and I've never known why. If he'd been an obscure elusive type of villain, one could understand Lillo's missing the mark for once; but with ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... finished. He told everything as he knew it both from An-ina and the mother of Marcel. Also that which he had learned first hand, and from the diaries of Marcel Brand. The story of the dead chemist who had abandoned everything, even life itself, in the pursuit of the elusive weed lost nothing from his wide sympathy. And the crude use of the drug by the Indians formed a picture ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... facts. So far as he helped on the substitution, he was a benefactor to all mankind. And yet, it would have been good to bare his hands and arms, and with them grasp and wrestle with the naked facts, elusive facts, despite their ruggedness. Nevertheless, he bravely smothered his desires. He even, and to himself, professed to ignore the way they multiplied, after an afternoon in the society of Professor ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... beginning, I have had a great deal of experience with these elusive 'facts,' and it chances that a practised though non-professional psychic with whom I have held many baffling sittings, is in the city. I may be able to induce her ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... been told to assure him, in case they ever managed to locate the elusive Roland, that he should not worry because of not being able to comply with the absurd conditions of Uncle Jerry's ridiculous will; because she had enough of this world's goods for both, and she meant to leave it all to him, Roland; so she begged him to come ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... so well provided with an apparently endless supply of appropriate remarks, was so kind, and yet so—what was the word? could it be mechanical?—that Robin for the hundredth time found himself pondering over something odd, half-remembered, elusive about the girl. Then there was the uncle; manifestly a man who had never before been required to assist at a school-treat, manifestly on this occasion an unhappy man, yet look how he worked while she sat idly watching, ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... has traveled abroad, has admired and perhaps coveted the gardens of England, France, and Italy. Their charm is undeniable, and thought to be too elusive for reproduction on American soil without the aid of landscape ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... were moving softly over the piano keys; melodies in minor, sad and haunting and elusive, melodies that had never been put on paper and would always be her own: in them she might leap from comedy to tragedy, from laughter to tears, and only she would know. The midnight adventure was forgotten, and the hero of it, too. With her ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... he was at that moment leisurely tying his white neckwear in his bed-chamber at Villa Cardross. And sometimes he whistled, tentatively, as though absorbed in mentally following an elusive air; sometimes he resumed a lighted cigarette which lay across the gilded stomach of a Chinese joss, sending a thin, high thread of smoke to the ceiling. He had begun his collection with one small idol; there were now nineteen, and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... so long to kindle his blaze. He found a place sheltered from the wind, whittled many shavings from dead wood, and used his flint and steel until his hands ached, coaxing forth the elusive sparks and trying to make them ignite the wood. They died by hundreds, but, after infinite industry and patience, they took hold, and he sheltered the tiny and timid blaze with his body, lest it change its mind and ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... found ourselves faced with the first crime, that of the Cite Frochot, and our notice was drawn to the elusive Fantomas, we were unable to decide in what manner that hapless Mme. Raymond, whom we then took for Lady Beltham, had been done to death. Now, remember, Fandor, that during that night of mystery, hidden behind the curtains in Chaleck's study we heard weird rustlings ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... a huge-shouldered, long-armed slouch of a man, with a close-cropped head (flat at the back) upon which great hairy ears stood out like growths. His eyes were bloodshot and bulging, the left with an elusive cast in it that showed only now and then, when it testified to the kink in his brain. His nose, uneven in its downward trend, was so fat and wide and heavy that it fairly sprawled upon his face; and its cavernous, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... him, muttering; the mill had unduly prolonged itself; he would end it. His fist struck at that face so elusive; but crashed against the wall; like a flash Steele's arm lifted. The great form ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... expression of the expert. Bell permitted him to ramble on about historic rings in general. But all the same he could see that Van Sneck was far from easy in his mind. Now and then a sudden gleam came into his eyes: memory played for the fragment of a second on a certain elusive ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... social bustle and the empty amenities of present-day existence to pass a few weeks in the comparative solitude of several pleasant companions "under the stars" in North-Western Rhodesia, where they can still catch a glimpse of the elusive zebras, with coats shining in the sun like burnished steel, and hear the persistent call of the honey-bird. At night the roar of lions may now and then cause them to turn in their sleep, and in their dreams they may have visions of the animals that have charmed ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... on the rings. The under part was pinkish wine crossed with a narrow white line at each segment. The claspers were prominent and sharp. The finishing touch of the exquisite creatign lay in the fact that in motion, in strong light the red wine shadings of the under side cast an intangible, elusive, rosy flush over the dark back of the moth that was the mast delicate and loveliest colour effect I ever have seen on marking of flower, ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... had been a fool, but straight. The woman—well, the woman was not the marrying sort. He was certain of that. She was elusive as a flame. Impatiently yet again he flung the thought of her from him. What did it matter to him? Why should he be haunted by her thus? He ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... used the word happy, even in his solitary thoughts. Happiness, that priceless elusive treasure, can come only to a heart at peace in the warm sunshine of love. Material things can make for contentment, but ah! how ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... which did not take place till full four years later, and which by all accounts supplied him with a faithful and excellent companion and nurse, and his children with a kind stepmother—little or nothing is again known of this elusive man of genius between the publication of the Miscellanies in 1743, and that of Tom Jones in 1749. The second marriage itself in November 1747; an interview which Joseph Warton had with him rather more than a year earlier (one of the very few direct interviews ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... not moralize long. He was squatting in the moss, a bone in his mouth, sucking at the shreds of life that still dyed it faintly pink. The sweet meaty taste, thin and elusive almost as a memory, maddened him. He closed his jaws on the bones and crunched. Sometimes it was the bone that broke, sometimes his teeth. Then he crushed the bones between rocks, pounded them to a pulp, and swallowed ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... Canada penetrating to different men with different suggestion, and touching here and there a pure and unworldly heart, such as Pere Etienne bore in his breast, with commiseration. The young priest did not conceive very clearly of the make and manner of the crime he suspected the elusive and mysterious stranger of committing; but he imagined that the great sum of money he knew him possessed of, was spoil of some sort; and he believed that Northwick's hesitation to employ it in any ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... and had beaux. She had worked in the ten-cent store until her misplaced generosity with the glass beads on her counter resulted in her being sent to a reformatory. But Birdie's bold attractions suffered in comparison with the elusive charm of the pink and white ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... not be sacrificed to anything virtually extrinsic; and her verses all show a strange cadence of inner rhythmical music. Lines are always daringly constructed, and the "thought-rhyme" appears frequently,—appealing, indeed, to an unrecognized sense more elusive than hearing. ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... to make a guess, I should suppose that you are that distinguished and elusive person whom the outside world refers to ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... clothes; even my flesh, and sit in my bones, like Sydney Smith,—the I in me retreating ever to an inner citadel; but I must stop with the feeling that something moves in there. That is not what my self IS, but what the elusive sprite feels like when I have got my finger on him. In daily experience, however, it is unnecessary to proceed to such extremities. The self, at a given moment of consciousness, is felt as one group of elements which form a foreground. The second group ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... He counted himself among the launched, no doubt, and had breasted seas; but the boy was alive, a trencherman lad, in the coming schoolmaster, and told him profitable facts concerning his condition; besides throwing a luminous ray on the arcane of our elusive youthful. If they have no stout zest for eating, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the life of any man when he says to himself, "I am happy." To Jack, these three words, never spoken, but somewhere within him articulate and peremptory, these three words almost overwhelmed him with their significance. He trembled for this treasure, so elusive, so transitory, perhaps, so surely ill deserved; he grew humble with the thought of his own unworthiness, and, though no believer in the ordinary sense, he began to feel the first stirring of religion. When Fetuao, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... than six to one and he is increasing at a much greater rate than the European. Hence you have an inevitable conflict. Race lies at the root of the South African trouble and the racial reconciliation that Rhodes and Botha set their hopes upon remains an elusive quantity. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... enactment which allows trustees to invest trust funds in their loans. Probably the safest course would be to leave sentiment to settle the matter, and pray to Providence to give us sensible sentiments. Actual restraints on the export of capital would be very difficult to enforce, for capital is an elusive commodity that cannot be stopped at the Customs houses. If we lent money to a friendly nation, and our friend was thereby enabled to lend to a likely foe, we should not have mended matters. The time is not yet ripe for a full discussion of this difficult and complicated ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... rewritten. He stated in this connection that he always had a picture in his mind when composing, which he aimed to reproduce in his work. "Ich habe immer ein Gemaelde in meinen Gedanken wenn ich am componiren bin, und arbeite nach demselben" (Thayer). Sometimes this picture was shadowy and elusive, as his gropings in the sketch-books show. He would then apply himself to the task of fixing the idea, writing and rewriting, until it stood out clearly in accordance with the concept already ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... lad, is writing an essay on "A Day in Church," in competition for a university scholarship. He gets on finely until he pauses for lack of a word. For nearly an hour he searches for this elusive thing, until suddenly he is told that the allotted time is up, and he has lost! Barrie ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the gridiron practically to themselves, for he cut a poor figure the first three times that he tried to reach the elusive quarter-back. Once Marvin caught him with a straight arm and sent him toppling out of his path, once Marvin dodged him completely, twirling on one heel and darting past him beyond reach, and once the little quarter-back wrenched himself loose ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... carry different notes over the wire and reproduce them by means of the electro-magnet. Although Bell did not know it, many others were struggling with the same problem, the answer to which proved most elusive. It gave Bell a starting-point, and the search for the ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... three accents which make the meter rather elusive at that point. The two small notes shown at the beginning of the third line seem to be spoken with no attempt at vocalization. They are notated, however, at the pitch of the speaking voice. The small note shown in the bottom line is ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... time Warwick was conscious that something more than mere grace or beauty had attracted him with increasing force toward this young woman. A suggestion, at first faint and elusive, of something familiar, had grown stronger when he heard her voice, and became more and more pronounced with each rod of their advance; and when she stopped finally before a gate, and, opening it, went into a yard shut off from the street by a row of dwarf ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... entities for a deity. This philosophy has never had the social power or the consistency of the theological philosophy; its entities have been mere abstractions. It has and has had such political power simply because so elusive. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... on and the dam was completed, he gradually gathered around him an ardent little group of seeker after that most elusive of ...
— Regeneration • Charles Dye
... the tale of Diana, the Gipsy, the Goddess, the Woman, one in all and all in one and that one so wonderful, so elusive, so utterly feminine that I, being but a man and no great student in the Sex, may, in striving to set her before you in cold words, distort this dear image out of all semblance ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... pensive with anxiety; thin, ascetic lips that could smile in the most confidential manner or close tightly with grimness and fixed purpose. He was a man who was at the same time shy and determined, elusive and definite, but if there was one note in his bearing that predominated all others, it was a solemn and quiet sincerity. He seemed utterly without guile and ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Mossman when the puck was dropped on the ice, and play began. There was a furious scramble, but Hugh came out of it first-best, for he bore away the little elusive rubber disc, and managed to carry it some distance down toward Keyport's goal before losing control. Then the fun became fast and furious, indeed. Those agile skaters whirled back and forth across the smooth ice with every imaginable turn ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... succession of separate definitions in thought at once, compare them with each other, and determine just where and how they part company; and the persons least able to do this are the very ones most in need of the information. The distinctions between words similar in meaning are often so fine and elusive as to tax the ingenuity of the accomplished scholar; yet when clearly apprehended they are as important for the purposes of language as the minute differences between similar substances are for the purposes of chemistry. Often definition itself is best ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... that reveal it, nor is it exhausted by all these sensations when they are added together; yet it contains nothing assignable but what they might conceivably reveal. As it lies in your fancy, then, this object, the reality, is a complex and elusive entity, the sum at once and the residuum of all particular impressions which, underlying the present one, have bequeathed to it their surviving linkage in discourse and consequently endowed it with a large part of its present character. With this hybrid object, sensuous ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... his bold step seemed justified. The directors were an elusive body, and even when got together they found it hard to act with anything like unanimity and despatch; but one afternoon Stephen Giles encountered Mr. Holbrook in the office of one of the hotels and was told that the plan was receiving favourable consideration and was not unlikely to be accepted. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... there were more substantial ghosts about, as the story tells. Read the curious adventures that befell after Titania Chapman came to learn the book business in the mellow atmosphere of the second-hand bookshop of this novel. There was mystery connected with the elusive copy of Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell, which kept on disappearing from Roger's shelves. Some readers may remember that Roger Mifflin was the hero of Mr. Morley's first novel, Parnassus on Wheels, though this is in no sense a sequel, but ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... them! He would teach them that red-tape and officialism could only blunder blindly on at the heels of his elusive and lightfooted wariness. If they were bound to hold him down and delegitimatize him and keep him a pariah and a revolter against order, he would show them what he, alone, could do in ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... trace of his previous state of mind vanished, as the instantaneous and elusive trail of a bursting meteor vanishes on the profound blackness of the sky; it was the faint flicker of a painful thought, gone as soon as perceived, that nothing but her presence—after all—had the power to recall him to himself. He stared at her. She sat with her hands on her lap, looking down; ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... done by Ruskin in art up to his fortieth year, that he should turn, for practically the remainder of his life, to the seemingly vain and profitless task of a social reformer and regenerator of modern society, has to most men been a riddle too elusive and enigmatic to solve. And yet, in his earlier career, had he not himself prepared us for just such a departure as he took in the sixties, for in art was he not equally revolutionary and iconoclastic, as well as personally self-willed, passionate, and impulsive? Moreover, had not Mother ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... mention of him. She and James spent a long evening together, and she was entirely charming. James began to put behind him all the mystery and dark hints of evil. Clemency, although fond, was as elusive as a butterfly. She had feminine wiles to her finger tips, but she was quite innocent of the fact that they were wiles. It took the whole evening for the young man to secure a kiss or two, and have her upon ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... light she looked to him the masterpiece of God striving for the perfect in a woman's form. Her gown, gently stirred by the warm breeze, seemed a part of her, elusive, alive, feminine. The milk-white of bare throat and shoulder and rounded arm, the rise and fall of her breast, the soft lure of her eyes, the tender smile upon her lips, drew him slowly closer, closer to her. She lifted her face a little, raising her eyes until they ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... fascinate with the witchery of untrammeled existence. Two lines of a song from Twelfth Night give an attractive presentation of the Renaissance philosophy of the present as opposed to an elusive future:— ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... phantom is in love with me. But that love, too, is an illusion I create. No, do not come too close. Let me grow accustomed first to my madness. You are happy, eh? How marvelous your eyes! They were beautiful before when they crawled like round spiders through my brain. But elusive. They fled from me, my madness pursuing them ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... intercourse possessed by the two who looked and acted very like a pair of handsome boys. Moreover, Gerard distrusted himself, fearing to say too much, too soon. He was approaching Flavia carefully and delicately as a man striving to close his hand on some frail, elusive creature whose capture he scarcely dares hope possible. And she gave him no help. Her frank gentleness and impersonal cordiality gave neither encouragement nor discouragement, no ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... was regaling him with one of the choicest of Messer Sacchetti's paradoxes, gurgling, myself, at the humour of the thing I told. I paid no heed to the sign. I continued to expound my quip, as though we had the night before us in which to make its elusive humour clear. But out of the tail of my eye I watched my good friend Stefano, and I saw his right hand steal round to the region of his back where I knew his dagger to be slung. Yet was I patient. There should be no blundering through an excessive precipitancy. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... conquering sleep, descending on mine eyes, First smites the brow with unresisted blow; Unseen, elusive, like old age, she tries To gather strength ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... went far beyond the point to which his methods had previously led him. It was, for all who heard it or came to know it, a revelation of the possibilities of tonal effect—this dim and wavering and elusive music, with its infinitely subtle gradations, its gossamer fineness of texture, its delicate sonorities, its strange and echoing dissonances, its singular richness of mood, its shadowy beauty, its exquisite and elaborate art—this music which drifted before the senses like iridescent ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... spearing desperately at an elusive potato as the train jerked and jolted over the rails at sixty miles an hour, "to see how often you can raise your coffee cup without spilling the coffee ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... time ceded his other possessions on this continent to England. In 1800, Napoleon had forced Spain to re-cede Louisiana to France, as the price of the First Consul's uncertain goodwill and other intangible or elusive favors. At this period, France desired to occupy the country, or at least to form a great seaport at New Orleans, the entrepot of the Mississippi, that might be of use to her against English warships in the region of the ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... began an elusive dance in and out among the palms but ever under the moving glare of a flaming torch. The eunuch, like some shaggy monster, doggedly followed her. After some minutes of this dancing-chase, Pilate cried, ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... her father I was being drawn into such subtle devilish schemes that I felt to draw back must only bring upon my head the vengeance, through fear, of a man who was so entirely unscrupulous and so elusive that the police could ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... of the ways of modern pedagogy, and deep and complicated are the snares of the Tamil alphabet with its two hundred and sixteen elusive characters. Baffling, too, are the mysteries of number combination. "If six mangoes cost three annas, how much will one mango cost?" Arul never had an anna of her own, how should she know? The teachers bamboo falls on her hard, little hand, and two hot tears run down and drop on the ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... impression of transparency which invited the eyes to strain and peer, as if vision might be expected to reward an adequate effort. It was that liquid darkness which means not mist, but the utter absence of light on a clear air; and it was filled with elusive yet almost illuminating forest scents. To the keen nostrils of the man who was silently mounting the trail, it seemed as if these wild aromas almost enabled him to veritably see the trees which towered all about him, so clearly did they ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... should attempt to tamper with the cable, he could not understand, knowing the superior efficiency of the wireless system; but he thought she might be one of the elusive filibustering vessels reported to have been seen in the Gulf of Mexico several ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... a look of anxious solicitude. He was uncertain whether she spoke ironically or seriously. Only one thing was certain—that she was slipping from him again. She seemed so complex, paradoxical, elusive—and yet growing every moment ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... "play fair" with Slop-eye gradually restored his cheerfulness, and he walked slowly back to the hotel, looking in at many window displays as he went. Half shyly he paused before a window of women's wear; fine, filmy things, soft and elusive, and, he supposed, very expensive. He wondered if Reenie bought clothes like that to wear in her city home. And then he began to look for a brown sweater, and to move from window to window. And presently he ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... encroaching years there was little evidence of it in her opulent good looks. She had manifestly specialized in graceful idleness and was prepared to meet with superb confidence the competition of debutantes. The elusive shadow of lost illusions, of knowledge born of experience, was the only betrayal of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... he is not in Russia," replied the Count. "He is a very elusive person, and one who tricks us every time. 'Mac the Spy,' as they call him at Whitehall, is the first secret agent in Europe—next, of course, to ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... How Generals talked with you, in splendid humours, And how the Worcestershires have gone to Wales; Up yonder trench each lineward regiment swings, Saying some shocking things; And here at dark sad diggers stand in hordes Waiting the late elusive Engineer, While glowing pipes illume yon notice-boards, That say, "No LIGHTS. YOU MUST ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... playthings—in Morocco. My friend's summary of his country's recent history is by no means complete, and, if he could revise it here would doubtless have far more interest. But it seemed advisable to get the Moorish point of view, and, having secured the curious elusive thing, to record it as nearly as ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... gorgeous sunset, that made him think of Helen May just because it was beautiful and because she would probably be gazing up at the crimson and gold and all the other elusive, swift-changing shades that go to make a barbaric sunset. Sure, she would be looking at it, unless she was still talking to that man, he thought jealously. It fretted him that he did not know who the fellow was. So he turned his thoughts away from the two ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... absolute an instinct in the human mind for the definite, the palpable, and the emphatic, as there is for the mysterious, the versatile, and the elusive. With some, method is a law, and taste severe in affairs, costume, exercise, social intercourse, and faith. The simplicity, directness, uniformity, and pure emphasis or grace of Sculpture have analogies in literature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... or on still summer afternoons, when there came up from the hollow the sounds of hay-making—the scythe shearing through the grass, the clatter of the whetstone, the occasional country voices. The dialect, and the odd ideas expressed in it, worked their elusive magic over and over again. To hear a man commend the weather, rolling out his "Nice moarnin'" with the fat Surrey "R," or to be wished "Good-day, sir," in the high twanging voice of some cottage-woman or other, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... beginning from the right. In the right aisle are paintings (modern) looking like frescoes, and representing the preaching of St. Denis, by Galand; and the history of Ste. Genevive—her childhood, recognition by St. Germain l'Auxerrois, miracles, etc., delicate and elusive works, by Puvis de Chavannes. The paintings of the South Transept represent episodes in the early history of France. Chronologically speaking, they begin from the east central corner. Choir, Death of Ste. Genevive, and Miracles before her Shrine, by Laurens. Apse of the tribune, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... toward God through all its darkness grope, And find within its deadened heart to sing These songs of sorrow, love, and faith, and hope? How did it catch that subtle undertone, That note in music heard not with the ears? How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown, Which stirs the soul or melts ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... Sonorous, elusive, came the sound. It was within a half mile now, and there was no mistaking the destination, the intent of its makers. "Honk! honk! honk! honk!" from many throats, in many keys, louder and louder, confused as children's voices ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... must not over-run Tom," said Ruth to her chum. "No knowing what by-path he might have tried in search of the elusive gasoline." ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... this voice recounted her feverish agitation for the unknown, her insatiable ideals, her imperative need to escape from the horrible reality of existence, to leap beyond the confines of thought, to grope towards the mists of elusive, unattainable art. The poignant tragedy of his past failures rent his heart. Gently he clasped the silent woman at his side, he sought refuge in her nearness, like a child who is inconsolable; he was blind to the sulkiness of the comedienne obliged to perform off-scene, in her leisure moments, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... room Joan floated after the elusive ball. Sylvia watched her with a light breaking over ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... successful marriages are those which—'when the first sweet sting of love be past, the sweet that almost venom is,' develop into the temperate, unexacting, peaceful and harmonious unions which come under this heading. To the ardent youths and maidens—restless seekers after the elusive joy of life—who will have none of this prosaic and inglorious counsel, and who are prepared to stake their all on the belief that the first sweet sting of love is going to last for ever, I say: Get your roses-and-raptures over some other way; don't ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... therefore, if he were to be cheated of his reward. That either Ford or Miriam would attempt this he did not believe, even if between them the worst, from his point of view, was at the worst; but that an absurd, elusive principle which called itself chivalry, but really was effeminacy of will, might try to disarm him by an appeal to scruples he contemned, was the possibility he feared. He feared it because he estimated at its worth the force of restraint a sentimental civilization and a naA-ve people ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... gurgling song, brought me to my feet and I went on down the path listening. It was different from the note of a wren which it resembled, that of a Lincoln sparrow, I was sure, a rarity at the Manor, only one specimen of which Jerry possessed. But midway in my pursuit of the elusive bird I saw movement in the path in front of me and I caught a glimpse of leather leggins and a skirt. In a moment all thought of my Lincoln sparrow was gone from my head. At first I thought the visitor one of Jerry's guests, but as she approached, butterfly net in hand, I saw that it was Una Habberton. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... "will do. Miss Childe and I came here to lunch, not to listen to maudlin memories of the Great War. Did I ever tell you that a Spaniard once compared me to that elusive bloom to be found only upon the ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... financial responsibility from his shoulders, his publishers, and perhaps half a dozen intimate friends, he was scarcely recognised in his true character. Indeed, his whereabouts were seldom known save to his agent and his only brother, so elusive was he and so careful to establish ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... it to her, and asked if Roland was well, and her father; then alluded to her husband; but the unlettering elusive moon, bright only in the extension of her beams, would not tell him what story this face, once heaven to him, wore imprinted on it. Her smile upon a parted mouth struck him as two-edged in replying: 'I have good news to give you of them all: Roland is in garrison at Rouen, and will come when I telegraph. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... laid for that elusive glimmer in the sky, which began already to pale in lustre and diminish in size, as the stain of breath vanishes from a window pane. At the same time ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... flit before us; but in none do we meet with sentimentalism, despondency, or disconsolateness." But with their weird and minor strains, and their odd jumps from low tones to high, on first acquaintance they strike the hearer as strange and elusive. ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... it, and (need I mention?) approached it to his face, he fancied he could detect just a trace, just the faintest reminder, of a perfume—something like an afterthought of orris. It was by no means anodyne. It was a breath, a whisper, vague, elusive, hinting of things exquisite, intimate of things intimately feminine, exquisitely personal. I don't know how many times he repeated that manoeuvre of conveying the letter to his face; but I do know that when I was privileged to inspect it, a few months later, the only ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... not enchantment for the eyes of the metaphysician in this play of light, these nameless interfulgent colours which appear flimsy as the play of thought? For the glowing floating haze is made of nothing—of lines, of gleam, of unregulated splendour. And all this triumph of fluctuating light and elusive colour is quenched with the sun, smoulders into darkness, even as ideas in the obscure depths of the intelligence ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... in fact, spend the night there and the next night and the night after that. And, when three whole days and three nights had elapsed, not only had he failed to discover the elusive Lupin and his no less elusive companion, but he had not even observed the slightest clue upon which to ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... again, they are stated in larger units, as for instance diameters of the earth's orbit, the unit itself that should facilitate the grasping of the result, and which really is more manageable numerically, becomes itself elusive of the mental grasp: it comes in as an interpreter; and (as in some other cases) the interpreter is hardest to be understood of the two. If, finally, TIME be assumed as the exponent of the dreadful magnitudes, time combining itself with motion, as in the flight of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... felicitous throughout. This poem contains many of its author's peculiar beauties and none of his faults; it was the outcome of the mood that can summon a rare spirit of art to express the gladdest thought and most elusive feeling." ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... herself realize what a hunger of loneliness was hers? Or Anna and Irby, with Madame between them. Could you, maybe, have guessed the veritable tempest beneath the maiden's serenity, or his inward gnashings against whatever it was that had blighted his hour with the elusive Flora? ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... pursuit of the elusive thread interwoven in modern literature, and made several notable discoveries. "Contemplation of the mountainous toils of Balzac and Dumas fills me with a kind of physical terror," he said to Don on one occasion. "It is an odd reflection ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... in a queer psychic way that is elusive, you know — strengthened and sweetened spiritually by our ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... the big lumber piles. Along their base lay half-melted snow. Soggy pools soaked the ground in the exposed places. Bob breathed deep of the clear air, keenly conscious of the freshness of it after the murky city. A sweet and delicate odour was abroad, an odour elusive yet pungent, an aroma of the open. The young man sniffed it eagerly, this essence of fresh sawdust, of new-cut pine, of sawlogs dripping from the water, of faint old reminiscence of cured lumber standing in the piles of the year before, and more fancifully of the balsam and spruce, the hemlock ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... choice collection of early Italian paintings, all of which will repay careful study. We note on the entrance wall, 1260, a Virgin and Child by Cimabue—if indeed we may now assign any work to that elusive personality.[204] L. of this is a genuine Giotto, 1312, described by Vasari: St. Francis receiving the Stigmata. In the predella, Vision of Pope Innocent III.; Papal Confirmation of the Rule; The Saint preaching to the Birds—each scene portrayed ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... humour is a singularly elusive thing, and I doubt if anyone alive can explain it; but its elusiveness gives it something of its charm; and, moreover, the illustrations which are necessary to an inquiry into its nature, its scope and meaning, are apt to be amusing without ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... soft radiance which seemed to wax and wane, to quiver almost to darkness and then to burn more clearly. It was like a dreamer's pulse, fluttering, pausing, leaping, in accord with his vision. And as I gazed at the sphere, I fancied I could see within it strange, elusive shapes, which changed and merged and faded from moment to moment, and yet grew always clearer and more suggestive. I bent forward, straining my eyes to see them better, to fathom ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... crouched aloft in his red lair below the fort, he might almost have claimed kin with his mighty prototypes of the Assarbanipal frieze. One wondered a little, seeing whose work he was; but probably it is easier for an artist to symbolize an heroic town than the abstract and elusive divinity who sheds light on the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... council of officers, on November 11th, to determine the best course to pursue. The decision was unanimous to return to the Point of Pines and renew the search for the elusive Puerto de Monterey, which they believed they had left behind. This was at once acted upon, and the command took up the march in the afternoon of that day, returning by the route of its coming, and on the 27th ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... Perhaps had I been blessed with a mother, or a sister, or a female friend of another sort tenderly devoted to me, I might have thought it worth while to continue my present existence. I have long dreamt of such an unattainable creature, as you know, and she, this undiscoverable, elusive one, inspired my last volume; the imaginary woman alone, for, in spite of what has been said in some quarters, there is no real woman behind the title. She has continued to the last unrevealed, unmet, unwon. I think it desirable to mention this in order that no blame may attach ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... of the setting sun shed a ruddy tinge on the topmost branches of the trees as Durham reached where the road dipped to the stream. The subdued light in the pass made the distances elusive and turned the shadows into subtle mysteries of purpling greys. The air was full of the scent from the thickly growing vegetation, but, save for the rippling swish of the water trickling across the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... flash and twinkle. Along the road came a hundred little basket phaetons, in which, almost always, a couple of ladies were sitting—ladies in white dresses and long white gloves, holding the reins and looking at the two Englishmen, whose nationality was not elusive, through thick blue veils tied tightly about their faces as if to guard their complexions. At last the young men came within sight of the sea again, and then, having interrogated a gardener over the paling of a ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... which there was still an elusive fog that he did not try to shake off, accepted apparent ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... had six times descended upon her and she was doing her gentle, well-bred, conscientious best in six lively directions, but under it all she was forever Helen, forever the best beloved. She was getting rather beyond her depth but she was not giving up. Stephen, in discussion, had an elusive way of soaring into hazy ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... never been persuaded to hold it. Possibly it is because men feel so keenly the elusiveness of women that they grow weary in the quest of the real Herself. But, says Browning, they must not grow weary in it. Elusive though she be, her lover must not leave her uncaptured. For if love is the greatest adventure, it is also the longest. We cannot come to an end of it—and, if we were wise, should not ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... consider how undisciplined and individually independent they are. Let us then, on our side, play the game fairly. No doubt it is very exasperating to have the thing dragging on in the way it is doing, and the present intangible, elusive warfare is desperately irritating, but there is after all nothing unfair about these tactics of the Boers, nothing illegitimate in any way; they are merely the turning to account of natural advantages; and this being the case, we have no right to lose our tempers and ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... another side to his personality and practice, and one with which we are now more directly concerned; for the cases that especially appealed to him were of no ordinary kind, but rather of that intangible, elusive, and difficult nature best described as psychical afflictions; and, though he would have been the last person himself to approve of the title, it was beyond question that he was known more or less generally as the ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... fell silent and looked inquiringly at each other. Fortune was beginning to show herself elusive, even in the Sargasso, save to those ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... some!" chuckled the elusive voter, as he watched with delight their unsuccessful endeavors to locate him. "But there's lots of places yet that they hain't thought of; they hain't half looked for me yet. I may be in the well for all they know." Then he began to sing to ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... came up we set off again in pursuit of the elusive gold convoy. We could get no accurate information concerning it. Some said it was behind, others ahead. We never ran it down. It may well be that it was concealed in a ravine near the road a few yards from where ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt |
