"Flickering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sins continued till the measure is filled up, and when the last sin has been added which completes the measure, that is the sin unto death, which it avails nothing to pray for, for that sin ends in death. Before, there was life, spiritual life, perhaps flickering, but extant, then comes the last sin, and the life is gone out, all is dark, and dead, and cold, no more fanning of the black ashes is of any avail, the fire is out and cannot ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... upon a boulder, looking over a vast tract of lovely country to infinite blue distances. As ever in moments of stress, he had chosen the height, with wide horizons, fresh-blowing winds, far spaces of sunlight; and in the flickering shade of the thinly foliaged trees he took off his helmet, baring his head to the breeze. And it could be seen that the grey about the temples had been increasing, while the strong lines on the face had deepened already, as if it had gone hardly ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... a common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be used here it is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through fire. Even yet some flickering combustion illuminated the drifting hulk. His face and hands had been recently washed—a rite insisted upon by Phillips as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In the candle-light he stood, a flaw in the decorous fittings of the apartment. His face was a sickly ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... mean?" echoed the count, and he stared, for again he thought that he saw his mother's shadow darkening the splendor of those princely halls, whose lights were flickering as though they were about to be extinguished and leave the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a tiny fire was flickering far away, and apparently on the far horizon, though it is almost impossible to judge of the distance of a ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... But young girls are not taught that. I was only a child, not strong-willed. And now, when I'm free,"—a curious clearness coming to her eye,—"I'm glad to think of it all. I never blame other women. Because, you see,"—looking up with the flickering smile,—"a woman's so hungry for something of her own to love, for some one to be kind to her, for a little house and parlor and kitchen of her own; and if she marries the first man who says he loves her, out of that first instinct of escape from dependence, and hunger for love, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Forward Officer called up his Battery and quickened the rate of its fire upon the German line. In a few minutes he caught a quick stir in the British line, a glimpse of the row of khaki figures clambering from their trench and the flickering flash of their bayonets—and in an instant the flat ground beyond the trench was covered with running figures. They made a fair target that the German gunners, rifles, and maxims were quick to leap upon. The German trench streamed fire, the German shells—shrapnel and high-explosive—blew ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... night, being too tired to sleep well. Many times I saw the moon shadows of spruce branches trembling on the tent walls, and the flickering shadows of the dying camp-fire. I heard the melodious tinkle of the bells on the hobbled horses. Bossy bawled often—a discordant break in the serenity of the night. Occasionally the hounds ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... obliged to go up to the attic to find the Dryad manuscript which had never been returned. Leighton came too, and for about half an hour they hunted in the flickering light of a candle. It was a strange, ghostly place, and Rickie was quite startled when a picture swung towards him, and he saw the Demeter of Cnidus, shimmering and grey. Leighton suggested the roof. Mr. Stephen sometimes left things on the roof. So they climbed out of the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... low, and ill-ventilated. A fire burnt in the grate, and a small candle flickered on the table. Beside the grate, sat an old man sleeping on a chair; beside the table, and bending over the flickering light, sat a young girl engaged in sewing. My master was welcomed, for he had been absent, it seemed, for two months. During that time he had, he said, earned some money; and he had come to share it ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... darkness. The vivid flashes of lightning that shot every now and then through the cracks of the closely shuttered window, making a skeleton of its framework, added not a little to its terror, there being no other light in the room save that and the flickering, almost dying flame, with which I strove to aid Mr. Felt's endeavors and only succeeded in lighting up his anxious ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... darker there, but we felt it highly necessary to put as much distance as possible behind us; so we waded, jumped, and clambered down that rocky riverbed, in the flickering black and white moonlight and leaf shadow, till growing daylight forced ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... greeting that came from one of the newcomers, as they came into the flickering light of the street lamp, near which Frank Sheldon and Bart Raymond were standing. "This is a dandy night to be out patrolling—I ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... flickering at intervals round the aerodrome. A vivid orange colour against the dim blue sky. The horizon was greyer, and little flames flashed intermittently from it. There ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... touching each point with light! The great earth under him an altar is, Upon whose top a sacrifice he lies, Burning in love's response up to the skies Whose fire descended first and kindled his: When slow the flickering flames at length expire, Sleep's ashes only hide ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... lost in his own thoughts, though for my part the power of clear thinking appeared to have left me. Visions of a sort flowed over my mind without sinking into it, as water flows over marble. All I could do was fix my eyes on the face of that watch, of which in the flickering lamp-light the second-hand seemed to my excited fancy to grow enormous and jump from one side of ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... that he had been searching for her all day. His stern standards crumbled and became dry dust. One might as well apply standards to flickering sunlight or to swirling trifles of mountain mist as to Nella-Rose. She came upon him gaily; the dogs had discovered her on one of their ventures and were ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... torches threw their flickering glare into the windows of the palace, where were the ministers and servants of the king, in silent horror. Among all those counsellor of the king, there was at this time but one Man, Marie Antoinette! She alone preserved her steadfastness and discretion; she spoke to every one friendly, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... feeble, unshaded light from the middle of the table, for the morning was dark, and the room smelled abominably of oil. The flickering rays picked out here and there a bit of tarnished gold from the wall paper, and, as though purposely, made the worn spots in the carpet unusually distinct. Meaningless china ornaments crowded the mantel, but there was no saving grace ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... are sensual enough, without making ourselves so, aren't we?' she asked, turning to him with a certain golden laughter flickering under her greenish eyes, like a challenge. And immediately the queer, careless, terribly attractive smile came over his eyes and brows, though ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... you please," Lesley said. She could not get past him without seeming rude. A slight tremor shook her frame; she shrank away from him, towards the open piano and leaned against it as if for support. The flickering firelight showed her that his face was very pale, the lips were tightly closed, the brows knitted above his fiercely flaming eye. He did ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... flickering light of surprise flashing in his eyes again. Then he threw back his head and shouted in the mad joy of his wild heart, his great mouth stretched wide, his great mustaches moving in his breath. Shouting still, as his Viking forebears shouted in the joy of battle, the roar ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... there was constant movement, lights flickering, heads swaying to and fro, confused voices within the court, rushing waves of sound through the entrance from without. It seemed to Romola as if she were in the midst of a storm-troubled sea, caring nothing about the storm, caring only to hold ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... on a low rocker by the bedside, the dim flare of an oil lamp flickering on the faces of the two women, Aunt Rebecca told more of the things she was so eager to ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... silence. His eye was caught by the old hearth, and by the iron plate at the back of it, bearing the letters G. W. and some scroll work. There flashed into his mind a vision of the December evening on which Washington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the winds breathing round the house and over the snow-bound landscape outside, the dying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering invisibly, the ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... walked away. Walked out of the enchanting village and down the highway and across the flower-pulsing plain to Judith's back doorway. It was unlighted now, and he had trouble distinguishing it from the others. Its shimmering blue framework was flickering. Judith had not lied then: ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... out on to the veranda, and gazed down into the black darkness, with the lightning still quivering and flickering ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... face. It was there in the white heart of the dying campfire; it hung in the shadows that hovered over the flickering light; it drifted ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... with one end narrowed to a handle, arranging with this the piles of coals upon the hearth, over which they set their "skillet" and "oven" to do their cooking. It was on such a wooden shovel that Abraham worked his sums by the flickering firelight, making his figures with a piece of charcoal, and, when the shovel was all covered, taking a drawing-knife and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... was that painters who under favourable circumstances might have done some meritorious work, became mere journeymen contented with the soulless insincerity of cheap effects. Giulio Romano alone, by dint of robust energy and lurid fire of fancy flickering amid the smoke of his coarser nature, achieved a triumph in this line of labour. His Palazzo del Te will always remain the monument of a specific moment in Renaissance history, since it is adequate to the intellectual conditions of a race demoralised but ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the sleepy hounds leaned against our chairs looking at us with suppliant eyes, in the evenings when the fire was dying away in the hooded fireplace in the library, stories. Stories, and legends, and fairy tales, while the stiff old portraits changed countenance constantly under the flickering firelight, and the sound of the drifting Inn came softly ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... laid in magnificent languor among the leaves. The picture is singularly impressive, when seen far enough off, as an image of thick forest gloom amidst the rich and tender foliage of the South; the leaves, however, tossing as in disturbed night air, and the flickering of the torches, and of the branches, contrasted with the steady flame which from the Angel's presence is spread over the robes of the disciples. The strangest feature in the whole is that the Christ also is represented as sleeping. The angel ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... to the bridge, Tom! I can see flickering lights darting about, and I believe they must be planes rushing up into ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... an instant of universal surprise shared by the mayor, after which Clark gathered Dawson and Belding with his magnetic eye, and the two pushed up the windows nearest them. The cool night air breathed in and set the big oil lamps flickering, but with it there came the dull monotone of the rapids. Clark leaned slightly forward, and, smiling, began ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... powerful engines whizzed and clanked, like a great metallic heart. Her sharp, steep prow cut through the river-water and sent two rolling waves to right and to left of us. With every throb of the engines we sprang and quivered like a living thing. One great yellow lantern in our bows threw a long, flickering funnel of light in front of us. Right ahead a dark blur upon the water showed where the Aurora lay, and the swirl of white foam behind her spoke of the pace at which she was going. We flashed past barges, steamers, merchant-vessels, in and out, behind this one and round the other. Voices hailed ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been mistaken. The white corner of a folded paper appeared clearly against the general's dark uniform. At the same moment a cold draught coming from somewhere set the tapers flickering. Shadows danced around the room, over the bier, across the dead man's face; and in the quick change of light and shadow it seemed to her that the rigid features became more living, that a mournful smile formed itself on ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, which stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance, the flickering brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and making a luminous mist of the emerging smoke. The interior, as seen through the window, caused him to draw up with a terminative air and watch. The house was rather large for a cottage, and ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Bertram; it's all right!" she whispered. He returned no answer, even of a flickering eyelash. He lay still, inert, a great bulk that tugged at the muscles ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... dreary night away in the sickroom, where the insensible child was watched by his mother and her friend! The flickering taper, which both forgot to snuff, would fitfully flare up and reveal the watchers, the bed, and the prostrate form of the pale, stiff, motionless boy, with his eyes flared back with a fixed and horrid stare. In the parlor, a party equally silent ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... till he found the shelf and lit the candle. By degrees the flickering light revealed to him a small bare room with no furniture except a bed, a chair, a small stove, and a table. A box in the corner apparently contained a few worn garments. Some dishes and provisions were ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the neighboring church clock, striking the hour, seemed to beat on her heart as it smote relentlessly the girl's returning consciousness. Then she took up the work again, and the needle, with whose little point in pain and sickness and consuming solitude, in darkness, desolation, and flickering, fainting faith, she pricked back ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... stair without. Someone reeled staggering across the room, came a-scrabbling at the open casement and, as I leapt up, the door burst open and Joel Bym appeared flourishing a naked hanger and with Godby behind bearing a lanthorn, whose flickering light showed Adam, knife in hand, where he leaned panting against the wall, a smear of blood across his pallid face and with shirt and doublet ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... a perpetual fascination for him. He was considering the tints in Bessie's hair and in the delicate, downy rose-oval of her cheeks, and the effect upon them of the sunshine flickering through the vine leaves. When the after-glow was red in the west, the dark green cloth of the window-curtain, faded to purple and orange, made a rich background for her fair head, and he beheld in his fancy a picture that some day he would reproduce. On the tea-table ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... insisted on making when Dicky had collected some grown-ups and the barrels were being rolled away. During this thunder-like interval Denny and Oswald were all the time in the pitch dark. They had lighted their last match, and by its flickering gleam we saw ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... simplified the situation, but before I could recall the men, several of them had reached the bed-ground. As fast as horses could be secured, others dashed through the lighted circle and faded into the darkness. From the flickering of matches it was evident that the boys were dismounting and looking for some sign of trouble. Zilligan was swearing like a pirate, looking for his horse in the murky night; but instead of any alarm, oaths and derision greeted ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... cigar for about two hours, and had smoked one side of it three-quarters of the way down to the end, when I concluded that I had smoked enough—for one day—so I rose up to cast the other side into the fire, which was flickering fitfully in my spacious fireplace. This done, I turned about, and there, fearful to see, sat this thing grinning at me from the depths of my chair. My hair not only stood on end, but tugged madly in an effort to get away. Four hairs—I can prove the statement ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... sally into the world. To preserve Siegfried for the enterprise to which he has destined him he makes a grotesque attempt to teach him fear. He appeals to his experience of the terrors of the forest, of its dark places, of its threatening noises its stealthy ambushes, its sinister flickering lights ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... beautiful, having the size and appearance of a pie—a meringue pie, well browned. A path led to another garden where in a hidden nook we one day discovered a quantity of chanterelles that were like wonderful black morning-glories. It was duskily shaded there, and through the flickering green we noticed a vivid, red spot that was like a flame. We pushed out to it and came upon a tiny, silent brook slipping through a bed of cowslip and water-arum, and at its margin a scarlet cardinal-flower, burning ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... this frame of mind, produced by actual contact with Salem, is subtly akin to the mood from which so many of Hawthorne's visions were projected. A flickering semblance, perhaps, of what to him must have been a constant though subdued and dreamy flame summoning him to potent incantation over the abyss of time; but from this it was easy to conceive it deepened and intensified in ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... saved? And yet—he was standing above her and he was superb in his strength and power. He was holding her cloak for her; helping to rid himself of her. The old half-dead, but vital call of the aboriginal woman rose in her, then ebbed away at birth in a feeble flickering jealousy. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... one transfixed, and he stood motionless also in the flickering light of the flames, gazing at her with eyes of awful blue that were as burning spirit. But he spoke not a word—not a word. How ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... and apprehensions creep over them... and all their troubles come trooping home. I wonder what they would think of a sunset which ushered in eighty-four hours of darkness!... I watched the light fading on the wall, a flickering, sickly glow that paled and faded and died, and left my eyes, weakened now by the long darkness, quite ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... began in his throat, very softly and rhythmically, broken only by interruptions in which a last instinctive effort appeared to revive the flickering life of the intelligence, and to rouse fitful gleams of consciousness ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... back and held some converse with Auntie Lucinda, and by what spell I know not, won the promise of the latter to remain silent and make no attempt at escape. A little later she was at my side in the dim light cast by a flickering and distant arc light ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... challenge Jeff had not sent, and Esther was accepting it, wherever it might lead, to whatever duelling ground. Esther couldn't help that. A challenge was a challenge. She had to answer. It was a necessity of type. Madame Beattie saw the least little flickering thought run into her eyes, and knew she was involuntarily charting the means of summons, setting up the loom, as it were, to weave the magic web. She got up, took her hat, gave her toupee a little smack with the hand, and unhinged it ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... flickering flame of Christianity. The Middle Ages were indeed dark for Christianity, as unbelief, ignorance, and faithlessness prevailed. But the monasteries were centers of religious interest ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... arm, and the bent, distorted image of a head. I pressed my one free hand beneath my neck, and thus, by an effort, lifted myself so as to see more clearly beyond the shoulder of the dead Indian. The first tiny, flickering spark of fire had caught the dry wood, and was swiftly bursting into flame. In another moment this had illumined that stooping figure, and rested in a blaze of light upon the lowered face, bringing out the features as though they ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... he found that the young moon was up, and that the stars were beginning to shine in the sky from which the tones of red and yellow were flickering out, in favour of the calm blue of a summer night. He was still by the river-side. Turning suddenly, he met a man, so close upon him that Eugene, surprised, stepped back, to avoid a collision. The man carried something ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... scene in that play not to be forgotten. The curtain rises and shows a vast, dim chamber in the castle, with a heavily-curtained bed, and massive carved furniture, and a deep bay-window. It is night; a candle burns upon the table, feebly flickering in the gloom of the great chamber. Angelo, whom Thisbe loves, and who pretends to love her, is sitting uneasily in the chamber with his mistress, whose name we have forgotten, but whom he really loves. Thisbe is suspicious of his want of ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... curtains to draw or blinds to pull down or shutters to close in these humble dwellings, but the light, though unobstructed shines but feebly, for 'tis only the glimmer of a tallow candle that we see or perhaps the flickering of the firelight from the open chimney that dances ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... ago that the books on occasions could be dispensed with, and the elder members of families would recite the stories from memory for the delectation of the younger fry, when all foregathered in a crescent before the kitchen fire to wear out the long winter evenings. In this manner, under the dim-flickering light of an "oilie cruizie," in a straggling village in Perthshire, did I learn first of Blue Beard and Jack the Giant Killer, and many another hero of chapbook literature. And my experience, I am sure, was by no means singular. Rather, I feel certain that while telling thus my own, I am ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... wonder of delicate transition and change of key, that one could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at work informing the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the sharpness, and blending the angles, until in some parts there was but the gentle flickering of the original conception left, all its self-assertion vanished under the file of the air and the gnawing of the worm. True, the hand of the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought lovingly and gently, and wherein it had erred, the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... his heavy chin silhouetted against the flickering light of the candle on the table. His hand closed suddenly on the handle of the bag with the swift clutch of an eagle's claw. She started at the ugly picture it made in the dim rays ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... re-descended by a steep incline to 2500 feet. The intense heat prevented me from walking at my usual pace, and I did not, therefore, reach my destination before sundown. Walking on in the dark, we saw the distant flickering forest fires crawling here and there like incandescent snakes along or up the mountain-side: these are caused by the igniting of the grass, shrubs, and undergrowth by the natives, the flames not unfrequently spreading and playing havoc among ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... fierce little cub. So were his brothers and sisters. It was to be expected. He was a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed of meat- killers and meat-eaters. His father and mother lived wholly upon meat. The milk he had sucked with his first flickering life, was milk transformed directly from meat, and now, at a month old, when his eyes had been open for but a week, he was beginning himself to eat meat—meat half-digested by the she-wolf and disgorged for the five growing cubs that ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... huge stake which had been planted in the square. Back of them were groups of terrified, awe-struck Peruvians, helplessly weeping and lamenting the fate of their monarch which they were powerless to prevent. Flickering torches held by the troops cast an uncertain light over the tragic scene. Atahualpa was led forth in fetters and chained to the stake. He showed little of the firmness and fortitude of a proud monarch ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the cabin door open, and our hero entering found himself in a dimly-lighted apartment and in the presence of a villainous, dark-faced man. The latter eyed his visitor by the aid of the dim, flickering light shed abroad in the room by ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... shrills his ditty, Flickering flame-wise through the clear live calm, Rose triumphal, crowning all a city, Roofs exalted once with prayer and psalm, Built of holy hands for holy pity, Frank and fruitful as ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and mental structure, these two men were harmonious in spirit, and a close bond of sympathy and affection existed between them. It was a mutual pleasure to work as brothers, and afterward to rejoice together in labor accomplished. One of the last visits which roused the flickering animation of the dying physician, was from this friend of more vigorous years, and the voice which gave fitting expression to the worth of the departed, at his funeral, was that ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... last half-day's journey toward the place, he had fallen in with an old gentleman whom others called "Governor," a tall, trim figure, bent but little under fourscore years, with cheerful voice and ready speech, and eyes hidden behind dark glasses and flickering in ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... with the blood of millions in his polluted skirts—terrible to behold—greedily devouring our hard earnings and feeding himself upon our flesh. Here was the evil from which to escape. On the other hand, far away, back in the hazy distance, where all forms seemed but shadows, under the flickering light of the north star—behind some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain—stood a doubtful freedom, half frozen, beckoning us to her icy domain. This was the good to be sought. The inequality was as great as that between certainty and uncertainty. This, in itself, was enough to stagger us; but ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... it was plod-plod-plod, one day very much like another, cold with coldness of the sub-Arctic, the river a white band through heavy woods, nights that were crisp and still as death, the sky a vast dome sprinkled with flickering stars, brilliant at times with the Northern Lights, that strange glow that flashes and shimmers above the Pole, now a banner of flame, again only a misty sheen. Sometimes it seemed an unreality, that silence, that immensity of hushed forest, those vast ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... disjointed as by an earthquake, loaded the inward silence with unearthly tones, which my lonely and quickened imagination readily furnished with syllables. The lanthorn diffused but a small light, and the flickering of the fire made a movement of shadows about me. I was separated from the great cabin where the figures were by the little arms-room only, and the passage to it ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... sketches of this sort with an air of unconsciousness which is fascinating.... It may be a sunset, or it may be only a flake of snow falling upon a young girl's hair, or the light from lanterns penetrating the shutters and flickering over the ceiling of a room in the early winter morning,—no matter what the circumstance or happening is, it is caught in the act, photographed in permanent colors, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... disremember exactly what he is celebrated for, but I think it was a flying a—oh, yes, flying a kite, that's it. The publisher mentioned it. He was out one day flying a kite, you know, like boys do nowadays, and while she was a-flickering up in the sky, and he was giving her more string, an apple fell off a tree and hit him on the head; then he discovered the attraction of gravitation, I think they call it. Smart, wasn't it? Now, if you or me'd 'a' ben hit, it'd just made us mad, like as not, and set us a-ravin'. But men are so ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... it was finished; and when the boys began to shuffle them in the pack, they were disappointed because of the bulky appearance and wished for a more perfect set. But John had done a good job in cutting them out, and the marking answered the purpose very well. So night after night, by the aid of the flickering and sputtering light, furnished by the rag burning in the saucer of lard, the two boys, with heads bent low, sat scheming and planning, each striving to get ahead of the other ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... two flame-tipped shadows appeared, stood for a moment, and then seemed to float out upon its surface. The shadows wavered; the tips of flame that nimbused them with flickering points of vermilion pulsed outward, drew back, darted forth again, and once more withdrew themselves—and as they did so the shadows thickened—and suddenly there before us ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... favorite table (the second from the corner on the street, not too conspicuous, and yet commanding the avenue) was vacant. He slipped into the chair which the waiter drew out for him, and took up the bill of fare. With the sight of the menu, he felt his flickering appetite revive; but it was still capricious, and would not brook the thought of meat. Little-Neck clams, of course. They seemed to convey a delicate intimation to the waiting stomach of favors to come. Soup? ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... and renewing my life with your own. You only have taught me that I have a heart; you only have thrown a light deep downward and upward into my soul. You only have revealed me to myself, for without your aid my best knowledge of myself would have been merely to know my own shadow—to watch it flickering on the wall, and mistake its fantasies for my own real actions. . . . If the whole world stood between us we must have met; if we had been born in different ages we ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... carrying them, alight, in one hand—not without dexterity, for candles played an important part in his life—he went forward. The flickering light showed his face to be a fat one, kind enough, gleaming now with perspiration and fear, but shiny at other times with that Christian tolerance which makes men kind to their own failings. It was very dark within the house, for all the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... He dared not let go for an instant, well knowing that the frenzied beast would tear his victim limb from limb. But Juxon's hands were strong, and though Stamboul writhed and his throat rattled he could not free himself. The squire glanced at the body of the fallen man, just visible in the flickering moonlight. Walter Goddard lay quite still upon his back. If he was badly wounded it was not possible to say where the ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... the mocking answer. He had glided back behind the bed, the instant the shots were fired. As he moved, two guns appeared for a flickering instant around the edge of the doorway, one on each side. Their muzzles kicked up rapidly, one, two, three, four, five, six, and each, as he fired, spread the shots carefully from side to side. Sinclair heard the bullets ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... will be a Daniel, and you will speak the truth unto princes, and they will conspire to take your life; but the Lord will protect you.—Now I can safely leave, for I see lightnings flash from your eyes and tongues of fire flickering over your head. (As he is leaving.) There comes the Lord of Flies: don't let him defile ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... along with his colonel and several comrades. They were eleven in number, prisoners to the Delawares. Captain Pipe had marched them to his own town. Their hopes had been flickering, they thought that Simon Girty might help them, but on the way Chief Pipe and Chief Wingenund had painted them black. Then nine of them were killed by a mob. And at Pipe's Town Doctor Knight had sickened in watching his colonel burned ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... gain in power for the waiting. Her physician had told her that Bivens's days were numbered. Stuart had waited twelve years in silence; he could wait the few months more of her husband's flickering life. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... employing his time in examining the ground for traces of the gang, and very shortly he came across the tracks that the precious pair had made earlier in the evening. An exclamation from him drew the others to the spot. By the flickering light of a match they inspected the hoof-marks, and then the leader of the party gave vent to a ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... every side by the great cliff of high black forest, looked very wild as it showed in the starlight, its low, savage-built bark huts, in two hard rows, closed at either end by a guard-house. In both guard-houses there was a fire burning, and in their flickering glow showed the forms of sleeping men. Nothing was moving save the goats, which are always brought into the special house for them in the middle of the town, to keep them from the leopards, which ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... seated near a blazing fire in the old-fashioned dining-room of a large, lonely mansion. They had just dined; wine and fruit were on the table, both untouched, while Mr. Hewson and his wife sat silently gazing at the fire, watching its flickering light becoming gradually more vivid as the short spring ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... village, perhaps at a distance from any house, it may be in the midst of a piece of woods where four roads meet, one may sometimes even yet see a small square one-story building, whose use would not be long doubtful. It is summer, and the flickering shadows of forest-leaves dapple the roof of the little porch, whose door stands wide, and shows, hanging on either hand, rows of straw hats and bonnets, that look as if they had done good service. As you pass the open windows, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... disguise or ward it off when possible: now addressing Elvire by her husband's mouth, in the terms of an ideal companionship, now again reducing her to the level of an every-day injured wife; and when the dramatic Don Juan was about to throw off the mask, the flickering wifely personality would be extinguished altogether, and the unfaithful husband left face to face with the mere phantom of conscience which, in one sense, Elvire is always felt to be. This is what actually occurs; and only from this point of view can we account for the perpetual encroaching ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... that had been liberally distributed among them because there was hardly grass enough for a "burro." We were all ready to turn in, but there stood our temporary commander, his long legs a-straddle, his hands clasped behind him, and the flickering light of the fire betraying in his face both ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the candle, and held it, while Ellen tried, by its flickering light, to show Fisher the tooth ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... go to bed that night, but sat in his chair by the flickering embers of his kitchen fire. His wife, lying awake in the bedroom above, listened to his hard breathing and to the half-stifled words which now and again fell from his lips. He was brooding over ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... another and another, as night, gathering in its intensity, swept over the valley, until it was met by an ever-increasing challenge. It was like a myriad host of fairy fire-flies, each diamond pointed, flickering, blinking, never still. And there settled on the under side of the smoke pall a lurid glow as of banked fires, waiting for the ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... some magnetic attraction. Once he advanced his other hand, and turned the contemplative face towards his own for a moment. But it sought the fire again as soon as he released it; and remained, addressed towards the flickering blaze, until the nurse appeared, to summon ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... crowd lining the principal entrance to the temple, showed that it was a matter of no little interest to the public. The courtyard of the temple presented a most picturesque sight; it was crowded with soldiers standing about in knots round large fires, which threw a dim flickering light over the heavy eaves and quaint gable-ends of the sacred buildings. We were shown into an inner room, where we were to wait until the preparation for the ceremony was completed: in the next room to ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... and flickering smile of dissent; but to say more she felt would be fruitless. A heavy burden was laid upon her young life. She knew the iron will that slumbered beneath her father's kind exterior; but she felt in her soul a will as resolute, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... hurried out of sight, 'how sad a spectacle! the deluded, wandering mind, told by such unerring symptoms; the wild eye, strange words, and fantastic pleasantness; reason hurled from her own throne, and that steady light exchanged for the fitful flickering over decay! They mistake me for one of their melancholy fraternity, poor lunatics! whereas my lamp of life, and reason, it appears to me, never shone brighter. I shall yet work out something of which my country will be proud, and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... whose sides thrust out abroad each wave the main doth send Is broken, and must cleave itself through hollow bights to wend: Huge rocks on this hand and on that, twin horns of cliff, cast dread On very heaven; and far and wide beneath each mighty head Hushed are the harmless waters; lo, the flickering wood above And wavering shadow cast adown by darksome hanging grove: In face hereof a cave there is of rocks o'erhung, made meet With benches of the living stone and springs of water sweet, The house of Nymphs: a-riding there may way-worn ships be bold ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... made by Father M'Clane for holding a regular confessional; and an hour before sunset, he had taken his seat in the little darkened chamber, behind a table on which four tallow-candles were burning, with an uncertain, flickering light. ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... a light flickering inside the box, and there was a noise of scraping and knocking, ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... stripe of nether sky, Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by, Now flickering golden through a woodland screen, 95 Then spreading out, at his next turn beyond, A silver circle like an inland pond— Slips seaward silently through marshes purple ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... her nineteenth year, spending a long life to his honor and glory. It was the winter of the year, but a mild day, when on returning from school we were summoned to her bedside. The feeble lamp of life was flickering in the socket, and the pulses of the aged woman stood still. Her spirit passed quietly from earth, to enter into the presence of God who gave it. She fell like a shock of corn fully ripe, at the age of ninety-four years. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... hour, and in that guise, she generally did, that the word of God might be the last book on which she looked ere she sought her rest, she was leaning abstractedly over the fire, seated on a low stool, her hands pressed on her temples, while the flickering flame cast a red and unnatural glare on those pale cheeks. Ellen advanced, but her cousin moved not at her entrance, nor even when she knelt by her side, and twined ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... library. She was pulling Octavia's adorable white lace shawl about her firm young shoulders, the flickering gas lights made ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... certainly not where they had been. Not a trace nor an echo—not a trace nor an echo—of anything, only parallelograms of darkness in every direction, and our little circle of light flickering on the tombs of Anterus, and Fabianus, and Entychianus, and Epis—martyr—and we three within ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Katte mourned for the lambs. At length, through all difficulty and danger, when his light had spent itself, and his strength had wellnigh spent itself too, his feet touched the old highroad. There were flickering torches and many people and loud cries around the church, as there had been four hundred years before, when the last sacrament had been said in the valley for the hunter-king doomed to perish above. His mother, being sleepless and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... anguish to Winifred. She prayed against it. That little cleft between his brow, that flickering, wicked, little smile that seemed to haunt his face, and above all, the triumphant loneliness, the Ishmael quality. And then the erectness of his supple body, like a symbol. The very way he stood, so quiet, so insidious, like an erect, supple ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... and the flickering firelight added to its strangeness. Silent and still as statues the warriors stood. Then as John Smith was led before the chief they raised a wild shout. As that died away to silence one of the Powhatan's squaws rose and brought a basin of water to Smith. In this he ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... baby," said Billy, when the flickering lights of Cuivaca shone to the south of them, and the road ahead lay clear to the rendezvous ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I was thinking very little of ghosts that day, or of the minister either. My ears were cocked to catch and interpret all the noises that came in through the open windows on my left. My eyes wandered in that direction, too, though the clear panes revealed nothing more exciting than flickering maple leaves and a sky filmed over by ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... any of the other contemporary leadersTaylor, Kimball, Orson Hyde, or Pratt: "Mormonism will decline. Brigham is its tun; this is its daytime." Stenhouse asserted that, "Theocracy will die out with Brigham's flickering flame of life; and, when he is laid in the tomb, many who are silent now will curse his memory for the cruel suffering that his ambition caused them to endure." But all such prophecies remain unfulfilled. Young's death caused no more revolution or change ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Coleridge (says the late Mr. George Dawson)[88] "holds the first place amongst English poets in this objective teaching of the vague, the mystic, the dreamy, and the imaginative. I defy any man of imagination or sensibility to have 'The Ancient Mariner' read to him, by the flickering firelight on Christmas night, by a master mind possessed by the mystic spirit of the poem, and not find himself taken away from the good regions of 'ability to account for,' and taken into some far-off dreamland, and made even to start at his own footfall, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... within two hundred yards of the head of the train, letting drive their arrows at the flying Mexican vedettes and uttering yells fit to raise the dead, while their comrades behind, whooping also, stormed along under a trembling and flickering of lances. The little, lean, wiry horses were going at full speed, regardless of smooth faces of rock and beds of loose stones. The blackguards were over a hundred in number, all lancers and archers of ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... shown their good manners. There were no pleasant games of snap-dragon, or touch, or even a gossip over the tea-table, for the young-lady foxes. Empty, vast, and cold were the halls of the Snow Queen. The flickering flame of the northern lights could be plainly seen, whether they rose high or low in the heavens, from every part of the castle. In the midst of its empty, endless hall of snow was a frozen lake, broken on its surface into a thousand forms; each piece ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... had lasted long. The lamps were flickering low. Dark shadows were loitering in every corner of the room. The aroma of flowers from the adjacent gardens floated in at the open windows, and made the hot air drugged and heavy. Ulamhala slowly and noiseless as a cat stepped to the window, and, leaning out over the marble railing, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... flooring." She passed her slim hand across her eyes. "It was like an unreal scene—a fevered vision of two phantoms in the smoky, lurid lustre of the torch. Boyd stood there dark against the light, edged with flickering flame as with a mantle, figure and visage scintilant with Lucifer's own beauty—and Lana, her proud head drooping, and her sad, young eyes fixed on me—Oh, Euan!" She stood pressing down both eyelids with her fingers, motionless; then, with a quick-drawn breath and a brusque gesture, flung ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... moment the two were silent, staring down at the busy landing procedures below. A warning light was flickering across the field, signaling the landing of an incoming shuttle ship, and the supply cars broke from their positions in center of the field and fled like beetles for the security of the garages. A ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... By this flickering light, which made the old room, with its heavy timbers and panelled walls, look as if it were built of polished ebony—the wind roaring and howling without, now rattling the latch and creaking the hinges of the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the letter by the flickering firelight, which was stronger on the hearthrug than the light of the dim November day. It began: "Dearest Hilda, I write at once to tell you that a lawyer called here this afternoon to inquire about your Hotel Continental shares. He told me there was going to be some difficulty with the Company, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... winks of sleep towards morning. E—— sat outside all night, finding it very difficult not to drop off the coach from drowsiness. The early hours of the morning, after the moon went down until dawn, were truly wretched, what between the outer darkness, the flickering of our lamps, the unevenness of the road, and the clouds of dust, and one almost began to wonder if the journey ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... smiling proudly for all that, because he knows that the army is coming on. The Superior had brought from the Brotherhood the picture of the head of Christ in its crown of thorns to hang on the wall at the end of the bed, and the light from the window made flickering gleams on the glass, and they were reflected ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Saturn evolution progressed, facts follow of a different kind from those already related. Whereas everything hitherto was a reflection of outer life and feeling, there now begins a kind of inner life. In the Saturn world a life of light begins flickering here and there, and growing dim again. A quivering glimmer is seen in some places, something like flashes of lightning in others. The Saturn heat bodies begin to glimmer, to sparkle, and even to emit rays. This stage of evolution having been reached, there again arises the possibility ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... two or three, which he visited with as little success. Standing again in the outside darkness he pondered what to do. He thought perhaps his friend might be known at the livery stable, and going there he asked again. The stableman knew no such a fellow, and by the flickering lantern-light he saw the look of disappointment and ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... over the blows and pitchforkings, hitherto unknown to him, no one could surely say. He would do nothing but crouch, brooding, sullen and dangerous, at the back of his cage. Hansen noted the green light flickering fitfully across his pale, wide eyes, and ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... inland empire. He conquered Rome and all north Italy and assumed the title of Roman emperor. The movement of Charlemagne was a slight and even a doubtful beginning of the revival. Possibly his reform was a faint flickering of the watch-fires of intellectual and civil activity, but they went out and darkness obscured the horizon until the breaking of the morn of liberty. Yet in the darkness of the ages that followed new forces ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... inasmuch as the king did hate it sorely." . . . "The heresy was seen glimmering here and there," says another contemporary witness [Florimond de Raimond in his Histoire de l'Heresie], "but it appeared and disappeared like a nightly meteor which has but a flickering brightness."—At bottom this reserve was quite in conformity with the mental condition of that class, or as one might he inclined to say, that circle of Reformers at court. Luther and Zwingle had distinctly declared war on the papacy; Henry VIII. had with a flourish separated ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... draw aside from her path, and whisper with superstitious fear mingled with contempt, "It's the idiot girl!"—Idiot—how much more of heaven's light was there in that cloud than in the rushlights that, flickering in sordid chambers, shed on dull things the dull ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton |
