"Shifting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... black flag and returned it, shooting away from her with all the sail he could pack; and had he taken Armstrong's advice to have gone before the wind, he had probably escaped; but keeping his tacks down, either by the wind's shifting, or ill steerage, or both, he was taken aback with his sails, and the Swallow came a second time very nigh to him. He had now, perhaps, finished the fight very desperately, if death, who took a swift passage in a grape shot, had not interposed, and struck him directly on the throat. ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Inlet is buoyed in such a way that the stranger who tries to go through it will run his vessel so hard and fast aground that she will be likely to stay there until the waves make an end of her, or the shifting sands of the bar bury her out ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... soul;' 'a spirit is a spirit;' 'a fetiche is a fetiche,' &c. These all being equivalent to this proposition, viz. WHAT IS, IS; i.e. what hath existence, hath existence; or, who hath a soul, hath a soul. What is this more than trifling with words? It is but like a monkey shifting his oyster from one hand to the other: and had he but words, might no doubt have said, 'Oyster in right hand is subject, and oyster in left hand is predicate:' and so might have made a self-evident proposition of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... evening of Thanksgiving Day there was an air of repressed excitement about the Cardew house. Mademoiselle, in a new silk dress, ran about the lower floor, followed by an agitated Grayson with a cloth, for Mademoiselle was shifting ceaselessly and with trembling hands vases of flowers, and spilling water at each shift. At six o'clock had arrived a large square white box, which the footman had carried to the rear and there exhibited, allowing a palpitating cook, scullery maid and divers ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... before a house on the Swedish bank to hay his horses. We went up and found a single inhabitant, a man who was splitting fir for torches, but the conversation was limited to alternate puffs from our pipes. There was a fine aurora behind us—a low arch of white fire, with streamers radiating outward, shifting and dancing ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... loosened by the hands of imaginative sympathy. What happiness a single theatre can contain! And those of maturer years, or of more meditative temperament, sitting at the pantomime, can extract out of the shifting scenes meanings suitable to themselves; for the pantomime is a symbol or adumbration of human life. Have we not all known Harlequin, who rules the roast, and has the pretty Columbine to himself? Do we not all know that rogue of a clown with his peculating fingers, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... things—at least to the best of them: but they have to suffer an eclipse, during which they are nothing but symbols of all that is hackneyed and commonplace in music and literature. I think things are either beautiful or not: I can't believe in a real shifting of taste, a merely relative and temporary beauty. If it only happened to the second-rate kinds of goodness, it would be intelligible—but it seems to involve the best as well. What ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... upheaving; Who, that had seen them, could have thought That things so fair could be deceiving? The moon, the sky, the wave, the wind, In all their fitful moods of changing, Are nought to wavering woman's mind, For ever shifting, ever ranging! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... form at length a species of swamp. Such rivers are generally styled lagoons. The Yarra-Yarra is navigable up to the town of Melbourne for ships of a large size—say 400 tons; but the seven miles of distance being circuitous, and the banks of sand at the mouth of the river occasionally shifting, the larger class of ships generally remain at the anchorage ground in the bay, and discharge by common lighters. At the present moment, from twenty to thirty very large ships are riding in the bay. A pretty little steamer plies three times a-day between the towns of Melbourne ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... in the same place, does he generally go on fishing for the same merchant for years?-Yes; but I have heard of some of them shifting. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... had fallen, the twilight was still glowing, and even on this wide expanse the air was still. The vast and undulating surface of the brown and purple moor, varied occasionally by some fantastic rocks, gleamed in the shifting light. Hesperus was the only star that yet was visible, and seemed to move before them and lead them ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... as they stood together at the side of the vessel, David leaning heavily against it, his words would fail him altogether, and he would be left staring stupidly, the great black eyes widening, the lower lip falling—over the shifting brilliance ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cut down the end of the mountain in the Gap where it projects into the river, open up a good highway through the cut, and thus shorten the distance very materially and shun two dangerous and ever-shifting fords, one above and the other below the cut. His patience and perseverance in this great enterprise yielded to no discouragements, and he saw the bridge built, and the projecting end of the mountain cut down. Like all other men who have embarked in great enterprises ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... society, everywhere courted and flattered, Voltaire was constantly at work, displaying the marvellous suppleness of his mind by shifting from the tragedies of Artemise and Marianne, which failed, to the comedy of L'Indiscret, to numerous charming epistles, and lastly to the poem of La Henriade, which he went on carefully revising, reading fragments of it as he changed his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... consciousness he lay upon the hard ground and Chester was bending over him. Shifting his position slightly the lad saw what was left of his troop standing idly about. At the same moment he felt a hand grasp his and heard ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... sheer round three sides reminds one of the geyser-studded old crater of Unzen, in the island of Kyushiu in Japan, "Its gleaming mirror," the guide book says, "exhibits a wonderful luxury of tints and colours, shifting and changing whenever the gentle mountain breeze ruffles the smooth surface." We did not stay a sufficiently long time to experience any wonderful changes on the lake itself, but the surroundings are loaded with charm. ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... volcanic backbone, and I saw the clouds above tilt, too. This was no stable, firm-founded land, else it would not cut such capers. It was like all the rest of our landfall, unreal. It was a dream. At any moment, like shifting vapour, it might dissolve away. The thought entered my head that perhaps it was my fault, that my head was swimming or that something I had eaten had disagreed with me. But I glanced at Charmian and her sad walk, and even ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... the Christian superstition and prepare the way for a more rational and humane condition of society. I shall adapt myself, as well as I can, to the shifting conditions of the struggle. My aim is to succeed. My policy, therefore, will never be determined by a personal preference. I shall follow the path that promises victory. But I do not, and will not, dictate ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... seven years ago, what was there in the very obvious future thus assured her that could match the hopes her heart held out? How could it be at once the golden harbor, the peaceful end of hurried, empty years, and the delicious, shifting unrest that made a tumult of her days and nights? Yet something told her that it was; something repeated insistently, "Always I will wait."... He would keep faith, that ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... intensity, and those glimmering lights waxed and waned with a steady rise and fall. Sometimes they seemed to be tiny points of extreme brilliancy—little electric sparks in the black obscurity—then they would widen and widen until all that corner of the room was filled with their shifting and sinister light. And then suddenly they went ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... floating shrine of white marble, is perhaps the most unique and graceful object of architecture in Siam; shining like a jewel on the broad bosom of the river, a temple all of purest white, its lofty spire, fantastic and gilded, flashing back the glory of the sun, and duplicated in shifting, quivering shadows in the limpid waters below. Add to these the fitful ripple of the coquettish breeze, the burnished blazonry of the surrounding vegetation, the budding charms of spring joined to the sensuous opulence ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... laughed shortly. "The Andrew Halloran? I guess not!" He shut his knife with a decisive snap and stood up. "I don't trust her—not in such a storm as that's going to be." He waved his arm toward the harbor. The greyness was shifting rapidly. It moved in swift green touches, heavy and clear—a kind of luminous dread. In its sallow light the man's face stood out tragically. "I ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... by politics and contracts, is become a branch of assurances; it was before more properly a part of gaming, and as it deserved, had but a very low esteem; but shifting sides, and the war providing proper subjects, as the contingencies of sieges, battles, treaties, and campaigns, it increased to an extraordinary reputation, and offices were erected on purpose which managed it to a ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... Temple was filled with Votaries, who applied themselves to different Diversions, as their Fancies directed them. In one part of it I saw a Regiment of Anagrams, who were continually in motion, turning to the Right or to the Left, facing about, doubling their Ranks, shifting their Stations, and throwing themselves into all the Figures and Countermarches of the most changeable and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... routes, according to the direction of the winds. While the sea rages on one side of the archipelago, on the other it may be still and safe, lying heavy like oil. In the straits the waves may swirl high in furious whirlpools, but with a mere turn of the wheel, a slight shifting of her course, the vessel may glide into the shelter of an island where she will ride in tranquil waters, paradisiacal, limpid, affording views of strange vegetation, where dart fishes sparkling with ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... opportunity; while Chauncey as diligently sought to gain the advantage of the wind, to force action with his heavy ships. Manoeuvring continued all day of the 8th, 9th, and 10th. The winds, being light and shifting, favored now one, now the other; but in no case for long enough to insure a meeting which the American with good reason desired, and his antagonist with equal propriety would accept only under conditions that ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... heart that he spoke almost kindly: "Tom—Tom, my boy, don't be too sure of yourself. You may keep fit and you may survive—but Tom, Tom—" the Doctor looked steadily into the bold, black eyes before him and fancied they were being held consciously from dropping and shifting as the Doctor cried: "For God's sake, Tom, don't let up! Keep on fighting, son, God or no God—you've got a devil—keep ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... ways of Providence are truly strange and inscrutable, and its balance ever shifting. This morning I rose in despair, to-night I shall lie down rejoicing; for a way is again opened to us that will put it beyond his power to annoy or oppress us further. God knows we have both suffered enough, already, at his hands! My maiden aunt, Lady Frances Pomfret, is dead, and makes me her ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... fog is not homogeneous—its density varies: it is honeycombed with streets, it has its caves of clear air, its cliffs of solid vapour, all shifting and changing place with the subtlety of legerdemain. It has also this wizard peculiarity, that it grows with the sinking of the sun ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... new version do not reflect the free play of Schiller's dramatic instinct so much as his deferential attitude towards Dalberg. Thus we know that the most important of them all, the shifting of the action back into the age of expiring feudalism, was made reluctantly. Schiller felt, and had reason to feel, that the modernity of his drama was its very life-blood;[32] for the squeamish Dalberg, however, the robbers in the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... pages, falconers, scullions with meats, gallant knights, gaily dressed ladies; it was like a tangled dream. The gabled fronts of the houses were richly blazoned or hung with scarlet cloth; it was a shifting scene of colour, life, and movement, and to Hilarius' untutored eyes, wild confusion. Outside the taverns clustered all sorts and conditions of men, drinking, gossiping, singing, for the day's work was ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... one particular State to another presents, on the largest possible scale, the most shifting play of individual passions, interests, aims, talents, virtues, power, injustice, vice, and mere external chance. It is a play in which even the ethical whole, the independence of the State, is exposed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... shouts. Other vaqueros, belonging to the same herd, segregated the animals immediately required and drove them in a straight line for the corral. There was not a moment of pause. The vaqueros, the brander, and his assistants seemed impervious to fatigue; the cattle, shifting uneasily in their bands, leaped eagerly from the lines at the first signal from the vaquero bearing down on them like a fury from the corral. On the far side, otherwise deserted, the sore indignant beasts scampered as fast as their legs could carry them whithersoever their ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... remarked the Glass Cat, sitting down to watch the shifting hues of the flowers. "I'm sure she won't have as fine a birthday ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... marriage with Elizabeth was, in truth, a leading motive with Orange for his close alliance with the Duke. The political structure, according to which he had selected the French Prince as protector of the Netherlands, was sagaciously planned; but unfortunately its foundation was the shifting sandbank of female and royal coquetry. Those who judge only by the result, will be quick to censure a policy which might have had very different issue. They who place themselves in the period anterior to Anjou's visit to England, will admit that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... A shifting of feet and changing of positions of those in the cabin plunged Daughtry back into his polishing, which he had for the time forgotten. And, as he rubbed the brass-work, he told himself under his breath: "The old party's sure been through the ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... anything the eye could see. In front of the Residency two soldiers marched up and down sleepily, mechanically, between two ten-pounders marking the limit of their patrol; and an orderly stood at an open door, lazily shifting his eyes from the sentinels to the black guns, which gave out soft, quivering waves of heat, as a wheel, spinning, throws off delicate spray. A hundred yards away the sea spread out, languid and huge. It was under-tinged with all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of Labrador, Battle Harbor, was reached. A week was consumed in getting from our first anchorage in Labrador to this harbor, as the captain was unaccustomed to icebergs, and properly decided to take no risks with them in the strong shifting currents and thick weather of the eastern end of the straits. The wind was ahead for several days, and the heavy squalls coming off the land in quick succession made us fear the wind would drop and ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... indeed preserved by the avarice, not the piety, of the conqueror: a more honorable exemption was granted to the church of St. Julian, and the quarter of the town where the ambassadors resided; some distant streets were saved by the shifting of the wind, and the walls still subsisted to protect, and soon to betray, their new inhabitants. Fanaticism had defaced the ornaments of Daphne, but Chosroes breathed a purer air amidst her groves ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... panted. His Captain's danger was the one coherent thought in his mind. Desmond merely nodded reassurance; and shifting a little in his saddle, eased matters as far as ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Chancellor came out of her house and wandered for a long time upon the shore. She looked up and down the bay, at the sails that gleamed on the blue water, shifting in the breeze and the light; they were a source of interest to her that they had never been before. It was a day she was destined never to forget; she felt it to be the saddest, the most wounding of ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... there be anything amiss—let the Dream be responsible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel with a rainbow for showing, or for not showing, a secondary arch. So far as I know, every element in the shifting movements of the Dream derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary features associated with the mail. For example, the cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic combination of features which ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... the valleys of the East and West Lyn. Lying on the short dry springy turf, in the mellow sunlight of late afternoon, you can look along the velvety wooded valley of the East Lyn, where the stream is hidden by the tufted banks of the trees, and by shifting ever so slightly on your elbows as you lie at ease you can look into the bare brown rocky valley of the West Lyn, and see the gleam of the river foaming over its rocks a thousand feet below. All ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... said he, shifting from one foot to another. "I enjoyed it, mamselle. It was such fun to dive into the battle and pull out the wounded. It helped them, you see, and it gave us a grand excitement. Otherwise, had I not gone with you, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... quite plainly—the twisted, crunched-up form of old Jake, with his tawny-bearded face, and narrow, shifting little black eyes; the smooth-shaven, suave, oily, cunning countenance of Thorold, the super-crook. Both were sitting at a table in the miserly appointed room, whose only other articles of furniture were a cheap iron bed and a few chairs. ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... in each other's arms and trotted down the street and out of town. He covered the ground in easy lopes that belied his three hundred and twenty-five years, and soon he arrived at the Meeting Place. The mayors of the other villages had been awaiting him since early morning and were shifting impatiently on their haunches. When he clambered up on the rostrum they extended their audio-appendages and retractile fingers and accorded him a round of applause. He extended his own "hands" and held them up for silence, ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... physical charm, his frail distinction, his spiritual grace; and he had won me. The sense of mutual possession was inexpressibly sweet to me. And it was all I had in the world now. When my mind moved from that rock, all else seemed shifting, uncertain, perilous, bodeful, and steeped in woe. The air was thick with disasters, and injustice, and strange griefs immediately I loosed my hold on the immense ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... menacing eyes, from that dark-skinned face that gradually began to glow, from the half-closed and motionless lips, from the two black snakes rhythmically moving on both sides of her graceful head. Colibri went on swaying without moving from the spot and only her feet were working; she kept lightly shifting them, lifting first the toe and then the heel. Once she rotated rapidly and uttered a piercing shriek, waving the guitar high in the air.... Then the same monotonous movement accompanied by the same monotonous singing, began again. Kuzma Vassilyevitch ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... believe in ignorance of the Prayer-book the poor lose the greatest fund of instruction and consolation next to the Bible (and it is our best Commentary on that!) that is to be got at. And people's ignorance of it is wonderful! You hear complaints of the shifting of the services—the arrangement of the Lessons—and a precious muddle it must seem to any one who does not know—that Isaiah is skipped in the reading of the Old Testament—that as the Evangelical Prophet he may be read at the Advent and Nativity ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... nearly white, who are not moslem, but pagan. "They are certainly," he says, "the same people, as they speak the same language, and have the same features and colour, except those who have crossed with the negro. They are as fair as the lower class of Portuguese or Spaniards, lead a pastoral life, shifting from place to place as they find grass for their horned cattle, and live in temporary huts of reeds or ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... in much better spirits on this night, for there were signs of the wind shifting from south to north-west; and, for the first time in our lives I suppose, we were anxiously watching and desiring this change, as it was the only chance of saving the thousands of sheep and lambs we now knew lay buried under the smooth white winding-sheet ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... exclude their fellow-citizens from a voice in the management of their own affairs, than they had with the quasi-sovereign position of an hereditary stadholder. Among the Orange party were few men of mark. The council-pensionary Bleiswijk was without character, ready to change sides with the shifting wind; and Count Bentinck van Rhoon had little ability. They were, however, to discover in burgomaster Van de Spiegel of Goes a statesman destined soon to play a great part in the history of the country. During this period of acute party strife Patriot and Orangeman ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... the presence of the man she always loved. The dream is simply a dream of impatience common to those which happen before a journey, theater, or simply anticipated pleasures. The longing is concealed by the shifting of the scene to the occasion when any joyous feeling were out of place, and yet where it did once exist. Note, further, that the emotional behavior in the dream is adapted, not to the displaced, but to the real but suppressed dream ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... to be found in any code, nor yet binding through the stern behest of mechanical necessity, but a law which finds definition at every moment, and at every moment also marks a direction of progress, being as it were the shifting tangent to the ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... while, as the vast masses of the Himalayas defined themselves more and more distinctly in the moonlight. Horses of all kinds under me, lean and fat, short and high, roman-nosed and goose-necked, broken and unbroken; away and away, shifting saddle and bridle and saddle-bag as I left each tired mount behind me. Once I passed a stream, and pulling off my boots to cool my feet, the temptation way too strong, so I hastily threw off my clothes and plunged in and had a short ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... priest and layman advanced into the chamber the Old Maid's features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it was only the shadow of a tattered curtain waving betwixt the dead ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... acres of sweet bay and spear grass, sometimes skirting thickets of twisted cedars, sometimes walking in the full glare of the morning sun, sinking into shifting sand where sun-scorched shells crackled under our feet, and sun-browned sea-weed glistened, bronzed and iridescent. Then, as we climbed a little hill, the sea-wind freshened in our faces, and lo! the ocean ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... universal suffrage is to democratic, instead of an imperial, centralism. What is to guard against this centralism? Not universal suffrage, for that tends to create it; and if the government is left to it, the government becomes practically the will of an ever shifting and irresponsible majority. Is the remedy in written or paper constitutions? Party can break through them, and by making the judges elective by party, for short terms, and re-eligible, can do so with impunity. In several of the ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... a few hours of rest, and release from the monotonous sense of disappointment, and was already lost in a dream of deep bewildering bays of ice, and gulfs whose shifting shores offered to the eye every possible combination of uncomfortable scenery, without possible issue,—when "a voice in my dreaming ear" shouted "LAND!" and I awoke to its reality. I need not tell you in what double quick time I tumbled up the companion, or with what greediness ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... told her that he knew quite well that she was shifting upon him the responsibility of deciding. As a strict disciplinarian—in theory—it would never do for her to countenance such unlawful proceedings. He rose to the occasion promptly. "Soap and water for ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... eyes watched the ever-shifting crowd that moved from table to table he saw Rodriguez, the man for whom he was searching. He was with Reedy Jenkins and three others coming from that end of the building devoted to alleged musical comedy. Besides the natty Madrigal, ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... silent for a while, looking on the ground and shifting his foot in the dust, and some fear rose in my mind as to ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Lorenco Marquez what the cleanest street of Greenwich Village, of New York City, is to "Hell's Kitchen" and the Chinese Quarter. The houses were well swept and cool, the shops were alluring, the streets were of clean shifting white sand, and the sidewalks, of gray cement, were as well kept as a Philadelphia doorstep. The most curious feature of Beira is her private tram-car system. These cars run on tiny tracks which rise out of the sand and extend ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... and the adjoining villages at its base gleaming in the distance like a fringe of pearls on a regal mantle. Nearer by, the picturesque rocky shores of the island of Capri seem to pulsate through the dreamy, shifting mists that veil its sides; and the sea shimmers and glitters like the neck of a peacock with an iridescent mingling of colors: the whole air is a glorifying medium, rich ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... upon the stool, kneels down near the hearth, and blows the turf into a flame, the raven helping her, by flapping his big black wings, and uttering a variety of strange sounds, as the sparks fly about. Heaping on more turf, and shifting the caldron, so that it may receive the full influence of the flame, the hag proceeds to one of the chests, and takes out sundry small matters, which she places one by one with great care on the table. The raven has now ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The faint, shifting blips in the radar screens was an old story, reminding him that certain things were no better than before, and that some were worse. Somewhere there were other bubbtowns. There were policing space forces, ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... his privilege, since it included a seat, a lamp, and a noise, though his perception of it possibly went no further. The other odds and ends were of the mixed country blood, like the girls, dingy, undecipherable. They made a shadow for the rest, lying along the benches, shifting unnoticeably. ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... these together; they are all good men and true, saving a little shifting for their living. Do you see to the execution of these felons, while I hold a court in the great hall, and we'll try whether the jury or the provost marshal do their work first; we will have Jedwood justice—hang in haste and try ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... afterwards allow them to push on alone. He took John to keep him company after their departure, and because the two prisoners could not well be left in charge of Bateese, who besides had his hands full with the baggage. So Bateese and McQuarters toiled behind, the little man grunting and shifting his load from time to time with a glance to assure himself that McQuarters was holding out; now and then slackening the pace, but still, as he plodded, measuring the slopes ahead with his eye, comparing progress with the sun's march, and timing ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... they decided that by having some partitions in the Taft attic, which was roughly divided into small bedrooms, taken down, they could be accommodated. However, fortune favoured the preservation of the Taft home by a sudden shifting of the boys' interest in the direction of the White House. Mrs. Lincoln was called to New York for a week; Willie and Tad had such severe colds and the weather was so rainy, that she wished them to be amused in the house during ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... had reached the utmost possible height. Every shifting of the wind was watched with nervous agitation. The road from The Hague to the sea was constantly covered with a crowd of every age and sex. Each sail that came in sight was watched and examined with intense interest; ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... in zoology is treated would lead those who are not special zoologists to suppose that observations have been made by which it can be inferred that there is in nature such a thing as change among organized beings actually taking place. There is no such thing on record. It is shifting the ground from one field of observation to another to make this statement, and when the assertions go so far as to exclude from the domain of science those who will not be dragged into this mire of mere assertion, then ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... reports of things said in the cabin, misunderstanding of words and looks, apparent abuses,— brought us into a condition in which everything seemed to go wrong. Every encroachment upon the time allowed for rest appeared unnecessary. Every shifting of the studding-sails was only to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... as he took to his heels; and Paul pursued him through a labyrinth of alleys and lanes, through which he shot and dodged with a variable and shifting celerity that, had not Paul kept close upon him, would very soon, combined with the fog, have snatched him from the eyes of his young ally. Happily the immaturity of the morning, the obscurity of the streets passed through, and above all, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the doctor, shifting his position and raising the arm a little. "The fangs are like needle-points, and make so small a wound. Can't see anything. Whereabouts ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... emissaries travelled the country in various disguises, shifting their quarters secretly, but in favourable districts occasionally appearing quite openly, more or less winked at by the authorities. Their immunity made them the more sanguine, but it also alarmed the Protestants, ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... southwards, and strode away into the darkness towards Babbulkund. Then a hush fell upon our encampment, and the smell of the tobacco of those lands arose. When the last flame died down in our camp fire I fell asleep, but my rest was troubled by shifting dreams of doom. ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... although she was not exactly estranged from Clem, for neither he nor she would have admitted any coolness, she had learned that she was nothing specially to him. I have often noticed what an imperceptible touch, what a slight shifting in the balance of opposing forces, will alter the character. I have observed a woman, for example, essentially the same at twenty and thirty—who is there who is not always essentially the same?—and yet, what was a defect at twenty, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... concurrence.[22] In the next year similar resolutions were adopted by the legislatures of New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland and Tennessee;[23] but the approach of the time when Congress would acquire the authority without a change of the Constitution caused a shifting of popular concern from the scheme of amendment to the expected legislation of Congress. Meanwhile, a bill for the temporary government of the Louisiana purchase raised the question of African importations there which ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... shifting scenes came fast to Rupert Ames; and they were mostly scenes of dreariness and trial; but he did not altogether give up. Many of his friends were his friends still, and he could have drowned his sorrow in the social whirl; but he preferred to sit ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... of domicile, substitution of uses, the alternate destruction and erection of buildings, each being larger and more costly in material than its predecessor,—make the metropolis of the New World appear, to the visitor from the Old, a shifting bivouac rather than a stable city, where hereditary homes are impossible, and nomadic instincts prevalent, and where local associations, such as endear or identify the streets abroad, seem as incongruous as in the Eastern ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... philanthropies, and he had declared that the man who died rich died disgraced. Moreover, new influences were rising in the steel trade with which Carnegie had little sympathy. Its national capital seemed to be shifting from Pittsburgh to Wall Street. New men who knew nothing about steel but who possessed an intimate acquaintance with stocks and bonds—J. Pierpont Morgan, George W. Perkins, and their associates—were branching out ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... stirred his heart, and now the actual approach of the royal family set every pulse throbbing. Eagerly his eyes were fixed upon the advancing column of gallant riders, the self-appointed bodyguard of the king and queen—a bodyguard which, changing and shifting as the royal party progressed through the kingdom, yet never deserted them throughout the triumphal march, and did not a little to raise within the breast of the queen that martial ardour which was to be so severely tested in ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the Merriweather homestead, she kept to the path along the highway, now and then shifting the pail from one hand to the other, and clasping the beloved fiddle to her breast. Once she looked down to find Milly Ann peeping above the rim of the pail. Jinnie could see the glint of her greenish eyes. She stopped and, with a tenderly spoken admonition, ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... wherein mischief was suspected to lurk, and in the neighbourhood of turnpike gates, which had, previously, been the objects of attack. It was not, however, the policy of the insurgents to place themselves in open collision with the soldiers; but the clandestine and shifting mode of warfare which they had adopted with so much success, was but imperfectly counteracted by the presence of a military force. Under cover of the night, and with the advantages afforded by a knowledge of the country, and the sympathy of the population, they could sweep ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... philosophy we must be prepared to be independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is perhaps the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one of thinking alone, of scoring off one's own bat, and of shifting ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... has been developing for half a century. The great mass of the reading world, to whom the arts should minister, have now forgotten that poetry is a consolation in times of doubt and peril, a beacon, and "an ever-fixed mark" in a crazed and shifting world. Our poetry —and I am speaking in particular of American poetry — has been centrifugal; our poets have broken up into smaller and ever smaller groups. Individualism ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... but nothing more! The Earth's store of Ovidum, which is Anti-Gravitational, and used in minute quantities in our Anti-Gravitational Ovoids, is evenly distributed throughout the world. By vibration of the Beryls I can control it, scatter it or gather it all together wherever I will! By shifting through vibration this Anti-Gravitational material, I can disrupt, make uneven, or nullify the pull of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... so indiscreet as to boast of his successful amours with certain ladies whom he ought not to have named. He affected pomp and splendour, though his profession demanded simplicity and humility. He was continually shifting parties, being a loyal subject one day and the next a rebel, one time a sworn enemy to the Prime Minister, and by and by his zealous friend; always aiming to make himself formidable or necessary. As a pastor he had engrossed ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... treatment nature is subjective, and plays the part of fate. Natural scenery is as the orchestra to a Wagnerian opera. The shifting of the clouds, the voice of the sea, the scent of the woods, are made the most important factors in the formation of character. He whose home is in mountain fastnesses knows the solemn glory of sunrise and sunset, and has for his heritage the high brave temper ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the war was young, the tugs did not know what to look for specially. Now they do. All this mine-searching and reporting and sweeping, plus the direction and examination of the traffic, plus the laying of our own ever-shifting mine-fields, is part of the Trawler Fleet's work, because the Navy-as-we-knew-it is busy elsewhere. And there is always the enemy submarine with a price on her head, whom the Trawler Fleet hunts and traps with zeal and joy. ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... ready to offer good rents for the shops, on condition of being granted leases for eighteen years. The dwelling apartments rose in value by the shifting of the centre in Paris life—henceforth transferred to the region between the Bourse and the Madeleine, now the seat of the political power and financial authority in Paris. The money paid to him by the Minister, added to a year's rent in advance and the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... uncertain air currents—the air is continually shifting and eddying, especially within a hundred feet or so of the earth—the equilibrium of an airship is almost constantly being disturbed to some extent. Even if this disturbance is not serious enough to ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... Mr. Howel, shifting his legs from one knee to the other, in order to be more convenient to listen, or, if necessary, to object. "What can Italy possess, that England does not enjoy in a still ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... did not come to her clearly, consecutively, but in a series of blurred and shifting images. Marriage had meant to her, as it means to girls brought up in ignorance of life, simply the exquisite prolongation of wooing. If she had looked beyond, to the vision of wider ties, it was as a traveller gazes over a land ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... her. Rebecca's face was full of a strange radiance which she could not subdue before her mother's hard, inquiring gaze. Her cheeks burned with splendid color, her lips trembled into smiles in spite of herself, her eyes were like dark fires, shifting before her ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... also located in Mitchell County, not two miles from the place my father had decided upon for our future home, and Samantha, her younger sister, had settled in Minnesota. The circle in Neshonoc seemed about to break up. A mighty spreading and shifting was going on all over the west, and no doubt my mother accepted her part ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... competence, and energy. If once that charge can be substantiated, I regard the Liberal cause as lost—and lost for many a year to come. Any Government almost is better than a Government which cannot govern; and the sentiment is so universal that I have no doubt the shifting ballast, which decides all elections, would go with a rush to the Tory side, and would enthrone in the place of power a strong Tory majority and an almost omnipotent Tory Government. The Tories know this, and calculate upon it, and will devote all their energies, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... with such a general, but condescend to two special things, two spiritual sins, viz. omission, or shifting of spiritual duties, which contained the substance of worship. "None calleth on thee," few or none, none to count upon, calleth on thee; that is, careth for immediate access and approaching unto God in ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... he was strictly confined during the voyage, had a window in the stern, and he, too, had therefore some change of prospect. He gazed eagerly at every shifting picture of the land; but most eagerly when he found himself off Cap Samana. With his pocket-glass he explored and discovered the very point of rough ground on the height where he stood with Christophe, less than six months before, to watch the approach, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... that she was often fatiguing; since her changing face affected this particular admirer at least not as a series of masks, but as a response to perceived differences, an intensity of that perception, or still more as something richly constructional, like the shifting of the scene in a play or like a room with many windows. The image she was to project was always incalculable, but if her present denied her past and declined responsibility for her future it made a good thing of the hour and kept the actual peculiarly fresh. This time the actual was a bright, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... from snow to patches of loose debris and rotten rock. The fatigue of walking on such a surface was simply overpowering. Having climbed up half a dozen steps among the loose, cutting stones, we would slide back almost to our original point of departure, followed by a small avalanche of shifting material that only stopped when it got to the foot of ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... way through flying men, Your hand lay fast in mine: We saw the shifting crowd dispart, ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... field; to work his craftiest, fox. From his brief signal, straight the stroke of the leveller falls; From him those opal puffs, those arcs with the clouded balls: He waves and the voluble scene is a quagmire shifting blocks; They clash, they are knotted, and now 'tis the deed of the axe on the log; Here away moves a spiky woodland, and yon away sweep Rivers of horse torrent-mad to the shock, and the heap over heap Right through the troughed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... case of any particular class of corporations that its interest has become in any essential respect hostile to the public interest, a constructive industrial policy demands, not a partial, but a much more complete, shifting ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... at Sidney's feet, with a slave's collar upon his neck; but his secretary, Neil M'Kevin, persuaded him that his cause was not yet absolutely without hope. Sorleyboy was still a prisoner in the castle at Lough Neagh, the Countess of Argyle had remained with her ravisher through his shifting fortunes, had continued to bear him children, and notwithstanding his many infidelities, was still attached to him. M'Kevin told him that for their sakes, or at their intercession, he might find shelter and perhaps help among the kindred ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... vibration in the spiritual atmosphere and works as with irresistible sway. The individual who is held to possess great strength of will is, really, simply the one capable of holding the thought, of keeping a certain tenacity of purpose. This power alone redeems one from living on shifting sands, and being perhaps, at last, engulfed and swallowed up in the quicksands of his own shattered visions and ideals, which never grew to fulfilment because of his infirmity of will and his closing his eyes to the star that had shone in ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... off she glided almost noiselessly across the smooth water of the harbor, followed closely by the shifting rays of a British searchlight on shore. Ever since the great European war had started searchlights stationed on shore had followed the movements of every craft in the harbor at night. Beyond, the flagship's few lights glowed ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... is to be expected that the prisoner should know the Gentoo laws: for he not only cheated Nobkissin of his money to get these laws translated, but he took credit for the publication of the work as an act of public spirit, after shifting the payment from himself by fraud and peculation. All this has been proved by the testimonies of Mr. Auriol and Mr. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... FOR LIQUOR.—This appetite is far stronger and more uncontrollable than that for liquor, and we can spot its victim as readily as though he were an ordinary bummer. He has a pallid complexion, a shifting, shuffling manner and can't look you in the face. If you manage to catch his eye for an instant you will observe that its pupil is contracted to an almost invisible point. It is no exaggeration to say ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... glancing over trivial things saw them with great clearness, we might infer that in moments of intense activity his mind gazing steadfastly on important things, would see wonderful visions, where to us all was vague and shifting. During our quiet walk with him across the fields he said little, or little that was memorable; but his eye was taking in the varying forms and relations of objects, and slowly feeding his mind with images. The common hedge-row, the gurgling brook, the ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... a Fifth Avenue mansion. He has much more in common with the workingmen of other nationalities of the country—he has sorrows, struggles, indignation and longings for freedom in common with them. His hope is the social reconstruction of society and not nationalistic scene shifting. His conditions can be ameliorated only through a union with his fellow sufferers, through human brotherhood, and not by means of separation and barriers. In his struggles against humiliating demands, inhuman treatment, economic pressure, he can depend on help from his non-Jewish comrades, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... the trade west of Big Wolf to this new town, cutting deep into the Wykerton business. Misfortunes hunt in couples when they do not gather in larger companies. Not only did the Jacobs store decrease the income of the Wykerton stores, but, following hard after, came the shifting of county lines. Wolf county fell into three sections, to increase three other counties. The least desirable ground lay in the north section, and the town built up on a brewery and the hopes of being hit by ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... he first beheld the disabled airplane in the desert valley, filled Johnny now. As he climbed up and filled the tank his lips were pursed into a soundless whistle, his eyes were wide and shining, his whole tanned face glowed. Bland Halliday regarded him curiously, his opaque blue eyes shifting inquiringly to Mary V, halted at a sufficient distance to take a picture. They were very young, these two—wholly inexperienced in the byways of life, confident, with the supreme assurance of ignorance. It had been ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... that by a reverse shifting that soil will come back after many days?—ah, here is my venerable friend," observing the old miser, "not in your berth yet? Pray, if you will keep afoot, don't lean against ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... large number of the country laborers got from some source the impression that the Labor Act was to cease to be operative on the first of October of that year.[388] This was the usual time for the shifting of laborers from one estate to another upon the expiration of their annual contracts and they usually assembled in towns to find new fields, many of them seeking, however, to secure employment in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Almighty, it would surely be for some definite end. These phenomena belong to neither class; my persuasion is, that they originate in some brain now far distant; that that brain had no distinct volition in anything that occurred; that what does occur reflects but its devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed thoughts; in short, that it has been but the dreams of such a brain put into action and invested with a semi-substance. That this brain is of immense power, that it can set matter into movement, that it is malignant ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... him stretched on his pallet, horribly emaciated and breathing with difficulty, his whole body a mere fascine of raw and tremulous nerves, his eyes restless and fevered, his head continually shifting from side to side searching instinctively for a cool spot on the hot coarse ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... from the simples which compose them. Moreover, the monad, though uninfluenced from without, is changing continually; the change proceeds from an internal principle. Every monad is subject to a multitude of affections and relations, although without parts. This shifting state, which represents multitude in unity, is nothing else than what we call Perception, which must be carefully distinguished from Apperception, or consciousness. And the action of the internal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... term) is dull and muddy. We are pleased with the eye in this view, on the principle upon which we like diamonds, clear water, glass, and such-like transparent substances. Secondly, the motion of the eye contributes to its beauty, by continually shifting its direction; but a slow and languid motion is more beautiful than a brisk one; the latter is enlivening; the former lovely. Thirdly, with regard to the union of the eye with the neighbouring parts, it is to hold the same rule that is given of other beautiful ones; ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... seen a broad, straight path of silver brightness lying by night upon a smooth sea, and stretching from your feet away until it was lost in the distance—a path that seemed to have been trodden by the feet of all the saints who have ever passed through a shifting world to their eternal home. Oh that silver path by night across the sea,—it glittered much: but it was not its brightness that lighted up the moon in the sky. Neither was it the love to Jesus trembling ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... each end to the bulkhead placed near the center of the boats, thus leaving an open compartment, three and a half feet long, for the oarsman. All the loads were placed under cover, and securely lashed to prevent shifting. The boats were also provided with air-tight compartments in each end, and under the seat, containing sufficient air to float both boat and load, should all the other compartments be full of water. The boats were named the Arizona, the Utah, and the Nevada. ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... explained. "New ship. I got a freak charter party over on Walden and I have to get rid of my cargo. How about shifting me to a delay space until I can talk ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... Palestine suffered from the burden that the rivals imposed on the provinces in their efforts to raise armies. Antipater and his ambitious sons Herod and Phasael contrived to maintain their tyranny amid the constant shifting of power; and when the hardy mountaineers of Galilee strove under the lead of one Hezekiah (Ezekias), the founder of the party of the Zealots, to shake off the Roman yoke, Herod ruthlessly put down the revolt. But when Antigonus, the son of that Aristobulus who had been deprived of his kingdom by ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... has nothing to do with directing her when she is going in and out of the harbor." The gentleman then went on to explain that at the entrances of all rivers and harbors there were usually rocks, shoals, sand bars, and other obstructions, some of which were continually shifting their position and character, and making it necessary that they should be studied and known thoroughly by some one who is all the time upon the spot. The men who do this are called pilots. The pilots of each port form a company, and have established rules and regulations for ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... this sub of yours," and Brooks, despite his illness, was indeed working out of the back door of his yellow trundle bed at the moment, and looking anxiously about. But the engineer stood pale and quiet, coolly studying the flustered growler, and when Burleigh's shifting eyes sought that young scientist's face, what he read there—and Burleigh was no fool—told him he would be wise to change the tune. The aid had pushed out in front of the troop and was signaling to Dean, once more ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... of mixed work to be sifted out between us, and since we had met one another from time to time in the quick scene-shifting of India—a dinner, camp, or a race-meeting here; a dak-bungalow or railway station up country somewhere else—we had never quite lost touch. Infant sat on the banisters, hungrily and enviously drinking it in. He enjoyed his baronetcy, ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... fog this morning, on land and river. But through shifting rifts made by the morning breeze, we had kaleidoscopic, cloud-framed pictures of the dark, jutting headlands which hem us in; of little white cabins clustered by the country road which on either ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... inadvertently, Where shifting winds were driving his argosies, Long anchored and as long unladen, Over the foam for ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... sorry," I burst out, for I had often talked about this with Carrie. "It is beautiful, but it is too shifting, too treacherous, too changeable, to belong to the higher life. Think of all the cruel wrecks, of all the drowned people it has swallowed up in its rage; it devours men and women, and little children, Dot, and hides its mischief with a smile. Oh, no, it ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... connections: and her it was, Cornelia, the daughter of a man who had been four times consul, that Csar was required to divorce: but he spurned the haughty mandate, and carried his determination to a triumphant issue, notwithstanding his life was at stake, and at one time saved only by shifting his place of concealment every night; and this young lady it was who afterwards became the mother of his only daughter. Both mother and daughter, it is remarkable, perished prematurely, and at critical periods of Csar's life; for it is probable enough that these irreparable ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... north. Scotland sent all her warriors forth. Marmion might hear the mingled hum Of myriads up the mountain come; The horses' tramp, and tingling clank, Where chiefs reviewed their vassal rank, And charger's shrilling neigh; And see the shifting lines advance While frequent flashed, from shield and lance, The sun's ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... darkness, revealing with almost painful distinctness the outlines of every stem of grass and flower. Then, far at the end of the path of light, something moved. There were two small, luminous spots, then in an instant two more, a little larger. Slowly the shifting lights and shadows took shape, and there, before them, stood two deer—a ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... than two hours, with now and then an intermission, listening to the flight of dreaded missiles above us; but, as nobody in our immediate neighborhood was hurt, we at length voted the performance of the artillery to be, on the whole, rather fine. During intermissions, while the scenes were shifting, as it were, we began to feel a disposition to talk and ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... apparently an unimportant fixture of the landscape. An hour earlier it might not have been observed at all by even the keenest eye, and it would have needed yet more time to assure an observer even now that the dot was a moving object. Under the shifting play of the prairie sun the little object appeared now dark, now light in colour, but became gradually more distinct. It came always crawling steadily on. Presently an occasional side-blown puff of dust added a certain heraldry, and thus ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... now," said Margray, bending forward at the pictures shifting through the door-way. "He'd do for the Colossus at what-you-may-call-it; and there's our Effie, she minds me of a yellow-bird, hanging on his arm and talking: I wonder if that's what my mother means,—I wonder will my mother compass it. See Mary Strathsay there! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... time, and the gorge in front of them was filled with savages, a great mass of men with tufted scalp locks, some bare to the waist, others wrapped in gaudy blue or red or yellow blankets, a restless, shifting mass, upon which the sun poured brilliant rays, lighting up the savage faces as if they were shot with fire. It was a strange scene, buried in the green wood, one of the unknown battles that marked the ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Neisse; for which operation it is hoped there will soon be weather, if not favorable yet supportable. What of the force was superfluous at Glogau had at once marched off, as we observed; and is now getting re-distributed where needful. There is much shifting about; strengthening of posts, giving up of posts: the whole of which readers shall imagine for themselves,—except only two points that are worth remembering: FIRST, that Kalkstein with about 12,000 takes post at Grotkau, some twenty-five miles ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... team line up opposite to and facing each other, behind each line. Two brick bats are placed upon the starting line in front of each team. At the signal to go, the first contestant on each team stands on the two brick bats. Bending forward he grasps the front end of each brick with his hands. Shifting his weight to one foot, he slides the other foot forward, drawing the brick bat with it by means of his hands. He then shifts his weight to that foot and draws the other foot forward with the brick bat and in this way proceeds to the far line, ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... he hastened away. Her gaze became more and more staring and glazed, and she felt as if the rock, on which she was sitting, were changing into the ship which had brought her from Massilia to Ostia. Every heaving motion of the vessel, which had made her so giddy as it danced over the shifting waves, she now distinctly felt again, and at last it seemed as if a whirlpool had seized the ship, and was whirling it round faster and faster in a circle. She closed her eyes, felt vaguely and in vain in the air ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... drinking cups in sealed oil paper—all these brought their separate thrill. And then there was the inexhaustible interest of the travellers themselves. When night had fallen and the great Outside withdrew itself, she turned with eager eyes to the shifting world around her, a human world even more absorbing than ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... a short, compact-looking man of forty-odd entered the gunroom, shifting a brief case to his left hand and extending his right. Rand advanced to meet him and shook hands ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... presents. Only twelve short months and this man, end product of civilization, doer of nothing practical, dreamer of dreams and recorder of fancies, had become a positive force, a contributor to the world's food supply, a producer of meat. What a satire, in a period of time of which the shifting seasons could be counted upon one hand, to have vibrated from manuscript to beef, and for the change to ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... ashamed to say that I am exceedingly sleepy. I have been riding sixteen miles over these charming hills. The day is bright and breezy, and full of shifting lights and shadows, playing over a landscape that combines every variety of beauty,—valleys, in the hollows of which lie small lakes glittering like sapphires; uplands, clothed with grain-fields and orchards, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... distance across the mole, but a frightful tragedy was enacted before their eyes as they ran. The galley by the mole was none too large; as the frightened men piled into her, the shifting and increasing weight threw her on an uneven keel; and then came the horror. A cry of mortal agony burst from hundreds of throats as the ship capsized. Drusus, as he ran, saw, but for a twinkling, her deck black with writhing men, then her curving sides ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... neighborhood of the two countries the relations which exist between Mexico and the United States are just cause for gratification. We have a common boundary of over 1,500 miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific. Much of it is marked only by the shifting waters of the Rio Grande. Many thousands of Mexicans are residing upon our side of the line and it is estimated that over 40,000 Americans are resident in Mexican territory and that American investments in Mexico amount to over seven hundred ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... abandoned their ships, which were set on fire, and consumed with all their treasure. The greatest danger still remained to the English. They lay under the fire of the castle and all the forts, which must in a little time have torn them in pieces. But the wind, suddenly shifting, carried them out of the bay; where they left the Spaniards in astonishment at the happy temerity ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... frame-work of our stern was shattered excessively, and, in almost every respect, we had received considerable injury; but to our extreme Joy we found the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no great shifting of our ballast. The main fury of the blast had already blown over, and we apprehended little danger from the violence of the wind; but we looked forward to its total cessation with dismay; well believing, that, in our ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... diversions, as their fancies directed them. In one part of it I saw a regiment of anagrams, who were continually in motion, turning to the right or to the left, facing about, doubling their ranks, shifting their stations, and throwing themselves into all the figures and counter-marches of the most ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... "shunt off" a certain amount of nervous impression that would otherwise register itself as additional painful sensation. Similarly most women and children understand the comfort of a "good cry," and its benefit in shifting ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... off the shoals of Trafalgar; and when I made the signal to anchor, few of the ships had an anchor to let go, their cables being shot. But the same good Providence which aided us through such a day preserved us in the night, by the wind shifting a few points, and drifting the ships off the land, except four of the captured dismasted ships, which are now at anchor off Trafalgar, and I hope will ride safe ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... and forth they rushed as the shifting flames and smoke drove them from place to place. The interior of the barn was becoming hotter and hotter. Most of the front had burned away, and through it, wreathed in flames and smoke as it was, those inside could ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... pleasure in bumping along so. On the snow, however, it ran as sweetly as if it had been made for it; yet I durst not take the pony with it; in the first place, because his hoofs would break through the ever-shifting surface of the light and piling snow; and secondly, because these ponies, coming from the forest, have a dreadful trick of neighing, and most of all in ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Possession, as, besides his never going more than three leagues from the northern shore, which, obliged him to sound continually, he lost as much by the tides as he ever gained by them. About this time the wind shifting favourably, he continued his voyage, and got to the entrance of the first gut about half after two o'clock; but now with all his sails set, and aided by a fine breeze, he could not stem the tide, which ran six knots ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... not enjoy the relationship, allow me to suggest a cure for the trouble. Put your own mother—or daughter—in the place of the offender, and act according to the light thrown upon the subject by this shifting of positions. Say to yourself—"This woman means well, but she does not know me yet well enough to understand just how to put things in the way to which I have been accustomed. She loves John so well that she seems unjust or inconsiderate to me. She could not, in the eyes of John's wife, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... roar of throbbing, thrashing engines, flying pebbles, and whirling wheels. And behind these, stretching for a twisted mile, came hundreds of others; until the road was aflame with flashing Will-o'-the-wisps, dancing fireballs, and long, shifting shafts of light. ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... previous chapter, I had come by land over the very track now followed by the railroad, but under conditions in strong contrast with the luxuries of a railway carriage—"Alone, unfriended, solitary, slow," I had made my way painfully, shifting from horse to cart, and sometimes compelled by the narrowness of a path to descend to a wheelbarrow. How I longed for the advent of the iron horse. Now I have with me a jovial company; and we may enjoy the mental stimulus of an uninterrupted session of the Oriental Society, while ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... on the White Horse, "to bring Peace indeed, but a peace of which the world cannot even dream; a peace built upon the eternal foundations of God Himself, not upon the shifting sands of human agreement. And until that Vision dawns there must be war; until God's Peace descends indeed and is accepted, till then My Garments must be splashed in blood and from My Mouth comes forth not ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... trees and the clearing away of timber and undergrowth. There were no bridges save over the narrower streams, fording being the custom, till ferries were established at various points. Roads and town boundaries were alike undetermined and shifting. "Preambulators," otherwise surveyors, found their work more and more complicated. "Marked trees, stakes and stones," were not sufficient to prevent endless discussions between selectmen and surveyors, and there is a document still on file which shows the straits to which ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... we shall hear speedily, inducted into most of the secrets of the family) that the mere payment of his creditors cost the honourable Baronet several hundreds yearly; but this was a delight he could not forego; he had a savage pleasure in making the poor wretches wait, and in shifting from court to court and from term to term the period of satisfaction. What's the good of being in Parliament, he said, if you must pay your debts? Hence, indeed, his position as a senator was not ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sister punctuated the tale with exclamations of surprise and admiration, and at the conclusion of it, turned to look at Badshah, who had taken refuge from the sun's rays under a tree and was standing in the shade, shifting his weight from leg to leg, flapping his ears and driving away the flies by flicking his sides with a small branch which he held in his trunk. Dermot had taken ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... can do better than to busy herself with such details, or, to speak more correctly, she can deal with them much more successfully by shifting her point of power from the circumference to the centre. Her duty in this case will be very much simplified and lightened, if she will give more attention to the springs of Christian life, to the conformity ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... In the shifting of the groups and figures, when dinner was announced, the young man found himself, again, within reach of Conrad Lagrange; and the novelist whispered, with a grin, "Now for the flesh-pots in earnest. You will be really out of place in the ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... of the mind and character of the child intrusted to her care. It is difficult to see how our modern life would go on as well as it does if there were not in our homes a good many such faithful souls. It sometimes seems, in this shifting world, that about the best any of us can do is to prepare some one else for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to accustom yourself to eat with the left hand, and thus avoid shifting your knife and fork from one ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... robberies are perpetrated and committed, contrary to the laws, which be severely punished, and in such wise as I have before reported. Certes there is no greater mischief done in England than by robberies, the first by young shifting gentlemen, which oftentimes do bear more port than they are able to maintain. Secondly by serving-men, whose wages cannot suffice so much as to find them breeches; wherefore they are now and then constrained either to keep highways, and break into the wealthy men's houses with the first ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed |
