"Shifting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... early childhood are always vague and hazy; but in the distance, among shifting forms and changing prospects, there was always a big, big figure, with kind eyes and strong arms, looming ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... especially in small organizations, it was more or less because it was not possible for the managers to organize the various individuals into classes or gangs. In the transitory stage the emphasis is shifting. Under Scientific Management the emphasis is most decidedly and emphatically upon the individual as the unit to be managed, as has ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... many of the blows directed at his burthen missed their aim. It was an understood thing, however, that the boy carrying the felon should aid him in every way in his power, by yielding, moving', and shifting about, so that it was only when he seemed to abet the master that the ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... in an impenetrable fog, lasting for a night and a day. There was perhaps some confusion as to charts, and the scarcely visible lights upon the Maidens. At any rate, the Afra had suddenly struck on a reef, and, shifting at once, had been hopelessly rent, so as to leave no hope save in the boats. Every one seemed to have behaved with the resolute fortitude and unselfishness generally shown by English and Americans in the like circumstances. The sea was not in a dangerous state, and there was a steady ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... on the large room. All men present, as if by some magnetic current, had become aware of this crisis. In my ignorance, and the total stoppage of my thoughts, I stood stock-still, and noticed various people crouching, or shifting their positions. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... Gladdened beyond their wont, in bustling throngs Among the leaves they riot; so sweet it is, When showers are spent, their own loved nests again And tender brood to visit. Not, I deem, That heaven some native wit to these assigned, Or fate a larger prescience, but that when The storm and shifting moisture of the air Have changed their courses, and the sky-god now, Wet with the south-wind, thickens what was rare, And what was gross releases, then, too, change Their spirits' fleeting phases, and their breasts Feel other motions now, than when the wind Was driving up the cloud-rack. Hence proceeds ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... moon, far off in a cloudless sky, sent pale fingers of mysterious light creeping down the dark forest lanes, the surviving lynx appeared in his endless search for food, his huge pads making no sound as he kept himself cunningly concealed among the shifting shadows. The hush of death brooded over the frozen forest, a hush in which the scratching of a dry leaf across the icy snow crust could be plainly heard for some distance. Occasionally the silence was broken by a loud ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... silent world of ghosts. Or again, our walks would take us on the other side, over the Sands of Forvie, a desolate tract where nothing grows save the coarse grass called bent by the Scotch, and where the wearied eye rests on nothing but mounds of shifting sand, drearily shaped into the semblance of graves by the keen winds that blow from over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... was so silent and sort of solemn—like being in a church again. I can't think how I got so lost. I meant to come round back to the road, but before I knew it, I didn't know which way the road was. The pines were so dense, so all alike, they looked almost as if they kept sort of shifting about me. I tried to follow back on my footprints, but in some places snow had shaken down from the branches. And there were so many—so dreadfully many other tracks—of animals—" She put her hands over her face and ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... and prose. Verse is simple, harmonious, and unfamiliar. It is thus the fitting organ for that energy of thought which simplifies the phenomena of life by referring them to a spiritual principle; which blends its shifting colours in the light of a master-passion, and passes from the contradictory data of the common understanding to the unity of a deeper consciousness. Even the spiritualist philosopher, no less than the poet, would have to speak in verse, if, instead of making statements, he portrayed: ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... Chester had been shifting about uneasily. He realized that, if his project did not miscarry, he would not see his aunt again, and his heart softened to her. Harsh as she was, she was the only protector he had ever known, and the boy ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... brown hands, in Araby, They traced, upon the desert sand, Their Rams and Scorpions of the sky, And strove—and failed—to understand. Before their footprints were effaced The shifting sand forgot their rune; Their hieroglyphs were all erased, Their desert naked to ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... said Mary, rapidly shifting the hot cake from one hand to the other,—"if you please, I had rather go up now, and eat the cake when it ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... whom Vanity's light bark conveys On Fame's mad voyage by the wind of praise, With what a shifting gale your course you ply, For ever sunk too low, or borne too high! Who pants for glory finds but short repose, A breath revives him, and a ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... at each side of the row are stretched two thinner wires or cables which hold the long tent securely in position. The method of shifting from one row to another is very simple. Both trolleys are moved into their new positions at the two ends of a fresh row, the fastenings of the tent at the ground on the further side having been released, so that the flap of the tent on that side is dragged over the tops ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... awake, and shifting from one pleasant thought to another, when he heard Travers's voice behind him raised impressively. "And they both went at Van hammer and tongs," he heard Travers say, "one in front and the other behind, kicking and striking all over the shop. ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... foundation upon universal and necessary principles. This is the period of criticism, in which we do not examine the facta of reason, but reason itself, in the whole extent of its powers, and in regard to its capability of a priori cognition; and thus we determine not merely the empirical and ever-shifting bounds of our knowledge, but its necessary and eternal limits. We demonstrate from indubitable principles, not merely our ignorance in respect to this or that subject, but in regard to all possible questions of a certain class. Thus scepticism is a resting place for reason, in which ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... time he watched the movements of trains and the shifting of cars, and finally found his way into the general waiting room for passengers. A red shirted bootblack accosted him ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... with a lively breeze at south-west, the wind shifting after she had got into the lower bay. There were a dozen sail of us altogether, and in our little fleet were two of Uncle Sam's men, who felt disposed to try their hands with us. We crossed the bar, all ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... the influence of the first experience of a new anticipation—that of shifting the scenes, for no matter how short an act. She was going among new faces for a little while. What a break in the monotony of ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... eagerly about her at the shifting, colorful scene. There was certainly plenty to be seen and every minute held its own bit of interest. As they watched, another 'plane soared into view, black as a crow against the evening sky; it showed first as a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... large staff engaged in the interior of the building was able to cope with the extensive work before them practically without interruption, as throughout the whole of the department, gas is still laid on, and, beyond the shifting of one or two desks to within reasonable distance of gas jets, no inconvenience was caused after the burners and fittings—somewhat out of order through non-usage—were put to rights. The public hall, however, suffered most, as, when ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... horse is the instrument of that civilization. It enables him to govern and to guide his sheep and cattle; it carries him to the chase, when he is tempted to it; it transports him and his from place to place; while his very locomotion and shifting location and independence of the soil define the idea, and secure the existence, both of a household and of personal property. Nor is this all which the horse does for him; it is food both in its life and in its death;—when dead, it ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... as she spoke, as if compelled by the shifting of the crowd to change her position; and while she shook hands managed to bring herself almost face to the picture, so that his ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... I have not seen the sun arise, When heaven was clearest of all cloudy stain— The welkin-bow I have not after rain Seen varied with so many shifting dyes, But that her aspect in more splendid guise Upon the day when I took up Love's chain Diversely glowed, for nothing ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... hotels (whose uses to vagabonds are purely financial) there is on this shore a drifting and incalculable population, heterogeneous, yet with a note of character common to all. A population cosmopolitan and shifting, living from hand to mouth, vagrants of the road or of the street corner, finding life a warm and easy thing in this long garden shut between hills and sea. So warm and lovely and easy a garden is it that it has for ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... least interwoven with the daily habits of life; and how very rarely those who have obtained legal power because they first had physical, have ever lost their hold of it until the physical power had passed over to the other side. Such shifting of the physical force not having taken place in the case of women; this fact, combined with all the peculiar and characteristic features of the particular case, made it certain from the first that this branch of the system ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... 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 ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... discussion it should be clearly remembered that no single plan or no one particular method has the final word or ever will have. As long as a science is growing and unfinished, points of view will continually be shifting. We are largely orthodox in our teaching. If brought up on the laboratory method of instruction it may seem the best one for us, but others may prefer another way which they have inherited. Let us appeal, then, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... whither is it going? To form new soil in the aestuary. Now you will not wonder how old harbours so often become silted up. The sea has washed the land into them. But more, the sea-currents do not allow the sands of the aestuary to escape freely out to sea. They pile it up in shifting sand-banks about the mouth of the aestuary. The prevailing sea-winds, from whatever quarter, catch up the sand, and roll it up into sand-hills. Those sand-hills are again eaten down by the sea, and mixed with the mud of the tide-flats, and so is formed a mingled soil, partly ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... flatly from Cloud. He did not need to spend hours at a calculating machine; at one glance he knew, without knowing how he knew, that no equation could be made to fit even the weighted-average locus of that wildly-shifting Sigma curve. "But most of the cycles cut this ordinate here—seven fifty-one—so I'll take that for my value. That means nine point nine oh six kilograms of duodec basic charge, with one five percent over and one five percent under that for alternates. Neocarballoy ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... of demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products resulted in a short-term contraction of the economy, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995-97, the pace of the government program of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial shifting of assets into the private sector. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium agreement to build a new pipeline from western Kazakhstan's Tengiz oil field to the Black Sea increases prospects for substantially larger oil ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... she clad in all that fair weed he had given her, wherein this time of spring and early summer she mostly came to the trysting-place, and about her shoulders was a garland of white May blossom. And when she saw him in his shifting grey hawberk and gleaming helm, and Boardcleaver girt to his side and the spear in his hand, she stretched out her hands to him and cried out: "O if thou mightest but be here and thine arms about me! for now I see that some evil hath ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... plastic, capable of taking the complexion and the form impressed upon it by speculative politicians. So firmly rooted was this conviction, and so highly self-conscious had the statesmen of Italy become, partly by the experience of their shifting history, and partly by their study of antiquity, that the idea of the State as something possessed of organic vitality can scarcely be said to have existed among them. The principle of gradual growth, which ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... was studying with increasing interest the shifting spectacle of American life. The openings of the West especially caught his imagination, and when the chance came to travel on what was then the frontier, the trans-Mississippi territories, he was quick to accept it. As guest of one of the members of a commission ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... He was forty-eight, but he bent over the sack, applied a tentative, shifting grip that balanced it, and, with a quick heave, stood erect, the somersaulted sack of flour ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... Shifting my aim slightly, I pulled the trigger. The .375 Bonanza went off with a sound like an atom bomb in a telephone booth, and the slug whiffed between her arm and her body and drilled a crater in ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... shifting impressions he heard Sir Reginald valiantly covering the sudden breach, talking inconsequently in a language which Tommy could not even recognize as his own. And the Colonel was seconding his efforts, while Major Burton sat frowning at the end of his cigar as if he were trying ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... you." She stopped, and glanced over her shoulder at Emily. "I see what attraction has brought you back to the school. Steal your way into that poor little fool's heart; and then make her miserable for the rest of her life!—No need, miss, to hurry," she said, shifting the polite side of her toward Emily, who returned at the moment. "The visits of the trains to your station here are like the visits of the angels described by the poet, 'few and far between.' Please excuse the quotation. You wouldn't think ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... until she had three and a half feet of water in her hold. A portion of her diminished crew was sent to the pumps, while every officer, man and boy, was employed in fishing the masts and spars, knotting and splicing the rigging, and shifting the sails. The two ships lay close together, drifting with the tide. The prize was won, but it was a question whether she would be kept. They were close in with the French coast; and should any other of the enemy's ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... reconcile his attitude with the sounds I had just heard was merely impossible; and it bewildered me worse than any in the long chain of bewildering incidents. For five seconds or so he appeared not to see me; but when he grew aware his look changed suddenly to one of utter terror, and his eyes, shifting from me, shot a glance about the room as if he expected some new accusation to dart at him from the corners. His indignation and passionate defiance were gone: his eyes seemed to ask me, "How much do you know?" before he dropped them and stood ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the norm of those above and alongside,—so the Indians of Pecos aggregated their cells according to their wants and the increase of their numbers; their inside accommodations, the wood-work, bearing the last trace of the frail "lodge" of a former shifting condition. ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the dying glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and fluttering, and glittering, but constant: the light of them as the light on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... answered Latimer, and turned as if to walk out of the room. He knew what he was dealing with, and saw the fevered cupidity and fear in the little, shifting eyes. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... from every source, commonly occasions the continual veering of our private word. Through what manifold phases a good conversationist has dexterity to pass! Quarterings of the uncertain moon, the lights that glance blue, silver, yellow, and green from the shifting angles of the gems that move with their wearers, or the confused motions of some of our inferior fellow-creatures that flutter from side to side of the road as intimidating objects fail on the eyes planted on opposite sides of their heads, feebly symbolize these human displays of unstable equilibrium. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Her left hand, shifting a little, flashed a gleam of gold into his eager eyes, striking him into silence. When he spoke again, all the vividness was gone from his voice. "I beg your pardon," he said. "Yes; I sent the roses. You shan't be troubled ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of men under his direction were engaged in shifting the stern torpedo from its tube, in order to replace it with a spare torpedo, as I never allow any of my torpedoes to stay in the tube for more than a week at a time owing to corrosion. The torpedo which had been in the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... came so fast. To Carter their conduct seemed outrageous. It was incredible that in so short a time, at a pace so reckless, they would decide a question of such moment. They came bunched together, shifting and changing, with, through the dust, flashes of blue and gold and scarlet. A jacket of yellow shot out of the dust and showed in front; a jacket of crimson followed. So they were at the half; so they ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... interpreter, "We now run only one danger; it is a great one. Before us are shifting sandbanks, occasionally displaced by the high tides; the galleys might ground there. It is necessary, then, that I reconnoitre the passage plummet in hand, before bringing the fleet into it. Let them rest as they are on their oars. Order the smallest ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... God bless my soul! Fine young woman! fine young woman! glad to see you,—glad, glad. Girls good for nothing, nothing, nothing at all, nowadays," jerked on the queer old gentleman, still shifting rapidly from one foot to the other, and beating time continuously with his cane, but looking into Mercy's face with so kindly a smile that she felt her heart warm ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... allied, Throw'st the prattling page aside, To me, in converse sweet, impart 25 To read in man the native heart; To learn, where Science sure is found, From Nature as she lives around; And, gazing oft her mirror true, By turns each shifting image view! 30 Till meddling Art's officious lore Reverse the lessons taught before; Alluring from a safer rule, To dream in her enchanted school: Thou, Heaven, whate'er of great we boast, 35 Hast blest this ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... future glory, would blush to think, that the history of any nation might represent them as humble suppliants for their favor. The least slight from a sovereign, whose life will be read with applause by posterity, whose situation places her above those little shifting politics by which inferior Princes govern, who has magnanimity enough to feel and declare herself independent of every other tie, but that which wisdom and justice impose, might be urged with weight against us, and give force ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... I had anticipated, the assault was fierce. It was give and take, charge and retreat, all day. A few minutes after twelve, Vinal pushed through a crowd of brokers to me and said: "I'm about half through my shifting, but a telephone has just come from Mrs. Lawson saying that something has happened at the school and will I at once get a carriage and bring your daughters home. It will take half an hour. Shall I go?" I replied: "You had better, but get back as quickly as possible." A ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... that there will be witnessed in the United States a gradual shifting of live stock centers. During the past half century, the great central West has been noted for the production of live stock, particularly for beef, mutton and wool, as an incident of its pioneer development. Already the production of large herds of cattle and flocks of ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... his hands together as though he held some small, accustomed tool that he was turning, shifting from foot to foot, with long breaks in his speech, the chauffeur finally put me into possession of what he knew—or what he wished me to know. He had been out all night. That was usual with him Saturdays. Where? Over around ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty; that we would find the same enemy, and the same or equal intrenchments, at either place. The country will not fail to note, is now noting, that the present hesitation to move upon an intrenched enemy is but the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... often due to a false sense of rest. Muscles not acting harmoniously tend to completely collapse. Many people sit without true rest, and are continually shifting their position in a ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... had seen the footstep. My favorite resort was now the banks of the Hudson, where I sat upon the rocks and mused upon the current that dimpled by, or the waves that laved the shore; or watched the bright mutations of the clouds, and the shifting lights and shadows of the distant mountain. By degrees a returning serenity stole over my feelings; and a sigh now and then, gentle and easy, and unattended by pain, showed that my ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... there is!—over space, over time, While the human will rocks, like a reed, to and fro, Lives the will of the holy—a purpose sublime, A thought woven over creation below; Changing and shifting the all we inherit, But changeless through ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... to hear the bee sing amid the blossoms sunny; To me his drowsy melody is sweeter than his honey: For, while the shades are shifting Along the path to noon, My happy brain goes drifting ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... almost stands still, and the sacred word "mother" trembles on his lips, as he bends forward to get a quick glance of the face that must be disclosed by the shifting ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... his pale eyes shifting away from my glance; "too ill for Philadelphia, but not too ill for New York, where, I am told, he has been most of the time since your—what d'ye call ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... would," said the old man, shifting the tobacco in his cheek. "She's been a rare comfort to me and mine. She'd be a blessing to your home, Master Bernard. Take an old chap's word for it, an old chap as knows what's what. That young lady'll be the joy of some man's heart some day. You've got your chance, ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the secondary accent (3d beat) of the final measure. This method of shifting the cadence forward is generally adopted in large species of measure (6-8, 9-8, and the like), and has been defined among the devices employed in disguising or lightening the cadence. In Ex. 22, No. 5, the ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... related to the first, is the inherent complexity of Industry, the continual and close interaction of a number of phenomena whose exact size and relative importance is continually shifting and ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... the country, particularly in underdeveloped areas. For example, the establishment of new peacetime industries in the Western States and in the South would, in my judgment, add to existing production and markets rather than merely bring about a shifting of production. I am asking the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor to explore jointly methods for stimulating new industries, particularly in areas with ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... 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
... it was from a sad, hurt 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
... of the smile as a matter of course; but the accompanying question obviously embarrassed her, and it became clear to her observers that she was not quick at shifting her facial scenery. It was as though her countenance had so long been set in an expression of unchallenged superiority that the muscles had stiffened, and refused to ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... The shifting-engine had cut a car from the rear of the lately-arrived Alton, and was sending it down the outbound track to a coupling with the Transcontinental Limited. Adams stepped back and let it miss him by a hand's-breadth, ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... what makes a science of Folk-tales both necessary and possible. Nor can it be denied that some changes are voluntary. But the voluntary changes are rare; and the involuntary changes are only such as are natural and unavoidable if the story is to continue its existence in the midst of the ever-shifting social organism of humanity. The student must, therefore, know something of the habits, the natural and social surroundings, and the modes of the thought of the people whose stories he examines. But this known, it is not difficult to decipher ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... rush of the German offensive onward to the Marne, Somme, and Ypres salient in March-June, 1918, was received by the shifting garrison of Brussels with little enthusiasm. Would it not tend to prolong the War? The German advance into France was spectacular, but it was paid for by an appalling death-roll. The hospitals at Brussels were filled to overflowing with wounded and dying men. The Austrians who were brought ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... shifting for themselves, after being used to the rather indolent luxury of a tropical hotel, made a welcome change to them. Joe had his meal after the others had finished, as it was necessary for some one to stay at the wheel, for the Tartar was slipping along through the blue water at a good rate ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... if we have long made her a Castle of Indolence, vary no less than do the shifting aspects of her scenery. Days of spring and of mere pleasure in existence have alternated with days of gloom and loneliness, of melancholy, of resignation. Our mental pictures of the place are tinged ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... rootless feeling. She had spent but a short time in any one place since she had left her father's house to go to St. Mary's. That is the privilege or the curse of the prosperous American. Life thus becomes a shifting panorama of surfaces. Even in the same city there are a dozen spots where the family ark has rested, which for the sake of a better term may be called "homes." That sense of rooted attachment which comes from long habituation to one set of physical ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Prather's burro next to him, both unharmed. Nogales's horse had also been killed, but its rider was safe. Prather was crawling down the side of the arroyo on his belly, digging his hands into the dirt, his face white and contorted and his eyes shifting back and forth in ghastly incomprehension. His horse followed him and sank down in final ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... and there, and at length, nodding his head, pointed in the direction he designed to take. Redlaw going on at once, he followed, something less suspiciously; shifting his money from his mouth into his hand, and back again into his mouth, and stealthily rubbing it bright upon his shreds of dress, as ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... brake which would relieve the crew from such awful exposure and foolhardy risk of life on the icy roofs of the cars in winter, and for couplers which, by abolishing the iron link and pin, would save the constant and almost certain crushing of the hands which the shifting of the cars compelled when coupled ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... be shifting or movable, as, in the event of the loss of a wheel, an axle, or other accident rendering it necessary to abandon the wagon, a temporary cart may be constructed out of the remaining portion. The tires should be examined just before commencing the journey, and, if ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... 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 counter-marches of the most changeable ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... gaze shifting, the smile dying on her lip. For the door of the library had opened authoritatively, and that difficulty which had embarrassed her all through the afternoon suddenly confronted ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... with a breeze from the land, we weighed, and steered our course S.S.E. for the Scarcies bar, but the wind shifting to the S.E. and the ebb tide running strong, we were nearly driven out of sight of land; we were therefore obliged again to anchor, and wait the change of tide. Trusting to a sea breeze that had just set in, it being slack ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... thousand Tricks to gain you; and how he was at last carry'd off by a Cold that he got under your Window one Night in a Serenade. I was that unfortunate young Fellow, whom you were then so cruel to. Not long after my shifting that unlucky Body, I found myself upon a Hill in AEthiopia, where I lived in my present Grotesque Shape, till I was caught by a Servant of the English Factory, and sent over into Great Britain: I need not inform you how I came into your Hands. You see, Madam, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... clear to its jagged, 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 as I glanced I saw her stagger and bump into the yachtsman ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... something to his companions, two of whom took off their plaited hair girdles, joined them together, and then the band was passed round a likely tree, knotted round one of the wearers' loins, and the next minute he was apparently walking like a monkey up the tree, shifting the band dexterously and going on and on till he reached the crown of leaves and the fruit, which he began screwing off and pitching down into the sand, where they were caught up, the pointed end of ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... see it?" he asked, fixing her with his eyes. As he started to withdraw his hand from his overcoat pocket, a general cry of alarm went up and there was a sudden shifting of positions. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... noon on the 7th, however, he found himself still at Cape 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... minutes passed and they did not return. Ten, fifteen. I drew near the fire and made myself comfortable in a great arm-chair, looking on the embers, but not seeing all the scenery and dramatis personae of my past life or future fortunes, in their shifting glow, as people in romances usually do; but fanciful castles and caverns in blood-red and golden glare, suggestive of dreamy fairy-land, salamanders, sunsets, and palaces of fire-kings, and all this partly shaping and partly shaped ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... upon his ears, her hearer's face became a shifting study. Incredulity, wonder, fury, all swept across it, and then in a single second it seemed to freeze. Next moment he spoke with ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... past two years that she had come to know her grandfather so intimately and to become as fond of him as she was proud. Her earlier life had been one of so many changes that the constant shifting had rather bewildered her. First she remembered living in a big city house where she was cared for by a nurse who was never out of sight or hearing. There it was that "Mamma Bee"—Mrs. Beatrice Burrows— appeared to the child at times as a beautiful vision and ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... of heavy weather, shifting winds, and consequently irregular seas, during our run to Swan River; and owing to the deep state of our loaded little vessel, her decks were almost constantly flooded. For many days we had never less than an inch and a half of water on them all over; and this extra weight, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... fact began to be understood and to become amenable to further and further explanation. To this further explanation Philosophy gave notable assistance. To 'elaborate our concepts' has been said to be the whole business of Philosophy, that is, to arrest the vague and shifting meanings that float before our minds loosely attached to the words of ordinary careless speech, to fix their outlines, distinguishing, defining, ordering and organizing until each mass of meaning is ...
— Progress and History • Various
... authority, and not of subordinate Territorial legislation. Were it otherwise, then indeed would the equality of the States in the Territories be destroyed, and the rights of property in slaves would depend not upon the guaranties of the Constitution, but upon the shifting majorities of an irresponsible Territorial legislature. Such a doctrine, from its intrinsic unsoundness, can not long influence any considerable portion of our people, much less can it afford a good reason for a ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 19th, 1793. Judge six of the enemy's ships to be of the line, two frigates and two brigs...On the wind shifting at 4 in a squall, tacked, as did the Latona, which brought her near the rear of the enemy's ships, at which she fired several shot; she tacked again at 5, and fired, which the sternmost of their ships returned. At dark the enemy passed to windward ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... produced a local revolt by a well-intentioned attempt to amend the primitive ethics of the Mainote Greeks—a tale which is not without its warning if ever the time comes for dealing with a cognate question amongst the wild tribes of Albania; and of how, amidst the ever-shifting vicissitudes of Eastern politics, the Tsar of Russia, who had heretofore posed as the "protector" of Roumans and Serbs against their sovereign, sent his fleet to the Bosphorus in 1833 in order to "protect" the sovereign against his rebellious vassal, Mehemet ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... backward in proper order; and it has glorious volumes of prophecy, revealing the far-off future to any man who is able to look thereon, break the seals, and read the record. Glowing stars are the alphabet of this lofty page. They combine to form words. Meteors, rainbows, auroras, shifting groups of stars, make pictures vast and significant as the armies, angels, and falling stars in the Revelation of St. John—changing and progressive pictures of infinite ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... it was, and they had accepted it at every successive stage, serene in the knowledge that in this as in other things they were above the necessity of compromise and subterfuge. They were the fixed quantities in a world of shifting values. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the side-door into the study, which had been prepared as her bedroom. In the bed, which was drawn back against the wall, instead of standing, as I had last seen it, boldly across the window, sat Bernard Huddlestone, the defaulting banker. Little as I had seen of him by the shifting light of the lantern on the links, I had no difficulty in recognising him for the same. He had a long and sallow countenance, surrounded by a long red beard and side-whiskers. His broken nose and high cheek-bones gave him somewhat the air of a Kalmuck, and his light ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interest in the performance contrasted much with the languidly permissive air of those in front. When the ten minutes' break occurred, Christopher was the first of the two to speak. 'Well, what do you think of her, Faith?' he said, shifting restlessly on his seat. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... men in the motor boat failed to see the rowboat in their path, or whether they were simply reckless and heartless, it was impossible to tell. In any event, there was no shifting of the helm, no slackening of speed. Swift and relentless as doom the motor craft drove into the rowboat and crushed ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... on the heels of McGee and Larkin who, once outside, ran briskly down the street toward the house where they were billeted. They halted at the drive entrance to gaze upward as great searchlights began playing upon the dark inverted bowl of the heavens. The long, shifting beams of light were accusing fingers seeking to point out the ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... last, the blessed, the longed-for evening. A soft breeze sprung up, cooling the burning air after the heat of the day, and bringing with it the odors of a thousand flowers. A regal glory of shifting colors blazed on the breast of heaven—the bay, motionless as a mirror, reflected all the splendid tints with a sheeny luster that redoubled their magnificence. Pricked in every vein by the stinging of my own desires, I yet restrained myself; I waited till the sun sunk below the glassy ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... public welfare as an excuse for changing their terms without the consent of the parties of the second part. A man of honour is one who simply does whatever he says he will do, provided the other party holds to the compact too. One cannot imagine him shifting, trimming and making excuses; it is his peculiar mark that he never makes excuses—that the need of making them would fill him with unbearable humiliation. The moment a man of honour faces the question of his honour, he is done for; it can no more stand investigation than the chastity of ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... earth. In the most important countries of America and Europe, and especially in those which have suffered most from the destruction of the woods, the superficial strata of the earth are colder in winter, and warmer in summer, than those a few inches lower, and their shifting temperature approximates to the atmospheric mean of the respective seasons. The roots of large trees penetrate beneath the superficial strata, and reach earth of a nearly constant temperature, corresponding to the mean for the entire year. As ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... had no fear of running into anything in their march through the darkness across the shifting sands. And only an occasional flash of the emergency light to check the compass was necessary to keep them moving ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... won his soul; and rapturous Fancy shed Her golden lights, and tints of rosy red. But ah! few days had pass'd, ere the bright vision fled! When evening ting'd the lake's ethereal blue, And her deep shades irregularly threw; Their shifting sail dropt gently from the cove, Down by St. Herbert's consecrated grove; [e] Whence erst the chanted hymn, the taper'd rite Amus'd the fisher's solitary night: And still the mitred window, richly wreath'd, A sacred calm thro' the brown foliage breath'd. The wild deer, starting thro' ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... not want their houses to stand for many years, because they are not like the Baganda who chose a country and stay there always. The Congo tribes move their villages after a few years and live somewhere else. So villages are always shifting, and nothing they make is wanted to last long. Some weave mats and baskets out of palm-leaves or reeds; others make pottery; others make iron-headed spears and hoes for their fields, but only a few things that can easily be carried ...
— People of Africa • Edith A. How
... shifting, sonorous, pulsing crowd glimpses could be had of Jerry's high hat, battered by the winds and rains of many years; of his nose like a carrot, battered by the frolicsome, athletic progeny of millionaires ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... at others they were carrying unwieldy bundles of sugar-cane from one deck to another. Here they were handling, with much difficulty, large blocks of stone; there throwing yellow water-jars one at a time, passing red-bricks slowly, or shifting stacks of green clover from deck to deck. They accompanied the work of disburdening the vessels with strange cries and chants in which the name of Allah noticeably recurred, occasionally stopping to test the result of their labor by plunging into the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... possessions seized by envious rulers or fellow citizens. Not many years ago Vanderbilt suddenly bought fifty million dollars of four per cent Government bonds, simply, it is believed, for the purpose of shifting the enormous risk of active employment upon shoulders which would be less apt to excite popular manifestations of greed should the Commune bring about its foolish and chaotic reign. The cares of great wealth are ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated or betrayed in his conversation with Lydgate, had been determined in him by some severe experience which he had gone through since the epoch of Mr. Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw, and when the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... people were moving northward. "Exoduses" have been before; Kansas still remembers the exodus from Tennessee of forty years ago; but this latest exodus had no one starting-point nor any single destination. It was a vast shifting of Negro populations from below Mason and Dixon's line, and it swept northward toward all the great industrial centers. Its cause and consequences make a remarkable story, for which there is ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... thus adjured, made a hesitating movement, and Fanny settled herself down into the saddle. It was the shifting of the weight that seemed to bring home to the grey filly the true facts of the case, and with the discovery she shot straight up into the air as if she had been fired from a mortar. The rope whistled through Johnny Connolly's fingers, and the point of the filly's ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Sioux. Winter and summer this wide expanse had to be suspiciously patrolled by numerous military scouting parties, anxious to learn more regarding the uncertain whereabouts of wandering bands and the purposes of malecontents, or else drawn hither and thither by continually shifting rumors of hostile raids upon the camps of cattlemen. All this involved rough, difficult service, with small meed of honor attached, while never had soldiers before found trickier foemen to contend against, or fighters more ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... watery moon flew in and out among the shifting clouds; and now and then a shot came through the mist and the half dusk, telling of some poor fugitive fighting, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... for refuge from distracting thought To such amusements as ingenious woe Contrives, hard shifting, and without her tools— To read, engraven on the mouldy walls, In stagg'ring types, his predecessor's tale, A sad memorial, and subjoin his own— To turn purveyor to an overgorg'd And bloated spider, till the pamper'd pest Is made familiar, watches his approach, Comes at his call, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... For the shifting of very large tub-plants, a box or tub with movable sides, as in Fig. 137, is handy and efficient. The plant-box recommended to parties who grew plants for exhibition at the World's Fair is shown in Fig. 138. It is made of strong ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... demand no territory, that the step was merely a definitive measure against Servian machinations; that Austria-Hungary felt herself obliged to exact guarantees for the future friendly behavior of Servia toward the monarchy; that he had no intention of bringing about a shifting of the balance of power in the Balkans. The Charge d'Affaires, who as yet had no instructions from St. Petersburg, took the explanations of the Minister ad referendum adding that he would immediately ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... was real life that absorbed him now, and yet am I aware that what seems real to him must still appear vague and visionary to many. It is, however, only a question of shifting one's point of view, or, better still, of enlarging it. Material success in life, fame, wealth—these things M. Maeterlinck passes indifferently by. There are certain ideals that are dear to many on ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and look where you're a going, for in all reason you've plenty to do with that. And don't you go a waving your precious hand, for it gives me such a turn to think you've let go, and have only got one hand to hold on with, and just turning the corner too, and the pony a shaking its tail, and shifting about with its back legs, till how you don't slip off on one side ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... piers. Elevations were taken on each set of girders during each operation, and careful observations were made on the elevated railway columns. Where the rock was very close to these bents, the open space between the posts was filled with blocking so that there would be less danger of the bent shifting if struck by blasted materials. Fig. 3, Plate XLVIII, shows one of these ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • B.F. Cresson, Jr
... so. You see, the wind is shifting, and it depends a good bit on how much it veers around," concluded ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... make myself a capable man I've purged myself of all the sins ... I never was idle enough to commit. I know that if your God didn't make use of men, sins and all ... what would ever be done in the world? That one natural action, which the slight shifting of a social law could have made as negligible as eating a meal, can make me incapable ... takes the linch-pin out ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... principle upon which Lilienthal had depended for maintaining his equilibrium in the air. Lilienthal had shifted the weight of his body, under immovable wings, as fast and as far as the sustaining pressure varied under his surfaces; this shifting was mainly done by moving the feet, as the actions required were small except when alighting. Chanute's idea was to have the operator remain seated in the machine in the air, and to intervene only to steer or to alight; moving mechanism was provided to adjust the ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... the Lizard on our lee. Wind south-south-west and the cargo shifting a point to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... making the charge introduces A and B to prove the accusation. At a second trial he introduces the same witnesses, who tell the same story as before, and a third witness, who tells the same thing, and in addition gives further testimony corroborative of the charge. So with Trumbull. There was no shifting of ground, nor inconsistency of testimony between the new piece of evidence ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... in her no change and shifting to new lights of beauty or otherwise at the estimation of those around her; she rather controlled, as it were, all the domestic winds. Captain Cavendish bowed before his superior on his own deck, though I ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... sentry in the service had not the instinct for a foe afar off that Flick-Flack possessed. He gazed keenly southward, the poodle growling on; that cloud so dim, so distant, caught his sight. Was it a moving herd, a shifting mist, a shadow-play between the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... caught the most callous of the hundreds of spectators; a stillness fixed the shifting crowd; from the tower of Battell chapel, close by, the college bell clanged the stroke of five; before it stopped striking the first two juniors would ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... daily and increasingly forgotten. Ignoring the fundamental laws of collective logic, we give way more and more to shifting popular impulses, instead of learning ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... him again by one arm, shoved him toward the bureau. He got out of his shirt, Greenleaf shifting his grasp so as not to let go of him for a second. In trying to put the front collar button into the fresh shirt, he broke ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... night with wonderful sound. Lady Blythebury had turned her husband's house into a fairy palace of delight. She stood in the doorway of the ballroom, her florid face beaming above her Elizabethan ruffles, looking in upon the gay and ever-shifting scene which she had ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... of nature—and who has the courage to avow himself aught else?—the sea-shore can never be monotonous. The swirl and sweep of ever-shifting waters, the flying mist of foam breaking away into a gray and ghostly distance down the beach, the eternal drone of ocean, mingling itself with one's talk by day and with the light dance-music in the parlors by night—all these are active sources of a passive pleasure. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... The child was a deaf mute. But its soul had the inner sense that answers to hearing, and the shaping capacity which through natural organs realizes itself in words. Only it had to talk with its face alone; and such speaking eyes, such rapid alternations of feeling and shifting expressions of thought as flitted over its face, I have never seen in ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Against the shifting background of history these many races of diverse origin played their individual parts, each contributing its essential characteristics to the growing complex of a new order of society in America. So on this stage, broad as the western world, we see these men of different ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth |
