"Twinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there was a row of unusual dimensions, brought about by one of the Garrison boys at the noon recess having started a fight with one of the National boys, which almost in a twinkling of an eye involved all the boys belonging to both schools then in the Parade. It was a lively scene, that would have gladdened the heart of an Irishman homesick for the excitement of Donnybrook Fair. There were at least one hundred boys engaged, the sides being pretty evenly matched, and the battle ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... was aware of the neighbourhood of a morsel she had reason to suppose tender. She would have been meanwhile a wonderful lioness for a show, an extraordinary figure in a cage or anywhere; majestic, magnificent, high-coloured, all brilliant gloss, perpetual satin, twinkling bugles and flashing gems, with a lustre of agate eyes, a sheen of raven hair, a polish of complexion that was like that of well-kept china and that—as if the skin were too tight—told especially at curves and corners. Her niece had a quiet name for her—she kept it quiet; thinking of her, with ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... Instantaneity. — N. instantaneity, instantaneousness, immediacy; suddenness, abruptness. moment, instant, second, minute; twinkling, trice, flash, breath, crack, jiffy, coup, burst, flash of lightning, stroke of time. epoch, time; time of day, time of night; hour, minute; very minute &c., very time, very hour; present time, right time, true time, exact correct time. V. be instantaneous &c. adj.; twinkle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... herself declared, "would think scorn to listen." Amiable dame, she was in bed by nine o'clock, while Alban and Anna were lying in a punt at the water's edge, listening to the music of a distant guitar and watching the twinkling lights far away below the ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... in a twinkling I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each tiny hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. ...
— Dear Santa Claus • Various
... but a twinkling in the history of a nation. Within a few years Russia may once more be united. The army that will have achieved this feat will constitute a formidable weapon in the hands of the state that wields it. As everything, even military strength, is relative, and as the armies ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of the man's loud voice, cordial as it was, brought him comfort in his misery. He gripped the hand that was held out to him. The two men looked at each other. Braun was a little man: he had a red face with a black, scrubby and untidy beard, kind eyes twinkling behind spectacles, a broad, bumpy, wrinkled, worried, inexpressive brow, hair carefully plastered down and parted right down to his neck. He was very ugly: but Christophe was very glad to see him and to be shaking hands with him. Braun made no ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... accusingly, while Mollie and Betty turned twinkling eyes upon her. "If that isn't the biggest one I ever heard. Why, I woke up once or twice in the night and each time ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... the long gallery between its walls of mirrors and their infinite repetitions of twinkling candles and dancing figures pleasantly confused to the eye by the delicate wreaths of gold foliage that divided their panes. In the immeasurable depths of those reflections the nearest objects melted by endless repetition ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... little man of forty-five, smooth-shaven, somewhat sandy in complexion, with twinkling eyes that were friendly, and a light thatch of pinkish hair which was noticeably thinning on the top of his head. There was a general air of cheerfulness and content about him and his mouth, that was inclined to twitch at the corners, seemed continually on the point of smiling. In truth, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... been the flickering light of the campfire. The wild desert dogs, with their characteristic insolent curiosity, were baying men round a campfire. Gale proceeded slowly, halting every few steps, careful not to brush against the stiff greasewood. In the soft sand his steps made no sound. The twinkling light vanished occasionally, like a Jack-o'lantern, and when it did show it seemed still a long way off. Gale was not seeking trouble or inviting danger. Water was the thing that drove him. He must see who these campers were, and then ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... saw, standing close at his side, a sallow gentleman, with sunken cheeks, black hair, small twinkling eyes, and a singular expression hovering about that region of his face, which was not a frown, nor a leer, and yet might have been mistaken at the first glance for either. Indeed it would have been difficult, on a much closer acquaintance, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... boughs above, And each depending leaf, and every speck 460 Of azure sky, darting between their chasms; Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves Its portraiture, but some inconstant star Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, 465 Or gorgeous insect floating motionless, Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings Have spread their glories to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the night the Twelve sat around a waving bonfire, their eyes twinkling at the memory of old victories and defeats, of struggles that were pleasant, whatever their outcome, just because ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... the technical virtuosity of Little Eyolf to its moral aspects, we find it a very dreadful play, set in darkness which nothing illuminates but the twinkling sweetness of Asta. The mysterious symbol of the Rat-Wife breaks in upon the pair whose love is turning to hate, the man waxing cold as the wife grows hot. The Angel of God, in the guise of an old beggar-woman, descends into their garden, and she drags away, by an invisible ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... singular irregularity in the surface of the wall. About on a level with the window-sill was a niche in the masonry, perhaps three feet square, and looking to be the depth of the wall itself. The back of it seemed to be made of a dark substance—darker than the bricks—through which shone twinkling glimpses of daylight. ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... down beneath the sheltering rock, when night had closed in, and the frosty stars were twinkling in the cold blue firmament, strange ghosts and fancies came crowding on him thick and fast. Down the long vista of a misspent, ruined life, he saw people long since forgotten trooping up towards him. His ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... at the Frisian's throat. So quick and fierce was the onslaught that only one issue to it seemed possible. Elsa gasped and closed her eyes, thinking when she opened them to see that knife plunged to the hilt in Martin's breast, and Foy sprang forward. Yet in this twinkling of an eye the danger was done with, for by some movement too quick to follow, Martin had dealt his assailant such a blow upon the arm that the poniard, jarred from his grasp, flew flashing across the room to fall in Lysbeth's lap. Another second and the iron grip had closed upon Adrian's ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... telling a story by Mimer's Unceasingly murmuring fountain, he too a saga unending. Covered with straw was the floor, and upon a walled hearth in the center, Constantly burned, warm and cheerful, a fire, while down the wide chimney Twinkling stars, heavenly friends, glanced upon ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... Wood-nymphs wave their locks, 420 And wondering Naiads peep amid the rocks; Pleased trains of Mermaids rise from coral cells, Admiring Tritons sound their twisted shells; Charm'd o'er the car pursuing Cupids sweep, Their snow-white pinions twinkling in the deep; 425 And, as the lustre of her eye she turns, Soft sighs the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... sent her a keen, blue, twinkling glance that made Billy Louise turn hot all over with shame and penitence. "Hm-mm!" he said again—if one can call that a saying—and pulled at ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... soon overtook the strangers. Long Ned walked the nearest to the gentleman, and brushed by him in passing. Presently a voice cried, "Stop thief!" and Long Ned, saying to Paul, "Shift for yourself, run!" darted from our hero's side into the crowd, and vanished in a twinkling. Before Paul could recover his amaze, he found himself suddenly seized by the collar; he turned abruptly, and saw the dark face of the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... smooth as a boy's, twinkling eyes behind spectacles, he was one of the most astute, learned, and patient of the French secret police. And he did not care the flip of his strong brown fingers for the methods of Vidocq or Lecoq. His only ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... after the ball was in play, seemed directed toward the right wing of Gridley, the ball was actually jumped to little Fenton, at the left end, and Fenton, backed solidly by a superb interference, got off and away with the ball. In a twinkling he had it down behind Fordham's ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... will tonight. Steady, now, and do just as I tell you, and don't say one word whatever you see," answered Nursey, quite quivering with excitement as she patted a large box in her lap, and nodded and laughed with twinkling eyes. ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... Harryman, turning in his comfortable wicker chair toward Webster and looking at him half encouragingly with twinkling eyes. ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... fatigue, her face streaked with soft coal soot, while the wrinkled riding skirt in which she had slept was soiled and torn. Her fleece-lined canvas coat was buttoned to the throat, and she leaned negligently against the rail, watching from under the broad brim of her Stetson the twinkling lights increase. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... creature with such multitudes of eyes, yet has he not indued it with the faculty of seeing more then another creature; for whereas this cannot move his head, at least can move it very little, without moving his whole body, biocular creatures can in an instant (or the twinkling of an eye, which, being very quick, is vulgarly used in the same signification) move their eyes so as to direct the optick Axis to any point; nor is it probable, that they are able to see attentively at one time ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... made the sign of the cross, her lips moved, and a single big tear stood on her leathery cheek. I changed the painful subject, and soon found excuse to slip away. That evening as the darkness gathered and twinkling lights began to appear like fireflies, up and down the Grand Canal, I sat in a little balcony of my hotel watching the scene. A serenading party, backing their boats out into the stream, had formed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... one of the boys opened the door for me; and in stepping out I had one of the greatest surprises. Not far from the western edge of the world there stood the setting half-moon in a cloudless sky; myriads of stars were dusted over the vast, dark blue expanse, twinkling and blazing at their liveliest. And though the wind still whistled and shrieked and rattled, no snow came down, and not much seemed to drift. I pointed to the sky, smiled, nodded and closed the door. As far as the drifting of the snow went, I ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... shrubbery. Barbara knows the way; she often went there with—' He checks himself. Granny signs to them to go, and Barbara, kisses both the Colonel's hands. 'The Captain will be jealous, you know,' he says, twinkling. ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... all this meant rolled over me, and I fear I grew a little faint—it meant so much more than I could say "yea" to on the spot. In a flash, somehow, all was different; the tremendous wave I speak of had swept something away. It had knocked down, I suppose, my little customary altar, my twinkling tapers and my flowers, and had reared itself into the likeness of a temple vast and bare. When Neil Paraday should come out of the house he would come out a contemporary. That was what had happened: the poor man was to be squeezed into his horrible age. I felt as ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... we postponed from day to day because we were either too busy or too tired. We thought we could about figure out what that crude sort of village would be like. Then on Saturday evening our neighbour with the twinkling eye—whom we called McNally, without conviction, because he told us to—informed us that there would be a miners' meeting next day, and that we would be ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... hanging, with heels drumming against the coffer-dam sides. After he had done he pushed himself up by the palms of his hands, rearranged his row of tin letter-files, shifted his electric bulkhead light, picked up a fat folk-lore volume and waited, with eyes twinkling down on us, for somebody to ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... He was young. Barbara saw three things—that he had kindly gray eyes, which just now were twinkling at her amusedly; that the handkerchief about his neck was clean; and that the line of his jaw was unusually clear cut and fine. An observant person would have noticed further that the young man carried a rifle and a pack, that he wore a heavily laden belt about his waist, and ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... feeling any farther. In consequence of some advice which I fancied it my duty to tender, as being the only confidant whom she now had in the world, I fell under Miss Bacon's most severe and passionate displeasure, and was cast off by her in the twinkling of an eye. It was a misfortune to which her friends were always particularly liable; but I think that none of them ever loved, or even respected, her most ingenuous and noble, but likewise most sensitive and tumultuous character, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... can do it," he said, his eyes twinkling. "Sure I can do it. Say, you fellers ain't ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... his twinkling smile. "Yes, I knew them—quite intimately. Might I, perhaps, if it would not be intruding, come in just a moment to look once more at the old place? That is," he added hastily, seeing her hesitate, "only if it would be entirely convenient! I do not know, ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... a man dashed madly through the grove, displaying two boxes and a handful of separate matches. O Lalala at first refused to play for this trifling stake, but in a storm of menacing cries consented to cut the pack for double or nothing, and in a twinkling extinguished the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... kind you are!—I suppose you have heard—and are come to give us joy. This does not seem much like joy, indeed, in me—(twinkling away a tear or two)—but it will be very trying for us to part with her, after having had her so long, and she has a dreadful headache just now, writing all the morning:—such long letters, you know, to be written to Colonel Campbell, and Mrs. Dixon. 'My dear,' said I, 'you will blind ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... time he had lived among a tribe of blacks in Africa; at another been a member of a party of exiled Russians, on tramp to the mines of Siberia. He was telling of an exciting adventure he had had among the Arabs when the twinkling lights in a train crossed the trestle caused him to come to ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... to walk farther. At length a large owl, flapping down close to my head, gave utterance to a long hiss, followed by a sharp, clicking sound, ending with a sudden loud, laugh-like cry. The nearness of it startled me, and, looking up, I saw a twinkling yellow light gleam for a moment across the wide, black plain, then disappear. A few fireflies were flitting about the grass, but I felt sure the gleam just witnessed proceeded from a fire; and after vainly trying to catch sight of it again from my ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... willing," sternly interposed the elder; but Jones fixing his twinkling eyes upon Brewster's face over the edge of the pewter pot covering the lower half of his face answered scoffingly as he set the ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the eventide and beginning of night, warm and fragrant and bright with the twinkling of stars, and they went into the King's pavilion, and there was the feast as fair and dainty as might be; and Hallblithe had meat from the King's own dish, and drink from his cup; but the meat had no savour to him and the drink no delight, ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... Medical Journal," Dec. 29, 1900), "the use of the thermometer has occasionally given rise to needless alarm, but almost invariably it may be interpreted with great certainty. Often it dispels unnecessary anxiety as in a twinkling by its negative indication, and surely it is to be credited with being distinctly diagnostic in those diseases of which it has itself established the 'curve.'" By the thermometric "curve" of a disease ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... discovered that some of the tiny stars that we can hardly see twinkling in the depths of the azure sky are enormous suns, larger and heavier than our own, and millions of times ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... think myself, when, in the twinkling of an eye, the Flaming Tinman disengaged himself of his frock-coat, and, dashing off his red nightcap, came rushing in more desperately than ever. To a flush hit which he received in the mouth he paid as little attention ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... finger in between them. There were some as big as a goose's egg, others tiny as hempseed. . . . They had come out for the festival procession, every one of them, little and big, washed, renewed and joyful, and everyone of them was softly twinkling its beams. The sky was reflected in the water; the stars were bathing in its dark depths and trembling with the quivering eddies. The air was warm and still. . . . Here and there, far away on the further bank in the impenetrable darkness, several bright red ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... "The few and twinkling lights disappeared from the roadside cottages. The full white moon was high in the cloudless deep of heaven, and the sounds of the warm summer night were all about their path; the splash of leaping fish, the sleepy chirrup of birds disturbed by some night-wandering ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I wasn't listening—forgive me!" he said one day, when, with a spark of real anger, Julia had begged him to make his calls at the settlement house a little less frequent and less conspicuous. "What was it?" And with twinkling eyes he caught up the hand that lay near him on ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... fields and gardens that topped the hill beyond. The world turned gold and amber, shining beneath a turquoise sky. There was a rush of flaming sunsets, one upon another, followed by great green moons, and hosts of stars that came twinkling across barred windows to his very bedside ... that grand old Net of Stars he made so cunningly. Cornhill and Lombard Street flashed back upon him for a second, then dived away and hid their faces for ever, as he passed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... muttered. Then a thought—a flash shot through his brain, immediately followed by a pang through his heart. The thought—"where are my clothes?"—the pang—the result of his disappointing glance towards the place in which he had placed them. He was out of the water in the twinkling of an eye. The boot which he had found was in his hand. Where were his trousers? where was his coat? There was his shirt being knocked about by the waves! He rushed upon it, threw it on the gravel near his boot, and began tremblingly to ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... replied, his handsome brown eyes twinkling with increased merriment, "and I am one of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... an uncertain turn, as if thinking to seek safety in flight but doubting which way to choose; and the movement struck panic into the minds and hearts of his fellows. In a twinkling all were on their feet. But before one could move a step the lamp in the ceiling winked out, the room was left in darkness unrelieved, and the accents of Number One were ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... see why it should make a great deal of difference what they would think, since they don't seem to be aware of my existence, or even of yours, Aunty," said Pauline, with twinkling eyes. She knew it was her aunt's dearest desire to get in with the Morgan Knowles' "set"—a desire that seemed as far from being realized as ever. Mrs. Wallace could never understand why the Morgan Knowles shut her from their charmed circle. They certainly associated with people much poorer ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fast," returned Driggs, his eyes twinkling. "I'll give you credit, and treat the debt as a matter of ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... terrors for it: it leaps out on the bank, climbs trees without much difficulty, finds a congenial habitat on the banks of mud exposed by the falling tide, and basks there in the sun, prepared to vanish in the ooze in the twinkling of an eye if some approaching bird should catch sight of it. Pelicans, herons, cranes, storks, cormorants, hundreds of varieties of seagulls, ducks, swans, wild geese, secure in the possession of an inexhaustible supply of food, sport and prosper among the reeds. The ostrich, greater ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... river. There were places where the utmost exertions of both men had to be put forth in order to force the canoe to the only safe part of the rapid, and to prevent it from sweeping down broadside on, where in a twinkling we should have found ourselves floundering among the plotuses and cormorants, which were engaged in diving for their breakfast of small fish. At times it seemed as if nothing could save us from dashing in our headlong race against the rocks which, now that the river was low, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... was but an instant's work to seize the advancing creatures, to hold them rearing,—and then a deadly flash,—while the ball whistled past me, grazed my hand, and pierced the leader's heart. In a twinkling the dead horse was cut away, and His Excellency, cowering in the bottom of the coach, galloped borne more swiftly than the wind, without a word. But the populace appreciated the action, took it up with vivas ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... or four close calls. Once, she had knocked at his door as he was in the act of boiling eggs over the gas jet. In the twinkling of an eye the saucepan was thrust under the bed, and David, sweet and serene of expression, opened the door to ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Sea," he said, pointing to the dull cabins that crouched here and there upon the earth, with the dark twinkling of their black folk darting out to ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... once behind the Nome King, who was still trying to free his eyes from the egg, and in a twinkling she had unbuckled his splendid jeweled belt and carried it away with her to her place beside the Tiger and Lion, where, because she did not know what else to do with it, she fastened it around her ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... course the darkness was intense, but at first it was partially dispelled by the lights of the half-dozen miners in whose company he had entered the road. As they gradually left him behind, their twinkling lights grew fainter and fainter, until at last they vanished entirely, and Derrick found himself stumbling alone down the ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... darkness, and the sound of a hymn broke the stillness of night. In a circle round the great fire lesser fires were kindled; and last of all the lads ran about swinging their lighted torches, till these twinkling points of fire, moving down the mountain-side, went out one by one in the darkness. At midnight the bells rang out from the church tower, mingled with the blast of horns and the sound of singing. Feasting and revelry were kept up throughout the night, and in the morning ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... envious elf," said her father, taking something from his pocket. Like light she flashed out from under the cloud and was at his side in an instant, dimpling, smiling, and twinkling with expectation, her black eyes as quick and restless as her father was deliberate and slow in undoing ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... slap across it in the twinkling of a bedpost, by a handsome viaduct of thirty arches on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... packs and set out wearily. Carroll, limping and stumbling along, was soon troubled by a distressful stitch in his side. He managed to keep pace with Vane, however, and some time after noon a twinkling gleam among the trees caught their eye. Then the shuffling pace grew faster, and they were breathless when at last they stopped and dropped their burdens beside the boat. It was only at the third or fourth ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... kicking, with a violence that rendered every other sound inaudible. Sowerberry returned at this juncture. Oliver's offence having been explained to him, with such exaggerations as the ladies thought best calculated to rouse his ire, he unlocked the cellar-door in a twinkling, and dragged his rebellious apprentice ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... they entered without difficulty. All but Tabary took off their upper garments; a ladder was found and applied to the high wall which separated Saint-Simon's house from the court of the College of Navarre; the four fellows in their shirt-sleeves (as we might say) clambered over in a twinkling; and Master Guy Tabary remained alone beside the overcoats. From the court the burglars made their way into the vestry of the chapel, where they found a large chest, strengthened with iron bands and closed with four locks. One of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strikes me you ought to be if you're jogging round the country together," said the other, her eyes twinkling. "But if you're not, take warning, padre. A girl that talks about corsets in public isn't respectable, especially as she doesn't wear them herself, except in the evening, for the sake of other things. Or she used not ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... churches; Spalato, with the grandeur of Diocletian's palace, are denied to the traveller; Lesina, proudly calling itself the Nice of Austria; Curzola, whose mighty Venetian bastions stand out into the sea, and many another delightful little town and island, only show a twinkling light or two in the darkness as the steamer ploughs by. At daybreak we are nearing Gravosa, Ragusa's modern port. As we leave again, and round the peninsula of Lapad, glorious in a mass of semi-tropical vegetation, Ragusa bursts upon our view. Seen on a sunny ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... ever dear Antonio? All unconscious, I think,—gallantly posed against the wall, thy slouch hat brought forward to the point of thy long cigar, the arms of thy velvet jacket folded on thy breast, and thy ear-rings softly twinkling ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... slides from under the tube, two small steel arms spring out and grasp it and lay it on the die. At the same instant, the upper die descends with a quick thump, and the silver counter, stamped in a twinkling on both sides, falls into a box below. In an instant, another takes its place, and thus they go on dropping under the swiftly moving rod, and turning into coins in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... is the most popular," he said, regarding her with merry, twinkling eyes. "Say thirty cents a month, or three-fifty a year. That's as much as ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... and looked at the water and the dark masses of the houses on the Latin side, with the twin towers of Notre Dame rising dimly behind them. Ferdinand thought of the Thames at night, with the barges gliding slowly down, and the twinkling of the lights ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... passed through his mind in a twinkling. Then he peered out from behind the shelter of the radio station, took deliberate aim, and fired. The leading figure, that of Paddy Ryan, stumbled, lurched forward and fell. Some of the others in the pursuing party paused, others ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... already? What is to become of class distinctions if you are just going to hobnob with anyone who may happen along?" he asked, his eyes twinkling with fun, for he was quoting ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... earth is His Father's foot-stool. The soul of man is the abiding place of the love of the Saviour, and no heart is out-landish. What you may call liberty is an education, but the soul as God's province is not made so by training, but came with the first twinkling of light, of ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... one at the wheel the Maggie shot off at a tangent and the hawsers slacked immediately. In the twinkling of an eye Mr. Gibney had cast them off, and as the ends disappeared with a swish over the stern he ran back to the pilot house, rang for full speed ahead, put his helm hard over, and headed the Maggie ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... on in a twinkling. "Of course, you two men will be against me. When did two men ever disagree upon the subject of wifely duties? However, I shall read in spite of you. Do you know, Mr. North, that when I married I made a special agreement with Captain Frere that I was not to be asked to ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... let you, after all," he declared, his eyes twinkling. "You seemed more upsetting than soothing yesterday, ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... any news out of me, my dear," announced Doctor Hugh, his eyes twinkling. "All in good time—and after Mother, you'll be the first to be told. Patience ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... we intend to act?" repeated the second trapper. "That is simple enough. We shall place ourselves in the cistern—the jaguars will come forward to its brink; and then, if we are only favoured by a blink of the moon, I'll answer for it that in the twinkling of an eye the brutes will neither ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... and Rembrandt. The effect the artist has produced is wonderful; the ray of light thrown through the gloom upon the figure of Darrell as he stands against the wall, sword in hand, is capitally managed, "while the intricacies of the tile-work, and the mysterious twinkling of light among the beams are excellently felt and rendered."[87] Simon Renard and Winwike on the Roof of the White Tower ["Tower of London"] is another admirable drawing. The scene is laid on the platform of one of the antique guns which frown from the embrasures ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... saw the delicate, fresh colors, the soft reds and creamy whites of the buildings in the clear, smokeless atmosphere, the white exhausts of the beating systems, standing out like little white flags against the light blue sky, and the myriad dark, twinkling eyes of the houses, row upon row, severe, square, strong, firm and light with a myriad grave, fixed questioning glances reviewing the new arrivals from across the sea, who streamed from all the quarters of the globe to this land of future promise ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... smoke. Then I took fifty dinars in a handkerchief and went out to the Zuweyleh Gate, where I hired an ass, bidding the driver carry me to the Hebbaniyeh. So he set off with me and brought me in the twinkling of an eye to a by-street called El Munkeri, where I bade him go in and enquire for the Syndic's house. After a little he returned and said, 'Alight.' But I made him guide me to the house, where I dismounted and giving him a quarter-dinar, said, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... just as high as the other, and they were both as high as the goat-sucker flies before a thunderstorm. At first they were close together, but as they came nearer they grew wider apart. Soon our people saw, by their twinkling, that they were two eyes, and in a little while the body of a great man, whose head nearly reached the sky(9), came after them. Brothers, the eyes of the Great Spirit always go before him, and hence nothing is hid from his sight. Brothers, I cannot describe the Master ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... sat the Red Fox, Hushed the wail of Waub-ome-me, Weeping for her absent mother. With the twinkling stars the hunter From the forest came and Raven. "Sea-Gull wanders late" said Red Fox, "Late she wanders by the sea-shore, And some evil may ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... along in dry ditches where best we might, towards the St. Denis Gate of Paris. I had never been on a night surprise or bushment before, and I marvelled how orderly the others kept, as men used to such work, whereas I went stumbling and blindlings. At length, within sight of the twinkling lights of Paris, and a hundred yards or thereby off the common way, we were halted in a little wood, and bidden to lie down; no man was so much as to whisper. Some slept, I know, for I heard their snoring, but for my part, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... to be a great actress; and when she found that acting was not her forte she determined to dance her way to fame and fortune, and after a year's training in London and Spain she was ready to conquer the world with her twinkling feet ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... were always a great comfort to me. Above the gun-flashes or the bursting of shells and shrapnel, they would stand out calm and clear, twinkling just as merrily as I have seen them do on many a pleasant sleigh-drive in Canada. I had seen Orion for the first time that year, rising over the broken Cathedral at Albert. I always (p. 144) felt when he arrived for his winter visit to the sky, that he ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... but beautiful in form; and she sprang from her horse with the grace of a kitten. Her face was not so white as her companion's, but its color was entrancing. Her expression was animated, and her great brown eyes danced like twinkling stars on ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... to a very cowed and surly man, whom Mary persistently addressed as "Major." As he turned from the telephone, Mary surveyed him with twinkling eyes. ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... latitudes—had risen high into the sky ahead, and spread well along the horizon to north and south, causing the stars to fade and disappear, one after another, until only a few of the brightest remained twinkling ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... as she stood at the window in her room looking out, Minot's flashed above the horizon, and the big light on the Point flamed against the darkness like a sun. The little twinkling fair weather lights of the summer were gone. Only these remained through the beating storms to send out their ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... indeed. A great light had suddenly burst upon Mr. Hennage. Both by nature and training he was possessed of the ability to assimilate a hint without the accompaniment of a kick, and in the twinkling of an eye the situation was as plain to him as four aces and a king, with ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... time the stars had been twinkling brightly in the sky, and the aurora shed a clear light upon the scene, while the air was still calm and cold; but a cloud or two now began to darken the horizon to the north-east, and a puff of wind blew occasionally over the icy plain, and struck with such chilling influence on the frames of the ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... pink and twinkling, emerged from the background, as if buoyed up on his broad white gown, and briskly dominated the bowed heads in the front rows. He prayed energetically and briefly and then retired, and a fierce nod from Lambert Sollas warned the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... well. The test is easily put." He looked at Arnold, with the irrepressible humor twinkling merrily in his eyes, and twitching sharply at the corners of his lips. "My niece has a beautiful complexion. Do you believe in ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Norton. "The artist's imagination must have been stimulated by intense personal sufferings from said insect. The savage little wretch. How did you manage the diet, Mr. Lansdowne?" continued the missionary, a smile twinkling all over ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... suddenly fallen, for there is no twilight in Egypt,—night, or rather a blue day, treading close upon the yellow day. In the azure of infinite transparency gleamed unnumbered stars, their twinkling light reflected confusedly in the waters of the Nile, which was stirred by the boats that brought back to the other shore the population of Thebes; and the last cohorts of the army were still tramping across the plain, like a gigantic serpent, when the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... muddy clothes, as they come from the front, they are bedded down on the stone floor like cattle till they are well enough to go back to their job. It was a pitiful contrast to the little church at Blercourt, with the altar lights twinkling above the clean beds; and one wondered if even so near the front, it had to be. "The African village, we call it," one of our companions said with a laugh: but the African village has blue sky over it, and a clear stream runs ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Mrs. Hall introduced me to various people, some of whom were of note,—for instance, Sir Emerson Tennent, a man of the world, of some parliamentary distinction, wearing a star; Mr. Samuel Lover, a most good-natured, pleasant Irishman, with a shining and twinkling visage; Miss Jewsbury, whom I found very conversable. She is known in literature, but not to me. We talked about Emerson, whom she seems to have been well acquainted with while he was in England; and she mentioned that Miss Martineau had given him ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said, with a smile twinkling in his keen eyes as they scanned the beautiful face with the dark tendrils of hair blown across her brow, beneath her old sailor hat, the clear gray eyes shining like crystal, the red lips parted slightly with the climb. "Just left your interesting patient. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... was up and out of the parlor in a twinkling, followed by all the ladies of the Kinzer family. It ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... he was so wild and strong I did not dare to force him in. At last he made a dash for the ripple, and I gave him a quick turn, and as he struck out of it Mr. McGrath had his landing-net under him in a twinkling, and he was out kicking on the rock. He weighed four pounds six ounces, and furnished conclusive evidence that a bass of that weight can give a great deal of very agreeable trouble before he will consent to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... stars. Around him he sees innumerable shining worlds, sparkling and glittering in endless profusion over the circumscribed immensity of space—mighty constellations that shone from afar; clustering aggregations of stars; floating islands of light; twinkling systems rising out of depths still more profound, and a zone luminous with the light of myriads of lucid orbs verging on the confines of the universe. All these worlds the fiend passed unheeded, nor stayed he to inquire who dwelt happy there. In splendour above them all the Sun ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... door of the apartment and came running to meet Mrs. Royston, just apprised, doubtless, of her return from her afternoon stroll. He looked very fresh in his white linen dress, his red leather belt, and twinkling red shoes. With the independent nonchalance of childhood, he took no note of the outstretched arms and blandishing smile of Mr. Briscoe, who sought to intercept him, but made directly toward his mother. His gleaming reflection ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... my childhood's home was lovelier far Than all the stranger homes where I have been; It seem'd as if each pale and twinkling star Loved to shine out upon so fair a scene; Never were flowers so sweet, or fields so green, As those that wont that lonely cot to grace If, as tradition tells, this earth has seen Creatures of heavenly form and angel race. They might ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... away, dash away, dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So, up to the housetop the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys,—and St. Nicholas too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound; He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, And his clothes ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... at the thought, but I could not find a word to say in protest. Crimson with shame, confused and furious, I was wondering how I could interfere, when suddenly the consultation ceased and the gentlemen at once surrounded me. One of them, a little old man with a vapid smile and twinkling eyes, tapped me on the cheek, and said: 'So she is as good as she is pretty!' I could have struck him; but all the others laughed approvingly, with the exception of M. de Chalusse, whose manner became ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... orbs that shine in Heaven, in the volutes of the flower, in the clustering of low shrubberies, in the waving of the grain-fields, in the slanting of tall eastern trees, in the blue distance of mountains, in the grouping of clouds, in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks, in the gleaming of silver rivers, in the repose of sequestered lakes, in the star-mirroring depths of lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs of birds, in the harp of AEolus, in the sighing of the night-wind, in the repining voice of the forest, in the surf that complains ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... their heads for certain that he commanded the genii, and that he went from place to place like a bird in the twinkling of an eye; and it is a fact that he was everywhere. At length it came about that he carried off a queen of theirs. She was the private property of a Mameluke, who, although he had several more of them, flatly refused to strike a bargain, though "the other" offered all his treasures ...
— The Napoleon of the People • Honore de Balzac
... every step gradually on the floor from the point to the heel, and pausing between, until he was out of the cabin. His heart bounded within him when he found himself standing in the free air and the white moonlight, with his limbs unbound. He beheld his old acquaintance, the stars, as bright and twinkling as ever, and saw with rapture the same river which rolled its dark and massy waters beside the dwelling of his father. They took a path which led westward through the woods, and, after following it for the distance of a bowshot, the maiden turned aside, and took, from a thick clump of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... Following the arcades of the old edifices near the harbor, groups of workers from the maritime establishments were filing by. Barcelona, dazzling with splendor, was attracting the crowds. The inner harbor, black and solitary, was filled with weak little lights twinkling from ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... than any star in our skies; brighter than the evening star at its brightest. It still glowed out white and large, no mere twinkling spot of light, but a small, round, clear shining disc, an hour after the day had come. And where science has not reached, men stared and feared, telling one another of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed by these fiery signs in the Heavens. Sturdy Boers, dusky Hottentots, Gold Coast ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... levities, which, though contemptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which should irradiate a right friendly epistle—your puns and small jests are, I apprehend, extremely circumscribed in their sphere of action. They are so far from a capacity of being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... I first made his acquaintance. He has had something of Gissing's restricted and grey experiences, but he has nothing of Gissing's almost perverse gloom and despondency. Indeed he is as gay a companion as he is fragile. He is a twinkling addition to any Christmas party, and the twinkle is here in the style. And having sported with him "in his times of happy infancy," I add an intimate and personal satisfaction to my pleasant task ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... their nets they threw To the stars in the twinkling foam, Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe, Bringing the fishermen home; 'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed As if it could not be, And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed, Of sailing that beautiful ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... with an ominous light. He did not say a word. Tom continued: "Ah! your fortune will soon be gone to the dogs, all the money that you have honestly earned, that you have had so much trouble to scrape together, will disappear in the twinkling of an eye, and your ruined daughter will have to end her days in ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... his glance upon Dick Ralston and rapidly took note of his appearance. He was rather a stocky man, with a red, pimpled face, a broad nose, small, twinkling eyes and intensely black hair. He wore a "loud," striped sack suit, and on one of his pudgy fingers was a diamond ring. It was really a diamond, and he had often found it serviceable. When he was in very bad luck he pawned it for a comfortable sum, but invariably redeemed it when ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... were strings of them at the heels of the respective guides, with, I thought, a prevalence of the Germans, who are now overrunning Italy; I am sorry to say they are not able to keep it cheap, at least for other nationalities. Among these I noted two little smiling, shining, twinkling Japs, who carried kodaks for the capture of that classical antiquity which could never really belong to them. Their want of a pagan past in common with us may be what keeps us alien even more than the want of a ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Branch of the Ultonians! Soon they rushed to view from the rear of Emain, speeding forth impetuously out of the hollow-sounding ways of the city and the echoing palaces into the open, and behind them in the great car green and gold, above the many-twinkling wheels, the charioteer, with floating mantle, girt round the temples with the gold fillet of his office, leaning backwards and sideways as he laboured to restrain their fury unrestrainable; a grey long-maned steed, ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... respond to the command, the guard gathered round him. Before we could realise what was happening, his crucifix and rosary had been roughly torn off, and with his watch and chain had been thrown upon a table standing alongside. His robe was roughly whisked away in the twinkling of an eye. But the prisoner did not move or raise a hand in protest, even when he was bared to his under-clothing in front of fraeulein, who signalled her appreciation of the sight by wildly ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... enemies, who tried to extinguish his poor little twinkle. It was a pity to lose so much splendor as there might have been; but yet there was a kind of symbolism in the thought that every one of those thousands of twinkling lights was in charge of somebody, who was striving with all his might to keep it alive. Not merely the street-way, but all the balconies and hundreds of windows were lit up with these little torches; so that it seemed as if the stars had crumbled into glittering fragments, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... But there was both luster and depth in her eyes. She was very pretty; as graceful as a bird and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall while evening ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... of gravity, that naturally being more convenient, but when about to hurl them, the hand was shoved further toward the head. Both natives thus shifted their right hands, though, they still held them horizontal at their thighs, from which position they could be brought aloft in the twinkling of an eye. ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... would squat down near Listing, who had been a wanderer and a vagabond. He would listen with many a shake of the head to the stories Listing related of his life on the roads, especially of the nights the fine ones, in which one lay on the dry grass beneath the twinkling stars, or in the forest under a beech in the branches of which the screech-owl was calling; and of the wretched, rainy, cold nights of late autumn. Then one would pull a few trusses of straw out of a stack and creep shivering into the hole, which would gradually become wet through ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... taken into the building, he was invited to submit to hand-cuffs. As the thought flashed upon his mind that he was about to be sold on the auction-block, he grew terribly desperate. "Liberty or death" was the watchword of that awful moment. In the twinkling of an eye, he turned on his enemies, with his fist, knife, and feet, so tiger-like, that he actually put four or five men to flight, his master among the number. His enemies thus suddenly baffled, John wheeled, and, as if assisted by an angel, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Beecher, his eyes twinkling, "let's have it out. My people say that Plymouth holds more people than the Tabernacle, and your folks stand up for the Tabernacle. Now which is it? What ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Fox, a Ghost Dancer of the Cheyenne River reservation, threw up his gun, from under his blanket, and fired at a soldier. All the soldiers fired; the Indians fought back; the machine guns opened; and in a twinkling two hundred Sioux men, women and children, and sixty soldiers, were piled, dead or wounded, upon the ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... bright, with twinkling stars which on air-raid nights in London would have caused much perturbation among average householders ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... the struggles and corruption of mankind may close at any moment, in the twinkling of an ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... written on my heart. No article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur l'Officier de l'Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast devoted to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable. Ah! see at the gangway by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the names! May he be for ever changeless in his buttoned black surtout, with his note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat, surmounting ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... here one of his finest umbrellas which his good wife presented to me. There was also a lady of whom he speaks, a grande dame, of very great authority." For all the sadness of the deep voice, I felt that his eyes were twinkling. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... up the steps of the lookout tower, he could detect the twinkling lights from his lady's home gemmed against the background of velvet darkness. Perhaps her fluttering little heart was uneasy about her lover, and she was peering out into the gale. However that may be, he had no difficulty in summoning her to the window when he raised his ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... the doors shut agen; I, do your heads itch? I'le scratch them for you: so now thrust and hang: again, who is't now? I cannot blame my Lord Calianax for going away; would he were here, he would run raging among them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own in the twinkling of an eye: ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... process. I have heard an old lady declare that she "got religion" in the twinkling of an eye, and she believed all people would be damned and burn in hell fire, who did not ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... don't know what a glib young chatterbox he is; and, if he has his way, he is to be our errand-boy! Yesterday he challenged Eros—tripped up his heels somehow, and had him on his back in a twinkling; before the applause was over, he had taken the opportunity of a congratulatory hug from Aphrodite to steal her girdle; Zeus had not done laughing before—the sceptre was gone. If the thunderbolt had not been too heavy, and very hot, he would have made ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... leap, and the Belgian felt a heavy body hurtle onto the rump of his terror-stricken mount. The horse, snorting, leaped forward. Giant arms encircled the rider, and in the twinkling of an eye he was dragged from his saddle to find himself lying in the narrow trail with a naked, white giant kneeling ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the barrier in front, and turned aside also. Then, in the midst of a cloud of smoke, shouts, curses, cries, shrieks, orders, and the roar of guns, all the English precipitated themselves in a body on the principal post, and became the masters of the battery in the twinkling of an eye. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... with shout and din, To bind his hands and feet; A hundred strong they clambered in Our good old Kris to meet. He sat quite still, with twinkling eyes, Then seized his mystic wand, He raised it up, and waved it round Stilled was this ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... hind legs, and preparing to repeat the blow. Without a moment's hesitation he rushed in consternation to the ship's side, and plunged into the sea, whither he was followed by all his countrymen in the twinkling of an eye. A storm of musket bullets could not have cleared the deck more quickly than did the attack of that ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... needed no second bidding. They were up-stairs and back in the dining-room in a twinkling, and so eagerly did they chatter of their plans for the morrow that hungry though they were ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... Lights were twinkling, far and near, over the hills, singly, and in clusters. Black figures moved across the moonlit spaces in the street. There were sounds of talking, laughing, and singing; dogs barking; occasionally a stir and tinkle in the scrub, as a cow wandered past. The engines throbbed from the distant shaft-houses. ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... we could perceive him to catch flies in a very strange manner. On perceiving a fly sitting, he suddenly darts out something from his mouth, perhaps his tongue, very loathsome to behold, and almost like a bird-bolt, with which he catches and eats the flies with such speed, even in the twinkling of an eye, that one can hardly discern the action. In the hills there are many spiders on the trees, which spin webs from tree to tree of very strong and excellent silk of a yellow colour, as if dyed by art. I found also hanging on the trees, great worms like our grubs with many legs, inclosed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... victuals, but they told me old bl—bl"——Again he hesitated, evidently afraid that some "unsonsy" thing was behind him. His voice sunk down to a tremulous whisper. "They said that old split-feet brought a whole bevy of little devilkins with him that cleared decks in the twinkling of a bowsprit." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... conductor came in, took Rico by the arm, and led him quickly to the door, and lifted him down the steps; then, pointing towards the heights in the distance, he said briefly, "Peschiera;" and in a twinkling he was back again in the carriage, and disappeared in the train as it ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... Basin. The noble harbor of Halifax narrows to a deep inlet for three miles along the rocky slope on which the city stands, and then suddenly expands into this beautiful sheet of water. We ran along its bank for five miles, cheered occasionally by a twinkling light on the shore, and then came to a stop at the shabby terminus, three miles out of town. This basin is almost large enough to float the navy of Great Britain, and it could lie here, with the narrows fortified, secure from the attacks of the American navy, hovering outside ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... smooth in the midst of hardship and drudgery. For the dancer the cup is always overflowing, even though it may be small. There is an element of relaxation and of joyfulness in the rhythm of the music and the twinkling of the feet, which comes as a blessing into the dulness and monotony of life. The overworked factory girl does not seek rest for her muscles after the day of labour, but craves to go on contrasting them in the rhythmic movements of the dance. So it has been at all times. The hardest ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Kethcrwn {77b} the Priest. Clust the son of Clustveinad, (though he were buried seven cubits beneath the earth, he would hear the ant, fifty miles off, rise from her nest in the morning). Medyr the son of Methredydd, (from Gelli Wic he could, in a twinkling, shoot the wren through the two legs upon Esgeir Oervel in Ireland). Gwiawn Llygad Cath, (who would cut a haw from the eye of the gnat without hurting him). Ol the son of Olwydd; (seven years before he was born ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... regalia at the head of the 50th Gordon Highlanders on garrison parade. On the curb a twinkling little Jap watches him. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... their saddening eyes, And in the vain endeavor We see them twinkling in the skies, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lives a bitter, stagnant life, Who follows after every ill And knows not either Faith or Love, (For Faith in deeds alone doth live). Eternal woe shall be his doom - More torments he shall then behold Yea, in the twinkling of an eye Than any ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... through this, and up a winding staircase of spirals, so steep and so many that the head swam. Open lancet windows—one at each complete round of the stair— admitted the morning breeze, and through them, as I clung to the newel and climbed dizzily, I had glimpses of the sea twinkling far below. I counted these windows up to ten or a dozen, but had lost my reckoning for minutes before we emerged, at my uncle's heels, upon a semi-circular landing, and in face of an iron-studded door, the hasp ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... were twinkling to acknowledge those little prayers of thanks, and the night was sweet and peaceful, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... shall live in Italy for the rest of our lives," said Lucy with twinkling eyes; "but we must come back in a year and take ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... has the search of fallen man into the depths of the universe demonstrated the truth of God given by revelation in His word. And yet the great questions we ask of astronomers concerning this great universe are answered with "we do not know." Some day in the twinkling of an eye we shall know more about this great universe than all the knowledge gained by fallen man. But this universe rests in the hands of the Man in Glory. He is the great central sun around which all revolves. ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... a John Bull aspect to the room of the hotel into which she was ushered, that she was on the point of swooning, when her ears were suddenly assailed by a loud sound—Gracious heavens! What noise is that? Her delicate little head is in a twinkling thrust out of the window, and she beholds,—oh horror of horrors—she beholds a mail-coach, built on the regular English plan, cantering into the yard, with all its concomitants completely a l'Anglaise—"horses curvetting, and not a hair turned—a whip that ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... verge of the pool. Before she could look again the one had fallen on the earth; and the other, with a desperate blow of his stick on the head of the prostrate man, uttered an oath in a voice whose peculiar tones were well-known to Barbara, and in the twinkling of an eye shoved the wounded man over the bank ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... and then looked again; the temptation was too great. There was a noise of softly drawn bolts and bars, the door was hesitatingly opened a little way, and, in a twinkling, the one-eyed Hans had slipped inside the castle, ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... jump might be the one by which he would reach her, she thought, and that surely would be the end, for, if he ever succeeded in getting his hooked fangs fastened in her clothes, she would be pulled from the tree in an eye twinkling, and she shuddered as she thought ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... fayre, and beautified with the moueable wauinges of theyr crysping hayre couered ouer with a thinne vayle, lyke a Spiders vvebbe. Theyr eyes byting and alluring, more bright, than the twinkling starres in a cleere ayre, vnder theyr circulate brees: vvith a small nose, betwixt their rounde and cherry cheekes: their teeth orderly disposed, small and euen set, of the collour of refyned siluer: vppon the rest, betwixt ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna |
