"Roving" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... us that many of his countrymen went away to sea for a few years and saved money, the wise ones bringing it home and investing it in a plot of land; "but," he added, "they do not all succeed, for many of them have become so accustomed to a roving life, and know so little of farming, that they cannot manage to make it pay. I have worked very hard myself, and am getting along all right;" and, looking at his surroundings, we certainly thought he must be doing very ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... years had passed by since the old Towncrier first visited the Huntingdon home. He was not the Towncrier then, but a seafaring man who had sailed many times around the globe, and had his fill of adventure. Tired at last of such a roving life, he had found anchorage to his liking in this quaint old fishing town at the tip end of Cape Cod. Georgina's grandfather, George Justin Huntingdon, a judge and a writer of dry law books, had been one of the ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... franchise! And this is the work of a Conservative Government, this plan which would swamp all the counties in England with electors who possess the Derby-Walpole qualifications; that is to say, youth, poverty, ignorance, a roving disposition, and five feet two. Why, what right have people who have proposed such a change as this to talk about—I do not say Lord John Russell's imprudence—but the imprudence of Ernest Jones or of any other Chartist? The Chartists, to do them justice, would give the franchise to wealth as well ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him rode Marcus Minucius Rufus, tall and well-built, with bold, coarse features and fierce, roving eyes. His red hair bristled from his brow, and he seemed to restrain with difficulty either his steed or himself from darting ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... to death. Albinos are valued, though their colour is not admired. If death occurs in a natural manner, the body is usually either buried in the village or outside. A large portion of the negro races affect nudity, despising clothing as effeminate; but these are chiefly the more boisterous roving pastorals, who are too lazy either to grow cotton or strip the trees of their bark. Their young women go naked; but the mothers suspend a little tail both before and behind. As the hair of the negro ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... deserted and forlorn appearance. Phil's keen eyes were roving over the ground, but he found nothing to excite him till he came to the rear of the building. Here was a ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... wall, near its original site. This early church and early school was a log cabin with a thatched roof and latticed windows, if one may believe the relief, but men of brains and character were taught there lessons which stood them and the colony in good stead. One fancies the students' roving eyes may have occasionally strayed down the Indian trail directly opposite the old site—a trail which, although now attained to the proud rank of a lane, Churchill's Lane, still invites one down its tangled green way along ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... the month of days that passed as years. Little is known as to what happened in the gray hut, but that perhaps is a good thing. Dom Manuel never talked about it. This much is known, that all day the clay head would be roving about the world, carrying envious reports, and devouring kingdoms, and stirring up patriotism and reform, and whispering malefic counsel, and bringing hurt and sorrow and despair and evil of every kind to men; ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... the local legends, the sacra which were the exclusive property of old-world families, Butadae or Eumolpidae. These are clearly survivals from a stage of Greek culture earlier than the city state, earlier than the heroic age of the roving Greek Vikings, and far earlier than the Greek colonies. They belong to that conservative and immobile period when the tribe or clan, settled in its scattered kraals, lived a life of agriculture, hunting and ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... personification of Eastern Capital looked about him dubiously at the only hotel of Heart's Desire, before which the coach had pulled up as a matter of course. "Any women folks in town, anywhere?" he inquired, bringing his roving eye to rest upon Dan ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... the window, and was looking discontentedly at the prospect, as she had often done at school when alone, and sometimes did now in society. The door opened again, and Sir Charles appeared. He, too, looked round, but when his roving glance reached Agatha, it cast anchor; and ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... by the blacks. The rest had started to walk along the shore to Sydney, but one man, named Pamphlett, had remained with the natives; and it was he who now was rescued by Oxley, to whom he gave the information that, when roving inland with the tribe among whom he was living, he had seen a fine river of fresh water. Under the guidance of Pamphlett, Oxley left his little vessel in the bay, and with a boat entered upon the broad current of the stream. Before ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... escape all intercourse with humanity, or some outlaw hiding from arrest, would be likely to select so isolated a place in which to live. To them it would be ideal. Away from all trails, where not even widely roving cattlemen would penetrate, in midst of a desert avoided by Indians because of lack of game,—a man might hide here year after year without danger of discovery. Yet such a one would not be likely to welcome their coming, and they were without arms. But ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... or later. I therefore recommend you to marry without delay. You have sufficient means, connected with your knowledge and habits of business, to support a genteel establishment, and I am certain that as soon as you are married you will experience a change in your ideas. All those vagabond, roving propensities will cease. They are the offspring of idleness of mind and a want of something to fix the feelings. You are like a bark without an anchor, that drifts about at the mercy of every vagrant breeze ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... father had been a mining engineer who had never accomplished anything more remarkable than proving himself a failure in his profession. He was of a roving, adventurous disposition, the kind of a man to whom the fields just ahead always look greenest, and as a result his life had been a remarkable series of ups and downs—mostly downs. Bob's mother had been an artist of more or less ability— probably less—who, having met and fallen in love ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the family was very fond of liberty, as they called it; and liked to run up and down, hither and thither, roving about, with neither law nor order, just as they pleased. So they could not endure their brother's tyranny, as they called it. At one time they said that he was only one of themselves, and therefore they would not obey him; at another, that he was not like them, and could not understand ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... out of an idle thirst of curiosity, but from an interest mingled with sorrows and affections; for, after the campaign in England, my three brothers, Michael, William and Alexander, never domiciled themselves at any civil calling. Having caught the roving spirit of camps, they remained in the skirts of the array which the covenanted Lords at Edinburgh continued to maintain; and here, poor lads! I may digress a little, to record the brief memorials of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... he had steeped himself in the legends and ideals of the Middle Ages, and his best literary work is wholly mediaeval in spirit. The Earthly Paradise (1868-1870) is generally regarded as his masterpiece. This delightful collection of stories in verse tells of a roving band of Vikings, who are wrecked on the fabled island of Atlantis, and who discover there a superior race of men having the characteristics of ideal Greeks. The Vikings remain for a year, telling stories of their own Northland, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... as soon as she discovered that he preferred to stroke her full, firm cheeks when they were guiltless of powder. She dropped her former freedom of speech, gave up the telling of highly-spiced anecdotes, and checked her roving glances and the frolicsome imps—somewhat too deeply versed in Boccaccio—that haunted her lively brain, when she saw that he took umbrage at anything the least risky. Her cigarettes horrified him, so she threw them out of the window, and never ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... the door, waved Bostwick into the crowded gaming room, and was about to follow when his roving gaze abruptly lighted on a figure in the place—a swarthy, half-breed Piute Indian, standing in front of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the courage to act upon your own responsibility; you exhibited very sound judgment and resource in that affair of the Indian Queen, and also in the affair of the Indiaman, which you certainly saved from capture. I am therefore going to take upon myself the responsibility of giving you a roving commission to hunt down and ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... disease, known as the "milk-sick" created such havoc in Indiana in 1829, the father of Abraham Lincoln, who was of a roving disposition, sought and found a new home in Illinois, locating near the town of Decatur, in Macon county, on a bluff overlooking the Sangamon river. A short time thereafter Abraham Lincoln came of age, and having done his duty to his father, ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the present, at least, is a roving commission," said young Lennox. "It seems to me that the best we can do is to ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... horseman had been warned; but shortly she heard again the rustle of stiff branches, and out into the opening rode a Mexican. He was astride a wiry gray pony, and in the strong twilight Alaire could see his every feature—the swarthy cheeks, the roving eyes beneath the black felt hat. A carbine lay across his saddle-horn, a riata was coiled beside his leg, a cartridge-belt circled his waist. There was something familiar about the fellow, but at the moment Alaire could not determine what ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... repeated, "indeed I almost venture to fear that you must." But the gentleman's gaze had wandered to the fallen girl once more, and the glow was back in his roving eyes. ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... the lonely hour, Friends, who can alter or forsake. Who for inconstant roving have no power, And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take. To My Books. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... 1st death too it was we were never the same since O Im not going to think myself into the glooms about that any more I wonder why he wouldnt stay the night I felt all the time it was somebody strange he brought in instead of roving around the city meeting God knows who nightwalkers and pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that if she was alive ruining himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour so silent I used to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... natural trap. It had been built of roughly piled stone and never entirely finished. Indians sometimes camped within the inclosure. It was, however, empty of life, and the adventurers were about to push on with the herd when the keen, roving eyes of Kid Wolf spotted something suspicious on the north horizon. He held his hand aloft, signaling ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... accident, for he was a bosom friend; yet he could never bring himself to confess the fact, for he dreaded the blame of his townsmen, the anguish of the dead man's parents, the hate of his betrothed. It was believed that the killing was a murder, and that some roving Indian had done it. After years of conscience-darkened life, in which the face of his dead friend often arose accusingly before him, the unhappy wretch vowed that he would never again look his fellows openly in the face: he would pay a penalty and conceal his shame. Then ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... balm or what solace could be found for the sermon? Naturally the eye, wandering here and there among the serried ranks, made bold, untrammelled choice among our fair fellow-supplicants. It was in this way that, some months earlier, under the exceptional strain of the Athanasian Creed, my roving fancy had settled upon the baker's wife as a fit object for a life-long devotion. Her riper charms had conquered a heart which none of her be-muslined, tittering juniors had been able to subdue; and that she was already wedded had never occurred to me as any bar ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... ungraceful tilmas, and rather serving than associating with those around them. There were mulattoes, too, and negroes of a jetty blackness from the plantations of Louisiana, who had exchanged for this free, roving life the twisted "cow-skin" of the overseer. There were tattered uniforms showing the deserters who had wandered from some frontier post into this remote region. There were Kanakas from the Sandwich Isles, who ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... them, published in 1802, shows the Gipsy to be the same in Northern Russia as with us in England. He describes them as follows:—"I was surprised at the appearance of detached families throughout the Government of Tobolsk, and upon inquiry I learned that several roving companies of these people had strolled into the city of Tobolsk." The governor thought of establishing a colony of them, but they were too cunning for the simple Siberian peasant. He placed them on a footing with the peasants, and ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... sufficient to occupy a man,—when divided with the oversight of his farm, overtasked his powers, and left him no leisure for poetic work, except from time to time crooning over a random song. Then the habits which his roving Excise life must have induced were, even to a soul less social than that of Burns, perilous in the extreme. The temptations he was in this way exposed to, Lockhart has drawn with a powerful hand. "From the castle to the cottage, every door flew ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... accumulated upon him, and just a year after his marriage, and shortly after the birth of their daughter, I received a letter which breathed a profound melancholy, due partly to his difficulties, but more, I thought, to a return of the restless and roving spirit. I replied: "Do tell me you are happier than that letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied." It was only a few weeks later that Lady Byron adopted the resolution of parting from him. She had left London in January on a visit to her father, and Byron was to follow her. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... right through both my ears; 'the Lord be merciful to me,' said I, trembling. 'Amen,' says he, 'whether you're joking or not.' The moment he said that my mind was relieved, for I knew it was not a sperit, and I began to laugh heartily at my mistake; 'and who are ye at all?' said I, 'that's roving about, at this hour of the night, ye can't be Father Luke, for I left him asleep on the carpet before I quitted the college, and faith, my friend, if you hadn't the taste for divarsion ye would not be out now?' He coughed then so hard that I could not ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist belted suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking up Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying to take the curb with a jaunty youthfulness ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... statesmen of proved ability. These precautions were soon seen to be necessary, for the partisans of the Toyotomi seized the occasion to attempt a coup. The country at that time swarmed with ronin (wave-men); that is to say, samurai who were, for various reasons, roving free-lances. There seems to have been a large admixture of something very like European chivalry in the make up of these ronin, for some of them seem to have wandered about merely to right wrongs ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... no common difficulty: the country they had to traverse was untrodden even by the feet of former missionaries, inhabited by wild, roving tribes, beggared by Chinese extortions, rendered barren by long misgovernment, and lastly, infested in many parts by bands of armed robbers. These latter are, it is true, far different, in manner at least, from what their name would lead most of our ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Harun-haunted streets creep the one-eyed calenders, the Little Hunchback and the Barber's Sixth Brother, hoping to escape the ministrations of the roving ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... over this, and worried also. She loved Jims dearly and would feel deeply giving him up in any case; but if Jim Anderson were a different sort of a man, with a proper home for the child, it would not be so bad. But to give Jims up to a roving, shiftless, irresponsible father, however kind and good-hearted he might be—and she knew Jim Anderson was kind and good-hearted enough—was a bitter prospect to Rilla. It was not even likely Anderson would stay in the Glen; he had no ties there now; he might even go back to England. She might ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... have been blighted is presented with a Scotch Collie to divert her mind, and the roving adventures of her pet lead the young mistress into ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... machines for the working of fibres preliminary to the loom—the carding, roving, spinning, reeling and warping—and the allied but different machines which make wire-cloths of different meshes and size, we come to the ropemaking-machines for hemp and wire, which are shown principally in their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... people, every one of you!" said the convalescent, smiling eyes roving about her. "Grass paper, Kane, and such a dear border!" she said. "And everything feeling so clean! And my darling girl writing letters and seeing people all these weeks! And my boys so good! And dear old Daddy carrying the real burden for everyone—what a ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... of gin with a stinger, and thank you kindly. A master should go with his ship," and he touched his sparse white hair which showed his scalp, and nodded his head, staring out over the bay as if in a reverie. The colour was bleached out of his failing eyes and they had a habit of roving about unsteadily, a quality common in old sailors and probably acquired in a ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... hungry, roaring sea. His twelve-year-old vocabulary boasted such compound difficulties as mizzentopsail-yard and main-topgallantmast. He knew the intricate parts of a full-rigged ship from the mainsail to the deck, from the jib-boom to the chart-house. All this from pictures and books. It was the roving, restless spirit of his father in him, I suppose. Clint Kamps had never been meant for marriage. When the baby Tyler was one year old Clint had walked over to where his wife sat, the child in her lap, and had ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the Boy roving about here wrapped in his flaming discontents. There was flash on flash against the clouds, and rush on rush of shadows down the valley till the shaws were full of his hounds giving tongue, and the woodways were packed with ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... peasant's dress, and wore the round hat which, in Wales at least, seems to suit the character of the female face so well; her long and waving ringlets fell carelessly upon her shoulders, and her cheek flushed from walking. Before I had a moment's notice to recover my roving thought, she spoke; her voice was full and round, but soft ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... to afford opportunity for physical movement. Even if a separate room is not available, screens or curtains should make it possible for the children to change their position frequently. The separation will also remove the temptation for curiosity to obtain satisfaction through roving eyes. The place should provide comfortable seating arrangements, for impressions carried within from strained muscles and tired limbs are far stronger than from ideas that the teacher gives, and these will consequently ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... "you are more of a Dissenter than a Catholic. I beg your pardon," he added, seeing Willis look up sharply, "let me be frank with you, pray do. You were attached to the Church of Rome, not as a child to a mother, but in a wayward roving way, as a matter of fancy or liking, or (excuse me) as a greedy boy to something nice; and you pursued your object by disobeying ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... exceeding fat On lands our roving fathers raided; And blush with holy horror at Their lawless sons who do as they did; No doubt the age improves a lot, It grows more honest, more veracious; But, as I said, the times are not Quite ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... undertake. The third time that he asked this favour, he obtained it by pure importunity. He carried the money safely into Landau, without meeting with any obstacle. On his return he saw some hussars roving about. Without a moment's hesitation he resolved to give chase to them. He was with difficulty restrained for some time, and a last, breaking away, he set off to attack them, followed by only two officers. The hussars dispersed ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... of the nicker. Down the road, through the swaying purple of the early lilacs, ridden by a picturesque cowboy, paced a great horse, glinting ruddy in the morning sun-gold, flinging free the snowy foam of his mighty fetlocks, his noble crest tossing, his eyes roving afield, the trumpet of his love- call echoing ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... created a great deal of surprise, not so much from the fact of the Bretons having taken up arms against the Convention, as from a certain degree of mystery which were attached to the men who were roving about the country. It appeared that they were all under the control of one leader, whose name was not known in Laval, but who was supposed to have taken an active part in many of the battles fought on the other side of the river. ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Hebrew treatises, but he smiled again to think that the name of Yossel's volume signified 'the duties of the heart.' The Bube Yenta received the book with thanks, and a moment of embarrassment ensued, only slightly mitigated by the offer of the snuffbox. Yossel took a pinch, but his eyes seemed roving in amaze, less over the stranger than over the bespread table, as though he might unaccountably have overlooked some sacred festival. That two are company and three none seemed at this point a proverb to be heeded, and without waiting to renew the hero's acquaintance, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... lavishly, saying fine things with no effort, dropping a subject quickly if he thought it did not interest me; sometimes flashing out with a quick gesture of impatience or gusto, enjoying life, every moment and every detail. His quick eyes, roving about, took in each smallest point, not in the weary feverish way in which I apprehend a new scene, but as though he liked everything new and unfamiliar, like an unsated child. He greeted Maud and the children with a kind of chivalrous ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... were engrained with dirt, showing even against his dark skin. His heavy face lit up with a gleam of malicious satisfaction as Diana came towards him, his loose mouth broadened in a wicked smile. He leaned forward a little, weighing heavily on the hands that were on his knees, his eyes roving slowly over her till they rested on her ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Her roving eye had immediately, with an infallible instinct, caught sight of a bracelet which, in taking stock of her possessions, Sophia had accidentally left on the piano. She picked it up, and then put it ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... regions. In early days he was quite often both preacher and teacher, such as William E. Barton, father of Bruce Barton, who after preaching in the thinly settled parts of Knox County, Kentucky, became the pastor of a Chicago church in later years. Some of the early roving preachers even studied theology in the great centers of learning ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... Pasha the soldier turned back, and I was left to coax my unwilling helpers on a four days' journey across a war-stricken countryside, swept of all supplies, infested with savage dogs (fortunately well fed by the harvest of the battlefields), liable to ravage by roving bands. ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... the Old Un proposed, and was duly seconded, thirded, and fourthed, that Mrs. Trapes be elected into the chair to pour out the tea, which she proceeded to do forthwith, while the Old Un, seated at her right hand, kept a wary eye roving between jam dish and angel cake. And by reason of the unwonted graciousness of Mrs. Trapes, of Ravenslee's tact and easy assurance, and the Old Un's impish hilarity, all diffidence and restraint were banished, and good fellowship reigned supreme, though the Spider was interrupted in the midst ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... guessed not whence he hailed from, Nor knew what far-off quay His roving bark had sailed from Before he came ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... widows to wife. At the age of 20 he married—almost, it seems, out of a sense of duty—the widow of his teacher, Xylotectus of Lucerne; an elderly lady who persecuted him sorely, and once in a passion threw dirty water over him. After eight years, two of which he had spent roving through Germany with Paracelsus, she died, leaving her property to relations. Oporinus' next widow had three children, girls, who grew up to share their mother's expensive tastes. For nearly thirty years their extravagance vexed him, though his wife had tact enough to ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... and his companions had had to defend themselves against hostile mountaineers, who rushed suddenly upon them out of the woods. When they were about two days' journey still from the end of their march, they had a bloody skirmish with a roving band of men that seemed to belong to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the West with their brethren ere the European had landed on their shores, navigation was yet in so immature a state in Northern Europe as to secure to them an exemption from foreign invasion. In an after age, however, when the roving Vikings had become formidable, many of the eminences originally selected, from their inaccessibility, as sites for hill-forts, would come to be chosen, from their prominence in the landscape, as stations for beacon-fires. And of course ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Richard Adams, and I am the son of a Cumberland yeoman who married a Welshwoman. Therefore I have Celtic blood in my veins, which perhaps accounts for my love of roving and other things. I am now an old man, near the end of my course, I suppose; at any rate, I was sixty-five last birthday. This is my appearance as I see it in the glass before me: tall, spare (I don't weigh more than a hundred and forty pounds—the desert has ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... replied. "I asked the same question. Their roving patrol had been by there a short time earlier, but saw nothing suspicious. After all, they can't post men everywhere. So two of them take turns keeping watch on the tidal flats, in case anyone tries to cross from the mainland directly to here. ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... glamour of the moonlight may have served to enhance its ethereal beauty, but neither moonlight nor sunlight could do justice to that beauty in its living human splendour. As I gloried in her starry eyes I could think of nothing else; but when for a moment my eyes, roving round for the purpose of protection, caught sight of her whole figure, there was a pang to my heart. The brilliant moonlight showed every detail in terrible effect, and I could see that she wore only her Shroud. In the moment of ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... of a culture which is not required, and having a good string to their bow in the matter of livelihood, namely, the mechanical art of signalling, are prone to lead a careless, gay, and superficial life, roving from town to town throughout: the length and breadth of the States. But for his genius and aspirations, Edison might have yielded to the seductions of this happy-go-lucky, free, and frivolous existence. Dissolute comrades at Memphis won upon his good nature; but though he lent them ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... little sister, little sweetheart, 'ade! ade!' My little sweetheart, your meadow is half-way up the mountain; it's such a green spot on the eyeballs of a roving boy! and the chapel just above it, I shall see it as I've seen it a thousand times; and the cloud hangs near it, and moves to the door and enters, for it is an angel, not a cloud; a white angel gone in to pray for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at the driveway and briskly resigned the care of Polly to old Asher, his seamed and wrinkled helper, the Doctor's eyes were roving now to a corner, snug beneath a tattered rug of snow, where by summer Aunt Ellen's petunias and phlox and larkspur grew—and now to the rose-bushes ridged in down, and at last to his favorite winter nook, a thicket of black alders ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... to memory is the bare trail that we followed over the prairies of Nebraska, in 1856, when the Missouri River was held by roving bands from the Slave States, and Freedom had to seek an overland route into Kansas. All day and all night we rode between distant prairie-fires, pillars of evening light and of morning cloud, while sometimes the low grass would burn to the very edge of the trail, so that we had to hold our ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... while Mr. Truck proceeded to get the sun and the time. As soon as he had run through his calculations, he came to them with a face in which the eye was roving, though it was ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... on the products of Loudoun's fruitful acres. Opposing forces, sometimes only detachments and roving bands, but quite as often battalions, regiments, brigades, and even whole divisions were never absent from the County and the clash of swords and fire of musketry were an ever-present clamor and one to which Loudoun ears early ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... them. Probably in hours of depression he was quite indifferent to fame, and perhaps in another mood the whole business of play-writing seemed to him a little thing. None of these thoughts and feelings influenced him when his subject had caught hold of him. To imagine that then he 'winged his roving flight' for 'gain' or 'glory,' or wrote from any cause on earth but the necessity of expression, with all its pains and raptures, is mere folly. He was possessed: his mind must have been in a white heat: ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... midst a class, into whose mental economy the faculty of wonder is so thoroughly infused, that it has inoculated the entire system, and forms an inherent, inexplicable, and almost elementary part of it. These persons sail about in their pleasure yachts, on roving expeditions, under a pretended 'right of search,' armed to the teeth, and boarding all sorts of crafts to obtain plunder for their favorite gratification. They are most uneasy and uncomfortable companions, having no ear for commonplace subjects of conversation, and no eye for ordinary ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... would-be knowing arguers on slavery, race, etc., were only aware of the fact that such people as the primitive Greeks, or the ancestors of classical Greeks, that the ancestors of the Latins, that even the roving, robbing ancestors of the Anglo Saxons, in some way or other, have been anthropophagi, and worshipped fetishes; and even as thus called already civilized, they sacrificed men to gods,—could our great pro-slavers ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... of the responsibilities of maternity worked forward and backward with Lynda much to Truedale's secret amusement. Confident of her duty to her son, she interpreted her duty to Ann. While Billy, red-faced and roving-eyed, gurgled or howled in his extreme youth, Lynda retraced her steps and commandingly repaired some damages ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... college we visited was Cardinal Wolsey's—an immense fabric. While roving about a very spacious apartment, Mr. Fairly(212) came behind me, and whispered that I might easily slip out into a small parlour, to rest a little while ; almost everybody having taken some opportunity ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... told them all about it. James Leigh's change of life, manner, and habits dated from the dreaded night when he saw with his own eyes the ghastly figure of what he believed to be a murdered man. From being a roving, reckless, devil-may-care sailor, he settled into a steady, ambitious, capable man. He married a Welsh girl after his own heart, and forgot all about the daughter of the old Spaniard, who, if subsequent accounts were correct, pined for his return to Chili. Mrs. ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... to the spot where yet Safe tether'd lay her snowy pet, To roving tastes a martyr: But something met the damsel's gaze, Which made her cry in sheer amaze, "Good ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... horse's bells, deposited a couple at the door whose faces were familiar. At table d'hote, though he was separated from the new-comers by half a dozen covers, he had leisure to identify them as the Dollonds; and by-and-by the roving, impartial gaze of the Academician's wife encountering him, he could assure himself that the recognition was mutual. They came together at the end of dejeuner, and presently, at Mrs. Dollond's instigation, started for a stroll through ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... in miniature, and this makes it still a more lovely spot. The building consists of a square pavilion two stories high, and separated entirely from the accessory buildings, which are on the left, and among them a pretty chapel. But a wish to be with the multitude, who were roving among the fountains, cut short my visit ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... wilt thou say but that the foemen whom we go to meet in Upmeads may be some of those very Burgers: hast thou heard whether they have found a new dwelling among some unhappy folk, or be still roving: maybe they shall ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... Ursula stared. "Ah, yes-I remember. You and he used to be great friends, didn't you?" Her roving attention deepened.... But if Susy were waiting to see Lord Altringham—one of the richest men in England! Suddenly Ursula opened her gold-meshed bag and snatched ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Ruatara, the inheritor of his influence over the tribe. This notable man, while still young, determined that he too would see the world, and in the year 1805 engaged himself as a common sailor on board a whaling vessel. The roving life suited his adventurous temperament, and in spite of many hardships and much foul play he served in one ship after another. His duties carried him more than once to Port Jackson, where he, too, met Samuel Marsden ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... its conquest by the Turks. He was a coasting trader and skipper, and had four sons—Elias, Isaak, Arouj and Khizr, all said to have been born after 1482. Khizr became a potter and Isaak a trader. Elias and Arouj took to sea roving. In an action with a galley of the Knights of Saint John, then established at Rhodes, Elias was killed and Arouj taken prisoner; the latter was ransomed by a Turkish pasha and returned to the sea. For some time ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... not dead, and in spite of the steam engine and of Thomas Cook & Son. When the announcement of the contemplated voyage of the Snark was made, young men of "roving disposition" proved to be legion, and young women as well—to say nothing of the elderly men and women who volunteered for the voyage. Why, among my personal friends there were at least half a dozen who regretted their recent or imminent marriages; and there was one marriage ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... peevish and distrusted; the Dean of Markborough, with the green shade over his eyes, and fretful complaint on his lips of the "infection" generated by every Modernist incumbent; and near him, Professor Vetch, with yet another divinity professor beside him, a young man, short and slight, with roving, grasshopper eyes. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Bill Jones were hungry a hasty meal was prepared for them, during the eating of which they told of their experiences since landing from the airship. They had been on a farm until fired with a desire to go roving once more. ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... happiness and rest gradually stealing into her heart and filling it; like as the tide at flood comes in upon the empty shore. Whatever her father might think upon the just mooted question, those two hands had found each other, once and for all. Thoughts went roving, aimlessly, meanwhile, as thoughts will, in such a flood-tide of content. Pitt worked on rapidly. Then a word came ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... we mentioned, Kaiser Joseph was on his first Visit to the Czarina. They met at Mohilow on the Dnieper, towards the end of May; have been roving about, as if in mere galas and amusements (though with a great deal of business incidentally thrown in), for above a month since, when Prince de Ligne is summoned to join them at Petersburg. He goes by ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the operation a large hostile column operating in the neighbourhood of the Rovuma had ceased to exist. There were other roving forces still in the district, and against these the Haussas were to operate in conjunction with ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... mother, the ship's boy did all the emptying, you know," Mr. Dickett urged tolerantly. "It seems a roving sort of life, to us, I know, and unsettled, but if they like it, why I ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... some distance, our young guide keeping his sharp eyes roving round in every direction in search of some other bird or animal on which he might exercise his skill. We were naturally surprised at the wonderful way in which the bird he had shot had recovered. I could scarcely believe that the arrow had been tipped with poison, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... it seems, got intelligence of us when they came to the south part of the island, and had been a-roving as far as the Gulf of Bengal, when they met Captain Avery, with whom they joined, took several rich prizes, and, amongst the rest, one ship with the Great Mogul's daughter, and an immense treasure in money and jewels; and from thence they came ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... lucky should one of them crawl over you, or come towards you. There is a spider popularly known as daddy-long-legs, though this name is shared by other insects; it has a narrow body, and long pale legs, with dark knee-joints. It is often noticed roving about, for some reason or other; yet the species is a web-maker; its web is usually in a ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... what had been taken, by successful raids on the castle or the garrison. Fleet-footed, and well aware of every spot which would afford concealment, these hardy Celts generally escaped scot-free. Thus occupied for several centuries, they acquired a taste for this roving life; and they can scarcely be reproached for not having advanced in civilization with the age, by those who placed such invincible obstacles to ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Then a roving idea of genial impertinence brought a gleam to his eye. "If you should happen to want more Rubber Consols at any time," he said, with a tentative chuckle, "I could probably let you have ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... was a very handsome man, tall, slender and nervous, the Venetian type. His black eyes were keen and energetic and roving, suggesting a temper less calculating than hasty. The mouth, partly hidden under a graceful military mustache, was thin-lipped, the mouth of a man who, however great his vices, was always master of them. From his ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... of my own; in those days I gave to many a tramp such as I now am, no matter who he might be nor what he wanted. I had any number of servants, and all the other things which people have who live well and are accounted wealthy, but it pleased Jove to take all away from me. He sent me with a band of roving robbers to Egypt; it was a long voyage and I was undone by it. I stationed my ships in the river Aegyptus, and bade my men stay by them and keep guard over them, while I sent out scouts to reconnoitre ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... six to sixteen "slivers" are run together and the fibers drawn out in several stages until the soft rope is about an eighth of an inch in diameter, called "roving." This tends to get rid of any unevenness and makes the fibers all parallel. From this machine the roving is wound on a bobbin ready ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... town called Bruton, in Somersetshire, and my parents were well-to-do people. My mother died when I was very young; my father, who had been a great traveller in his days, often told me of his adventures, which gave me a strong desire for a roving life. I used to beg my father to let me go to sea with some captain of his acquaintance; but he only warned me solemnly against the dangers to which sailors were exposed, and told me I should soon wish ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... was roving over the land in search of the fugitive. He was not seriously concerned at the disappearance of the Indian chief; nevertheless, his pride was hurt and he did not conceal his annoyance that his ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... times the beacon-fire has sent forth messages from hilltops or across inaccessible places. In this country, when the Indian was monarch of the vast areas of forest and prairie, he spread news broadcast to roving tribesmen by means of the signal-fire, and he flashed his code by covering and uncovering it. Castaways, whether in fiction or in reality, instinctively turn to the beacon-fire as a mode of attracting a passing ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... Armine from cutting scarlet geraniums in the ribbon beds to show him the scene in the Greek play which he was to prepare, and Babie tried to store up all the directions, perceiving from the pupil's roving eye that she should ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vanity,—her hair, of a rich raven black, was plaited in a stiff thick braid resembling a Chinese pigtail, and was fastened at the end with a bow of ribbon,—and a pair of wonderfully brilliant dark eyes flashed under her arching brows, suggesting something weird and witchlike in their roving glances, and giving an almost uncanny expression to her small, sallow face. But she was full of the most exuberant vitality,—she sparkled all over with it and seemed to exhale it in the mere act of breathing. Brimful of delight at the prospect of spending the whole ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Hume's knife, which had been painstakingly lashed to a trimmed shaft of wood. Since he had emerged from that clouding of mind which still gripped the Hunter, he had done what he could to prepare for another attack from any roving beast. And he also had Hume's ray tube—its single charge to be ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... while his day's work lasted,—fifty years or so, for it began early. He died in his Castle of Ballenstadt, peaceably among the Hartz Mountains at last, in the year 1170, age about sixty-five. It was in the time while Thomas a Becket was roving about the world, coming home excommunicative, and finally getting killed in Canterbury Cathedral;—while Abbot Samson, still a poor little brown Boy, came over from Norfolk, holding by his mother's hand, to St. Edmundsbury; having seen "SANTANAS s with outspread wings" ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... under his mild administration. The growing seaport of Alexandria was a good market for a country rich in natural produce, and, above all, Egypt's marvellously good geographical position stood her in good stead in time of war. Surrounded nearly on all sides by desert land, the few inhabitants, roving Bedouins, offered no danger. The land of the Nile was accessible to an enemy in one direction only, along the coast of Syria. This even teemed with difficulties. Transports there could only be managed with the greatest ingenuity, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... homogeneous in character, as were eminently the Colonists of New England. They were of most mixed and discordant materials. Prisons were ransacked for convicts and desperadoes; humble artisans and peasants were accepted as laborers; roving mariners, whose only sure port of rest would be in the abyss, were bribed for transient service, the condition always exacted being that they must be ready for the nonce to turn landsmen for fighting in swamp or bush. These, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... time is the wandering life which he led—and many have learned from experience, how difficult it is for a traveller to find leisure for intellectual pursuits. Some idea, therefore, of Pushkin's activity may be formed from a knowledge of the circumstance, that during this roving period he had not only been storing his memory with images of the beauties of nature, taking tribute of grandeur and loveliness from every scene through which he wandered, but found time to pursue what would appear, even for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... the holy priest That I may sained be; For I have lived a roving life Fifty years under the ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... few buttons in his blouse that it had taken his fumbling fingers several moments to unloose, and dropping one hand to his side, he held it there rigid as he saluted with two fingers at the brim of an imaginary hat; while his roving eye quickly took in the various motley articles of furniture of our camp,—a small kitchen table with oil-stove and tea outfit of plain white ware, some plates and bowls, a few saucepans, half a dozen chairs, no two alike, and the two cots huddled in ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... slavery, in a more congenial climate, and earnestly petitioning to be removed, were sent to Trinidad in 1821. Some few of those who remained are good servants and farmers, disposing of the produce of their lands in the Halifax market; but the majority are idle, roving, and dirty vagabonds."[85] ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... was suddenly confident; determined. "We'll stop there to break the news. Then we'll be wedded, you and I, according to the custom of your people. Our honeymoon—years of it—will be spent in the Nomad, roving the universe. Mado'll agree, I know. Wanderers of the heavens we'll be, Ora. But we'll have each other; and when we've—you've—had enough of it, I'll be ready to settle down. Anywhere you say. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... first there, were three brothers: Colonel Ebenezer, Silas and Jonathan. They all were of the roving "wild-turkey" breed, and bolder spirits never wore buckskin or sighted a rifle. A fourth brother, Isaac, had been taken by the Indians when nine years old, and had chosen to stay with them. He married a sister of a Wyandot chief; rose to be a chief, himself, but never lifted ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... tremendous drama into which the poor romance-loving soul was so suddenly plunged, and in which in spite of all her woe she found an awful kind of fascination. Failing to read any depth of admiration in her roving eye, Rupert promptly abandoned grandiloquence, and resuming his usual voice and manner, he dropped his orders upon her heat of agitation like a cool relentless stream under which her last protest fizzed, sputtered, and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Dolores, dictated to Lida-all in the same spirit. One of them said, "Go bravely on, my Dolores; though we do not live together in our bicycle-roving castles. You will do good work if you uphold the glory of God and the improvement of man, all through creation and science. I should like to talk it over with you. Things are plainer to me than in the days of my inexperience and cocksureness. Short as the time was, in months, ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge |
