"Fluent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... describe elsewhere. His disposition was naturally cheerful and mild, his temper even, and not easily provoked. Although somewhat inclined to taciturnity, yet when drawn out to converse upon any subject he was acquainted with, he was naturally fluent, and in his language pure and correct. He was a universal favorite with the youth of both sexes in his native town, and, during the intervals between his voyages, was always in demand when a Thanksgiving ball was contemplated, or a sleigh-ride, or a "frolic," as all such parties of pleasure ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... aisle with the plate on the Sabbath day, had become part of St. Cuthbert's ritual—and we all thought it beautiful. He was one of the two, referred to in the opening of our story, who had been sent to spy out the land, and to report upon the propriety of my conjugal enterprise. The fluent panegyric in which his report was made is already recorded and need ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... good sense and judgment. He had managed even to win the good opinion of Miss Sarah Pemberton, who was not in general inclined to think well of young men especially of officers in the army, whom she designated generally as an impudent, profligate set, with fluent tongues and insinuating manners, whose chief occupation in life was to break the hearts of young girls foolish enough ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... mistress. He was popular in this city of questionable morals at that time. She was beautiful and developed remarkable talents as a singer, and was a bright, witty, fascinating conversationalist. She worked hard at her studies, and became a fluent speaker of the Italian language. Hamilton had great consideration for her, and never risked having her affronted because of the liaison. Her singing was a triumph. It is said she was offered L6,000 to go to Madrid for three years and L2,000 for a season ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... one of her fluent Spanish oaths and, springing to her feet, stood with her body slightly bent forward, her hands on her hips, gazing at him with her narrow, gleaming eyes. Her apathy was gone, she was alive now to her ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... made his speech, and it was fluent, fast, and florid. Without giving it word for word, which would be tedious, I could not adequately set before the reader's eye the speaker's pleasing picture of world-wide commercial love and harmony which was to be produced by a railway from Salt Lake City to Vera Cruz, nor explain the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... as it was penetrating; his allusions and quotations, as far as they were English and within my reach, were apt and ingenious - and the wild and sudden flights of his fancy, bursting forth from his creative imagination in language fluent, forcible, and varied, had a charm for my ear and my attention wholly new and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... then, however. I admired it with all my heart; applauded the nursery eloquence of these sucking Mirabeaus and Camille Desmoulins as frantically as their own vanity could desire; and was even secretly chagrined that my own French was not yet fluent enough to enable me to take ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... the spirit can get through. We can play more sympathetically, more fluently, and with finer effect on a beautiful "grand" than on a jangly upright instrument: the one is a better vehicle of expression than the other. So also we can secure more fluent expression with a fountain pen than with one that continually interrupts the free flow of ideas by demanding to be dipped in the inkpot. We have two typewriters of the same manufacture, but one is an early model and the other a modern machine: there is a vast difference in the ease of expressing ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... the second occasion of her going with Minna to see Dr. Dieckel. Minna, as they were walking quietly along together had suddenly begun in a broken English which soon turned to shy, fluent, animated German, to tell about a friend, an apotheker, a man, Miriam gathered—missing many links in her amazement—in a shop, the chemist's shop where her parents dealt, in the little country town ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... but coldly to the whilom prima donna, "will you do me the honor to explain this? We have some doubts as to the authority upon which this invitation was issued." He spoke fluent English, for the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady,' he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; 'and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... development of the people which his class are studying. He is aware that the pupil should experience something more than a kaleidoscopic view of isolated facts. He recognizes the folly of requiring four years of high school English for the purpose of cultivating clear, fluent, and accurate expression, only to relax the effort when the student comes into the history class. He knows that the precision, logic, and habit of definite thinking exacted by the pursuit of the scientific subjects should not ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... When he attacked her one day with the brusque exclamation, "Well, Mattie, what's all this blame foolishness your ma's being tellin' me ?" she answered him with a cool decision and energy that startled and alarmed him. She stood straight and terribly tall, he thought. She spoke with that fluent clearness of girls who know what they want, and used words he had never met with before out of a newspaper. He felt himself no match for her, and ended the discussion by saying: "That's all moonshine—you shan't go! D'ye hear me?" but he felt dismally sure that she would ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... time a dozen newspapers in the State. With all of them had Bartlett to do battle for the cause in which he had enlisted, and right valiantly did he do it. He was a fluent and most caustic writer, and was always ready, not only to write, but to fight for his party, and would with his blood sustain anything he might say or write. Like most party editors, he only saw the interest of his party in what he would write, and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... you yourself be one of those to enter your name in such a list as I speak of? You are young; you have great talents; you have a clear head; you have a natural, fluent, and unforced elocution; your ideas are just, your sentiments benevolent, open, and enlarged;—but this is too big for your modesty. Oh! this modesty, in time and place, is a charming virtue, and the grace of all other virtues. But it is sometimes the worst enemy ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with shy, queer manners—one of those beings of whom people say the hand of God is upon them. He had the same business as my father and Nastasa: he was also a private "agent" and commissioner, but as he had neither an imposing exterior nor a fluent tongue, nor much self-confidence, he could not make up his mind to act independently, and so formed a partnership with my father. His handwriting was wonderful, he had a thorough knowledge of law, and was perfectly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... courses of medical lectures. His memory was perfect and his reading embraced everything relating to his profession. A good lecturer requires not only a clear perception of his subject, but a lucid and fluent presentation of it. Dr. Delamater never wrote lectures. His memoranda were of the most meagre kind. They were frequently nothing more than a few hieroglyphics made on the margin of a newspaper drawn ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... The negotiations with the bird-man had lasted a little longer than one would have expected. But then, of course, M. Feriaud was a foreigner, and Roland's French was not fluent. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... member, in advising and directing our measures in the Northern war. As a speaker, he could not be compared with his living colleague and namesake, whose deep conceptions, nervous style, and undaunted firmness, made him truly our bulwark in debate. But Mr. Samuel Adams, although not of fluent elocution, was so rigorously logical, so clear in his views, abundant in good sense, and master always of his subject, that he commanded the most profound attention whenever he rose in an assembly, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... unable to address them either in the French or Flemish language, and was therefore obliged to ask their attention to the Bishop of Arras, who would act as his interpreter. Antony Perrenot accordingly arose, and in smooth, fluent, and well-turned commonplaces, expressed at great length the gratitude of Philip towards his father, with his firm determination to walk in the path of duty, and to obey his father's counsels and example in the future administration of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the face only seemed familiar because it was the type of a class of faces all more or less alike, all intensely respectable and not without refinement, expressing a grave reticence that did not agree with the fluent speech, and a polite reserve at odds with the inquisitive ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Whirl and bewilder and flutter and fascinate! Faith, it's so killing you are, you assassinate— Murder's the word for you, Barney McGee! Bold when they're sunny, and smooth when they're showery— Oh, but the style of you, fluent and flowery! Chesterfield's way, with a touch of the Bowery! How, would they silence you, Barney machree? Naught can your gab allay, Learned as Rabelais (You in his abbey lay Once on the spree). Here's to the smile of you, (Oh, but the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Melinda was speechless. But Uncle Joe was likely to be fluent when he got started. He cleared his throat and turned mild, suffused, half-shamed blue eyes on his shrinking niece. "Yes, your piece has come out in the paper, Melinda, and your folks are all-fired pleased with you. I told Lucy this ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... and, interesting novel from the pen of Lord Normanby. His writings evince great knowledge of the world, the work-o'-day world, as well as the beau monde; yet there is no bitterness in his satire, which is always just and happily pointed. His style, too, is easy, fluent, and polished, without being disfigured by the slightest ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... eloquence at the Dragon of Wantly. At the White Horse, meanwhile, the friends of the de Courcy interest were treated perhaps to sounder political views; though not expressed in periods so intelligibly fluent as those of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... that crowd of men went to the extraordinary length of grim smiles. Suddenly I recognized the trick of that Arab cheapjack. It may be seen at work in Poplar, my native parish to which the ships come, when a curious and innocent Chinaman joins the group about the fluent quack in ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... intellectual but simple, sometimes metaphysical and always interesting technically in its fluent and variable rhythms. A collection of his best verse up to 1919 was published under ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... in the two boys. The elder, who was about fifteen, seemed older than he was, not only from his height, but from the darkness of his complexion, and a certain proud, nay, imperious, expression upon features that, without having the soft and fluent graces of childhood, were yet regular and striking. His dark-green shooting- dress, with the belt and pouch, the cap, with its gold tassel set upon his luxuriant curls, which had the purple gloss of the raven's plume, blended perhaps something prematurely manly in his own tastes, with the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a sofa, and quite unfit to cope with a hard bad man like Farmer Tester, and a fluent plausible lawyer. They told their story all their own way, and the farmer declared that the man had tempted the pony into the allotment with corn. And the lawyer said that the constable had no right to keep the pony in the pound, that he was liable to all sorts of punishments. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... and with Dick and Henry for audience made an impassioned speech in defence of vested interests and the sacred rights of property. Never in his life had he been so fluent or so inventive, and when he wound up a noble passage on the rights of the individual, in which he alluded to Sam as a fat sharper, he felt that his case ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... joined Flavia, but neither yet had spoken, watching the cousins. They had not the fluent familiarity of intercourse possessed by the two who looked and acted very like a pair of handsome boys. Moreover, Gerard distrusted himself, fearing to say too much, too soon. He was approaching Flavia carefully and delicately ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... wall, and she seemed perfectly at home, laughing and chattering, in the best spirits imaginable, to Hareton—now a great, strong lad of eighteen—who stared at her with considerable curiosity and astonishment: comprehending precious little of the fluent succession of remarks and questions which her tongue never ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... keep life fixed and constant, and all about her she found life fluent and changing. Or perhaps life was constant, and the fluency was in her. Or perhaps the difficulty was all in this man, about whom she had never been able to take any position that he did not shortly oust her from it. Considering her resolution only last night, she too had thought, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... it is, as usual, very fluent, very picturesque and very full of colour. Here and there, however, it is really irritating. Such a sentence as 'the tavern had the defects of its quality' is an awkward Gallicism; and when Mr. Symonds, after genially comparing Jonson's ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Lawton, tall, bronzed, commanding, taciturn—but fluent when he did speak—or Kent, or Sumner, or little Jerry Carter himself. And once, a soldier stepped into the circle of firelight, his heels clicking sharply together; and Crittenden thought an uneasy movement ran around the group, and that the younger men looked furtively up as though ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... It is not easy to say what a panegyrist of that period intended by 'a complete knowledge of Greek,' or 'fluent Greek writing,' in a Prince. I suspect, however, that we ought not to understand by these phrases anything like a real familiarity with Greek literature, but rather such superficial knowledge as would enable a reader of Latin books to ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... At first his words came slowly, with some stiffness and self-consciousness. This passed; he forgot himself, thought only of his subject, and utterance became quiet, grave, and fluent. He did not speak as though he were addressing a jury. Gesture was impossible, and his voice must not carry beyond the blue room. He spoke as to himself, as giving reasons to a high intelligence for the invalidity of murder. For an infusion of sentiment and rhetoric ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... realised the companionship of both children as very dear just then. He had a great deal to say, and wanted to say it all at once, but words never came to him too easily; he had missed many an opportunity in life for the want of fluent and spontaneous address. He stammered and halted somewhat in his delivery. A new language with but a single word in it would have ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... before thee." The Caliph looked at Miriam and saw that she was slender and shapely of form and stature, the handsomest of the folk of her tide and the unique pearl of her age and her time; sweet of speech[FN19] and fluent of tongue, stable of soul and hearty of heart. Thereupon she kissed the ground between his hands and wished him permanence of glory and prosperity and surcease of evil and enmity. He admired the beauty of her figure and the sweetness of her voice and the readiness of her replies ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... probably a fitful game, and since the days of the Brontes there has not been a large family without its magazine. The weak point of all this literature is its commonplace. The child's effort is to write something as much like as possible to the tedious books that are read to him; he is apt to be fluent and foolish. If a child simple enough to imitate were also simple enough not to imitate he might write nursery magazines that ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... general literary subjects I know, but the main theme was myself. In five minutes Walt had pumped me dry. He did it in his quiet, sympathetic way, and, with the egoism of my age, I was not averse from relating to him the adventures of my soul. That Walt was a fluent talker one need but read his memoirs by Horace Traubel. Witness his tart allusion to Swinburne's criticism of himself: "Isn't he the damnedest simulacrum?" But he was a sphinx the first time I met him. I do recall that he said Poe wrote ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... flat, hard, secret as a wall, wrinkled as an old banner. He was a hale, thick-set man, dressed in breeches of corduroy, and a sleeved waistcoat down to his knees of the same material. His fur cap was on the carpet beside his pack; and he had a fluent tongue in praise of his wares, as he hung his silks over Lettice's outstretched arm, or arranged ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... fellowship" wins and told pathetic stories to those whose sentimentality made them easy victims; (5) a weak kind of egoism, seeking easy ways to pleasure and position, restless under discipline, always repentant after wrong-doing, fluent in speech but lacking the courage to face ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... time after his election, he began to take part in the debates. He was not a fluent speaker; indeed he was hesitating, and sometimes his sentences were much involved; but, as he never spoke except upon topics with which he was perfectly familiar, he was listened to with the respect and attention which are always, in the ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... days were passed he could not go down the village street without lifting his cap at least a dozen times. Bourcelles was so very friendly; no room for strangers there; a new-comer might remain a mystery, but he could not be unknown. Rogers found his halting French becoming rapidly fluent again. And every one knew so much about him—more almost than ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... fellow, thought Stephen, and a fluent talker. Already his eloquence had brought quiet to the room and caused those who were fumbling with the papers to let them fall motionless in their laps. But what a knave! Here he was deliberately playing upon ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... unfamiliar with French. I do not know, indeed, to what degree this is true of you, but reading is in any case a way to keep what you have and to acquire more. If it pleases you, we shall find a way for you to become more fluent in talking, than, as you say, you are now. If you do not like it, rely with entire confidence on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... careful manner in which the man selected his dinner, his instructions to the maitre d'hotel as to the manner the entree was to be made, and the infinite pains he took over the exact vintage he required. He spoke in French, fluent and exact, and his manner was entirely that of ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... often heard it said by the Persians and Tatars who live along the Lower Volga that there is no language to swear in like the Russian; and I must admit that they illustrated and proved their assertion when occasion offered in the most fluent and incontrovertible manner; but I am convinced, after having heard the curses of experts in all parts of the East, that for variety, ingenuity and force the profanity of the Caucasian mountaineers is unsurpassed. They are by no means ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... attitudes she made you think of some smooth and balanced mechanism which, however it turned, or went, or stopped, was still in no danger of going awry. She could stand still and sit still, and to see her do either was good for the eyes. She was not fluent in speech, but when she began you might be sure she would get to the end of what she set out to say and stop when she got to the end. The simplest things took a rhythmical quality in her mouth, and clung to the memory with ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... fluent heat began, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, The home of seeming random forms, Till, at the last, arose ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... invention, "than which," said one of the graver guides, "we can recall few more melancholy examples of speculative aberration." Naturally the subject passed into popular literature, and figured very commonly in advertised programmes. The fluent Loligo, the formidable Shark, and a younger member of his remarkable family known as S. Catulus, made a special reputation by their numerous articles, eloquent, lively, or abusive, all on the same theme, under titles ingeniously varied, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... their victory. The managers of the Colonization Society resolved, if possible, to capture that sentiment, and with it the pecuniary aid the British Abolitionists might render. It was always a tremendous beggar. They, accordingly, selected a fluent-tongued agent and sent him to England to advocate their cause. He did not hesitate to represent that the Colonization Society was the especial friend of the negro, working for his deliverance from bondage, and, in addition, that it had the support of "the wealth, the respectability, ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... certain the Hermanns knew what they wanted when they bought the whole point and perched their house on the very top of the hill, where all the winds of heaven might visit it as roughly as they pleased, but where nothing could rob the outlook of its ever-changing splendor and mystery, its fluent wonder and abiding charm. ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... around the camp fire evenings were highly interesting too, for Big Pete was a fluent talker with a wealth of stories of the Great West at his tongue's end. Indeed, the story of his family and their migration west was one that fascinated me. His father had been a trapper in the old days; he had done his share of roaming the mountains, prospecting and making his ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... went a little too far when he claimed to have found inaccuracies in Froude's transcripts from the Simancas manuscripts without knowing a word of Spanish. But he was seldom so frank as that. It was not often that he forgot his two objects of holding up Froude as the fluent, facile ignoramus, and himself as ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... important document penned at the instance of the Duke of Florence by Vasari to Buonarroti, not long before the old man's death in Rome. This epistle has so weighty a bearing upon the matter in hand that I shall here translate it. Careful study of its fluent periods will convince an unprejudiced mind that the sacristy, as we now see it, is even less representative of its maker's design than it was when Vasari wrote. The frescoes of Giovanni da Udine are gone. It ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... murmured the Princess, in an Arabic much more soft and fluent than the original gum. "So ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... dreadful anxiety in these seven or eight weeks of absence, of his sleepless nights, of his self-accusings, of his anguished affection, the senior warden could find nothing to say; but for anger and disappointment and contempt he had fluent and searing words. Such words were only the recoil from anxiety; but Sam could not know that; he only knew that he was a disgrace to his family. The information left him apparently unmoved. He did not betray—very likely he really did not recognize in himself—the moral let-down that ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... given me, I know I shall win your gratitude, which I much desire. It is a little disheartening and a justification of my pessimism that neither of these men has received anything like the same general recognition as our fluent Mr. Perchance, that interpreter of literature to the American bourgeoisie. I will slip in also a volume or two of Matthew Arnold, as a good touchstone to try them on. Now that you are becoming a professional weigher of books yourself, you ought to ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... doors. [759] The substance of the debates has consequently been preserved in a report, meagre, indeed, when compared with the reports of our time, but for that age unusually full. Every man of note in the House took part in the discussion. The bill was opposed by Finch with that fluent and sonorous rhetoric which had gained him the name of Silvertongue, and by Howe with all the sharpness both of his wit and of his temper, by Seymour with characteristic energy, and by Harley with characteristic ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who were such a singular contrast to one another, and who were evidently the important persons of the cavalcade. They swung themselves lightly from their saddles, and returned the polite greetings of the generals; the one in fluent German, the other in equally flowing words, but in a language which no one understood, and to which the only answer was a few murmured words, a smile, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... fluent fellow, and as soon as we were within hailing distance, cried out—"Ah, my fine sailors, from Ameriky, ain't ye, my beautiful sailors?" And concluded by calling upon; us to stop and heave a rope. Thinking he might have something important to communicate, the mate accordingly backed I the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... minute or two she was badly frightened. Then, watching him, she suddenly came to the conclusion that she had nothing to fear—that he was telling her something he wanted her to know. She listened, trying hard to catch some word in the flood of fluent foreign speech, and twice she thought she made out the name of Ram Das. Then he finished abruptly with almost the one word of Hindustani she knew, since it was one the old hawker had taught her. "SUMJA," ("Do you understand?") ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... abjectness; nothing that asked for pity. When Diana last caught sight of them, Marion had a contadino's child on her knee, in the corner of a third-class carriage, and Frobisher opposite—he spoke a fluent Italian—was laughing and jesting with the father. Marion, smiling, waved her hand, and ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of ideas was probably designed or conceived by him as affording an explanation also of the community of Knowledge. He emphasised the fluent instability of the sensible impression, and as we have already pointed out, sensation in itself labours also under this drawback that it contains and affords no common nexus whereby the conceptions or perceptions of one ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... under Johann Matthysz (Matthyszoon), baker of Haarlem. He had little education, but some literary faculty, and had written plays. On the 13th of January 1534 he appeared in Muenster as an apostle of Matthysz. Good-looking and fluent, he fascinated women, and won the confidence of Bernard Knipperdollinck, a revolutionary cloth merchant, who gave him his daughter in marriage. The Muenster Anabaptists took up arms on the 9th of February 1534 (see ANABAPTISTS). On the death of Matthysz ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... more mortified, when talking in a company with fluent vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all who were present; a German who sat next him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself, as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... results. There appear to be some dangers involved which it may be well to consider. Useful work may be hindered owing to, first, the time and attention required for the meetings and discussions of the various councils, and the risk that clever and fluent talkers may prolong debate and generate friction and may perhaps exercise an undue influence. Probably this will not be found a serious danger. Experience over a considerable district shows that those who are chosen by the Trade Unions to represent them are usually clear-headed ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... compliments and good wishes from Rupert Vivian." Kitty read the inscription; her lip curled, but she still kept silence. Hugo thought that her eye rested with some complacency upon the silver beads; but she did not express a tithe of the pleasure and surprise which flowed so readily from Mrs. Heron's fluent tongue. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... after, the Jerusalem Church was scattered. Then, by degrees, came elders and deacons. People fancy that there is but one rigid, unalterable type of Church organisation, when the reality is that it is fluent and flexible, and that the primitive Church never was meant to be the pattern according to which, in detail, and specifically, other Churches in different circumstances should be constituted. There are great principles which no organisation must break, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... amazement fell upon all. For myself, the wild incongruity of this foreign tongue from lips which I had heard utter such fluent and flute-like English ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... aim shows itself in the fluid nature of the term "results"; to some teachers it signifies readiness for promotion, or a piece of work that presents a satisfactory external appearance, such as good writing, neat handwork, an orderly game, fluent reading. To others it means something deeper, which they discover in some chance remark of a child's that marks the growth of the spirit, or the awakening of the interest of a child whose development is late, or the quickened power of a child to express; or evidence ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... every morning at the ford, where he remained the whole day for the purpose of extorting money from the passengers, which he regularly spent every night in the wine-shops of Badajoz. To those who gave him money he returned blessings, and to those who refused, curses; being equally skilled and fluent ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Mahbub Ali had incautiously driven home the sharp-edged stirrup. (He was not the new sort of fluent horse-dealer who wears English boots and spurs.) Kim drew his own conclusions ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... from one to the other and mixed up the two with a ready familiarity. He went much into London society, and though entirely serious and without having, so far as I know, a gleam of humor, he was a fluent and ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... reassuring conversation with Sir Sydney Shippard this evening. He is a most intelligent man, and speaks with such fluent decisiveness that all he says carries conviction. I am told that Sir Jacobus's speech was a rambling, poor affair and weak; the crowd showed a restlessness that at one time threatened to become dangerous. He was fortunately ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... plan. The summer days were all very delightful, but the presentation of the little play promised that agreeable variety without which all pleasures pall. Indeed, Lucy's expression of gratitude, fervent if not fluent, rendered Priscilla ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... forget the learned Havillan, our Book would be thought to be imperfect, so terse and fluent was his Verse, of which we shall give you two Examples, the one out of Mr. John Speed his Description of Devonshire, speaking ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... wife puts kindred before husband, her affection remaining chiefly where it was before marriage. But if the moralist desires yet more solid virtues, he need only inquire of the first Sevillan he meets, who will give at shortest notice, in choice and fluent language, a far more impressive list than ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... that there has never been in Europe a fluent script so beautiful and legible as that of our very best English writers of to-day. But their aesthetic mastery has come from loving study of the forms that conscious artistry had perfected, and through a constant practice ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... suspect his other-world muteness. William was closing his first Sunday night service. The congregation was large and in the front midst of it sat Brother A. Immediately behind him sat Brother B, a fluent and enthusiastic steward. I was in the Amen Corner as usual, because it is only from this vantage ground that a preacher's wife can keep her eye properly upon his congregation and be able to estimate the ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... innocent, Count," said Lucian, in reply to the fluent, incorrect English of the Italian, "appearances are against you. However, you can prove yourself ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... be very glad to see the noble Athenian in his own city. His fame for eloquence and prudence is already in Tyre and Babylon," spoke the stranger, never taking his steel-blue eyes from the orator's face. The accent was Oriental, but the Greek was fluent. The prince—for prince he was, whatever his nation—pressed his hand closer. Almost involuntarily Democrates's hand responded. They clasped tightly; then, as if Lycon feared a word too much, the unknown released his hold, bowed with inimitable though silent ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... weep—and laugh. Perhaps no step in the evolution of beauty went farther than our human power of making a continuous fabric; soft and mobile, showing any color and texture desired. The beauty of the human body is supreme, and when we add to it the flow of color, the ripple of fluent motion, that comes of a soft, light garment over free limbs—it is a new field of loveliness and delight. Naturally this should have filled the whole world with a new pleasure. Our garments, first under right natural selection developing perfect use, under right sex ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... (1) Fluent, affluent, influence, influenza, superfluous, fluid, influx, flush (rush of water), fluctuate; (2) confluent, mellifluous, flux, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... early life; his face genial looking, with good humor lurking in every corner of its innumerable angles. Judge Douglas once said, "I regard Lincoln as a kind, amiable and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen and an honorable opponent." As a speaker he was ready, precise, fluent and his manner before a popular assembly was just as he pleased to make it; being either superlatively ludicrous or very impressive. He employed but little gesticulation but when he desired to make a point produced a shrug of the shoulders, an elevation of the eyebrows, a ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... (1767), which in a quarter of a century went through six editions, was thought by Helvetius superior to Montesquieu, though Hume himself, as always the incarnation of kindness, recommended its suppression. At least Ferguson read enough of Montesquieu to make some fluent generalities sound plausible. He knows that the investigation of savage life will throw some light upon the origins of government. He sees the folly of generalizing easily upon the state of nature. He insists, probably after conversation ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... forgot any thing that he had read. He could repeat the whole of Paradise Lost by heart, and thought it probable that he could rewrite Sir Charles Grandison from memory. In his books, in his speeches in the House of Commons, and in private conversation—for he was an eager and fluent talker, running on often for hours at a stretch—he was never at a loss to fortify and illustrate his positions by citation after citation of dates, names, facts of all kinds, and passages quoted verbatim from his multifarious reading. The first of Macaulay's writings ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the cause of independence. Bolivar was alert, dauntless, brilliant, impetuous, vehemently patriotic, and yet often capricious, domineering, vain, ostentatious, and disdainful of moral considerations—a masterful man, fertile in intellect, fluent in speech and with pen, an inspiring leader and one born to command in state and army. Quite as earnest, equally courageous, and upholding in private life a higher standard of morals, San Martin was relatively calm, cautious, almost taciturn in manner, and slower in thought and action. He ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... remarkable occurred this evening, we may as well explain this Mr. Clinton. He was a speculator, and above all a setter on foot of rotten speculations, and a keeper on foot a little while of lame ones. No man exceeded him in the art of rose-tinting bad paper or parchment. He was sanguine and fluent. His mind had two eyes, an eagle's and a bat's; with the first he looked at the "pros," and with the second at the "cons" of ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Montmorencys.' Jeanne had her respectable friends, as Becky had the Sedleys; like Becky, she imprudently married a heavy, unscrupulous young officer; her expedients for living on nothing a year were exactly those of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley; her personal charms, her fluent tongue, her good nature, even, were those of that accomplished lady. Finally she has her Marquis of Steyne in the wealthy, luxurious Cardinal de Rohan; she robs him to a tune beyond the dreams of Becky, and, incidentally, she drags to the dust the royal head of the fairest and ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... replied with a vivacity rather Gallic than British, and finally, emerging almost with passion from his native language, burst into the only tongue which expresses anything properly, and assailed his enemy in fluent French. Thapoulos muttered comments in modern Greek. And the Turkish refugee from Smyrna quoted again and again the words of praise from Pierre Loti, which had made of him a moral wreck, a nuisance to all who came into contact with him, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... having secured such a prize as his friend Gibson, but said nothing about his long neglect of duty. Molly, who by this time knew the few strong expressions of his countenance well, was sure that something was the matter, and that he was very much disturbed. He hardly attended to Mrs. Gibson's fluent opening of conversation, for she had already determined to make a favourable impression on the father of the handsome young man who was heir to an estate, besides his own personal agreeableness; but he turned to Molly, and, addressing her, said—almost in a low voice, as ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and fluent is ever thy speech at the moment war calls for action; and when the fathers are summoned thou art there the first. But we need no words to fill our senate-house, safely as thou wingest them while the mounded walls keep off the enemy, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... who, as was natural, were very much despised by the women of the tribe. The pieces of fine sentiment and brilliant description discovered by Macpherson seemed never to have found their way into this northern district. But, told in fluent Gaelic, in the great "Ha'," the wild legends served every necessary purpose equally well. The "Ha'" in the autumn nights, as the days shortened and the frosts set in, was a genial place; and so attached was my cousin to its distinctive principle—the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... own girls were not ready writers, and their mother generally sent their messages for them. Nancy and Kitty did not yet write nearly as well as they talked, but they contrived to express something of their own individuality in their communications, which were free and fluent, though childlike and crude. ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... speech. Reuben Ring, who was a man of many solid and valuable qualities, would most probably have been exercising the military functions of his brother-in-law, at that very moment, had he been equally gifted with a fluent discourse. But his feats lay rather in doing than in speaking, and the tide of popularity had in consequence set less strongly in his favor than might have happened had the reverse been the case. The present, however, was a moment when it was necessary to overcome his natural reluctance ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... opinion, though he refused to do or say anything but grunt, as The Pilot said to me afterwards, in a rage. It is true, Williams, the storekeeper just come from "across the line," did all the talking, but no one paid much attention to his fluent fatuities except as they represented the unexpressed mind of the dour, exasperating little Scotchman, who sat silent but for an "ay" now and then, so expressive and conclusive that everyone knew what he meant, ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... behind her a foot long by six inches wide, which effectually put a stop to all further fishing operations on the part of Goliath and his merry men for that day, at any rate. It was all so quiet, and so tame and so stupid, no wonder Mistah Jones felt savage. When Captain Slocum's fluent profanity flickered around him, including vehemently all he might be supposed to have any respect for, he did not even LOOK as if he would like to talk back; he only looked sick and ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... beauty—a circumstance that has never been sufficiently noticed by either poet or painter. Willows are now beautiful objects in the landscape; they are like rich masses of arborescent silver, especially if stirred by the breeze, their light and fluent forms contrasting finely with the still and sombre ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... slightly in his broad beard, made him look older than his real age, which was forty-six. He stooped a little in the shoulders. His manners were usually gentle and grave; but a pair of large and very lively eyes and an occasional impulsive eagerness of speech, wherein he was ready and fluent at all times, showed that there was more fire and life in his character than appeared on the surface. Those who knew him well were aware that his temper was impetuous and precipitate, and on given occasions might be ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... which they condemned. He was the chief speaker for the Presbyterians at the famous Savoy Conference, summoned to advise and consult upon the Book of Common Prayer. His antagonist was Dr. Gunning, ready, fluent, and impassioned. "They spent," as Gilbert Burnet says, "several days in logical arguing, to the diversion of the town, who looked upon them as a couple of fencers, engaged in a discussion which could ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... on the miseries of famine as experienced in Ireland,—talked much of their own glorious and free country—("Looking out for a few niggers this morning?" occurred to me),—and made some severe reflections—not, I admit, altogether undeserved—on the Government of England. This man was fluent, though turgid. He seemed resolved to act the orator throughout, and certainly to me appeared in point of talent far—far a-head of Henry Clay. Bravos and hoohoos in abundance greeted Mr. Prentiss. He spoke long; but the noise of the suburbs prevented my ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... that day, Peter and myself sat alone beneath the oak. We fell into conversation; Peter was at first melancholy, but he soon became more cheerful, fluent and entertaining. I spoke but little, but I observed that sometimes what I said surprised the good Methodist. We had been silent some time. At length, lifting up my eyes to the broad and leafy canopy of the trees, I said, having nothing better to remark, "What a noble ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to himself, much after the haranguing way; he was no stranger to the rules of art, and knew well how to make his matter subservient to the subject he handled. His diction and language was easy and fluent, void of all affectation and bombast, and has a kind of undesigned negligent elegance which arrests the reader's attention. Considering the time he lived in, it might be said, that he carried the orator's prize from his contemporaries ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the air with a jarring, hasty laughter, at which his goat-like beard began to tremble in an uncomely manner. It took Foma a long time to obtain a categorical answer; the old man, contrary to his habit, was restless and irritated; his speech, usually fluent, was now interrupted; he was swearing and expectorating as he spoke, and it was with difficulty that Foma learned what the matter was. Sophya Pavlovna Medinskaya, the wealthy architect's wife, who was well known in the city for her ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... his life was in danger came to Sarpi from Caspar Schoppe, the publicist. Scioppius (so his contemporaries called him) was a man of doubtful character and unsteady principles, who, according as his interests varied, used a fluent pen and limpid Latin style for or against the Jesuit faction. History would hardly condescend to notice him but for the singular luck he had of coming at critical moments into contact with the three chief Italian thinkers of his time. We know already that a letter of this man is the one contemporary ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... became aware of an effect away between the white-stemmed trees towards the house as if the Cambridge boat-race crew was indulging in a vigorous scrimmage. Drawing nearer this resolved itself into the fluent contours of Lady Beach-Mandarin, dressed in sky-blue and with a black summer straw hat larger than ever and ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... came out of their temporary retirement, and helped Bradley's cause simply because he was young and a dissenter. They were a power, for most of them were deeply read on the tariff and on the railroad problem; in fact, were all round radicals and fluent speakers. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... to me my duty, and I will sustain it in the best way in my power.... Ah! that ancient France, how one feels her grandeur here, and what a part she is known to have had in Christianity! It is that chord which I should like to have heard vibrate in a fluent writer like you, and not eternally those paradoxes, those sophisms. But what matters it to you who date from yesterday and who boast of it," he added, almost sadly, "that in the most insignificant corners of this city centuries of history abound? Does your heart blush at ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... raised head Feels the full flower of morning shed And fluent sunrise round him rolled That laps and laves his body bold With fluctuant heaven in water's stead, And urgent through the growing gold Strikes, and sees all the spray flash red, And his soul takes the sun, and yearns For joy wherewith the sea's ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Beside him, the other officials look very small: indeed the first impression of him is that of a man of another race. While I am wondering whether the old Japanese heroes were cast in a similar mould, he signs to me to take a seat, and questions my guide in a mellow basso. There is a charm in the fluent depth of the voice pleasantly confirming the idea suggested by the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... attention to her story of the shooting of the stag, Stephen's feat when a boy of fourteen; she did not of course know as much of the history of the Archdales as did the petted young beauty to whom he had been talking before dinner, and she in the midst of her fluent account wondered in her own mind where she had heard it all, and remembered that it had been one of Katie's stories when they ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... wended his way up the hill to Mr. Anderson's with very much the aspect of a man who is going to be hanged. And his attempts at conversation with the maiden were not at all what might have been expected from the young minister whose graceful presence and fluent eloquence had been the boast of Magdalen. On her part the embarrassment was equally great. At length they were married,—a marriage based on a false idea of duty on each side. But no idea of duty, however strong or however false, could blind the eyes of this married ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... ordinary things of design and decoration have sifted down and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a cumulative force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal and leaf—the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by rote—are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness and insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly of all imaginable rooms, which is probably the parlour of a farm-house ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... but was interrupted by a sudden uproar outside, fluent swearing coming towards the house. The door opened with a bang, admitting a white-faced, big-eyed man with one leg jammed through the box he had landed on ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... who suffered from an over-fluent tongue rather than a resolute will, was determined to make himself heard. He addressed the driver again. Italian in the mouth of Italians is a deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders to preserve it ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... the lieutenant, smiling. And in the same tongue he continued, with fluent ease: "Indeed I do, Effendi. Yes, yes, I learned it in Algiers and all the way south as far as the headwaters ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Villoria in Castilla, and professed in the Dominican convent of San Pablo at Valladolid. On going to the Philippines he was sent first to the mission of Bataan, where his labors were uninterrupted and severe. He became fluent in the Tagil language, after Which he was assigned to the Chinese mission near Manila; and he composed and published several devotional treatises in both those languages. He was elected prior of Manila, but before his three years in that office were finished, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... elevated, and poetical. In fact, the language of passion is almost always pure as well as vehement, and it is no uncommon thing to hear a Scotchman, when overwhelmed by a countryman with a tone of bitter and fluent upbraiding, reply by way of taunt to his adversary, "You have ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... so it is with the Englishman from sheer lack of the habit of self-expression. Nor is the Englishman deliberately hypocritical; but his tenacity, combined with his powerlessness to express his feelings, often gives him the appearance of a hypocrite. He is inarticulate, has not the clear and fluent cynicism of expansive natures wherewith to confess exactly how he stands. It is the habit of men of all nations to want to have things both ways; the Englishman is unfortunately so unable to express himself, even to himself, that he has never realized this truth, much less ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the spoiled child do not vanish with childhood or even with adolescence. A university training does not necessarily transform petulance into ripe wisdom. Literary ability may only give fluent ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... when young greatly feared the people. He had a certain personal likeness to the despot Peisistratus; and as his own voice was sweet, and he was ready and fluent in speech, old men who had known Peisistratus were struck by his resemblance to him. He was also rich, of noble birth, and had powerful friends, so that he feared he might be banished by ostracism, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... the others use the hardware supplies, and then I tackled the chuck with the same weapons. It ain't much trouble to travel with the high-flyers after you find out their gait. I got along fine. I was feeling cool and agreeable, and pretty soon I was talking away fluent as you please, all about the ranch and the West, and telling 'em how the Indians eat grasshopper stew and snakes, and you never saw ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... not a single person, whether high or low, has there been who has not looked up to her with regard: with the result that Mr. Lien himself has, in fact, had to take a back seat (lit. withdrew 35 li). In looks, she is also so extremely beautiful, in speech so extremely quick and fluent, in ingenuity so deep and astute, that even a man could, in no way, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... creature, this Amilcare Passavente, his own paradox. Quick as a bird of prey he was, and at times as inert; dark as night, eagle-faced, flat-browed, stiff and small in the head, clean-featured, with decisive lips. A very fluent speaker, hoarse in voice, but cunning in the vibrations he could lend it, he was in action as light and fierce as a flame; at rest as massive as a block of stone, impervious to threats or prayers or tears. Women loved him easily, men followed ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... investigation of truth, are habitually employed in producing arguments such as no man of sense would ever put into a treatise intended for publication, arguments which are just good enough to be used once, when aided by fluent delivery and pointed language. The habit of discussing questions in this way necessarily reacts on the intellects of our ablest men, particularly of those who are introduced into parliament at a very early age, before their minds have expanded to full maturity. The talent for debate is developed ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... generous imagination, the grasp of a profound statesmanship, the enthusiasm of a noble nature,—these no practice could educe from the eloquence of Lumley Lord Vargrave, for he had them not; but bold wit, fluent and vigorous sentences, effective arrangement of parliamentary logic, readiness of retort, plausibility of manner, aided by a delivery peculiar for self-possession and ease, a clear and ringing ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was a man who had seen many changes, And always changed as true as any needle; His Polar Star being one which rather ranges, And not the fixed—he knew the way to wheedle: So vile he 'scaped the doom which oft avenges; And being fluent (save indeed when fee'd ill), He lied with such a fervour of intention— There was no doubt he earned his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... a member of Parliament, who was lamenting that he had failed to win the ear of the House. He was puzzled by the failure. He was a fluent speaker; he knew his subject with great thoroughness, and his character was irreproachable; and yet when he rose the House went out. He was like a dinner-bell. He couldn't understand it. Yet everybody else understood it quite well. It was because he was always "telling you," ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... upon to make the formal exposition of his political opinions. Randal Leslie, indeed, was not one of those speakers whom either modesty, fastidiousness, or conscientious desire of truth predisposes towards the labour of written composition. He had too much cleverness to be in want of fluent period or ready commonplace,—the ordinary materials of oratorical impromptu; too little taste for the Beautiful to study what graces of diction will best adorn a noble sentiment; too obtuse a conscience to care if the popular argument were purified from the dross which the careless flow ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the commander in Spanish that was more fluent than elegant or precise,—his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of the schooner General Court, of the port of Salem, in Massachusetts, on a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged permission ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... many things but suggested none, while Raffles turned this much of his statement into sufficiently fluent Italian. But when he faced me again his face ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with a sly demand, how things were looking "Cauldstaneslap ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Morris?" asked one of the listeners, as the speaker, a fluent, energetic young man, closed his recital of the atrocities he had witnessed. "Did they escape, or are they among the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... coffee for him, Chino," Rennie called. Herrera brought over a tin cup from the fire now blazing. As the Mexican took it awkwardly with his left hand, still watching Rennie glassily over the brim, the latter used fluent Spanish, only a word or two of ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... best come right over!' the fluent but kind voice said persuasively. 'It's all spilin' to be eat. An' what kin you do? There ain't no fire here to warm you, and it'll take a bit of a while before you kin get one; an' you're all tired out. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the Convent of the Ursulines, dressed in the ordinary costume of a French soldier, got from the wife of Jean Labrouk. In manner and speech though I was somewhat dull, my fellows thought, I was enough like a peasant soldier to deceive them, and my French was more fluent than their own. I was playing a desperate game; yet I liked it, for it had a fine spice of adventure apart from the great matter at stake. If I could but carry it off, I should have sufficient compensation for all my miseries, in spite ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... other rapturously on receipt of the news, but they were not fluent or expressive, either of them, and they could only underline and put in a reckless number of exclamation points. "Gee," wrote Jimsy King, "isn't it immense? Skipper, I can't tell you how I feel—but, by golly, I can show you when I ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... eye-witnesses of this scene, such as Mrs. Uniacke and Charles Langholm, who saw that it had a serious meaning, without dreaming what that meaning was, were each in hopes that no one else had seen as much as they. Sir Baldwin plunged at once into amiable and fluent conversation, and before many moments Rachel's replies were infected with an approximate assurance and ease; then Langholm turned to his juvenile companion, and put a question in the form ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... insatiable ambition, founded on a vanity which made him think himself capable of filling the highest situation; and therefore gave him daring, when to dare is frequently to achieve. He mixed a false and overstrained, but rather fluent species of bombastic composition, with the grossest flattery to the lowest classes of the people; in consideration of which, they could not but receive as genuine the praises which he always bestowed on himself. His prudent resolution to be satisfied with possessing ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... pleasant parlour, where Mrs Rose sat spinning. She was a comely, comfortable-looking woman of middle height, round-faced and rosy, with fair hair like her daughter's, but grey eyes. Isoult had forgotten her foreign origin till she heard her speak. Her English, however, was fluent and pleasant enough; and she told her visitors that she came from a town in Flanders, close to ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some; To him indiff'rent whether grief or joy. Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks, Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet With tears, that trickled down the writer's cheeks Fast as the periods from his fluent quill. Or charged with am'rous sighs of absent swains, Or nymphs responsive, equally affect His horse and him, unconscious of them all. But oh the important budget; usher'd in With such heart-shaking music, who can say What are its tidings? have our troops awak'd? ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... was scarce able to sit up; so only alluded to my guest of all this month, the Tongan, Tomas, and to Simele, partly for the jest of making him translate compliments to himself. The talking man replied with many handsome compliments to me, in the usual flood of Samoan fluent neatness; and we left them to an afternoon of singing and dancing. Must stop now, as my right hand is very bad again. I am trying ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said," replied Asako, her Japanese becoming quite fluent with the return of her light-heartedness. "Perhaps a joke is being made. It would be possible ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... The Secessionists were fluent in argument that the framers of the Constitution intended only a partnership of States, dissoluble by any at will. However difficult to prove that the original builders purposed only such a temporary edifice, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... grades of probation and preparation by which the Jesuit is trained for his arduous work, and was ordained priest in the year 1825. Being a ripe scholar, well versed in literature, ancient and modern, an able theologian, a fluent and impressive speaker, he soon took a foremost place amongst the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... renown are all comprised in thee; By them may Fortune never cease thy bounder slave to be! Munificence and knowledge sure, glory and piety, Fair fluent speech and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. Added to this moral and intellectual superiority was the "magic power of his language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic, strange and yet familiar, solemn and not too ornate, grave and yet pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which altogether carried away the minds of his hearers." His orations were most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries on them, most of which are lost. Sixty of the great productions of his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... the Younger was the adopted son of Pliny the Elder. He was a voluminous correspondent. We have nine books of his letters, relating to a large number of subjects, and presenting vivid pictures of the times in which he lived. Their diction is fluent ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... and after teaching at Newburyport for a short time, she accepted a call to fill a vacancy in the academy at Elizabeth City, N. C., where she continued an earnest and appreciated teacher for a number of years. She became a fluent French scholar while at that institution, and her leisure hours were devoted to the fine arts. Her paintings and drawings were much admired for their correctness in outline, subdued coloring, and ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... whence this danger threatened. But nixies—even when burdened by cares of state—are just nixies; those three seem to have lived to laugh before all else—to laugh and chase one another and play in the cool green element, singing all the while a fluent, cradling song whose sweetness might well ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... benignity of his face. On the end of his nose grew a tuft of long hairs, which he seemed to prize as a natural mark of royalty, or chieftainship. Indeed, there was a popular legend afloat that he was of true royal blood—a stray Bourbon, or something of the sort. His speech was singularly fluent and elegant. The Emperor was one of the celebrities that no visitor failed to see. It is said that his mind was unhinged by a sudden loss of fortune in the early days, by the treachery of a partner in trade. The sudden ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... returned to their sockets; and he had a sudden outburst of fluent German. He did not think that any of his hearers could understand that portion of his native tongue he was using; he hoped they could not; he could not help ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... whereon he rose, or rather tried to, felt for his hat, which, of course, had gone, with the idea of taking it off, and instantly addressed her in his beautiful and fluent Arabic, saying how glad he was to have this unexpected honour, and ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... the sentence must be flexible if it is to ease the thought. We can learn its elasticity, we can practice the flow of clauses, until the wooden declaration which leaves half unexpressed gives place to a fluent and accurate transcript of the mind, form fitting substance as the vase the water within it. This technique has to do with paragraphs. The critic knows how few even among our professional writers master ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... developed, was a fluent and persuasive talker, a man of the broadest worldly experiences and wit. He was younger than Calvin, but older than Wilmer Deakon, and a little fat. He had a small mustache cut above his lip, and closely shaved ruddy cheeks with a tinge of purple about his ears. Drawing out his monologue ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... distributed and the experiment can show this clearly. It is also well known from practical life that some men can easily go on dictating to a stenographer while they are affixing their signature to several hundred circular letters, or can continue their fluent lecture while they are performing experimental demonstrations. With others such a side activity continually interrupts the chief function. Then some succeed better than others in securing a certain automatism of the accessory function to such a point that its special acts ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... drubbing, as if innumerable fairy carpenters were nailing on the shingles. The invalid water-spout had a hard time of it; it was racked, shaken, and bullied, and continually choked itself with the volubility of its fluent utterances, which were instantly swallowed up in the bottomless depths of the waste-barrel. A strong, cool, earthy odor rose from the garden, and was wafted past the professor's nostrils, and into the heated house. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... for, as his good angel had prophesied, his one word of English met every requirement and he got the assignment. Since that time, I might add, he has acquired a fluent command of the English language. Francqui has always been willing to take a chance and ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... the soft air along, While fluent Greek a vowel'd undersong Kept up among the guests discoursing low At first, for scarcely was the wine at flow; But when the happy vintage touch'd their brains, Louder they talk, and louder come the strains Of powerful instruments—the gorgeous dyes, The space, the splendour of the draperies, ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... gentleman, who was employed on the medical staff of the U.S. army, I believe, as a supernumerary, or candidate for a commission as a surgeon. He was a most agreeable companion, of good natural parts, fluent in conversation, intelligent in remark, free from egotism, and well educated, I believe, at Cambridge, in England. We soon became attached to each other. He accompanied me in my rambles, and we were almost inseparable companions during my stay. He was one of those beings, in ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell |
