"Swiftness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... searchlight leaped into play from the top deck of the ship. Its long ray shot out in a trembling cone through the darkness. It switched here and there with appalling swiftness. The crew in the little boat stared at it, holding their breaths. When that leaping ray fell on the dinghy it would be followed by a ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... home and dream; but in a moment he was again beside them, had taken their painter with a bow and an easy sentence, but neither with empressement nor heightened color, and, changing his course, was lending them a portion of the Arrow's swiftness in flight towards the Bawn. It seemed as if the old place sent its ghosts out to him this afternoon. Bringing them close upon the flat landing-rock, and hooking the painter therein, he sheered off, lifting his hat, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... intimate glimpse into the workings of his employer's mind that came to him as a positive revelation. Larssen's were no mysterious powers, but the powers that every man possessed worked at white heat and with an extraordinary swiftness and exactitude. The revelation did not sweep away the glamour; on the contrary, it increased it. Lars Larssen was a craftsman taking up the commonest tools of his craft and using them to create a work of art of ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... inconsolable. For Italy was wounded and bleeding, and the dramatic swiftness and horror of the disaster had bent her pride and almost broken it. But, though the future seemed black as a night without stars, the hope of a coming daybreak remained strong in the hearts of a few. But the struggle ahead would be cruelly hard. What ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... impurity, and all other derelictions from the excellence of God. The lines, once unparalleled, would, without a check, go further apart for all eternity; albeit, the primal deviation arose in time. The aerolite, dropping slowly at first, increases in swiftness as it multiplies the fathoms of descent: and if the abyss be really bottomless, how impossible a check or ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the way of the Alps to deliver death to their victims with a merciful swiftness, but here the rule failed. These men suffered the bitterest death that has been recorded in the history of those mountains, freighted as that history ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... miniature solar systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex activity is enough to bewilder the imagination. The mass, as a mass, may lie inert upon the table; but so far from being destitute of the element of motion it is the abode of the never-tiring energy moving the particles with a swiftness to which the speed of an express train is as nothing. It is, therefore, not the mere fact of motion that is at the root of the distinction which we draw instinctively between spirit and matter; we must go deeper than that. The solution ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... overhead upon steel pulleys, with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds. In one corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, and curiously wreathed with wire. To this my mother advanced with a decisive swiftness. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... yet seeking the trigger the first shadow was joined by a score of fellows—shades that materialised with like swiftness and silence from the surface of the earth—and before he could level the weapon Labertouche seized his wrist. For an instant he resisted, raging with disappointment; but the Englishman was cool, strong, determined; inevitably in the outcome ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... efforts to seize their tormentors, but not one could they touch; and they outdoubled them in numbers. Between every wild clutch came a peck of beak and a buffet of pinion in the face. Generally the bird would, with sharp-clapping wings, dart its whole body, with the swiftness of an arrow, against its singled mark, yet so as to glance aloft the same instant, and descend skimming; much as the thin stone, shot with horizontal cast of arm, having touched and torn the surface of the lake, ascends to skim, touch, and tear again. So mingled ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... he replied; "but you will find that the Sagoths can move with incredible swiftness, and as they are almost tireless they are doubtless much fresher than we. Then—" ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... voyage 120 miles up the river in canoes, to Silchar, the capital of the district of Cachar: the boats were such as I described at Chattuc, and though it was impossible to sit upright in them, they were paddled with great swiftness. The river at Silhet is 200 yards broad; it is muddy, and flows with a gentle current of two to three miles an hour, between banks six to twelve feet high. As we glided up its stream, villages became rarer, and eminences more frequent in the Jheels. The people are a tall, bold, athletic ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to Greensboro has resulted in the creation of a city alongside of ancient Salem which is, in every respect the compeer of Durham in the swiftness of its growth and the amount of its trade and manufactures. Winston, Durham and Reidsville have arisen almost like magic, and are expanding into such importance that Charlotte, Salisbury and Greensboro have all felt the consequences of their ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... gradually the body would become weaker, the poor tortured lungs fail to clear themselves of the secretion that poured from their outraged tissue, and the fluid would accumulate slowly—oh, so slowly!—and the agonised victim died, not with the merciful swiftness of a bullet, but by ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... seemed strange, as the men were strong, and would take up loads such as two or three Englishmen could barely lift, and carry them without difficulty up or down hill for a mile together. They also ran with exceeding swiftness and for ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... the wood-crowned hill, the overtopping trees shot forth pinnacles and walls and streamers of arrowy fire. The entire hill-side was an ocean of glowing and surging fiery billows. Favored by the gale, the conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the immense sweep of ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... third (Jupiter) had the whitest light—the fourth (Mars) was red—the sixth (Venus) was in whiteness second. The whole had one motion, but while this was revolving in one direction the seven inner circles were moving in the opposite, with various degrees of swiftness and slowness. The spindle turned on the knees of Necessity, and a Siren stood hymning upon each circle, while Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, the daughters of Necessity, sat on thrones at equal intervals, singing of past, present, and future, responsive to the music of the Sirens; Clotho from ...
— The Republic • Plato
... what hurt more, perhaps, in an unfavorable light. The war had changed standards, too. Men were being measured, especially by women, and those who failed to measure up were being eliminated with cruel swiftness, especially the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... portion of respect. Their numbers also were great, and their valour could not be despised by those who had seen them fight at Durazzo, [Footnote: For the battle of Durazzo, Oct. 1081, in which Alexius was defeated with great slaughter by Robert Guiscard, and escaped only by the swiftness of his horse, see Gibbon, ch. 56.] and elsewhere. They might also, by the permission of Supreme Providence, be, in the long run, the instruments of advantage to the most sacred empire, though they approached it with so little ceremony. He had, therefore, mingling ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... electric swiftness to Jacques' side; from his sheltering arm she made declaration: "Never! I stay here with Jacques—always." Then struggling against emotion she added with finality: "I thank ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... settled upon the horse, and had their throwers found some purchase of stump or boulder by which they could hold them, then the man's brain might have won its wonted victory over swiftness and strength. But the brains were themselves at fault which imagined that one such rope would serve any purpose ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... trivial circumstance which occurs to my recollection will be sufficient to give an idea of her manner. Her brother had just obtained the command of a frigate cruising against the English. I spoke of the manner of fitting out this frigate without diminishing its swiftness of sailing. "Yes," replied she, in the most natural tone of voice, "no more cannon are taken than are necessary for fighting." I seldom have heard her speak well of any of her absent friends without letting slip something ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... on the assassin, and he brought forth long tales, intricate, incoherent, delivered with a chattering swiftness as from an old woman. "—great job out'n Orange. Boss keep yeh hustlin' though all time. I was there three days, and then I went an' ask 'im t' lend me a dollar. 'G-g-go ter the devil,' he ses, an' ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... monarchs of that name, but, from his temper and habits, we may suppose Edward IV.) sets forth with his court to a gallant hunting-match in Sherwood Forest, in which, as is not unusual for princes in romance, he falls in with a deer of extraordinary size and swiftness, and pursues it closely, till he has outstripped his whole retinue, tired out hounds and horse, and finds himself alone under the gloom of an extensive forest, upon which night is descending. Under the apprehensions natural to a situation so uncomfortable, the king recollects ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... was hammering away on the umbrageous tree under which Flora used to sit while busy with her sketches. He cocked his head to listen as they approached, and, at first sight of them, flew up into the clear blue air, with undulating swiftness. To Flora's great disappointment, they found all the doors fastened; but Mr. Jacobs entered by a window and opened one of them. The cottage had evidently been deserted for a considerable time. Spiders had woven their tapestry in all the corners. A pane had apparently been cut out of the window ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... ancient writers must have been imported from India and Arabia. White horses were especially prized, and those mentioned with peculiar praises were of the "Sindhawo" breed, a term which may either imply the place whence they were brought, or the swiftness of their speed.[5] In battle the soldiers rode chargers[6], and a passage in the Mahawanso shows that they managed them by means of a rope passed through the nostril, which served as a bridle.[7] Cosmas Indicopleustes, who considered the number of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... gold pen, which his wife had given him, examined the nib, dipped it very slowly in the ink, and wrote with sudden swiftness. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... automatically discontinued the suction ventilation. The underground thousands, in mortal terror of the non-existent third-rail danger, groped their way painfully to the stations. With inconceivable swiftness the mephitic vapors gathered. Strong men staggered fainting into the streets. When revived they told dreadful tales of stumbling over windrows of ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... There are two kinds of winter avalanches; the one, sheets of frozen snow sliding on the surface of others. The swiftness of these, as the clavendier of the Convent of St. Bernard told me, he could compare to nothing but that of a cannon ball of equal size. The other is a rolling mass of snow, accumulating in its descent. This, grazing the bare hill-side, tears up its surface like dust, bringing away soil, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... mine was, but, then, should theirs fail them, they might dismount and follow me on foot. Notwithstanding this, I had no thought of giving in, and determined, should my horse fall, that I would try the speed of my legs. I could run as fast as most Indians, boasting as they do of their swiftness of foot. Some distance before me appeared a wood, bordering a stream: I determined to try and gain it, and dismounting, to leave my poor horse to his fate, when I would make my way along the bank, and then cross the stream, if it was sufficiently ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... glory faded, leaving a transparent lilac sky over which the darkness closed with all the swiftness of the tropics. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... the crust, as a wave, or series of waves, of compression and rarefaction, much as a sound wave is transmitted through the elastic medium of the air. Each earth particle vibrates with exceeding swiftness, but over a very short path. The swing of a particle in firm rock seldom exceeds one tenth of an inch in ordinary earthquakes, and when it reaches one half an inch and an inch, the movement becomes ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... higher for it all. One would even say that, the farther we proceed in our conquest of matter, the more our morality recedes. The most advanced of our inventions consists in bringing men down with grapeshot and explosives with the swiftness of the reaper mowing ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Trolls steal and carry off into their palace. Most never return: but here and there one escapes out again, and tells how the Trolls killed all his comrades: but tells too, of the wonders he has seen inside, of shoes of swiftness, and swords of sharpness, and caps of darkness; of charmed harps, charmed jewels, and above all of the charmed wine: and after all, the Trolls were very kind to him—see what fine clothes they have given ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... resumed. A lightning artist appeared, drawing caricatures and portraits with incredible swiftness. He even went so far as to ask for subjects from the audience, and the names of prominent men were shouted to him from the gallery. He drew portraits of the President, of Grant, of Washington, of Napoleon Bonaparte, of Bismarck, of Garibaldi, of ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Stonewall Jackson, concerning whom most men spoke as if he had never known defeat, though it is, or it should be, notorious, that he was as often beaten as successful, that more than once he had to fly with wind-like swiftness to escape personal destruction, and that on one occasion he was saved from ruin only because of an exhibition on our side of more than a usual amount of stupidity. But he had repeatedly showed some of the best qualities of a dashing general, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... from the breeze, and nourish their natures far from swift-moving things. A true lover is not one of those melancholy flies that shoot and maze over muddy stagnant pools. He must be up in the great air. He must strike all the strings of life. Swiftness is his rapture. In his wide arms he embraces the whole form of beauty. Eagle-like are his instincts; dove-like his desires. Then the fair moon is the very presence of his betrothed in heaven. So for hours rode Farina in a silver-fleeting glory; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be equally indignant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself up to a table where some hungry children were being fed, and reach his arm over their heads and take their bread from them. But you are not the least indignant if, when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of capacity, and, instead of being long-armed only, has the much greater gift of being long-headed—you think it perfectly just that he should use his intellect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the other men in the town who are of the same trade with him; or use his breadth and sweep of ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... sort of animal instinct might lead him to attempt, and thus Komel was often startled by suddenly beholding him dangling by his feet from some lofty cypress, swinging to and fro like a monkey; or to observe him turning a series of summersets, in a broad circle, with such incredible swiftness as to cause all distinctness of his form to be lost, producing a most singular and magical appearance. Then, perhaps, after forming a circle thus on the green sod he would suddenly plunge into its ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... cry of "Help, help!—the Lady Eveline is murdered!" the seeming statue, starting at once into active exertion, sped with the swiftness of a race-horse to the brink of the moat, and was about to cross it, opposite to the spot where Rose stood at the open casement, urging him to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... length higher she sent her phantom, and made him pause. Seeing this, sure now that his enemy could go no further, Curling Smoke shot up with lightning swiftness and stood above him at last, stretched to his full height, an immensely tall and straight and slender column, poised on tiptoe to spring and overleap him. His voice rang out hoarsely. "Ah, now you shall not escape me! At last your ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... the pressure on it already is enormous; soon it breaks, the great confused mass yields, and begins to move. All the men are on their guard now, holding back to see what is coming next; if the part they are standing on shows signs of breaking loose, they must leap with catlike swiftness to a safer spot. Their calling is one of daily and hourly peril; they carry their lives in ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... the ecstasy of that moment by the pound of hoofs and the crashing of brush. He could not disengage himself before a horse and rider were upon them. Nevertheless Pan recognized the intruder and leaped away from the bench with the instinctive swiftness for defense that had ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... finished statues, if without attributes, "Is this Bacchus or Apollo—Zeus or Poseidon?" There is a fact for you; noteworthy, I think! There is no personal character in true Greek art:—abstract ideas of youth and age, strength and swiftness, virtue and vice,—yes: but there is no individuality; and the negative holds down to the revived conventionalism of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you how you are to paint young women, and how old ones; though a Greek would ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... on Shorty Bill's back." He faded rapidly away, and our friend was left alone, gazing with fascinated eyes at the miraculous phenomenon which was occurring under his very nose. Suddenly and with incredible swiftness a portion of the rubbish heap, with dock leaves, nettles, old cans, and bricks adhering to it, detached itself from the main pile and hurled itself into the trench. With a peculiar sliding movement it advanced along the bottom, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... second miracle was that Reese Beaudin did not leap on him when he had fallen. He stood back a little, balancing himself in that queer fashion on the balls and toes of his feet. But no sooner was Dupont up than Reese Beaudin was in again, with the swiftness of a cat, and they could hear the blows, like solid shots, and Dupont's arms waved like tree-tops, and a second time he was off ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the return of the pigeons every afternoon to their home. Every afternoon they came sweeping across the lawn, positively in clouds, and with a swiftness and softness of winged motion, more beautiful than anything of the kind I ever knew. Had I been a musician, such as Mendelsohn, I felt that I could have improvised a music quite peculiar, from the sound they made, which should have indicated all the beauty over which their wings ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... ordinary men and women. And to distinguish them from mortal beings, the artists of the East proceed in the manner of symbolism: they make additions to the human types which are to signify the divine attributes, but do not really embody them. They add wings to represent the swiftness of the deity, wings not meant for actual flight, but only symbols of rapid motion. They represent them as victoriously overthrowing wild beasts and monsters, which stand for the powers of evil, ever bent on thwarting their action. In some of their most archaic works, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... shift, stripped as usual to the waist, set to work without an instant's delay; and the vigour and swiftness with which the blows fell upon the face of the rock would have told experienced miners that the men who struck them were working for life or death. Those unemployed, Jack took into the adjacent stalls and set them to work to clear a narrow strip of the floor next to the upper wall, then to cut a ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... much attention to the order as a tiger would to a dog whistle. He was off again in an instant, bent almost double, and bursting through the tangled bushes with amazing swiftness. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... Kofirans seeing her appear Abroad to join in the publick Festivity, would relinquish the Suspicions they had harbour'd against her. But they were too inveterate, and the Event was quite different, for had it not been for the Dexterity of her Coachman, and the Swiftness of her Horses, she had infallibly fallen a Victim to the Fury of the Populace. This hazardous Experience of their Malice, brought her to lead a Life at Kofir very different to her Inclinations, being ashamed to shew herself in any Assembly, ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... masterpiece of human poetry, inspired or uninspired, only approached by the companion-Psalm, the 144th. From whence comes that cumulative energy, by which it rushes on, even in our translation, with a force and swiftness which are indeed divine; thought following thought, image image, verse verse, before the breath of the Spirit of God, as wave leaps after wave before the gale? What is the element in that ode, which even now makes it ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... Mountain and the Cowpens, deprived Cornwallis of nearly all his light-armed troops, and he was just entering upon a game where swiftness was especially required. It was his object to intercept Morgan and defeat him before he could effect a junction with the other part of the American army. It was Greene's object to march the two parts of his army in converging directions northward across North ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... the utmost swiftness, expecting every moment to see the captain and Chris appear, but, luckily, those two, wearied by their hard work, had paused to rest before ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... address, and, placing it carefully in the desk, rose and leaned against the window, that the cool night air might fan her fevered brow. The hot blood beat heavily in her temples, and fled with arrowy swiftness through her veins. Continued mental excitement, like another Shylock, peremptorily exacted its debt, and, as she looked out on the solemn beauty of the night, instead of soothing, it seemed to mock her restlessness. Dr. Hartwell had been absent since ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... komatik runners, but even then the dogs would have to run their hardest to preserve a safe distance between them and us, and out on the smooth ice of the bays we would shoot, to skim along with exhilarating swiftness. As we proceeded south we were interested in observing signs of spring. Towards the end of our journey we encountered much soft snow and ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... craft had a splendid race to the mouth of that brook which, because of its swiftness, still remained unshackled by the frost. The shallow stream of water poured down over the rocks into the lake, but there was only a small open place at the point where the brook emptied into its waters into the larger and ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... thoughts wandered like that, and I ate and, from my pocket flask, washed my dry eating down, the weather changed with a swiftness familiar enough among the Scottish mountains. The heavens passed behind a veil of drifting clouds, through which the sun flared in red, angry bursts. The elements had declared hostilities, and when I looked ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... out of the vapor and grew with astonishing swiftness into dim tiers of slanted sailcloth swaying above a strip of hull that moved amid a broad white smear of foam. It was a brig under fore-course and topsails, and as the girl watched the vessel it sank ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... Go 'way an' lemme 'lone!" she screeched, and the next minute she dropped her empty basket and sped up the street with a swiftness that only fear could have ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... "six years since I bought a horse in Hungary remarkable for its swiftness. The thirty-two that we shall use to-night are its progeny; they are all entirely black, with the exception of a ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the balance in favour of the French. Suvaroff, aware of his danger, collected all the troops within reach with the utmost despatch, and pushed eastwards to meet Macdonald on the Trebbia. Moreau descended from the Apennines in the same direction; but he had underrated the swiftness of the Russian general; and, before he had advanced over half the distance, Macdonald was attacked by Suvaroff on the Trebbia, and overthrown in three days of the most desperate fighting that had been seen in the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... head, to recognise his assailant. Nor, having lost his knife, and believing doubtless that Adrian was only the first of a troop of rescuers, did he seem inclined to continue the combat, but, calling to his companion to follow him, he began to run after the woman with a swiftness almost incredible in a man of his build and weight, turning presently into the brushwood, where he and his two fellow ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the pigmy horde following with incredible swiftness, Stoddard wheeled and fired time and again—and now his shots were answered by the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... rippling torch upon the breeze Of his own glorious swiftness: in the grass He bruised no feathery stalk, and through the trees I ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... taken this picture from Ovid's description, and that he had, with great art, represented, by the very circumstance to which I objected, the swiftness of the motion with which the chariot was driven forward. The current of the morning wind blowing from the east was represented by the direction of the hair of Lucifer, and of the flame of his torch; while the rapidity of the motion of the chariot was such, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Universe, its twigs are the Ether, spread over the World-all; the eagle is the Infinite glance, penetrating heaven and earth; and the squirrel the medium by which the deeds and condition of the Gods are brought to men. The stags, whose swiftness betokens the restless, rapid passions of man, are the ailments of the soul; and the green leaves which they devour, are sound, healthy thoughts.' According to Hauch (Die Nordische Mythenlehre, Leipsic, 1847, p. 28), these swift stags are the four winds of heaven which scatter the leaves. The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... danger of her adventure was past, Melissy was aware too of a chill dread lurking at her heart. She was no longer buoyed up by the swiftness of action which had called for her utmost nerve. There was nothing she could do now but wait, and waiting was of all things the one most foreign to her impulsive temperament. She acknowledged too some fear of this quiet, soft-spoken frontiersman. All Arizona knew ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... running across the intervening distance with swiftness incredible in one of his bulk at this gravity. His blizzer was out. It was one of the very latest models of blizzers. Very destructive. Mr. Wordsley had always been afraid to ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... though you will be but five minutes walk from me, your face will not be at my breakfast table to help me begin each day with a courage it has always inspired. So I beg that you two will not delay your marriage; give no thought to me. You are young but once, and youth has wings of wonderful swiftness. Margaret and Christopher shall come to me; but although they are my own flesh and blood, they will never become to me what you two have been, and always ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... the baboon are the most skilled of all animals in making their flight. They use every method known to man, and because of their swiftness of action excel man in certain ways. Like man, in the face of danger, they show great bravery and never lose their presence of mind. The ape is fast disappearing before man, but against other animals and Nature he can well protect ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... both in drawing and colour. It was in the wall of the next room that the famous Bocca di Leone was placed, into which were dropped those anonymous charges against Venetian citizens which the Council of Ten investigated, and if true, or, very likely, if not true, punished with such swiftness and thoroughness. How a state that offered such easy temptations to anti-social baseness and treachery could expect to prosper one cannot imagine. It suggests that the Venetian knowledge of human nature was defective ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... by the banks of some other stream, a hundred miles off, on the morrow. The presence of his manada offered some guarantee, that he might still be near the ground where the vaquero had marked him. Once found, I trusted to the swiftness of my horse, and my own skill in the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... us, but I did not get a glimpse of the deer. Soon we reached the bottom of the canyon, and struck into another trail. The air was full of the low roar of tumbling water. This mountain-torrent was about twenty feet wide, but its swiftness and foam made it impossible to tell its depth. The trail led up-stream, and turned so constantly that half the time Bill, the leader, was not in sight. Once the sharp crack of his rifle halted the train. I heard crashings in the thicket. Dick yelled for me to look up the ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... with the swiftness of light. He could not rush the group: the odds were too great, and besides, Judd's gun was already out. Nor could he dive at them with the Star Devil itself, or ray them from above: that would mean Friday's death too. It would have to be something else—and in a moment ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... arrogance of the performer who, having given only a fraction of his time to the acquirement of skill, reckons that he can beat the professional who has given the whole of his time. Lucas's glances at chauffeurs who hindered his swiftness were masterpieces of high disdain, and he would accelerate, after ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... compelled in the main to condemn;—as he was in the case of Senaca. He had the faculty of hitting off in a phrase the whole effect of a man's style; as when he speaks of the "milky richness of Livy," and the "immortal swiftness ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... tremendous Lover! Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see! I tempted all His servitors, but to find My own betrayal in their constancy, In faith to Him their fickleness to me, Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit. To all swift things for swiftness did I sue; Clung to the whistling mane of every wind. But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, The long savannahs of the blue; Or whether, Thunder-driven, They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven, ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... deep, and the horses' hoofs were soundless as we plunged through the crisp and tingling air. The wind raced past me as I sat perched on my rickety seat, swaying wildly with every lurch of the coach. With every gust I seemed to drink in fresh strength and felt the very motion and swiftness enter into my blood. Across the white waste we tore, up a stiff ascent and down across the moorland again—still westward; and now across the stretches of the moor I could catch the strong scent of the sea upon the wind. Along the level we ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... brilliancy baffles all competition. Now it glows with a fiery hue, and again it is changed to the deepest velvety black. The upper parts of its delicate body are of resplendent changing green; and it throws itself through the air with a swiftness and vivacity hardly conceivable. It moves from one flower to another like a gleam of light, upwards, downwards, to the right, and ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Personal influence in appointments can be annulled only by free and open competition. By that bridge we can return to the practice of Washington and to the intention of the Constitution. That is the shoe of swiftness and the magic sword by which the President can pierce and outrun the protean enemy of sophistry and tradition which prevents him from asserting his power. If you say that success in a competitive literary ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... you, my children, sound and rich:" for wealth sways all. It is not with us, as amongst those Lacedaemonian senators of Lycurgus in Plutarch, "He preferred that deserved best, was most virtuous and worthy of the place, [2231]not swiftness, or strength, or wealth, or friends carried it in those days:" but inter optimos optimus, inter temperantes temperantissimus, the most temperate and best. We have no aristocracies but in contemplation, all ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... With the swiftness of a deer the Indian maiden sprang through the reeds, and in a moment had disappeared. Rosa had no choice but to follow. Whilst making her way through the innumerable stems that barred her passage, she heard a loud cry, but it was not Canondah's voice. A noise like that of a heavy body falling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... clutching him round the neck, and choking every attempt at a cry. Then falling himself in all his huge height, breadth, and weight, upon Wrotham's prone body he crushed it under and held it beneath him, while, with appalling swiftness and vehemence, he plunged a drawn claspknife deep in his victim's throat, hacking the flesh from left to right, from right to left with reckless ferocity, till the blood spurted about him in horrid crimson jets, and gushed in a dark pool on ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... balloon some thirty-five feet diameter (that is, of about 23,000 cubic feet capacity), to be made of linen lined with paper and this machine, launched on a favourable day in the following spring, rose with great swiftness to fully a thousand feet, and travelled nearly a mile ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... spirit is on fire. [The horizontal lines across the leg signify magic power of traversing space. The short lines below the foot denote flames, i.e., magic influence obtained by swiftness ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... fair; booths are erected upon the ice, with fires in them. The country people skate to market, with milk and vegetables; and every kind of sport is seen on the frozen canals. Sledges fly from one street to another, gaily decorated, and numberless skaters glide about with astonishing swiftness and dexterity. No people skate so well ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... precaution, the noise alarmed the speakers; down slid the young lady's casement, and the shutters were barred in an instant. The dash of a pair or oars in the water announced the retreat of the male person of the dialogue. Indeed, I saw his boat, which he rowed with great swiftness and dexterity, fly across the lake like a twelve-oared barge. Next morning I examined some of my domestics, as if by accident. and I found the gamekeeper, when making his rounds, had twice seen that boat beneath the house, with a single person, and had heard the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... over the great changes introduced into various animals by artificial or accidental cultivation, as in horses, which we have exercised for the different purposes of strength or swiftness, in carrying burthens or in running races; or in dogs, which have been cultivated for strength and courage, as the bull-dog; or for acuteness of his sense or smell, as the hound and spaniel; or for the swiftness of his foot, as the greyhound; or for his swimming ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Pharo sprang with ox-like levity from the floor, and amid the giddy swiftness of the music I was occasionally conscious of hearing his mailed heels flow together with a clash that made the rafters ring. He descended at last ominously, but when the reverberations died away I looked, and saw ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... by such a day-mare as this? But the moment must come when Jacob would move his right hand to draw off the lid of the tin box, and then David would sweep the guineas into the hole with the utmost address and swiftness, and immediately seat himself upon them. Ah, no! It's of no use to have foresight when you are dealing with an idiot: he is not to be calculated upon. Jacob's right hand was given to vague clutching and throwing; it suddenly clutched the ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... historic and the imaginary parts of the idyl. According to this, Pheidippides himself tells his first adventure, to the assembled rulers of Athens: depicting, in vivid words, the emotions which winged his course, and bore him onwards over mountains and through valleys, with the smooth swiftness of running fire; and he also relates that Pan promised him a personal reward for his "toil," which was to consist in release from it. This release he interprets as freedom to return home, and to marry the girl he loves. It meant a termination ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... distance! Or he would hear that there was to be a hunt somewhere, that a rich landowner had arranged a meet in some outlying part of his land: he would be off there at once, and would canter in the distance, on the horizon, astounding all spectators by the swiftness and beauty of his horse, and not letting any one come close to him. Once some hunting landowner even gave chase to him with all his suite; he saw Tchertop-hanov was getting away, and he began shouting after him with all his might, as he galloped at full speed: 'Hey, you! ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... post, waiting some time in expectation of the governor's appearance, who narrowly escaped the fate intended for him, by its falling on another person accidentally passing that way. On being pursued, he fled with incredible swiftness to the Table Mountain at the back of the town, whence this single miscreant, still animated by the effect of the opium, for two days resisted and defied every force that was sent against him. The alarm and terror into which the town was thrown were inconceivable; for two days none ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... of war will suffice to desolate many homes, to destroy fertile fields, and to burn down prosperous villages, but it is long before that waste can be repaired, confidence restored, and prosperity and goodwill re-established. The devil will carry fire and sword through the world with the swiftness of a whirlwind, but Jesus Christ patiently waits and weeps over an irresponsive people, as he says, "Ye will not come to Me that ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... or left; heaven everywhere, liberty everywhere, and life everywhere. The horses, kept in check by a vigorous hand, went quietly as far as the middle of the faubourg. There they began to trot. Little by little, whether they warmed over it, or whether they were urged, they gained in swiftness, and once past Bercy, the carriage seemed to fly, so great was the ardor of the coursers. These horses ran thus as far as Villeneuve St. George's, where relays were waiting. Then four instead of two whirled the carriage ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... life did not seem worth a minute's reprieve, were pulled down; all were bunched with Morgan in the middle of the mob. Gray began again with his denunciation, Morgan hearing him only as the wind, for his attention was fixed on the activities of Dell Hutton, working with insidious swiftness and apparent success ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew, Nor for the limbs that, fallen low And seeming faint and slow, Shall alter and renew Their shape and hue Like birches white before the moon Or a young apple-tree In spring or the round sea And shall pursue More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips Among ... and find more winds than ever blew The straining ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... not been mistaken; they were going faster, faster even than their efforts with the poles would account for. With the narrowing of the bed of the stream, the current was taking on a new swiftness. Shann said ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... long, and immediately at its foot is Gray Canyon, thirty-six miles long. Then comes Gunnison Valley, and it was there that Powell was to return to us. The first indication of descending waters was a slight swiftness, the river having narrowed up to its canyon-character. At one place it doubled back on itself, forming in the bend a splendid amphitheatre which was called after Sumner of the former party. This beautiful wall, about one thousand ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the Institute he found every opportunity of increasing his professional knowledge. He was an untiring reader, and he read to learn. The wars of Napoleon were his constant study. He was an enthusiastic admirer of his genius; the swiftness, the daring, and the energy of his movements appealed to his every instinct. Unfortunately, both for the Institute and his popularity, it was not his business to lecture on military history. We can well imagine him, as a teacher of the art of war, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... dressed in dark-blue serge, and had peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair. I heard the unseen dogs growl furiously, and forthwith he ducked back,—coming into contact with the hand I put out to fend him off from myself. He turned with animal swiftness. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... in strength, but not in swiftness and daring, and above all they had settled how to attack him. The moment he reared his axe, they flew at him like cats, and both together. If he struck a full blow with his weapon he would most likely kill one, but the other would ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... a young Man on the Back of it, advancing upon full Stretch after the Souls of about an hundred Beagles that were hunting down the Ghost of an Hare, which ran away before them with an unspeakable Swiftness. As the Man on the milk-white Steed came by him, he looked upon him very attentively, and found him to be the young Prince Nicharagua, who died about Half a Year before, and, by reason of his great Vertues, was at that time lamented ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... not be fickle. She had a loyalty in her that was Sicilian in its fervor, a sense of gratitude such as the contadini have, although by many it is denied to them; a quick and lively temper, but a disposition that responded to joy, to brightness, to gayety, to sunlight, with a swiftness, almost a ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... we had done we called all our men together by us, and about half an hour and fourteen minutes after three in the afternoon, to our great surprise, we all of us saw two men come running towards us with such swiftness that no living man could run half so fast as they did run, when all of us heard Captain Barnaby say, 'Lord bless me, the foremost is old Booty, my next-door neighbour;' but he said he did not know the other that run behind: he was in black clothes, and the foremost was in grey. Then Captain ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... With unthinking swiftness, he threw his arm over her and drew her tight to him. His lips found hers in a long kiss—clung in ecstasy ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... exhausted, though the idea of her happy flight, by inspiring her with a strength which surprised even herself, for a long time had kept her insensible to fatigue. While her friends pressed on with a speed which allowed no more conversation than occasional inquiries of how she bore the journey, the swiftness of the motion and the rapidity of the events which had brought her from the most frightful of situations into one the dearest to her secret and hardly-breathed wishes, so bewildered her faculties, that hse almost feared she was only enjoying one of those dreams which since her captivity ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... and encircling this, in order, were the Heavens of Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jove, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, and the Crystalline or first moving Heaven. These nine concentric Heavens revolved continually around the Earth, and in proportion to their distance from it was time greater swiftness of each. Encircling all was the Empyrean, increate, incorporeal, motionless, unbounded in time or space, the proper seat of God, the home of the Angels, the abode of ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... October. As if pointedly to irritate Henry, he had placed himself under the conduct of the Duke of Albany.[624] He was followed two days later by his fair niece, Catherine de Medici; and the preparations for the marriage were commenced with the utmost swiftness and secrecy. The conditions of the contract were not allowed to transpire, but they were concluded in three days; and on this 25th of October the pope bestowed his precious present on the Duke of Orleans, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... gave no further grace. His fingers tightened on the man's throat and the desperate face went black. Then, keeping the fellow ever before him, he suddenly flung him into the air by the waist, shifting holds with tigerish swiftness, and caught him by the ankles as he came down. He whirled the unfortunate wretch once, and three men went down under the terrible blow; the rest scattered with furious howls, bespattered with the blood of their comrade; but one more sight of the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... was thinking of your strength rather than your swiftness. Come this way. Father has run ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... swiftness fleet, The road became a village street; And this, before men were aware, A city's crowded thoroughfare; And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... her thoughts with his lightest touch into newer channels. The talk had grown merrier now, and he soon discovered that she possessed a sharpened wit as well as a ready tongue. From subject to subject she passed with amazing swiftness, bearing down upon her favourite themes with the delightful audacity of the talker who is born, not made. She spoke of her own youth, of historic flirtations in the early twenties, of great beaux she had known, and of famous recipes that had been handed down for generations. Everywhere he felt her ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... relied on the superior seaworthiness of his vessels, those of Tyre and Sidon in particular, he immediately accepted battle. At the outset the Asiatics succeeded in sinking one of the Carthaginian vessels; but, when they came to grapple, Roman valour prevailed, and it was owing solely to the swiftness of their rowing and sailing that the enemy lost no more than 23 ships. During the pursuit the Roman fleet was joined by 25 ships from Rhodes, and the superiority of the Romans in those waters was now doubly assured. The enemy's fleet thenceforth kept the shelter of the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... respect man stands, I conceive, distinguished from, and superior to, all other earthly creatures; it is this privilege which, while he is inferior in strength to some, in swiftness to others; without horns or claws or tusks to attack them, or even to defend himself against them, hath made him master of them all. Indeed, in other views, however vain men may be of their abilities, they are greatly inferior ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... gun, but he had heard tales of the man's ability with the weapon. There lingered in his mind at this minute—as it had dwelt during all the days he had known Lawler—the knowledge that Lawler's father had been a gunman of wide reputation, and that he had taught his son the precision and swiftness that had made him famous ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... comfort her; but when at last they retired to rest, Ajut went down to the beach; where, finding a fishing-boat, she entered it without hesitation, and telling those who wondered at her rashness, that she was going in search of Anningait, rowed away with great swiftness, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of that class which were approaching him. Some of his guns were so mounted that their muzzles could be greatly depressed, and aimed at an object in the water not far from the ship. But these were not discharged, and, indeed, the crabs, which were new ones of unusual swiftness, were alongside the Adamant in an incredibly short time, and out of the range of ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... not a bit like the prelude of high tragedy; yet that was on the way, and fell at once. Holgate's voice arrested the Prince, and he started, as if now for the first time aware of the presence of the mutineers. Till that moment he had merely been bent on rating a servant. With the swiftness of lightning he drew and levelled a revolver; I saw Holgate's fat bull neck and body lean to one side and drop awkwardly, and then an exclamation sprang up on my left, where Gray and another were holding Barraclough captive. The bullet had gone over Holgate's ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... honeysuckle. Here, when the weather was fine, and our labour soon finished, we usually sat together to enjoy an extensive landscape in the calm of the evening. On an afternoon about the beginning of autumn, when I had drawn out my family to the seat, dogs and horsemen swept past us with great swiftness. After them a young gentleman, of a more genteel appearance than the rest, came forward, and, instead of pursuing the chase, stopped short, and approached us with a careless, superior air. He let us know that his name was Thornhill, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... self-transporting commissariat in its flocks and herds. Constant practice in riding, scouting and the use of arms, physical endurance tested by centuries of exertion and hardship, make every nomad a soldier. Cavalry and camel corps add to the swiftness and vigor of their onslaught, make their military strategy that of sudden attack and swifter retreat, to be met only by wariness and extreme mobility. The ancient Scythians of the lower Danubian steppes ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... dwindled to scrubby thickets, covering great areas of comparative level. Long reaches of grassland opened before them, waving yellow in the autumn sun. They crossed other rivers of various degrees of depth and swiftness, swimming some and fording others. Hazel drew upon her knowledge of British Columbia geography, and decided that the big river where Bill hid his canoe must be the Fraser where it debouched from the mountains. And in that ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... places herself in opposition to a man, for whom all things are ordered in the society that he governs; her only chance of striking a telling blow being through his passions. If he were in love with her, then there might be some hope of making him wince. And Hadria, with a fierce swiftness had accepted the condition, with a mixture of confidence in her own power of rousing emotion, if she willed, and of scorn for the creature who could be appealed to through his passions, but not through his sense of justice. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... With the swiftness of a small tornado, Charlotte descended the long, straight stairway only to sink in a heap on the broad step at the bottom. "Oh, dear!" she said, her chin in her ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... race with a cloud. Vapors are unreliable things at best, and are prone to roll up the sky with fateful swiftness. As Hubert and Theodora came under the first of the trees, the cloud came above them, and the moon vanished. Theodora was as plucky as a girl could be; but there was something rather fearful to her in this dark and lonely road, where she and Hubert were the only moving objects, ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... caporal that lay on the table with the oilskin cover. He struck a match and was about to apply it to the bowl, when one of his sudden ideas caused him to blow out the match and lay down the pipe. Then with his old lightning swiftness he strode to the door and flung ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... for the voices of animals—O for the swiftness and balance of fishes! O for the dropping of raindrops in a song! O for the sunshine and motion ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... before he arrive. If he come on them there, and they kill him! Oh, let me go quickly." At the thought of him, and the danger he might meet, all her fears of the men "rouge" returned upon her, and she was gone, passing with incredible swiftness over the rough way, to try to intercept him before ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... necessitated by the orders of the Chief of the Army. They were more severe, more crushing, than any that have ever been adopted even by a punitive expedition under British colours. They were successful. For that they were intended. Swiftness and thoroughness were of the essence of ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... him for exactly ten seconds, and then, clean and straight, with lightning swiftness, his one hand shot forward. It was a single hard blow, delivered full on the jaw with a force that nearly carried Nick with it, and it sent the offender staggering backwards on his heels in bellowing astonishment. The opposite wall saved ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... that there are stages in his life when his existence is more uncertain and much more weak than that of the other animals, or even of some inanimate things. Man is unwilling to admit that he possesses not the strength of the lion, nor the swiftness of the stag, nor the durability of an oak, nor the solidity of marble or metal. He believes himself the greatest favorite, the most sublime, the most noble; he believes himself superior to all other animals because he possesses the faculties of thinking, judging, and reasoning. But his thoughts ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... almost instantaneously to distances which were limited, with regard to the former, by restrictions imposed by the globe. To the speaker had been assigned the task of introducing to their notice electric energy in a different aspect. Although still giving evidence of swiftness and precision, the effects he should dwell upon were no longer such as could be perceived only through the most delicate instruments human ingenuity could contrive, but were capable of rivaling the steam engine, compressed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... dramatic swiftness, and in the negative. Anna approached her mistress, still with that curious look of beaming happiness in her round, fat, plain face, and after she had put down the coffee-jug she held out her work-worn ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... hell-beautiful than when he tore around his corral in a tantrum, as lithe and graceful as a black panther. His mane stood on end; his eyes and nostrils were of a colour; the muscles looked to be bursting through the silken gloom of his coat. His swiftness was something incredible. He caught and most horribly killed Jim Baxter's hound before the latter could get out of the corral—and a bear-hound is a pretty agile animal. We had to tie Jim, or he'd made an end of Geronimo. He left the ranch ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... his two-button cutaway, his well-fitting trousers, his scarf with a pin in it, had been too much for these young fellows in their long 'stoga boots and flannel shirts. They looked at him askance, and despatched their meal with more than their wonted swiftness, and were off again into the woods without any demonstrations ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... came upon me again, buried me at once twenty or thirty feet deep in its own body; and I could feel myself carried with a mighty force and swiftness towards the shore, a very great way; but I held my breath, and assisted myself to swim still forward with all my might. I was ready to burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt myself rising up, so to my immediate relief ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the whip and with irresistible strength drew it from the Queen's hand. But she drew from her bosom a sharp dagger and with the swiftness of lightning aimed a blow at Inga's heart. He merely stood still and smiled, for the blade rebounded and fell clattering ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... architect will become increasingly the intelligent student of novelty. The steam engine, the coal yard, and the tail chimney, and indeed all chimneys, will vanish quietly from our urban landscape. The speeding up and cheapening of travel, and the increase in its swiftness and comfort will go on steadily—widening experience. A more systematic and understanding social science will be estimating the probable growth and movement of population, and planning town and country on lines that would seem to-day almost inconceivably wise and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... preparatory to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of being killed while he is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown away to gain ten minutes' time. He may either deploy with desperate swiftness, or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break, according to the discipline under which he has lain ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... think we may probably enough conceive in general, that the Eye may be Variously affected, not only by the Entire Beams of Light that fall upon it as they are such, but by the Order, and by the Degree of Swiftness, and in a word by the Manner according to which the Particles that compose each Particular Beam arrive at the Sensory, so that whatever be the Figure of the Little Corpuscles, of which the Beams of Light consist, not only the Celerity or Slowness of their Revolution ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... a glory and a grace, Refashioning the sin-disfashioned face; A nobler bruit than hollow-sounded fame, A new-lit lustre on a tarnished name, One virtue pent within an evil place, Strength for the fight, and swiftness for the race, A stinging salve, a life-requickening flame. A salve so searching we may scarcely live, A flame so fierce it seems that we must die, An actual cautery thrust into the heart: Nevertheless, men die not of such smart; And shame gives ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... that went from his feet to his head; he could feel the roots of his hair tingle. The newcomer went quickly, with catlike tread, toward the girl. Fascinated he stood, wanting to speak, to laugh, yet powerless from the very swiftness ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... slow; that the Arabs trail along on labouring camels while the Europeans flash by on motors or mono-planes. But there is another and stranger sense in which we do seem to them slow, and they do seem to themselves to have a secret of swiftness. There is a sense in which we here touch the limits of a land of lightning; across which, as in a dream, the motor-car can be seen ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... swiftness and endurance, he would not have been able to travel the distance until the night was well advanced; for, though there were numerous places where he broke into his fleet lope, and more than once rose to a higher pace, he was compelled to make detours that greatly ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... slip by with incredible swiftness. The tragedy of Ermsted's death had ceased to be the talk of the station. Tessa had gone back to her mother who still remained a semi-invalid in the Ralstons' hospitable care. Netta's plans seemed to be of the vaguest; but Home leave ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... done make a dab at his ink-pot, enter up a cheque as credit, cross it out and make it a debit, then reverse the entry—all before Watson could interfere. The Bonehead was not slow; in fact, he was too rapid—but his swiftness was a serious detriment since the direction taken was usually wrong. Porter acted on impulses, and they seemed destined forever to be senseless. A swift inspiration came to him, he made a slash with his heavily inked ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... stream is the Tigris—a corrupted form of 'Idiklat.' It is only 1146 miles in length, and is marked, as the native name indicates, by the 'swiftness' of its flow. Starting, like the Euphrates, in the rugged regions of Armenia, it continues its course through mountain clefts for a longer period, and joined at frequent intervals by tributaries, both before it merges into the plain and after doing so, the volume of its ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow |
