"Flitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... barns, clustering beneath the wings of beautiful trees—elm trees; see the flat plots of ground of the market gardens, with figures bending over baskets of roots; see the factory chimney; there are trees and gables everywhere; see the end of the terrace, the gleam of glass, the flower vase, the flitting white of the tennis players; see the long fields with the long team ploughing, see the parish church, see the embowering woods, see the squire's house, see everything and love it, for everything ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... till presently I came to the bridge, and loitered for a moment to rest and watch the boats flitting about below. There went a four, smartly manned by youngsters no older than myself. There lolled a big fellow in a canoe. There swished by a senior in a skiff, calling on the four-oar to get out of the way as he passed. There, too, stood a master in flannels, with the Oxford Blue on ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... it was no easy task to travel among the trees and across the slippery crust. As Parker scrambled along, he was tempted to cry out and appeal to the man to return. Now that his sudden panic of the flitting sled was over, the dull, cold fear of a helpless and abandoned man came upon him. But he clinched his teeth to keep back the cry that struggled to follow the man of the sled, and kept pushing on into ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... the parrot screamed, And "Pretty Poll," repeated I, The while I stole a merry glance Across the room all on the sly, Where some one plied her needle fast, Demurely by the window sitting; But I beheld upon her cheek A multitude of blushes flitting. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... had passed since Maddy's flitting. The skimped delaine was sadly rusty,—Miss Wimple very poor. The profits of the Hendrik Athenaeum and Circulating Library accrued in slow and slender pittances. A package of envelopes now and then, a few lead pencils, a box of steel pens, a slate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... turned into the Becket drive. It had grown dark now, save for the half-moon; the last chafer was booming by, and a bat flitting, a little, blind, eager bat, through the quiet trees. He got out to walk the last few hundred yards. A lovely night, silent below her stars—cool and dark, spread above field after field, wood on wood, for hundreds of miles ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... as though the snow had fallen in May. She remembered everything connected with that conversation, and later in life she could close her eyes and hear the robins calling and see the butterflies flitting among the bushes, for that morning was the turning point in ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... strength of his genius. The reader feels a lack of reality in the conclusion, the fatal encounter of the father and the lost son, an incident as old as the legend of Odysseus. But this is more than atoned for by the admirable part of Madge Wildfire, flitting like a feu follet up and down among the douce Scotch, and the dour rioters. Madge Wildfire is no repetition of Meg Merrilies, though both are unrestrained natural things, rebels against the settled life, musical voices out of the past, singing forgotten songs ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... low whisper, for silently she appeared in the doorway, silently she held forth her bound hands. The man untied the bonds and pointed into the cedars toward the corral. Swift and soundless as a flitting shadow Mescal vanished in the gloom. The Mormon stole with wary, unhurried steps back to his bed and rolled in ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... officers were seated in little groups about the camp-fires, and beside a low wall at the left of the road the fitful blaze occasionally flared up and rescued from the darkness the gold embroideries and bedizened uniforms of the Commander-in-Chief and his staff, flitting to and fro like phantoms, watching the road and listening for the tramp of horses in the mortal anxiety they were in as to the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... light once more waxing, Still on with courage high, tho' strength was well-nigh spent; Grim spectres of pursuit the wearied brain perplexing, Fear-fraught, but ever met with spirit dedolent. The landscape reeled, there came a sense of slumber, And myriad shadows rose and wanned and waned, And flitting figures, visions without number, Took shape above the land till sight was pained, And floated round me till at last the longed-for goal ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... easily. Even now there were shadowy ideas, well within my mental grasp—ideas, however, which I was in the humour to repel rather than to invite. For I knew very well whither they would lead me—back to the creation of those lighter and more fanciful figures flitting always across the canvas of a painted world. A certain facility for this sort of thing had brought me a reputation which I was already growing to hate. More than ever I was determined not to yield. Mabane's words had come to me with a subtle note of ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... impressions. But in this case they were particularly appropriate. No other words could so precisely describe my feelings. Me, a rational intelligence, succumbing to such low-level emotional stimuli! If this keeps on, the next thing I know I will be seeing little green men flitting through the trees.... Of course, this world is unnatural, which makes its effect on the nervous system more powerful, yet that does not explain the feeling of tension which I have been experiencing, the silent straining tension of an overloaded ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... stopped by a ditch. He dismounted, and found not a ditch, but an open pit; and he could not drive round it, because there was deep water on all sides. Presently he saw a light flare up like a torch, and then another, till many of them were flitting about everywhere. In consternation, the farmer cried out, "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, what's going on here tonight?" The horse sprang forward, as if somebody had stuck a pin into him, and the farmer had only just time to tumble on the sledge, when they went off at full gallop; and the ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... dark among the trees. He could see neither the house behind, nor the city before him. He did not hear the sound again, but he was troubled. His pleasant thoughts were disturbed. It was like waking from a happy dream. He turned to go back to the house and then he saw a flitting shadow. The wicked heart of Braxton Wyatt stood still. If he had not known that Henry Ware was safely in the military prison he would have taken the terrible shadow for him. He knew too well the great height, the broad shoulders, and ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... thrill, the sense of the Infinite, the awe and majesty of the universe, are no doubt permanent in the race, but the expression of these feelings in creeds and forms addressed to the understanding, or exposed to the analysis of the understanding, is as transient and flitting as the leaves of the trees. My little poem is vague enough to escape the reason, sincere enough to go to the heart, and poetic enough ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... guiding his struggling boat through the night-draped waters. The skill with which he found passage through the enshrouding gloom, guided by signs invisible to my eyes, aided only by a fellow busily casting a lead line in the bows, and chanting the depth of water, was amazing. Seemingly every flitting shadow brought its message, every faint glimmer of starlight ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... expostulated Zarah, following him over the threshold; but then arresting her steps, and watching his receding form for a moment with a smile as radiant as his own. "How could he fear a rival!" was the thought flitting through Zarah's mind as she gazed. She then turned to re-enter the hut, ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... been such robbers of their fellow-subjects, stopped above two thousand of them, and took from them their congregations of goods and wares, wearing apparel, pots, pans, and gridirons, and other furniture, wherewith they had burdened themselves like bearers at a flitting. My house was stript to a wastage, and every thing was taken away; what was too heavy to be easily transported was, after being carried some distance, left on the road. The very shoes were taken off my wife's feet, and "ye'll no be a refuse to gi'e me that," said a red-haired reprobate as ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... nearing the surface of the lake. The distance was a thousand feet; now eight hundred. Did he see shadows flitting across the ice? At five hundred feet he was sure that he did. He said nothing. So intent on landing was he that no risk seemed too great. At three hundred feet he saw them distinctly—gray streaks scooting ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... said that they expected to do wonderful stunts with their airship somewhere in the South. But our two boys were too deeply interested in their own fortunes to give more than a passing thought to the flitting of their rivals. Besides, it would not seem that there could be one chance in a thousand that they would ever run across Puss and Sandy in all that great country, lying south of the Caribbean Sea, and north ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... can't do better." She laughed a low, sweet laugh, like her voice; and her voice suggested a leisurely brook flitting among mossy stones. "You see, I've lost that first bloom of youth the wife-pickers prize so highly. I'm not unsophisticated enough to please them. And I haven't money enough to make them overlook such defects as maturity ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... In leafy bushes, Singing sweet songs to the hot summer sky. In and out twitting, Here and there flitting, Happy in life as the long days ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... novitiate in the Rue du Bac two years before; that young voice had a marvellous power of its own, and could exhort and reprove as well as soothe and console, and when the blue-robed figure was seen flitting up and down the ward smiles appeared on wan and sorrowful faces, and querulous murmurs were hushed. Even to-day the patients nodded to her languidly as she passed, observing with transitory cheerfulness ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... Your flitting recollection brings back with gushes of exultation the figure of that little, blue-eyed hoiden,—Madge,—as she came with her work to pass the long evenings with Nelly; it calls again the shy glances that you cast upon her, and your naive ignorance ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... hands of envy, treachery, and greed. What was he in this world of contending ambitions? A child sacrificing everything to the pursuit of pleasure and the gratification of vanity; a poet whose thoughts never went beyond the moment, a moth flitting from one bright gleaming object to another. He had no definite aim; he was the slave of circumstance—meaning well, doing ill. Conscience tortured him remorselessly. And to crown it all, he was penniless and exhausted with work ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... second and more explicit interview with Truesdale, before Truesdale had taken an airy and irresponsible flitting from town. He had also prosecuted various inquiries of his own in various directions, and these inquiries had resulted in his coming to look up Truesdale's frothy suggestion with more seriousness, and upon Truesdale himself with more ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... cattle from their tranquil dreams and quickening into fuller life all the inhabitants of that favored region, from the warlike woodpecker with his head of flame high up in the naked tree-top to the timid ground-squirrel flitting along the graystone fences. It glorified with splendid impartiality the apple blossoms in the orchards and the vagabond blackberry bushes blooming by the roadside; and then, with many a mile of smiling pastures in its victorious ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... by the sea in the south, The hills of olive and slopes of fern Whiten and glow in the sun's long drouth, Under the heavens that beam and burn; And all the swallows were gather'd there Flitting about in the fragrant air, And heard no sound from the larks, but flew Flashing under ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... the watch of love beside the flitting soul which parts in peace; but how much more awful was that vigil, in which the anguish of bereavement was doubly embittered by the fear of future want to those who had been reared amid all the refinements of luxury. The mother looked upon her remaining child, and felt that she ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... All the little figures flitting through those tranquil early dramas are so sharply drawn, so brightly colored still! I meet Melissa Crane sometimes nowadays, a prosperous matron with space enough on her broad back for the very largest plaid ever woven; but her present identity is hazy and unreal. I see instead, with ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... which glided by leading their troops of cygnets. The only sounds heard were the splash of the fish as they leaped out of their watery home, the various notes of birds, and the subdued hum of insects flitting in the sunshine, where here and there an opening in the foliage allowed it to penetrate into ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... the man quietly, using an oar so as to get the boat's head down stream, and farther from the bank, where the fireflies were still flitting at intervals. ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... would generally be found the nucleus of a crowd, while Clio in spectacles languished in a corner. Winifred Glamorys, however, was reputed to have a tongue that matched her eye; paralleling with whimsies and epigrams its freakish fires and witcheries, and, assuredly, flitting in her white gown through the dark balmy garden, she seemed the very spirit of moonlight, the subtle incarnation of ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... transferred. The transparent crystal water over which they rowed was clear as an aquarium, and alive with gorgeous medusae whose pink tentacles seemed to flash with the colors of the sunset; to gaze down at them was like watching a flock of sea-butterflies flitting across a background ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the sunshine, a most beautiful butterfly fluttered in the air, in the very middle of the open window. When we first saw it, it was flitting gaily and happily amongst the plants and flowers that were blooming in the balcony, but it gradually became more and more slow on the wing, and at last poised itself unusually steadily for an insect of its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... are soon taken by others,—"the place thereof shall know them no more." Few only appear again after a time, claiming once more our attention through the memoirs of their lives, and then either flitting away forever among the shades of the departed, or assuming afresh a power of life, a place in history, and an influence on the future often more powerful even than that which they exercised on the world while living in it. To call the great and good thus back from the grave ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... departure, and the whole family were assembled in the vicarage parlour—old madam fell a-crying and complaining that they were taking her son away from her—robbing her of him: she would never live to set eyes on him again—a poor old body of her years and trials would not survive another flitting. She had been fain to gratify some of his wishes; but see if they would not destroy them both, mother and son, by ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... never met a human creature; the streets were already deserted. He only saw a dark shadow flitting on before him, vanishing in the darkness now and then, and at last slipping round the corner. He followed, and found all the doors open; some helping hand had opened the wicket, the house-door, and even the closet in the wall. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... father take a step forward, and for a flitting instant he thought there would be violence. But apparently nothing was farther from ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... untouched except by official hands, and from the time of the court's establishment the files had been safe and were then in his personal keeping. But, before the clerk's communication had reached its destination, so difficult is it for stately truth to overtake flitting falsehood, the mischief had been done. Upon the most prejudiced reports utterly unfounded in fact, with a carelessness which even his personal and political friends found no ample means of explaining away, President ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... life, used to go to the Church of St. Jehan, on the Place de Greve, where, as everyone knows, the fashionable world was accustomed to meet; and while saying her paternosters to God she feasted her eyes upon all these gallants, curled, adorned, and starched, young, comely, and flitting about like true butterflies, and finished by picking out from among the lot a good gentleman, lover of the queen-mother, and a handsome Italian, with whom she was smitten because he was in the May of his age, nobly dressed, a graceful mover, brave in mien, and was all that a lover should be ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... forgive the women who ruin their lives? I doubt it. As for me, I feel that the end is not yet—that when my soul is released from its earthly prison, I shall still be doomed in some drear dim way to pursue her treacherous flitting spirit over the black chasms of a hell darker than Dante's—she in the likeness of a wandering flame—I as her haunting shadow; she, flying before me in coward fear—I, hasting after her in relentless wrath—and this ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the municipality of Chicago, one visiting at that hospitable abode might imagine himself in the country. From no part of the enclosure could you, during the leafy season, see another human habitation. A quarter of a mile down the road to the east, the electric cars for Calumet could be seen flitting by, but except at the intervals of their passing, there was seldom anything to suggest that the location was part of a great city. A quarter of a mile to the west, on the edge of a marsh—a situation well suited to such culture—lived a person engaged in the raising of African geese. As ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... signs of uneasiness were apparent; shadows of fear seemed flitting ever and anon over ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... fellow! I think of her too much. I should absolutely have diddled Hounslow, if it had not been for her confounded pretty face flitting about my stupid brain. I saw you speaking to Guardy. You managed ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the ear. Returning I opened my eyes, and there was the sun struggling slowly through the screen of white birches in Opie's wood lot, and scattering the night mists that bound down the Opal Farm with heavy strands; the air was tense with flitting wings, bird music rose, fell, and drifted with the mist, and it was only half-past four! You cannot kill time, you see, by stopping clocks—with nature day Is, beyond all dispute. In two days, ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... He heard voices talking in the grove; and he went in the direction of the voices,—stealing from shadow to shadow, until he reached a good hiding-place. Then, from behind a trunk, he caught sight of the heads,—all five of them,—flitting about, and chatting as they flitted. They were eating worms and insects which they found on the ground or among the trees. Presently the head of the aruji stopped ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... accustomed to being afraid," she said, with a wan little smile flitting across her ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... ever get along without her!" sighed the young nurse, as she watched Polly flitting about like a sprite, comforting restless little patients, hushing, with her ready tact, quarrelsome tongues, and winning every heart by her gentle, loving ways. Oh, the ward would be lonely indeed without Polly May! None realized this more than Miss Lucy, unless it were Dr. Dudley, ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... around. They are not those alone of the strictly tropical level, but, owing to the height above the sea, the floral wealth of the temperate zone is embosomed in the torrid region itself, and adds the charm of an almost magical diversity to the intrinsic splendors of the scene. See small objects flitting about from flower to flower. They are the smallest and most delicate of hummingbirds, nowhere found but in America. Watch their colors, changing with every changing motion, purple, crimson, golden, green. It is as if the very flowers had taken life, and were revelling with conscious glee in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... attraction. There is a general air of bustle, and the provincial, trundled along in his cab, his trunks over his head, looks out with a certain awe and sense of delight, noting, as he skirts the Park, the gay colours glistening among the dusty trees, the figures flitting past, the riders, the carriages, all suggesting a foreign capital. The great city never looks so brilliant or so stately as on one of these 'broiling' days. One calls up with a sort of wistfulness the great and ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... laugh of protest. "I am quite content with the mission of my sex, sir," she returned, half in jest, half in wifely humility. "I'm sure I'd much rather make shirt fronts for you than wear them myself." Then she nodded to him and went, with her stately step, up the broad staircase, her white hand flitting over the mahogany balustrade. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming, And the lamp-light, o'er him streaming, throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... later they were picking their way along the embankment at the side of the great drain, now once more filled with salt water, while when they reached the mouth, where a peculiar dank saline odour was perceptible, the two men who had been flitting before them with lanthorns like a couple of will-o'-the-wisps, went cautiously down the crumbling bank, followed by the engineer, and the mischief done was ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... ludicrous. Desperate was the conflict between pedantry and feeling which he experienced. His manner appeared more pompous and affected than ever; yet was there blended with the flush of approaching triumph as a candidate, such woe-begone shades of distress flitting occasionally across his feature, as ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... smooth as glass bumped and jogged down into the ruts and started toward Sabbath Valley, with the driver pulling again at his almost empty flask, and swaying giddily in his seat. Half a mile farther down the mountain, the car gave a gasp, like the flitting soul of a dying lion, and came with sudden grinding breaks to a dead stop in the heart ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... for the winters which we dreaded so much had no terrors for them. Sometimes when we were preening our feathers under the radiant skies near the Southern gulf, I thought of our old neighbors the jays, and fancied them in their bleak Northern home flitting about in the tops of the leafless trees, swayed by the icy winds from the upper lakes, and with perhaps but little to eat. I would not have exchanged places with them for the world. But my older comrades assured me the jays were not in need of my sympathy ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... and ferocious, he was blind as a child in Paradise. He did not notice the hawk sweeping upon the dove, the swallow darting upon the moth, nor the lizard lying in wait for the fly; or, if he did, he saw them only as he saw the shadows flitting across the sunny landscape. His soul was like a garden full of light, life, perfume, color and the music of singing birds and whispering leaves. Before his inward eye the familiar figures of his daily ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... time he had done with these reflections, for while he sat half-dazed and more than half-frozen the miles had been flitting by, and now the team knew they were not very far from home. Little by little their pace increased, and Winston was almost astonished to see another bluff black against the night ahead of him. As usual in that country, the willows and birches crawled up the sides and ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... a cheerful, hospitable appearance. The walls were whitewashed; the chairs, table, and bed were of polished oak; a good fire of logs crackled in the fireplace, and between the opening of the white window-curtains could be seen a slender silver crescent of moon gliding among the flitting clouds. The young man went at once to his bed; but notwithstanding the fatigues of the day, sleep did not come to him. Through the partition he could hear the clear, sonorous voice of Reine singing her father to sleep with one of the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mantle she wore could not disguise the exquisite symmetry of her graceful form, and the thick brown veil could not dim the luster of her flashing Assyrian eyes. She smiled back, before flitting away, at the dark, bright, sparkling face her ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... Rare wines, exotic flowers were constantly supplied in profuse display. Luxurious divans and reposeful seats were interspersed about. The most modern as well as the most famous musicians furnished exquisite music, while flitting about in neat white aprons partially concealed by their gently swishing gowns of black, the attentive justices anxiously tried to add to the pleasure and ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... is nothing but rock, rock, rock! It is as if we were passing where the foot of man had never trod before, so solemn is the stillness here in the midst of the "everlasting hills." To see one solitary bird flitting fitfully from point to point only makes the loneliness seem greater, and it is absolutely touching to find in a place like this the lovely little Ranunculus alpestris and Ranunculus glacialis forcing a way between the shingly stones and opening their delicate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Battalion took down the leather harness that had adorned its armoury walls for many a year and spent an anxious day fitting it together, Begbie Lyte and the other officers who had volunteered for the front flitting from one group of ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... Dempster had been flitting to and fro between the house and the apple tree. There was always something she had to attend to, so she explained when Douglas remonstrated, telling her that she should eat something herself, and never mind the rest. But she would not listen, as she had to look after the fire, get a plateful ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... any need of one. The flitting landscape, the regular pounding of the wheels were declaring tidings precious beyond price. A hundred times he wished the compartment empty save for himself, that he might have exulted openly. As it was, he was reduced to hugging himself surreptitiously, to staring ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... monte, which delighted her, and which she vowed she would introduce at her supper parties in the half season of November, when she should be in London for a week or two, as a bird of passage, flitting southwards. He began to teach Lesbia Spanish, a language for which she had taken a sudden fancy; and it is curious what tender accents, what hidden meanings even a grammar can take from such a teacher. Spanish came easily enough to a learner ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... in a low cane chair, fatigued by her drive, and longing aloud for tea; and Evadne was flitting about with her hat in her hand, laughing and talking more than any of us. She was wearing an art gown, very becoming to her, and suitable also for such sultry weather, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the oppressive silence. It seemed to enfold and crush him in spite of the clamor of the creek which indeed he scarcely heard. No man, he fancied, had crept through those solitudes before; but several times he felt almost sure that he saw shadowy figures flitting among the trees, and Grenfell declared that he heard the clank of cowbells. Weston was not astonished, though he knew that no cattle had ever ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... they their silver bowers leave, To come to succor us, that succor want? How oft do they with golden pinions cleave The flitting skies, like flying pursuivant, Against foul fiends to aid us militant? They for us fight, they watch and duly ward, And their bright squadrons round about us plant, And all for love and nothing for reward: Oh! why should heavenly God to man have ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Count, a smile flitting over his dark countenance. "But we trifle precious time. What have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... the night, and rack; Hear, in the woods, what an awful crack! Wildly the owls are flitting, Hark to the pillars splitting Of palaces verdant ever, The branches quiver and sever, The mighty stems are creaking, The poor roots breaking and shrieking, In wild mixt ruin down dashing, O'er one another they're crashing; Whilst 'midst the rocks ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... fruits and the changing foliage are rendered still more lovely by the warm haze which a fine day at that season presents. So, also, the earlier hues of spring have a transparency, and a thousand quivering lights, which in their turn harmonize with the light and flitting clouds and uncertain shadows which then ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... seafarers from Bristol City looked out from the prows of their vessels in the grey of the morning, and wot not rightly whether the land they saw might be Jerusalem or Madagascar, or if it were not North and South America. "And there be certaine flitting islands,'' says one, "which have been oftentimes seene, and when men approached near them they vanished.'' "It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,'' said Ulysses (thinking of what Americans call the "getting-off place''); "it may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.'' And so on, and so on; ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... Nurses chivvied about with little squeals of laughter as they bumped into each other out of the shadow world, but not losing their heads or their hands, with so much work to do. Framed in one or other of the innumerable doorways stood a Belgian nun, with a white face, staring out upon those flitting shadows. The young doctors had flung their coats off and were handling the heaviest stuff like dock labourers at trade union rates, though with more agility. I made friends with them on the other side of cases too heavy for one man to handle—with a golden-haired, blue-eyed boy ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... her forehead's dazzling white, So swift and clear her radiant eyes, Within the treasure of whose light Lay undeveloped destinies,— Of thoughts repressed such hidden store Was hinted by each flitting smile, I could but wonder and adore, Far off, in awe, I ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... of old; deg.20 I know him by his forest-dress— The peerless hunter, harper, knight, Tristram of Lyoness. deg. deg.23 What Lady is this, whose silk attire Gleams so rich in the light of the fire? 25 The ringlets on her shoulders lying In their flitting lustre vying With the clasp of burnish'd gold Which her heavy robe doth hold. Her looks are mild, her fingers slight 30 As the driven snow are white deg.; deg.31 But her cheeks are sunk and pale. Is it that the bleak sea-gale Beating from the Atlantic sea On this coast ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... resistless chariot of civilization with scythed axles mowing down ignorance and prejudice as it whirls along,—tells a whole story of change and wonder. We can almost see the shadows of the past escaping into the dim woods, or flitting over the boundless prairie, shivering at the fearful whistle, and seeking shelter from the wind of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... dark depths of the gorge, they saw black figures flitting silently past, men and horses, as they were able ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... as I came from Almira's. The late summer twilight held the stars at bay; and in the meadows the fire-flies were flitting everywhere. Suddenly in the north, directly before me, began the flashings of the aurora—piles of splendor, a celestial colonnade to the invisible palace. It is a fitting close for a day so soft and beautiful. We took a long sauntering ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... preached to very small congregations: the sorrow to leave each tree you have planted, and the evergreens whose growth you have watched, year by year. Soon, you are in all the worry of what in Scotland we call a flitting: the house and all its belongings are turned upside down. The kindness of the people comes out with tenfold strength when they know how soon you are to part. And some, to whom you had tried to do little favours, and who had somewhat disappointed you by the slight sense of them they had shown, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... retires also to rest, putting out its candle, and so exposing itself to the dangers which surround other diurnal species during the hours of darkness. I have spoken of the firefly's pastimes advisedly, for I have really never been able to detect it doing anything in the evening beyond flitting aimlessly about, like house flies in a room, hovering and revolving in company by the hour, apparently for amusement. Thus, the more closely we look at the facts, the more unsatisfactory does the explanation seem. That the firefly should have become ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... considerably perturbed that so many of her guests had arrived in her absence—an absence carefully planned by the Doctor—betook herself to the masquerade, and the Christmas party began with bandits and minstrels and jesters and all sorts of queer folk flitting gaily about the house. They paid gallant court to Roger in his great chair by the fire and presently began to present for his approval ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... each sorceress transformed herself that she might fly to her paramour. According to some of the Scotch stories, the witch, after bestriding her broomsticks must repeat the magic formula, Horse and Hattork! The flitting of these ill-omened night-birds, like nearly all the general superstitions relating to witchcraft, mingles itself and is lost in a throng of figures more august.[110] Diana, Bertha, Holda, Abundia, Befana, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... on the field saw Ward and Homans running for the plate. All eyes were on the gray, flitting shadow of a sprinter. One voice only, and that was Murray's, boomed out in the silence. When Reddy turned second base Starke reached the ball and threw for third. It was a beautiful race between ball and runner for the bag. As Reddy stretched into the air in a long slide ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... Some rude orator was still preaching death and destruction to a more than half-drunken gang, urging them on to the aid of their brethren up the levels above. All about the Silver Shield, however, was ominously still. Over on opposite heights and down in stray gulches could be seen the flitting lights of rival establishments, and away to the west, around the base of the mountain where the railway squirmed by the side of the tortuous stream, two or three locomotive-engines, on stalled trains, had been whistling long and hard for aid. ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... was flitting about, busy with a decanter of Scotch. A moment later Rosalie signified her preference for it with a slight nod. Geraldine, who sat watching indifferently the filling of Mrs. Dysart's glass, suddenly leaned back and turned her head sharply, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... was gold and purple like an autumn sunset, and long walls of brilliant clouds lay round him. A rosy light shone through the silver mist, on gleaming columns and the rainbow roof; soft, fragrant winds went whispering by, and airy little forms were flitting ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... together she went downstairs. She wanted to go into the yard, but whilst flitting through the passage she heard her husband and Rosa talking together ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... sidling away he could not determine; he did not wish to shout; he kept passing pretty girls and taking off his hat, and following Briggs about, but he never seemed to come any nearer to Briggs; Briggs always appeared in the middle distance, flitting genially from girl to girl; and presently the absurdity of his performance struck Wayne, and he sat down on the bank of the brook, too mad to think. There was a pretty girl picking strawberries near-by; he rose, took off his hat to her, and sat down again. ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... so Mithrobarzanes led the way, and I followed holding on to him, until we reached a great meadow of asphodel, where the shades of the dead, with their thin voices, came flitting round us. Working gradually on, we reached the court of Minos; he was sitting on a high throne, with the Poenae, Avengers, and Erinyes standing at the sides. From another direction was being brought a long row of persons ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... crook she must make the left side of the stream and gain an anchorage. The jetty or the millpond—that was the alternative, and it was one to put power into the arm and give staying power to the laboured breath! The moments were flying now, the banks seemed to be flitting past more quickly than ever. Darsie tried to convert the paddle into an oar, with which to steer more vigorously for the desired bank; then came a breathless second of suspense, followed by a sickening realisation ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... humanity; but it is better still, it gives a firmer nerve to purpose and adds a finer holiness to the ethical sense, to carry ever with us the unmarked, yet living tradition of the voiceless unconscious effort of unnumbered millions of souls, flitting lightly away like showers of thin leaves, yet ever augmenting the elements of perfectness in man, and exalting ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... everything else for the time but the scene which was passing directly before his eyes. There was a weird attraction in watching the flitting, fantastic figures, whose hands were yet reeking with the blood of innocent men and whose greatest delight would have been to scalp every man, woman and ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... I had something in hand towards my own possible flitting. Here is the key of my desk. Bring me my banker's ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pass through my mind as I keep watch while the men are sleeping around me. Still the night continues dark; but as I peep through the obscurity, I fancy that I see against the sky some objects flitting here and there over the rocks. I step cautiously back into the boat, rouse up the men, who seize their arms, and with the oars ready to shove off, if necessary, we wait prepared. The figures approach ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... Williams. You know they have gone to the Upper Pass and can't possibly be back for weeks—excuse me, some of my school people seem to want me," and she flitted from the room. To Eleanor, her life seemed a constant flitting at the beck of bootless duties, nagging duties that only an expert time keeper of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... before the steaming samovar to meditate in solitude and quiet, while the rays of the declining sun shone on the gilded eikon in the corner of the room, and on the chromo-covered walls. When darkness fell, and the simmering music of the samovar had gradually died away; when the flitting swallows in the room had ceased their chirp, and settled down upon the rafters overhead, we ourselves would turn in under our fur-lined ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... impression. Little dots of flame flitting about before her eyes, forming into circles of light and whizzing rapidly round and round. Then when her eyes were open, a heavy confused stupor, in which she saw, but refused to understand. Why was she lying on the grass in the middle of the day? Why did ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... swoon among them. Then the third quarter, or in other words the beginning of the second half of the book, will open with the Goblin part of the thing: the bells ringing, and innumerable spirits (the sound or vibration of them) flitting and tearing in and out of the church-steeple, and bearing all sorts of missions and commissions and reminders and reproaches, and comfortable recollections and what not, to all sorts of people and places. Some bearing scourges; and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... framework of the several stories, where the seats were so many stains of red velvet turned black. The chandelier had been let down as far as it would go, and it so filled the region of the stalls with its pendants as to suggest a flitting and to set one thinking that the public had started on a journey from which ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... vision of hell, seen by the poet Dante, those who had betrayed country, freedom, were visited by the most awful sufferings, pursued by the most vengeful fiends, and pushed to the most dire extremity of woe. Among the pale, haunted, shrieking shades flitting through that limbo of horrors, they were conspicuous in punishment. And if remorse is in reality the undying worm, the quenchless fire of that future state which recompenses for the deeds of this, surely the traitor to this good, free Government will be made to experience its unmeasured horrors. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fathomless and dim To wild uncertainty and shadows grim. There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before, And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore The journey homeward to habitual self! A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf, Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar, Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire, 280 Into the bosom of ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... There, flitting round the door, or occasionally peering through the windows of the tap-room, with pipes in their mouths and perchance a tankard in their hands, were seen the elders of the village, boatmen, and habitans, making use, or good excuse, of a rainy day for a social gathering ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... looked on the lifeless body; "but oh! there was something lying hard and heavy at her heart. I have seen mony a ane dee, baith in the field o' battle, and a fair-strae death at hame; but I wad rather see them a' ower again, as sic a fearfu' flitting as hers!" ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... middle watch to look at her sinking," he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my interesting invalid shot out an ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... how later we found ourselves on Westminster Bridge, looking back upon the long sweep of wrinkled black water that reflected lights and palaces and the flitting glow of steamboats, and by that time we had talked ourselves past our despair. We perceived that what was splendid remained splendid, that what was mysterious remained insoluble for all our pain and impatience. But it was clear to us the thing for ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Oh how fragrant they are, and how pleasant it is to sit in this sheltered copse, listening to the fine creaking of the wind amongst the branches, the most unearthly of sounds, with this gay tapestry under our feet, and the wood-pigeons flitting from tree to tree, and mixing the deep note of love with ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... "They call that a soubrette. It will be a great chance to learn French." Charlotte gave a little soft, helpless groan. She had a vision of a wicked, theatrical person, clad in pink stockings and red shoes, and speaking, with confounding volubility, an incomprehensible tongue, flitting through the sacred penetralia of that large, clean house. "That is one reason in favor of their coming here," Gertrude went on. "But we can make Eugenia speak French to us, and Felix. I mean to begin—the ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... point, so to speak, of it—you could not wonder if I took any extreme one first ... never minding all the untold portion that led up to it, made it possible and natural—it is true, 'I could not dream of that'—that I was eager to get the horrible notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus and thus to me on condition of my proving just the same to you—just as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we ascertained within these two or ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... how quick the days are flitting! I mind me of a time that's gone, When here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting, In this same place,—but not alone. A fair young face was nestled near me, A dear, dear face looked fondly up, And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me! There's no one ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... has! Late one October, after his mates and companions had long since gone South, I noticed one for several successive days in the dense part of this next-door wood, flitting noiselessly about, very grave and silent, as if doing penance for some violation of the code of honor. By many gentle, indirect approaches, I perceived that part of his tail-feathers were undeveloped. The sylvan ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... irrigate the adjacent lands. The wonderful influence which he had acquired was apparent from the fact that the very morning after he told them of his intention to move to the Kolobeng, the whole tribe was in motion for the "flitting." Livingstone had to set to work at his old business—building a house—the third which he had reared with his own hands. It was a mere hut—for a permanent house he had to wait a year. The natives, of course, had their huts to rear and their gardens to prepare; but, besides this, Livingstone ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... fly, viii. 66. Their tracts I see, and pine with pain and pang, i. 151. There be no writer who from death shall fleet, i. 128. There be rulers who have ruled with a foul tyrannic sway, i. 60. There remaineth not aught save a fluttering breath, viii. 124. There remains to him naught save a flitting breath, vii. 119. They blamed me for causing my tears to well, ix. 29. They bore him bier'd and all who followed wept, ii. 281. They find me fault with her where I default ne'er find, v. 80. They have cruelly ta'en me from him my beloved, v. 51. They're gone who when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... dear, by all means. I shall be writing; and you will be lonely, if you stay. But I must see my girls; for I caught glimpses of certain surprising phantoms flitting by the door." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of apartments, and her intimate friend, Mrs. Bagman. At the boarding-house she patronised; and every morning between the hours of twelve and three, she might be seen at the window of the drawing-room, if it rained, or flitting up and down Broadway if the sun shone, generally attended by Captain Kockney, the long {sic} Englishman, whom she took great pleasure in showing off to the public. On the present occasion she was ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... great rubber coat, which hung drying before the kitchen stove, floated with the aroma of coffee through the half-open door. When I closed an eye and peeped through the crack, I could see my mother's tall shadow, shifting, not flitting, on the whitewashed wall of the kitchen, as she passed back and forth from the stove to the wooden cradle in which my little sister Jessy lay asleep, with the head of her ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... comes with the morning. Athenians visiting the Macedonian capital would hear, and from time to time actually see, something of a religious custom, in which the habit of an earlier world might seem to survive. As they saw the lights flitting over the mountains, [58] and heard the wild, sharp cries of the women, there was presented, as a singular fact in the more prosaic actual life of a later time, an enthusiasm otherwise relegated to the wonderland of a distant past, in which a supposed primitive harmony and understanding between man ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... have a clever father, a stealthy, cunning, merciless father, soft-winged, foul-eyed, hungry-taloned, flitting noiselessly in circles, that grew ever and ever narrower, sure, and unfaltering to the final triumphant swoop! Or no—Rather a coiled and quiescent father, horrible-eyed, lying in slimy rings at the foot of the tree, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... recoil from the conclusion that this is all; and there are moments when one passionately feels that this cannot be all. On warm June mornings in green country lanes, with sweet pine-odours wafted in the breeze which sighs through the branches, and cloud-shadows flitting over far-off blue mountains, while little birds sing their love-songs, and golden-haired children weave garlands of wild roses; or when in the solemn twilight we listen to wondrous harmonies of Beethoven and Chopin that stir the heart like voices from ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... prevailed in the community. Doors and shutters were rattled at the dead of night, marks of leopard claws were scratched on door-posts. Then tracks lay on every path. Women and children in lonely places saw their flitting forms, or in the dusk were knocked down by their spring, or heard their growl in the thickets. It is difficult to decide in many of these reports whether it is a real leopard or only an Uvengwa—to native fears they are practically the same,—we were certain this time the Uvengwa ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... "Such a flitting would scarce prove our wisdom," said Christina, "to run away with thy mother like a lover in a ballad. Nay, let me first deal gently with thine uncle, and speak myself with Sir Kasimir, so that I may show him the vanity of his suit. Then will we back to Adlerstein without leaving ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bats with white heads flitting around in zigzag flights—assuredly new and strange ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... lightly and kindly, Charley was not elated over his unsought leadership. Vague suspicions were flitting through his mind, and his new responsibility was weighing heavily upon his young shoulders. As the evening wore on he still sat silent, buried in thought. The captain was reading aloud from an old newspaper he had brought along. Suddenly ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... evidently wasting away—like a candle burnt down to the socket, flitting and flaring alternately; at one time almost imbecile, at others, talking and planning as if he were in the vigour of his youth. O what a curse it must be—that love of money! I believe— I'm shocked to say so, Philip,—that that poor old ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... rose from the marsh, and in them I could see lights flitting. A month or two ago I should have feared them, thinking of Beowulf, son of Hygelac, and what befell him and his comrades from the marsh fiends, Grendel and his dam. Now I watched them, and half longed for a ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... "first appearance" of hundreds. "Upon the first of our assembling," he says, "I attended, my foolish heart throbbing with the anticipated honor of being styled 'the learned member that opened the debate,' or 'the very eloquent gentleman who has just sat down.' All day the coming scene had been flitting before my fancy, and cajoling it. My ear already caught the glorious melody of 'Hear him! hear him!' Already I was practising how to steal a sidelong glance at the tears of generous approbation bubbling in the eyes of my little auditory,—never suspecting, alas! that a modern ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Jove Who sways the world below and heaven above, Has sent me down with this severe command: What means thy lingering in the Libyan land? If glory cannot move a mind so mean, Nor future praise from flitting pleasure wean, Regard the fortunes of thy rising heir: The promised crown let young Ascanius wear, To whom the Ausonian sceptre, and the state Of Rome's imperial name, is owed by fate." DRYDEN, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... I said, discussing the music. Mother was flitting round, giving the final dust-off and brush-about after our early tea. Aunt Clara was sitting quietly at the window, pretending to read Baxter's "Saint's Rest." Jerusha and I tried to imitate the tune, and we did ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... them all out of the tent. They finished the ice-cream (which Reddy and Short and Long declared had to be eaten up because there was not ice enough to keep it out in the open), with the light fading out of the western sky and the early fireflies flitting about the edge of ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... sudden new friendship she had taken his hand and led him through the swamp, showing him all the beauty of her swamp-world—great shadowy oaks and limpid pools, lone, naked trees and sweet flowers; the whispering and flitting of wild things, and the winging of furtive birds. She had dropped the impish mischief of her way, and up from beneath it rose a wistful, visionary tenderness; a mighty half-confessed, half-concealed, striving for unknown things. He seemed to have ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois |
