"Elusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... increasing at a much greater rate than the European. Hence you have an inevitable conflict. Race lies at the root of the South African trouble and the racial reconciliation that Rhodes and Botha set their hopes upon remains an elusive quantity. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... a firm, elastic wall, against which he threw the balls of his wit, while they bounded steadily back into his hand. Almost the first thing he said was quoted from Horatio Greenough, whom he esteemed one of the greatest men of our country. But there is nothing more elusive and difficult to retain than Emerson's wit. It pierces and is gone. Some of the broader touches, such as the clothes- pins dropping out of the pockets of the Brook Farm gentlemen as they danced in the evening, were apparent to all, and irresistible. ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... shorter in stature than the crewmen with whom the pilot had lived so long. His hair was fair, as was his skin under its sun tan. He was unusually light on his feet and possessed a wiry strength Raf could testify to. But there was that disconcerting habit of mind reading and other elusive differences. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... his straw. For a long time he groped with stiffening fingers for the elusive gold, which seemed to avoid him. And ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... helmeted men in khaki, the scarce visible smoke of the guns, the wrecked trains in great lonely places, the burnt isolated farms, and at last the blockhouses and the fences of barbed wire uncoiling and spreading for endless miles across the desert, netting the elusive enemy until at last, though he broke the meshes again and again, we had him in the toils. If one's attention strayed in the lecture-room it ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... indebted to him for this insight. Quite aside from their intrinsic interest, linguistic forms and historical processes have the greatest possible diagnostic value for the understanding of some of the more difficult and elusive problems in the psychology of thought and in the strange, cumulative drift in the life of the human spirit that we call history or progress or evolution. This value depends chiefly on the unconscious and unrationalized ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... with so much energy, authority and cunning that no one dreamt of criticising his encroachments. He was, besides, much feared for his bitter tongue, but he pleased the prefect, who liked his wit and appreciated his cleverness. From the beginning Licquet was fascinated by the idea of discovering the elusive conspirator and thus demonstrating his adroitness to the police of Paris; and his satisfaction was profound, when, on the 17th of August, 1807, three days after having arranged a plan of campaign and issued ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... of trees, the great head and antlers stood out like an upturned root; but I had never known that a living creature stood there were it not for a soft, clucking rumble that the bull kept going in his throat,—a ponderous kind of love note, intended, no doubt, to let his elusive mate ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... ridiculous the notion! Why shouldn't a girl have a bit of determination in her make-up? Well, she should. It gave force to her character. It made her more individual, more attractive. It coloured a nature so essentially feminine as Ruth Gardner's with elusive and delightful possibilities. ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... interfere with the pleasing throes of composition. Peter—Dan—Felix—Cecily—Felicity—Sara Ray—the Story Girl—they are all around me once more, in the sweet-scented, fading grasses, each with open dream books and pencil in hand, now writing busily, now staring fixedly into space in search of some elusive word or phrase which might best describe the indescribable. I hear their laughing voices, I see their bright, unclouded eyes. In this little, old book, filled with cramped, boyish writing, there is a spell of white ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... realised vaguely, a George with whom the General and I possessed hardly so much as an acquaintance. The man before me was a man whom Sally had invoked into being, and it seemed to me, as I watched them, that she had awakened in George, who had lost her, some quality—inscrutable and elusive—that she had never aroused in the man to whom she belonged. What this quality was, or wherein it lay, I could not then define. Understanding, sympathy, perception, none of these words covered it, yet it ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... were sitting down to make the inventory of broken glass, ruined furniture and provisions. A principle had been preserved, people said, talking largely and superficially, but the principle seemed elusive. The laborers, too, had lost, more heavily in proportion to their ability to bear—millions in wages, not to reckon the loss of manhood to those who were blacklisted for ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... that it seems to preserve its virginal purity. There is proof, however, that the flower does possess some "secret virtue," for if the plant be immersed in glycerine the preservative takes the hue of the flower. Nature having ordained that the plants should be elusive, they appear in remote spots and unlikely situations with foothold among loose and gritty fragments of rock, and with cessation of the sustaining rains disappear, each having borne but a single leaf and produced but a solitary flower. The leaf ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the advance agent of that mysterious combination known to the financial world as an "English syndicate," an elusive sort of commercial sea-serpent with its head in London and its tail around the globe. The "inquiry" which had so gladdened the colonel's heart the morning ofthe breakfast with aunt Nancy had proceeded from this ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... all this, out of the mirage of these vast elusive prospects and apprehensions, that he answered Poppy St. John, as with serious eyes yet smiling lips she turned, and coming across the white floor sat ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... forebodings, and all day they could be seen in groups about the village discussing ways and means. Quarrels broke out, and parties disbanded in discouragement and bitterness. The road to the golden river seemed to grow longer, and the precious sand more elusive, from day to day. Here at Hazleton, where they had hoped to reach a gold region, nothing was doing. Those who had visited the Kisgagash Mountains to the north were lukewarm in their reports, and no one felt like stopping to explore. The ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... time, pains, or money, to fulfil his part of the compact. It would be monstrous, therefore, if he were to be cheated of his reward. That either Ford or Miriam would attempt this he did not believe, even if between them the worst, from his point of view, was at the worst; but that an absurd, elusive principle which called itself chivalry, but really was effeminacy of will, might try to disarm him by an appeal to scruples he contemned, was the possibility he feared. He feared it because he estimated at its worth the force of restraint a sentimental civilization and a naA-ve people ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... direction but the right one. Edward went to Hunter's Spinney every day. He began to find a new world among the budding hyacinths on the soft leafy soil, breaking up on every side with the push of eager lives coming through, and full of those elusive, stimulating scents ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... breast, but as it comes nearer, obscure arrow-heads are visible — not heavy, heart-shaped spots such as plentifully speckle the larger wood thrush or the smaller hermit. It is the smallest of the three commoner thrushes, and it lacks the ring about the eye that both the others have. Shy and elusive, it slips away again in a most unfriendly fashion, and is lost in the wet tangle before you have become acquainted. You determine, however, before you leave the log, to cultivate the acquaintance of this bird ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... purpling distance to the west suggested fastnesses remote enough from the northern man, yet in those deep canyons, those wide valleys, along creek-bank and river bed, the busy prospector was ruthlessly prosecuting his quest for the elusive "color," and the mining engineer was probing for ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... long-armed slouch of a man, with a close-cropped head (flat at the back) upon which great hairy ears stood out like growths. His eyes were bloodshot and bulging, the left with an elusive cast in it that showed only now and then, when it testified to the kink in his brain. His nose, uneven in its downward trend, was so fat and wide and heavy that it fairly sprawled upon his face; and its cavernous, black nostrils made it seem to possess something that, to ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... to "play fair" with Slop-eye gradually restored his cheerfulness, and he walked slowly back to the hotel, looking in at many window displays as he went. Half shyly he paused before a window of women's wear; fine, filmy things, soft and elusive, and, he supposed, very expensive. He wondered if Reenie bought clothes like that to wear in her city home. And then he began to look for a brown sweater, and to move from window to window. And presently he ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... was at that moment leisurely tying his white neckwear in his bed-chamber at Villa Cardross. And sometimes he whistled, tentatively, as though absorbed in mentally following an elusive air; sometimes he resumed a lighted cigarette which lay across the gilded stomach of a Chinese joss, sending a thin, high thread of smoke to the ceiling. He had begun his collection with one small idol; there were now nineteen, and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... at Bray was one of those styleless nondescript river-side residences which, apart from the incomparable beauty of their surroundings, have a charm of their own, elusive but distinct. Originally it had been no more than a couple of cottages, thatched and low-eaved, but her husband in his lifetime had dealt with these so successfully by building out a dining-room with bedrooms above on one side, a drawing-room and billiard-room, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... foot. At the moment of anchoring the fog was so thick that for all they could see they might have been a thousand miles out in the open sea. Yet the shelter of the land could be felt. There was a peculiar quality in the stillness of the air. Very faint, very elusive, the wash of the ripple against the encircling land reached their ears, with mysterious ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... anywhere; together they were doubly striking-looking. Arnold, tall and slight, carrying his head high, fair of complexion as a peachy-cheeked girl, was a peculiarly distinguished-looking man. The delicate pince-nez he wore emphasized slightly the elusive air of supercilious courtliness he always conveyed. Now, as he spoke to Ruth, who, although a tall girl, was some inches shorter than he, he maintained a strict perpendicular from the crown of his head ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... bluster and convinced him that the elusive Mamise was some tremendous super-spy. He became servile at once, and took pride in being the lackey of her unexplained and unexplaining majesty. Mamise liked him even less in this role ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... couples breaking out of the whirl now and then to rush to the bar; players stood deep around the tables; men reached over each other's shoulders to take their drinks from the bar. All was haste and hilarity, all a crowding of pleasure with hard-pursuing feet, a snatching at the elusive thing with rough boisterous hands, with loud laughter, with ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... they stirred out of doors? Such customs could scarcely make a whole country mysterious. But now, though he had not yet landed, he knew that he would be compelled to acknowledge the indefinable mystery at which he had sneered. Already he fancied an elusive influence, like the touch of a ghost. It was in the pulsing azure of the sky; in the wild forms of the Atlas and far Kabyle mountains stretching into vague, pale distances; in the ivory white of the low-domed roofs that gleamed against the vivid ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... deal, but she did not answer at once. She wanted to be very sure of saying the right word; and it is only when we try to grapple with another's intimate need that we find ourselves baffled by the elusive, intangible spirits of those with whom we share sunlight and food and the bewildering gift of speech. Honor was wondering now whether, by a supreme concentration of will, she could possibly infuse some measure of the soldier ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Rivington pleasantly at his club, in Forty-eleventh street, and then we set forth in pursuit of the elusive ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Both these young people who had carved their own Fate in the very rock which now had shattered their lives, seemed to be searching for something vague, unavowed and mysterious which instinct told them was there, but which was so elusive, so intangible that the soul of each recoiled, even whilst ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... though in lesser degree, of the rising and falling of waves. This latter sensation became less and less, though the feeling of traveling downward continued. Prester Kleig knew that he was going down into the sea again, down into it deeply.... Then that odor once more, and the elusive memory. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... him so long to kindle his blaze. He found a place sheltered from the wind, whittled many shavings from dead wood, and used his flint and steel until his hands ached, coaxing forth the elusive sparks and trying to make them ignite the wood. They died by hundreds, but, after infinite industry and patience, they took hold, and he sheltered the tiny and timid blaze with his body, lest it change its mind and go away after all. Though it ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... quick embrace, and the desolation of the watcher was complete as he heard her speak lovingly to the officer who had at last come back into her life. She spoke in French and—was it because of the language used or of the unusual excitement?—her voice took on a strange elusive quality utterly unlike the richness of the tones Mark loved so well, yet remained vibrant, haunting in its sibilant lightness. Never again would he hear it so. He longed to go, but there was no present way of escape, so he steeled his heart ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... they lookin' some!" chuckled the elusive voter, as he watched with delight their unsuccessful endeavors to locate him. "But there's lots of places yet that they hain't thought of; they hain't half looked for me yet. I may be in the well for all they know." ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... suggested that there might be a little desert-scrub about if we looked for it. He was quite right; there was a little, a very little. About one bush to the half-mile was the average, and usually under a boulder at that. Every morning we rode forth and scoured the desert for that elusive scrub. As we had, by the process known in the army as "wangling," acquired sufficient tents and marquees for a battalion, there was a large quantity to find. Ultimately, after weeks of searching, we obtained enough, and to stimulate keenness, ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... than teach her monosyllabic English and the rudiments of reading and writing. Doubtless she babbled of western life with its freedom and joyousness for women; but four years have elapsed since her death, and her stories are only elusive memories ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... for the elusive Sary, he located her. But she was not elusive looking. She was six feet in height and would tip the scales ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the least sleek like some of our Hindu swamis, and very charming. When we left he thanked us for coming and expressed his great satisfaction that he had made some friends. His talk was largely moral but with a high metaphysical flavor, somewhat elusive, and reminding one of Royce. Well it was an experience worth having, as he is reputed the most learned and representative Buddhist in Japan, and as I have remarked before, seeing is quite different from reading. He was more modern than Royce in one respect; he said God is the ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... month since I saw you last, sweetheart!" he exclaimed, as he lifted her clear from the floor in a passionate embrace and kissed in turn her lips, her eyes, the tip of her nose, the elusive dimple in her cheek, and the adorable curve of ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... joy was painful. His chief praised him a little at parting, and said he had done good work and hoped his successor would do as well. Regretted his departure at this moment, since that old fellow who kept such a notorious den was breaking loose again, more villainous, more elusive than ever. Lawson heard this with astonishment, with infinite regret. Wished he could have stayed to ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... moment silently in the elusive light, that matched the mental twilight in which she viewed his mood. His expression puzzled, evaded her; and she could not have explained the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... eyes of Mr. Sefton, and that feeling of jealousy which he would not have recognized had it not been for Talbot's half-jesting words returned to him. He would not deny to himself now that Helen Harley attracted him with singular force. There was about her an elusive charm; perhaps it was the slight trace of foreign look and manner that added to her Southern beauty ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... million died. In World War II, German and Soviet armies were responsible for some 7 to 8 million more deaths. Although final independence for Ukraine was achieved in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR, democracy remained elusive as the legacy of state control and endemic corruption stalled efforts at economic reform, privatization, and civil liberties. A peaceful mass protest "Orange Revolution" in the closing months of 2004 forced the authorities to overturn a rigged presidential election and to allow ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... give their conversation a more personal note, but he found her elusive. She accepted an invitation, however, to be present at a lecture which he was giving before another learned society during the following week. With that he felt that he ought to be content. Nevertheless, he left her a little dissatisfied. He was perfectly well aware that the magnetism which ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... has not forgotten that tree ferns are among its ancestors; when it is discouraged, it rests and grows again. But imagine the feelings of a mat of exquisite maidenhair rent from a shady slope with moss and partridge vine at its feet, and quivering elusive woodland shade above, on finding itself unceremoniously crowded into a bed, between cannas or red geraniums! Or fancy the despair of either of the wide-spreading Osmundas, lovers of stream borders opulent with leaf-mould, or wood hollows deep with moist richness, on finding themselves ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... permitted him to ramble on about historic rings in general. But all the same he could see that Van Sneck was far from easy in his mind. Now and then a sudden gleam came into his eyes: memory played for the fragment of a second on a certain elusive ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... once started in pursuit, only to find that the French had retired before him to Poitiers, eighteen miles due west of Chauvigny. Careless of his convoy, he hurried across country in the hope of catching the elusive enemy, but was only in time to fight a rear-guard skirmish at a manor named La Chaboterie, on the road from Chauvigny to Poitiers, on September, 17. That night the English lay in a wood hard by the scene of action, suffering terribly from want of water. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... But three times blessed he Whose eye and ear, of finer fibre spun, Sense the elusive thread of beauty, where The common man hath deemed that none can be. The beauty of the commonplace is one In substance with ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... he understood her attitude toward him—toward the whole world; and a flood of loving pity swept over him. Reaching the other side of the street, he found that she had disappeared. He looked up and down in the dusk, but caught no further sight of the elusive Miss Blair; and after lingering on the street for a half hour, he returned ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... dim for her to see it face to face. Its mere possibility dissolved the instant she focused it to get the truth behind it. It was too utterly elusive, made, protaean. Under the attack of even a minute's concentration the very meaning of it vanished, melted away. The idea lay really behind any words that she could ever find, beyond the touch ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... his table of test-tubes and picked up one containing mercury. What prompted this action he did not know. Perhaps it was his fascination for the elusive metal. Perhaps it was some subconscious feeling. At any rate, he held it aloft and gazed at it in the light. As he did so a strange thing happened. Reflected in its surface on the glass, yet distorted like a convex mirror, he could see the door of ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... the peculiar feeling that they were somehow familiar, as though related to something he already knew, even though they were so alien. But, strain as he might, he could not at first bring that elusive thought into recognition. ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... Kew, "that I must leave you by the ten something. I must leave you to sniff without my help, like bloodhounds, along the trail of the elusive Jay. But I won't bid any one a fervent good-bye, because I daresay I shall be back again on leave for lack of anything else to do in three weeks' time, if we can't get across the Channel. In that case I'll meet you one day next month—say at Land's End or the Firth ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... still continued to rise, reaching 33 Fahr. on November 14. The thaw consequent upon these high temperatures was having a disastrous effect upon the surface of our camp. "The surface is awful!—not slushy, but elusive. You step out gingerly. All is well for a few paces, then your foot suddenly sinks a couple of feet until it comes to a hard layer. You wade along in this way step by step, like a mudlark at Portsmouth Hard, hoping gradually to regain the surface. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... wars are fought, or which are asserted to be the causes, make one of the important psychological problems of war. Sometimes these causes are elusive, sometimes they may give occasion for cynicism and a pessimistic view of national morals; again we see self-deception, again ideals seeking for light, peoples trying to find something to live for or to ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... no one has such elusive hooks and eyes on their clothes as I have," grumbled Emma Dean, who had appeared in the doorway in time to hear Mary's heartfelt remark. "I have permanently dislocated one shoulder and ruined the charming curves of both my elbows forever, in a vain, but valiant, effort to unite one miserable ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... the first seismologists to realise the significance of the earthquake-sound; and he attended closely to the subject, though finding the sound even more elusive of precise observation ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... it with certain properties and actions, we of course commit the usual sin of the intellect: the sin of abstraction and isolation of its material. This crime of analysis the intellect commits every day in the search for truth. Before its dissection, it seems to have to dip the elusive article in a fixative, and bottle it ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... near, the fantastic shadows of the elms and maples, the gathering dew, the elusive odor of new grass, and that peculiar hush which belongs only to midnight—as if Time had paused in his flight and were holding his breath—gave to the place, so familiar to me by day, an air of indescribable strangeness and remoteness. ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... like such a fool—of course you're bored!" drawled the Older Man, rummaging listlessly through his pockets for the ever-elusive match. ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... motherhood had six times descended upon her and she was doing her gentle, well-bred, conscientious best in six lively directions, but under it all she was forever Helen, forever the best beloved. She was getting rather beyond her depth but she was not giving up. Stephen, in discussion, had an elusive way of soaring into hazy generalities. She ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... yet seen enough of joy. It bears the reputation of an elusive sprite with finger always at lip bidding farewell. In certain dark periods, especially in times of international warfare, it threatens to vanish altogether from the earth. It is then the first duty of all peaceful folk to find and hold fast to joy, keeping ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... delicately charming as the daguerrotypes of the sixties. As we tipped the old picture this way and that, to catch the right light on the image under the glass, the very uncertainty of effect seemed to give it an elusive fascination. To my mind the birds in the bush have always brighter plumage than any in the hand, and one of these early photographs leaves ever, no matter from what angle you look upon it, much to the imagination. So Geoff in his gray Southern uniform, young and soldierly, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... who has traveled abroad, has admired and perhaps coveted the gardens of England, France, and Italy. Their charm is undeniable, and thought to be too elusive for reproduction on American soil without the aid of landscape ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... pair of large blue eyes, cold as the waters of the Tiber and like unto them mysterious and elusive, were turned fully on ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... judgment more trustworthy. In all his work in the Athenaeum he presents a seasoned, many-sided sense of all poetical, phonetic and musical values: rhythm, color, tone, the lightest breath and aroma of an elusive work of art. One feels that Wilhelm overhauls the whole business of criticism, and clears the field for coming literary ideals. Especially telling is his demolition of Klopstock's violent "Northernism," to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... The Frenchwoman's son was one of the men arrested in Quebec province for using wolf dope: a handsome, elusive devil who sometimes haunted the lumber woods at the lower end of Lac Tremblant, trapping or robbing traps as seemed good to him, and paying back interruptions with such interest that no one was keen ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At first I took it for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement. It was an elusive vision—a moment of bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine trees, and this problematical object came out clear and sharp ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the days of his heedless youth. That long aisle of years seemed unending, but it narrowed in perspective until earlier experiences were but queerly dissolving shapes, wavering of outline, dimly discerned, piquant or sad in the mind, but elusive when he would ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... do not grumble more at having to spell correctly. Yet one may ask, Do we not a little over-estimate the value of orthography? This is a natural reflection enough when the maker of artless happy phrases has been ransacking the dictionary for some elusive wretch of a word which in the end proves to be not yet naturalised, or technical, or a mere local vulgarity; yet one does not often hear the idea canvassed in polite conversation. Dealers in small ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... whose rich magnetism of face and personality brings them close to you, not only for the present, but also for the past, one of those people who are apt to make you feel that you have known them before, forever, a feeling that flowers into elusive fragrances, suggestions, reminiscences, flown on the first stir of a thought to ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... sufficient to restrain all elusive contracts, and whether all the little artifices of interest are sufficiently obviated, I am yet unable to determine; but by a reflection upon the multiplicity of relations to be considered, and the variety of circumstances ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... strove to connect the developments of the last few days. The case was strange in many ways. With numerous clues, suspicions circumstances and half-identified people on every hand, there was no one feature upon which definite action could be taken. Atwood was the most elusive criminal he had ever pursued. Never at any time had the man become an actual personality. Like a will-o'-the-wisp, he was ever in sight, yet just beyond reach. While the detectives struggled along tangled paths that led nowhere, Atwood's ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... aloft in his red lair below the fort, he might almost have claimed kin with his mighty prototypes of the Assarbanipal frieze. One wondered a little, seeing whose work he was; but probably it is easier for an artist to symbolize an heroic town than the abstract and elusive divinity who sheds light on the world ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... recurring to me in after years, filled me with the pain and wonder of remembrance. I want to string together those glimpses of my earliest days that dangle in my mind, like little lanterns in the crooked alleys of the past, and show me an elusive little figure that is myself, and yet so much a stranger to me, that I often ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... is in the direction of diplomacy, and not always frank. On the whole this is the character whose features are least clearly defined, over which a certain mystery hangs, and strange experiences are not unfrequent It is difficult to deal with its elusive showings and vanishings, and this melting away and reappearing seems in some to become a habit and even a matter of choice, with a determination ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... Meta Elliot-Smith was elusive, loud and vulgar, but she was also good-natured. She admired Rosalind, but in her heart of hearts she thought that her friend had played Prissie a very shabby trick. She brought Prissie some tea, therefore, ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... peculiar distinction which had first attracted me, was as yet wholly immature. But in the face itself there were signs of a coming change. Wherein it might lie I could not tell, but it was there, an intangible and wholly elusive thing. I think that a certain fear of it and what it might mean oppressed me with the sense of coming trouble. I was more fully conscious then than ever before of the moral responsibility of our ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that most interesting and most rare cross-bred result of the elusive something, be it soul, imagination, or ecstasy which had turned a woman ancestress, created for the great honour of bearing children, into the nun, whose maternal instincts had feigned find solace ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... him. For the first time her wet skirt exposed her feet, encased in torn stockings. The dancer wore no shoes, and Bobby guessed why she had been so elusive, why she had left ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... a woman's strongest arm; My charwoman is full of charm; I chose her, not for strength of arm But for her strange, elusive charm. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... safe," he thought. His fine ear could detect the faintly accentuated murmurs of the current breaking against the point of the island, and he forgot himself in listening to them with interest. But even to his acute sense of hearing the sound was too elusive. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... up we set off again in pursuit of the elusive gold convoy. We could get no accurate information concerning it. Some said it was behind, others ahead. We never ran it down. It may well be that it was concealed in a ravine near the road a few yards from where we passed. Just short of a town called Abu Kemal ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... This was the woman whom the world thought composed; who had triumphed over its opposition, compelled it to bow before her; who presented to it that self-possessed, unified personality by which he had been struck at their first meeting. Yet, paradoxically, the personality remained,—was more elusive than before. A thousand revelations, he felt, would not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... straight away from that boundary begins the corresponding negative class and passes into the illimitable horizon of nothingness. You talk of pink things, you ignore, as the arbitrary postulates of Logic direct, the more elusive shades of pink, and draw your line. Beyond is the not-pink, known and knowable, and still in the not-pink region one comes to the Outer Darkness. Not blue, not happy, not iron, all the NOT classes meet in that Outer Darkness. That same Outer Darkness and nothingness is infinite ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... say. A day, a week, a month, a year—it is an elusive search I follow, my young friends. May I call ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... worked task work, and have the rest of the day to myself." But his day did not last many years. "Lamb was but fifty when he quitted the service of the company; yet less than ten years of life were left to him. Not only so, but the happiness he had expected to find proved more and more elusive. The increasing frequency of his sister's aberration was a heavy burden for a back which grew daily less able to bear the strain. The leisure to which he had looked forward so eagerly was spent in listening to incoherent ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... I had entered and left caused me considerable curiosity. Kemsley was one of those free, bluff, open-hearted, open-handed, men. He was never secretive, never elusive. I could only account for his curious, mystifying actions by the fact that the reputation of a woman was at stake—that he ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... Tom," said Ruth to her chum. "No knowing what by-path he might have tried in search of the elusive gasoline." ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth for ever chase That flying and elusive shadow, rest. An air of coolness plays upon his face, And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. And then he thinks he knows The hills where his life rose, And the sea ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... Not that so elusive a thing as personal charm can be neatly plotted by the card. We love certain people because we love them; and since that is so, everything they do is interesting to us. A great writer lives in his books, to be sure, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... of humanitarian enthusiasm. Gradually satiated with erotic passion, gradually convinced that it is rather a mischief-maker than a reconstructive force in a decrepit society, she is groping, indeed, between her successive liaisons for an elusive felicity, for a larger mission than inspiring Musset's Alexandrines or Chopin's nocturnes. It is somewhat amusing, and at the same time indicative of her vague but deep-seated moral yearnings, to find her writing rebukingly to Sainte-Beuve, as early as 1834, apropos of his epicurean Volupte: "Let ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... friend of another sort tenderly devoted to me, I might have thought it worth while to continue my present existence. I have long dreamt of such an unattainable creature, as you know, and she, this undiscoverable, elusive one, inspired my last volume; the imaginary woman alone, for, in spite of what has been said in some quarters, there is no real woman behind the title. She has continued to the last unrevealed, unmet, unwon. I think it desirable ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... The elusive light-footedness of the man, the successive stinging of those contemptuous slaps at last maddened Monohan into ignoring the rules by which men fight. He dropped his hands and stood panting with his exertions. Suddenly he kicked, a swift ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... pinions, Spirit of Dreams? Hidden elusive garments Woven of gleams? In what divine dominions, Brighter than day, Far from the world's dark torments, Dost thou stay, dost thou stay?— When shall my yearnings reach thee Again? Not in vain let my soul beseech thee! Not ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... the artist's changing purpose, as this in turn is acted on by influences of which he is himself unconscious. How, then, was an unprepared imagination to distinguish between such varied reflections of the elusive vision? She took refuge in a passionate exaggeration of her ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... artless observations, and his drollery of style, Bewildered with that sorrowful serenity of smile— The eye's elusive twinkle, and the twitching of the lid, Like he didn't go to say it and was sorry that he did. O Artemus of Michigan! so worthy of the name, Our manager indorses it, and Bill Nye does the same— You tickled our affection ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... The elusive history of the magnetic compass has many points in common with that of the mechanical clock. Just as we have astronomical models from the earliest times, so we find knowledge of the loadstone and ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... one of them say, gesturing excitedly. "Post-subjective synapse!" another tech yelled, and there was a sudden scurry of activity about the screen. Without warning or appreciable reason those symbols had begun to shift ... wild and elusive, ghost patterns without semblance or sense, but so unmistakable that even Jeff Arnold was jarred alert; Arnold stared, then suddenly was white as chalk as he ploughed into the ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... a process of stretching; who knew how much farther it would not be carried. The authorities were capable of anything. A death or two (or twenty-two!) from starvation would not soften hearts obsessed by an elusive "Situation." Surrender, however, was out of the question; having gone so far we could not turn back. The Flag, too, whatever the Standard-bearers might be, was worth keeping aloft. Exacting too much it was; but there was no alternative, save surrender, ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... heads came together resoundingly and absurdly, but not before the bag had exposed its surface articles: a pair of tortoise-shell military brushes, a packet of documents, and a precious silver and lapis-lazuli box about the dimensions of a playing card, the kind usually dedicated to such elusive addenda as stamps, collar buttons, or sewing box ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... in a position of grotesque fright, the fear-sweat streaming down his face, Frederik Grimm peered about him through the flickering gloom. The place seemed peopled with elusive Shapes. His teeth clicked together as his loosened jaw was nerve-racked. He shivered from head ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... are paintings (modern) looking like frescoes, and representing the preaching of St. Denis, by Galand; and the history of Ste. Genevive—her childhood, recognition by St. Germain l'Auxerrois, miracles, etc., delicate and elusive works, by Puvis de Chavannes. The paintings of the South Transept represent episodes in the early history of France. Chronologically speaking, they begin from the east central corner. Choir, Death of Ste. Genevive, and Miracles before her Shrine, by ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... understand faith. What is faith, anyway? I try to believe; sometimes I feel that my faith is strong, but at other times I feel that my faith is giving way. Can you help me in this matter? Faith seems such a hazy, intangible, elusive thing; now I think I have it, now it seems certain I have it not. I feel at times that my faith is so strong I could believe anything, then again I feel that every bit of faith I had is gone. Can you give me any ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... quarters of the garrison the sound of many feet was heard without, but when the doors were flung open only the two men were visible and they were retreating. Next evening the yeoman was chased by these elusive gentry, who were believed to be scouts of the enemy, for they wore white breeches and waistcoats and carried ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Library Automation, University of California, opened his talk with the general observation that networked information constituted a difficult and elusive topic because it is something just starting to develop and not yet fully understood. LYNCH contended that creating genuinely networked information was different from using networks as an access or dissemination vehicle and ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... by the time it was finished. He told everything as he knew it both from An-ina and the mother of Marcel. Also that which he had learned first hand, and from the diaries of Marcel Brand. The story of the dead chemist who had abandoned everything, even life itself, in the pursuit of the elusive weed lost nothing from his wide sympathy. And the crude use of the drug by the Indians formed a picture full of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... a bed of gentians on some sparkling October day, we can but repeat Bryant's thoughts and express them prosaically who attempt description. In dark weather this sunshine lover remains shut, to protect its nectar and pollen from possible showers. An elusive plant is this gentian, which by no means always reappears in the same places year after year, for it is an annual whose seeds alone perpetuate it. Seating themselves on the winds when autumn gales shake them from out of the home wall, these ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... the Solarite found and destroyed Kaxorian super-planes, protected in the uneven conflict by their diminutive size and the speed of their elusive maneuvering. ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... my feet and I went on down the path listening. It was different from the note of a wren which it resembled, that of a Lincoln sparrow, I was sure, a rarity at the Manor, only one specimen of which Jerry possessed. But midway in my pursuit of the elusive bird I saw movement in the path in front of me and I caught a glimpse of leather leggins and a skirt. In a moment all thought of my Lincoln sparrow was gone from my head. At first I thought the visitor ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... And thick their mortal shafts commission'd fly; When now a breaking surge, with forceful sway, Two, next Arion, furious tears away: Hurl'd on the crags, behold they gasp, they bleed! 730 And, groaning, cling upon the elusive weed; Another billow bursts in boundless roar! Arion sinks! and Memory views no more. Ha! total night and horror here preside, My stunn'd ear tingles to the whizzing tide; It is their funeral knell! and, gliding near, Methinks the phantoms of the dead appear: ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... gregarious instinct, not suspecting that a more powerful instinct was already awake. Anyhow, his sense of that propinquity,—his consciousness of her, gracefully moving beside him in the sweet weather, while her summery garments fluttered, and some strange, faint, elusive perfume was shaken from them,—filled him with a satisfaction that for the moment seemed ultimate. He had no wish to talk. Their progress side by side was a conversation without words. They were getting to know each other, they were breaking the ice. Each step ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... many moons hence, to use the language of our story-teller, if she continues as elusive as the wind. I have had glimpses of her, or rather of the flutter of her vanishing raiment. A being with a wonderfully perfect face, clothed in heterogeneous and many-coloured garments, and educated on ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... among these waterways When Spring first treads the meadows of the marsh, Leaving faint footprints of elusive green To glimmer as she strays, Breaking the Winter silence with the harsh Sharp call of waterfowl; Rubbing dim shifting pastels in the scene With white of moon And blur of scudding cloud, Until the myrtle thickets And the sand, The silent streams, And the substantial land Go drifting down ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... definitely the belief which was being presented to him, but it appeared as elusive as a shadow in the mist. Mr. Strathmore's look was as frank and clear as ever. There was in his eyes no sign of wavering or of evasion; his smile was ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... know me and love me seek me oftener at other seasons, when I am more at leisure, and can bid them to a more intimate companionship. They come to understand my finer moods and deeper secrets of beauty; the elusive loveliness which I leave behind me to lure on my true friends through the late autumn, they find and follow with the eye and heart of love; the rare and splendid aspects in which I often discover my presence in midwinter they enjoy all the more because ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... him, like him very much. In this case they take an interest in him after his departure; wish him to be sure of employment, speak of him as the gem of gondoliers and tell their friends to be certain to "secure" him. There is usually no difficulty in securing him; there is nothing elusive or reluctant about a gondolier. Nothing would induce me not to believe them for the most part excellent fellows, and the sentimental tourist must always have a kindness for them. More than the rest of the population, of course, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... them and of refuting counter-arguments; one, in fact, who, to his initial amazement, could juggle with ideas as he juggled with concrete objects. In this companionship he found an unknown stimulus. He would bid his friend adieu and go away, his brain catching feverishly at elusive theories and new conceptions. Sometimes he went off thrilled with a sense of intellectual triumph. He had beaten his adversary. He had maintained his simple moral faith against ingenious sophistry. He realized himself as a thinking being, impelled by a new force to ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the earliest chroniclers of war recorded their observations, strategists and generals have been tantalized and confounded by the elusive goal of destroying the adversary's will to resist before, during, and after battle. Today, we believe that an unusual opportunity exists to determine whether or not this long-sought strategic goal of affecting the will, understanding, and perception of an ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... has been of much value in hastening the fire from heaven. Often the reader is impatient to inform the loud-voiced suppliant that Baal has gone a-hunting. Yet it is alleged that the most humble bribe has at times sufficed to capture the elusive divinity. Schiller's rotten apples are classic, and Emerson lists a number of tested expedients, from a pound of tea to a night in a strange hotel. [Footnote: See the essay on Inspiration. Hazlitt says Coleridge liked to compose ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Mary Daniel—a marriage, however, which did not take place till full four years later, and which by all accounts supplied him with a faithful and excellent companion and nurse, and his children with a kind stepmother—little or nothing is again known of this elusive man of genius between the publication of the Miscellanies in 1743, and that of Tom Jones in 1749. The second marriage itself in November 1747; an interview which Joseph Warton had with him rather ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... or sorry about anything. This sort of monotony became very tiresome presently, and even something worse. The spectacle of an entire nation groveling in contentment is an infuriating thing. We felt the lack of something in this community—a vague, an indefinable, an elusive something, and yet a lack. But after considerable thought we made out what it was—tramps. Let them go there, right now, in a body. It is utterly virgin soil. Passage is cheap. Every true patriot in America will help buy tickets. Whole armies of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... took some lunch in the saddle bag and started for that elusive spot we had christened Cummings' Lake. About three o'clock we found it—a beautiful patch of water in the heart of the forest, nestling like a jewel, back ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... secure clear articulation, staccato and finger-memory. Von Bulow phrases the study in groups of two, Kullak in sixes, Klindworth and Mikuli the same, while Riemann in alternate twos, fours and sixes. One sees his logic rather than hears it. Von Bulow plastically reproduces the flitting, elusive character of the study far better ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... moles, although we never saw any of them. She warned us that bees and wasps were too heating to the blood, and not to eat them, but if very hungry, a grass-hopper was not to be sneezed at; positively no toads, however. How we played in the garden, chasing the elusive sunbeams, rolling over and over, and learning to box and jump! It all came to an end too soon, however, for one day a very neat little girl came in and said that her father, who was janitor in a grammar ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... of the laboratory men, "we started on another series of record-breaking experiments that lasted over five years. I might almost say heart-breaking, too, for of all the elusive, disappointing things one ever hunted for that was the worst. But secrets have to be long-winded and roost high if they want to get away when the 'Old Man' goes hunting for them. He doesn't get mad when he misses them, but just keeps on smiling and firing, and usually ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... said Campo-Basso, with a sympathetic desire to make trouble, if possible, "that His Majesty delays an answer while he frames one that shall be elusive, yet conciliatory. King Louis, Your Grace knows, thinks many times before each ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... hatches, and clear the deck of all litter. The barometer says nothing, neither the sky nor the water; the skipper has the "feel" that out yonder there's a big blow moving. Now the doctor had the "feel" that somewhere ahead lay danger. It was below consciousness, elusive; so he sent out a call to his ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... he could not join the group that congregated to listen to Beekstein—Secretary of Education—straighten out the involved syntax or track an elusive x to its secret lair. In the afternoon he could not practice on the diamond with them, learning the trick of holding elusive flies or teaching himself to face thunderous outshoots at ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... as the elusive music proceeded. The far-away look died away, and became puzzled; her chin came out of her hand, and the hand it came out of covered ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... grief; but Lady Elliston's grief pierced through her. She leaned towards her and softly touched her shoulder, her arm, her hand; she held the hand in hers. The sight of this loss of strength and dignity was an actual pain; her own pain was something elusive and unsubstantial; it wandered like a ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... tingling to his finger tips. Ah, how dear she was! What mad folly to think he could forget her! Every glance of her eye, every tone in her soft Scotch voice, every motion of hand and body, how familiar they all were! Like the faint elusive perfume from the clover fields of childhood, they smote upon his senses with intoxicating power. Standing there tingling and trembling, he made one firm resolve. Never would he see her again. To-morrow he would make a long-planned trip to the city. He dared not wait another day. To-morrow? ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... ceded in 1763 to Spain as a set-off for Florida, while the French King at the same time ceded his other possessions on this continent to England. In 1800, Napoleon had forced Spain to re-cede Louisiana to France, as the price of the First Consul's uncertain goodwill and other intangible or elusive favors. At this period, France desired to occupy the country, or at least to form a great seaport at New Orleans, the entrepot of the Mississippi, that might be of use to her against English warships in the region of the West Indies. When news of the ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... communication put an entirely new complexion on affairs. Far from wishing to confront Charley, Evan now desired at any cost to avoid him. If he could only succeed in following Charley to the "club-house" and in trapping the elusive chief himself, what a triumph! His heart beat ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... clad in their warm winter furs, made a picture good to look upon. Natalie had ripened wonderfully since her marriage, and added to her rich dark beauty there was now an elusive sweetness, a warmth and womanliness which had been lacking before. As for Eliza, she had never appeared more sparkling, more freshly wholesome and ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... altogether. But the artist in him forced him to play all things well, and for his own comfort he would assure himself that no doubt somewhere in the room someone was listening, someone who thought more of the strange, elusive melodies of the Hungarian folksongs than of the chefs entrees, and that for this unknown one he must be true to himself and true to his work. Covertly, he would seek out some face to which he could make the violin speak—not openly and impertinently, as did ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... favored her. The fever of the game flamed in her cheeks and eyes, and it got into her blood and into her brain like an intoxicant. People turned their heads to look at her, and more than one lent an attentive car to her utterances, hoping thereby to secure the elusive but ever-desired "tip." Arobin caught the contagion of excitement which drew him to Edna like a magnet. Mrs. Highcamp remained, as usual, unmoved, with her indifferent stare and ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... and the hunters. It became necessary first to see him, second to get a shot at him, third to hit him, and last to bring him down. Bobby, shooting the heavy barrelled Flobert at unaccustomed ranges, and at an elusive mark, discovered the appetite of atmosphere for lead. Nevertheless it was the most exciting, breathless, tingling game he had ever played. The air was biting cold, especially after the sun began to sink through the trees, but it had the effect merely of ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... of the cave in which I was in an effort to find the elusive aperture that would lead me ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... asked me to come back an' watch to-night. 'T ain't for none o' their sakes, but Sister Barsett was a good friend to me in her way." Sarah Ellen broke down once more, and felt in her bundle again hastily, but the handkerchief was again elusive, while a small object fell out upon ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... She did not explain that elusive answer. "But it don't matter about how I feel. When he comes back I've got to ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... place widens architecturally, and the atmosphere, too, seems impregnated with a sort of mental freedom, conducive to dangerous theorizing and broody reflections on the inequality of the classes. The sun shines in a strip in the centre, yellow and elusive, like gold; someone is rattling a gay galop on a piano somewhere; there is a sound of mens' voices in a heated discussion, a long whiff of pipe-smoke trails through the sunlight from the bar-room; the clink of glasses, the chink of silver, and the high treble of a woman's voice scolding a refractory ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... in the distance, or in the colors; and these people who laugh in the fairs will have after hours as solemn as the quiet star-gazer in the "Midsummer Eve." This poetry is evident in the oddest ways, and escapes analysis, so elusive and so original is it, as in the "Street of Shows." Nothing at first thought seems more hopelessly remote from poetry than the country circus, with its lurid posters of the Giant Schoolgirl, the Petrified Man, ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... people were at least shaped and coloured into dainty imitation of existing facts. So far as he helped on the substitution, he was a benefactor to all mankind. And yet, it would have been good to bare his hands and arms, and with them grasp and wrestle with the naked facts, elusive facts, despite their ruggedness. Nevertheless, he bravely smothered his desires. He even, and to himself, professed to ignore the way they multiplied, after an afternoon in the society of Professor Opdyke. However, ignore them ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... generous manner of their kind; but Paul did not care. Pariahdom was his accustomed portion. He was there for his own pleasure. They were going to ride in a train. They were going to have a wonderful afternoon in a nobleman's park, a place all grass and trees, elusive to the imagination. There was a stupefying prospect of wondrous things in profusion to eat and drink-jam, ginger-beer, cake! So rumour had it; and to unsophisticated Paul rumour was gospel truth. With all these unexperienced joys before him, what cared he for the blankety little blanks who gibed ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... touching here and there a pure and unworldly heart, such as Pere Etienne bore in his breast, with commiseration. The young priest did not conceive very clearly of the make and manner of the crime he suspected the elusive and mysterious stranger of committing; but he imagined that the great sum of money he knew him possessed of, was spoil of some sort; and he believed that Northwick's hesitation to employ it in any way was proof of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... hunting rabbits—this seemed to be the unconscious motive that led the old mother, every sunny afternoon, to ignore the thickets where game was hiding plentifully and take her cubs to the dry, sunny plains on the edge of the caribou barrens. There for hours at a time they hunted elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their heads. Then on again, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... and examined the knobs and dial. Then, raising his head, he sniffed the air, his nostrils detecting an elusive fragrance, exotic, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... arguments the balance and relation of interdependent principles, and so often in details marring the most exquisite poetry with the wildest extravagancies of style,—so free from mere vulgar tricks of effect, and so full of imaginative tricksiness and surprises,—so mischievous, subtle, mysterious, elusive, Protean,—that it is no wonder he has been more admired and more misunderstood than any eminent American of his time. It was because of these unaccustomed qualities of mind that matter-of-fact lawyers and judges came slowly but surely to Mr. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... difficult. As he was always knocking about the river I hired Dingle's sloop-rigged three-tonner to be more on an equality. Powell was friendly but elusive. I don't think he ever wanted to avoid me. But it is a fact that he used to disappear out of the river in a very mysterious manner sometimes. A man may land anywhere and bolt inland—but what about his five-ton cutter? You can't carry that in ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... elusive maturity that had come into her young, smooth face,—that was it. Maturity without the passing of Youth; definiteness, understanding, discovery,—a grip on the realities of life, just as it was with him and all the others who were awake. A year ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... nearer the exaltation of deathless youth in a deathless world than anything else in a temporary earth. It was a day on which even the jaded heart is in the mood to begin all over again, in renewed pursuit of the happiness which up to now has been elusive. To Derek, whose heart was by no means jaded, it was a day on which the instinctive hope of youth, which he supposed he had outlived, proved itself of one essence with the conscious ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... mistake to regard music simply as a recreation or as an "extra," outside the regular war programme. It is really an important factor in producing and maintaining that elusive but most important thing called moral. Men are actually braver, more enduring, more confident, more enthusiastic, if they ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... Are you as cold and elusive as this moonlight? I have waited patiently, and now I must and will speak. Every man has a right to speak and a right to ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... whipping another shot after the fleeing rider. But evidently the latter had anticipated the action, for as he rode he jumped his horse from one side to another, and as the distance was already great, and growing greater, he made an elusive target. ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer |
