"Flaring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the table, and the candle was flaring low in the socket. Her arms were stiff, her body cold—hours must have elapsed. She shivered, a sob burst from her throat, and she sought her bed. Mrs. Denvil returned from her ball at that moment. The dressing-room had been restored ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... I was younger, and far from being so clear-headed, and I looked upon those evenings at Shelldrake's as being equal, at least, to the symposia of Plato. Something in Mallory always repelled me. I detested the sight of his thick nose, with the flaring nostrils, and his coarse, half-formed lips, of the bluish color of raw corned-beef. But I looked upon these feelings as unreasonable prejudices, and strove to conquer them, seeing the admiration which he received from others. He was ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... with his own hands carried big calabashes to the door of his hut. They stood there till the evening, and Mrs. Makola looked into every one. The men got them at sunset. When Kayerts and Carlier retired, a big bonfire was flaring before the men's huts. They could hear their shouts and drumming. Some men from Gobila's village had joined the station hands, and the ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... these theatrical spectacles and pompous processions—accompanied as they were by blazing tar-barrels, flying dragons, and leagues of flaring torches—John Baptist, who had been director-in-chief of all the shows successively arranged to welcome Don John of Austria, Archduke Matthias, Francis of Alengon, and even William of Orange, into the capital, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... running up the panelled walls, setting the beautiful ceiling ablaze, while from the library, on the other, there was a furnace-like roar, as the flames literally charged up the oaken staircase, whose balusters were already glowing, and the gallery and corridor were fast flaring up as the fire licked ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... another word was spoken the outer screen flared white under a beam of terrific power, and simultaneously there appeared upon one of the lookout plates a vivid picture of the pirate vessel—a huge, black globe of steel, now emitting flaring offensive beams of force. Her invisibility lost, now that she had gone into action, she lay revealed in the middle of the first zone—at ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... play went on and the easily pleased audience laughed and clapped its hands, and the tired players bowed and smiled from behind the flaring foot-lights, there was one spectator who was conscious of a great crisis in her own life, which the mimicry of that evening seemed to ridicule and counterfeit. And though Nan smiled with the rest, and even talked with her neighbors while the tawdry curtain had fallen, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the cold night air shivered by. That was familiar and good to feel, but the glare northward caught his eyes again, and held him fascinated. It rose and fell, now blushing softly against a velvet sky, now flaring angrily to heaven. It seemed to quiver with voices that were harsh and threatening. It filled Christopher's heart with unreasonable horror against which he struggled in vain, as with the dim terror of a stranger. At last he closed the window ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... two men who had passed by as we had talked, and how that the features of one had seemed strangely familiar. Therefore I took a cab to the police-station down at Whitehall, and made inquiry of the inspector on duty in the big bare office with its flaring gas-jets in wire globes. He heard me to the end, then turning back the book of "occurrences" before him, ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... judge's address the short November day had turned from afternoon to night, and a great change had come over the aspect of the dim and dingy court. Opaque globes turned into flaring suns; incandescent burners revealed unsuspected brackets; the place was warmed and lighted for the first time during the week. And the effect of the light and warmth was on all the faces that rose as one while the judge sidled from the bench, and the jury filed out of their box, and the prisoner ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... has a certain amount of basis for his proposition that genius and madness are near allied, but it will hardly do, however, to assume that they are the same thing. Cellini at times showed a fine flaring up of talent that might be called genius—he could do exquisite work—yet there were other times when he certainly was "queer." These queer periods might account for his occasional fusing of memory and imagination, and the lapses of recollection entirely concerning things he did not wish ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... of those fierce terrible oaths which bind members of Trades' Unions to any given purpose. Then under the flaring gaslight, they met together to consult further. With the distrust of guilt, each was suspicious of his neighbour; each dreaded the treachery of another. A number of pieces of paper (the identical letter on which the caricature had been drawn that very morning) were torn up, and one was marked. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a candle. The match flickers for a moment, and shows great mounds of dusty rags upon the ground; then dies away and leaves a denser darkness than before, if there can be degrees in such extremes. He stumbles down the stairs and presently comes back, shading a flaring taper with his hand. Then the mounds of rags are seen to be astir, and rise slowly up, and the floor is covered with heaps of negro women, waking from their sleep: their white teeth chattering, and their bright eyes glistening and winking on all sides with surprise and fear, like the countless ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... lightest of dust coats, he was obliged to endure the greatest of man's amazements—the knowledge that there was a well of truth within him. Leicester Square was swathed in an ivory fleece, and he was obliged to gain Berkeley Square on foot, treading gingerly in pumps, escorted by linkmen with flaring golden torches, and preceded by tipsy but assiduous ruffians armed with shovels, who, with many a lusty oath and horrid imprecation, cleared a thin thread of path between the towering walls of snow that sparkled faintly in ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... of our cities were placarded, the other day, with an advertisement of a new sensational novel, the flaring woodcut of which represented a girl tied down upon a table, and a villain preparing to cut off her feet. If this were the general taste, there would be no use in talking about Jane Austen. But if you ask at the libraries you will find that her works are still taken out; so that there must still ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... a little pause, and then Jim Boone struck his fist on the table and cursed, for she stepped from the darkness into the flaring ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... saying that a society in which one sees such social inequalities as we see all about us, in which we see every day suicides caused by poverty, prostitution flaring at every street corner,—a society whose principal monuments are barracks and prisons,—such a society must be transformed as soon as possible, on pain of being eliminated, and that speedily, from the human race. Hail to him who labors, by no matter what means, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... Sister Serena belonged, and a Sister of Charity from the hospital in X—-, were already ministering tenderly in the crowded ward; and both had essayed to coax away the little figure clutching her mother's gown; but the flaring white cap of one, and the flapping black drapery of the other, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that this flaring, trumpet-shaped flower is next of kin to the morning-glory that clambers over the trellises of countless kitchen porches, and escapes back to Nature's garden whenever it can. When the ancestors of these blossoms welded their five petals ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... barking. He had discovered the approaching danger, and the startled sentinels challenged, but no reply was made. A second challenge bringing no response, several muskets flashed in the night. Other dogs joined in barking, alarm rattles were sprung and wood flung upon the fires, which, flaring up, threw their illumination out on the river and revealed the launch and cutter. The hoarse commands of officers rang out, and the soldiers, springing from sleep, caught up their guns and ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... moment it appeared what it was: a blotched, disordered huddle, ugly, raw, fit companion of the swamp and jungle. Then beads of light appeared, some still, some winking, one crooked line of flaring illumination marking the Street of the Sailors, along which the notorious kantrans flourished, now ready for their nightly brood of men who sought forgetfulness in revelry. Soon, Carse knew, the faint man-noises he heard would grow into a broad fabric of sound, stitched ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... them that at present they were too drunk to aid me, but that the following morning things must be different; that enough at least to attend to my orders must be sober. After supper, attracted by the noise and hubbub, we set out to see the plaza. Torches were flaring in every direction, and considerable business was being done at all the booths. Crowds of drunken people were squatting on the ground in all directions; at the town-house the band of music was playing the jarabe, and 40 or 50 persons were ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... in the morning From the rag-bag of the world! Scraps of dream and duds of daring, Home-brought stuff from far sea-faring, Faded colors once so flaring, Shreds of banners long since furled! Hues of ash and glints of glory, In ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... we paused to look, with our flaring lamps poised above our heads, a strange squeaking noise was heard, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular. I glanced inquiringly at my guide, in answer to which he simply replied, "Bats," and pointed to the walls, where, on closer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... shoot!" the taller burglar kept saying without intermission, while the flaring of candles and frightened voices, ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... place of shadow and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents. At one end a minstrel's gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... distant shouts of the men cutting down the trees in the garden, and the blows of the axes. The princess pushed open the door behind which the light was, and they found themselves in Axel's study, where the candles he had lit in order to read Letty's poem were still guttering and flaring in the draught from the open window. A clock on the writing-table showed that it was past midnight. The room looked ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... yellow flowers, Children of the flaring hours! 50 Buttercups, that will be seen, Whether we will see or no; Others, too, of lofty mien; They have done as worldlings do, Taken praise that should be thine, 55 Little, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... He thought he had never in his life beheld a woman so beautiful. Some wild, unruly hope that she might become his client, perhaps even a friend, was flaring in his mind. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... at daybreak we both at the same instant descried a sail to the eastward, and evidently coming towards us! We hailed the glorious sight with a long, although feeble shout of rapture; and began instantly to make every signal in our power, by flaring the shirts in the air, leaping as high as our weak condition would permit, and even by hallooing with all the strength of our lungs, although the vessel could not have been less than fifteen miles distant. However, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... roan's watchful eye. Like a flash the blue roan also went up—but Andy had been a fraction of a second quicker. There was a squeal that carried to the grand stand as the Weaver, wild-eyed and with red flaring nostrils, pounded the wind-baked sod with high, bone-racking jumps; changed and took to "weaving" till one wondered how he kept his footing—more particularly, how Andy contrived to sit there, loose-reined, firm-seated, riding easily. The roan, ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... poor that grass withers and dies out, and how they stand erect where every other living thing bows to the bleak winds and blizzards of the prairies, is one of the mysteries of plant life. What a splendid bonfire we made of their boughs that night, flaring as a beacon out over the ocean of ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... exhausted, they sat down, and the harper gradually changed to one of those wild, inspiring national airs for which he was so famous. The thronged audience sat earnest and breathless, and you might have heard a pin drop, except when some maiden passed hurriedly, with flaring candle and busy look, through to the real kitchen beyond. When he had finished his beautiful theme on "The March of the men of Harlech," he changed the measure again to "Tri chant o' bunnan" (Three hundred pounds), and immediately a most unmusical-looking man began chanting "Pennillion," ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... were dusty and patched, and some of the costumes as frayed and tarnished as they could be after two-thirds of a season's wear, all the glamour of the famous entertainment was here—the smell of the animals, the dancing dust in the lamplight, the flaring torches, the blaring of the band, the distant roaring of the lions being fed for the ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; His day is ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... soon discovered, was bourgeois in the extreme. Young men from the mill escorted young women from the shops. The young men wore flaring collars three sizes too large; the young women white cotton mitts three sizes too small. The older men spat, and talked through their noses; the women drawled out a monotonous flow of speech concerning the annoyances of domestic ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... and Delilah danced, a dance which they had practiced together. It had in it just a hint of wildness, and just a hint of sophistication, and Delilah in her dress of sapphire chiffon, with its flaring tunic of silver net, seemed in the nebulous light like some strange bird of ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... before she looked up again; the candles were flaring in their sockets. It was a wild windy night; Venetia rose, and withdrew the curtain of her window. The black clouds were scudding along the sky, revealing, in their occasional but transient rifts, some glimpses of ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... me so much that I walked along the passage to see what it meant. I thought perhaps the young man had fallen asleep with the window open and left the gas flaring in the wind. I stood for a moment outside the door wondering what I ought to do. Then I heard a crackling sound, and smelt something burning. That alarmed me still more, because I knew no fire had been lit in the room that day. I wondered if the bedroom ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... at last before a pillared colonnade, with a crimson curtain hanging behind the pillars. No light came from behind the curtain, and Gerrard realised suddenly that he distinguished its colour by means of a light behind him. At a word from the Rajah, two old women came forward with flaring lamps, and stationed themselves one on each side of Gerrard, so as to throw his face into the clearest possible relief. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... and a bleak evening in March. There are gas-lamps flaring down in Ratcliff Highway, and the sound of squeaking fiddles and trampling feet in many public-houses tell of festivity provided for Jack-along-shore. The emporiums of slop-sellers are illuminated for the better display of tarpaulin coats and hats, so stiff of build that they ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Year's Eve there were many people about, voices laughing and shouting through the mist and then some one running with a flaring light, then some men walking singing in chorus. The aunts said nothing as they went. Maggie's thoughts were given now to wondering whether Martin would be there. She tied her mind to that, but behind it was the irritating knowledge ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... not frightened. Cursing the disturbance with all the resounding and harmless words I could accumulate, I jumped out of bed and lit the candle in a second, and in the first dazzle of the flaring match—but before the wick had time to catch—I was certain I saw a dark grey shadow, of ungainly shape, and with something more or less like a human head, drive rapidly past the side of the wall farthest from me and disappear into ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... place, there was a great mound of weeds or stubble burning; and they watched the fire, so white in the daytime, flaring through the fog, with only here and there a dash of red in it, until, in consequence, as she observed, of the smoke 'getting up her nose,' Miss Slowboy choked—she could do anything of that sort, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist's at the corner of Sixth Avenue. She had meant to take another street: she had usually done so of late. But today her steps were irresistibly drawn toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried to take the lower crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and she struck across the street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... friends. Withal he possessed a pair of the most powerful shoulders I have ever seen on a man of his frame; and in the depths of his mild blue eyes flickered a flame of resolution that I could well imagine flaring up to something formidable. Slow to make friends, but staunch and loyal; gentle and forbearing, but fierce and implacable in action; at once loved and most terribly feared; shy as a wild animal, but straightforward and undeviating in his ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... however, to gaze at this strange scene, for upon our appearance the hounds abandoned their helpless attempts to reach Saxon, and flew, with a fierce snarl of satisfaction, at Reuben and myself. One great brute, with flaring eyes and yawning mouth, his white fangs glistening in the moonlight, sprang at my horse's neck; but I met him fair with a single sweeping cut, which shore away his muzzle, and left him wallowing and writhing in a pool of blood. Reuben, meanwhile, had spurred his horse forward ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the earth, and that was still continuing unabated two hours later. It mantled the shoulders of the workmen and the withers of the horses; it clogged the wheels of the fresnos so that dirt was moved with ever-increasing difficulty; it veiled the flaring gasolene torches and choked the night. Where a plow ran or a scraper scooped earth, snow speedily obliterated the mark, and with the passing of time both men and animals found it necessary to struggle more and more desperately ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... you bubbles set up for a month. We have already decided to put you in command of the girls, because we can then expect some real good stand-bying in case of Scout trouble or excitement. We meet in the Crotch to-night to decide all the details." Tony's eyes were shining and flaring and his red hair standing straight up in ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... mind, Loo-tenant," said Rawbon, "I might as well see—" He was interrupted by a sudden crash and roar, running bursts of flaring light, hoarse yells and shouts, and a few rifle shots from somewhere beyond the barricade across the Leak. The work of the next minute was too fast and furious for Rawbon to follow or understand. The uproar beyond the barricade swelled ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... downstairs when she missed the candle, and asking the girl what she had done with it, received the cool answer that 'she had left it sticking in the barrel of black salt'. Lady Edgeworth bade her stand still, turned round, went back alone to the loft where the tallow candle stood guttering and flaring planted in the middle of the gunpowder, resolutely put an untrembling hand beneath it, took it out so steadily that no spark fell, carried it down, and when she came to the bottom of the stairs dropped on her knees, and broke forth in a thanksgiving aloud for the safety of the household ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... line of shore The mists crept upward chill and damp, Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor Beneath the flaring lantern lamp, They talked of all things old and new, Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do; And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent, Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... east. These and other similar considerations were straying through my mind all the while that I was going down the slope with the horse. At the bottom I sat down by the roadside and looked again at the light. As before it was glimmering and flaring up. ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... elms. There was a little crowd in front of the cart, and a man with a black beard and a red fez cap was discoursing in a deep, sonorous voice to the assembly—descanting, with seeming fluency, upon a picture which he held in his hand, his tawny, gipsy-like face only half shown by the flame of a flaring naphtha lamp, and his features rendered grotesque by the play of lights and shadows. The party from the park, however, had very little opportunity for seeing what manner of man he was; for no sooner did he catch sight of Mr. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the purple shadows, Yet must love the flaring autumn too,— Follow when the skrieling pipes bid forward, Lie and gaze for ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... suggesting petrified diagrams proving dead problems—stands a house that ever draws me to it; so that often, when least conscious of my footsteps, I awake to find myself hurrying through noisy, crowded thoroughfares, where flaring naphtha lamps illumine fierce, patient, leaden-coloured faces; through dim-lit, empty streets, where monstrous shadows come and go upon the close-drawn blinds; through narrow, noisome streets, where the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... the other's manners,' said Anthea. But Robert, who was excited by the music, and the flaring torches, and the applause and the opportunity, spoke up before the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... the davits on either side of the quarter-deck, and a small dingy over the stern. On the main deck she was pierced for twelve guns, with two heavy pivot guns amidships. Her lines were beautifully fine, with sharp flaring bows, billet head, and elliptic stern. The cabin accommodation was perhaps somewhat scanty, but this, in so small a vessel, built altogether for speed, not comfort, was scarcely to be avoided. The semicircular stern-cabin was, of course, ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... Flaring up suddenly, a stick, in the embers of the fire which had long been smoldering, burst into blaze. By the light of this Dick saw the figure hurrying out of the maze of sleeping bodies in the camp. And there ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... me to it," he cried, flaring up, "I am too good! I'm too good a man to drink when I don't want to drink—I'm too good to accept treats when I don't stand treat! And more than that," he added slowly and impressively, "I'm too good to help blow that old man, or any ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... manner during the evening. He noticed the colour mount in her cheeks and her eyes kindle, as on first entering the room she looked down upon the crowded floor. The chairs had been removed, and the audience stood packed beneath the flaring gas-jets—artificers for the most part, their white faces smeared and stained with the grime of their factories. The roar of applause as Drake rose by the table swelled up to three cheers in consonance, and a subsequent singing ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... is a great muster of the choir, and the fine Old Hundredth Psalm is sung from the gallery to a full organ, whose billows of sound roll through the vaulted edifice. The scene is strikingly picturesque: all is dim and shadowy; the red light from the flaring candles falling upon upturned faces, and here and there falling upon a piece of grave sculpture, whilst the grey light of day begins to stream through the antique windows, adding to the solemnity of the scene. As the last verse of the psalm peals forth, the crowd begins to move, and the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... looked across the room, pleased when the leaping flames sent flaring over floor and wall long shadows from the tall brass andirons or claw-footed chair and table. Sometimes he glanced shyly at the mother, but getting no answering smile kept silence. Once or twice the girl whispered a word to him, as the logs fell and a sheet of flame from the ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... garments seemed to have been shot at random on to the chairs near it; a dozen soda-water bottles, full and empty, were huddled in one corner; a tea-tray tottered on the extreme edge of a table heaped with dusty books and papers; and at a desk in the centre of the room, with a great paraffin lamp flaring upon his face as he wrote, sat John Saltram, surrounded by fallen slips of copy, writing as if to win ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... as he passed through it near midnight, as the household had been long in bed; the flaring link had been extinguished two hours before, and the shadows of the tall chimneys lay black and precise at his feet across the great whiteness on the western side of the yard. Again the sense of the smallness ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... had come over as soon as he heard the news. Not much of an examination could be made, as the place was in such ruins. But it was surmised that in combining the two chemical mixtures a new one had been created, or at least one that Tom had not counted on. This had exploded, blowing Eradicate down, flaring a sheet of flame up into his face, scattering broken glass ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... color; the bergamot charms butterflies with magenta, and tubes so deep the short-tongued mob cannot pilfer their sweets; and from the frequency of the humming bird's visits, from the greater depth of the Bee Balm's tubes and their brilliant, flaring red—an irresistibly attractive color to the ruby-throat—it would appear that this is a bird flower. Certainly its adaptation is quite as perfect as the salvia's. Mischievous bees and wasps steal nectar they cannot reach legitimately through bungholes ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... was long, but not long enough for his mind to clear. It was still clouded with doubts and questionings and fears when they at last saw the flaring of many fires with figures loitering or moving busily about them. As they came nearer, a strange, rhythmic throbbing crept to his ears; nearer still, he resolved it into the slow, regular beatings of a flat-toned drum. The measure, deliberate, incessant, changeless,—the ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... irregular thatch; while the hair of their heads was jet black, and matted into a filthy tangle with grease and clay. Their faces were broad and flat, with powerful protruding jaws, low and very receding foreheads, and wide noses which seemed to have been punched in at the bridge so that the flaring red ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... against the houses in the narrow streets. The inhospitable houses projected their flights of steps almost into the carriage-way, forcing pedestrians again into the danger they had avoided for twenty or thirty paces. Then, at night, the only light was derived from the glaring, flaring oil-lamps hung above the doors of the more aristocratic mansions; just allowing space for the passers-by to become visible, before they again disappeared into the darkness, where it was no uncommon thing for robbers to be ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... have retained the usual term "shields" for the flaring forms which embrace the sun glyph, though without accepting its appropriateness. They might with equal likelihood be ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... moment my breath seemed to be stopped. This past, I heard the old serving-woman fumbling with the bolts, and peering from behind the curtain of my casement, I saw that the ways were dark, and the narrow street was lit up with flaring torches, the lights wavering in the wind. I stepped to the wide ingle, thinking to creep into the secret hiding-hole. But to what avail? It might have served my turn if my escape alive from the moat ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... a checkered shirt was at the head of the table and seemed to have the game well in hand, for his chip stacks were high, and a pile of gold pieces lay behind them. His closely cropped black beard could not conceal the cruelty of his flaring nostrils and sensual mouth. He was overbearing and loud of speech, and his menacing, insolent stare seemed to ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... ship swept into view, its full battery of offensive weapons flaring forth. The paralyzing ray tingled again and again over the control room. Someone laughed at its uselessness. The violet heat ray leveled full at them, but the commander avoided it with "Port ten, starboard ten! Maintain zigzag course to the tunnel." He understood the enemy's weapons now; ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... apparently not so fatigued by the preacher's shrill, hard delivery as he was himself. There were many children, whom their elders held up to see, and there was one young girl in a hat as wide as a barrel-head standing up where others sat, and blotting out the prospect of half the church with her flaring brim and flaunting feathers. The worshippers came and went, and while the monk preached and reposed a man crept dizzyingly round the cornice with a taper at the end of a long pole lighting the chandeliers, while two other men on the floor kindled the candles before ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... so adored him. She adored his immaculate neatness, the ruddy pinkness of his skin; she loved his wavy white hair and the deep sparkle of his dark eyes. She saw nothing droll about the peaked felt hat and long black coat that he persisted in wearing, or about the ruffled shirt, with its absurd flaring collar and black satin stock. She even loved the empty coat sleeve pinned inside his breast pocket. She thought him the most beautiful human in the whole world. She lived in constant dread of what Grandy would or would not be pleased to have her do. And though she ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... because they are always sure of renting them out just as they are. The floor, laid in bricks, was going to pieces; and a number of bricks were loose, and shaking in their layers of cement. The ceiling was cracked, and fell off in scales; while all along the walls it was blackened by flaring tallow-candles. The papering, a greasy, dirty gray paper, preserved the fingermarks of all the previous occupants of the room from the time it had first been hung. The furniture, also, was in keeping with ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... relief at last to feel pavement under the wheels, which they could do in the broad places where wind had swept the street bare; and gaslights looked very kindly, flaring along the line of way. They could see the storm then! How it raged and drove through the streets, driving everybody to the shelter of a house that had a house to go to; and those who had none were slunk away into other hiding places. The wind and the snow had cleared ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... 4) is next fitted on deck at the stern, forming the after portion of the bulwarks, which on the sides are one-eighth of an inch thick, flaring out at the bow, where they are nailed to the bowsprit, and tumbling in aft, where they are nailed to the piece x, a strip one-eighth of an inch thick (shown in Fig. 5) being first tacked to the deck, and the bulwarks ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the coil of rope, she had not known he carried, and gave her a drink of water which seemed to her the most wonderfully strength-making, life-giving draft in the world. Then he dropped down at her side, looked at his watch in the light of a flaring match carefully cupped in his hand, and lighted ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... came from the brook, refreshed by the cooling waters and adorned with flowers. All were in a merry mood for food and fun. Half a dozen flaring torches illuminated their happy, tattooed faces and dusky bodies, and caught color from the vivid blossoms in their hair. The ring of light made blacker the rustling cocoanut grove, the lofty trees of which closed in upon us ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... marching troops recalled the thought of Gouache, and suddenly he understood what was happening. The soldiers were leaving Rome to attack the Garibaldians, and he was near one of the gates. By the light of flaring torches he recognised at some distance the hideous architecture of the Porta Pia. He caught sight of the Zouave uniform under the glare and pressed forward instinctively, trying to see the faces of the men. But the crowd was closely packed and he could not obtain ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... sometimes, and well-tailored; but come you from Oxford or Bow, You're a flaring offence when you lounge, and a blundering pest when you row; Your 'monkeyings' mar every pageant, your shindyings spoil every sport, And there isn't an Eden on earth but's destroyed when it's ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... prosperous warehouse. One of those sudden and sweeping conflagrations, which so frequently make a breach in the long line of edifices, destroyed within a few months the tall white walls of the American Museum, with its flaring effigies of giants, dwarfs, and monsters, and its band of musicians in the balcony, so alluring to the rustic visitor. The picturesque church of St. Thomas and the heavy granite facade of the Stuyvesant Institute, the "Tabernacle," the Art-Academy, and the Society Library buildings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... of the Reformation differed from the chalice, too, in being taller and straighter, with a deep bowl, almost in the proportions of a flaring tumbler, and a stem with a few close decorations instead of a knop. The small paten served as a cover to the cup, as has ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... to the abnegation of whiskey—a rival stage office, and a small one-storied building, from which the "Sierran Banner" fluttered weekly, for "ten dollars a year, in advance." Insufferable in the glare of a Sabbath sun, bleak, windy, and flaring in the gloom of a Sabbath night, and hopelessly depressing on all days of the week, the First Presbyterian Church lifted its blunt steeple from the barrenest area of the flats, and was hideous! The civic improvements ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... desperation that I got my toes upon a solid piece of the slippery rock and pressed myself against the steep slope for a few moments, listening to the firing, some of which sounded close, some more distant. Then, shouting to Denham to hold on, I glanced at the lamp, which was flaring bravely and giving a good light, but only at the expense of the rapidly melting fat. The next minute I was climbing as quickly as I could by the rope, and shuddering as I heard stone after stone go down, any one of which I knew ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... black varies his tactics by a night attack, which is often highly demoralising. When the moon is on the other side of the world, with spears and flaring torches of paper-bark, he rushes in a band to raid the reef, to the dismay of startled and bewildered fish. Substitute for the gurgling cadences of semi-submerged coral and muteness and universal dimness instant noise and splashing, and dazzling lights here and there and everywhere, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... breast, or tail, which it is no joke to hear, when blown close to your ears by a stout pair of lungs. The scene is very picturesque. Above, the dark vault of night, with its far stars, the blazing and flaring of lights below, and the great, dark walls of the Sapienza and Church looking grimly down upon the mirth. Everywhere in the crowd are the glistening helmets of soldiers, who are mixing in the sport, and the chapeaux of white-strapped gendarmes, standing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Protestant Imperial Free-town, in the Bavarian regions, had been, for some fault on the part of the populace against a flaring Mass-procession which had no business to be there, put under Ban of the Empire; had been seized accordingly (December, 1607), and much cuffed, and shaken about, by Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, as executor ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... amused groups to hear the strange patter of some voluble merchant retailing goods from a barrow. From the interiors of tiny shops and cellars came eldritch voices crying the nature and remarkable qualities of the wares within. Every hand-cart carried a flaring naphtha-lamp, and the glare of these innumerable torches created strong lights and flickering shadows which would have gladdened the heart of Rembrandt were his artistic wraith permitted to roam the by-ways of a city which, perhaps, he never ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... on the mantel-piece had burnt low, and the wick was divided; there was a great winding sheet made by the dripping wax, on the side towards me. The disordered taper emitted a broad flaring flame, and threw a strong light on a painting over the fire-place, which I had not ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... river, with a divergence here and there where a dike came, with a miniature windmill on it and a muddy sluice-gate. When I looked round, I could see the other lights coming in after us. The torches we carried dropped great blotches of fire upon the track, and I could see those, too, lying smoking and flaring. I could see nothing else but black darkness. Our lights warmed the air about us with their pitchy blaze, and the two prisoners seemed rather to like that, as they limped along in the midst of the muskets. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... them both financially. Very likely she saw in this only the open workings of his malice toward Gower. In which MacRae admitted she would be quite correct. He had not been able to discover in that flaring-up of passion for Betty any reason for a burial of his feud with Gower. There was in him some curious insistence upon carrying this to the bitter end. And his hatred of Gower was something alive, vital, coloring his vision somberly. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the Wilderness, and it had lost none of its ominous aspects. Far to left and right yet burned the forest fires set by the shells, flaring luridly in the intense blackness that characterized those nights. The soldiers as they hurried on saw the ribbons and coils of flame leaping from tree-top to tree-top, and sometimes the languid winds blew the ashes in their ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Charley Rattan, and natty Jack Rann, And giant-like Giles McGhee; There's Sidle so slim, and flare-away Tim, And all of them doat on me. Kit. Hadelgitha—platonically, Christopher! Ade. But Charley, and Jack, and Tim, In vain may exert their wit. For still I'll dance it, prance it, dance it, Flaring away ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... the other. "Feu!" cried Menou. There was the crack of the four rifles, then a crashing noise amongst the branches, and the clatter of hoofs, succeeded by cries of Sacre! and Damn ye! and Diabolo! and San Jago! The six pitch-pans lay smoking and flaring on the ground; the Creole and I had sprung on one side, the negroes had thrown themselves on their faces in great terror, and the two Dons lay beside them, overthrown by the rush of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... he understand his own trouble? He does not seem to. For when, his hat thrown aside, he stops, erect and frowning under the flaring gas-jet he had no recollection of lighting, his first act was to lift his hand to his head in a gesture of surprising helplessness for him, while snatches of broken sentences fell from his lips among which ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... straight line of his perfect back; she sensed his lusty challenge and listened breathlessly to the answering trumpet call from a distant, hidden corral. She saw a herd of young horses, twenty of them perhaps, racing wildly with flying manes and tails and flaring nostrils; a strangely garbed man on horseback raced after them, shot by them, heading them off, a wide loop of rope hissing above his head. She saw the rope leap out, seeming to the last alive and endowed with the will of the ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... more healthy and in better spirits. She determined to go out marketing with her mother in the evening, and walked back past the flaring lamps, at which women were already crowding, with her head in the air and her courage high. She almost forgot Toby while she was bathed in this flustering brilliance of light and noise. Only far below, in ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... fatal to her enterprise. It chanced that where she stood for a moment a fruit-seller occupied a tiny shop, squeezed tightly between a church and a restaurant. The interior was dark enough, for a couple of flaring naphtha lamps were so disposed as to cast their flickering brilliancy over the baskets of fruits and vegetables displayed in the window or crowded ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... eyes fixed upon infinity she went buoyantly forward; for this time she was not lost. The sun, already high when she arose, was blazing somewhere in the regions above, and the strong light, flaring in her face and shining on the broad reaches ahead, was very trying to her eyes. After peering against it ineffectually for a while she took off the three-cornered hat and proceeded to undo her work of the day before, removing the pins and ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... children would not have hung about her skirts with dirty fingers, palpably dragging her down day by day. I suppose it was the pie which put such heartless and improper ideas in my head, and so I rose up and told Ingomar I believed I'd go to bed. Preceded by that redoubtable barbarian and a flaring tallow candle, I followed him upstairs to my room. It was the only single room he had, he told me; he had built it for the convenience of married parties who might stop here, but, that event not happening yet, he had left it half furnished. It had cloth on one side, and large cracks ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... anything in which he was not the first and greatest sharer, the old lady was obliged to help him first. When they had been thus refreshed, the whole house hurried away into an empty stable where the show stood, and where, by the light of a few flaring candles stuck round a hoop which hung by a line from the ceiling, it was to be ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens |
