"Roving" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... while I was roving over the hills or about the farm, and even listening to John Fry, my mother, being so much older and feeling trouble longer, went about inside the house, or among the maids and fowls, not caring to talk to the best of them, except when she broke out sometimes about the good master ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... wandered about, and admired the uniforms of the governor's body guard, tall native soldiers standing round about the passages with huge turbans and beards, blue tunics, white breeches, and tall black boots, all straight and stiff as their lances, and barring their roving black eyes, as motionless. From a verandah opposite the Viceroy, we watched the new comers making their bows; ladies, soldiers, sailors, civilians, single or married passed, and never were two bows or curtseys absolutely alike, nor were two walks, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... lead, bounding on some distance ahead, with Ranger in their midst. They were in no mood just then for sitting still, so depositing their fishing tackle in the schoolhouse, went roving about in search of more active amusement than ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... hunter allowed his boat to drift down with the current, then swollen to an unusual height. His eyes, roving on either hand, were now and then rewarded with the sight of a small brown bunch of fur, resting on a bit of lodged drift. Then followed a quick puff of smoke, and the echoing report from the shotgun. The troubles of the furry little chap ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... my force were difficult to thee. Is it, because by ordinance of Jove Thou art a lioness to womankind, 565 Killing them at thy pleasure? Ah beware— Far easier is it, on the mountain-heights To slay wild beasts and chase the roving hind, Than to conflict with mightier than ourselves. But, if thou wish a lesson on that theme, 570 Approach—thou shalt be taught with good effect How far my force in combat passes thine. She said, and with her left hand seizing both Diana's wrists, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... and came over into York City all set to conquer the world, become rich and famous, and live happily ever after. Five minutes after I set foot on the Earther side of the river I was beaten up and robbed by a gang of roving kids. It was ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... name had set her thoughts roving was handsome, as the glance at him already given might have foreshadowed. But his features had a graver impress than his age seemed to account for, and the sober tone of his letter to Susan implied that something had given him a maturity beyond his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... roving eyes, remarked genially,—"I like to look out over the place where I have been working so ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... leave in darkness,—so managed, the practice of confession is undoubtedly the most demoralising practice known to any Christian society. Innocent young persons, whose thoughts would never have wandered out upon any impure images or suggestions, have their ingenuity and their curiosity sent roving upon unlawful quests: they are instructed to watch what else would pass undetained in the mind, and would pass unblameably, on the Miltonic principle: ('Evil into the mind of God or man may come unblamed,' &c.) Nay, which is worst of all, unconscious or semi-conscious ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... fat fishing-worm wriggled under his very eyes, and the growing man lapsed swiftly into the boy again. He gave another quick dig, the earth gave up two more squirming treasures, and with a joyful gasp he stood straight again—his eyes roving as though to search all creation for help against the temptation that now was his. His mother had her face uplifted toward the top of the spur; and following her gaze, he saw a tall mountaineer slouching down the path. Quickly he ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... these attentions without a word of thanks, without a sign of gratitude. He appeared to be numbed, paralyzed, by the nervous shock he had undergone, and yet he was not paralyzed, for his eyes were intensely alive. They were wild, baleful; his roving glance was like poison to the men it ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... and hearing that his sire was bearing a dead snake, the powerful Sringin burned with wrath. And looking at Krisa, and speaking softly, he asked him, 'Pray, why doth my father bear today a dead snake?' And Krisa replied, 'Even as king Parikshit was roving, for purpose of hunting, O dear one, he placed the dead snake on the shoulder ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... May it is come, and the trees are in bloom— Who wills may sit listless with sorrow at home! As the clouds go a-roving up there in the sky, So away for a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... saw the Boy roving about here wrapped in his flaming discontents. There was flash on flash against the clouds, and rush on rush of shadows down the valley till the shaws were full of his hounds giving tongue, and the woodways were packed with his knights in armour riding down into ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... however, she forgot this precaution; and the consequence was that the wife of a certain small furniture-broker began to fume on recognition of some in her presence. While she was drinking her second cup of tea her eyes kept roving. As she set it down, she caught sight of Long Tim, but a fortnight out of prison, rose at once, made her way out fanning herself vigorously, and hurried home boiling over with wrath—severely scalding her ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... was exultant over this irregular jaunting. It was the first unusual thing, except the glance of Bresnahan, that had happened since the weaning of Hugh. They rode in the caboose, the small red cupola-topped car jerked along at the end of the train. It was a roving shanty, the cabin of a land schooner, with black oilcloth seats along the side, and for desk, a pine board to be let down on hinges. Kennicott played seven-up with the conductor and two brakemen. Carol liked ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... nearing some encampment or habitation. I could hear what was supposed to be music, and in the dark made my way, as near as I could judge, in the direction of the sound, and in about half an hour my efforts were rewarded, as I had overtaken a band of roving Indians, all in fancy dress, playing funny reed instruments and dancing continuously as they travelled. They could not speak Spanish, but at that time I knew sufficient of their language—"Aymara," as it is called—and soon explained to them my position. I was allowed to accompany them, as I ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... us that many of his countrymen went away to sea for a few years and saved money, the wise ones bringing it home and investing it in a plot of land; "but," he added, "they do not all succeed, for many of them have become so accustomed to a roving life, and know so little of farming, that they cannot manage to make it pay. I have worked very hard myself, and am getting along all right;" and, looking at his surroundings, we certainly thought he must be ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... a blazing glare from the sheen of the untrodden snow, the cavalry came in sight of the Indian encampment down in the valley of Powder River. The fight came off then and there, and, all things considered, Crazy Horse got the best of it. He and his people drew away farther north to join other roving bands. The troops fell back to Fetterman to get a fresh start; and when spring fairly opened, old "Gray Fox," as the Indians called General Crook, marched a strong command up to the Big Horn Mountains, determined to have it out with Crazy Horse and settle the question of supremacy ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... at the driveway and briskly resigned the care of Polly to old Asher, his seamed and wrinkled helper, the Doctor's eyes were roving now to a corner, snug beneath a tattered rug of snow, where by summer Aunt Ellen's petunias and phlox and larkspur grew—and now to the rose-bushes ridged in down, and at last to his favorite winter nook, a thicket of black alders freighted with a wealth of berries. How ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... spun twice; especially if a close, hard-twisted thread was desired, to be woven into a stiff, wiry cloth. When there were two, the first spinning was called a roving. The single spinning was usually deemed sufficient to furnish yarn for knitting, where softness and warmth were ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Chippeway or Ojibway from Minnesota, appeared before the board of the Association, February 12, 1855, in behalf of his people. He had been a Baptist missionary to the Ojibways, but had found that he could accomplish little while the Indians continued their roving life and their wars with the Sioux. He therefore wished to have his people adopt a settled agricultural life. The Baptist Home Missionary Society, with which he was laboring, would not accede to his plans ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... more of a Dissenter than a Catholic. I beg your pardon," he added, seeing Willis look up sharply, "let me be frank with you, pray do. You were attached to the Church of Rome, not as a child to a mother, but in a wayward roving way, as a matter of fancy or liking, or (excuse me) as a greedy boy to something nice; and you pursued your object by disobeying the ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... in good spirits, though both the Kenerleys detected a roving eye and an alert ear that made them think he suspected, or at least hoped, that Patty was there. But he said nothing that indicated his thoughts except to ask on arrival if ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... nine months old, was with her, and her husband, as stalwart and handsome an officer as ever wore shoulder-straps. But we were facing unknown dangers, in a far country, away from mother, father, sister and brother—a country infested with roving bands of the most cruel tribe ever known, who tortured before they killed. We could not ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... under her touch, but he did not hear a word that she was saying until his roving eyes rested on her face; he immediately noticed a remarkable thing. For the first time she was talking to him and avoiding his eyes. That was not like the Angel at all. It was the delight of hearing her speak that she looked one squarely in the face and with perfect frankness. There were no ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... criticism and attack from him, for he was not properly constructed for the defense of either. He had himself declared his "sympathies" were "with the Conservatives, and his opinions with the Liberals," and that he and his Peelite colleagues, during this period of political isolation, were like roving icebergs on which men could not land with safety, but with which ships might come into perilous collision. Their weight was too great not to count, but it counted first this way and then that. Mr. Gladstone was conscientious in his opposition. He said: "I greatly felt being ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... Jerusalem and the establishment there of a Christian kingdom, pilgrims flocked to the holy places. Soon, however, piteous stories reached Jerusalem of the cruel spoliation and murder of unarmed pilgrims, on their journey from the coast, by hordes of roving lightly-armed Bedouins, against whom the heavily-armed Franks were powerless. The evil was growing well-nigh intolerable when, in 1118, two young French nobles, Hugh of Payens and Godfrey of St. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... of New Zealand in the year 1827 was an artist by profession. "A love of roving and adventure," he states, tempted him, at an early age, to sea. In 1815 he procured a passage on board a storeship bound for Sicily and Malta, where he had a brother stationed who was a captain in the ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... after Roving and Tipling all Night, For his Groat in the Morning may set his Head right. And the Beau, who ne'er fouls his White fingers with Brass, May have his Sixpen' worth ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... they suffered to repletion. Just as the romance of adventure sang its siren song in their ears and whispered vague messages of strange lands and lusty deeds, so the delicious mysteries of home enticed 'Frisco Kid's roving fancies, and his brightest day-dreams were of the thing's he knew not—brothers, sisters, a ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... habit; thoughts seemed to go round in a whirl. And in the midst of the whirl there would come before her mind's eye, not now Tom Caruthers' face, but the vision of a pair of pleasant grey eyes at once keen and gentle; or of a close head of hair with a white hand roving amid the thick locks of it; or the outlines of a figure manly and lithe; or some little thing done with that ease of manner which was so winning. Sometimes she saw them as in Mrs. Wishart's drawing-room, and sometimes at the table in the ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... wandering, n. rambling, ranging, roving, strolling, itineracy, peregrination, pilgrimage; digression, expatiation, departure, deviation, divergence, errantry; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... These roving musicians, who generally united the qualities of the poet, the musical composer, and performer, were treated with much favor by princes and all the nobility, and were everywhere warmly welcomed for a long period. It is, however, far from pleasant ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... the country—that which has life, and freedom, and humour—comes from the Pariahs. And was it different in those days, when Rabelais, and Von Hutten, and Giordano Bruno were, in their wise, Pariahs and Gipsies, roving from city to city, often wanting bread and dreading fire, but asking for ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... is, for it I wait; To it, ah! let me wed my fate, And, like a sad wife, supplicate My roving lord no more to flee; If leisure is—but, ah! 'tis not— 'Tis long past praying for, God wot; The fashion of it men forgot, About the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... mentioned kingdoms, probably named from the barbarous chiefs of roving savage tribes, are now ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Fate was upon him. They got into all the paddocks they shouldn't have been in. They scattered themselves over the run promiscuously. They visited the cultivation paddock and the vegetable-garden at their own sweet will. And then they took to roving. In a body they visited the neighbouring stations, and played havoc with the ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... Three low, prolonged raps on the wall, and—he is among them. They are seated about a small table, on which is a plan of the prison. One is about forty-five,—a tall, thin man, with a wiry frame, a jovial face, and eyes which have the wild, roving look of the Arab's. He is dressed after the fashion of English sportsmen, and his dog—a fine gray bloodhound—is stretched on the hearthrug near him. He looks a reckless, desperate character, and has an adventurous history.[D] In battle he is said to be a thunderbolt,—lightning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... King's intentions were still unknown, fresh relays of ambassadors were sent out to him. But meanwhile French officers and men passed the gates in little bands of fifteen or so at a time, and were seen roving about the town unarmed, jaunty, and gallant, bearing pieces of chalk in their hands to mark the houses on which their troops were to be billeted. While affecting an air of contemptuous indifference, they were unable to hide their amazement at the sight ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... the Zephyr press'd This bud at morning light; At noon it fann'd its glowing breast, And nestled there at night. But other flowers sprung up thereby, And lured the roving gale; The Zephyr left to droop and die The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... talked of his journey the rustic displayed his strong teeth in mischievous smiles. It was a wild adventure of which his friends there in Iviza would talk a long time! He had always been of a roving and venturesome disposition—a vicious habit formed when he was a soldier. The master of a small trading vessel, a great friend of his, had picked up a cargo for Majorca, and had invited him just for a joke to come along. But it was risky to joke with him. As soon as the idea ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... short on the word. Silence reigned in the big, bright room except for the occasional rustle of Clarence's newspaper. His wife sat idle, her eyes roving indifferently from the gayly papered walls to the gayly flowered hangings, the great bowl of daffodils on the bookcase, the portrait of Carol that, youthful and self-conscious, looked down from the mantel. On the desk a later photograph of Carol, in a silver frame, was duly ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... march, walk, promenade, constitutional, stroll, saunter, tramp, jog trot, turn, stalk, perambulation; noctambulation^, noctambulism; somnambulism; outing, ride, drive, airing, jaunt. equitation, horsemanship, riding, manege [Fr.], ride and tie; basophobia^. roving, vagrancy, pererration^; marching and countermarching; nomadism; vagabondism, vagabondage; hoboism [U.S.]; gadding; flit, flitting, migration; emigration, immigration, demigration^, intermigration^; wanderlust. plan, itinerary, guide; handbook, guidebook, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... so much game here, for the Indians were ever on the alert and the roving bands always on the verge of starvation. But once in a while there was a feast of fresh meat and Mere Dubray made tasty messes ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... with a gentle modesty such as Pontorno has painted in the sublime face of his "Christian Chastity caressing the Celestial Unicorn." The mistress of the manor, whose silence was respected by her companions when they saw that her eyes were roving over those vast plains, once arid, and now fertile by her will, walked on, her arms folded, with a distant look, as if to some ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... tests of the troop-ship and the married quarters when he died. For a while her parents hoped she would make her widowed home in Boston; but her heart had been given irrevocably to the British army—to its distinguished correctness, to its sober glories, its world-wide roving, and its picturesque personal associations. Though she had seen little of England, except for occasional visits on leave, she had become English in tastes and at heart. For a year after Gerald's death she lived with his family at Silchester, in preference to going to her own. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... Miama. Simon Kenton and two young men, named Clark and Montgomery, were employed to proceed in advance, and reconnoiter. Kenton was a native of Fauquier county, Virginia, where he was born the fifteenth of May, 1755; his companions were roving backwoodsmen, denizens of the wood, and ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... that the roving-tempered Dr. Spencer had been on fire to volunteer to the Crimean hospitals, and had unwillingly sacrificed the project, not to Dr. May's conviction that it would be fatal in his present state of health, but to Ethel's private entreaty that he would not add to her ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sort of self-constituted roving commission, to carry into effect a long-projected intention to make a week's tramp in "Dickens-Land," for purposes of health and recreation; to visit Gad's Hill, Rochester, Chatham, and neighbouring classical ground; ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... heard when homing) That her roving spouse was dead; Why she had danced in the gloaming We ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... His roving eyes showed him that the coast was clear, and he slipped a letter into her hand-bag which she opened, and from it he took the letter she cautiously disclosed. He chatted awhile ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... from Cherbourg, who happened to get wrecked on the Hanois, and settled and married in Peter Port. Paul Martel had grown up to the sea. He had sailed to foreign parts and seen much of the world. He was an excellent sailor, and when he tired of a roving life turned his abilities to account in those peculiar channels of trade which the situation of the Islands and their ancient privileges particularly fitted them for. The Government in London had, indeed, tried, time after time, to suppress the free-trading, ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... from Majorca. The gully there was "rushed" about nine years since, when some twenty thousand diggers were drawn together, with even more than the usual proportion of grog-shanty keepers, loafers, thieves, and low men and women of every description. In fact, the very scum of the roving population of the colony seems to have accumulated in the camp; and crime upon crime was committed, until at length an affair occurred, more dreadful and outrageous than anything that had preceded it, which ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... everything now lay at hand, Kenny never doubted. Already he had rocketed sentimentally into inspiration. If a certain vagueness of detail sent him roving abstractedly around the studio with the letter in his hand, the inspiration in itself was amazingly clear. Yes, he would fare forth and find Brian. He would tramp every mile of the road as Brian had done. He would find ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... all the troops at Little Rock were reviewed by Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, late of the Army of the Potomac. He lost a leg at the battle of Gettysburg, which incapacitated him for active service, so President Lincoln gave him a sort of roving commission to visit and inspect all the western troops. In conducting the review at Little Rock, on account of his maimed condition he rode along the line in an open carriage. The day was exceedingly hot, the troops ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... teacher, such as William E. Barton, father of Bruce Barton, who after preaching in the thinly settled parts of Knox County, Kentucky, became the pastor of a Chicago church in later years. Some of the early roving preachers even studied theology in the great centers of learning ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... inlaid with gold; but he gave Helgi a gold ring and a mantle, and Grim a shield and sword. After that he took Helgi and Grim into his body-guard, and thanked them for their good help. They were with the earl that winter and the summer after, till Kari went sea-roving; then they went with him, and harried far and wide that summer, and everywhere won the victory. They fought against Godred, King of Man, and conquered him; and after that they fared back, and had gotten ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... this crowd was gathered to a great height; they ran roving over the whole city, shut up all the shops, and forced all the people to join with them from thence. They went up to the castle, and renewing the clamour, a strange consternation ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... statements, which are continually put forward by designing men. Hence, I can well believe that it will be an acceptable service, at this particular moment, when the very constitution of the two English universities is under the unfriendly revision of Parliament, when some roving commission may be annually looked for, under a contingency which I will not utter in words (for I reverence the doctrine of euphemismos), far worse than Cromwellian, that is, merely personal, and to winnow the existing ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... of Union Square they caught a roving taxicab. Their next thought, after bare escape, was necessarily concerned with shelter, a hiding-place. To the chauffeur's "Where to, ladies?" Mrs. De Peyster said, "Hotel Dauphin." The instinct, the Mrs. De Peyster of habit, ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... left to stagnate for want of proper occupation or to run riot in any vain pursuit she might happen upon by accident, while her senses were allowed to have their way, unrestrained by any but the vaguest principles. Thanks to her free roving outdoor habits, her life was healthy if it were not happy, and she promised to mature early. Youth and sex already began to hang out their signals—clear skin, slim figure, light step, white teeth, thick hair, bright eyes. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... an instinctive cry to her brother inarticulate upon her lips. They came nearer, they were opposite to her; her brother Jim keeping step with the invader, and even conversing with him with an animation she had seldom seen upon his face—they passed! She had been unnoticed except by one. The roving eye of the deserter had detected her handsome face among the leaves, slightly turned towards it, and poured out his whole soul in a single swift wink of ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... districts dealt one more blow to the power of the French Jacobins and their black friends. These last were formidable only when the quest was plunder. Even the iron will of their ablest leader, Toussaint l'Ouverture, could infuse no steadiness into the swarthy levies, which, roving almost at will in the mountainous interior, were wellnigh as dangerous to the Republicans as ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the Saxon habit of talking over a meal. Well might they gorge; for this was the one great annual feast. There would follow a winter of stint and hardship and hunger; and every soul in the camp was laying up store against famine. Even the dogs were happy, for they were either roving over the field of the hunt, or lying disabled from gluttony at ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... roving feet To tread the heavenly road; And new supplies each hour I meet While pressing ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... that she was a beautiful lady from London. Kranich carried the story dutifully to his aunt, adding his own ingenious surmise: "Can Francine have become sufficiently Anglicised to contract secret marriages with roving revolutionists, and scamper about the country with ardent young Frenchmen in the style of Gretna Green?" In fact, it was really from London that Mrs. Ashburleigh was proceeding, for the purpose of taking care, in the Rhenish city where he was dying, of her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... short for want of wind. He swung about and glared defiantly at his pursuers out of injected eyes. He had never seen a lasso before, possibly not a man; but his instinct told him that the horse and rider behind him were not roving the plain in his own aimless fashion. He stood pawing the ground and shaking his great red nostrils. Suddenly to his surprise the part of the horse new to him lifted itself, and a black coiling something, graceful and swift as a rattlesnake, sprang through the air with a sharp audible rush. ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... natural manner, the body is usually either buried in the village or outside. A large portion of the negro races affect nudity, despising clothing as effeminate; but these are chiefly the more boisterous roving pastorals, who are too lazy either to grow cotton or strip the trees of their bark. Their young women go naked; but the mothers suspend a little tail both before and behind. As the hair of the negro will not grow long, a barber might be dispensed with, were it not that they delight in odd fashions, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... given respecting the arrival of this family on the banks of the Yadkin, or of their habits of life while there. We simply know that they were far away in the untrodden wilderness, in the remotest frontiers of civilization. Bands of Indians were roving around them, but even if hostile, so long as they had only bows and arrows, the settler in his log-hut, which was a fortress, and with his death-dealing ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... the earth, until, by degrees, he is driven to seek for new means, by which his wants may be supplied and enlarged. He then becomes a hunter and a fisher. As his species increases, greater necessities come upon him, when he gradually abandons the roving life of the savage for the more stationary pursuits of the herdsman. These beget still more settled habits, when he begins the practice of agriculture, forms ideas of the rights of property, and has his own, both defined and secured. The forest, the stream, and the sea are now no ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the love of home do its familiar names enter! And we appeal to the common sense of everybody, whether those we have quoted above are not enough to make a man ashamed of his birthplace. They are the ear-mark of a roving, careless, selfish population, which thinks only of mill-privileges, and never of pleasant meadows,—which has built the ugliest dwellings and the biggest hotels of any nation, save the Calmucks, over whom reigns the Czar. Upon the American soil seem destined to meet and fuse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... mental economy the faculty of wonder is so thoroughly infused, that it has inoculated the entire system, and forms an inherent, inexplicable, and almost elementary part of it. These persons sail about in their pleasure yachts, on roving expeditions, under a pretended 'right of search,' armed to the teeth, and boarding all sorts of crafts to obtain plunder for their favorite gratification. They are most uneasy and uncomfortable companions, having no ear for commonplace subjects of conversation, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... A roving war-party stumbled upon one of Boone's companions and killed him, and the others then left Boone and journeyed home; but his brother came out to join him, and the two spent the winter together. Self-reliant, fearless, and the frowning defiles of Cumberland Gap, they ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... urns lifting; Hyale, and Niphe, Phiale, Rhanis, Psecas, lave her limbs. Here while the goddess in the limpid wave Washes as 'custom'd,—lo! Actaeon comes;— His sportive toil till morning dawn deferr'd: And roving through the vale with random steps, By hapless fate conducted, he arrives Close to the sacred grove. Within the grot Stream-pouring, when he stept, the naked nymphs,— Then first by man beheld,—their bosoms beat; Fill'd the deep grove with outcries loud; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... don't think Mademoiselle Lannes will incur much danger," said Weber. "It's true, roving bands of Uhlans or hussars sometimes pass in our rear, but it's likely that she and other French girls going to the front march ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had; but it grieves me sorely, even to think of my only brother taking part with the hirelings of the North in an attempt to subdue the free, untamed, and untamable South. It would not hurt my feelings more to know that you were a buccaneer, roving on the ocean for the plunder ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... man talked mostly as though he spoke to himself. He seldom more than glanced at her, his eye roving everywhere but at the person to whom he spoke. Ruth started toward the house from which the fire and lamplight shone so cordially. The dogs stood before her—Tiger, the big hound, and Rose, a ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... was yet handsomer than he had been, more set and manly, though still he affected his coxcomb party-coloured dress with the turned-up shoes of which the points were fastened by little golden chains beneath the knee. Still he was a fine man with his roving black eyes, his loose mouth and little pointed beard from which, as from his hair, came an odour of scents. Seeing me in my merchant's gown, for I remained mindful of my uncle's advice as regards attire, he spoke to me as great ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... weather had turned ill, and Robin Hood's band stayed close to their dry and friendly cave. The third day brought a diversion in the shape of a trap by a roving party of the Sheriff's men. A fine stag had been struck down by one Of Will Stutely's fellows, and he and others had stepped forth from the covert to seize it, when twenty bowmen from Nottingham appeared at ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... daughter of Isabella, whose husband was Ferdinand. By what seems to us the most whimsical of political arrangements, the Papuan islander, the Calabrian peasant, the Amsterdam merchant, the semi-civilized Aztec, the Moor of Barbary, the Castilian grandee, the roving Camanche, the Guinea negro, the Indian Brahmin, found themselves—could they but have known it—fellow-citizens of one commonwealth. Statutes of family descent, aided by fraud, force, and chicane, had annexed the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... were Satraps worthy of such a Soldan. The buff jerkin, broad belt, and long sword of one, showed him to be a Low Country soldier, whose look of scowling importance, and drunken impudence, were designed to sustain his title to call himself a Roving Blade. It seemed to Nigel that he had seen this fellow somewhere or other. A hedge-parson, or buckle-beggar, as that order of priesthood has been irreverently termed, sat on the Duke's left, and was easily distinguished by his torn band, flapped hat, and the remnants of a ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... really fear death. But they do dread captivity. They are so fond of their roving life, their vast liberty—room! An Indian is too brave to commit suicide, save in the most rare and desperate cases. But his heart breaks from home-sickness, and he dies there in despair. And then to see his helpless little children die, one by one, with the burning ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... more probable than that at very early periods the more advanced nations of the East obtained communication with the Grecian continent and isles? What more probable than that the maritime and roving Phoenicians entered the seas of Greece, and were tempted by the plains, which promised abundance, and the mountains, which afforded a fastness? Possessed of a superior civilization to the hordes they found, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a tiger his prey, and seized his mother's hand that held the bottle, and he furiously pumped the milk into that insatiable gulf of a stomach. But he found time to gaze about the room too. A tear stood in each roving eye, caused by ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... him toward a smaller room off the main workshop. The giant followed docilely, his eyes roving about the room—the pitiful questioning still upon his handsome features. Von Horn turned toward ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the children's imagination roving. Their first charges were not so unreasonable. Why, the vagrant Sarah Good, a social outcast, wandering about without any settled habitation; and Sarah Osburn, a bed-ridden woman, half distracted ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... my eyes, a well-born knight and a sincere man; but he loves his king, and his ends are juster than his means. Master Hilyard, enough of the past evil. Some months after the field of Hexham, I chanced to fall, when alone, amongst a band of roving and fierce Lancastrian outlaws. Thou, their leader, recognizing the crest on my helm, and mindful of some slight indulgence once shown to thy strange notions of republican liberty, didst save me from the swords of thy followers: from ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... perfect spring afternoon, and the air was filled with vague, roving scents, as if the earth exhaled the sweetness of hidden flowers. In the apple orchard the young grass was powdered with gold, and the long grey shadows of the trees barred the ground like the sketchy outlines in a ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... had escaped comparatively free from the ravages of war, but the approach of roving bands of Burgundian or English troops frequently spread terror through Domremy. Once the village had been plundered by some of these marauders, and Jeanne and her family had been driven from their home, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... that subtle women know, Hourly she used, to catch some lover new. None kenned the bent of her unsteadfast bow, For with the time her thoughts her looks renew, From some she cast her modest eyes below, At some her gazing glances roving flew, And while she thus pursued her wanton sport, She spurred the slow, and reined ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... we saw the place of our destination on a rising ground surrounded with fields. The town was surrounded with a low mud-wall and stockade to keep off wild beasts, and as a slight protection against roving freebooters. Larger towns, especially those belonging to warrior chiefs, have high mud-walls, sometimes with loopholes and bastions, and are capable of standing a siege where the enemy has neither cannon nor battering-rams. The gate was made of planks ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... early education, until she found that she acquired but little strength in her new experience. How, translated to a backwoods society, she was hated by the women, and called proud and "fine," and how her dear husband lost popularity on that account with his fellows. How, led partly by his roving instincts, and partly from other circumstances, he started with her to California. An account of that tedious journey. How it was a dreary, dreary waste in her memory, only a blank plain marked by a little cairn of stones,—a child's grave. How she had noticed that little ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... building, the most characteristic feature of the English landscape, with its square grey tower or shapely spire, a tower that is, perhaps, loopholed and battlemented, and tells of turbulent times when it afforded a secure asylum and stronghold when hostile bands were roving the countryside. Within, piscina, ambrey, and rood-loft tell of the ritual of former days. Some monuments of knights and dames proclaim the achievements of some great local family. But all this weighs for nothing in the eyes of the renovating squire ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... something like a peasant's dress, and wore the round hat which, in Wales at least, seems to suit the character of the female face so well; her long and waving ringlets fell carelessly upon her shoulders, and her cheek flushed from walking. Before I had a moment's notice to recover my roving thought, she spoke; her voice was full and round, but soft and thrilling, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... his eyes down to her from a roving quest among the tops of the trees. "It seems to me you want a ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... away, in front of the door, a shallow pool had formed in a depression of the hard, sun-baked soil, and as the soft light of the moon fell upon it there came a whirr of wings as a flock of night-roving, spur-winged plover lit upon its margin. I could have shot half a dozen of them from where I sat, but felt that I could not lift gun to shoulder and slaughter when there was no need, and their shrill cries, as they ran to and fro, afforded me ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Miles, who had sat with her hands tightly locked and her great haggard dark eyes roving tensely from one to another—"you and I were partners, weren't we?... Of course! Remember you were dummy and I played the hand? You went out to telephone, didn't you?... That's right! I remember clearly now! Flora said she had to telephone the house to ask how her two babies—six and four ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... kind, fed on provisions collected by the mother and placed in a narrow cell is subject to conditions of health unknown to the roving grub that goes where it likes and feeds itself on what it can pick up. The first, the recluse, is no more able than the second, the gadabout, to solve the problem of a food which can be entirely assimilated, without leaving an unclean ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... by which the taverner addressed him the fellow bore no outward signs. Arms he carried, it is true; a sword and dagger at his belt, whilst beside him on the table stood a rusty steel-cap. But these warlike tools served only to give him the appearance of a roving masnadiero or a cut-throat for hire. Presently abandoning the comtemplation of Gonzaga he turned to his companions, and across to the listener floated a coarse and boasting tale of a plunderous warfare in Sicily ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... leaving Rome for a few days. Under existing circumstances the chances of his arrest were not worth considering. His cousin was eager to show him all the sights; and the freebooter was glad of a little relaxation from his roving life, glad to forget for an instant that his country was his squadron, his rights at law were his cutlass. Moreover, he had taken a vast liking to Agias; deeply dipped in blood himself, he dared not desire his cousin to join him in his career of violence—yet he could not part with the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... patient, of an intimate dropping in for an informal call. It came to her that she must amend her opinion that Dr. Sartorius was quite without social ties. She was about to return to her work when the young man's roving eyes reached her in their tour and rested upon her face for several seconds, their vacant gaze giving way ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... not, however, quite tall enough to do this, but Zaidee's quick eyes, roving around, spied a wooden stool which she immediately dragged up on the little platform, to stand on. She climbed up and looked in. It was not the vat in which she had turned the spigot, and it was half full of whey with great pieces of the ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... fact that their life here on Capella IV was possible only by application of modern industrial technology. That rodeo down the plaza—tank-tilting instead of bronco-busting. Here they were, living frozen in a romantic dream, a world of roving ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... of suddenness and life. You had, indeed, to wait for an interruption in dialogue—it is true you had to wait for it; so had the interrupted speaker on the stage. But when the interruption came, it had still a false air of vivacity; and the waiting of the interrupted one was so ill done, with so roving an eye and such an arrest and failure of convention, such a confession of a blank, as to prove that there remained a kind of reluctant and inexpert sense of movement. It still seemed as though the actor and the actress acknowledged some ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... 'Story of Saif ibn dhi Yazan,' the 'Tale of al-Zir,' the 'Romance of Dalhmah,' and especially the 'Romance of Antar' and the 'Thousand Nights and A Night.' The last two romances are excellent commentaries on Arab life, at its dawn and at its fullness, among the roving chiefs of the desert and the homes of revelry in Bagdad. As the rough-hewn poetry of Imr-al-Kais and Zuheir is a clearer exponent of the real Arab mind, roving at its own suggestion, than the more ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Five days were they riding before they came within sight of the blue sea with its ships and its quiet green islands. That sight brought a restless yearning into Olaf's spirit. It seemed as if nothing would now content him but that he should go out upon the wide ocean and spend all his days in roving. And so much did he speak of the ships and of the viking life that when at last the time came for the return to Holmgard, Sigurd Erikson had hard work to win ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... master to another; every man that would employ him thinking he might get him to stop with him for a constancy. But it was all useless; he'd be off after half a year, or sometimes a year at the most, for he was fond of roving; and that man would never give himself any trouble about him afterwards; though, may be if he had continted himself with him, and been sober and careful, he would be willing to assist and befriend him, when he might ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... surmounted by a brow rather high than broad. The eyes were the most remarkable, and commanded instant attention. They were large, black and flashing, and, in spite of the injunctions of the old man, wide open and roving round the apartment. By the manner in which he had been addressed, it was evident he ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... in many respects." Writing of it later he said: "Our life was as full of romance as heart could desire. We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hairbreadth 'scapes from the roving bands of Federals who were continually visiting that Debatable Land. . . . Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashes on the beach of fair Burwell's Bay, and ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... perceived, in his dim way, a kind of mastery in this heavy-booted, homespun-clad, tobacco-chewing, grave-eyed man from the backwoods, and for a long time he felt none of his usual pugnacity. But by and by the craving for freedom began to stir in his breast, and the blood of his hill-roving ancestors thrilled toward the wild pastures. The glances which, from time to time, he cast upon the backwoodsman at the other end of the rope became wary, calculating, and hostile. This stalwart form, striding before him, was the one barrier between himself and freedom. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... reason on her side; I have talked too much; but I must turn off another way.— [Aloud.] Will you then make no difference, Amanda, between the language of our sex and yours? There is a modesty restrains your tongues, which makes you speak by halves when you commend; but roving flattery gives a loose to ours, which makes us still speak double what we think. Enter SERVANT. Ser. Madam, there is a lady at the door in a chair desires to know whether your ladyship sees company; her name is Berinthia. Aman. Oh dear! 'tis ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... to right and left, as he walked through the long, barn-like building, and took in with other glances the inadequate decorations of the graceless interior. His roving eye caught the lettering over the lateral archways, and with a sort of contemptuous compassion he turned into the Fine ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... who had been alive only minutes earlier had been close friends of his; Shann had never known anyone but acquaintances in his short, roving life. Most people had ignored him completely except to give orders, and one or two had been actively malicious—like Garth Thorvald. Shann grimaced at a certain recent memory, and then that grimace faded into wonder. If young Thorvald hadn't purposefully tried to get ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... determined. "We'll stop there to break the news. Then we'll be wedded, you and I, according to the custom of your people. Our honeymoon—years of it—will be spent in the Nomad, roving the universe. Mado'll agree, I know. Wanderers of the heavens we'll be, Ora. But we'll have each other; and when we've—you've—had enough of it, I'll be ready to settle down. Anywhere you say. Are ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... street seemed not disturbed by his rapidly swelling audience. He stood in the place he had selected, his insolent eyes roving over the assembled company, his thin, expressive lips opening a very little to allow words ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Augustus, [100] the kings of Bosphorus were the humble, but not useless, allies of the empire. By presents, by arms, and by a slight fortification drawn across the Isthmus, they effectually guarded against the roving plunderers of Sarmatia, the access of a country, which, from its peculiar situation and convenient harbors, commanded the Euxine Sea and Asia Minor. [101] As long as the sceptre was possessed by a lineal succession of kings, they acquitted themselves of their important charge ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... hours were already various and successful. Even at the wolf-dance, before he had wearied of its monotonous drumming and pageant, his roving eye had rested upon a girl whose eyes he caught resting upon him. A look, an approach, a word, and each was soon content with the other. Then, when her duties called her to the post from him and the stream's ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... and child—except a boy who fled into the woods—and took their scalps. Then she scuttled all the canoes but one, and taking the scalps with her as proof of her revenge, she put the nurse and the boy into the canoe and paddled down the river. She escaped all roving bands and won her way home again to find her husband and sons safe and well, and to show the scalps—the blood payment for her murdered child. Such were the stories told and retold in every colonial township, round every fire; such were the stories brought home ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... his degree in 1598, he followed the example of many another man of original mind, athirst for knowledge of the world, and led a roving life for six years, "in order to observe and collect what was curious in nature, mysterious in arts, or ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Who'd have thought it for a young gentleman of the quality-like yourself! But, there, some are born under the traveller's star, sir—created with a roving spirit. And the Lord help 'em, I say, for they're so made as to be powerless to help themselves seemingly. Rove they must and will, if they are to taste any contentment—an itch in their feet from the cradle nought but foreign lands'll ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... aside, well out of Kitty's roving sight. She had noticed how his hands had trembled as he brought it; she did not notice that her own shook a little in thus ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... everybody will feel suspense waiting for the next show. Has Jamison got the Purple Death on the Planet of Smoky Hilltops? Will darling Alicia Keith break out in green spots next time we watch her on the air? Has Captain Al of the star-roving space-ship breathed in spores of the Swelling Fungus? Are the space-travellers doomed? Tune in on our next broadcast and see! My dear Bill, if we weren't signed up for sponsors' fees, I'd raise our ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... on, from one subject to another. Andy had given his young partner the full particulars of his own roving life, and in return Matt had related everything concerning himself, and the two felt as if they had known each other for years; in fact, as Matt once stated later on, they were more like brothers ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... eyes, roving here and there, saw still more cartridge shells. Walking cat-footed, he made no sound but suddenly three buzzards rose on heavy wings and he went swiftly to where they had been squatting. A dead man lay up against the cliff, a saddle blanket thrown ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... to leave this subject without instituting an inquiry relative to the time when these mines were wrought, and the people who worked them. Many who have been taught to regard the present roving tribes of Indians as instinctively wise in matters of medicine and mining are ready to award to that race the credit of having worked these mines; but, inasmuch as even a traditional knowledge of their existence was unknown to the Indians at the time the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... at a town called Bruton, in Somersetshire, and my parents were well-to-do people. My mother died when I was very young; my father, who had been a great traveller in his days, often told me of his adventures, which gave me a strong desire for a roving life. I used to beg my father to let me go to sea with some captain of his acquaintance; but he only warned me solemnly against the dangers to which sailors were exposed, and told me I should soon wish to ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... had in view some very important object. The nearest settlement—Anadyrsk—was almost two hundred and fifty miles distant; the country along the lower Anadyr was said to be wholly destitute of wood, and inhabited only by roving bands of Chukchis, and a party landed there without an interpreter would have no means of communicating even with these wild, lawless natives, or of obtaining any means whatever of transportation. If there were any Americans there, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... girl whose affections have been blighted is presented with a Scotch Collie to divert her mind, and the roving adventures of her pet lead the young mistress ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child |
