"Twinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slowly. Again and again I consulted my watch by the light of the moon, which was now rising high in the heavens, and thought that it would never come to an end. Listen as I would, there was nothing to be heard, and as the mist still prevailed the only thing I could see except the heavens, was the twinkling of the fires lit ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... with twinkling eyes. "Queer thing to me," he said, "is how you and this gent Gregg have hit it off so well together. Might almost say it was like you'd shot Gregg and now was trying to make up for it. But, of course, ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... forbids me to make two on't; but, never fear—the nightcap will only warm my brain, not clog it. So, man or devil, give me notice if you are disturbed, and rely on me in a twinkling." So saying, the cavalier retreated into his separate apartment, and Colonel Everard, taking off the most cumbrous part of his dress, lay down in his hose and doublet, and composed himself ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... mile from the point where they had entered the water; then they struggled ashore, and, clambering up the bank and crossing the railroad, sought for the farm which they had observed from the hill-top. Twinkling lights in the windows attracted their attention, and within half an hour they were close ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... benches around them, and a frightful old stove in a corner. In the middle, linen was hung on lines to dry. Anton could hardly suppose they meant to dance here; but the linen was torn down by one servant in the twinkling of an eye, while another ran to the stove, and was equally expeditious in blowing up the fire, and in a very few moments six couples stood up for a quadrille. As there was a lady wanting, a young count, with a black beard like velvet, and a wondrously beautiful pair of blue ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... It is the universal spelling. That love is being spelled out to all the race by every twinkling star in the upper blue, every shade of green in the lower brown, by every cooling shading night, and every fragrantly dewy morning. Every breath of air and bite of food and draught of water is repeating God's spelling ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... desert and the black shadows of the hills. It's grand, but it's terrible too; and then when you think that we really are, as that dragoman said just now, on the very end of civilisation, and with nothing but savagery and bloodshed down there where the Southern Cross is twinkling so prettily, why, it's like standing on the beautiful edge ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the sights," responded Maskull with twinkling eyes. "But first of all, to dine. I can't remember having eaten all day. You seem to have been hunting to some purpose, so ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... bursting shells stabbed through the smoke of their explosion with little, twinkling flashes, like the sparkle of innumerable mirrors heliographing messages of death. There was one incessant roar rising and falling in waves of prodigious sound. The whole line of battle was in a grayish murk, which obscured all landmarks, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... row was heard at the door. St. Giles's was just beginning his orisons. Loud shouts, hard blows, and deep oaths were heard, with cries for the policeman, and "Murder, murder," from powerful lungs. In a twinkling the kitchen was emptied, and then came the din of strife—struggling, heavy falls, swearing, the policeman's voice, and the roar of ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... have it, I alit upon my feet within the vehicle. immediately, he bolted out behind, and turning down an alley, was out of sight in the twinkling of an eye. The recruits, aroused by the bustle, could not exactly comprehend the merits of the transaction. Seeing, however, a man, the precise counterpart of the felon, standing upright in the cart before their eyes, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... little girl," replied Slattin, rising and standing looking down at her, with his gold tooth twinkling in the lamplight, "there will be a whole division, if a whole ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... with bloom, and the tireless bees still buzzed thick among its boughs,—when Jeanne, standing in the doorway at sunset, saw two riders approaching the inn. At her first glance she recognized Willan Blaycke. Jeanne's mind moved quickly. In the twinkling of an eye she had sprung back into the bar-room, and said to ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... while they were all busying themselves with preparation, the sun began to set, and the hour came at which all the angels appear before God and worship Him; and Michael also flew up into the heavens in the twinkling of an eye, and stood before the Lord. And when all the angels had done their worship and gone forth again, Michael remained and said to the Lord, "Lord, I cannot speak to Abraham about his death; for I have ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... worn't all," returned the fellow gruffly; "but if ye be in such a mighty hurry, bring 'un along here, and I'll clap a shoe on 'un for ye in a twinkling." ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... perhaps, but she was infinitely more attractive. She was small, but beautiful in form; and she sprang from her horse with the grace of a kitten. Her face was not so white as her companion's, but its color was entrancing. Her expression was animated, and her great brown eyes danced like twinkling stars ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... dark watches of the night—impressions, conclusions, based upon no actual or recognized action of the physical senses—Josephine rose, passed to the window and looked out. The moonlight lay upon the lawn like a broad silver blanket. Faint stars were twinkling in the clear sky overhead. The night brooded her planets, hovering the world, so that life ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... cool the heated brows of the travellers, and the twinkling starlight revealed in the distance a grove, waving to and fro with the gentle motion of the air. Heimbert cast his eyes to the ground and said, "Go before me, sweet maiden, and guide my path to the spot where I shall find this threatening ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... there is a nice meadow just beyond the shrubbery. Barbara knows the way; she often went there with—' He checks himself. Granny signs to them to go, and Barbara, kisses both the Colonel's hands. 'The Captain will be jealous, you know,' he says, twinkling. ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... could carry him, started along the shore in one direction, and Langton in the other. Sometimes Owen found the sand smooth enough, but at others he came to rough rocks, over which he had to climb. Now and then he saw a light on his left twinkling in the distance, but he passed no human habitation. Again and again, however, he shouted, hoping that some fisherman's boat might be concealed among the rocks. No one came near him, and he concluded that the people ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... to quarrel," said Nettie; "for indeed you are the only person in the world I can say a word to about the way things are going on," she added with a certain momentary softening of voice and twinkling of her eyelid, as if some moisture had gathered there. "I think Fred is in a bad way. I think he is muddling his brains with that dreadful life he leads. To think of a man that could do hundreds of things living like that! A woman, you know, can only do a thing or ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... data of little Milky Ways, moving swiftly; or data of hosts of angels, not absolute, or still dynamic. I suspect, myself, that the fixed stars are really fixed, and that the minute motions said to have been detected in them are illusions. I think that the fixed stars are absolutes. Their twinkling is only the interpretation by an intermediatist state of them. I think that soon after Leverrier died, a new fixed star was discovered—that, if Dr. Gray had stuck to his story of the thousands of fishes from one pail of water, had written upon it, lectured upon it, taken ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... Chris, with his eyes twinkling, but he looked straight before him. So did Griggs, and ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... moonlight shimmering in the chiffon of her skirts brightest on her crossed knee and the tip of her slipper; saw the blue curve of the characteristic shadow behind her, as she leaned back against the white step; saw the watery twinkling of sequins in the gauze wrap over her white shoulders as she moved, and the faint, symmetrical lights in her black hair—and not one alluring, exasperating twentieth-of-an-inch of her laughing profile was spared him as she seemed to turn to the ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... back into party harness. Rising by degrees, as a telescope is pulled out, until he stood in a most ungraceful attitude, his heavy black hair falling down over his cavernous brows, and his cold little eyes twinkling with anger, he would make some ludicrous remark, and then, reaching to his full height, he would lecture the offender against party discipline, sweeping at him with his large, bony right hand, in uncouth gestures, as if he would clutch ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... instant, but took it with a light leap, nor pausing an instant on the other side, sped on. The second man took it in the same way, then Hainteroh, and Henry, so close behind that the moccasins of the Wyandot were scarcely twinkling in the air before the feet of Henry were resting where ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... always ought to be one gentleman in a family, and that seems to be rather my line," answered Charlie, posing for the character with an assumption of languid elegance which would have been very effective if his twinkling eyes had ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... fair that his cool mood about Weatherbury people was changed. He had not expected her to exercise this power over him in the twinkling of an eye. Should he go on, and care nothing? He could not bring himself to do that. Beyond a politic wish to remain unknown, there suddenly arose in him now a sense of shame at the possibility that ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... throat. So quick and fierce was the onslaught that only one issue to it seemed possible. Elsa gasped and closed her eyes, thinking when she opened them to see that knife plunged to the hilt in Martin's breast, and Foy sprang forward. Yet in this twinkling of an eye the danger was done with, for by some movement too quick to follow, Martin had dealt his assailant such a blow upon the arm that the poniard, jarred from his grasp, flew flashing across the room to fall in Lysbeth's lap. Another second and the iron grip had closed upon Adrian's shoulder, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... order and in the twinkling of an eye reached the edge of the rocks. Peering around carefully in all directions he slid down a thick liana stalk and announced that there was no smoke, but that there were "niama." It was easy to surmise that he ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... see myself now, seated in the omnibus and trundling over the plain to the cadets' dancing-rooms. The very hot, still July night seems round me again. Lights were twinkling in the camp, and across the plain in the houses of the professors and officers; lights above in the sky too, myriads of them, mocking the tapers that go out so soon. I was happy with a little flutter ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... reflects the hidden purposes of the royal mind. Clothed in a mantle of dazzling gold or draped in rags of black clouds like a beggar, the might of the Westerly Wind sits enthroned upon the western horizon with the whole North Atlantic as a footstool for his feet and the first twinkling stars making a diadem for his brow. Then the seamen, attentive courtiers of the weather, think of regulating the conduct of their ships by the mood of the master. The West Wind is too great a king to be a dissembler: he is no calculator ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... his eyes twinkling with the fun of the situation. "This is all very well for you country people, Miss Sylla; but we poor Londoners have come down for rest after a spell of hot rooms and late hours, preparatory to encountering ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... mice rushed wildly about the room the Scarecrow had only time to note a whirl of skirts and a twinkling of feet as the girls disappeared from the palace — pushing and crowding one another in their mad ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of the green. The place had a peaceful rustic look at this dusky hour. There were no traces of that modern spoiler the speculative builder just hereabouts; and the quaint old houses near the barracks, where lights were twinkling feebly here and there, had a look of days that are gone, a touch of that plaintive poetry which pervades all relics of the past. Gilbert felt the charm of the hour; the air still and mild, the silence only broken by the cawing of palatial rooks; and whatever tenderness towards John ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... quick leap, and the Belgian felt a heavy body hurtle onto the rump of his terror-stricken mount. The horse, snorting, leaped forward. Giant arms encircled the rider, and in the twinkling of an eye he was dragged from his saddle to find himself lying in the narrow trail with a naked, white ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... stand long dazed and bewildered. In a twinkling she had drawn on a pair of men's boots over her bare feet, buckled her ulster over her night-dress, and rushed back upstairs to drag the blankets from the beds. Laden with these she sprang down the ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... his twinkling feet and then, near the twenty, he was challenged by a Claflin back. Carmine eluded him, crossed a third line, found himself confronted by the Blue's quarter, attempted to slip by on the outside, was tackled and borne struggling across ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... when I reached the foothills of the Swaziland mountains. Far off, as I approached, I could see the twinkling lights at the kraals on the high ledges. I camped at the foot of a very high, naked peak of granite, which was almost sheer on the side facing me. This peak turned out to be densely populated by, baboons. At intervals, ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... along at the irresistible velocity of a mile an hour, and wondering how far it is to the other end of the swampy road, when thrice welcome succor appears from a strange and altogether unexpected source. I had noticed a small fire, twinkling through the darkness away off in the swamp; and now the wind rises and the flames of the small fire spread to the thick patches of dead tuile. In a short time the whole country, including my road, is lit up by the fierce glare of the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... both these arts: And as the boding owl (or rather The bat, because her wings are leather) Steals from her private cell by night, And flies about the candle-light; So learned Partridge could as well Creep in the dark from leathern cell, And in his fancy fly as far To peep upon a twinkling star. Besides, he could confound the spheres, And set the planets by the ears; To show his skill, he Mars could join To Venus in aspect malign; Then call in Mercury for aid, And cure the wounds that Venus made. Great scholars have in Lucian read, When Philip King of Greece ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the sun shone out from behind the gray cloud. In the twinkling of an eye all the snowflakes were gone. 'Strange, strange!' thought the people of the Summer Land. 'What has become of ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... moment I stood horror-struck. I turned and saw the passage behind me blocked by another heavy brute, with a huge grey face and twinkling little eyes, advancing towards me. I looked round and saw to the right of me and a half-dozen yards in front of me a narrow gap in the wall of rock through which a ray of light ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... head. "No," she said, curious little twinkling lines deepening round her eyes, "I never ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... mean, poor place for a woman to lie in extremity.... And she had once been lovely—with warm, live youth, with twinkling eyes and modesty, with sympathy and merry ways to win the love o' folk! Ay; but 'twas wondrous hard to believe.... 'Twas a mean station of departure, indeed—a bare, disjointed box of a room, low-ceiled, shadowy, barren of comfort, but yet white and neat, kept by Judith's ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... after him with twinkling eyes of dry mirth, and slowly sauntered after him, watching him until he entered the little unpainted gate of the Carson house and tapped at the old gray door. Then Bi lunged across the street and entered a path ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... and the latch will go up," said the old grandmother. So the wolf pulled the bobbin and opened the door, and sprang upon the poor old grandmother and ate her all up in a twinkling. ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... twinkling he swooped up Mike's small coin, which had rattled to the pavement, and vanished with them in a struggling tangle of horse cars and omnibuses before Mike finished his desperate yell of, "Gim ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... breeze—precisely give us a right to call her beautiful. But there was both lustre and depth in her eyes. She was very pretty; as graceful as a bird, and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall while evening is drawing nigh. Instead of discussing her claim to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regard Phoebe as the example of feminine grace and availability combined, in a state of ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sands, fair Licia, on the shore, Or colored flowers, garlands of the spring, Or as the frosts not seen, not felt before, Or as the fruits that autumn forth doth bring; As twinkling stars, the tinsel of the night, Or as the fish that gallop in the seas; As airs each part that still escapes our sight, So are my sighs, controllers of my ease. Yet these are such as needs must have an end, For things finite none else hath nature done; Only the sighs, ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... clear night, brilliant with stars. In contrast with the twinkling and pure lights of the heavens, there were dim reds and greens and yellow-white lights on the surface of the ocean. These lights rocked and oscillated and tossed as the giant surges ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... my way, who should come across me but Dr. Sangrado, whom I had not seen since the day of my master's death. I took the liberty of touching my hat. He knew me in a twinkling. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... reader will see that the Protestant churches of America exist only by and through the numerical power of Protestantism, but should Romanism ever become powerful enough in this country she would, within the twinkling of an eye, destroy or confiscate every Protestant church ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... happened in the twinkling of an eye, but he recognised the sound; it was the whiz of a crossbow bolt, which had missed his head, and buried its point in a fir. The stumble saved him; the bolt would have struck his head or chest had not the horse gone nearly on his knee. The robber had so planned ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... last glimmer of twilight, by the light of the first twinkling star, the ladies, with many charming curtseys, make their appearance. Our house is soon full of the little crouching women, with their tiny slit eyes vaguely smiling; their beautifully dressed hair shining like polished ebony; their fragile bodies lost in the many folds of the exaggerated, wide garments, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... her hand to him with a smile, and he pressed it fondly to his lips. There were twinkling jewels upon the slender fingers; for the prettiest shop in Brighton—the brightest shop in Brighton—had been ransacked that morning by the fond, frivolous, happy husband, as pleased to bedeck his wife as a child to ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the fur department of old John McNabb's big store, looked up from his scrutiny of the Russian sable coat spread upon a table before him, and encountered the twinkling eyes of old ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... on the south side of the clump, and looked toward the south. He was rewarded by seeing the twinkling lights of the campfires, seemingly at no ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... it showed the house which held the light. It was not a large house, but it seemed to be a home. Home!—what is that? I wondered; and I remember that I pulled at the frozen legging, and moved, with pain, the limbs grown tired and sore. And, as one looked at that twinkling, comfortable light, how plainly the rest of the old song ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... represented, leant back in the box and kept up a running commentary in a low voice. "There never was a more Oriental thing invented than the crinoline," he observed, nodding towards a group of dancers blowing as lightly as balls of thistledown over the stage, slim ankles twinkling below their inflated skirts of misty whiteness; "I'm not trying to be epigrammatic, I mean it. Watch those girls there ... did you ever see such sway, such slope—I can't find the exact word for it? Each little movement—a raised eyebrow seems almost enough—and the crinoline sways this way and that, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... look changed to a bland smile as I saw the ragged straw hat with the hair standing out of the top, and the grubby face of Shock looking at me with his eyes twinkling and the skin all round wrinkled, while the rest of his ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... malevolent spirits constantly provoking diseases and infirmities upon men. They were alleged to surround mankind so densely that each person had a thousand to his right and ten thousand to the left of him. Endowed with the subtlest activity, they were able to reach the remotest points of earth in the twinkling ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... of the infinitude of successive universes created by the Supreme Being, is to that Being but as a single moment of time; or, as the celebrated Hindu proverb runs: "The creation, duration, and destruction of a universe is but the time of the twinkling of an eye to Brahman." In other words, that to the Supreme Being, all the past, all the present, all the future of the universe, must be as but a single thought in a single moment of time—an ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... keenest remembrance. Her diamonds, indeed, had over me that strange fascination which serpents are said to have over birds; and I would sit with my little mouth all agape, and my eyes fixed and staring, until they grew dazed, and I was frightened at the solemn twinkling of those many gems. In my absurd child-way, it was to my fancy as though the Lady were some great Altar or Herse of State in a Church, and her Jewels so many Lamps kindled about her, and to be kept alive for ever. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... delightful moment of sensational suspense was brief. In a twinkling the doorkeeper's vengeful hands ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... aboard, and in the twinkling of an eye were out of sight of land. Yet, once afloat, it seemed as though we should never reach our port in the moon—so it seemed to me as I lay awake in my little cabin, listening to the patient thud ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... out the prairies," said Obed White, his eyes twinkling. "Now that winter has made 'em brown, they need a dash of color and the Panther gives it to 'em. Fine feathers don't keep a man from being a man for a' that. What did you do in ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it. The previous evening a Baptiste Lake hunter, bound for the Landing, set on from our camp at a great rate astride of a couple of logs, which he held together with his legs, and disappeared round the bend below in a twinkling. A priest, too, with a companion, arrived about dusk in a canoe, and set off again, intending to beach at ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... the twinkling of an eye they both stood erect, freed. Life was transfigured for both at ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... little winking twinkling eye; was it on me all the time!' cried Mantalini, in a sort of ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... will lay on the floor, the general's wife kneeling on it, as on a prayer carpet, in an attitude of prayer, her clasped hands on the window sill, her wet eyes fixed on a faintly twinkling star, as though calling heaven to witness her inconsolable grief ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... conscious triumph? Give her her part of vanity, of youth, of desire to rule and be admired. Meanwhile Mr. Clive's drawings have been crackling in the fireplace at her feet, and the last spark of that combustion is twinkling out unheeded. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ran swiftly up the road to Wasen, and some twinkling lights and a huge crimson eye at the entrance to the great tunnel told us that we had done the ten miles to Goeschenen. No one stirred in the streets of the village, and, gliding cat-like past the station, Jack put the car at the beginning of the real ascent of the famous St. ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... on, throwing its sable mantle over the earth, the sounds of the busy day were hushed, and all the world seemed wrapped in the tranquil stillness of a summer night. The stars, in countless numbers, were twinkling and sparkling in the blue heavens above, while the new moon, like a silver crescent, shed its soft light upon a scene of rare beauty ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Horatio,' said Ida, looking at him with the loveliest eyes, twinkling a little at his expense; 'we all know that you are ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... established; but we soon discovered that the Indians had no other design than to haul the boats on shore: Many of them leaped off the rocks, and swam to them; and one of them got into that which belonged to the Tamar, and in the twinkling of an eye seized a seaman's jacket, and jumping over board with it, never once appeared above water till he was close in shore among his companions. Another of them got hold of a midshipman's hat, but not knowing how to take it off, he pulled it downward instead of lifting it up so that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... fourth corps, found himself during the hottest part of the action at a spot swept by the enemy's artillery. The Emperor, passing near him, said: "It is warm in your locality!"—"Yes, Sire; permit me to extinguish the fire."—"Go." This one word sufficed; in the twinkling of an eye the terrible battery was taken. In the evening the Emperor, seeing General Daleim, approached him, and said, "It seems you only had to blow on it." His Majesty alluded General Daleim's habit ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... their muddy clothes, as they come from the front, they are bedded down on the stone floor like cattle till they are well enough to go back to their job. It was a pitiful contrast to the little church at Blercourt, with the altar lights twinkling above the clean beds; and one wondered if even so near the front, it had to be. "The African village, we call it," one of our companions said with a laugh: but the African village has blue sky over it, and a clear stream runs between its ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... afterwards remembered, there was something absorbed, thoughtful, and self-concentrated in her deportment. She looked pale, as well she might, and held her torch with a nervous grasp, the tremor of which was seen in the irregular twinkling of the flame. This last was the chief perceptible sign of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... finish his statement, but ushered her into the compound. There were a few twinkling lights. She saw that there were a number of huts within this enclosure, each ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... and idolized brother David scandalized the family by marrying an actress and himself taking to the stage. But she had seen the bewitching "Miss Arnold" at the theatre in Baltimore—had, with fascinated eyes, followed her twinkling feet through the mazy dance, had listened with charmed ears to her exquisite voice, had sat spell-bound under her acting. To her childish mind, the stage had become a fairy-land and Miss Arnold its presiding genius. That brother David should love and marry her seemed ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... given their supper, and then Wopsie took them up on the roof. This was higher yet. It was a flat roof, with a broad, high railing all around it so no one could fall off. And from it Bunny and Sue could look all over New York, and see the twinkling lights far off, for it was now getting on toward evening, though ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... between the Bay of Whales and Hobart is nearly fifty degrees. If we could have sailed off this difference in longitude in the latitudes where we then were, and where a degree of longitude is only about thirteen nautical miles, it would all have been done in a twinkling; but the mighty mountain ranges of North Victoria Land were a decisive obstacle. We should first have to follow a northerly course until we had rounded the Antarctic Continent's northern outpost, Cape Adare, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... spreads his tail, flutters his wings, and erects his crest in a most warlike manner. The little dame was not a whit less vigilant than her spouse. Let but a blackbird pass over and she was off in a twinkling, pursuing him, pouncing down upon him savagely, and all the time uttering her plaintive "pe-o-wee!" till her mate joined her, and made it so uncomfortable for the big foe that he departed, protesting to be ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... and Foremost slowly raised his arms, and in a twinkling his hairy skin fell from him and he appeared before the astonished Nome as a beautiful woman, clothed in a flowing gown of pink gauze. In her dark hair flowers were entwined, and her face was ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... me by having it all written down in a twinkling, and going on with Cicero on her own account, while I plodded on up the "high tree" and around the "beautiful table." I hoped Miss Bousfield would rebuke her for insubordination, but she did not, and I began to think much less of both ladies ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... "Poh!" replied three-years-old Prudy, twinkling off the tears; "yes, I can neither. I won't go crying in! I didn't hurt me velly ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... afternoon passed. Sunset approached, yet the fight raged. Slowly the great luminary of day sank in the west, and twilight, cold and calm, threw its shadows across the waters; yet still the fight raged. The stars came out, twinkling sharp and clear, in that half tropical sky: yet still the fight raged. The hum of the day had now subsided, and the cicada was heard trilling its note on the night-air: all was quiet and serene in the city: yet still the fight raged. The dull, heavy reports of the distant artillery boomed louder ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... he recovered his freedom: breaking prison, he straightway conveyed a fiddlestick to his comrade, and in a twinkling was at Newcastle again, picking up purses well lined with gold, and robbing the bumpkins of their scouts and chats. But the time of security was overpast. Marked and suspicious, he began to fear the solitude of the country; he left the horse-fair for the city, and sought in the budging-kens ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Moon said because she knew that none of the stars had given a true reason for twinkling so gayly that night. The truth was, they were filled with envy, and were trying to be as brilliant as possible, to compete with a flaming Comet which had just ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... on board and greeted Thorbeorn fairly. He was a hale old man, with white hair and beard, and twinkling blue eyes. "You will do well," he said, "to stay with me through the winter. This is an unchancy country in winter time, what with fog and scurvy and one thing and another. In Iceland you do better, because you have the wind—but here ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... Benham, as has been indicated, was in the throes of bustle and self-improvement. Before the war it had been essentially unimportant. But the building of a railroad through the town and the discovery of oil wells in its neighborhood had transformed it in a twinkling into an active and spirited centre. Selma's new house was on the edge of the city, in the van of real estate progress, one of a row of small but ambitious-looking dwellings, over the dark yellow clapboards of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Rears the old mossy arch impressed, That clasps its secret stream of glass, Half hid in shrubs and waving grass, The wood-nymph's lone secure retreat, Unpress'd by fawn or sylvan's feet, We'll watch in eve's ethereal braid The rich vermilion slowly fade; Or catch, faint twinkling from afar The first glimpse of the eastern star; Fair vesper, mildest lamp of light, That heralds in imperial night: Meanwhile, upon our wondering ear, Shall rise, though low, yet sweetly clear, The distant sounds of pastoral lute, Invoking soft the sober suit ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... I might go and see them all! I could tell in a twinkling the real state of things." She spoke with a tinge of her ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... aloft reported that he could see a twinkling light. It was promptly investigated by Mr. Amblen, who went aloft for the purpose. He was satisfied that it was a light in some house in the village, probably in the upper story. It soon disappeared, and it was thought to be occasioned by the late ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... his throat was aching with a dull, dry pain; but his cousin, after her first exclamations, was perfectly quiet. So they went up the long, sunny street, deaf to the gay bird-songs, blind to the sunlight that slanted down through the arching elms and set the dewdrops to twinkling, only anxious to reach the safe refuge of the old house, and ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... The dance makes life smooth in the midst of hardship and drudgery. For the dancer the cup is always overflowing, even though it may be small. There is an element of relaxation and of joyfulness in the rhythm of the music and the twinkling of the feet, which comes as a blessing into the dulness and monotony of life. The overworked factory girl does not seek rest for her muscles after the day of labour, but craves to go on contrasting them in the rhythmic movements of the dance. So it has been at all times. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... the twilight began to darken in the town, and the lights of the windows were to us as the courses of the stars of that sky which, from our prison chamber, could not be seen. We watched their progress, from the earliest yellow glimmering of the lamp in the darksome wynd, till the last little twinkling light in the dwelling of the widow that sits and sighs companionless with her distaff in the summits of the city. And we continued our vigil till they were all one by one extinguished, save only the candles at the bedsides of the dying. Then we twined a portion ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... parlour, whilst Mrs. Bubb hovered about her with indignant consolation. Gammon, silent as yet, stood looking on. As he watched Mrs. Clover's countenance his own underwent a change; there was a ruffling of the brows, a working of the lips, and in his good-humoured blue eyes a twinkling of half-amused, half-angry determination. ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... caught a singular irregularity in the surface of the wall. About on a level with the window-sill was a niche in the masonry, perhaps three feet square, and looking to be the depth of the wall itself. The back of it seemed to be made of a dark substance—darker than the bricks—through which shone twinkling glimpses of daylight. ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... profound. Everything delights, but nothing astonishes them. That people covered with spangles should dive headlong through the floor; that fairy queens should step out of the trunks of trees; that the poor wood-cutter's cottage should change, in the twinkling of an eye, into a glorious palace or a goblin grotto under the sea, with crimson fountains and golden staircases and silver foliage—all that is a matter of course. This is the kind of world they live in at present. If these things happened ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... unfortunate fifth man, and struck and dismounted one of the guns of the larboard battery. Hence the cry of distress which had been heard. All the men rushed to the ladder. The gun-deck was empty in the twinkling of an eye. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... In the twinkling of an eye it was over. I heard a sound as when one breaks an egg on the edge of a cup,—no more. I screamed with horror, ran across the guarded plank, climbed the gate, and fell headlong and screaming over the donkey-engine. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... wintertime was near. Nature seemed brooding, and the generous odour of ripened harvests came over the uplands to the watchers in the valley. All was dark and quiet in the sky and on the hills; but in the valley were twinkling lights and the stir and murmur of troubled life—that sinister muttering of angry and sullen men which has struck terror to the hearts of so many helpless victims of revolution, when it has been the mutterings of thousands and not of a few rough, discontented toilers. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... bright, with twinkling stars which on air-raid nights in London would have caused much perturbation among average householders ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... islands, is at night simply a highway of glory. The worldlings and the camp-meeting gatherings vie with each other in the display of colored lights and fireworks. And such places as the Thousand Islands Park, Wellesley and Wesley parks, and so on, twinkling with lamps and rosy with pyrotechnics, like sections of the sky dropped upon the earth, create in the mind of the steamer pilgrim an indescribable earthly and heavenly excitement. He does not look upon these displays as advertisements of rival resorts, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and perseverance! Never had the world seen such energy, activity, or good fortune. Hers was a will that regarded no obstacles. Neither rivers, deserts, nor mountains far higher than those in Europe, arrested her people. They built grand cities, they drew their fleets, as in a twinkling of the eye, from the very forests. A handful of men conquered empires. They seemed a race of giants or demi-gods. One would have supposed that all the work necessary to bind together climates and oceans would have been done at the word of the Spaniards as by enchantment, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... of him, however, and he awaited his turn nervously. When he left the shop an old lamplighter was going down the street with torch and ladder, leaving a double line of twinkling lights in his wake, as he disappeared down the wide "Paris road." Jules watched him a moment, and then ran rapidly on. For many centuries the old village of St. Symphorien had echoed with the clatter of wooden ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... they were being driven; nothing could keep them back. The captain shouted orders, the men did their best, but the wheel did not work properly. Captain Wylie as he stood near, holding on while the waves dashed over him, saw the lights twinkling in the town, and felt that the cup of happiness so near might now at any moment be ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honor of its being Christmas-eve, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... below was a wide valley with a river twinkling in the moonlight, and beyond, in misty ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... calamity. You are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any even partial failure or effeminate collapse of your energies, you will be self-denounced as a murderer. You had but the twinkling of an eye for your effort, and that effort might have been unavailing; but to have risen to the level of such an effort would have rescued you, though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to your final ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... effigy in some idolatrous shrine. She was monumentally stout and imperturbably serene. Her aspect was to Newman almost formidable; he had a troubled consciousness of a triple chin, a small piercing eye, a vast expanse of uncovered bosom, a nodding and twinkling tiara of plumes and gems, and an immense circumference of satin petticoat. With her little circle of beholders this remarkable woman reminded him of the Fat Lady at a fair. She fixed her small, unwinking eyes at ...
— The American • Henry James
... every time Aunt Anne moves he's up like a jumping-jack till she gets sat down again. He says 'My word!' and 'in the States'—like that. He's got a mustache the color of your hair, Split, a scrubby, stiffy little mustache. His eyes are little twinkling things, and I believe—" she paused in her indictment to give the criminal the benefit of the doubt—"I do believe he had gloves on when he first came! I won't be sure; but, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... and he did not see this particular joke. The comedy of a judge's being addressed as an Irish bastard did not strike him. I doubt if half-a-dozen members of the House of Commons realised the beauty of the joke till Sir Hamar Greenwood got up and explained it. "I happen to know the judge," said the twinkling Chief Secretary. "He told the story himself with great glee, and here it is. Mr Justice Wylie, the last, and one of the best judges appointed in Ireland, was riding on a tramcar to a hunting meet. When he got ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... greeted her pleasantly and easily, and stepped across the threshold. Pat was already out of bed and seated in his chair close to the stove. He was long and thin, with a straggling beard and moustaches, a long face, a long nose, and kindly, twinkling eyes. Though he looked happy enough he also looked like a widower—why, I can't say. It may have been owing to his general unstowed, unfurled, unswabbed appearance. He had not yet fastened on his wooden leg. ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... side of Mars on which we were looking had passed into night, we could still see the guardships circling above the clouds, their presence being betrayed by the faint twinkling of the electric ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... day, where the woods stand black, and the rivers creep melancholy through colourless fields, and the sky is grey and formless above. Let the sun come out, and the river flashes into a golden mirror, and the woods are alive with twinkling lights and shadows, and the sky stretches a blue pavilion above them, and all the birds sing. Let God into your life, and its whole complexion and characteristics change. The man who sits whining and complaining, when he has shut out the thought of a divine Presence, finds that everything alters ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Mr. Rand bends forward and flings himself into the arena, while O'Meara leans back in his chair, his eyes twinkling maliciously. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... their father died he had left them these three things,—the turban, the carpet, and the sword. Whoever placed the turban on his head would at once become invisible. Whoever sat on the carpet had only to wish himself wherever he would be, and the carpet would carry him there in a twinkling, and the sword would cut through anything, and no magic could ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... rainbow promise:—Not a moment flies But puts its sickle in the fields of life, And mows its thousands, with their joys and cares. 'T is but as yesterday since on yon stars, Which now I view, the Chaldee shepherd[3] gazed In his mid watch observant, and disposed The twinkling hosts as fancy gave them shape. Yet in the interim what mighty shocks Have buffeted mankind—whole nations razed— Cities made desolate—the polish'd sunk To barbarism, and once barbaric states Swaying the wand of science and of ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... grandmother, an impoverished old lady with good blood in her veins who boarded in Graham's Row, on Olive Street. Suffice it to add, at this time, that he worshipped Mr. Leffingwell, and that he was back in a twinkling with the information that Mr. Isham ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... answer. His soul rebelled at the farce, and at McVay's irrepressible enjoyment of his own abilities. As Holland met the twinkling joy of those small blue eyes, he wondered if he would not be doing mankind a favour by putting a bullet into McVay before the dawn of another day. Unconscious of this possibility, McVay continued ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... fruit of which this keen-eyed Blackbird made up his mind to regale himself at no very distant period. Altogether, his day, which had begun so unpromisingly, was a decided success, and that night, as he fluttered to rest in the ivy, and saw the little silver stars peeping and twinkling at him through the warm green curtains of his canopy, he thought of all the little Robin's wise words. It was with a chirp of sincere thankfulness that he tucked his ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... he pressed his weapon too far, drawing blood. Before he could set his lance the wild foe was upon him. A leap into the air, a double stroke of the right fore-paw, and down fell the beast, while the man reeled, with rent tunic, and caught the side of the arena. In a twinkling, as he clung feebly, he reddened from head to toe. Three bestiarii had thrust in their lances and held the lion back; others opened a gate and removed the dying gladiator. Herod, leaning over, beckoned to the ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... he looked up into the mellow dome, that he had never known the stars to twinkle so madly as they twinkled on this fateful night. There were moments of illusion when he was sure that the moon itself was twinkling. He laid it to ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... imagination supplies a complete explanation of the interruption, according to the previous train of ideas expressed in the dream, even when scarce a moment of time is allowed for that purpose. In dreaming, for example, of a duel, the external sound becomes, in the twinkling of an eye, the discharge of the combatants' pistols;—is an orator haranguing in his sleep, the sound becomes the applause of his supposed audience;—is the dreamer wandering among supposed ruins, the noise is that of the fall of some part of the mass. In short, an explanatory system ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... unmoved, and glorious, shining down with her innumerable and solemn angel eyes, twinkling, beautiful, but silent. There was no speech nor language, no pitying voice or helping hand, from that distant sky. One after another, the voices of business or pleasure died away; all on the boat were sleeping, and the ripples at ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the door after him, and very softly slipped the bolt which had been placed on the outside. She then hastened downstairs, and finding the proprietor of the house, who was a little old man with a shrewd, twinkling eye, and a long aquiline nose, she said to this man, who was a leading spirit among the coiners into whose employ she and her husband had entered, "I want you to keep this lad in confinement, until I give you notice that it will be safe to let ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... gave the signal and the runners shot forward. Down the long course they went with twinkling legs. The spectators cheered, called their names, waved their chlamyses and himations. Their friends cried to the gods to help. Down they ran, two far ahead, others stringing out behind. Every runner's eyes were on the marble ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... murmur, that in the year 1730 gorged themselves with honey in the gardens of Charenton, were absolutely identical with those that to-morrow, when April returns, will be humming in the woods of Vincennes, but a few yards away. From Reaumur's day to our own, however, is but as the twinkling of an eye; and many lives of men, placed end to end, form but a second in ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... myself in the way of Signor Arias de Londona, and to look out for a new berth in his register; but as I was on my way to No Thoroughfare, who should come across me but Doctor Sangrado, whom I had not seen since the day of my master's death. I took the liberty of touching my hat. He kenned me in a twinkling, tho I had changed my dress; and with as much warmth as his temperament would allow him, "Heyday!" said he, "the very lad I wanted to see; you have never been out of my thought. I have occasion for a clever fellow about me, and pitched upon ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... will train them to a sterner veracity in dealing with human character. It will inhibit that pitiful tendency toward a falsification of the facts of life, which asserts the reform of a character in the twinkling of an eye just before the final fall of the curtain. It will lead to a renunciation of the feeble and summary psychology which permits a man of indurated habits of weakness or of wickedness to transform himself ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... sure I shall let you, after all," he declared, his eyes twinkling. "You seemed more upsetting than ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... surgeon, a bald little man with a twinkling eye, an unshaven chin and a very greasy shirt frill. "Well, well, give me your pulse, my friend. Better a blister on the neck than a round shot at your feet, hey? I near upon gave you up when they brought you aboard—upon my word I did." The Major groaned. "You ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was thoroughly tired, and more nervous than she had any idea she could be, leaned luxuriously back in her mother's chair, with a delicious sense of unresponsibility about her, and watched a magic spell come over the room. Down came the shades in a twinkling, and the low red sun looked in on them no more; the table-cloth straightened itself; pickles and cheese and cake got out of their confused proximity, and marched each to their appropriate niche on the well-ordered table; a flying visit into well-remembered regions ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... sculptured shores of Rozel Bay, where clumsy luggers lay far below, high and dry on the beach, behind the great masonry pier. Skiffs and fishing-boats lined the shores, and the soft breeze moved the foliage of the luxuriant garden. The white stars were peeping out and twinkling in the gray and lonely sea, as Nadine shivered and walked firmly back to the portico, where the old ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... a walking dictionary of truisms, father! I suppose you mean to take a philosophical view of the misfortune and make the best of it," said Nigel, with what we may style one of his twinkling smiles, for on nearly all occasions that young man's dark, brown eyes twinkled, in spite of him, as vigorously as any "little star" that was ever told in prose or song to do so—and much more expressively, ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... interesting and appealing. They are foreigners on whom the outbreak of war laid no formal compulsion. But they had stood on the butte in springtime perhaps, as Julian and Louise stood, and looked out over the myriad twinkling lights of the beautiful city. Paris—mystic, maternal, personified, to whom they owed the happiest moments of their lives—Paris was in peril. Were they not under a moral obligation, no less binding than [that by which] their comrades were bound legally, to put their breasts between her ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... had just entered, said this in such a kind voice that it was impossible to take offence, and Miss Deborah, raising her little, twinkling eyes to her sister's face, replied, "Ah! Judith, I need you to look after me still.—I have a sad tongue, my dear (to Nellie), and am apt to chatter when I ought to be silent; come, let me take you to your room now," and off trotted ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont |
