"Elfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mutht, Ethty," lisped Ikey, his elfish face growing grave. He went about depressed for ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... starched and spotless, her hair greyer than it had been five years before, with Sarah and Mary beside her—they had married during the war, but nothing had prevented them from coming back to make Billabong ready. Near them the storekeeper, Jack Archdale, and his pretty wife, with their elfish small daughter; and Mick Shanahan and Dave Boone, with the Scotch gardener, Hogg, and his Chinese colleague—and sworn enemy—Lee Wing. They were all there, a little welcoming group—but Norah could see them ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... published several volumes of lyrical verse. Some of it possesses the lightness of these elfish tales. The Barrel Organ, The Song of Re-Birth, and Forty Singing Seamen are among his finest lyrics. They display much rhythmic beauty and variety. He strikes a deeply sorrowful and passionate note in ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... up at him rather defiantly—seated on a low stool, her elfish chin in her elfish hand, her pretty little rose-bloom face peeping brightly out from the scented ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... the rest Of the elements are, for some tragedy-reason, Making the "awfullest gale of the season—" See, at the sound of the prompter's tap, The fiend come up through the "Vampyre trap;" Take a mental photograph then, and there, Of that imp, with his "fixins" all complete— The elfish grin, the tangled hair, The dragon wings and the scaly feet— And you'll have a notion of him I mean, The demon of this, my opening scene. I might go to Milton, and steal, bit by bit, A description to suit my Spirit of Cant, A second-hand suit, but a "shplendid fit," As a Jew would ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... dozen people were sitting with Lady Maxwell when Tressady was announced. She rose to meet him with great cordiality, introduced him to little Lady Leven, an elfish creature in a cloud of fair hair, and with a pleasant "You know all the rest," offered him a chair beside ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him look up. Soft Shoes had already raised the trap and was looking down into the room, his rather elfish face squeezed into a grimace, half of ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... you," he said slowly, regarding the Hun, with his elfish eyes. "I don't like you. I think you may be like the man in the English soldiers' story, who turned into a pig—a baby killer perhaps. It is because of your red hair that I think ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... stairs. It came more faintly this time, deadened by the closed door of the staircase, but to his enlightened senses it proclaimed so clearly what it was—the echo of a cracked, shrill voice, of a laugh insane, uncanny, elfish—that he trembled lest Louis should hear it also and gain the clue. That was a thing to be avoided at all costs; and even as this occurred to him he saw the way to avoid it. Basterga and Grio were absent: if this fool could be removed, even for an ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... next—the main thing, indeed, which has led me to seek this interview with Sprigg's father. I should hardly have come a thousand miles out of my way, since set of sun, had it been merely to gratify Manitou-Echo in an elfish whim. In brief, then, and in sweet earnest, too, the object we have in view is intended mainly for Sprigg's own good; and, as the means to this end, my son Manitou-Echo has sent, as a present to your son Sprigg, a pair of red moccasins, to put him, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... also how the wild things of the field and wood seemed unafraid of her. At times, returning to where he had left her hidden, he would pause, wondering to whom she was talking, and then as he drew nearer would hear the stealing away of little feet, the startled flutter of wings. She had elfish ways, of which it seemed impossible to cure her. Often the good man, returning from some late visit of mercy with his lantern and his stout oak cudgel, would pause and listen to a wandering voice. It was never near enough for him to hear the words, and ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... decaying gallery and reeling stairway. Suddenly the Castle turrets were gilded with pale sunshine, and all the little cells in the tall, old houses hummed and buzzed and clacked with life. The University bell called scattered students to morning prayers. Pinched and elfish faces of children appeared at the windows overlooking the kirkyard. The sparrows had instant news of that, and the little winged beggars fluttered up to the lintels of certain deep-set casements, where ill-fed bairns scattered ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... a wild dark creature, slim and elfish, with a queer little smile that flashed sudden as ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... fair, and Mrs. Vane, at lunch looked at the four bright faces before her, Vera, a small copy of herself; Elf, whose mischievous face was truly elfish; Nancy, whose gypsy beauty always pleased, and Dorothy, blue-eyed, fair-haired, whose lovable disposition shone from her eyes, and made her sweet to ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... of her, with the strange mockery and an almost elfish malice in her fine eyes, went home with me later to cause vague disquiet and fresh suspicion of her truth. The spell of her extraordinary, personal charm removed, doubt would assert itself. Was she quite sincere? Was her fascination not a questionable one? Might not that ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c 503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, fiend-like; supernatural, weird, uncanny, unearthly, spectral; ghostly, ghost-like; elfin, elvin^, elfish, elflike^; haunted; pokerish [U.S.]. possessed, possessed by a devil, possessed by ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Princess twain are they Of all Columbia's giant woods. The sylvan songsters sing thy praise From dawn till set of sun, and then The nightingale, the queen of song, In praise of thee poureth forth her lay Till every mellow silver note, Far floating in the silent trees, Is taken by an elfish choir, And chanted softly to the moon. The eagle her wee eaglets tells Of thee, that they may freedom love; Then soaring full beyond the clouds, She looks with vaunted pride on thee. So must thy spirit fill the hearts ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... his work in the afternoon he found a group of forlorn women and children standing beside the stoop. A pale, elfish-looking boy of ten, whose face appeared to be five years older, sat on the lower ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... Moon looked on and laughed With a shrill and sneering jibe; Her soul grew fat to see them chaffed, This mad and elfish tribe. The big black caldron boiled so high With food for these queer mites, That it lit the world throughout the sky, And ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... the English Ambassador—a choleric old man with a russet face like an apple, wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter. He saw Lady Galloway, slim and threadlike, with silver hair and a face sensitive and superior. He saw her daughter, Lady Margaret Graham, a pale and pretty girl with an elfish face and copper-coloured hair. He saw the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, black-eyed and opulent, and with her her two daughters, black-eyed and opulent also. He saw Dr. Simon, a typical French scientist, with glasses, a pointed brown beard, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... found by an English sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, and Polly stretched out her arms to the rice and salt fish, and began to cry. "Oh," said I, "perhaps she can eat;" and from that day the little one ate her rice ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... in her half-wild hollowed-eyed beauty, which seemed a sickly efflorescence of the marshes, pressing to her breast another "child of iniquity" as pale and elfish as her former self, she seemed to Odo the embodiment of ancient wrongs, risen from the wasted soil to haunt the dreams ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... was opened by an elfish-looking boy, and the earliest applicant was allowed to enter, the boy warning her, as she did so, to "be quick ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... before Hallow-e'en, the bonnie Janet dreamed that the long-lost Robin was living in Elf-land, and that he was to pass through the streets with a cavalcade of fairies. But, alas! how should even a sister know him in the dim starlight, among the passing troops of elfish and mortal riders? The dream assured her that she might let the first company go by, and the second; but Robin would ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... elfish to look up suddenly and see a lovely lady all in white, with shining hair and a wand in her hand, sitting under what looked very like a large yellow mushroom in the middle of a meadow, where, till now, nothing but cows and grasshoppers ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... the girl, but he was becoming mildly interested in her. She could, he thought, be daring to the verge of coarseness, and he did not admire her pessimism, which was probably a pose; but there was a vein of elfish mischief in her that appealed to him. Sitting among the heather, small, lithe, and felinely graceful, watching him with a provocative smile in her rather narrow eyes, she ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... open, he would pause for half a moment on the threshold to say, in a tone of intense self- satisfaction, "He be off. Abel! Janny's off!" and forthwith toddle out as hard as he could go. As he grew older, he dropped this form; but the elfish habit of appearing and disappearing at his own whim ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... want to—I don't care a hang, having no further use for them whatever. But on one of the Park benches, in the golden morning, the wonderment added, I remember, to my joy, for we hadn't, Lorraine and I, been the least bit overwhelmed about them: Lorraine only pretending a little, with her charming elfish art, that she occasionally was, in order to see how far Eliza would go. Well, that brilliant woman HAD gone pretty far for us, truly, if, after all, they were only in the manicure line. She was a-doing of it, as Lorraine says, my massive ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... on the effect of solitariness. In quiet weather mesa days have no parallel for stillness, but the night silence breaks into certain mellow or poignant notes. Late afternoons the burrowing owls may be seen blinking at the doors of their hummocks with perhaps four or five elfish nestlings arow, and by twilight begin a soft whoo-oo-ing, rounder, sweeter, more incessant in mating time. It is not possible to disassociate the call of the burrowing owl from the late slant light of the mesa. If the fine vibrations which are the golden-violet ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... Thomas Bolle, who ever wished the right thing and did the wrong. Talk no more of him, since I would not meet my end in a bad spirit. Thomas Bolle, who lets us die for his elfish pranks! A pest on the half-witted cur, say I. And after I ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. A piquant, tricksy sprite, as naughty as she is bewitching—a creature of fire and air, more elfish than human, at once her mother's torment and her treasure.—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... upon a summer's night Mused a mischief-making sprite, Underneath the leafy hood Of a fairy-haunted wood. Here and there, in light and shade, Ill-assorted couples strayed: "Lord," said Puck, in elfish glee, "Lord, what fools ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... delight when she was in the white middy blouse and the skirt flapped about her ankles in such a very grown-up manner. Mary Rose's yellow hair had always been bobbed but no one had seen that it was trimmed before she left Mifflin and it hung in rather straight lanky locks about her elfish face. Some of the locks were long enough to be drawn under one of Ella's discarded red hair ribbons and Aunt Kate pinned back the others. The result was a very different Mary Rose from the one who had jumped out of the taxicab a few hours ago. She climbed on ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... at the edge of noon, just balancing to fall, there came a boy, a little wretched, elfish-looking child, as sad and sickly as a boy could be, who asked the man for food. He answered him, "Poor little fellow! there, the pot is full of venison, so go ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... elephantinely elfish in M. Hanaud's demeanour, which left Mr. Ricardo at a loss. But he had come to notice that these undignified manifestations usually took place when Hanaud had reached a definite opinion upon some ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... was unable to find them; the effects of hunger probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length she peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and questioned: ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... bottom of all his craziness, she and that elfish daughter. Sister Ann is a very intelligent woman in some respects, but she is wild ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... the world need not be reminded that a wet boat is an abomination; what, then, must it be when it is caused by hours of snowfall, large flakes softly wet? Everything gets drenched and sopping, and it really appeared as if these white hazelnut flakes were possessed by an elfish desire to baffle your most careful efforts to keep them out. My waterproof bag was to the human eye impervious; but there was one unnoticed opening not an inch long by half an inch wide, and the flakes discovered it at once. There ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... his spiky hair, and gave her an elfish glance. "Candys don't seem to like Weightses," he said. "Grampy didn't, nor Dad ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... still glistening with tears, stared up at her, and impelled by that peculiar pitying tenderness that hovers in the hearts of all mothers, Mrs. Orme bent down and gently smoothed the elfish locks around the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... and said sullenly, "Please accept my apology for unlady-like language, Miss Irvine. I am sorry I should have degraded myself and spoken as I did, but" (and here a mischievous light swept the gloomy cloud from the piquant face and lit it up with an elfish smile) "you provoked me, and I am ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... looks—Jane Eyre with hardly that—for it is the fashion now-a-days with novelists to give no encouragement to the insolence of mere beauty, but rather to prove to all whom it may concern how little a sensible woman requires to get on with in the world. Both have also an elfish kind of nature, with which they divine the secrets of other hearts, and conceal those of their own; and both rejoice in that peculiarity of feature which Mademoiselle de Luzy has not contributed to render popular, viz., green eyes. Beyond this, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... malignant and elfish, Seems present whispering close, "All motives of life are selfish, All instincts of life are gross; And the song that the poet fashions, And the love-bird's musical strain, Are jumbles of animal passions, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... of a pity, nevertheless, that it must be given up, for Nancy was not particularly pretty, as young men nowadays measure beauty, and were it possible, the truth might have been hidden. She was something too elfish—and then there was the Billings mouth already mentioned. Gertrude Ellis, who spent much of her time with her aunt in New York and who had a proper care for her person, thought it a ridiculous pose for Nancy not to have something done about her freckles. It ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... elfish maiden child; She is not two years old; Through windy locks her eyes gleam wild, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... vision, painted like a picture in the air, I saw the elfish figure of a man with frosty hair— A quaint old man that chuckled with a laugh as he appeared, And with ruddy cheeks like embers in the ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... last vain pilgrimage to the Church of the Sacred Heart and stood before the glass, removing a thick black veil from the pale despair of her face, she was suddenly aware of a strange, unfamiliar smile lifting the drooped lines of her lips—an elfish smile which transformed her face to something different from her own. And immediately those smiling lips uttered words that fell as unexpectedly on her ears as though they had proceeded from ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... repellent little face in a soft, white hood. The face of the baby looked like an epitome of weary, even vicious, heredity. He looked older than his mother. Now and then she bent, and her severe face took on an expression of majestic tenderness. She pressed her handsome face close to the little, elfish, even evil face of the child, and kissed it. Then the baby smiled a fatuous, toothless smile, and he also was transformed; his little glory of infancy seemed to illuminate the face marked with the labors and sins and degradation of his ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... are confronted with the living picture of some one of our dreams of them that women cease to dwell in the abstract and become issues, to be met with more or less trepidation. Back among some of his idle dreams there had been a Kitty, blue-eyed, black-haired, slender and elfish. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... the boat. With a quick turn, Madge ran after the escaping form. As it poised itself for a leap toward the shore, Madge caught at the cloak and dragged it away from the face, and for a brief instant she saw the face of a boy a little older perhaps than she was. It was a wild and elfish face, while a pair of ears, ending almost in points, stuck up through the masses of thick, curly hair that covered his head. But before she could get a distinct impression of his face the young man was gone, ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... all accounts,' said the rector with a shrug, 'she is as little like other people as himself. A queer elfish little creature, they say, as fond of solitude down here as the squire, and full of hobbies. In her youth she was about the court. Then she married a canon of Warham, one of the popular preachers, I believe, of the day. There is a ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... desperation; and her eyes shone with a hard, diamond-like brilliancy, fitful, but never soft or tearful. Her manner grew more and more moody and constrained, till even her matter-of-fact uncle and aunt, good easy souls, and her absorbed cousin, became curious and anxious. The little elfish black pony was in more frequent request than ever; for his mistress now went out at any hour that suited her whim, in any weather, chose the loneliest by-ways, and rode furiously. Often, at evening, she ascended a dark gorge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... arm round her; they propelled her towards the house. They were lithe, supple creatures of twenty and twenty-one. Between them walked Neville, with her small, pointed, elfish face, that was sensitive to every breath of thought and emotion like smooth water wind-stirred. With her great violet eyes brooding in it under thin black brows, and her wet hair hanging in loose strands, she ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... of trees to illustrate their dainty elfish dwarfishness, but realising that no one could guess the height without a scale, I took a second of the same with a ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... resolved to do her small utmost towards balancing his injustice; so with an old shingle, fallen from the roof, which she had appropriated as her agricultural tool, she began to dig about them, pulling up the weeds, as she saw grandpapa doing. The kitten, too, with a look of elfish sagacity, lent her assistance, plying her paws with vast haste and efficiency at the roots of one of the shrubs. This particular one was much smaller than the rest, perhaps because it was a native of the torrid zone, ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cicad[ae]. Even the cicad[ae], however, find these groves too dim, and sing faintly; being sun-lovers, they prefer the trees outside the village. I forgot to say that you may sometimes hear a viewless shuttle—chaka-ton, chaka-ton;—but that familiar sound, in the great green silence, seems an elfish happening. The reason of the hush is simply that the people are not at home. All the adults, excepting some feeble elders, have gone to the neighboring fields, the women carrying their babies on their backs; and most of the children have gone to the nearest school, perhaps not ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... in perfect silence Polly O'Neill made her entrance. She moved very slowly forward, so slim and young and tall, with such big, dark-blue eyes, and such slender, elfish grace that she did not look like a real ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... of the ship I watch'd the water-snakes: 265 They mov'd in tracks of shining white; And when they rear'd, the elfish light Fell off ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... every day, and whom, at last, I compassionately supplied with a couple of safety-pins, after explaining their uses. She was decidedly ugly. But sometimes you may see others here, with neatly chiselled limbs and elfish eyes of a sultry, troubling charm into which, if sentimentally disposed, you can read an ocean of love; these need not be supplied with safety-pins. An enthusiastic Frenchman at Gabes actually married one of these sphynx-like ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... boy, with his elfish little countenance lighting up. He was very slight and small for his age, a little shadow darting across the sunshine. The half of the terrace lay in a blaze of light, but all was cool and fresh in ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the downy cheek Of the peach, and smoothed it sleek, And flushed it into splendor; And, with many an elfish freak, Gave the russet's rust a wipe— Prankt the rambo with a stripe, And the winesap blushed its reddest As they spanked the ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... blades of grass as if they were trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the country. A mole throwing up its mound at the end of its burrow and making its way out at last with the long-nailed paws which looked so like elfish hands, had absorbed him one whole morning. Ants' ways, beetles' ways, bees' ways, frogs' ways, birds' ways, plants' ways, gave him a new world to explore and when Dickon revealed them all and added foxes' ways, otters' ways, ferrets' ways, squirrels' ways, and trout's ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... looked he slid down from out of her arms; back into the pool, and began struggling to gain the edge. What grief and longing in her wild face then! But she did not wail. She did not try to pull him back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what was coming, it could not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the boughs and water, she watched ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... man who loved him so dearly. His figure and appearance had always been singular, but now it was more so than ever. He had been sleeping in his clothes, and he had that peculiar look of discomfort which always accompanies such rest. His black, elfish, uncombed locks, had not been cut since he left Durbelliere, and his beard for many days had not been shorn. He was wretchedly thin and gaunt; indeed, his hollow, yellow cheeks, and cadaverous jaws, almost told a tale of utter starvation. Across his face he had an ugly cicatrice, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... loomed up in the background. Something in the appearance of the front door suggested to Peggy that it was not intended for daily use, and she made her way around to the side and knocked. A child not far from Dorothy's age, with straight black hair, and elfish eyes, opened the door, looked her over, and shrieked ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... like a picture in the air, I saw the elfish figure, of a man with frosty hair— A quaint old man that chuckled with a laugh as he appeared, And with ruddy cheeks like embers in the ashes of ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... had SUCH a wonderfully interesting walk, all by herself, alone on the plain. It was really so queer and elfish to find one's self where one could see nothing above or around one anywhere but stars. Stars above one, to right and left of one, and some so low down they seemed as if they were picketed on the plain. It was so odd to find the horizon line at one's very feet, like a castaway ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... unnaturally bright, and turned wistfully upon them as she entered. There were ashes upon the hearth and ashes upon the floor, a hair-brush upon the table and an empty plate upon the chair, with swarms of flies sipping the few drops of molasses and feeding upon the crumbs of bread left there by the elfish-looking child now in the bed beside its mother. There was nothing but poverty—squalid, disgusting poverty—visible everywhere, and Lucy grew sick and faint at ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... heart-breaking separation of mother and child, of husband and wife. Sometimes they told her how Mary—so luxurious, so smiling, so avid of warmth and food and kisses—had shivered in that bleak wind, as she sat coatless, torn from David's sheltering embrace. They had given her elfish reminders of how soft, how pink, how perfumed was that woman's tender flesh. Then as she looked the blue eyes glazed with agony, the supple body grew rigid with cold, and down, down, through miles of water, sank the man they both ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... which, there was doo to him the sum of one pound seven and sixpence halfpenny, which I, bein' 'is widder, ought to 'ave, not that I expects to see it on this side of the grave—oh, dear, no!" and she gave a shrill, elfish laugh. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... imagined than described, for the wicked Irene had lifted the valance of the bed, and her bright eyes and a tiny portion of her face could be distinctly seen by any one who happened to glance in that direction. Had Lucy seen her she must have screamed, for nothing more elfish than that face could be imagined. As it was, all might have been well had not Irene, just as Lucy was reaching the door, given a low, wild whoop, and then disappeared again under the ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... lit up her face for a moment, as she flashed her beautiful wide eyes upon him. She seemed a part of that beauteous night, elfish and delicate as a moonbeam or a flower, fragile as the song of a bird. He could not speak, but stood drinking her in with his eyes and soul, his face wearing a mixed expression of rapture and pain. She knew what he ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... he walked between Dora and Susie to the side-hill where the first grasshoppers of spring were always found, felt at peace with all the world—even Smith—and it was in his heart to hug the elfish half-breed child as she skipped beside him. Dora's frequent, bubbling laughter made him thrill; he longed to shout aloud like a schoolboy given an ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... Elfish everything seems; for everything as well as everybody is small, and queer, and mysterious: the little houses under their blue roofs, the little shop-fronts hung with blue, and the smiling little people in their blue costumes. The illusion is only broken by the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... she is convinced that now you think her perfect," interrupted the saucy girl, with a trill of laughter. Then growing suddenly as gentle and tender as she had been elfish before, she added sweetly, "And Robert, you are right; you have won a real treasure—a perfect darling—as nobody knows better than ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... of the noise and laughter a small figure stirred in the shadowy chimney-corner, the figure of a little, bent, old man, with a queer, elfish, hairy visage. He sat up and his small, red eyes blinked wonderingly. "Hech, hech, and it will be the cold night, Malcolm!" he said ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... Thou must not talk so!" answered the mother, suppressing a groan. "He sent us all into the world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then, much more thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish child, whence didst ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we have felt to its core the elfish mystery of your profession. And now Notting Hill ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... colour, are amazing when contrasted with what had been previously. Wearied of the excessive eulogy bestowed upon Cruikshank's illustrations to Dickens, and unable to accept the artist as an illustrator of real characters in fiction, when he studies his elfish and other-worldly personages, the most grudging critic must needs yield a full tribute of praise. The volumes (published by Charles Tilt, of 82 Fleet Street) are extremely rare; for many years past the sale-room has recorded fancy prices for all Cruikshank's illustrations, so that a lover ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... put off the show I must be getting home or Mother will think I have been waylaid and my watch stolen. So long, everybody, and pleasant dreams." Then thrusting his face back into the room through the narrowing crack of the door, he added with elfish leer, "Just the same, I still think that Coulter had something to ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... Ascetics, saints, bishops, peasants, philosophers, kings, Gregory the Great, Martin Luther, all testified that they had often seen him. The mediaval conception of the devil was sometimes comical, sometimes awful. Grimm says, "He was Jewish, heathenish, Christian, idolatrous, elfish, titanic, spectral, all at once." He was "a soul snatching wolf," a "hell hound," a "whirlwind hammer;" now an infernal "parody of God" with "a mother who mimics the Virgin Mary," and now the "impersonated soul of evil."21 The well known story of Faust and the Devil, which ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... give up to sensual indulgence? that fearful picture of a deliberate effort to shut out the thought of debts and duels, deceit and evil luck? In that music Mozart disputes the palm with Moliere. The terrific finale, with its glow, its power, its despair and laughter, its grisly spectres and elfish women, centres about the prodigal's last effort made in the after-supper heat of wine, the frantic struggle which ends the drama. Victurnien was living through this infernal poem, and alone. He saw visions of himself—a friendless, solitary outcast, reading the words carved ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... starvation on her own part, been able to buy a wondrous gold-and-crimson worsted bird suspended from an elastic string, a bird which bobbed up and down to command in the most lively and artistic manner? And had not her hired baby actually laughed at the clumsy toy—laughed an elfish and weird laugh, the first it had ever indulged in? And Liz had laughed too, for pure gladness in the child's mirth, and the worsted bird became a sort of uncouth charm ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... Tertullian, a "credo quia impossibile'' is on his tongue as he quickens his pace — for what else can he do? A step, and the spell is shattered — all is cruel and alien once more; while every copse and hedge-row seems a-tinkle with faint elfish laughter. The Fairies have had their joke: they have opened the wicket one of their own hand's-breadths, and shut it in their victim's face. When next that victim catches a fairy, he purposes to tie up the brat in sight of his own green hill, and set him to draw ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... the baby!" I thought, looking down into her proud face. I cannot describe how very odd and elfish it did seem to have those sonorous words rolling out of the smiling mouth. The band striking up put an end to the quotation and to the confidences. As the exercises progressed and approached nearer and nearer the effort on which all her interest was concentrated, my ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... boy himself was far from robust. Having no taste for sports, he amused himself by reading romances or by listening to his nurse's tales,—beautiful tales, he thought, which "almost scared him into fits." His elfish fancy in childhood is probably reflected in Pip, of Great Expectations. He had a strong dramatic instinct to act a story, or sing a song, or imitate a neighbor's speech, and the father used to amuse his friends ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... us, and was no longer the object nearest to me. The girl whose light fingers grasped me, whose elfish charming face looked into mine—who, I thought, was betraying an interest in my feelings that she would not have directly avowed,—this warm breathing presence again possessed my senses and imagination like a returning siren melody which had been overpowered for an instant by the roar of ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... found out, however, that the princess was missing, and in a moment the palace was like a beehive in a garden; and in one minute more the queen was brought to herself by a great shout and a clapping of hands. They had found the princess fast asleep under a rose-bush, to which the elfish little wind-puff had carried her, finishing its mischief by shaking a shower of red rose-leaves all over the little white sleeper. Startled by the noise the servants made, she woke, and, furious with glee, scattered the rose-leaves in ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... the side of her giant escort seemed like a slender ray of light, a radiant, elfish form, transparent, intangible, gliding softly along with a huge, black shadow. She was simply clad, all in white. About her neck hung a string of pearls, and at her waist she wore the rare orchids which Ames had sent her that afternoon. But ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, fiend-like; supernatural, weird, uncanny, unearthly, spectral; ghostly, ghost-like; elfin, elvin[obs3], elfish, elflike[obs3]; haunted; pokerish [obs3][U.S.]. possessed, possessed by a devil, possessed by a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... nearing fifty; but her slim little wiry body and her elfish, wrinkled face, never still, but ever alive with the same vivacity that years ago had attracted William Allsopp, made her seem younger than her years; and her husband treated her as though she were still ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... was in no haste. Allowing her to keep between himself and the cavern's wall, even intrusting to her care the curious staff that now persisted in dancing along the cavern's floor in an elfish way which amazed the girl, he made a circuit of the place. At one spot he paused, and a single grunt of satisfaction escaped him. Then he seized a loaf of bread from a shelf-like niche and began to eat it ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... elfish creature, nine years old, diminutive and pale. Her long, silky brown hair, which was as straight as an Indian's, like mother's, and which she tore out when angry, usually covered her face, and her wild eyes looked wilder still ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... winter twilight came in there,—as yet the candles were not lighted,—when the crickets chirped around the dark stone hearth, and shifting tongues of flame flickered and cast dancing shadows and elfish lights on the walls, while grandmother nodded over her knitting-work, and puss purred, and old Rover lay dreamily opening now one eye and then the other on the family group! With all our ceiled houses, let us not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... much wonder at it myself sometimes when I saw Kitty's pale cheeks flush with that delicious pink, her wide hazel eyes deepen and glow, her little face light up with elfish mirth, and her round, childish figure poise itself in some coquettish attitude. Then she had such absurd little hands, with short fingers and babyish dimples, such tiny feet, and such a wealth of crinkled dark-brown hair—such bewitching little helpless ways, too, a fashion of throwing herself appealingly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... it was not to live in a state of perpetual mental hot water. It was privately whispered in the family circle that Polly encouraged her in her naughtiness. Whether that was the case or not, these two had a kind of quaint, elfish friendship between them, Firefly in her heart of hearts worshipping Polly, and obeying her slightest ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... childishness whatever. It was a thin, peaked, sallow face, with a discontented expression; her features were small and pinched, her hair, which was of inky blackness, fell on her shoulders in long, straight locks, without a ripple or a wave in them. She looked like an elf, but still this elfish little creature was redeemed from the hideousness which else might have been her doom by eyes of the most wonderful brilliancy. Large, luminous, potent eyes—intensely black, and deep as the depths of ocean, they seemed to fill her whole face; and in moments of excitement they could light ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... while this strife engaged the pretty band; But now bold Chanticleer, from farm to farm, Challenged the dawn creeping o'er eastern land, And well the fairies knew that shrill alarm, Which sounds the knell of every elfish charm. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... more detested by Englishmen than Bismarck in 1866. The obnoxious Prussian statesman was not even respected, for he had done nothing to command the respect of enemies. From the tone in which he was talked of, it was plain that the English considered him to be a mischievous, malicious, elfish sort of creature, who could not do anything that would deserve to be considered great, but who did his utmost to make himself and his country the nuisances of Europe. Books have been made from English journals to show how extraordinarily they berated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... little circumstances, that gave him a strong feeling of want of sincerity in his stepmother. Mrs. Owen brought with her into the family her little child by her first husband, a boy nearly three years old. He was one of those elfish, observant, mocking children, over whose feelings you seem to have no control: agile and mischievous, his little practical jokes, at first performed in ignorance of the pain he gave, but afterward proceeding to a malicious ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a merry sound as of shepherds piping on oaten straws in new grass where there are daisies; and there was a little elfish laughter of clarionets, and a fluttering among the cool flutes like spring wind blowing through crisp young leaves in April. The harps began to pulse and throb with a soft cadence like raindrops falling into a clear pool where brown leaves lie upon the bottom and bubbles float ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... sparks is a tiny animal, as perfect in its substance and as well adapted to its cycle of life as the highest created being. The wonderful way in which this phosphorescence permeates everything—the jelly-fish seeming elfish fireworks as they throb through the water with rhythmic beats—the fish brilliantly lighted up and plainly visible as they dart about far beneath the surface—makes such a night on the Bay of Fundy an ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... in answer to this mental question a peal of elfish laughter greeted his ear,—a mirthless, falsetto cackle, like that of a parrot, and half hidden behind one of the great marble lions in the shade of the loggia he discerned a grotesque little creature, with the figure of a child and a woman's face, old ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... at seventeen Must be a sprite— A dainty, fairy, elfish queen Of pure delight; But later on he sort of feels He'd like a girl ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... synthetic formulas. The thought of very primitive men has hardly any tincture of philosophy. Nature can have little unity for savages. It is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical powers. 'Close to nature' though they live, they are anything but Wordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is likely to be at midnight, when the camp smoke rises straight to the wicked full moon in the ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... by the abrupt address, drew his fingers from the long beard he was playfully stroking and, eyeing me with elfish gravity, seemed to ponder the question as if some comprehension of its importance had found entrance into his small brain. Annoyed at the doctor's whim, yet trusting to the child's intuition, I waited with inner anxiety for what those ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... lifts the mantle that enwraps him like a cloud, and under that mantle is seen an angel-face, the smile of a delicate little girl, two tender childish arms clasping the form of the count, a slight elfish form tremblingly reposing upon ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... a shell he dived to the bottom of his hole, then reappeared, showing his dirty, elfish face, until it was time ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... what a figure! It seemed to him that she was not like an ordinary girl, that she was not of the same composition as any of the girls he had ever met; that she was something hardly human—something elfish, something generated by the beautiful English woods and glades, filled with the soft glamour of the moon and stars. And all the while he was thinking thus, his heart rising in rebellion against the words of Hamar, the girl continued gazing up at him, and toying with the rings ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... her elfish moods, the languid grace of her sleepy-eyed moments forgotten. With a little cry of rapture she ran to the piano, and dashed into a gay, tinkling air with brilliancy and abandon. Her head, surmounted by a perky, high-peaked, narrow-brimmed hat, with a flaming red bird in ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... into the depth while lying upon a slab of stone that stretches some distance beyond the side of the pit! Bushes with twisted and fantastic arms, growing, they or their ancestors, from time immemorial in the clefts of the rock, reach towards the light, and the elfish hart's-tongue fern, itself half in darkness, points down with frond that never moves in that eternal stillness which all the winds of heaven pass over, to a thicker darkness whence comes the everlasting wail ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the skin is tightly drawn their eyes regard you suspiciously, malignantly even, never with the frank look of childhood. As the long afternoon goes by in its hours of leisure for us fatigue settles like a blight over their features, their expressions darken to elfish strangeness, whilst sullen lines, never to be eradicated, mark the distinctive visages ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... this elfish concert, it seemed, was the birth of a fairy child, at which the fairies, with the exception of two or three who were discomposed at having nothing to cover the little innocent with, were enjoying themselves with that joviality usually characteristic ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... believe this, Margaret—I got out of bed, and dragged myself to the window, expecting to see her dead and shattered at the bottom. There she stood, cool as crystal, shaking the leaves from her dress. She looked up and saw me, and if ever I saw an elfish look—do you believe in witchcraft, Margaret? my nurse did; she told me some strange tales when I was ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... admirable bits of the work of Richard Doyle, among other things a weird and grotesque, but charming cartoon of an elfish procession passing through a quaint and picturesque mediaeval city. It is a conte fantastique in colour—a marvel of affluent fancy and ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... have yer table agin the wall," she broke out, "at a five-o'clock tea; I know, 'cause I've peeked in the windows up on the avenoo, an' I've seen your folks, too." She nodded over at Phronsie. "I know what I'll do." She tossed her head with its black, elfish locks, and darted off in triumph, dragging up from another corner a big box, first unceremoniously dumping out the various articles, such as dirty clothes, a tin pan or two, a skillet, an empty bottle—last of all, a nightcap, which she held aloft. "Gran's," she shouted; ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... crowded streets was breathlessly thrilling, and during it Carmencita did not speak. At the window of the taxi she pressed her face so closely that the glass had continually to be wiped lest the cloud made by her breath prevent her seeing clearly; and, watching her, Van Landing smiled. What an odd, elfish, wistful little face it was—keen, alert, intelligent, it reflected every emotion that filled her, and her emotions were many. In her long, ill-fitting coat and straw hat, in the worn shoes and darned gloves, she was a study that puzzled and perplexed, and at thought of her future ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... stood, beside the spring—a teasing smile on her face. Before he could command himself, she danced a step or two, with an elfish air, and slipped away through the green willow wall. Another merry laugh came back to him and then—the silence of the little glade, and the sound of the ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... an elfish laugh; "I believe, if the truth were really known, we ought to be making our own beds and washing our own ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... his eyes. In a flash she felt the strength and depth of his feeling, but her searching scrutiny caused him to become tongue-tied, and he assumed the self-conscious mien peculiar to the man not yet assured that his love is returned. Once more a golden moment slipped away with elfish elusiveness, and Colette, secure in her ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... an air of childhood still clinging, as if from habit alone, to the outward insignia of maturity, in this mercurial, magnetic, and undaunted young person; and in her malicious elfish eyes could be read the solemn determination to force every possible claim that her double advantage, as child and adult, could, according to the ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... fancies; but to one of even slower imagination and of calmer mood, she might very well have seemed unreal, the creature of a dream, fantastic, intangible, insensible, arch, not wholly without some touch of the malign. In his heart he groaned over her beauty as if she were lost to him forever in this elfish transfiguration. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... wet, elfish-looking hair out of her black eyes, and proceeded to scrub such of the smaller children as could not escape from her relentless grasp. Some submitted dumbly, and others struggled under her vigorous application of the icy rag, but all she attacked ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... persuade grave Catholic noblemen that what they ought really to desire was a total and rapid transformation of the whole fabric of society, his efforts to found an association for the moral regeneration of mankind, and his elfish amusement of launching the truth upon the waters in the form of pamphlets sealed up in bottles. Shelley at this age perpetrated "rags" upon the universe, much as commonplace youths make hay of ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... De La Mare's second article was called "The Village of Old Age." It was a charming piece of what I simply cannot and will not call "elfish" writing. The word in me, foolishly, no doubt, produces physical nausea. If, however, someone with a stronger stomach in regard to words called it elfish I should understand what he meant, and agree. But, good as were these ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... he leaned over, looking downward after it,—every one of the innumerable wrinkles in his black face made more distinct, with his white beard and mustache, and the whites of his eyes seeming to glow in the blue elfish light,—was a caricature, half grotesque, almost terrible, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... dog's name, and he appeared in a fair way of "putting a girdle round the earth," if not in forty minutes like his elfish namesake, at least in an appreciable limited space of time, Teddy never being content except he carried about the unfortunate brute with him everywhere he went, hugging it tightly in his arms and almost smothering its life out by way of ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... of ten or twelve years of age opened the door. The child's big black eyes, and long snaky locks falling about a pale face, gave her an elfish look quite in keeping with the character of the house. She at once ushered the callers into the front parlour, where a lady and gentleman were sitting, who proved to be Mrs. Legrand and her manager and ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... head of all armed with scythes—through the city, into the wide gates of the Greyfriars. Lovely is his bride in white, nor less so his widow in black—more so in grey, portentous of a great change. Sad, too, to the Sage the thought of leaving his first-born as yet unborn—or if born, haply an elfish Creature with a precocious countenance, looking as if he had begun life with borrowing ten years at least from his own father—auld-farrant as a Fairy, and gash as the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Clara was slender and elfish, with a wealth of yellow tresses falling down her back. She was tender and gay, too, and Keith liked to hear her laugh. When they played, she was always ready to fall in ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... high-peaked cap of the same material drawn completely down over his head and face. Two round holes cut in this ghostly head-gear revealed simply two black glittering eyes, which shone with that singular elfish effect which belongs to the human eye when removed from its appropriate and natural accessories. As they passed out, the figure rattled a box on which was painted an image of despairing souls raising ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... for our rail or his own spar, as the case might be, across the staggering abyss; clung so well with his toes that he might almost have been classified with the quadrumana; and between times squatted humped over on the rail, watching us with bright, elfish, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... face wisely. It was a very dirty face just now; his red hair, long neglected, hung in wisps over his forehead and about his ears, giving him an elfish look in the candlelight. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... gossips, "it cannot be that gypsy niece of the Squire, that odd, black-browed girl, who scours over the country in all weathers, on that elfish black pony, with her hair flying,—for all the world as though in search of her wild relations. No, the blood of the Willertons would never run so low as that;—it must be sweet Miss Bessie, and she is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... to be told the same thing: what the day will bring forth. But each searcher into the dim and dangerous future has, of course, individual methods—some shuffling seven times and some ten, and so forth, and all intent upon placating the elfish goddess, Caprice. There is little Miss Banks, for example, but I must tell you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various |
