"Flicker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found the crowds smaller and the border of chairs in front of his hotel largely empty. A few cigars still burned in the half-light, but they were the last flicker of a conflagration now all but extinguished. The restless throb of the human dynamo was lower and more subdued. The street cars were practically empty. Instead of a constant stream of vehicles, an occasional cab clattered past. The city was preparing for its ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Mr. Falconer, grimly. "Yes, plenty of other thing change, have their day and cease to be, but the little village keeps its end up and sees things—and men—come and go, flare up, flicker and fizzle out. No, thanks; I'll have ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... beast!" roared Dodge. Behind him rode the detachment, grimly merry, though with not a flicker of a smile showing. ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... trouble at Linda's house; trouble so terrible that Harriet's unexpected arrival caused no comment, caused no more than a weary flicker of Linda's heavy eyes. Pip, the adored first- born son, lay dangerously ill, and the whole household moved on tiptoe, heartsick with dread. Fred, a white and unshaven Fred, was home in the cold gray ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... him quietly with the faintest flicker of a smile. "Ah, I won't offend you again, my dear fellow. I'm afraid that I'm a bit too impulsive, and that you are too proud a man even to listen to a well-meant and kindly suggestion for your ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... light, and window blinds are rolled, I hear a bounce upon the bed, I feel a creeping toward me—a soft head, And on my face A tender nose, and cold— This is the way, you know, that dogs embrace— And on my hand, like sun-warmed rose-leaves flung, The least faint flicker of the warmest tongue —And so my dog and I have met and sworn Fresh love and fealty ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... slowly back to her chair. "You seem in a great hurry to be rid of me," she said, with the flicker ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... found out all the crevices in the worm-eaten woodwork that would afford it ingress to the room. But neither Marguerite nor Ffoulkes was conscious of the cold. They had wrapped their cloaks round their shoulders, and did not feel the chill currents of air that caused the lamp to flicker and ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... jest, worn round, like what preceded it, rolled in an old groove, but because of some preoccupation of her own. Her faint smile had disappeared, and, as her cousin's glance met hers, she looked down; yet not before he had seen in her eyes the flicker of something like a question—a question both poignant and dismayed. He may have understood it; for his own smile vanished at once in favour of a ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... and small, glossy gray head bent over the squat brown tea-pot as she shook out the last bit of leaf from the canister. The canister was no longer hers, neither the tea-pot, nor even the battered old pewter spoon with which she tapped the bottom of the tin to dislodge the last flicker of tea-leaf dust. The three had been sold at auction that day in response to the auctioneer's inquiry, "What am I bid for ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... walls. These were intended to represent various of the powers of Nature under allegorical similitudes, and as nothing can be made that does not belong to the general scheme, she could not fail at least to imagine a flicker of relationship between some of them, and thus a shadow of the reality of things ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... did not stir nor did his eyelids flicker. He was used to the proximity of foes, and the distant report did not cause his heart to miss a single beat. Instead, he felt a sort of dry amusement that they should be so near and yet know it not. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... drowsily in the morning sunlight with shuttered windows that were its sleeping eyes—the great white house of Fairfield. Its high pillars reached to the roof; its big wings stretched away at either side; the flicker of the shadow of the leaves played over it tenderly and hid broken bits of woodwork, patches of paint cracked away, window-panes gone here and there. It stood as if too proud to apologize or to look sad ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... well and had forgotten himself. He took a chair and set it in the open doorway, using the door-post as a rest for his head; and then the cottage was silent. The wind breathed more gently; the stars shone out; the air was soft after the storm; the moonlight made a bright flicker of light and shade over all the outer world. Now and then a grasshopper chirruped, or a little bird murmured a few twittering notes at being disturbed in its sleep; and then came a ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... occupies its present position, and, as it were, offers to weary travelers so inviting a seat. Yet often I am strangely awed, in gazing on the group so enveloped in unfathomable mystery. Who may say when another of its jewels shall flicker and go out? And when may not our own world to other planets be a 'Lost Star?' How childish associations cling to one in after years. I never looked up at Cassiopeia, without recalling the time when ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... were wholly deserted, and came and went, on either side, phantom-like in their soft, gray, faded tints. Under every bridge flashed and foamed the clear beryl-green waters. And nobody in St. Petersburg, except ourselves, saw this last and sunniest flicker of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... was closed; a board covered the window, but a murmur of voices came from within. Maurice stole close and listened. Through a crack he could see the flicker of a candle-flame, and he heard the voice ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... second, but it was enough to make my heart jump. I had never seen the great man before, and he had never seen me. But in that fraction of time something sprang into his eyes, and that something was recognition. You can't mistake it. It is a flicker, a spark of light, a minute shade of difference which means one thing and one thing only. It came involuntarily, for in a moment it died, and he passed on. In a maze of wild fancies I heard the ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... gone out of itself. She did not speak. The lamp caused great luminous moires to flicker ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... flame flickers once more in the huge oven, the baker scrapes incessantly with his shovel, the water simmers in the kettle, and the flicker of the fire on the wall dances as before in silent mockery. While in other men's words we sing out our dumb grief, the weary burden of live men robbed of the sunlight, the ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... confessed failure, he yet refuses to accept the punishment, and swerves aside from the slum to vagabondage. The average beast in the social pit is either too much of a beast, or too much of a slave to the bourgeois ethics and ideals of his masters, to manifest this flicker of rebellion. But the social pit, out of its discouragement and viciousness, breeds criminals, men who prefer being beasts of prey to being beasts of work. And the mediocre criminal, in turn, the unfit and inefficient ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... it's turning round—oh! it has a black mark in front of its neck like a cravat and it's speckled underneath. It has flown a little further off and is walking up a tree, and it's very white on its back where its tail begins. Oh! do hear it laugh, Nat." And the Flicker, the big Woodpecker with golden lining to its wings, for it was he, gave out peal after peal of his ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... was followed by four other Eskimos. They had left their weapons outside. They seemed scarcely to breathe as they ranged themselves in a line and looked down upon Scottie Deane. Not a sign of emotion came into their expressionless faces, not the flicker of an eyelash did the immobility of their faces change. In a low, clacking monotone they began to speak, and there was no expression of grief in their voices. Yet Billy understood now that in the hearts of these little brown men Scottie Deane stood enshrined like a god. Before ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... nodded and relapsed into melancholy. The doctor turned his attention to the house which a flicker of the whip had pointed out. It was long and low, with wide verandas and a somewhat neglected-looking lawn. At one side an avenue of lilacs curved, and on the other stood a stiff line of fir trees. The front of the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... plays to suit cash customers, and of course, the Bard of Avon had first call, because his plays went on the various stages like a torchlight procession, while those of his so-called compeers, struggled through the acts and scenes with only the flicker and sputter of tallow dips ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... gambling-den. He coolly stroked the lovely hair of the ingenue, Miss Evelyn L'Ewysse, with one hand, leveled a revolver with the other, and made fearless jests the while, to the infinite excitement of the audience, especially of the hyah-hyah-hyahing negroes, whose faces, under the flicker of lowered calcium-carbide lights, made a segregated strip of yellow-black polka-dotted ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... do, Evelina, why not you—live with James?" he asked, and I thought I detected a mocking flicker in ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... occasions. Men would have marvelled less about him had they known that the man dressed in the long slate-coloured robe, with shaven head, and saintly-looking face, over which no one had ever seen a smile flicker, was in reality a pilgrim on his way to the Western Heaven, which he hoped to reach in time, and to become ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... coiled hair's brown crown, for that sweet and seemly way, The straight thoughts, the eager words, the dazzle of your day, Shall I turn base then and learn to whine and curse? Not though daggers of memory flicker through this verse! ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... minute!" said the Seigneur, suddenly starting and laying a finger beside his nose. "Hush!" he said again, and looked into the flicker of the candle by him with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... form no idea of its proportions. The lighting, purposely subdued, consisted of twelve enormous copper lamps, placed column-like upon the ground and burning with brilliant red flames. As we entered, the wind from the corridor made the flames flicker, momentarily casting about us our own enlarged and misshapen shadows. Then the gust died down, and the flames, no longer flurried, again licked up the darkness with ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... rapidly as was possible in the profound darkness, the little troop resumed its march, still under the guidance of Montbar. As they advanced, the leader noticed a smell of smoke which alarmed him. At the same time gleams of light began to flicker on the granite walls at the angles of the path, showing that something strange was happening at ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the three of us crouched there beside him, father and Mr. Goodloe bound them legally and in the name of God, just as the last flicker of strength flared up in Nickols' body. Immediately I rose with the child in my arms and Martha took Nickols' head on her faithful breast while the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... thinning fabric through, And makes substantial insubstantial seem, And shapes immortal mortal as a dream; And eye and brain flicker as shadows do Restlessly ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... turning them over—not counting them, he was too much amazed and excited to do that—when the candle in the lantern gave a final flicker and went out, leaving the boys and the mystery of the compass and the money and Rad's pantaloons enveloped in ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... spoke, was foolishly vacant. Then, a lurid blaze began to flicker behind his ice-blue eyes, and a brickish color surged into his face. Wheeling on Gavin, he cried, his ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Mr. Carter quietly. The expression on his face did not change, but Tommy caught the flicker of despair in his eyes. It convinced him as nothing else had done that ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... herself a flicker of amusement lit her eyes. She had a sense of humor, "I did not think of that, and since you have troubled to return it to me, I can only say ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... commonplace, and obliterating those magnified nothings that form the weary burden of civilised man. With keen appreciation we tramped steadily on till at last we perceived through the night gloom the cheerful flicker of our camp-fire, a sight always welcome, for the camp-fire to the explorer ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... probably loved his child. To take Spring and Love out of her life, as if there were no human instincts to tell Ruth what was being denied her! And what must have been the man's thought as he came upon Ruth wearing a gown of her mother's?—a fair picture of the mother in the primrose days? Not a flicker of an eyelash; steel and ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... The flame continued to flicker, but the hand holding the candlestick failed to move, and Bobby knew that the eyes didn't waver, either. He forced his glance from the searching flame. He managed to lower ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... blowing! Swift and keen and kind o' raw. Blew more furious every minute, Blew a hole clear through the skies; Blew so loud, like demons hissing, That the moon was 'fraid to rise. Got so fierce it blew the stars out, Saw them flicker, then go dead, While the blackness, mad and murky, Rolled in thunder overhead. Goin' with it, durn my whiskers! Hind wheels riz plumb off the ground; Goin' 'gainst it, you and me, dear, Had to push ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... Cynthia's eyes swept the eager face and slim figure of the girl at Jimmy's side. There was the barest flicker of her lids before she raised them and smiled ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... were almost upon the group; and for once we were welcome to our enemies. Even Carmona's face brightened, a flicker of hope lit Lady Vale-Avon's grey eyes; and the Duchess deliberately ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... arched gloom of the woods he had left behind was repeated in the dim aisle and vaulted roof; there was an earthy odor, as if the church itself, springing from the fertilizing dust below, had taken root in the soil; the chequers of light from the faded stained-glass windows fell like the flicker of leaves on the pavement. He paused before the cold altar, and started, for beside him lay the recumbent figure of a warrior pillowed on his helmet with the paraphernalia of his trade around him. A sudden childish memory of the great Western plains, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... He longed for brilliant light that should reveal all parts of the room equally, or else for a thick darkness that should conceal him from everything in the world. The uncertain flicker of a single candle playing miserably between the two was the last thing in the world ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... o'clock he came in and found Francie alone. She noticed, for strangeness, that he was very pale at the same time that he was sunburnt; also that he didn't for an instant smile at her. It was very certain there was no bright flicker in her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnatural meeting. He only said as he arrived: "I couldn't come last evening; they made it impossible; they were all there and we were up till three o'clock this morning." He looked as if he had been through terrible ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... by all the myriad tread Of yon dense millions trampled to the strand, Or 'neath some cross forgotten lays his head Where dark seas whiten on a lonely land: He left his work, what all his life had planned, A waning flame to flicker and to fall, Mid the huge myths his toil could scarce withstand, And the light died in temple and in hall, And the old twilight sank ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... been reached. Guns ahead of us and around us and behind us as usual, in a battle of competitive crashes among themselves, and near by we saw the figures of the gunners outlined in instants of weird lightning glow, which might include the horses of a caisson in a flicker of distinct silhouette flashed out of the night and then lost in the night, with the riders sitting as straight as if at drill. Every voice had one message, "This for the Ridge!" which was crowned by hell's tempest of shell-bursts to prepare the way for ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... of them also bearing lanterns. For a moment the two parties stood staring at each other; then followed a wild and savage scene. With shouts and oaths and battle-cries they fought furiously. The massive, oaken tables were overthrown, by the red flicker of the pole-borne lanterns men grappled and fell and slew each other upon the floor. A priest struck down a yeoman with a brazen crucifix, and next moment himself was brained with ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... on the faces of the ladies, complied, and passed the bottle to Mr. Culpepper. They drank to each other, and again a flicker of surprise appeared on the faces of Mrs. Culpepper and her niece. Mr. Culpepper, noticing it, shook his ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... moment Lawless drew from his blanket a flask of brandy, and without a word handed it over the fire. The fingers of the two men met in the flicker of flames, a sort of bond by fire, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the camp-fire's flicker, Deep in my blanket curled, I long for the peace of the pine-gloom When the scroll of the Lord is unfurled, And the wind and the wave are silent, And world is singing ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... they came to the end of the road, rose a hill with a broad plateau on its stomach. Here through the dull haze of the morning they saw smoky-orange lights beginning to flicker uncertainly as the wind that heralds the sunrise came fitfully up. The soft wet grass under their feet was flecked with little grayish-silver cobwebs, and here and there they heard the morning chirp of ground-nesting birds. As they went farther ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... bells were still clanging, but with abated enthusiasm; from the dimly lighted platform, grayish-white in the ghostly flicker of the oil lamps, the crowd of hungry passengers was ebbing swiftly in its quest of food and drink; a last half-hearted bawling of the virtue to be found in the "hot steak an' liver'n onions at the Royal Alexandry" gave way to a comforting silence—a silence broken only by a growing clatter ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... night grew cold, and soon they went indoors to a friendship fire in the stone fire-place. They watched the flames roar up the chimney, then crackle cheerily, and at last flicker away to little blue tongues, which died almost as soon as they were born. There was no other light in the cabin. Virginia had said that none was needed, and she did not notice the apprehensive glances which the other Vigilantes cast around the shadowy, half-lit room. ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... child to its perambulator," shouted the Eagle Man. Not a flicker disturbed the serenity of the man addressed, no matter what were his inner feelings. He put out two arms straight and stiff like rods, and Suzanna placed the baby upon them. Saying quickly their adieus, Suzanna and Maizie walked behind the uniformed ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... fourteenth of July, much delayed, arrived.[511] If angry before, he was now incensed; for he knew for a certainty at last that Hindman had been a sort of usurper in the Trans-Mississippi District and, with power emanating from no one higher than Beauregard, had never legally possessed a flicker of authority for doing the many insulting things that he had arrogantly done to him.[512] Next, from some ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... was the last flicker of the lamp of despotism; it destroyed and it parodied kings as Voltaire the Holy Scripture. And after him was heard a great noise: it was the stone of St. Helena which had just fallen on the ancient ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... apprehensiveness she moved quickly to the kitchen door and into the dimly-lighted dowdy passage-way. Somewhere beyond the gas flicker and the hat-stand lay—what? With all her determination she pushed forward, almost running to the door. Her hand hovered over the little knob of the lock: only horror of a renewal of that dreadful sound prompted her to open ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... plausible pretext, was relentless, and insisted on doubting the word of the Buster. That unfortunate with the puffy face, who seemed to know his man too well to protract resistance, puffed ahead of us up the black, oozy court, with myriads of windows made ghastly by the pale flicker of kerosene lamps in tiers above us, until he came to the last door but one upon the left side of the court, over which the letter S was sprawled upon the coping stone. The bullseye had been darkened, and when the Buster plunged through the doorway he was lost to sight in the impenetrable ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... passage might see the stars shining overhead. A little fire burned feebly in the huge stone recess: scant warmth might such a fire yield, kindled in such a fireplace, to those around it. Indeed, the little flame seemed conscious of its own inability, and burned with a wavering and mistrustful flicker, as if it were discouraged in view of the task set before it, and had more than half concluded to go ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... motor, I, Joris and Dirck. I snapped on my goggles and got to my work. "Hi, there!" yelled the cop in the helmet of white; "Let her flicker!" said Joris, and into the night, With a sneer at the speed laws, we hurtled hell-bent To carry to Aix ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... There was no flicker of breath; there was none of that pulsing of the body which denotes life; but still she had not the appearance of ordinary death. The Nais I had placed nine long years before to rest in the hollow of the stone, was a fine grown woman, full bosomed, and well boned. The Nais that ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... through the open door, for feet were now pattering along the corridors and the flicker of lights showed through the doorway. Boolba was rolling on the ground in agony when the servants crowded in, followed by the Grand Duke—and ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... returned David with an open countenance, no suspicion of a trap in even the flicker of an eyelash. "They sent Mrs. Cherry. Blooming more every day isn't she, don't you think? She didn't fall on my neck worth a cent though I had braced myself for the shock. She managed to convey the fact that ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... more than comfortable. Willie saw a row of low book-shelves lining the north side of the great room. There were numerous fine pictures and plaster casts here and there. A piano stood in one corner, a talking-machine in another. The light within seemed to flicker, and Willie guessed that in the rear of the room, where he could not see it, a log was burning in an open fireplace; for the days were ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... a candle a day," said a guard as he blew out the one he carried, laying it, with a tinder-box, on a shelf in the wall of rock beside me. Then they filed out, and the narrow door shut with a loud bang. We peered through at the fading flicker of the candles. They threw wavering, ghostly shadows on every wall of the dark passage, and suddenly went out of sight. We both ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... during which Rachel administered a draught of the cordial which did most to support the failing strength of the dying man. Just at this moment the lamp of life seemed to be glowing with fresh strength. It was but the last flicker before extinction, and the wife knew it, but Rachel experienced a glow of hope that perhaps it might ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... from the house-windows, an uncertain flicker of light was thrown into the street, by the aid of which Henri and Chapeau made their way to the market-place, in which there was a guard-house and small barrack, at present the position of the Vendean military head-quarters. In this spot a kind of ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... slowly, and when I put in an appearance on deck to stand my watch, at eight bells of the second dog-watch, it had not yet broken, although an occasional faint flicker of sheet-lightning, away to the eastward, warned us that we might expect it to do so within the next hour or so. At the moment of my appearance on deck, however, there was no very immediate prospect ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... leaves rustled it; the green brookflags waved it; the swallows took it with them to repeat it for me in distant lands. By the running brook I meditated it; a flash of sunlight here in the curve, a flicker yonderon the ripples, the birds bathing in the sandy shallow, the rush of falling water. As the brook ran winding through the meadow, so one thought ran ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... the girls and boys returned to the parlor. The two were closeted together for some time, and when they finally appeared, Mrs. Gray looked strangely flushed and nervous. But there was a smile on her nephew's thin lips and a dangerous flicker in his ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... flicker of Irish fighting spirit in the Boer War. Many thousands, no doubt, were in the English army of 250,000 men brought against the 30,000 Boers, but there was a small "Irish Brigade" that fought on the Boer side, and ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... and keen enjoyment of the ludicrous, our friend Mr. W. Botha could not easily be surpassed; and I advise you, good reader, if you have the chance, to induce him to tell you the following story in his own words, and to watch the flicker of amusement in ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... never animated. In her whole attitude there is a sort of gravity and placidness, something of the half-asleep air of a person ruminating. She has very slow gestures, the gestures of a somnambulist. With a mechanical movement she strikes a wax match, which gives a flicker, and lights the cigar she is holding between ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... time I saw Marie she was a bit cast down. She wished me to suggest something for her to do. Said she wanted a mission—a chance to do some good in the world. Thought she'd enjoy being a nurse. I felt sorry for the girl, and suddenly I saw the flicker ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... there was something indefinitely pleasant in the consciousness that, although a betrothed bride, the young lady still was fancy free: not a bit in love. It was but a marriage of convenience, with mitigations. And so there hovered in my curiosity some little flicker of egotistic romance, which helped to rouse my spirits, and spur me ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... unknown plant, like a fern, and bending slightly forward, was gazing fixedly at his master. A small torch fixed on the floor burnt with a greenish flame, and was the only light in the room. The flame did not flicker nor smoke. The Malay did not stir at Fabio's entry, he merely turned his eyes upon him, and again bent them upon Muzzio. From time to time he raised and lowered the branch, and waved it in the air, and his dumb lips slowly parted and moved as ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... to Gavotte and Mrs. Louderer telling stories of their different great forests. But soon Gavotte took his big sleeping-bag and retired to another cabin, warning us that we must be up early. Our improvised beds were the most comfortable things; I love the flicker of an open fire, the smell of the pines, the pure, sweet air, and I went to sleep thinking how blest I was to be able to enjoy the things ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... this? what night Clings like a face-cloth to the face of each,— Sweeps like a shroud o'er knees and head? for lo! The windy wail of death is up, and tears On every cheek are wet; each shining wall And beauteous interspace of beam and beam Weeps tears of blood, and shadows in the door Flicker, and fill the portals and the court— Shadows of men that hellwards yearn—and now The sun himself hath perished out of heaven, And all the land is ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... while Mrs. Martin and the children waited a bit anxiously, Grandpa Martin went to see what had happened. The Curlytops heard him laughing as they saw the flicker of his light through the white tent. Then they heard Nicknack bleating again. The goat seemed, to those inside, to be kicking about with his ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... there were no such things as "jelly-pieces" to bother about. He liked his mother to sing to him, for he seemed to get rolled up in her soft, warm voice, and become restful and happy. Gradually the low crooning song grew fainter in his ears, the flicker of the fire danced further and further away, until long streaks of golden thready light seemed to reach out, straight from his eyes to the fireplace, and all the comfort that it was possible to have flowed through his soul, and at last he slept. Mrs. Sinclair placed him ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... rather thinly and languidly cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is burrowed with mines; the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, thickens the lower sky, and lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It leaves the upper blue clear and the head of Orion, but dims the flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady ray of the evening star. The people scattered about are not mining people, but half-hearted agriculturists, and very poor. Their cottages are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... measures half-a-dozen at least upon the south; and range after range of vaults extend below the libraries. Few places are more characteristic of this hilly capital. You descend one stone stair after another, and wander, by the flicker of a match, in a labyrinth of stone cellars. Now, you pass below the Outer Hall and hear overhead, brisk but ghostly, the interminable pattering of legal feet. Now, you come upon a strong door with a wicket: on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... streets in that suburb were lonely: he went down them, the new-fallen snow dulling his step. It had covered the peaked roofs of the houses too, and they stood in listening rows, white and still. Here and there a pale flicker from the gas-lamps struggled with the ashy twilight. He met no one: people had gone home early on Christmas eve. He had no home to go to: pah! there were plenty of hotels, he remembered, smiling grimly. It was bitter cold: he buttoned up his coat tightly, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... to hurry over the wet and slippery shale, and down the steep sides of the rugged hill, Kennedy half drew, half-carried her along with swift steps towards the place from which the dim light still seemed to allure them by its wavering and uncertain flicker. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... swayed on the tips of her bare toes, flirting her little ragged frock, and kicking with quite the air of a ballet-dancer. She divided the honors with the dismal Savoyard, who ground away at his organ, and she brought a flicker of admiration into his bronzed and grimy face, for he played for her the same tune over and over, encouraging her with nods and bravas. She was enjoying her triumph quite as much as any prima donna who ever tripped it ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... our comrades died away down the low passage, and then the last flicker of their torch passed from the stone walls of that terrible pit, leaving Selred and myself alone in the cold moonlight. Out through the doors toward the council chamber I saw the Mercian thane, who had been watching us in silence, sit down at the table and ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... said Walker Farr with a frank smile which won an answering flicker from the face under the ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... kept his voice to a whisper, but his hand jerked to draw their attention to the right at deck level. Dane saw that flicker along a log. The stowaway pest was now the same brilliant color as the wood, indistinguishable until it moved, which probably explained how it had come ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... was beginning to flicker on the river and the three were finishing their supper in the cabin when Tom, looking through the porthole, called, "Oh, here comes the truck and an automobile ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... witnessed, regularly executed, all its provisions seeming, as he glanced through it, reasonable and feasible. As he laid it aside, he experienced the business man's satisfaction with a document duly capable of the ends desired. Then he opened with a sudden flicker of curiosity a bulky envelope placed with the will and addressed to himself. He read it through, the natural interest on his face succeeded by amazement, increasing gradually to fear, the chill drops starting from every pore. He had grown ghastly ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... malaria looming in the offing, as his aching head told him. It was as though his brains were arranged in slats, like a venetian blind, and these slats were opening and closing swiftly, bringing with each lightning flicker a momentary unconsciousness. ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... retreats of oriental Christendom, and when the mass is being said—inaudible, indeed, and not to be seen, at the furthest end of that dense, underground crowd, but testified to by the lighting of a thousand tapers, and by the strong desire for some flicker ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... again, or showed another flicker of the clear and normal intelligence that she had shown in the night. But she still breathed, and the long, wet day dragged slowly, in the big, mournful old house, until late in the unnatural afternoon. People—all sorts of people—were coming and going now, and being answered, or being turned ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... either misunderstood or misquoted. At such times oratory is unhappily elbowed to a back bench, the manuscript is solemnly withdrawn from the capacious inner pocket of the new frock coat, and everyone settles himself resignedly, with only a feeble flicker of hope that the so-called speech may not be as long as it is thick. The words may be golden, but the hearers' (?) eyes are prone to be leaden, and in about one instance out of a hundred does the perpetrator ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... pure contempt, but when the case was opened and the array of tubes and transformers was revealed, that expression disappeared; and when he added a super-power stage by cutting in a heavy-duty transformer and a five-kilowatt transmitting tube, Seaton thought that he saw an instantaneously suppressed flicker of doubt or fear. ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... a sort of lethargic reluctance towards effort which extended even to the muscles of his almost expressionless face. To some he might have appeared dull and stupid, but Esther knew this was not true. There was life in the flicker of his small eyes, deep-set, bilious in tinge, and as she looked into them she received the impression of a ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the open hatch, before it could be hastily closed, revealing the squalidness of the interior in which we were quartered. Then someone, growling and stumbling through the darkness, lit a slush lantern, dangling from a blackened beam, its faint flicker barely discernible. The hole became foul and sickening, men tossing and groaning in their uneasy sleep, or prowling about seeking some measure of comfort. There was no severe wind accompanying the storm, and the flurry of rain soon swept by, leaving an ugly swell behind, but enabling ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... Paris tramp, slouching with shoulders bent and little eye furtively scanning the ground for smokers' refuse;—all these moved in a steady stream across the fountain circle and out into the city by the Odeon, whose long arcades were now beginning to flicker with gas-jets. The melancholy bells of St Sulpice struck the hour and the clock-tower of the Palace lighted up. Then hurried steps sounded across the gravel ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... without a flicker. The full mouth was curved at the corners in a tolerant, unsuspecting smile. It was hard to have to make an enemy of so handsome and good-humoured a woman. And was it necessary, was it even wise? As I hesitated she turned and glanced downward ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... the lines on it standing out in sharp ridges; but not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did he betray the slightest nervousness. Yet Tad Butler realized fully the perilous nature of his undertaking, and that the least mistake on his part or on the part of those above him might mean a sudden end to ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... very funny had happened there, which, though the flicker of the fire had died down, she could see with ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... to keep apart from men and was shunned by them, but this one ventured to mingle with the 'great multitudes' that 'followed' Jesus, till he reached His side. He must have known something of Christ to have approached Him with a flicker of long-absent hope in his heart. No doubt he had heard of some of the earlier miracles; and no doubt the crowd recoiled from him so that he could easily reach Jesus. When he got there he worshipped, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Madam, once (said he); I will relate his story to you now. While through the branches of this apple-tree Some spots of sunshine flicker on your brow; While every flower hath on its breast a bee, And every bird in stirring doth endow The grass with falling blooms that smoothly glide, As ships drop down ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... the loyal-hearted hung, The proud was half disarm'd of pride, Nor cared the serpent at thy side To flicker with his double tongue. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees |
