"Rocking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like this: 'Marquis, I stood one winter night upon a rocking boat and crossed the Delaware. It was a bitter night; no stars were in the sky; the lanterns' rays scarce fell upon the waters; the oars rose and fell, though they were frozen, for they were plied by strong and grizzly fishermen; ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... appear a yellowish tinge in the unfixed portions when examined by transmitted light; but this is not an easy or certain test. It is better to make absolutely certain of thorough fixing by continued immersion, occasional rocking and, where many prints are made, a second bath. The fixing bath should not be allowed to get too warm in hot weather. Blistering, staining and frilling will result in such a case, and I have known a print which ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... of movement were apparently limited to a slow, ponderous, half-rocking, half-rolling progress on their heavy rounded bases. They were now grouped in a rough semicircle just under the edge of the rocky projection that extended out over the pit. The opalescent nucleus in every silvery faceted form seemed to be "watching" ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... Between one and two thousand men were at work on the beach at one time, yet so good-natured were they that no quarrels seem to have occurred. Doctors, lawyers, barkeepers, and all dropped their business and went to-rocking, as they call beach-mining." ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... behind them, they drew their horses down into a rocking trot, then to a slow walk. Virginia rode with her head up, her eyes upon the field of stars. Her face, as Norton kept close to her side, looked very white in the starlight. He would have given much to have seen her eyes when a little later he ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... was full of homely comfort. A blue-and-white rag carpet in the centre left a border of bare floor, painted pumpkin-yellow; there was a glittering airtight stove with isinglass windows that shone like square, red eyes; a gay patchwork cushion in the seat of a rocking-chair was given up to the black cat, whose sleek fur glistened in the lamplight. Three of the sisters knitted silently; two others rocked back and forth, their tired, idle hands in their laps, their eyes closed; ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... countenances; even the hectic of disease does not deceive you,—it has no affinity to the rose of health. There is the cough, too,—the cruel cough that would not be left at the North, that breaks out through all the smothering by day, and shakes the weak frame with uneasy rocking by night. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... gold sticks to their sides, are thrown away; but the smaller ones are left until the hopperful has been washed, so that nothing but clean stones remain in the riddle, and then the cradler rises from his seat, lifts up his hopper, and with a jerk throws all the stones out. The water and the rocking are both necessary. Without the water, the dirt could not be washed; and without the rocking, the dirt would dissolve very slowly, and the gold would most of it be lost. The rocking keeps the dirt in ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... her up in her arms and rocked her for a long time in the rocking-chair, crooning over her queer little rambling tunes without meaning; only once she spoke, and then what she said was this: "Libby Anne, I hope you will never be as lonely to see me as I am right now ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... is this the way you laugh at the most constant of your admirers? How many long years have I spent in your service, from the time I began with rocking your cradle, occasionally giving you, to sweeten your humors, a teaspoon of castor oil, or a half-dozen drops of elixir salutis, up to the present time, and thus you reward my devotion! I begin to feel desperate, and have half a mind to transfer my affections ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... child Marjory Had one white hour of life brim full; Now the old nurse, the rocking sea, Hath him ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs. A man with mirth is like a chariot with springs, in which one can ride over the roughest roads and scarcely feel anything but a pleasant rocking motion. ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... offer, the hostess took it herself, and see-sawed on it nearly the whole time. It was a very awkward, high-legged, crouch-backed rocking-chair, and shamefully unprovided with anything in the form of ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... hurrying after her, as he thought, down Windyghoul. He was no farther away than a whisper might have carried on a still night, but she dared not pursue him, for already Dow was coming back. She could not see him, but she heard the horse whinny and the rocking of the dogcart. Dow was now at the brute's head, and probably it tried to bite him, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... but men saw his face, and heard that which was in the voice, and they needed no word of reward to come, but shouted as we had shouted when the bride came home to Grimsby, and I thought that with the shout the throne of Hodulf was rocking. ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... bawled out as a Millionaire, it was up to Mother to join a new kind of Club and have a Handle put on her Eye-Glasses. She would practise in her room for Hours at a time, gripping the Rocking Chair with both Hands and trying to get the real Bostonian sound of ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... Desire, in the chimney corner, sobbing and wringing her hands, and rocking her body to and fro. She wouldn't eat, though good, kind, motherly Mrs. Moore, baked, on purpose for her, some of her most tempting cakes; she wouldn't drink, though Mrs. Moore handed her a nice hot cup of tea. ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... three generous cheers for the "first Siberian exploring party." We replied with three more,—our last farewell to civilisation,—and silently watched the lessening figure of the steamer, until the white handkerchief which Arnold had tied to the backstays could no longer be seen, and we were rocking alone on the long swells of ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... anything about it. When asked if she had ever seen a ghost, she said, "No, but I heard one once." She said that one night after her master had killed "hisself" in the barn with a pistol, she heard the doors being shut, the windows being slammed, and the chairs rocking on the front porch all by themselves. She declared that the wind was not blowing and that a "ghost was doing ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... not sensual," said the Boy. "I take my pleasures daintily, and this scene satisfies me heart and soul; balmy air; moonlight with its myriad associations; a murmurous multitude of sounds like sighs, all soothing; the silent drift and gentle rocking of the boat; and the calm human fellowship, the brotherly love undisturbed by a single violent emotion, which is the perfection of social intercourse to me. I say the scene is hallowed, and I'll have no sex in my paradise." The last words were ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... connecting rods, h', thereby allowing the carbon to be forced through the dies. In the backward movement of the piston, a, a fresh supply of material is drawn by atmospheric pressure through the hoppers, B B', alternately. At the end of the stroke the arms of the rocking levers (which are connected by tension rods with the tappet levers) are struck by the disk wheel or regulator, the guillotine is moved back and replaced over the openings of the dies, ready for the next charge, as shown. The plungers are operated by hydraulic, steam, compressed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... sure hands, With thunders and with lightnings and with smoke, Peal after peal, the British battle broke, Lulling the brine against the Coptic sands. We taught him lowlier moods, when Elsinore Heard the war moan along the distant sea, Rocking with shatter'd spars, with sudden fires Flamed over: at Trafalgar yet once more We taught him: late he learned humility Perforce, like those whom Gideon ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... open books, their bodies are swaying to and fro like reeds in a pond, and their voices rise and fall in the same sing-song in which they con their texts, all to deceive the monitor, who, hearing the usual drawl and seeing the rocking bodies, believes the students to be busy at their tasks. But little by little, they forget and drop out of their recitative into the ordinary conversational tone.—'Tell me, Zabualean [the pupils are called by their native town in the Yeshibah], don't you think it's ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... school I was ready to take in every word and see every picture and get a grip on every principle. Maybe you don't know that it was one of many such schools set up by the rural work leaders of our Home Missions Board, and it was a great school. They had no use for rocking-chair ruralists, so the faculty, instead of being made up of paper experts, was a bunch of men who knew. It was worth a year of dawdling over text-books. You see, I knew I could come back here and try everything ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... but everybody had gone in except Miss Susanna and Mr. Willie, and when I sat down in a rocking-chair Miss Susanna looked at me as if she didn't know whether to say anything or not, and I saw she was worried. But before I could ask what was the matter she got up and kissed me good night and went in, so I asked ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... eating like Lent was just over. We lost all the glory of the sunset except what we got by reflection, being on the side of the mountain we were, with the dense woods between. Big sullen clouds kept drifting over and a wind got lost in the trees that kept them rocking and groaning in a horrid way. But we were just as cozy as we could be and rest was as ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... resolved to sweep him off the earth. She could not blame Alvan for his desperate passion, though pitying the victim of it. In any case the instant of the arrival of the carriage was her opportunity marked by the finger of Providence rendered visible, and she sat rocking her parcel on her lap. Her love of Alvan now was mixed with an alluring terror of him as an immediate death-dealer who stood against red-streaked heavens, more grandly satanic in his angry mightiness than she had ever realized ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... know," said he, glancing down at me with the same serene goodness, the same repose of firmness that I have seen in him when sitting at his side amid the secure peace of his mother's hearth. Yes, thus adjured, I think I would have sat still under a rocking crag: but, indeed, to sit still in actual circumstances was my instinct; and at the price of my very life, I would not have moved to give him trouble, thwart his will, or make demands on his attention. We were in the stalls, and for a few minutes there was a most terrible, ruthless ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... his usual place, and directly behind James. He seemed to dislike the rocking of the boat as much as his master, but he bore it very patiently for awhile, thinking, no doubt, that the best way to deal with James was to "let him severely alone." But the rocking increased, and Brave ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... stiff with polite astonishment before the spectacle of a British "rag." He paid the dubious tribute of a weak giggle to the bombardment of Dr. Bird. He was convulsed at the first performance of Prosper Panne. In his final collapse he was rocking to and fro and crowing with ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... sadly. "No money, und your papa, he has all times a scare he shouldn't to get no more, the while the boss"—and here followed incomprehensible, but depressing, financial details, until the end of the interview found Morris and his mother sobbing and rocking in one another's arms. So Morris was helpless, his mother poor, and Teacher ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... trader, and I suppose you can account for Hurd's defeat in the same way. The people believe in protection although they generally admit that the tariff ought to be reformed. I believe in protecting "infant industries," but I do not believe in rocking the cradle when the infant is seven feet high ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... schooner. For an hour the blast drove us along, while, owing to the sharpness of the vessel's bow and the press of canvas, she dashed through the waves instead of breasting over them, thereby drenching the decks with water fore and aft. At the end of that time the squall passed away, and left us rocking on the bosom ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... of her lover, Little Dorrit, with her hands to her averted face, and rocking herself where she stood as if she were in pain, murmured, 'O father, how can you! O dear, dear father, how can ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... be united. A fire burned cheerfully in the chimney, over which was a tea-kettle. On the hearth sat a smiling and playful cherub of a boy, tossing something to a black girl who sat opposite, and whose innocent and regular features wanted only a different hue to make them beautiful. Near it, in a rocking-chair, with a sleeping babe in her lap, sat a female figure in plain but neat and becoming attire. Her posture permitted half her face to be seen, and saved me from any danger ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... people cried: "O cruel fate!" and many of them rent their clothes. They all sank down upon the ground around Nesibeh, rocking themselves ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... apathy the sound of horses' hoofs at her unprotected door even at that hour neither surprised nor alarmed her. She lifted her head as the door opened and the pale face of Gideon Deane looked into the room. She moved aside the cradle she was rocking, and, taking a saucepan and tea-cup from a chair beside her, absently dusted it with her apron, and pointing to the vacant seat said, "Take a chair," as quietly as if he had stepped from the next room instead ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... which was known and loved by prophet and psalmist, and most of all by Him who spread His table on the green grass, and taught His disciples while they walked the narrow paths waist-deep in rustling wheat, and spoke His messages of love from a little boat rocking on the lake, and found His asylum of prayer high on the mountainside, and kept His parting-hour with His friends in the moon-silvered quiet of the garden of olives. That spirit of place, that soul of the Holy Land, is what I fain would meet on my pilgrimage,—for the sake of Him who ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... melodrama; it is the woods he knew, and the creatures of the woods, Deerslayer and Chingachgook, that preserve his books. Whitman made little distinction between nature and human nature, perhaps too little. But read "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" or "The Song of the Redwood-Tree," and see how keen and how vital was his instinct for native soil. As for Hawthorne, you could make a text-book on nature study from his "Note-Books." He was an imaginative moralist first of all; but he worked out his visions ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Dicky!" she implored. "Sit down, you're rocking the boat! Save your mathematics for Martin. Don't you know that I could never find out why 'x' was equal to 'y' or to ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... well-defined. All framed in a tangle of blond beard and mustache which, if anything, added to the general manliness of his appearance. He, too, wore khaki, but with the addition of tan riding-leggings, which had seen anything but rocking-horse service. The man was yellow from the top of his helmet to the soles of his shoes—outside. For the rest, he was a mystery, to James, to all who thought they knew him, and most of all to himself. A pariah, an outcast, a fugitive from the bloodless hand of the law; a gentleman born, once upon ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... any special friends among the girls. In her time out of school hours she stayed with Mrs. Boardman as much as she could, and her teacher was very kind about letting the little girl come to her room whenever she wanted to, and curl up in the big rocking-chair and watch Mrs. Boardman as she sat by the window in her low sewing-chair and did the piles of mending ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... earth, high in the airy ocean, In the tempest's cradle I'm borne with a rocking motion; Clouds are towering, Storms beneath me are lowering, Giddily all the wonders I see, And, O Eternal, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... inverse proportion to the number of dollars paid, and ensconce themselves in their respective chambers. As to what they do there it is not very easy to say, but I believe they clear-starch a little, and iron a little, and sit in a rocking-chair, and sew a great deal. I always observed that the ladies who boarded, wore more elaborately worked collars and petticoats than any one else. The plough is hardly a more blessed instrument in ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... sat so long over the newspapers that in spite of my absorbing interest in the topic engrossing me, I fell asleep in my cozy little rocking chair. I was awakened by what seemed like a kiss falling very softly on my forehead, though, to be sure, it may have been only the flap of George's coat sleeve as he stooped ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... boarder—a Mr. Gonzalves, with a highly varnished complexion, who took off his hat elaborately as he passed the open door. She became conscious of her use of the roses, and abandoned them. Presently she sat down on a bentwood rocking-chair, and swayed to and fro, aware of an ebbing of confidence. Half an hour later she was still sitting there. Her face had changed, something had faded in it; her gaze at the floor was profoundly speculative, and when she glanced at the empty door ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... feeling as if she should like to cry. She did cry a little after tea, as they sat in the dusk; Mr. Worrett smoking his pipe and slapping mosquitoes outside the door, and Mrs. Worrett sleeping rather noisily in a big rocking-chair. But not even Johnnie found out that she was crying; for Elsie felt that she was the naughtiest child in the world to behave so badly when everybody was so kind to her. She repeated this to herself many times, but it didn't do much ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... clasped in his arms, was rocking to and fro a little distance from the tepee. Though he was not looking toward Tad's tent, the lad felt sure the fellow had been placed there to watch him. He understood then why Jinny had not been to the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... he was asleep and Mary, sitting in the rocking-chair by the bed, was thinking, thinking, thinking. If she could only stop thinking for a little while! Uncle Zoeth, there on the bed, looked so calm and peaceful. If only she might have rest and peace again! If she ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... its way out of Paris, past the great embankment and the fortifications, and goes rocking along among green trees whose branches sweep its sides, and trim villas with stone walls around quaint gardens. At every moment it passes little inns and suburban restaurants with cool arbours in front of them, and waiters in white coats pouring out glasses of red wine. It makes one thirsty just ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... of mine are going north to the Frio on a courting errand to-day. But our marriage customs are inferior to yours, and our young people, left to themselves, don't seem to marry. Don Alejandro, if you and I had the making of the matches, there'd be a cradle rocking in every jacal." Both smiled, said their "Adios, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... icebergs, breaking away from the glaciers of the Welsh Alps, sailed down over the spot where we now are, dropping their imbedded stones and silt, to confuse more utterly than before the records of a world rocking and throbbing above the shocks of the ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... into hummocks, which did not thaw out. The crisp leaves which had made the forest so noisy disintegrated into sodden silence. A wildness was in the air, swooping down with the breeze, buffeting in the little whirlwinds and eddies, rocking back and forth in the tops of the storm-beaten trees. Cold little waves lapped against the thin fringe of shore ice that crept day by day from the banks. The water itself turned black. Strange birds swirling down wind like leaves uttered weird notes of ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... from the house. I remember my old mother was alive then, and in the long winter evenings when the frost was crackling out of doors, and had sealed up hermetically the narrow panes of our cottage, she used to sit at her wheel, drawing out a long thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot, and humming a song, which I seem to hear ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... in and sitting lankly down in the feather-cushioned rocking-chair which his mother pushed toward him with her foot, "that the expense would be more at Harvard than it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... came from the booth, perspiring, but smiling and happy. He walked across the street to see Joe Wegg, and found the youth seated in a rocking-chair and looking quite convalescent. But he had company. In a chair opposite sat a man neatly dressed, with a thin, intelligent face, a stubby gray moustache, and shrewd eyes ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... the posts, moodily staring out into the blue distance, and every now and again flicking his riding boot with his whip; but she looked happy enough as she swung herself slowly backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair, her hands clasped behind her head. Such a pretty girl, oh, such a pretty girl, she was—so dainty and pink and white. Her rosy lips were just parted in a smile; the long, level beams of the setting sun, falling on her through the passion ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... swashing down stream, and a schooner, having but little of wind and less of tide to help it along, was rocking listlessly in the long swell. In the shadow of the slack sails a man sprawled upon the schooner's deck, while against the old-fashioned tiller ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... a black dress and white apron on, sat, with folded hands, in the rocking-chair. "Da" Corbett, with his "other clothes" on and his glasses far down on his nose, sat in another rocking-chair reading the life of General Booth. Peter Rockett, the chore boy, in a clean pair of overalls, and with hair-oil on his hair, sat on the edge of the wood-box ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... before the commonplacest, sanest, and simplest generalisations of human life. In The Great Free Show, in our common human peep at it, who has not seen them, staggering to know what the very children, playing with dolls and rocking-horses, can take for granted? Minds which seem absolutely incapable of striking out, of taking a good, manly stride on anything, mincing in religion, effeminate in enthusiasm—please forgive me, Gentle Reader, I know I ought ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Portman! look how nicely these are balanced. There! my breath has set them in motion. Look, they shake, shake, shake, like the great rocking-stones ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... mother, who had sung it all day long one spring while she was shearing the sheep. And he could not think of any other for the moment. It wasn't, in fact, a bad song. There were many good rhymesters in Iceland. He began singing again, rocking his body back and forth vehemently, and stroking the fox skin the while. And Samur, who sat in front of him, cocked his head first on one side, then on the other, and gave him a knowing look. At last the dog stretched out his neck, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... now; and under its dominion she was uplifted, carried along. Her mind moved toward it with a reckless rocking speed, the ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... down on the very edge of the cliff with her little legs hanging over the water, and laughed, rocking to and fro in her laughter, and Osberne laughed also. But he said: "But art thou not afraid of the Dwarfs?" She said: "Dear bairn or boy, I had been there many times before I heard tell of the Dwarfs, and I gat no harm, and after I had heard the tale I went still, and still gat no harm; nay ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... was composed of Steward, Kwaque, Cocky, and Scraps, and he ran with it as ancient forbears had ran with their own kind in the hunting. The steerage was the lair of this pack, and, out of the steerage, it ranged the whole world, which was the Mary Turner ever rocking, heeling, reeling on the surface of ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... the magazine, the pamphlet, furnished them with ready vehicles of conveyance. Archimedes, during the siege of Syracuse, had to quit the sober quiet of his study, and to mix with the armed defenders of his native city, amid the wild confusion of sallies and assaults, the rocking of beleaguered towers, the creaking of engines, and the hurtling of missiles. It was thus with some of the greatest minds of the country during the distraction and alarm of the French Revolution. Coleridge conducted a newspaper; Sir James Mackintosh wrote for one; Canning ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... his chair and sat down, pressing his lean hands to his aching temples and rocking himself to and fro, his breath hissing through his convulsively closed teeth. Still the fearful memory remained, and it grew into a prophetic vision of the future, reflecting what had been upon the distant scenery of what was yet to be. With ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... time or country, for the last two thousand years, was it so true as here in this waste-weltering epoch of Sterling's and ours. A world all rocking and plunging, like that old Roman one when the measure of its iniquities was full; the abysses, and subterranean and supernal deluges, plainly broken loose; in the wild dim-lighted chaos all stars of Heaven gone out. No star of Heaven visible, hardly now to any man; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... there, and show less," she said. I went in softly, and stood behind mother's chair, slightly abashed for a moment in the presence of the party—some eight or ten ladies, dressed in black levantine, or cinnamon-colored silks, who were seated in rocking-chairs, all the rocking-chairs in the house having been carried to the parlor for the occasion. They were knitting, and every one had a square velvet workbag. Most of them wore lace caps, trimmed with white satin ribbon. They were larger, more rotund, and ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... Indian, as he climbs the dizzy precipice, or passes over the rocking bridge, in his journey across the rugged mountains, or leads his troop of llamas to the seashore, or labours in the dark mines, bringing up vast weights from the bowels of the earth, is enabled to bear the fatigue he is called on to undergo by ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... They had rounded the big clump of evergreens and found Aunt Missouri Claiborne placidly rocking on the front porch! Directed to mount steps and ring bell, to lay cards upon the servant, how should one deal with a rosy-faced, plump lady of uncertain years in a rocking-chair. What should a ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... How placidly thy moist lips speak e'en now Along yon sparkling shingles. Who can be So fanciless as to feel no gratitude That power and grandeur can be so serene, Soothing the home-bound navy's peaceful way. And rocking e'en the fisher's little bark As gently as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... the last death-strife! Hurrah for an exile's tomb! Come life or death, 'tis still the same, So we preserve our stainless name From losel of the coward's shame. Hurrah for the mountain side! Hurrah for the bivouac! Hurrah for the heaving tide! If rocking the felon's track. ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... long after this had happened, as Balna was rocking her baby's cradle, and whilst her sisters were working in the room below, there came to the palace door a man in a long black dress, who said that he was a Fakir, and came to beg. The servants said to him, "You cannot go into the palace—the ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... first days, free from disagreeable sensations, though wanting in excitement. He ate and drank much, and slept twelve round hours. The rest of the time, when he did not talk with Bertha, he wandered in the park, lounged in a rocking-chair, or took a jaunt in the saddle. He even went fishing under the willows at the foot of the garden; and grew fat. His best days were those which he spent at Corbeil with Jenny. He found in her something of his past, and she always quarrelled with him, which woke him up. Besides, she brought ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... Pollock, and Lowe (Rev, R. T.) The latter was drowned in 1873, with his wife, in the s.s. Liberia, Captain Lowry. The steamer went down in the Bay of Biscay, it is supposed from a collision. I sailed with Captain Lowry (s.s. Athenian) in January 1863, when St. George's steeple was rocking over Liverpool: he was nearly washed into the lee scuppers, and a quartermaster was swept overboard during a bad squall. I found him an excellent seaman, and ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... stole into her heart as she watched the mother slowly rocking backward and forward, uttering a low, crooning lullaby,—the gentlest sound that ever falls on mortal ears. For some reason there came into her soul a sudden loathing of her ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Long live in story King Helge's glory, Who exiled me From him and thee, My father's nation. We'll roam creation Where blue is king, Where wild waves sing. Thou canst not rest thee Ellide, haste thee; Earth's farthest bound We'll sail around. Soon thou'lt be rocking, The sea-foam mocking, My dragon good; A drop of blood Will nothing hinder As ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... went down—glass crashed—another door yielded—two wild figures fell into the superintendent's private office. The little one climbed like a monkey upon a shelf he knew of, and then the two rushed out of the rocking building into the resounding air, on which human shrieks smote steadily, as it was said they did all that awful night. Again, the ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... was a steward on board of the name of James Browner and that he had acted during the voyage in such an extraordinary manner that the captain had been compelled to relieve him of his duties. On descending to his berth, I found him seated upon a chest with his head sunk upon his hands, rocking himself to and fro. He is a big, powerful chap, clean-shaven, and very swarthy—something like Aldrige, who helped us in the bogus laundry affair. He jumped up when he heard my business, and I had my whistle to my lips to call ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dismount after our weary ride, and rest in the comfortable rocking-chairs under the verandah. It is a small white wooden building, overhung with orange-trees, with a pond full of ducks and geese outside it, and a few scattered outbuildings, including a cooking hut, close by. A good-looking man was busy broiling beef-steaks, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... that Mary Erskine was inclined to accept this proposal, from a conversation which took place between her and Mrs. Bell the next evening. It was after tea. The sun had gone down, and the evening was beautiful. Mrs. Bell was sitting in a low rocking-chair, on a little covered platform, near the door, which they called the stoop. There were two seats, one on each side of the stoop, and there was a vine climbing over it. Mrs. Bell was knitting. Mary Bell, who was then about six years old, was playing about the yard, ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... continued he, seating himself in the rocking-chair, or 'courtin'-cheer,' as he called it, and drawing his blushing, yielding wife gently on his knee, 'naa, ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... near us, as well as two larger ones out farther in the ice-fields; but the fog hung grey and persistent over our heads and we could do nothing but wait. Another concert was given by the musicians, and as the steamer lay gently rocking upon the waters of the great sea, through the open front windows there floated out to our sister ship the sweet and pleasing strains of the violins ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... a rattle-trap hack gharry at the heels of a pair of galloping ponies. The reins were broken, a yelling soldier sat helpless on the driver's seat and several of his comrades were inside the rocking vehicle. The animals, maddened with fear, were making straight for the Irrawaddy and, as Shafto rushed forward with outstretched arms to head them off, they swerved violently, came into resounding contact with a huge crane, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... he went on, "I have such a darn good time. Peg and Bock (that's the dog) and I go loafing along the road on a warm summer day, and by and by we'll fetch up alongside some boarding-house and there are the boarders all rocking off their lunch on the veranda. Most of 'em bored to death—nothing good to read, nothing to do but sit and watch the flies buzzing in the sun and the chickens rubbing up and down in the dust. First thing you know I'll sell half a dozen books that ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... The Cheminee-des-Fees," said Morestal, pointing to the vaguely-seen shapes of two huge boulders known by those names of the Rocking Stone ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... distributed over the southern front. Three of the lighter and more slender of the band were "boosted" through the high west window into Moreno's domain. Then through the middle room they made their way, where sat the senora, rocking, weeping, and moaning over the body of the outlaw leader, where, hiding under the bed, shivering and praying, crouched the senorita, her daughter, and then, barefooted, they crept into the room adjoining ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... repeated young Bartlett, and, much to his astonishment, Yates found it to be so. When the horse broke into a canter, Yates thought the motion as easy as swinging in a hammock, and as soothing as a rocking chair. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... their bosoms tear;[92] Or whistling reeds that rutty[93] Jordan laves, And with their verdure his white head embraves; adorns. To chide the winds; or hiving bees that fly About the laughing blossoms[94] of sallowy,[95] Rocking asleep the idle grooms[96] ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... hand of the Druids in certain unusual rock-shapes, now known to be the work of Nature—such as rock-basins, which are developed in the granite by the action of wind and rain; tolmens, or holed stones; and logans, or rocking-stones. Granite on the moor generally weathers irregularly, and if the lower part of a piled-up mass partly crumbles away, a huge layer of harder granite remains balanced on one or two points, and becomes ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... for the timely help of Madonna Camilla, who sent us part of her supper from her barge, I for one," writes the lively lady-in-waiting, "should have certainly been by this time a saint in Paradise." As for going to bed, all wish for sleep was put out of their heads by the rocking of the ship and the uncomfortable berths, and the poor Marchesana was so cold and wretched without a fire that she wished herself dead, and her lady-in-waiting could not keep back her tears. However, at length these miseries were ended, Piacenza was safely reached, on the 12th ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... transpired from the whispers of the Quick Man that the conjurer must have concealed up his sleeve, in addition to the rings, hens, and fish, several packs of cards, a loaf of bread, a doll's cradle, a live guinea-pig, a fifty-cent piece, and a rocking-chair. ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... the mattress rested, had rather an antiquated air. Moreover, I had a pair of sheets which were not of a bad color, although slightly patched. In addition, there was a Madonna hanging on one wall, and a Saint looking at her from the other; and against a door near the foot of my bed, stood a rocking-chair, which on my conscience I believe must have been worth at least a dollar and a half. As the door was fastened up, this rocking-chair was the favorite resort of my first morning visitor, all subsequent callers having to choose between the window-sill, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the two living beings to whom the consequence of this moment was not measurable in time. Then from the woman's parted lips came a long, strangling moan that mounted to something like a muffled shriek. She remained a moment rocking on her feet, then wheeled and stumbled toward the quilt-covered four-poster bed in one dark corner of the cabin. Into its feather billows she flung herself and lay with her fingernails digging into her temples and her body racked ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... leading the way into the pretty parlor, "anyway, till you get into a comfortable rocker. It's so much easier to understand in a rocking-chair! I—well, I think I need one, too! You see, we expected—we didn't expect ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... Finally I asked them if I had "ever been converted," told them I "wanted to be," and immediately we knelt in prayer. How I did weep, and how badly I felt! I can see the back of that little sewing-rocker now swimming in my tears. (I wonder where that rocking-chair is now! The last I knew it was in California, having left us at an auction—an occasion not unfamiliar to most of preacher-families.) They told me to pray, and I prayed with all my heart. If ever there was a little boy who felt that he was a great sinner, I was the boy. I remembered ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... the boughs, rocking the flowers to sleep; the wild birds sang their evening hymns, and all within the wood grew calm and still; paler and paler grew the purple light, lower and lower drooped little Annie's head, the tall ferns bent to shield her from the dew, the whispering pines sang a soft lullaby; ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... a little cottage on the edge of a pretty suburb. The cottage was covered with roses, and the front yard was full of great old-fashioned flowers. On the porch sat a plain little old lady in a rocking-chair, knitting. There was a little gate with a path leading up to the door, and at the side another open gate with a road leading around to the back of ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... better things. For instance, on the festival of Easter, foolish, ridiculous stories have been introduced into the sermon to arouse the drowsy. And at the Christmas services, the absurd pantomime of rocking a babe, and silly declamations in rhyme, have found vogue. Similarly the festivals commemorating the three holy kings, the passion of Christ, Dorothy and other ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... that two or three hundred fathom of line are passed round the boat from stem to stern and back, and carried in and out between the oarsmen as they sit. Well, it was all new to me then; but when the boat began jumping and rocking, and the line began whizzing in and out, and screaming and smoking like—there now, fancy a machine, a complicated one, made of poisonous serpents, the steam on, and you sitting in the middle of the works, with not an inch to spare, on the crankest, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... I allude to, I had entered the first lobby in one of the houses of a most miserable street, where I saw a woman "rocking" in the manner the lower class of Irish express silent agony of feeling. Her body moved back and forward in that peculiar motion which told to my heart she was in misery; and entering the room in silent respect for her suffering, I forgot to knock or make any noise to attract ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... a knowledge of seamanship, and developing its mysteries. I was fond of going aloft when the vessel was rolling or pitching in a strong breeze. I loved to mount upon the top-gallant yard, and from that proud eminence, while rocking to and fro, look down upon the sails and spars of the brig, take a bird's eye view of the deck, and scan the various operations; look at the foam beneath the bows, or at the smooth, eddying, serpentine track left far behind. I also loved to gaze from this elevated ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... of carts and wagons had driven halfway through the parish, it came to the long floating bridge that lies rocking on the river. ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... ocean eagle soared From his nest by the white wave's foam, And the rocking pines of the forest roared,— This was ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... and fall of the rain, the indescribable roar of the raging sea; she heard the trees creak and toss and groan; she heard the rats scampering overhead; she heard the dismal moaning of the old house itself rocking in the gale. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.' To her native grace she now united a distinctive dignity which added to her always gracious and queenly charm, and never had she looked more exquisite than now, when rocking gently in the suspended network of woven turquoise silk fringed with silver, she rested her head against cushions of the same delicate hue, and turned her expressive eyes enquiringly towards her husband,— wondering what kept him so silent, and ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... elasticity of life to buoy it up; he saw his father in those depths, he clutched at him, he brought him up and cast him, a dead weight, into the boat, and exhausted by the effort, he had begun himself to sink again before he instinctively strove to rise and climb into the rocking boat. There lay his father, with a deep dent in the side of his head where the skull had been fractured by his fall; his face blackened by the arrested course of the blood. Owen felt his pulse, his heart—all was still. He called ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... courage a-plenty, and, by G—, you will have need of it all with that of a Griggs!" He gave me his bottle again, and assisted me down, and I found that my legs, save for the rocking of the ship, were steady enough. I followed him out of the hole in which I had lain on to a deck, which, in the half light, I saw covered with slush and filth. It was small, and but dimly illuminated by a hatchway, up the which I pushed after him, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... among themselves, but all the while there loomed above them the form of an old rocking-horse complaining bitterly. He said: "I am Blagdaross. Woe is me that I should lie now an outcast among these worthy but little people. Alas! for the days that are gathered, and alas for the Great One that was a master and a soul ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... hear it. He's a back-number. I'm a modern. I represent equilibrium—" He made a little rocking gesture with his graceful hand. "I am out for Eternal Truth, which ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... into a slow rocking see-saw, coupled with a sense of extraordinary lightness, and Stuart, looking overhead, saw the outstretched ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... mass that fell over her shoulders in a long braid. Then, smiling as she would have smiled at the play of a child, she knelt before her trunk and, taking something from its depth, quickly put out the light again and once more seated herself in a low rocking chair by ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... chestnut-tree, on which the blood of the murdered man is yet red. The gridata, or wake, is assembled in a dark room. On the wooden board, called tola, the corpse lies stretched; and round it are women, veiled in the blue-black mantle of Corsican costume, moaning and rocking themselves upon their chairs. The pasto or conforto, food supplied for mourners, stands upon a side table, and round the room are men with savage eyes and bristling beards, armed to the teeth, keen for vengeance. The dead ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... dream unwound; the dreamer moved, easing his position, shaking back a lock of dark hair that had fallen across his forehead. He was no longer rocking to the power of the north express; he was standing on the platform at the end of a little train that puffed out of the Finland station—a primitive, miniature train, white with frost and powdered with the ashes of its wood fuel. The vision came and passed a sketch, not a picture—a suggestion of ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... morning's bombardment was infinitely more so. It was the first time I had heard a full powered "Drum Head" barrage—where so many batteries and guns are engaged that the sound of firing and subsequent explosion is continuous and unified in volume. The hills and valleys shook under the rocking recoiling ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... feel that, since he had chosen to save this weakling once for their lost mother's sake, he was bound forever not to repent nor to retract. He gazed a while longer, silently, at the younger man, who sat, still rocking himself wearily to and fro on the loose earth of the freshly filled grave. Then he went and laid his hand on his brother's shoulder. The other started and trembled; he remembered that ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... she added, sweetly: "If I break any bones, doctor, I'll be your very humble and obedient servant. It's half-past four, and I'll be ready as soon as you are, Graydon. No backing out. You might as well warn me against the peril of a rocking-chair;" and she went to put ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... "Cat-fights in the orchard o'nights are bad enough. But cat-fights here in the livingroom are unthinkable." In due time Aunt Jamesina arrived. Anne and Priscilla and Phil had awaited her advent rather dubiously; but when Aunt Jamesina was enthroned in the rocking chair before the open fire they figuratively bowed down ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and the gentle movement of the waves was like the rocking of an arm-chair after the shaking and rolling we had experienced. We all enjoyed our dinner in peace, whilst the warmth of the cabin was a pleasant change from the searching cold on deck, which, despite furs and rugs, had pierced us ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... him, strolled to the further end, and into a little adjoining recess, well filled with toys. A great uproar in that direction made us all run to inquire the cause, and there was Jack, mounted on a first-rate rocking-horse, tearing away full gallop, and absolutely roaring out in the maddest paroxysm of delight, his hat fallen off, his arm raised, his eyes and mouth wide open, and the surrounding valuables in imminent ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... reached the house, they found the veranda occupied by the Blue Birds, who sat in a semi-circle about three ladies in rocking chairs—Mrs. Talmage, Aunt Selina, and Mrs. Catlin. The latter had a roll of paper in her lap, and evidently had been explaining something to ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... edge of her little black apron, and worrying a seam of the carpet with her toes. She bent her head towards her left shoulder, at first smiling vaguely. She said nothing, but every limb, every glance, every curve, was speaking. Mrs. Baines sat firmly in her own rocking-chair, full of the sensation that she had Sophia, as it were, writhing on the end of a skewer. Constance was ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... ashamed to have found a passing amusement at the expense of Simeon's mother, and she tried to make her mind a blank and go to sleep. Toward morning she must have lost consciousness, for she dreamed—or thought she dreamed—that old Mrs. Ponsonby sat in her hard wooden rocking-chair by the window—the chair with the patchwork cushion fastened by three tape bows to the ribs of its back; the chair Simeon had often told her was "mother's favorite." The old lady rocked slowly, and her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... water. Before she has gained the surface, she throws a summerset. The instant she is on her legs, she rushes backward. And so she goes on staggering, heaving, wrestling, leaping, diving, jumping, pitching, throbbing, rolling, and rocking: and going through all these movements, sometimes by turns, and sometimes altogether: until one feels ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... I remembered her upright, almost stiff, slight figure, the graceful precision of her poses, the faultless symmetry and taste of her dress, and the atmosphere of a fastidious and wholesome cleanliness which exhaled from her. In the lady I saw before me, half reclining in a rocking-chair, there was none of the stiffness and nicety. Habited in a loose gown of some easy, flexible, but rich material, worn with that peculiarly indolent slouch of the Mexican woman, Mrs. Saltillo had parted with half her individuality. ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... came from Foley, dropping his paddle and standing up in the skiff, which now had nothing to guide it but Hildey's exhausted arm. The skiff was rocking violently. Foley attempted to balance himself as he raised his pistol to shoot. In a flash the frail craft was caught in the conflicting currents, it careened and capsized, and the two men were battling for life in ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... That stupid high heel turned and gave me a sad wrench. It aches so, I can hardly stand, and I don't know how I'm ever going to get home," she said, rocking to and fro ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Presently, to my listless roving gaze, the varied outlines of the clumpy foliage began to assume or imitate—say rather SUGGEST other shapes than their own. A light wind began to blow; it set the boughs of a neighbour tree rocking, and all their branches aswing, every twig and every leaf blending its individual motion with the sway of its branch and the rock of its bough. Among its leafy shapes was a pack of wolves that struggled to break from a wizard's leash: greyhounds would not have strained so savagely! ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... inordinately proud of his learning and inordinately fond of nagging at him over little things. She was what Helen May called a vegetable type of woman. She did not seem to have any great emotions in her make-up. She sat in the one rocking-chair under the mesquite tree and crocheted lace and talked comfortably about Holly and her chickens in the same breath, and frankly admired Helen May's "spunk" in living out alone ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... of two minutes the masterly woman advertised the emotions she had suffered by burying her face in the Rose's coat; rocking gently. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... could dimly hear Ban's voice. He seemed to be swearing insanely. Dropping to her hands and knees, for the craft was now swerving and rocking, she crept ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... breaking softly and regularly on the beach. He heard the rustling of the grasses as they trembled in the night breeze, the hoot of the owl in the ivied chimneys of Garthowen, the distant barking of a dog, the tinkle of a chain on some fishing boat rocking on the undulating waves; but no other sound broke ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... nestled closer to her; and then while the shadows of evening were gathering round them, she sat rocking herself to and fro on a stone, murmuring many tender, sweet words to him, until the music of her voice and the warmth of ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... narrow streets, and on to the quarter of the Muski. Time after time he thought he had lost the carriage ahead, but his own driver's knowledge of the tortuous streets enabled him always to overtake it again. They went rocking along lanes so narrow that with outstretched arms one could almost have touched the walls on either side; past empty shops and unlighted houses. Cairn had not the remotest idea of his whereabouts, save that he was evidently in the ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the sitting-room door, she found the little old lady propped in a rocking chair just inside the doorway with a patchwork quilt across her lap, tucking her in. There was no appreciable change. She was as yellow, as parchment like as ever. Her eyes perhaps were brighter; indeed they seemed almost to have a heat of their own as Mary Louise stooped ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... I, putting my foot inside the door as I spoke. The room, I saw, was plainly, but neatly furnished. A rag-carpet covered the floor; green rush-bottomed chairs, a settee with chintz cover, and a straight-backed rocking-chair were distributed around the walls; and for ornament there was an alphabetical sampler in a frame, over the low ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various |
