"Undercurrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sullen undercurrent of intense feeling drove these eddying foam bells of flattery into the stream of conversation; or was her reply merely a chance ricochet shot, more accurately ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the best that had gone before was nothing more than a harmless spat compared to this. The marvel of it was how he had developed this quality of defense in inactivity. There must have been some psychological undercurrent carrying strength and skill to him through all the years of his romantic imaginings; the spirits of old heroes of that land must have lent him their counsel and might in that desperate battle with ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... the reorganization of the new, believing that all who worked in high places under the old regime must be and remain enemies of the revolution, so that their employment is a definite source of danger. Glebov is a trade union representative, and his speech was a clear indication of the non-political undercurrent towards the left which may shake the Bolshevik position and will most certainly come into violent conflict with any definitely bourgeois government that may be brought ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... in the churchyard, lost for a brief space in meditation. The solemn strains of the organ which the schoolmistress was still playing, floated softly out from the church to the perfumed air, and the grave melodious murmur made an undercurrent of harmony to the clear bright warbling of a skylark, which, beating its wings against the sunbeams, rose ever higher ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... when curiosity about things human was an ever stronger undercurrent in England, pilgrimages were particularly popular. In 1434, Henry VI. granted licences to 2433 pilgrims to the shrine of St James of Compostella alone.[2] The numbers were so large that the control of their ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... For it is underneath the multitude of fleeting proposals and conscious efforts, born of reason, and which, to one looking upon life from any superficial stand-point, seem to have all to do with its conduct, that there runs the undercurrent of disposition, which is born of Nature, which is cradled and nurtured with us in our infancy, which is itself a general choice, branching out into our specific choices of certain directions and aims among all opposite directions and aims, and which, although ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and coldness there was an undercurrent of something in Tars Tarkas which he seemed ever battling to subdue. Could it be a vestige of some human instinct come back from an ancient forbear to haunt him with the horror of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the writings of Lamb, and not merely in his "Elia," the character of the writer cooperates in an undercurrent to make the effect of the thing written. To understand in the fullest sense either the gaiety or the tenderness of a particular passage, you must have some insight into the peculiar bias of the writer's mind, whether native and original, or imprest gradually by the accidents of situation; whether ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... gallantries which so effectively advertised him as a man of spirit sad charm. Those repeated injunctions of honor are to be the rule, subject to these exceptions, which transcend the common proprieties when the subject is the rising young gentleman of the period and his goal social success. If an undercurrent of shady morality is traceable in this Chesterfieldian philosophy it must, of course, be explained away by the less perfect moral standard of his period as compared with that of our day. Whether this holds strictly true of men may be open to discussion, but his lordship's ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Hardy indicated that he wanted to speak to Lorry, and he included Waring in his gesture. Lorry rose and glanced quickly at Alice Weston. She was leaning forward in her chair, suddenly aware of a subtle undercurrent of seriousness. The undersheriff was patting the nose of ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... be detected in these rallies an undercurrent of strong mutual respect, of which they had all hitherto had no cognisance. They were each one intensely proud of what had been so efficiently carried out; although very little WAR was spoken they were keenly alive to the fact that personally and collectively ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... all? From the undercurrent of suppressed excitement animating most of the guests I should think it was something more important. Have you noticed the air of suspense, of fluctuating hope and doubt, triumph and despair which has characterized our noble band ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... the fire at Overland, who smiled inscrutably. The undercurrent was unfathomable to Williams, though he ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... started them off. It was the historic Marche du Regiment de Sambre et Meuse, which has been France's most popular parade piece since Napoleon's day. As rendered now it had all the crash of bugle fanfares which is its dominant feature, but an additional undercurrent of saxaphones and basses that put a new and ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... last sharp trot, the last leisurely uphill canter, on the bordering, leaf-strewn grass of the winding road, where the white walls and gray roof of the little house showed among the trees, that all the undercurrent seemed to center in a knot of ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... window and opened the wooden shutter and leaned out. He heard the roar of the many camps, blending into one vast undercurrent of sound; he caught the red gleam of fires half hidden behind intervening houses; now and then a bellowed chorus reached him. Also there were sweet tinkling sounds, of a kind which he had never heard before, which thrilled him strangely. Sudden desire took him to be out in the midst of this new ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... laugh was always disagreeable to Cora, as having an undercurrent of meaning intended for her alone. And ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... morning-coated, carefully groomed, plainly nervous but sustained by the dignity of it all. His voice was firm; his manner that of a very circumspect bridegroom. The old smug strut and case-hardened pomp of legislature inaugurals was lacking. An undercurrent of deep sincerity stayed many a tremorous hand. Drury was the least nervous of all. I imagine that in the morning he had sung to himself some good old fortifying ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... slowly over with the boy and laid a hand on Cassy's shoulder, for there was an undercurrent to the conversation which boded no good. The very first words uttered had plunged Abel Baragar and his son's wife into the midst of the difficulty which she had hoped might, after ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... said, more calmly, as if relieved, but still with an undercurrent of passion, "whether I could ever live again in the life of another. But if I did it would be in the life of a man. I am not made to live in a woman's life, really to live, giving out the force that is in me. I know I'm a middle-aged woman—to ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... peaceful resorts, where cultivated, scholarly men, and women of fine sensibilities, could find rest from the struggles of the outside world. The sisters, who managed this large establishment, seemed happy in the midst of their severe and multifarious duties. Of the undercurrent of their lives I could not judge, but on the surface all seemed smooth and satisfactory. They evidently took great pleasure in the society of each other. Every evening, from six to eight, they all sat in the gardens in a circle together, sewing, knitting, and chatting, with occasional merry ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... from fifty to two hundred and seventy pounds. Even Maude was for an instant daunted by the sum. The sale of their furniture would hardly meet it. It was the blackest hour of their lives, and yet, always a strange sweet undercurrent of joy was running through it, for it is only sorrow, fairly shared and bravely borne, which can weld ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... one phase of what may be seen in Trafalgar Square. But with early autumn and the shortening days and the steadily increasing pressure of that undercurrent of want and misery through which strange flotsam and jetsam come to the surface, one saw, on the long benches or crouched on the asphalt pavement, lines of men and women sitting silently, making no appeal to passers-by, but, as night fell, crouching lower in their thin garments or wrapping ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... insist that the only approach to happiness lies through a religious discipline of the feelings, and protest that death is not to be feared but welcomed—as the passage from a troublous existence to everlasting peace. In most of the poetry of the time, religion, if at all noticeable, is a mere undercurrent; but whenever it rises to the surface, it reflects ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... astonish you when I confess that, at the time you temporarily lost your head, I was conscious of an undercurrent of feminine vanity at the thought that I was capable of inspiring a young and talented man with so sincere ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the writings of Lamb, and not merely in his 'Elia,' the character of the writer co-operates in an undercurrent to make the effect of the thing written. To understand in the fullest sense either the gayety or the tenderness of a particular passage, you must have some insight into the peculiar bias of the writer's mind, whether native and original, or impressed gradually by the accidents of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... had settled into a steady drizzle when McDowell left the Shack at two o'clock. Keith watched the iron man, as his tall, gray figure faded away into the mist down the slope, with a curious undercurrent of emotion. Before the inspector had come up as his guest he had, he thought, definitely decided his future action. He would go west on his furlough, write McDowell that he had decided not to reenlist, and bury himself in the British Columbia mountains before an answer ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... he could tell us of the outspoken and constant sympathy of Chatham, Burke, Fox, Walpole, and their like, with the American cause—which they counted the English cause. He could tell of the deep undercurrent of favor among the English people, which the superficial course of power belied and at last ceased to control, in our earlier vital war as ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... childish babble the minor murmur of an undercurrent quickening for the first time; and he listened patiently and answered gravely, ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... ascendency wherever they may be thrown; his vast strength, his redundant health, had a power of themselves—a moral as well as physical power. He naturally possessed high animal spirits, beneath the surface of which, however, at times, there was visible a certain undercurrent of malignity and scorn. He had evidently received a superior education, and could command at will the manner of a man not unfamiliar with a politer class of society. From the first hour that Philip had seen him on the top of the coach on the R—— road, this man had attracted his curiosity and interest; ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... air about his attempt to be facetious that did not conceal, but rather accentuated, the undercurrent of feelings in him. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... the usual halts caused by troops crowding on one another, we made good distances each day and were in camp by sunset. I never before or afterward saw the men so buoyant. There was no demonstration, but a quiet undercurrent of confidence that they were there to conquer. The horses, too, invigorated by abundant food, carried higher heads and pulled ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... guest to the homes of great popular leaders like Roosevelt ... dignity and rides in parlour cars, instead of dusty, dirty box cars ... interviews of weight and speeches of consequence ... and the newspapers would drop their undercurrent of levity when I was written about in them, and ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... ourselves, and of realising its forward movement as the ultimate determining factor in all true healthful mental action, it will become second nature to us to have all our plans, down to the apparently most trivial, so floating upon the undercurrent of this Universal Intelligence that a great harmony will come into our lives, every discordant manifestation will disappear, and we shall find ourselves more and more controlling all things into the forms ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... there was never any intention on the part of A. G. Spalding and his confreres to let me get possession of the club. It was not until several men who had promised to aid me backed down squarely that I realized that there was an undercurrent at work, and that the option, which it was often denied at that time that I had, had been given to me in bad faith and just for the purpose of letting me down easily, but when once convinced that ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... cousin like a book. Perhaps it was something in the words; or on the other hand there may have been an undercurrent of doubt in the way Frank spoke, ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... calm weather in this current, in about 74 deg. N.L., observed the temperature rising off the Yenisej to 9.4 deg. C. (17th August, 1875), and off the Obi to 8 deg. C. (10th August of the same year). As is usually the case, this current coming from the south produces both a cold undercurrent, which in stormy weather readily mixes with the surface water and cools it, and on the surface a northerly cold ice-bestrewn counter-current, which, in consequence of the earth's rotation, takes ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... stay with that first chapter of John—they roved all over New York, visited all the places that she had seen, and a great many that she wanted to see, and that seemed beyond her grasp, going on meantime with the verses, and keeping up a disagreeable undercurrent of disgust. Over those same restless thoughts there came a tap at the door, and ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... little soberly that afternoon. Touched as she was by what Mrs. Snow had said, there was yet an undercurrent of sadness in it all. She was thinking of Aunt Polly—Aunt Polly who played the game now so seldom; and she was wondering if she herself always played it, when ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... sense of metrical values. We are sure that the defective second line is the fault of the printer rather than of the author. "The Blind Prince," by Henriette Ziegfeld, is an excellent juvenile tale involving a fairy story. The only serious objection is the undercurrent of adult comment which flows through the narrative. Particularly cynical is the closing sentence: "'And here's Mother,' finished poor Auntie with a sigh of relief." The ordinary fairy stories told to children are bits of actual Teutonic mythology, and should ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... exchanged formalities with an undercurrent of dislike. Shirley lost no time. He compelled the old man to run through his paces, as Holloway criticized each study in miming. Just as the capitalist would swing his arms, limp with his left leg, shift his head ever so little, from ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Bladud was the cause of much rejoicing in the whole district as well as in his father's house. At first the king, being, as we have said, a very stern man, felt disposed to stand upon his dignity, and severely rebuke the son who had run away from home and remained away so long. But an undercurrent of tenderness, and pride in the youth's grand appearance, and great prowess, induced him to give in with a good grace and extend to ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... public that Schodderstoghardtmeissen is a craggy headland on the coast of Norway, and not in the least associated with Germany or Austria—places I never heard of till but recently. But ever since the men in khaki first made their appearance in the Gardens some four months ago a most extraordinary undercurrent of opprobrious criticism has crept into the public's conversation, that public once so full of admiration for my noble bearing—unless it saw me walk; for which reason I don't come off my pedestal in public hours if I can help it. But now the mildest visitors seem ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... humiliation of spirit from the cruel distinctions based on sex. Though our State laws have been essentially changed, and positions in the schools, professions, and world of work secured to woman, unthought of thirty years ago, yet the undercurrent of popular thought, as seen in our social habits, theological dogmas, and political theories, still reflects the same customs, creeds, and codes that degrade women in the effete civilizations of the old world. Educated in the best schools to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... stream, river; reach, tributary. geyser, spout, waterspout. body of water, torrent, rapids, flush, flood, swash; spring tide, high tide, full tide; bore, tidal bore, eagre^, hygre^; fresh, freshet; indraught^, reflux, undercurrent, eddy, vortex, gurge^, whirlpool, Maelstrom, regurgitation, overflow; confluence, corrivation^. wave, billow, surge, swell, ripple; anerythmon gelasma [Gr.]; beach comber, riffle [U.S.], rollers, ground swell, surf, breakers, white horses, whitecaps; rough sea, heavy sea, high ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... adventitious source of attraction would have alone procured me the attention I have found, I would hope it may partly have arisen from their simple, unaffected appeal to those quiet, domestic, secluded feelings, which endear the still undercurrent of existence—in short, to my being content to make the best I could of the homely and confined materials to which my situation has given me access, without affecting scholarship, or aiming at romantic embellishment. There is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... strangers would have exhibited less restraint; for the ghost of an old comradeship made the fourth at the feast and prated to them in exiguous voice of paths that had diverged. Drake noticed, besides, an undercurrent of antagonism between Conway and Mallinson. He inquired what each had been ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... papers on a balloon marriage, as, The last affinity item! A raid among the magnetisms! or, Hifalutin among prunes! However, in some subtile way, one soon divines on entering a store whether she is to be well served there, and must follow with tact the undercurrent in the shop as well as in the salon. If it be not the right encounter, ask for something there is not, and pass on to the next. Thus, "my grocer" apologizes for keeping honey, because I do not eat sweets, and proposes to open the butter trade because it is so annoying to go about for butter; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... keen. She sensed an undercurrent, and her first attempt to touch it had failed. The mere name of Stefani Gregor had not roused Cutty's astonishment. She was quite positive that the name was not wholly ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... in the viewports when a sort of upswept tempo began to run through the ship, an undercurrent of increased activity. Cargo was checked, inventoried and strapped in. Ringg was given four extra men to help him, made an extra tour of the ship, and came back buzzing like a frantic cricket. Bart's computers told him they were forging toward the sidereal ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... said Helen, who felt that the boy was gaining upon her more and more: for, in spite of his coarseness, there was a frank, merry, innocent undercurrent that, she felt, might be brought to the surface, strengthened and utilised to drive ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... knees, and the beseeching hand of poverty, and the cries of the oppressed and the weary; but, at a thought, Pity is slain by Reverence. We are ready to cry out against the sluggish movement of the world and its lazy flux of life; but before the satire is spoken, we are fascinated by an undercurrent of this same world, earnest and full toward its sure goal,—of which, indeed, we only dream; but "the dream is from God,"[3] and surer than sight. There is a profounder calm than appears to the eye, in the quiet cottages ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... sitting alone by the door. Big Malcolm was not smoking, which was a bad sign, and his grandson saw by the look in his eye that he was not at peace. In his perturbation over Callum's difficult case the boy had not noticed that a new undercurrent of excitement was running through life's ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... at the back of his mind there ran an undercurrent of thought, or as of some one talking, to the effect that the Pope's old method of remaining as a prisoner in the Vatican was a foolish and unhumble pose. (He supposed he must have read it all somewhere in history.) Surely even Catholics used to talk like that! They used to say ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... came that bleak March day—Joan and Nancy were to graduate in June—when the hurrying undercurrent in Doris Fletcher's life brought her to a sharp turn ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... ex-consul to raise in the senate the question of the ratification of his brother's treaty. Even he could never have attempted to defend it; his dominant feeling was an overwhelming sense of the weight of undeserved ignominy under which he lay, tempered by an undercurrent of fear as to the danger that might follow in the track of the universal disfavour with which he and his brother were regarded. The action that he took even before the senate's opinion was known, was a proof that he regarded the continuance of the war as ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... of the last few months, through which, nevertheless, there had run an undercurrent of indefinite hope, I had kept up a lively intercourse with my few friends. Cornelius turned up regularly every evening, and was joined by O. Bach, little Count Laurencin, and, on one occasion, by Rudolph Liechtenstein. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... men and women, and crystalized her experiences into witty little sentences and epigrams which made her hearers feel as if they were listening to one of the people in clever books. But under all her sparkle there was a strongly felt undercurrent of true, womanly sympathy and kindheartedness which won affection as easily as her brilliancy won admiration. Nor did she monopolize the conversation. She could draw others out as skillfully and fully as she could talk herself, and Anne and Diana found themselves chattering ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... easily, softly. "My good friend, if I did that, I'd lose your friendship." He opened his lips to remonstrate, but suddenly caught the undercurrent of the naive remark. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... certain members of the existing Government, when the late Bill had been passed, had expressed themselves with almost burning indignation against the crime. But, through it all, there had been a slight undercurrent of ridicule attaching itself to the question of which only they who were behind the scenes were conscious. The House was bound to let the outside world know that all corrupt practices at elections were held to be abominable by the House; but Members of the House, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... well together. We managed to put up with your shortcomings and you managed to put up with ours, which at times may have been considerable of a strain on both sides. Still we've done it. But it seems to me here of late there's been a kind of an undercurrent of discontent stirrin' amongst your people—and no logical reason fur it either, so fur as I kin ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... longing to reconcile my conscience and my reason on a question so awful to a young student of natural science, I went to my Bible, what did I find? No word of all this. Much—thank God, I may say one continuous undercurrent—of the very opposite of all this. I pray you bear with me, even though I may seem impertinent. But what do we find in the Bible, with the exception of that first curse? That, remember, cannot mean any alteration in the laws of nature by which man's labour should only produce for him henceforth ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... a grim undercurrent in his wish that left nothing to words. They remembered that in all the time since their arrival they had seen no other human being, the Rattler men having left them as severely alone as if they ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... child, that because you have never opened your mind to me, I have not known what you were thinking, or have left you to think alone about it. Mother and daughter are too near not to hear each other without words. There is between you and me a constant undercurrent of communion, and occasionally a passing of almost definite thought, I believe. We may not be aware of it at the time, but none the less it has ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... closed upon the mother's broad back, and the hum of excitement at the departure subsided into the normal undercurrent of whispering between the pupils. Pencils scratched laboriously over rough manila pads as their owners copied the questions from the board. The boy two seats ahead of John took a wad of chewing gum from his mouth and stuck it on ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... it, and Ewbert said, "Oh, yes," as if he recognized it, and went on from it upon the line of thought which it suggested. He was aware of talking rationally and forcibly; but in the subjective undercurrent paralleling his objective thought he was holding discourse with himself to an effect wholly different from that produced ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... conduct therein, I entreat thee, O candid reader (not that any reader ever is candid), to remember that he is brimful of new ideas, which, met by a deep and hostile undercurrent of old ideas, become more provocatively ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in a row for their stinginess. Now and again there suddenly comes to light an undercurrent of aversion and hatred which we did not suspect. Where had more good things fallen to his lot than in England? Which country had he always praised more? But suddenly a bitter and unfounded reproach escapes him. England is responsible for his having become faithless to his monastic vows, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... to his personality, we have only a few meager details, with a portrait that suggests plainly enough those qualities of boldness and craft which characterized his tactics. Governor Dobbs appears to have had a special love towards Hugh, whose family he had known in Ireland, for an undercurrent of almost fatherly pride is to be found in the old Governor's reports to ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... to pay as possible, he ploughs as much for himself, by the day, as he can, and often strives to get the other to do as little per day, on the other side, in order to diminish what will remain due to his partner. There is, consequently, a ludicrous undercurrent of petty jealousy running between them, which ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... and convenient to them. We see in our own times how despotic governments can mystify their subjects, and distort contemporary history into what shape they please. But in Spanish America the system was worked to a greater extent than in any other country I have heard of; and the undercurrent of popular talk, which spreads in France and Russia things and opinions not to be found in the newspapers, had in Mexico but little influence. Scarcely any Mexican travelled, scarcely any foreigner visited the country, and the Spaniards ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... There was an undercurrent of meaning in all this of which each man present was fully aware. Unziar was presumed to have very strong private reasons to propitiate rather than to offend the powerful Minister. But this happened to be a typical instance ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... the swift undercurrent of an absorbing passion. A passion of friendship it may be, but it forces itself through the arid shells of conventionalism; it is at once the agony and the consolation of a despairing soul. Heartless, Mme. du Deffand is called, and ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... else, and that he saw another face as he mixed his colors, and not that of the siren before him. Or it may have been that, as he looked into the eyes of the Countess, he saw too deeply into the whirlpool of passion and pain which made up the undercurrent in this ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... disturb you," a small voice was chirping; and innocent and conventional as the remark surely was, Jimmy was certain of an undercurrent of mischief in it. He glanced up to protest, but two baby-blue eyes fixed upon him in apparent wonderment, made him certain that anything he could say would seem rude or ridiculous; so, as usual when in a plight, he looked to ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... character you and she make. My traditional estimate, which comes from thoughtfulness, or the putting off of responsibility, or God knows what, I find will not answer. I have been on my guard against that which everyday life might present—a lie, a theft, or a meanness; but of the undercurrent, which really bears you on, I have ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... now launched upon his life-work as "a writer of books." He translated Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," for which he received L180. I do not see the transcendent excellence of this novel, except in its original and forcible criticism, and its undercurrent of philosophy; but it is nevertheless famous. These two works gave Carlyle some literary reputation among scholars, but not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... eyes devoured his face. She knew each word of that first page. She had taken special and extra pains with it; it represented her best, her very best; it was strong, perfect in style, and her treatment of her subject was original; there was a note of passion and pathos, there was a deep undercurrent of human feeling in her words. Franks read ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... have preferred originating the suggestion. Besides, the conversation had begun to interest her; and she liked being amused too well not to be sorry for its being cut short abruptly. She thought Major Keene talked epigrammatically; and the undercurrent of irony that ran through all he said was not so obtrusive ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... may be, by some ovarian congestion, for she felt that on the left side there was a network of sexual nerves, and retroversion of the uterus was detected some years later. Her life was strenuous with many duties, but no occupation could be pursued without this undercurrent of sexual hyperaesthesia involving perpetual self-control. This continued more or less acutely for many years, when menstruation suddenly stopped altogether, much before the usual period of the climacteric. At the same time the sexual excitement ceased, and she became calm, peaceful, and happy. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... tried to satisfy their readers by recalling Balzac; and "Seraphita" began to appear in the pages of the Revue. Difficulties, as might be expected, soon arose between Balzac and the management; and the undercurrent of irritation which subsisted on both sides only required some slight extra cause of offence, to render an outbreak inevitable. In September, 1835, M. Buloz, already director of the Revue des Deux Mondes, an extremely able, but bad-mannered and dictatorial man, took ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... lurks a subtle undercurrent of pathos, like that in Sophie Arnould's exclamation in Le ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... of whom we write was unusually romantic, for her romance consisted of a deep undercurrent of powerful but quiet enthusiasm, with a pretty strong surface-flow of common-sense. Her husband was a man of noble mind and commanding presence—a magnificent representative John Bull, with the polish of a courtier and the principles of a Christian; ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... time he knew in his heart that he had never met any man to whom he would sooner entrust Meryl and the fortune that must be hers. For though their very silence together revealed to his astute brain that neither was indifferent to the other, he could not but see also that undercurrent of grim determination in Carew. True, he was almost always silent, but Henry Pym perceived that his silence to-day was not quite of that of yesterday. Something had gone out of it—some quiet, grave, unquestioning ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... vitality was fast restoring tissue and muscle to Darrell's wasted limbs and firmness and elasticity to his step, it was yet evident to a close observer that some undercurrent of suffering was doing its work day by day; sprinkling the dark hair with gleams of silver, tracing faint lines in the face hitherto untouched by care, working its ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... and left me. I puzzled over it. Was that why Miko struck me down and was carrying me off? I did not think so. I could not believe that all these incidents were so unrelated to what I knew was the main undercurrent They wanted me, had tried to capture me for ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... sinister undercurrent of antagonism against the Quirt could not whip her emotions into feeling that she was doing anything more than live the restricted, sordid little life of a poorly equipped ranch. She had ridden once with Frank Johnson to look through a bunch of cattle, ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... perfect, as Man, without suffering. But the suffering in Paradise will be accompanied with an exquisite delight and joy. Do we not know, even here on earth, how near to each other very often are joy and sorrow? He whose spirit is swelling with a great gladness has often a sense of an undercurrent of great pain along with it. How often tears and laughter go together! So, in that home of the disembodied soul, the very process of purification will be marked by an intensity of joy and an intensity of pain. ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... to detect that curious undercurrent of meaning in his voice which I had noticed in the course of our brief exchange of remarks in the hall. I glanced up and met his eye. He was looking at me in a way that struck me as curious. There was something in those bright brown eyes of his which had the effect ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... enough 'copy' to keep them busy. The narrow escape of the King from assassination, followed by his excommunication from the Church, worked a curious effect on the minds of the populace, who were somewhat bewildered and uncertain as to the possible undercurrent of political meaning flowing beneath the conjunction of these two events; and their feelings were intensified by the announcement that the youth who had attempted the monarch's life,— being proved as suffering from ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Ireland awakens feelings somewhat different from those the sinking of the Titanic had called up on two continents. The grief for the lost and the sympathy for the survivors and the bereaved are the same; but there is not, and there cannot be, the same undercurrent of indignation. The good ship that is gone (I remember reading of her launch something like eight years ago) had not been ushered in with beat of drum as the chief wonder of the world of waters. The company who owned her had no agents, authorised ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... plotting in the air. Real estate advanced in leaps and bounds and "Lemonade Dan" overhauled the bar fixtures in the Bucket o' Blood, and stuffed a gunny-sack into a broken window pane with a view to opening up. In every shack there was an undercurrent of excitement and after the dull days of monotony few could calm themselves to a really good night's sleep. They talked in thousands and the clerk's stock of Cincos, that had been dead money on his hands for over three years, "moved" in three days—sold out ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... anything he had hitherto written. It talked a strange sort of philosophy in the language of poetry. Beginning simply enough, it took more and more the character of a rhapsody, until, as if lifted off his feet by the deepened and stronger undercurrent of his thought, the writer dropped his personality and repeated the words which "a certain poet sang" ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Senators after 1840, and even Northwestern States threatened disruption of the Union as late as 1859 if the national policy should continue to run counter to their interests. There was, however, a strong undercurrent of devotion to the idea of nationality in both North and South[12] in 1860, and when South Carolina proceeded with her long-contemplated scheme of secession early in November of that year, Jefferson Davis, who had formerly talked freely of that "last remedy" of minority interests, advised ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... undercurrent of pensive thought was flowing in the old scholar's soul and his tones grew tenderer and tenderer. The echoes of Ebenezer's effusive speech were in his ears and the artificial notes rang strangely ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... faithfully recorded on the phonograph cylinder. And, as the man talked on, Tom became aware of a curious undercurrent of sound. It was a buzzing noise, that Tom knew did not come from the instrument itself. It was not the peculiar tapping, singing noise heard in a telephone receiver, caused by induced electrical currents, or by ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... weak little Reverend has already got on this town," he went on. "He's a sly one. Preaching ain't in it with the undercurrent he's let loose here. It's just sapping the foundations of society. It's setting free a lot of good stuff, but it's striking Tate ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... and a tossing heave of jaunty banners, and gleaming castle turrets, and all the brilliancies and colors that Manuel had known and loved anywhere, save only the clear red and white of Suskind's face, seemed to be passing incoherently through the still waters, like bright broken wreckage which an undercurrent ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... midnight the sounds became more sullen, and beneath the general uproar another note, one of those in distress, began, as it were, like an undercurrent to this pandemonium. The cause we had not long to seek, for presently flames began to shoot up, a sight we were by now well accustomed to, though not in this purely trading quarter of the city. The ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... success of the day, no longer to look at that success, but to look forward to the next difficulty that is to be conquered. And now, having had so much to say to the successful candidates, you must forgive me if I add that a sort of undercurrent of sympathy has been going on in my mind all the time for those who have not been successful, for those valiant knights who have been overthrown in your tourney, and have not made their appearance in public. I trust that, in accordance with old custom, they, wounded and bleeding, have been carried ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the stern of one of them, at the moment when a score of logs that had been gyrating in an aimless sort of way in a great dark backwater must needs hustle one another in company into a corner where they were suddenly caught by a strong undercurrent, and almost hauled out into the current, unnoticed by my boatman. For myself I was engaged with a hooked fish, and fortunately for me he was not large. The man had all he could do to fend off the spars with his oars, and at that critical moment, when the fish is either turned or allowed ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... feelings they express are associated with the unconscious of the race, if such a term is permissible. Gilbert Murray,[3] in interpreting this element in primitive literature states: "We have also, I suspect, a strange unanalyzed vibration below the surface, an undercurrent of desires and fears, and passions, long slumbering yet eternally familiar, which have for thousands of years lain near the root of our most intimate emotions and been wrought into the fabric of our most magical dreams. How far in the past ages this stream may reach back I dare ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... mountain-path. And yet, if Browning invented a harsh speech of his own far common use, he uttered it in all the varied rhythms of genius and passion. There may often be no music in the individual words, but there is always in the poems as a whole a deep undercurrent of music as from some hidden river. His poems have the movement of living things. They are lacking only in smooth and static loveliness. They are full of the ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... playing with great enjoyment, notwithstanding that little undercurrent of vague uneasiness of which I spoke, when the Scotchman, who had been on the deck all the evening, came down into the cabin, wearing a ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... taking notes of marriages and intermarriages in 1690, and writing each day a long, pleading letter to Bessie. There was a double strain upon me: all the arrangements for my client's claims, and in an undercurrent the arguments to overcome Bessie's decision, went on in my brain side ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various |
