"Checkered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come to one of the most picturesque incidents in this checkered life,—an incident that takes us again to that hot, dusty, southwestern corner where we saw him first enter Spain with the child trudging by ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... streets and edifices of Palma. The round, solid head, earnest eyes, and abstracted air of the painter came forth distinct from the limbo of things overlaid but never lost, and went with me through the checkered blaze and gloom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... morning walk so that it halted in front of a large plate-glass window of the Snake Drug Store in San Francisco. Just back of this plate glass, and within eighteen inches of my very nose, were fifty-seven varieties of the reptiles, big and small, streaked and checkered, quiet and active. After much remonstrance and waiting, I came-to—gazed at the markings, beautiful in their exactness—while slowly the change of mind took place. Faith took the place of fear, calmness subdued ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... on an unwonted aspect of festivity. Its spaciousness was checkered by golden-lighted windows. Delivery wagons and automobiles came and went, some discharging loads of deliciousness at the back door, others discharging loads ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... historian of Karaism. This school, the only educational establishment of its kind during that period, served in Odessa as a center for the "Friends of Enlightenment." Being a new city, unfettered by traditions, and at the same time a large sea-port, with a checkered international population, Odessa outran other Jewish centers in the process of modernization, though it must be confessed that it never went beyond the externalities of civilization. As far as the period under discussion is concerned, the Jewish center of the South can claim no share in the production ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... change in the little city of St. Pierre;—there may be less money and less zeal and less remembrance of the lost. Then from the morne, over the bulwark, the green host will move down unopposed;—creepers will prepare the way, dislocating the pretty tombs, pulling away the checkered tiling;—then will corne the giants, rooting deeper,—feeling for the dust of hearts, groping among the bones;—and all that love has hidden away shall be restored to Nature,—absorbed into the rich juices of her verdure,—revitalized ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... hour of vespers; and an unusually dense crowd of the town's people of Hammelburg, of all ages, ranks, and sexes, swarmed in the small open space before the fine old Gothic church of the town, and stood in many a checkered group—here, of fat thriving bourgeois and their portly wives, dragging in their hands chubby and rebellious little urchins, who looked all but spherical in their monstrous puffed hose or short wadded multifold petticoats, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... interesting account of the life and fortunes of a young woman of that neighborhood who rose to a high station by means of her personal attractions, and, after a checkered life, died in Italy a few weeks ago. She was the daughter of John Peele, a small farmer at Corringham, near Gainsborough, who eked out a somewhat declining livelihood by dealing in horses, &c., having previously ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... so humid and impracticable, that London, in its most oppressive fogs, were a summer bower to this mist and sirocco, which has now lasted (but with one day's interval), checkered with snow or heavy rain only, since the 30th of December, 1820. It is so far lucky that I have a literary turn; but it is very tiresome not to be able to stir out, in comfort, on any horse but Pegasus, for so many days. The roads are even worse than the weather, by the long splashing, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... artery blood spurting ten feet as straight and bright as a ray of light. There was a great burst of jolly laughter all around from friend and foe alike; and thus closed one of the pleasantest incidents of my checkered military life. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... reader has already seen how abnormal was his mind, and will not be surprised that his storm-tossed soul lost its rudder at last. But mid all its veerings he never lost sight of the Star that had shed its light upon his checkered path of life. He raved, and prayed, and wept, by turns. The horrors of mental despair would be followed by gleams of seraphic joy. When one of his stormy moods was upon him, his mighty voice could be heard above all the sounds of that sad and ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... recollect to have seen. A tale of the most pathetic kind is interwoven with low comedy—the most lofty sentiments, the most exalted virtues, and heroism and magnanimity strained almost beyond the limits of probability, are checkered by uncouth pleasantries, and the most pathetic incidents intruded upon and interrupted by the farcical conundrums of MUG, a low cockney, who has become secretary of state to the king of the Mandingoes. Thus, oscillating between Kotesbue and O'Keefe, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... beginning can and should be made by our friends themselves. Europe, for example, is now marked by checkered areas of labor surplus and labor shortage, of agricultural areas needing machines and industrial areas needing food. Here and elsewhere we can hope that our friends will take the initiative in creating broader markets and more dependable currencies, to allow greater ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... dear girl, my wife that is to be, and know now and always there is for me only one love. In sunny ways or shadow-checkered paths, whatever may come, I cannot think other than as I do now. You are life of my life. And so ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... effective picture: his action, as well as that of the cavalry, about him is admirably expressed: he appears on the pinnacle of triumph; his charger snuffs the very gale of glory, and the uncurbed energy of exultation seems to animate those immediately around him. The eye descends to the checkered toil beneath: the brawny soldier bearing the delicate form of his lovely wife, which is well contrasted with the bold, muscular figure of the former: the exhausted youth, and the veteran directing the army, but especially the former, are finely drawn and painted: the bare ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... floor Till the great caldron spills its brassy roar, Whirls the hot axle, counting, one by one, Each dull concussion, till his task is done. Toil's patient daughter, when the welcome note Clangs through the silence from the steeple's throat, Streams, a white unit, to the checkered street, Demure, but guessing whom she soon shall meet; The bell, responsive to her secret flame, With every note repeats her lover's name. The lover, tenant of the neighboring lane, Sighing, and fearing lest he sigh in vain, Hears the stern accents, as they come and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... settlers of Lincoln county (formerly Tryon) was Jacob Forney, Sr. He was the son of a Huguenot, and born about the year 1721. His life was checkered with a vicissitude of fortunes bordering on romance. At the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685, his father fled from France, preferring self-expatriation to the renunciation of his religious belief, and settled in Alsace, on the Rhine where, under the enlightening influences of ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... he spoke, for the consciousness of power was upon him—power to will and do, to win and to retain—that most blessed consciousness, whether it bless a hero's breast or poet's soul, a maiden's heart or scholar's dream, this checkered world ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... sailors of the good little boys and the head gear of his own particular chum. And there—the man who sought Knowledge only in facts smiled at the fire and a fond light came into his eyes while his too solid and substantial hook slipped unheeded to the floor—there was a sunbonnet of blue checkered gingham hanging by its long strings from a hook near ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... he had thoughtfully sent for my convenience to the railway station, I drove one sunny morning in October through the graceful, hilly landscape of Kent, which, with the checkered foliage of its woods, with its stretches of purple heath, yellow broom, and evergreen oaks, was arrayed in the fairest autumnal dress. As the carriage drew up in front of Darwin's pleasant country-house, clad in a vesture of ivy and embowered in elms, there stepped out to meet me from the shady porch, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... beside the red-and-white-checkered cloth spread on the ground, and Wade, after passing the still fretting baby to his wife, ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... years, and the creation of a deficit which at length rose to the formidable amount, in 1842, of L.4,000,000 sterling! And what first dispelled this distress, and arrested this downward and disastrous progress? The fine harvests of 1842—the blessed sun of its long summer, followed by the more checkered, but also fine summer of 1843, which again gave us plenty, derived from domestic production, and consequent general and increasing manufacturing as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... him, and moved down to the road, declining his invitation to come into the house. Westward, the sun had gone down and left the sky a glowing amber and rose. The fields rolled their young green like a checkered carpet over the low hills—the sweet, familiar hills. For an instant, in the hush of gathering twilight, we stood there silent and bridged the years; wiping out the strife, the toil, the ambitions, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... joined as one Had passed through checkered shade and sun, Until the earth our lives had given, With little change, ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... alive with huddled humanity and bobbing umbrellas. Yellow slickers, dotted through the field of black, made Davies think of a checkered taxicab. He cursed himself for not having brought his own raincoat along. In years gone by he could have been wet to the skin and not minded it, but now he was conscious of a desire for dry comfort. Certainly he couldn't be ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... superiority. The balance of general success and glory in the field is no more than shared with the conquered people. The morbid national vanity, which finds no delight but in the triumphs of the sword, will shrink from the study of this checkered story. The narrative of disastrous defeat and doubtful advantage must be endured before we arrive at that of the brilliant victory which crowned our arms with final success. We read with painful surprise of the rout and ruin of regular British regiments by a crowd ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... of graces, has taken in hand, but more commonly in connection with the very highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained society. She was a splendid scowling beauty, black-browed, with a flash of white teeth which was always like a surprise when her lips parted. She wore a checkered dress, of a curious pattern, and a camel's-hair scarf twisted a little fantastically about her. She went to her seat, which she had moved a short distance apart from the rest, and, sitting down, began playing listlessly with her gold chain, as was a common habit with ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... indeed the greatest thing." Margot stopped, as a turn in the walk brought them in view of the house. The long ranges of verandah stood in the moonlight, checkered with the still shadows of the neighbouring trees. Every window of the large white mansion gave out a stream of yellow light, to contrast with the silvery shining of the moon. "This is very unlike the hut we went to when we were married, Toussaint. Yet I was quite happy and contented. ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... said, sinking into, an armchair, and wiping his forehead with his broad checkered handkerchief. "You cannot imagine how I have been running about to-day! I wanted to take an omnibus to come home, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... is emphatically a country of progress. Within the last half century the number of States in this Union has nearly doubled, the population has almost quadrupled, and our boundaries have been extended from the Mississippi to the Pacific. Our territory is checkered over with railroads and furrowed with canals. The inventive talent of our country is excited to the highest pitch, and the numerous applications for patents for valuable improvements distinguish this age and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... drew the voluntary brand; And sure, through many a varied scene, Unkindness never came between. Away these winged years have flown, To join the mass of ages gone; And though deep marked, like all below, With checkered shades of joy and woe; Though thou o'er realms and seas hast ranged, Marked cities lost, and empires changed, While here, at home, my narrower ken Somewhat of manners saw, and men; Though varying wishes, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... of viceroys have here held rule, and within its walls things momentous in the country's annals have been enacted. During its checkered experience no less than three distinct Regimes have followed each other, French, British and American. In an old document still to be found among the archives of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, it is recorded ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... reprobate of a pheasant of ours was a pretty confirmed runner, anyway. He had trained himself to it. Yet never in all his checkered life was he conscious of a more awful desire to flee by means of the wings that God had given him. The weakness was over in a few seconds, and he crept on; but it was a near thing while it lasted. He passed, however, away from ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... past; that he might not so mournfully have lived in it, but might have enjoyed and improved the present. But this his heart refused to do; and ever, as he floated upon the great sea of life, he looked down through thetransparent waters, checkered with sunshine and shade, into the vast chambers of the mighty deep, in which his happier days had sunk, and wherein they were lying still visible, like golden sands, and precious stones, and pearls; and, half in despair, half in hope, he grasped downward after ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... military commanders, and I see no good reason why I too may not ask for it, and this simple concession, involving no public interest, will much soften the blow, which, right or wrong, I construe as one of the hardest I have sustained in a life somewhat checkered with adversity. With ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... this condition, he could never conjecture; but when he recovered his senses, all around him appeared like the illusion of a dream. The wind had died away, the darkness had disappeared, the moon had risen, and was now throwing in its mild and beautiful light through the long windows upon the checkered pavement; and, rising from the ground, he crawled out of the church and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... a graduate of West Point, and while still a young man had served with marked credit for some twelve years in the army. But he had more than a military education. Through a checkered career in civil life, he had enlarged his knowledge of the country, his acquaintance with men, his experience in affairs. He had been a banker in California, a lawyer in Kansas, President of a college in Louisiana, and, when the war began, he was ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... points between Cairo and Suez, and in Wadi el Araba, it mocks you with lakes and land-locked bays, studded with inlands and fringed with trees, all painted with an illusory truth of representation absolutely indistinguishable from the reality. The checkered earth, too, is canopied with a heaven as variegated as itself. You see, high up in the sky, rosy clouds at noonday, colored probably by reflection from the ruddy mountains, while near the horizon float cumuli ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... of thorough preparedness for a war which was much worse than humanity had thought possible that deepened the tragedy of their situation. In Servia, in fact, the career of the hospitals was quite checkered and the service rendered ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... three white Mouldiwarps friends to thy house," she told him—"the Mouldiwarp who is the badge, and the Mouldiwarp who is the crest, and the Great Mouldiwarp who sits on the green and white checkered field of the Ardens' shield of arms. It was the first ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... crystalline that it had the same effect on the landscape that a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and perfection. The landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang over fairy-land. ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... knowing well his place. The day of the commercial traveller was not yet, and for these there was no special table, they being for the most part assigned to the Red Belt; there being a certain portion of the hall where the tablecloths were checkered red and white. It was not good to be in the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... at me timidly, appealingly, but I bowed and departed. The sun was riding up into the sky, the walls already glowing with his heat, and a midsummer languor seemed to pervade the streets as I walked along. The shadows now were sharply defined, the checkered foliage of the trees was flung in black against the yellow-white wall of the house with the lions, and the green-latticed gallery which we had watched the night before seemed silent and deserted. I knocked at the gate, and presently ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and wore a striped skirt and a white jacket fitted to her waist. The checkered shadows cast by the tree made spots of light and darkness over her face and her uncovered neck, the top button of her camisole being unfastened on account of the heat. De Buxieres had been perfectly well recognized by her, but an emotion, at least equal to that experienced by the young man, had ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... I know not how many stories, and, on the summit, find the pavement of the upper chambers to consist of checkered squares of marble; owing to the shrubs and plants that have taken root among them, these are disjoined in places, a fresh bit of mosaic sometimes appearing intact on removing a layer of earth. Here were sixteen hundred ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... and that we love you as dearly as it is possible for parents to do. Take her, Captain Sinclair, from my hands, and take with her our blessings and best wishes for your happiness, which I do not doubt will be as great as we can expect in this checkered world; for a dutiful daughter will always become a ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... experience you ever had with them and then add a million for each one and you will have some idea. My little face, neck, arms, legs and feet were so bitten, scratched and sunburned that when I was undressed I was the most checkered looking young one you ever saw. Those parts of me might have been taken from a black child and glued on my ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... the lessons of the smoking furnace and the blazing torch. They are like the pillar of fire and cloud. Darkness and light; a heart of fire and a wrapping of darkness,—these are not symbols of Israel and its checkered fate, as Dean Stanley thinks, but of the divine presence: they proclaim the double aspect of all divine manifestations, the double element in the divine nature. He can never be completely known; He is never completely hid. Ever does the lamp flame; ever around it the smoke wreathes. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... is, the breeches and stockings all of one piece and drawn on together; over this habit they wear a plaid, which is usually three yards long and two breadths wide, and the whole garb is made of checkered tartan or plaiding; this with the sword and pistol, is called a full dress, and to a well proportioned man with any tolerable air, it makes an agreeable figure."[2] The plaid was the undress of the ladies, and to a woman ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... they were drawn, and she could see the great gaunt ruin frowning blackly above the slopes of the shadow-checkered hillside, she cried out suddenly, "I'm going there among them, Rastus! Oh, dear, hold me!" ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... from the floor, a row of clerestory windows, unglazed, admitted arrows of sunlight through a golden fretwork; and these arrows, piercing the incense vapor, checkered intricate patterns on the enormous, deep-piled Persian rugs of rose, lilac, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... rheumatically, carefully dusted his gay checkered suit, gave much attention to the crease in his jaunty little hat, adjusted his bright blue tie, daintily tapped his cuffs back into his coat sleeves and bestowed a beaming, cherubic smile ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... she had just left, apparently not a little disturbed. She hammered the beetle rather excitedly upon the limb a few times, as if it were in some way at fault, then dropped down to try for her nest again. Only vacant air there! She hovers and hovers, her blue wings flickering in the checkered light; surely that precious hole MUST be there; but no, again she is baffled, and again she returns to her perch, and mauls the poor beetle till it must be reduced to a pulp. Then she makes a third ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... lozenges, by turns luminous and dark, which checkered the ground of this path according as the trees were more or less in leaf, the young prince perceived a gentleman walking with his arms behind him, apparently plunged in a deep meditation. Without doubt, he had often had this gentleman described to him, for, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... window which commanded a view of both garden and orchard, Adele clapped her hands with glee at sight of the flaming hollyhocks and the trees laden with golden pippins. It was, indeed, a pretty scene: silvery traces of the brook sparkled in the green meadow below the orchard, and the hills beyond were checkered by the fields of buckwheat in broad patches of white bloom, and these again were skirted by masses of luxuriant wood that crowned all the heights. To the eye of Adele, used only to the bare ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... magnificent horn slung across his shoulders and a knife at his belt, he looked so cruel and inexorable that one would have thought he was going to engage in bloody strife with his fellow men rather than to hunt a small animal. Around the hind legs of his horse the hounds gambolled like a cluster of checkered, restless balls. If one of them wished to stop, it was only with the greatest difficulty that it could do so, since not only had its leash-fellow also to be induced to halt, but at once one of ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... perfection of title to land—payment of a quitrent—likewise had a checkered career in the seventeenth century. Under the company there is some question whether quitrents were due. It is clear that "the greate charter" of 1618 in order to encourage immigration exempted for seven years settlers who were taking up land by headright. For planters settled before 1616 at ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... of fathoms down, there teems a world of checkered life in all its changing forms, a world of the same composition as ours, with the same instincts, the same sorrows, and also, no doubt, the same joys; everywhere the same struggle for existence. So it ever is. If we penetrate within even the ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... the huge room. The morning sunlight streamed in through the high mullioned windows and spread a diamond-checkered pattern across the tapestry on the far wall, lighting up the brilliant hunting scene ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... everything," Berrington replied. It seemed to him that a bold course of action was the best to be taken under the circumstances. "For instance, I have a pretty accurate knowledge of the checkered past of Dr. Bentwood and the malignant scoundrel who calls himself Carl Sartoris. Of Miss Mary Sartoris I will say nothing. There are others here, too, whose past is not altogether wrapped in mystery. There are General Gastang ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... lived to be an old man, could Dick look back upon that night and the days following, without turning pale. How he lived through it he never knew. Perhaps it was because he had suffered so much in his checkered career that he was enabled to bear that which otherwise would have been impossible. And the consciousness of the great change in his own life led him to hope for Amy, when others would have given up ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... scene is in miniature.[2] Its green valleys are not wide; its dewy hills are not high; its forests are of no extent, or, rather, it has nothing that can pretend to a more sounding title than that of "wood." Its champaigns are minutely checkered into fields; we can never see far at a time; and there is a sense of something inexpressible, except by the truly English word "snug," in every quiet nook and sheltered lane. The English cottage, therefore, is equally small, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... of endeavour, are by no means of a uniform or homogeneous character throughout the modern communities, still less throughout the civilised world, or throughout the checkered range of classes and conditions of men; but, with such frequency and amplitude that it must be taken as a major premise in any attempted insight into human behaviour, it will hold true that they are of a spiritual, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... her back she rested, There the rocks she made and fashioned, And the hidden reefs created, Where the ships are wrecked so often, Where so many lives have perished. Thus created were the islands, Rocks were fastened in the ocean, Pillars of the sky were planted, Fields and forests were created, Checkered stones of many colors, Gleaming in the silver sunlight, All the rocks stood well established; But the singer, Wainamoinen, Had not yet beheld the sunshine, Had not seen the golden moonlight, Still remaining undelivered. Wainamoinen, old ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... hundred and fifty yards wide. To the southeast were mountains of moderate height, the nearest about two miles off, but the whole chain ranging to the east, south, and southwest, as far as the eye could reach. Their summits were crowned with extensive tracts of pitch-pine, checkered with small patches of the quivering aspen. Lower down were thick forests of firs and red cedars, growing out in many places from the very fissures of the rocks. The mountains were broken and precipitous, with huge bluffs protruding from among the forests. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... "My clothes, too, began to decay; as to linen, I had had none a good while, except some checkered shirts, which I carefully preserved, because many times I could bear no other clothes on. I had almost three dozen of shirts, several thick watch ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... wandering in the garden of what is termed the Schwarzpanier House, situated on a slope or glacis in the outskirts of Wahring. The evening was so far advanced, that candles already twinkled from the upper windows of the building, while the fires of the kitchens checkered the shrubs and gravel with patches of glaring light. Through the flowerbeds, and along the intricate paths of the shrubbery, the Alchemist strolled at a languid pace, musing upon the things he had already witnessed, when his vigilant ears caught the tones of a musical instrument. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... sharp eyes caught the first sign of a boat builder's establishment, and presently the three little craft that had come through such a checkered experience with credit, were secured to landings within the ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... His dark eyes fixed full upon the man's face, flashed with anger, while his heart thumped tumultuously beneath his little checkered shirt. ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... radar operators. We track the rockets on a radar set from a field station." Big Mac pulled a red-checkered handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose violently. "Good operators are scarce. That's why no one bothers us, so long as we're on ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the little chamber, nor was there over much of furniture, nor was that even of a high order—there was a bed with a red-checkered crazy-quilt; a washstand with severe, heavy white crockery; a rocking chair, homemade, of hickory; a rag mat, round, many-colored; and white muslin curtains on the windows. It wasn't luxurious, the little chamber—it was ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... 'Troilus and Cressida,' the most eccentric and inexplicable play of its time, or perhaps of any time, is probably 'The Rape of Lucrece.'" This may naturally be the verdict of a hasty reader at a first glance over the party-colored scenes of a really noble tragedy, crossed and checkered with the broadest and quaintest interludes of lyric and erotic farce. But, setting these eccentricities duly or indulgently aside, we must recognize a fine specimen of chivalrous and romantic rather than classical or mythological drama; one, if not belonging properly or essentially ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... for the sake of his own career, to regulate his course by a disregard of party creed, especially at a time when the principles of Republicanism were somewhat undefined in their character; but amid all the doubts and distractions of a checkered, eventful political career he was known for his absolute integrity, his clear head, and his steady nerve. His very pride made it impossible for him to condescend to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... plunged, and slowly sank, The calm wave rippled to the bank; I watched it as it sank, methought Some motion from the current caught Bestirred it more,—'twas but the beam That checkered o'er the living stream: I gazed, till vanishing from view, 380 Like lessening pebble it withdrew; Still less and less, a speck of white That gemmed the tide, then mocked the sight; And all its hidden secrets sleep, Known but to Genii of the deep, Which, trembling in their coral caves, They ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... further travel might be hazardous, General Toombs and his friend rode back to the mountains of North Georgia, and there remained until the early fall. It was in the month of October that the fugitives again started on their checkered flight. The May days had melted into summer, and summer had been succeeded by early autumn. The crops, planted when he started from home that spring day, were now ripening in the fields, and Northern statesmen were still declaring that ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... have not lost my senses. Such as they are, I have them all. I do not expect to find this ancestress of mine in the flesh, nor sitting in any one of the splint rockers behind the checkered window-panes of the old South East houses. It is only her portrait for which I am searching as for ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... last hillock and dropped down into the lighted bowl of the launching site. The rocket towered, winged and monstrously checkered in white and orange, against the first flickerings of ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... 1804, son of the preceding and of M. Husson —army-contractor; led a checkered career, explained by his origin and childhood. He scarcely knew his father, who made and soon lost a fortune. The previous fast life of his mother, who afterwards married again, gave rise to or upheld ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... peculiar field of observation, sequestered from general interest: and they are composed in a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the ear of the noisy crowd, clamoring for strong sensations. But this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness checkered by gleams of the fanciful, and the humor that is touched with cross lights of pathos, together with the picturesque quaintness of the objects casually described, whether men, or things, or usages; and in the rear of all this, the constant recurrence to ancient recollections and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... some hollyhocks at the corner, with their bannered bosoms open to the sun, and with the thrush in the air, like a song of joy in the morning; I would rather live there and have some lattice work across the window, so that the sunlight would fall checkered on the baby in the cradle; I would rather live there and have my soul erect and free, than to live in a palace of gold and wear the crown of imperial power and know that my soul was slimy with hypocrisy. It is not necessary to be rich and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the moorland waste bewitching in its alternation of softly checkered gray and shade, where acres of feathery grasses flowed in wind-blown furrows; where in the purple obscurity of hollows the strange and aged little forests grew restless and full of echoes; where shadowy reeds like elfin swords clattered and thrust ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... gradually checking its career as it approaches, and at last mingles with the ocean of Eternity. I have been led into this somewhat trite metaphor, to account to the reader for the contents of this chapter. As in the river, after many miles of checkered and boisterous career, you will find that its waters will for some time flow in a smooth and tranquil course as almost to render you unconscious of the never-ceasing stream; so in the life of man, after an eventful and adventurous career, it will be found ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... did not have to tell the tale of still another descent into Avernus, of this boy of the checkered career. But I have started out to paint the picture exactly as it is, and I dip my brush in black again with a sigh. You have to do the same thing in telling, even to yourself, the story of yourself, don't you, ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... piteous tale she was harbored on the West Side by an Irish family whose two daughters were clerks in a large retail store. Through these Claudia became a cash-girl. Thereafter followed an individual career as strange and checkered as anything that had gone before. Sufficient to say that Claudia's native intelligence was considerable. At the age of twenty she had managed—through her connections with the son of a shoe manufacturer and with ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... existence he was unaware. She corresponded with men in distant cities. These apparently trivial facts took on greater import as he mused. His own chances to win her, dishearteningly small at the best of times in view of his checkered record, suddenly sank below the level of ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... intriguer—of loyal soldier and mercenary looter. The mercenary instincts, possibly aided by a sense of their own comparative helplessness against Russian Cossacks and artillery, led them to accept the stranger's gold and fair promises, and they ended their checkered but theretofore relatively honorable careers by selling their country for a small pile of cash and the more alluring promise that the "grand viziership" (i.e., post of Minister of Finance) should be perpetual in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... cheerful, she took up her fresh burden, and, intent only on cheering her dear patient and comforting the sorrow of her sister and brother, she forgot her seventy-one years and every grief of the past. "I try," she writes, "to accept this, the most grinding and bitter dispensation of my checkered life, as what it must be, educational and disciplinary, working towards a better preparation ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... different feelings that Bessie left her home in the mild-tempered sunshine of that January day, to those when, seven months ago, she paid her first visit to The Grange. Things had been well with her then; no trouble since her brother's death had checkered her bright, sunshiny existence. She had gone in holiday mood to seek fresh interests and new enjoyments; but now how utterly changed were her feelings! She could no longer look out upon the world through the rose-colored ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the advance from thalassic to oceanic fields of commerce, but also purely local political events may for a time produce striking changes in the use or importance of coasts. The Piraeus, which had been the heart of ancient Athens, almost wholly lost its value in the checkered political history of the country during the Middle Ages, when naval power and merchant marine almost vanished; but with the restoration of Grecian independence in 1832, much of its pristine activity ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the stately college buildings of McGill and the rows of picturesque houses along Sherbrook Avenue; lower yet, the city, shining in the clear evening light, spread across the plain, dominated by its cathedral dome and the towers of Notre Dame. Green squares with trees in them checkered the blocks of buildings; along its skirts, where a haze of smoke hung about the wharves, the great river gleamed in a broad silver band. On the farther bank the plain ran on again, fading from green to gray and purple, until it melted into the distance, ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... I am a thinker. My mind is full of pictures when your fancy is checkered with red and blue lines. So you are willing to forgive her?" he added ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... clearly in my remembrance. And behold, they were no longer landmarks except to me. A change had come over the face of this old playground of mine. It had forgotten the withered, modest grace of the time when it was middle-aged, and when I was a boy. It was checkered and gridironed with pavements and electric lights. The Elevated Railroad roared at its doors behind clouds of smoke and steam. Great, cheerless, hideously ornate flat buildings reared their zinc-tipped fronts toward the gray heaven, to show the highest aspirations of that demoralized suburb ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... sewing in her pleasant room at the hotel. Her thoughts were far away from the checkered experiences of the frontier, for her husband—having received by the last mail a new book from an eastern friend—read while she plied her needle. Baby was in his crib in the bed-room adjoining, and Fannie and Helen were whispering in a matronly way in the corner, as with the help of mother's ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... his German ancestors, and was unsparing in war, is equally certain. Yet he was not less eminent in wisdom than in vigor; and his reign, on the whole, was righteous as well as glorious. The two most formidable enemies of Charlemagne were the Saxons and the Saracens. The Saxon war "was checkered by grave disasters, and pursued with undismayed and unrelenting determination, in which he spared neither himself nor others. It lasted continuously—with its stubborn and ever-recurring resistance, its cruel ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Checkered careers will be displayed On faces neatly lined, And vanity will still parade In smirks—the cheaper kind. Chins will appear in Utah's zone Adorned with lace-like frizzes, And something striking will be shown ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... Tessellated: checkered; more or less like a chess-board. {Scanner's comment: More correctly, it means "tiled", covered with possibly regularly shaped areas or pieces. They may or may not ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... of whom I wished much to learn something, he would not speak, but adroitly changed the conversation to the subject of my own adventures, and these he made me recount from the beginning. If the lady enjoyed all the absurdities of my checkered fortune with a keen sense of the ridiculous, the colonel apparently could trace in them but so many resemblances to my father's character, and constantly broke out into exclamations of "How like him!" "Just what he would have done himself!" "His own ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... sluggish throughout, with very low banks until the last ten or fifteen miles. After an intervale of half a mile to two miles, the land rises gently on the right to an altitude of some two to five hundred feet, the slope covered and checkered the whole distance with vineyards, meadows, woods, &c. The Poplar and the Pollard are still planted, but the scale of cultivation is larger and the houses much better than between Paris and Dijon. The intervale (mainly in meadow) ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... your own reward." Then he turned and hurriedly left the gardens, his breast swelled with exultation. When he was out of sight, the hunchback whistled softly, and Cocardasse and Passepoil came out of the shadow of the trees. The lights were now rapidly dying out, and the gardens lay in darkness checkered by ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... small and slight, Woven of the willow white, Lent a dimly checkered light; And the night-stars glimmered down, Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke, Slowly through an opening broke, In the low roof, ribbed with oak, Sheathed with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... without a word of protest or inquiry. She had been a good rider ever since the days when she galloped bareback on Reuben's plough horses to the pasture, and Gay's eyes warmed to her as she rode ahead of him down the circular drive, checkered with sunlight. Yet in spite of her prettiness, which he had never dignified by the name of beauty, he knew that it was no superficial accident of colour or of feature that had first caught his fancy and finally ripened his casual interest into love. The charm was deeper still, and ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Ballymahon. He emerged, however, unscathed from this dangerous ordeal, more fortunate in this respect than his comrade Bryanton; but he retained throughout life a fondness for clubs; often, too, in the course of his checkered career, he looked back to this period of rural sports and careless enjoyments as one of the few sunny spots of his cloudy life; and though he ultimately rose to associate with birds of a finer feather, his heart would still yearn in secret after the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... campaign in the event of military operations becoming a certainty. Torpenhow, the Keneu,, and the Nilghai had bidden all the men they had worked with to the orgy; and Mr. Beeton, the housekeeper, declared that never before in his checkered experience had he seen quite such a fancy lot of gentlemen. They waked the chambers with shoutings and song; and the elder men were quite as bad as the younger. For the chances of war were in front of them, and all knew what ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... that looks on all it loves! Yet are there moods, when the soul's wells are high With crystal waters which a strange fear moves, To doubt if what it joys in, be a joy; Fear not, thou fond and gentle one! though life Be but a checkered scene, where wrong and right, Struggle forever; there is not a strife Can reach thy bower: the future, purely bright, Is round about thee, like a summer sky. And there are those, brave hearts and true, to guard Thy walks forever; and to make each hour Of coming time, by fond and faithful ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... recovered entirely; and never again did he lose his equanimity for more, perhaps, than a day or two at a time, although the dreaded blow did come, but not before he had taken a step in the divine life, which served to buoy him up above the ills of this checkered existence. ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... checkered scene, Since that midsummer's eve; Much good received our hearts to cheer, And much those hearts ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... weed, or the leaf beneath, into gems by the magic of its own brightness. The boughs were waving over head, covered with many-colored foliage, and the sun, glancing through, not only enriched the tints above, but checkered the mossy path along which they wandered like a chess-board of brown and gold. Some of the late autumn birds uttered their short sweet songs from the copse hard by, and the musical wind came sighing up from ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... and with no extravagant eulogium,—touched all subjects, and touched none that he did not adorn,—nullum quod tetigit non ornavit. His life was a strange melodrama, so varied with laughter and tears, so checkered with fame and misfortune, so resounding with songs pathetic and comic, that, were he an unknown hero, his adventures would be read with pleasure by all persons of sensibility. There is no better illustration ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... board—the human mind—with the black men ranged on one side and the white on the other, ready to move, to advance, skirmish, threaten, manoeuvre, attack, and check each other, and the intervening squares represent the checkered ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... is high time the major took his wife away," and Wren sternly bade her hold her peace, she knew not what she was saying! But, said Camp Sandy, who could it have been but Mrs. Plume or, possibly, Elise? Once or twice in its checkered past Camp Sandy had had its romance, its mystery, indeed its scandals, but this was something that put in the shade all previous episodes; this shook Sandy to its very foundation, and this, despite her brother's prohibition, Janet ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... by the fire, the very picture of an old dame, with a black bonnet, high-crowned and crescent shaped in front, with a white muslin cap below, a buff handkerchief crossed over her shoulders, a dark short-sleeved gown, long mittens covering her arms, and a checkered apron; a regular orthodox birch-rod by her side, and a black cat at her feet. But her head was shaking with palsy, and she hardly seemed to understand what Lizzie screamed into her ear that, ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sun benignant Looked upon them through the branches, Saying to them, "O my children, Love is sunshine, hate is shadow, Life is checkered shade and sunshine, Rule by love, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... flew by, they found the pain of absence was checkered by dreams of the reunion that lay before them; and each day, as it was born, and grew, and died, and so was laid upon the pile of those already gone, was a sad joy to them, and counted not so much a day lost as ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... on him took the position that a man who used a deadly weapon in the commission of his crime should receive the full penalty of the law. A man who holds a pistol to shoot will take life, therefore he ought to have a life sentence. Wood, who belongs to a wealthy family in Texas, has a checkered history. He served as a soldier for a time in the Philippine Islands. Here he deserted his post and committed highway robbery. He was tried by court martial for larceny and convicted. Then he was brought ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... borne before the priests and clerks, who paced in surplices, singing as they paced. Then followed a standard, blazoned with the dead man's crest—a red deer's head, with gilt horns, and gold and green wings. Next followed mourners, and after them the herald, with the dead man's coat armour, checkered silver and azure. Then followed the corpse, attended by clerks and the livery. After the corpse came the son, the chief mourner, and two other couples of mourners. The swordbearer and Lord Mayor, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... mistaken in saying that the brake closed the circle entirely round; for there was one gap, scarcely apparent to mortals, through which a fairy at least might catch a view of a brook that was close at hand, rippling in the stars, and checkered at intervals by the rich weeds floating on the surface, interspersed with the delicate arrowhead and the silver water-lily. Then the trees themselves, in their prodigal variety of hues,—the blue, the purple, the yellowing tint, the tender and silvery verdure, ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out the gadding town, we enter within their covert as we go under the roof of a cottage, and cross its threshold, all ceiled and banked up with snow. They are glad and warm still, and as genial and cheery in winter as in summer. As we stand in the midst of the pines, in the nickering and checkered light which straggles but little way into their maze, we wonder if the towns have ever heard their simple story. It seems to us that no traveller has ever explored them, and notwithstanding the wonders which science is elsewhere revealing every day, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... for three, a GLOBE four inches in diameter; for five, a GLOBE six inches in diameter. PRANG'S CHROMOS will be given as premiums at the publisher's prices. Send stamp for a catalogue. GAMES, &c.—For two new subscribers, we will give any one of the following: The Checkered Game of Life, Alphabet and Building Blocks, Dissected Maps, &c., &c. For three new subscribers, any one of the following: Japanese Backgammon or Kakeba, Alphabet and Building Blocks (extra). Croquet, Chivalrie, Ring Quoits, and any other of the popular games of the day ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Bruno into his own family as one of the gentlemen of his suite. Under his roof the wandering scholar enjoyed a quiet home during the two years which he passed in England—years that were undoubtedly the happiest, as they were the most industrious, of his checkered life. It is somewhat strange that Bruno left no trace of his English visit in contemporary literature. Seven of his most important works were printed in London, though they bore the impress of Paris and Venice—for the very characteristic reason ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... her silence, trying in vain to guess the thoughts that were stirring behind her shining eyes, as green and golden as the sea under a noonday sun. What a wealth of romance must be hidden in that woman's past! What tragedies must have been woven into the checkered fabric of her ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Peter Maverick, alias anything that seemed to suit the varied occasions of his checkered career, thrust aside the curtain of foliage covering the hiding place of his new raft. There was no reason why he should visit the raft just then; he could have no possible use for it until he had ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him. .. Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville |
