"Elusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beginning to realize interiorly. This is manifest in the daily press; in music and drama; and in all the avenues of the senses. That intangible, elusive but potential thing called "character" forms the gist of editorial advice. Everywhere we note a tendency to look below the appearance of things, and to fathom the depths of psychological analysis. For the first time in centuries the race-thought seeks ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... enactment which allows trustees to invest trust funds in their loans. Probably the safest course would be to leave sentiment to settle the matter, and pray to Providence to give us sensible sentiments. Actual restraints on the export of capital would be very difficult to enforce, for capital is an elusive commodity that cannot be stopped at the Customs houses. If we lent money to a friendly nation, and our friend was thereby enabled to lend to a likely foe, we should not have mended matters. The time is not yet ripe ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... and soon he had 30,000 men at his disposal. He acted with remarkable swiftness: on the 27th he dispersed the commandos of Beyers and Kemp, and on 7 November General Smuts announced that there were but a few scattered bands of rebels in the Transvaal. De Wet made a longer run by his elusive heels, but found the motor-transport of his enemies an insuperable bar to the repetition of his exploits of 1900-2. He had a slight success at Doornberg on 7 November, when his force amounted to 2000 men; ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... even if it hurts. Crystal, therefore, had no thought of rebellion; she only felt an infinity of regret for something sweet and intangible which she had hardly realised, hardly expected, which had been too elusive to be called hope, too remote to be termed happiness. She gave herself the luxury of this short outburst of tears—since nobody was near and nobody could see: there was a fearful pain in her heart ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere! Is he in heaven, is he in hell, That demmed elusive Pimpernel?" ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... ease. It was impossible to be anything else in Kitty Palliser's society. He was, in fact, surprised. Though it was only by immense expenditure of thought and effort that he managed to secure the elusive aspirate, still he secured it. Never for a moment did he allow himself to be cheated into the monstrous belief that its absence was, or could ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... elusive character. The more I see of her the less I understand her. If your nature draws near hers, it retreats. If you pursue, it flies—a little frightened perhaps. If then you keep still and look perfectly safe, she will return, ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... have been used widely in European countries, but not so much in the United States. Numerous attempts have been made by the states to tax incomes, but with small results. Personal incomes, when sought by local assessors, proved to be most elusive. There are (in 1913) but seven states with anything resembling a personal income tax.[7] These are Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. Of these states Wisconsin has the most recent law, and one the widest in ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... in the religion of Beauty, always preserve a certain kind of order, even in their worst depravities. The conception of Beauty is the axis of their inmost being: all their passions turn upon that axis." He is, in other words, the re-incarnation of Don Juan, pursuing in woman an elusive and ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... flat country, and in the north-east had come to a new river, which he named the Castlereagh. He was absent ten days, and on his return Oxley determined to abandon the Macquarie, which had proved even more deceptive and elusive than the Lachlan, and to strike out for the higher lands which Evans reported ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... of 'The Spoilsmen' will be none too good. As a wide-awake, snappy, brilliant political story it has few equals, its title-page being stamped with that elusive mark, 'success.' One should not miss a word of a book like this at a time like this and in a world of politics ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... halls, their faces lit for a moment as they passed under successive arc lights, crowding round the carriage doors where their friends and relations gathered in leave-taking. Most of them carried little bundles tied up in black silk handkerchiefs and paper parcels whose elusive contents usually appeared to take a leguminous form, and something of the traditional romance of their calling came with them out of the blackness of that February night. It was reflected in the upturned admiring ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... lonely after the old stage rumbled away. The Talented One turned whimsically to Amelia for company. She tried to imagine her, as the little old woman did, but in vain. She could not conjure up the sweet, elusive face, the hair, the eyes, the grave little mouth of Amelia. The little old woman had taken away with her love, the key. She must have taken Amelia away with her, too, the girl thought, smiling at her own fancy. So, for company, she must wait until Loraine ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... elusive, loud and vulgar, but she was also good-natured. She admired Rosalind, but in her heart of hearts she thought that her friend had played Prissie a very shabby trick. She brought Prissie some tea, therefore, and stood for a ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... stories and clever mimicry, and rushed to her side whenever she summoned him to build card-castles or to join in a romp—until what was "play to the child" began to prove a serious matter to the man of the world. He found that, while he was building castles or chasing the elusive fairy blindfolded, she had stolen his heart away; but when he ventured to tell his love to her she boxed his ears, and told him to run away and not ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... Tzu and the earliest chroniclers of war recorded their observations, strategists and generals have been tantalized and confounded by the elusive goal of destroying the adversary's will to resist before, during, and after battle. Today, we believe that an unusual opportunity exists to determine whether or not this long-sought strategic goal ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... Indicator catches the eye of the Pilot. "Good enough," he says as he gently deflects the Elevator and points the nose of the Aeroplane upwards in search of the elusive ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... of the waiters would drown him out altogether. But the artist in him forced him to play all things well, and for his own comfort he would assure himself that no doubt somewhere in the room someone was listening, someone who thought more of the strange, elusive melodies of the Hungarian folksongs than of the chefs entrees, and that for this unknown one he must be true to himself and true to his work. Covertly, he would seek out some face to which he could make ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... all only one of the fifty-nine species I succeeded in identifying during my sojourn at the village. There were more. I heard the calls and cries of others in the wood and various places, but refused, except in the case of the too elusive crake, to set down any in my list that I did not see. It was not my ambition to make a long list. My greatest desire was to see well those that interested me most. But those who go forth, as I did, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... glittering, polished blade, at last a slanting sunbeam fell. It split the gloom, and a radiant afternoon seemed to emerge. The moist leaves shone; far down the aisles of the woods the fugitive mists, in elusive dryadic suggestions, chased each other into the distance. Although the song-birds were all silent, there was a chirping somewhere—cheerful sound! He had almost reached his destination when a sudden rustling in the undergrowth by the roadside caused ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... would not have recognized had it not been for Talbot's half-jesting words returned to him. He would not deny to himself now that Helen Harley attracted him with singular force. There was about her an elusive charm; perhaps it was the slight trace of foreign look and manner that added to her Southern beauty a ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... or vine-clad stump, a bird, a taloned monster, a rock carved by the fire-queen, a human form, a puff of vapor—and now it has given place to vacancy. It was a goddess, perhaps of the hula. In the solitude of the wilderness one meets a youthful being of pleasing address, of godlike wit, of elusive beauty; the charm of her countenance unspoken authority, her gesture command. She seems one with nature, yet commanding it. Food placed before her remains untasted; the oven, imu,[22] in which the fascinated host has heaped ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... atmosphere seemed peculiarly oppressive. The sun was sinking amid light clouds of gorgeous tints, and as Darrell watched their changing outlines they seemed fit emblems of the thoughts at that moment baffling his weary brain,—elusive, intangible, presenting themselves in numberless forms, yet ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... General and I possessed hardly so much as an acquaintance. The man before me was a man whom Sally had invoked into being, and it seemed to me, as I watched them, that she had awakened in George, who had lost her, some quality—inscrutable and elusive—that she had never aroused in the man to whom she belonged. What this quality was, or wherein it lay, I could not then define. Understanding, sympathy, perception, none of these words covered it, yet it appeared to contain and possess them all. The mere ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... is difficult, but too great effusiveness is as disgusting as too great abruptness is unsatisfactory. The elusive but happy medium is the ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... looked inquiringly at each other. Fortune was beginning to show herself elusive, even in the Sargasso, ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me what society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it. The evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as to defy clear, definite analysis in words. We all experience such things at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a certain individual, one who the very instant before we did not dream existed; and yet, at the first ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... 1932-33) in which over 8 million died, and World War II, in which German and Soviet armies were responsible for some 7 million more deaths. Although independence was attained in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR, true freedom remains elusive as many of the former Soviet elite remain entrenched, stalling efforts at economic ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... better plight but I could not bring myself to eat the uncooked flesh and I had no means of making a fire. When Woola had finished his meal I again took up my weary and seemingly endless wandering in quest of the elusive waterway. ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... expression of the expert. Bell permitted him to ramble on about historic rings in general. But all the same he could see that Van Sneck was far from easy in his mind. Now and then a sudden gleam came into his eyes: memory played for the fragment of a second on a certain elusive ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... could not join the group that congregated to listen to Beekstein—Secretary of Education—straighten out the involved syntax or track an elusive x to its secret lair. In the afternoon he could not practice on the diamond with them, learning the trick of holding elusive flies or teaching himself to face thunderous outshoots ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... labored,—his bill showing long against the reddened sky. 'He has something in his mouth,' I start to say, when I bethink me what a long bill he has. Around, above us he flies in wide, ambitious circles, the while we are enveloped, as it were, in that hurried chippering sound—fine, elusive, now near, now distant. How rapid is the flight! Now it sounds faster and faster, 'like a whiplash flashed through the air,' said my friend; up, up he soars, till he becomes lost to sight at the instant that his song ends in that last mad ecstasy ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... strange, elusive way of seeming to be in one place and then appearing in another. The canoeist grew hot, and panting with his efforts. The perspiration stood out on his round, rosy face, and the curls on his forehead became wet. He flung off his hat, and redoubled his efforts. He bent his head ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... of turning an impassive face to Mr. Underwood's remark, I listened with just the hint of an elusive mischievous smile twisting ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... was warmer even than yesterday. The joyous, elusive, intoxicating spirit of the Southern spring was everywhere, the air seemed filled with the dust of sunbeams, filled with fragrance and lazy sounds. The very business of the street seemed part of a great universal gaiety over which the sky heat hazy beyond the Battery rose ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... usual Mrs. Carstairs wore white, the fittest setting, Anstice thought, for her pale and tragic grace; but to-night she had thrown a wonderful Chinese scarf round her shoulders, and the deep blue ground, embroidered with black and green birds and flowers, gave an unusually distinctive note to her elusive personality. Opposite to her Iris, in her filmy grey-green frock, a big bunch of violets at her breast, wore the look of a nymph, some woodland creature whose fragrant charm and youthful freshness were in striking contrast to ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Follow round the walls, beginning from the right. In the right aisle are paintings (modern) looking like frescoes, and representing the preaching of St. Denis, by Galand; and the history of Ste. Genevive—her childhood, recognition by St. Germain l'Auxerrois, miracles, etc., delicate and elusive works, by Puvis de Chavannes. The paintings of the South Transept represent episodes in the early history of France. Chronologically speaking, they begin from the east central corner. Choir, Death of Ste. Genevive, and Miracles before her Shrine, by ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... were, and as sublimely complacent as we were young. Would you believe it, Mrs. Mayburn, your nephew and I at one time thought we were on the trail of some of the most elusive secrets of the universe, and that we should soon drag them from cover. I have learned since that this little girl could teach me more than all ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... them to make up for their want of prose exactitude. Admittedly, however, translation of Villon is difficult. Some of his most beautiful poems are simple as catalogues of names, and the secret of their beauty is a secret elusive as a fragrance borne on the wind. Mr. Stacpoole may be congratulated on his courage in undertaking an impossible task—a task, moreover, in which he challenges comparison with Rossetti, Swinburne, and Andrew Lang. His book, however, is meant ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... come anywhere near her impression of the new Swedish triumph. She quotes the last word from the makers themselves: "This is a very special product that has never been made on this earth before," and speaks of "the elusive flavor of mushrooms" before summing up, "the exquisitely textured curd and the unexpectedly fresh flavor combine to make it one of the most subtly enjoyable foods that have come my way in a ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... gave a large part of his days to the fiercest political fights of a fiercely political age and a large part of his nights to the fascination of the card-table, the disasters of the dice-box, and the pursuit of the sweet, elusive shadow which is {144} called pleasure. Fox's love for literature was indeed its own reward. In the darkest hours of a life that tasted the bitterness of many public and many private sorrows he could steep ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... stepmother. Mrs. Maitland was invariably kind to her, and astonishingly patient with the rather dull little mind—one of those minds that are like softly tangled skeins of single zephyr; if you try to unwind the mild, elusive thoughts, they only knot tightly upon themselves, and the result is a half-frightened and very obstinate silence. But Mrs. Maitland never tried to unwind Nannie's thoughts; she used to look at her sometimes in kindly amusement, as one might look at a kitten or a canary; and sometimes ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... away from the butt of his .45. It came away faster than it had gone for it. Guns had appeared suddenly in the Texan's two hands. His draw had been so swift that nobody had caught the elusive movement. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... head was laid for that elusive glimmer in the sky, which began already to pale in lustre and diminish in size, as the stain of breath vanishes from a window pane. At the same time she ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... vast glacial crests, almost at the limit of human vision. The purpling distance to the west suggested fastnesses remote enough from the northern man, yet in those deep canyons, those wide valleys, along creek-bank and river bed, the busy prospector was ruthlessly prosecuting his quest for the elusive "color," and the mining engineer was probing for Nature's most ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... charming individuality in each of these fascinating little tales; something elusive and subtle in every one, something quaint or surprising, which catches the fancy and gives a sense of satisfaction like that felt when one discovers a rare flower in an unexpected place. I predict that "The Odd Number" will soon be found lying in the corner of the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... so indifferent, and had begun to suspect the existence of the affair. His paternal jealousy made him feel it. He had for Jacqueline that strange pure affection which many fathers feel for their daughters, an elusive, indefinable feeling, a mysterious, voluptuous, and almost sacred curiosity, in living once more in the lives of fellow-creatures who are of their blood, who are themselves, and are women. In such secrets ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... conversation a more personal note, but he found her elusive. She accepted an invitation, however, to be present at a lecture which he was giving before another learned society during the following week. With that he felt that he ought to be content. Nevertheless, he left her a little dissatisfied. He was perfectly well aware ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... down to a deep, quiet glow; and soon Rodriguez stepped back a yard or two from the fire to where Morano had prepared his bed; and, watching the fire still, and turning over thoughts that flashed and changed as fast as the embers, he went to wonderful dreams that were no more strange or elusive than ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... the quality of my conduct. I was a young and fairly vigorous male; all my appetite for love had been roused and whetted and none of it had been satisfied by my love affair and my marriage. I had pursued an elusive gleam of beauty to the disregard of all else, and it had failed me. It had faded when I had hoped it would grow brighter. I despaired of life and was embittered. And things happened as I am telling. I don't draw any moral ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... beyond these doors save with me. My rascals are fierce creatures of jealousy and suspicion. Good night, friend." Him, too, she left tingling with her kiss, and whatever others in the camp did that night, two men found sleep elusive and vain. ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... little larger, the only peculiarity being that they were exactly alike in colour, and that they all emitted a rich, ruddy light. For a minute or two Dick stood carefully examining the stones; and as he did so a faint, elusive memory came to him in connection with them. Then suddenly the memory became clear and, carefully suppressing his excitement, he turned to Grosvenor and said, in quite ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... oratory and library. Therein his books would bide when he died.[1] Not till long after his death was the building completed. His books did not come to the University without much trouble. Bequests were elusive in the Middle Ages, for people sometimes dreamed of projects they could not realize while they lived, and sanguinely hoped their executors would win prayers for the dead by successfully stretching ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... streets, staring around him, trying to get some idea of what his new home was like. The winding, unpaved roads and dark, weatherbeaten houses stirred an elusive tag-end of memory in him. He had seen a place like this on Earth, but he couldn't remember anything about it. The recollection was as tantalizing as an itch; but he couldn't ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... down at the big, blue bow and at the soft, blue ruffly stuff on her shoulders—stuff that was just thin enough so that one caught elusive suggestions of the soft, pinky flesh beneath—and wondered vaguely why he had never noticed the beating in his throat before—and what would happen if he reached around and tilted back her chin and—"Thunder! I guess ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... visitor and the two girls, who must have come in from the garden. Then the front door banged heavily. He was gone. The vast and arid tedium of her life closed in upon her again; she seemed to exist in a colourless void peopled only by ominous dim elusive shapes of disaster. ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... fascination, of the still face. The eyes were long and half closed under finely arched brows, there was a minute patch at the right corner of a pale scarlet, smiling mouth; a pointed chin marked an elusive oval beneath black hair drawn down upon a long slim neck, hair to which was pinned an odd headdress of old gilt with, at the back, pendent ornamental strands of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... would teach them that red-tape and officialism could only blunder blindly on at the heels of his elusive and lightfooted wariness. If they were bound to hold him down and delegitimatize him and keep him a pariah and a revolter against order, he would show them what he, alone, could do in his ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... one thing that day at the station," he said, with such an ardent look that it made Bobby smile through her tears. As a rule he disliked dimples, especially the stationary kind. But the one that now occupied, his attention was a very shy and elusive affair that kept the beholder watching very closely for fear he should ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... you!" he bellowed, and, not to lose more time, he dashed up the steps of the deserted veranda, thrust his basket deep underneath a wicker settee, and ran violently after his elusive cousin. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... buried there. But the task is difficult, and after all, tombstones yield but cheerless reading. That the sleepers in the Potter's Field very often had not even that shelter of tombstones makes their stories the more elusive and the more melancholy. One or two slight records stand out among the rest, notably the curious one attached to the last of the stones to be removed from Washington Square. I believe that it was in 1857 that Dr. John Francis, in an address before the Historical ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... time the laboratory was resounding with the fury of a riot sale in a bargain basement. Sounds of destruction, counterpointed with cries of pain and imprecations increased as the staff pursued maddeningly elusive animals through a growing jungle of toppled and overturning equipment. At the far end there was a shower of sparks and a flash of flame as something furry plunged into a network of ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... that moment leisurely tying his white neckwear in his bed-chamber at Villa Cardross. And sometimes he whistled, tentatively, as though absorbed in mentally following an elusive air; sometimes he resumed a lighted cigarette which lay across the gilded stomach of a Chinese joss, sending a thin, high thread of smoke to the ceiling. He had begun his collection with one small idol; there were now nineteen, ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... just where and how they part company; and the persons least able to do this are the very ones most in need of the information. The distinctions between words similar in meaning are often so fine and elusive as to tax the ingenuity of the accomplished scholar; yet when clearly apprehended they are as important for the purposes of language as the minute differences between similar substances are for the purposes of chemistry. Often definition itself is best secured by the comparison of kindred ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Reluctantly at last he abandoned the design of driving his guest about in the trap, but he insistently put forward the motor-car. He would drive it himself. They would spend pleasant hours going about the country. His lordship continued elusive. To myself he confided that his ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a New York maiden, beyond dreams beautiful—both known as the Silver Butterfly. Well named is The Silver Butterfly! There could not be a better symbol of the darting swiftness, the eager love plot, the elusive mystery and the ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... of window—washing costume that has been worn by women from time immemorial. We noticed that she used plenty of hot water and clean rags, and that she rubbed the glass until it sparkled, leaning perilously sideways on the ladder to detect elusive streaks. Our keenest housekeeping eye could find no fault with the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... joke, sir, and you are attempting to be elusive, but you will not slip through the fine meshes of evidence woven by the law in that way. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... Harris to Edwards, gained eight, and Harris made it first down past left tackle. Kendall worked the centre for three and Harris romped around the right for six more. Carmine plunged through centre for the distance. Harris went back as if to kick and the ball shot to St. Clair and that elusive youth fairly streaked across the field and, finding a hole, shot through and over the line for the second score. This time Innes kicked the goal and the tally was 13-0. There was no more scoring in that period, although Cherry Valley sent the spectators' hearts into ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... mind been so quick, so clear, so wonderful in its understanding of what had heretofore been intricate and elusive impulses of his strange nature. His determination was to meet Poggin; meet him before any one else had a chance—Poggin first—and then the others! He was as unalterable in that decision as if on the instant of its ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... Wolverine slept on the verge of waking, but it was not until dawn that the cry of "Sail-ho!" sent them all hurrying to their clothes. Ordinarily officers of the U.S. Navy do not scuttle on deck like a crowd of curious schoolgirls, but all hands had been keyed to a high pitch over the elusive light, and the bet with Edwards now served as an excuse for the betrayal of unusual eagerness. Hence the quarter-deck was soon alive with men who were wont to be deep in ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... well as those of our Allies, all round; and that the loss of two of our cruisers off the coast of Chile had been more than offsetted by the destruction of the notorious commerce-destroyer Emden in the seas of Sumatra and the cornering of the equally elusive Koenigsberg among the palm-trees of an East African lagoon—fit incident for the pages of Captain Marryat or Mr. George Henty, beloved of the boy-devourers ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... them while working up the Springfield case. Long jumps, quick get-aways, no confederates, and a taste for good society—these ways had helped Mr. Valentine to become noted as a successful dodger of retribution. It was given out that Ben Price had taken up the trail of the elusive cracksman, and other people with burglar-proof safes felt more ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Dickens for mere caricature. There is a huge accumulation of truth, down to the smallest detail, in Dickens: he seems sometimes a mere mountain of facts. Thackeray, in comparison, often seems quite careless and elusive; almost as if he did not quite know where all his characters were. There is a truth behind the popular distinction; but it lies much deeper. Perhaps the best way of stating it is this: that Dickens used reality, while aiming at an effect of romance; ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... bird flying in the air, a school of minnows swimming around his feet. He lunged at them trying to catch them, and falling upon his hands and knees he crawled through the water grasping futilely at the elusive fish. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... clause will be sufficient to restrain all elusive contracts, and whether all the little artifices of interest are sufficiently obviated, I am yet unable to determine; but by a reflection upon the multiplicity of relations to be considered, and the variety of circumstances to be adjusted in a provision of this kind, I am ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... rest, the referee called "Time!" Ware came stalking up jauntily and confidently; but Jumbo, instead of skulking, was up, and at, and on him like a wildcat. Ware had expected that the Lakerim youngster would pursue the same elusive tactics as before, and he was all amaze while Jumbo was seizing his left hand with his own left hand, and, darting round behind him, was bending Ware's arm backward and ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... talk as much as he liked, catch it he would and catch it he must. But he must acquire greater skill before he would be able to render something so delicate and elusive. ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... had grown into the habit of looking upon Dartrey as a man who had no real existence outside the routine of their daily work. He welcomed with avidity, therefore, this opportunity of understanding a little more thoroughly Dartrey's pleasant but elusive personality. ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was working on the various problems of "The Wind Bloweth"—problems of wisdom, of color, of phrasing, and trying to capture the elusive, unbearable ache that is the mainspring of humanity, and doing this through the medium of a race I knew best, a race that affirms the divinity of Jesus and yet believes in the little people of the ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... us such as no other writer can work; he plays upon the strings of our hearts, now surprising us into wholesome laughter, now melting us to tears. You may know his essays by heart, but you can't define their elusive charm. ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... a man whose superficial personality was so haughty and awe-inspiring to strangers would, in any case, have had the greatest difficulty in penetrating the mysteries of a psychic world so obscure and elusive as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Read the curious adventures that befell after Titania Chapman came to learn the book business in the mellow atmosphere of the second-hand bookshop of this novel. There was mystery connected with the elusive copy of Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell, which kept on disappearing from Roger's shelves. Some readers may remember that Roger Mifflin was the hero of Mr. Morley's first novel, Parnassus on Wheels, though this is in no sense a ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... and into them there came a troubled look—the look of one who is endeavouring to grasp an elusive recollection. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... had never before seemed more desirable to him—or more elusive. For she was beginning to realize and to wield her power. Again she took a whiff from her cigarette, and wafted it ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... through it, and that no one save Aunt Amy thought it necessary to count all the boards in the sidewalk or to touch all the little posts under the balustrade as one came down stairs. Some of the prettier, more elusive fancies she may have retained, but, if so, they ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Then he was permitted to share their studies, to read slowly from handy, literal translations, his head cushioned on the Egghead's knee, while the lounging group swore genially at Pius AEneas or sympathized with Catiline. He shagged elusive balls and paraded the bats at shoulder-arms. He opened the mail, and sorted it, fetching the bag from Farnum's. He was even allowed to stand treat to the mighty men of the house whenever the change in his pocket became too ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... The strange elusive Hindu had disappeared after Hongkong. That was a weight off her soul. She was now assured that her imagination had beguiled her. How should he know anything about her? What was more natural than that he should wish to hurry back to his native state? She was not the only one in a hurry. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... million died. In World War II, German and Soviet armies were responsible for some 7 to 8 million more deaths. Although final independence for Ukraine was achieved in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR, democracy remained elusive as the legacy of state control and endemic corruption stalled efforts at economic reform, privatization, and civil liberties. A peaceful mass protest "Orange Revolution" in the closing months of 2004 forced the authorities to overturn a rigged presidential election and to allow a new ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... elusive Blatant Beast, Sir Calidore comes to a place where shepherds are holding a feast in honor of Pastorella, the adopted daughter of the farmer Melibee, and beloved of young Coridon, a neighboring shepherd. Coridon ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... incantation, spoke; it was to him that this voice recounted her feverish agitation for the unknown, her insatiable ideals, her imperative need to escape from the horrible reality of existence, to leap beyond the confines of thought, to grope towards the mists of elusive, unattainable art. The poignant tragedy of his past failures rent his heart. Gently he clasped the silent woman at his side, he sought refuge in her nearness, like a child who is inconsolable; he was blind to the sulkiness of the comedienne obliged to ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... The hedge gave them shelter, but no moisture, so that all these weeds and grasses had a somewhat forlorn and starved appearance, climbing up with long stringy stems among the powerful aloes. The hedge was also rich in animal life. There dwelt mice, cavies, and elusive little lizards; crickets sang all day long under it, while in every open space the green epeiras spread their geometric webs. Being rich in spiders, it was a favourite hunting-ground of those insect desperadoes, the mason-wasps, that flew about loudly buzzing in their splendid gold and scarlet ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Instead, his memory was conjuring up a pair of subtle, blue-gray eyes, now pleading, now coquettish, now frankly defiant; two slim, white, wonderful hands; the echo of a pleasant, throaty laugh; a splendid, elusive, radiant-haired phantom. Truly, a woman of mystery! Who was this Isabel Thorne who, for months past, had been the storm-center and directing mind of a vast international intrigue which threatened ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... bordering on awe, until fairly dragged away by the prosaic Englishman. This feeling of his childhood recurred to him now with irresistible force. The throb of the motor of human life was pulsating in his ears; but added to it was something more, something elusive, intangible, but all-powerful. The moment he had arrived within the city limits he had felt the first trace of its presence. As he approached the centre of congestion it had deepened, had become more and more a guiding influence. Since then, by day or by night, wherever he went, augmenting ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... we set off again in pursuit of the elusive gold convoy. We could get no accurate information concerning it. Some said it was behind, others ahead. We never ran it down. It may well be that it was concealed in a ravine near the road a few ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... to find the exact words by which to differentiate the traditional teacher from the artist teacher. There is an elusive quality in the artist teacher which is not easily reduced to or described by formal words. We know that the one is an artist teacher and that the other is not. The formal examination may not be able to discover the artist ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... said Kew, "that I must leave you by the ten something. I must leave you to sniff without my help, like bloodhounds, along the trail of the elusive Jay. But I won't bid any one a fervent good-bye, because I daresay I shall be back again on leave for lack of anything else to do in three weeks' time, if we can't get across the Channel. In that case I'll meet you one day ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... while she was thus deciding upon a measure to checkmate them both, Larry was pacing his room at Cedar Crest, at last excitedly evolving the elusive plan which was to bring Maggie to her senses and also to him; and Maggie, all unconscious of this new element which had entered as a potential factor in her existence, all unconscious of how far she had been guided from ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... always abnormally eager to talk over anything. Much of his artistic energy had trickled away in elusive snatches of talk. "Come," he exclaimed, enthusiastically, "I have it. I will begin a great work—a modern Magdalen or something of that sort. We can use you in just that posture, kneeling before a rock with outstretched hands, and head turned away. We will make everything ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... inquired with a trace of pertness as he laid a hand upon the other's pommel. "Do we search again for that elusive Monterey? Methinks Vizcaino dreamed it in his cups." He smiled, a flash of strong, white teeth relieving the half-weary relaxation of his features, and Ortega ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... nigh, And thick their mortal shafts commission'd fly; When now a breaking surge, with forceful sway, Two, next Arion, furious tears away: Hurl'd on the crags, behold they gasp, they bleed! 730 And, groaning, cling upon the elusive weed; Another billow bursts in boundless roar! Arion sinks! and Memory views no more. Ha! total night and horror here preside, My stunn'd ear tingles to the whizzing tide; It is their funeral knell! and, gliding near, Methinks ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... she was in California, but had failed to bind the contract by depositing a guarantee with her banker. He failed, it is said, because when he wanted to complete the negotiations he could not find her. Mr. Hammerstein also negotiated with her for the season of 1906-07, so he said, but she proved elusive. Neither of the managers felt any loss at his failure to secure her. The London excitement may have set Mr. Conried to thinking; Mr. Hammerstein it stirred to action. On December 1st he announced that he had engaged her for the season ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of the world, prophet and martyr stuff might be sifted out from the man-stuff of the times if the race had need of them. In normal states of growth, we call them "cranks" and look for no results from their existence. But the elusive spirit of love never dies. It appears and reappears in the history of all races and times, and leaves its mark upon them in various ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... way. He had imagined himself speaking and acting, half as man of business, half as judge. And now it was as if he were in the presence not of a mere woman and erring wife, but of some force, subtle and elusive as atmosphere itself within him and outside. A kind of defensive irony welled ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... God through all its darkness grope, And find within its deadened heart to sing These songs of sorrow, love, and faith, and hope? How did it catch that subtle undertone, That note in music heard not with the ears? How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown, Which stirs the soul or melts ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... the domain of quite simple material things the dislike of having fixed habits of thought disturbed, leads gentlemen to resent innovations in that way, it is not astonishing that innovations of a more intangible and elusive kind should be subject to a like unconscious misrepresentation, especially by newspapers and public men pushed by commercial or political necessity to say the popular thing rather than the true thing: that contained in the ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... window Sir Charles saw Miss Cameron half hidden by the vines of the veranda. The moonlight falling about her transformed her into a figure which was ideal, mysterious, and elusive, like a woman in a dream. He ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... him, stiff with cold, he noticed that a half-moon had sailed up above the peaks. Its elusive light lay upon the slope, but ledge and stone seemed less distinct than their shadows, which were black as ebony. After that he commenced a struggle with himself, for, numbed as he was, he did not want to move, which is one of the insidious effects of cold. It cramps its victim's ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... obvious, that where only such a small amount of energy can be made available, in a medium as elusive as air, the least change, or form, of the propeller, must have an important bearing ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... all the thousands of objects and subjects have dropped into their places in the exhibition with the precision of machinery, little adapted as some of them are to such treatment. Very impalpable and elusive things had to submit themselves to inspection and analysis, and have their elements tabulated like a tax bill or a grocery account. All human concerns were called on to be listed on the muster-roll and stand shoulder to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... who showed such hearty appreciation of her capital dinner. But Sue became only the more resolved that she was not going to yield so readily to this muscular suitor who was digging and eating his way straight into the hearts of her ancestors, and she proposed to be unusually elusive and alert during the afternoon. She was a little surprised when ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... practicable. It involves at once too much caste and too much contact. We do not wish to find servants or scrubs in our sisters, nor do we wish at all times even to see our sisters. There must be elbow-room for mood and temperament, as well as high walls of defence. The social element is too shy and elusive, and will not, like a monkey, perform on demand; therefore our plan abjures all these poetic organizations, which have a great deal of cant and very little good companionship; it has no sentimentalism to offer, proposing an association of purses rather ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... (The elusive person thus referred to kicks responsively, meaning perhaps that none of the others will change till there is a tap from another hammer. But when MATEY goes to rout him from his chair he is no longer there. His disappearance is no shock to MATEY, who shrugs his shoulders ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... now, for example. What can be more delightful on a bright, pleasant afternoon, when the wind is in exactly the right quarter, than to take up a standard work on fishing, written by some gifted traveling passenger agent, and with him to snatch the elusive finny tribe out of their native element, while the reel whirs deliriously and the hooked trophy leaps high in air, struggling against the feathered barb of the deceptive lure, and a waiter is handy ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... course, almost as tall as Joyce, with skirts almost as long, but it was not that which impressed him with the sense of change. It was a certain girlish winsomeness, something elusive, which cannot be defined, but which lends a charm like nothing else in all the world to the ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... at him, muttering; the mill had unduly prolonged itself; he would end it. His fist struck at that face so elusive; but crashed against the wall; like a flash Steele's arm lifted. The ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... Library Automation, University of California, opened his talk with the general observation that networked information constituted a difficult and elusive topic because it is something just starting to develop and not yet fully understood. LYNCH contended that creating genuinely networked information was different from using networks as an access or dissemination vehicle and was more sophisticated and more subtle. He invited the members of the audience ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... the redress of their grievances. In our replies to all, we have constantly assumed the prerogatives of that character, but eluded the direct avowal of it; under the name of influence we have offered them protection, and we have granted them the indulgences of government under elusive expressions, sometimes applied to our treaties with the Nabobs, sometimes to our own rights as the dewan; sometimes openly declaring the virtual rule which we held of these provinces, we have contended with them for the rights of government, and threatened to repel with force the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... elusive attention of children would seem to tell us that the psychical man is subject to ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... let him out of his coop for?" demanded Mark. "You're always bothering us about that rooster, Washington. He is as elusive as the Fourth Dimension." ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... vari-coloured beads, two gaudy-looking bandanna handkerchiefs, and three cheap pocket-knives. These treasures he entrusted to the care of Inaguy, the headman, and furnishing him with an escort of two men, dispatched him in search of the elusive natives, bidding him find them and by means of the gifts which he carried, open up peaceful communication with them. For up to this time the party had been wandering more or less at random, and their leader was most anxious to get into touch with the inhabitants, so that he might question ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... one and he is increasing at a much greater rate than the European. Hence you have an inevitable conflict. Race lies at the root of the South African trouble and the racial reconciliation that Rhodes and Botha set their hopes upon remains an elusive quantity. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... Youth it is connected by legend with early Spanish exploration in America. Long ago, the story goes, there lived in Mexico or South America a golden king who scattered treasures along his path. El Dorado and his realm have long been symbols of the elusive gold sought by mankind in ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... silence and immobility, but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world—invulnerable because elusive. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... uniformity. And you must seek it, says Mr. Parker, in the "Absolute Religion" which animates every form of religion, and is equally found in all. I know the chatters about this incessantly; but when I attempt thus to "hunt the one in the many," as Plato would call it.—to seek the elusive unity in the infinite multiform,—to discover what it is which equally embalms all forms, from the Christianity of Paul to the religion of the "grim Calmuck," I acknowledge myself as much at loss as Martinus in endeavoring to catch ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... The strange, elusive maturity that had come into her young, smooth face,—that was it. Maturity without the passing of Youth; definiteness, understanding, discovery,—a grip on the realities of life, just as it was with him ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... to listen to them—and even to sit up till Helen returned from the club. One night, as Helen was chatting of a young an from Boston who had teased her by following her around until every one was calling him "Helen's little lamb," Mary gradually became aware of an elusive scent ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... trace of his previous state of mind vanished, as the instantaneous and elusive trail of a bursting meteor vanishes on the profound blackness of the sky; it was the faint flicker of a painful thought, gone as soon as perceived, that nothing but her presence—after all—had the power to recall ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... him, his face relaxing to a serious expression in which a trace of sadness and gloom spread like an elusive twilight. He took out his letter, but did not glance at it, simply holding it tightly gripped in his sinewy right hand. Then his old eyes stared vacantly, as eyes do when their sight is cast back many, many years into the past. The missive was from beyond the sea—he ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... to distinguish between originality and singularity.[12] The contradiction of a common prejudice, which always passes for paradox, is often such only in appearance. It is true that an ingenious person may take advantage of the elusive nature of language to play tricks with the ordinary understanding, but it is equally true that words of themselves have a way of imposing on the uninquiring mind and passing themselves off at an ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the graver of the two; graver indeed than is at all usual at twenty-four, but with a quiet fund of humour and a romantic dreaminess, and withal a certain elusive quality that made her always interesting, and pleasantly something of a mystery. Diana was a sparkling, practical, outspoken young woman, much adored of young men whom she treated with scant courtesy, and with ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... delicately charming as the daguerrotypes of the sixties. As we tipped the old picture this way and that, to catch the right light on the image under the glass, the very uncertainty of effect seemed to give it an elusive fascination. To my mind the birds in the bush have always brighter plumage than any in the hand, and one of these early photographs leaves ever, no matter from what angle you look upon it, much to the imagination. So Geoff ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the summit of the rock was still shooting, though intermittently. It seemed to the rider that the man's target must be elusive or concealed, for the shooter's actions showed that he was irritated. The other man, too, was still shooting. The rider noted that he, too, seemed to be meeting with failure, for as the rider drew nearer he heard ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... aware of his life's flow And bears its winding murmur, and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze; And there arrives a lull in the hot race, Wherein he doth for ever chase That flying and elusive shadow, rest." ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... plays when pitted against the Smartness and resourcefulness of the black may be related. A large eel, in a moment of indiscretion, showed itself in a fairly deep creek. Bewailing the absence of his wing-net, or "moorgaroo," the boy hunted the elusive fish hither and thither with cunning determination. At last it disappeared under a log. In most of his activities the black boy sniffs at conventions. Hastily stripping, the boy dived and when he reappeared the eel was vainly squirming ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... more plainly through the tumult of his emotions was what Jan had come to know as the picture in his brain. Shadowy and indistinct at first, in pale, elusive lines of mental fabric, he saw the picture growing; and in its growth he saw first the soft, sweet outlines of a woman's face, and then great luring eyes, dark like his own—and before these eyes, which gazed upon him with overwhelming love, all else faded ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... These Indians never gave the Americans a minute's rest. They were up at all hours, pressing round the flanks, sniping the sentries, worrying the outposts, and keeping four times their own numbers on the perpetual alert. What exasperated the Americans even more was the wonderfully elusive way in which the Indians would strike their blow and then be lost to sight and sound the very next moment, if, indeed, they ever were seen at all. Finally, this endless skirmish with an invisible foe became so harassing that the Americans sent out a flying ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... taking-for-granted ideal is essentially man's—woman has never been persuaded to hold it. Possibly it is because men feel so keenly the elusiveness of women that they grow weary in the quest of the real Herself. But, says Browning, they must not grow weary in it. Elusive though she be, her lover must not leave her uncaptured. For if love is the greatest adventure, it is also the longest. We cannot come to an end of it—and, if we were wise, should ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... this occurred so easily was due to a number of causes. Of these several have already been noted,—the readiness of the most prominent teachers to broaden their field of knowledge, in particular. Other causes contributing to the acceptance of the mechanical idea were the elusive character of empirical knowledge of the voice, and the unconscious aspect of the instinct of vocal imitation. No master of the later transition period deliberately discarded his empirical knowledge. This could have been possible only by the master ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... say 'a man '? Why am I so elusive and mysterious? You're quite right. It sounds more dramatic, but after all what you want is facts. Very well. I broke into your house that night to win a bet. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... Sunday feature story published a month before in a semi-theatrical paper. It described with rollicking sarcasm, a gay "millionaire" party which had been given in Rector's private dining rooms. Among the ridiculed hosts were Van Cleft, Wellington Serral and Herbert De Cleyster! Here, in some elusive manner, ran the skein of truth which if followed would lead to the solution of mystery. He must carve out of this mass of pregnant clues the essentials upon which to act, as the sculptor chisels the marble of a huge block ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the bird student more pleasure than settling the identity of species, albeit sometimes it is hard and patience-trying work. And of all the birds, none are so provokingly and charmingly elusive as some of the wood warblers. What a time I had for several years in making sure of some of these little nymph-like creatures which were flitting about in the foliage of the trees, concealing themselves by a leafy barrier! Many a weary chase did they lead me through ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... into the stalls and hit that oily martinet in the mouth would have been to lay himself open to a charge of cruelty to animals. He was so puny and fat and soft. Poor little Tootles, who had had a tardy and elusive recognition torn from her grasp! It was ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... planet, in brief bursts of completely incomprehensible speed, the huge ship darted; the biggest, solidest, yet most elusive and fantastic "flying saucer" ever to visit that world. The tremendous oceans and six great continents were traversed; the ice-caps; the frigid, the temperate, and the torrid zones. Wherever she went, powerful and efficient ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... they are too stunning and confounding. If, again, they are stated in larger units, as for instance diameters of the earth's orbit, the unit itself that should facilitate the grasping of the result, and which really is more manageable numerically, becomes itself elusive of the mental grasp: it comes in as an interpreter; and (as in some other cases) the interpreter is hardest to be understood of the two. If, finally, TIME be assumed as the exponent of the dreadful magnitudes, time ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and sharpened the cold ache Of the heart-broken, incessantly-sobbing sea. It has scattered its sparks in the hearts of silken flowers And has raised the frozen fury of glaciers against the North And has permeated the South with its elusive fragrance. Auroral over East and ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... which is thought of when we speak of death was absent from the room. In the numbness of everything, in the mother's attitude, in the indifference on the doctor's face there was something that attracted and touched the heart, that subtle, almost elusive beauty of human sorrow which men will not for a long time learn to understand and describe, and which it seems only music can convey. There was a feeling of beauty, too, in the austere stillness. Kirilov and his wife were silent and not weeping, ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the road before me, and then abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At first I took it for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement. It was an elusive vision—a moment of bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine trees, and this problematical object came out ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... to be on examination a New-Englander of the gaunt variety, an acute man of thirty, who ate his roast turkey and mashed potatoes with that avidity he was wont to manifest when running down an elusive fact in an encyclopaedia. At the table Millard, for want of other conversation, plucked up courage to ask him whether he was ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... the tentative, hesitating, ambiguous hypotheses of Physical Science, transforming themselves afresh with every new discovery, seem, when the portentous mystery of Life's real secret confronts us, to be equally remote and elusive. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... This may appear to be a matter of style, but what we have in view here is not merely a principle of exposition, necessary for the sake of being intelligible to the reader, it is a precaution which the author ought to take on his own account. The facts of society are of an elusive nature, and for the purpose of seizing and expressing them, fixed and precise language is an indispensable instrument; no historian ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... and finger-memory. Von Bulow phrases the study in groups of two, Kullak in sixes, Klindworth and Mikuli the same, while Riemann in alternate twos, fours and sixes. One sees his logic rather than hears it. Von Bulow plastically reproduces the flitting, elusive character of the study ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... great fly stood with moveless, wide-spread wings, scintillating aerial hues as if its body was compacted of a million microscopic prisms. The transparent tissue of its wings was filled with a finer and more elusive iridescence. The great rounded, globose, overlapping jaws, half as big as the creature's whole head, kept opening and shutting, as if to polish their edges. The other half of its head was quite occupied by two bulging, brilliant ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... mask was held. The women were placed in their respective carriages, but the men walked. At the door of the house, as they entered the ballroom, they reunited, but again were soon scattered. Robert Kater wandered about, searching here and there for his very elusive Laura, so slim and elegant in her white and gold draperies, who seemed to be greatly in demand. He saw many whom he recognized; some by their carriage, some by their voices, but Laura baffled him. Had he ever ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... The Frenchwoman's son was one of the men arrested in Quebec province for using wolf dope: a handsome, elusive devil who sometimes haunted the lumber woods at the lower end of Lac Tremblant, trapping or robbing traps as seemed good to him, and paying back interruptions with such interest that no one was keen to interfere with him. ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... negroes are 'the black peas' which Americans detest. But that is a matter of social custom; the law, however, does not distinguish them from other citizens.... To love, not to love ... that is elusive and capricious, but justice is ...
— The Shield • Various
... work done by Ruskin in art up to his fortieth year, that he should turn, for practically the remainder of his life, to the seemingly vain and profitless task of a social reformer and regenerator of modern society, has to most men been a riddle too elusive and enigmatic to solve. And yet, in his earlier career, had he not himself prepared us for just such a departure as he took in the sixties, for in art was he not equally revolutionary and iconoclastic, as well as personally self-willed, passionate, and impulsive? ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... her. Both these young people who had carved their own Fate in the very rock which now had shattered their lives, seemed to be searching for something vague, unavowed and mysterious which instinct told them was there, but which was so elusive, so intangible that the soul of each recoiled, even ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... back to the days of his heedless youth. That long aisle of years seemed unending, but it narrowed in perspective until earlier experiences were but queerly dissolving shapes, wavering of outline, dimly discerned, piquant or sad in the mind, but elusive when he would ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... to the door with you," announced Mabel. "No, I won't forget our walk. I'll tell Frances about it to-morrow, before she has a chance to make any other plans. She is a popular young person, and elusive in the matter ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... with the clangour of the band, the brown sails of the fishing boats wave in the translucid greens of water; and the white field of the sheer cliff, and all the roofs, gables, spires, balconies, and the green of the verandahs are exquisitely indicated and elusive in the bright air; and the beach is strange with acrobats and comic songs, nursemaids lying on the pebbles reading novels, children with their clothes tied tightly about them building sand castles zealously; see the lengthy crowd of promenaders—out of its ranks two little spots of mauve ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... potential microcosm or nucleus of a clan, having limited autonomy in the conduct of its own immediate affairs. The constitution of this organism, whether as contemplated by the law or in the less perfect actual practice, is alike elusive, and underwent changes. For the purpose of illustration, the fine may be said to consist, theoretically, of the "seventeen men" frequently mentioned throughout the laws, namely, the flaithfine ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... Spencer did. But in fact, the exact limits he should assign to religious beliefs as an evolutionary function were still indeterminate in his system. He, like all cosmic philosophers, found this the most baffling and elusive of all his problems. Meantime, here in this little country church, he was to witness the supreme rite of the supreme religious belief. There was some compensation for his enforced attendance in that thought. He looked about him with genuine ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... supply, and the losses that the farming, ranching, and mineral regions suffered affected all the commercial and industrial activities of the State, so that there was a general depression. Business not coming into their office, the three partners went out to hunt for it; and yet it was elusive, so that they had very little to do and soon were in extremities for living necessities, even for wood for the kitchen fire. Henry George had fitfully kept a pocket diary during 1864, and a few entries at this job-printing period tell ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... seemed to him. But to Lanyard and Liane Delorme, hurled along a road they could not see at anywhere from forty to sixty miles an hour, with no manner of guidance other than an elusive tail-lamp which was forever whisking round corners and remaining invisible till Jules found his way round in turn, by instinct or second sight or intuition—whatever it was, it proved ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... sure to come along sooner or later. When these amusements palled, they threw their latent energies into the roping of a post in the long-suffering Mrs. Clunie's orchard, and later the moving and more elusive ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... familiar, there will be an increasing tax on the imagination. The world of dead matter which our fathers thought they understood has become a world of subtle forces moving with inconceivable velocity; nothing is inert, all things are transformed into other and more elusive shapes precisely as the makers of the fairy tales foresaw and predicted; the world lives in every atom just as their world lived; forces lie just outside the range of physical sight, but entirely within the range of ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various |
