"Flicker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the first flicker of the acetylene through a maze of hurrying figures, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, the plot would thicken: books orderly and disorderly, on bracketed shelves, cameras great and small in motley confusion, guns and a gramophone-horn, serpentine ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... flicker of a smile crosses her lips. She lays her knitting on her knee for an instant, that she may the more readily let her tapered fingers droop until they touch the pale brow of the child at her feet; then she resumes it again, with a face calm ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... compartment of the flyer, and before us lay the bodies of eight children. The beetle lifted the first one, a little girl, up until his many-faceted eyes looked full into the closed ones of the child. There was a flicker of an eyelash, a trace of returning color, and then a scream of terror from the child. The beetle set the girl down and Jim bent ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... silver plates, the glowing rubies, the glinting emeralds, made a picture of fabulous riches that even he could not ignore. But at the upward slide of the door his eyes left the richness of it without a flicker; he waited for the heavy velvet hangings to be drawn, and when Dolores's eyes sought his they surprised his deep, ardent gaze fastened full on herself and not upon what might next ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... a troublesome tooth) that here was a chance come of feeding, a chance at last of feeding. For the man on the cliff, the despairing watchman, weary of fastening his eyes upon the sea, through constant fog and drizzle, at length had discovered the well-known flicker, the glassy flaw, and the hovering of gulls, and had run along Weighing Lane so fast, to tell his good news in the village, that down he fell and broke his leg, exactly opposite the tailor's shop. And this was on St. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... my eyes there is a film of shame and in my breast a flicker of fear; my face is veiled and I weep when I cannot ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... flicker. It became red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, invisible; then back again through the spectrum the other way—violet, blue, green, ...
— Subjectivity • Norman Spinrad
... his eyes, awakened him. For a moment he lay, dazed, confused by the gentle and unfamiliar oscillations of his hammock. Another flicker of light and a rumble of thunder brought him to his full senses. The rain had degenerated into a casual drizzle and the wind had withdrawn into the higher areas. He heard some one ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... book-shelves lining the north side of the great room. There were numerous fine pictures and plaster casts here and there. A piano stood in one corner, a talking-machine in another. The light within seemed to flicker, and Willie guessed that in the rear of the room, where he could not see it, a log was burning in an open fireplace; for the days ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... palpable flicker of interest Zillah Forsyth looked back across her shoulder. "Engaged? How many times?" she asked ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... around it. The Zouaves, flushed with success, attempted to carry the Round Tower with a rush, and swept up to the abattis surrounding it. The Russians brought up fresh supports, and the whole hill-side was alive with the flicker of musketry. The Russian guns of all the batteries bearing upon the scene of action opened it, while those of our right attack, which were close to the French, opened their fire to aid our allies. Had the Zouaves ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... though they affected people who were a long distance off. One day, when for the thousandth time word came that the advance-guard of the Relief was in sight, when the commotion visible in the enemy's laagers suggested a poked-up ant-hill, and seemed to confirm the report, there was a brief flicker of excitement. Mounted men rode out in force, guns were limbered up and galloped out north and west, to divert General Huysmans' attention, and give Grumer, conjectured to be waiting for it, the opportunity for an eagle-like swoop down upon the harassed tortoise sprawling ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... even, in a remote degree, depressing, but her heart was so overwrought that she had poured out the whole sad story to the little girl before time could be taken for consideration of the wisdom of such a course. A flicker of doubt, however, came to her as she saw the troubled look of the child deepen into an expression of pain and perplexity, and ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... rapid. A change had come upon her. With that strange ride had gone the last strong flicker of the desire for savage life in her. She knew now the position she held towards her husband: that he had never loved her; that she was only an instrument for unworthy retaliation. So soon as she could speak after her accident, she told them that they must ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the latch brought George Doble's sly, shifty eye round. He was expecting to see one of his friends from below. A stare of blank astonishment gave way to a leaping flicker of fear. The crook jumped to his feet, tugging at his gun. Before he could fire, the ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... playing this game, Things I have known that shall have no name; Forgetting the place from which I came I watch her ward away the flame, Yet warm herself at the fire—then blame Me that I flicker in the basket; Me that I glow not with content To have my substance so subtly spent; Me that I interrupt her game. I ought to be proud that she should ask it Of me to ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... Then the flicker of the blaze Gleams on volumes of old days, Written by masters of the art, Loud through whose majestic pages Rolls the melody of ages, Throb the harp-strings of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... afternoon passes to night, and the lamps in the roof are lighted. The cards flicker upon the seat; the boors gather round to watch; they pass the French frontier, and see from their windows the forges of Belgium, throwing fire upon the river Meuse. Still, hour after hour, though their eyes are ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... white hand parted the curtain an inch or two. There was the flicker of a fan held against ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... I cried out aloud at the picture of the sad, reproachful eyes of my poor wife, fixed upon me as they might be when the film of death passed over them. I knew that I must do the thing in a way which would prevent her sensing my purpose, even in the last flicker of time in ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... for production. Adelaide Crapsey's chief visitant was doom. She saw the days vanishing, and the inevitable years lengthening over her. No wonder she could write brevities, she whose existence was brevity itself. The very flicker of the lamp was among the last events. What, then, was the fluttering of the moth but a monstrous intimation. If her work was chilled with severity, it was because she herself was covered with the cool branches of decision. Nature was cold with her, hence there is the ring of ice in these little ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... There was a flicker of a candle through the keyhole, and a slipshod footstep in the hall, which gave us great satisfaction. Mrs Nash ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... mother's knee, through a fairy city outlined in tremulous points of flame, down to the shore of the Man Sagar Lake, where the lights quavered and ran together and the dead ruins came alive with them. All night they had seemed to flicker in his fanciful brain; and next morning-unable to think or talk of anything else—he had been moved to dictate his very first attempt at ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... unjustifiable conclusion that the campaign was closing, and that in the course of about another fortnight some of us would be on our homeward way. They forgot that after a candle has burned down into its socket it may still flare and flicker wearisomely long before it finally goes out. War lights just such a candle, and no extinguisher has yet been patented for the instant quenching of its flame just when our personal convenience chances to clamour for such quenching. Indeed, the "flare and flicker" period sometimes proves, ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... house-mistress. Near her were some children, busy too, plaiting wicks for candles and lamps. Each group of workers had a lamp in its centre, and those farthest from the fire had live heat from two braziers filled with glowing wood embers, replenished now and again from the generous hearth. But the flicker of the great fire was manifest to remotest corners, and prevailed beyond the ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... to each other in the shelter of a single wobbly umbrella, forged their uncertain way through the muddy lane. Except for the brief instants when the dull flicker of lightning came to their relief, they were ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... likeness, as none others can, Without like process, shall this tree The king of all the forest, be, Alas, the only one of all That shall not lie where it doth fall? Shall this unflagging flame, here nurs'd By everything, yea, when reversed, Blazing, in fury, brighter, wink, Flicker, and into darkness shrink, When all else glows, baleful or brave, In the keen air beyond the grave? Beware; for fiends in triumph laugh O'er him who learns the truth by half! Beware; for God will not endure For men ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... tresses, green tresses. Slow dipping, caressing, I've heard A whisper, a chuckle of laughter, a scamper; and high, High up in the air the cry, the call of a bird. And when the night came with a flicker of wings I have heard the earth breathing quiet and slow Like a pulse in the tiny, wild tumult ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... A flicker of amusement dwelt in Heldon Foyle's blue eyes. "Yes. He has been seen by different people within an hour or two of each other in Glasgow, Southampton, Gloucester, Cherbourg, Plymouth, and Cardiff. Our information on that point is not precisely ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... over the dull gloom of the skies until they fell again to the earth level, and then he suddenly sat up, half believing himself in a dream—down the stream, how far away he could not judge, there gleamed a steady, yellowish light. It was no flicker of a camp fire, yet remained stationary. Surely no star could be so low and large; nor did he recall any with that peculiarity of color. If such a miracle was possible in the heart of that sandy desert he would have sworn it was a lamp shining through a window. ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... blandly, without so much as a flicker of humour in her serene blue eyes. "Your grandfather used to be very fond of quoting something from 'Sappho,'" she returned thoughtfully, "or was it from Mr. Pope? I can't remember which or what it was except that it was hardly the kind of ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... and her trouble began to moderate. Somewhere out of the uncrushed part of her womanhood there came one flicker of womanly pride to comfort her. She saw Philip at last from the point of revenge. He loved her; he would never cease to love her. Do what he might to banish the thought of her, she would be with him always; the more surely with him, the more ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... help the lines upon which she had been builded, and they were very good; but she had long since learned those lines, and though little they needed, was not above advantaging them to the best of her ability. The candle began to flicker. She could not do anything ungracefully, but that did not prevent her improving upon nature a bit, when she reached forth and deftly snuffed the red wick from the midst of the yellow flame. Again she rested head on hand, this time regarding ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... of the great moon flooded the land, paling the stars and casting the shadows of the tents across the sleepers, and the wind, which was now blowing from the west, shook the twigs of the tree, like skeleton fingers, over the flicker of the red ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... neck, the forehead, and the temples, so that the hair is singed away somewhat. At church the wax tapers are of importance: if they burn brightly and clearly, the young couple will have a happy, merry married life; if feeble, their life will be a quiet one; if they flicker, there will be strife and quarrels between them ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... swallows; the green leaves rustled it; the green brookflags waved it; the swallows took it with them to repeat it for me in distant lands. By the running brook I meditated it; a flash of sunlight here in the curve, a flicker yonderon the ripples, the birds bathing in the sandy shallow, the rush of falling water. As the brook ran winding through the meadow, so one thought ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... glow into those cavernous abysses with which all men communicate. Hence come angels or fiends into our twilight musings, according as we may have peopled them in by-gone years. Over our friend's face, in the rosy flicker of the fire- gleam, stole an expression of repose and perfect trust that made him as beautiful to look at, in his high-backed chair, as the child Pansie on her pillow; and sometimes the spirits that were watching him beheld a calm surprise draw slowly over his features and brighten into ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seemed to be amazed or to find these words wonderful and out of the common. For them the hand of approaching Doom had opened the gates of Distance, and they knew everyone that through these some light had broken on their souls, a faint flicker of dawn from beyond the clouds. They accepted it ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Only the merest flicker of the folded eyelids over the greenish eyes of her visitor answered the challenge. He stood small and black, peeping fixedly out of the window at the ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... and glowed in the rubies, the Bishop conceived the whimsical fancy that the Knight might well be some splendid archangel, come down to force the Convent gates and carry off a nun to heaven. And the Knight, watching the leaping flame flicker on the Bishop's crimson robes and silvery hair, saw the lenient smile upon the saintly face and took courage as he realised how kindly was the heart, filled with most human sympathy, which beat beneath the cross of gold ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... swept by as steadily as the procession of the Seasons. The Dimbula heard the Majestic say, "Hmph!" and the Paris grunted, "How!" and the Touraine said, "Oui!" with a little coquettish flicker of steam; and the Servia said "Haw!" and the Kaiser and the Werkendam said, "Hoch!" Dutch fashion—and that ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... saw with a quick glance a large room furnished with an old walnut bed, dresser, and commode; two lightless windows opened at the far end toward the road, Bridge assumed; and there was no door other than that against which he leaned. In the last flicker of the match the man scanned the door itself for a lock and, to his relief, discovered a bolt—old and rusty it was, but it still moved in its sleeve. An instant later it was shot—just as the sound of the dragging chain ceased outside. Near the door was the great bed, and this Bridge dragged before ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... popular, and widely circulated poem of colonial New England was Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom (1662), a kind of doggerel Inferno, which went through nine editions, and "was the solace," says Lowell, "of every fireside, the flicker of the pine-knots by which it was conned perhaps adding a livelier relish to its premonitions of eternal combustion." Wigglesworth had not the technical equipment of a poet. His verse is sing-song, his language rude and monotonous, and the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... meanings—but love! His brow contracted in a frown spreading in a shadowy doubt over his face when he saw that he had almost reached the clubhouse; its long steep-pitched bulk lay directly across the path of dusk, approaching from the east; and a ruddy flicker in the glass doors on the veranda showed that a fire had been lighted. To his left, down over the dead sod and beyond a road, he could see the broad low faade of his house with its terraced lawn and aged ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in old winters, through your branches bare, The north wind drove the blue home-scented smoke That on the glowing Christmas hearth awoke Where the old logs, with eager flicker and flare, Sang their low crackling song Of peace and of good will. The old song is still, The old voices have died away, The hearth has been cold so long, And the bright faces dimmed and covered up ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... Her cold tone came back over her heat as the grey clouds of a bitter day shut down again upon a dangerous flicker ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... firm determination too written on all his features, such as is rarely seen in young men; and the wild vacillating light which used to flicker so changefully over his fine face, was lost in an expression of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of the firelight, he threw on a handful of dry twigs hoping to uncover the prowlers, but the flareup revealed only an enlarged circle of great trees and emphasized their shadows. He sat motionless, his eyes focussed sharply upon the spot, and as the fire died down he saw the flicker of a dark form as it darted from the shadow of the tree and dissolved into ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... exercise. The eyes lacked a certain rascally gleam which had appeared in them when he was so empresse with the offer of his services. The face was better then—that is, if vice is better than ignorance. We say a countenance is 'lit up' by a smile; and indeed that momentary flicker does the office of a candle in a dark room. It sheds a ray upon the dim upholstery of our souls. The visages of poor men, generally, know few alternations. There is a large class of human beings whom fortune restricts to a single change of expression, or, perhaps, rather to a single expression. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... beggars mingle with the kneeling crowd. Rags flutter beside the most costly laces; youth kneels with crabbed old age; rich and poor meet upon the same level before the sacred altar. Priests by the half dozen, in scarlet, blue, gilt, and yellow striped robes officiate hourly before tall candles which flicker dimly in the daylight, while boys dressed in long white gowns swing censers of burning incense. The gaudy trappings have the usual theatrical effect, and no doubt serve, together with the deep peals of the organ, the dim light of the interior, the monotone of the priest's voice, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... themselves up in the west, the sun went down in a glare of coppery thunder-rack, and the whole earth broiling under an unspeakable oppression and sultriness paused and panted for the storm. After sunset the remote fires of lightning began to wink and flicker on the horizon, but when bed-time came the storm seemed to have moved no nearer, though a very low unceasing noise of thunder was audible. Weary and oppressed by the stress of the day, Darcy fell at once into ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... borders of Lucerne, with the white Alps in the sky above her,—or perhaps listening to the evening songs on the Grand Canal, and I would try to feel the little rocking of her gondola, making myself dream that I sat at her feet. Or I could see the grey flicker of the pongee skirt in the twilight distance of cathedral aisles with a chant sounding from a chapel; and, so dreaming, I would start spasmodically, to hear the red-coated orchestra of a cafe' blare out into "Bedelia," and awake to the laughter and rouge and ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... hardly tell how this presentiment of disaster had taken hold upon her, for the beginning of it must have come as imperceptibly as the first flicker of dusk across the radiance of an afternoon. Looking back, she could almost make herself believe that she had seen its shadow over her early satisfaction in her son's marriage to Diane. Certainly she had felt it there before their honeymoon was over. The four years that had ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... roof. What we may call the "garden butterflies," especially the red admirals, often do seek a roof, going into barns, sheds, churches, verandahs, and even houses to sleep. There, too, they sometimes wake up in winter from their long hibernating sleep, and remind us of summer days gone by as they flicker on the sun-warmed panes. Mrs. Brightwen established the fact that they sometimes have fixed homes to which they return. Two butterflies, one a brimstone, the other, so far as the writer remembers, a red admiral, regularly came for admission to the ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... work just as hard as the men on a country farm. In Charlemagne's time (for instance) they did nearly all the sheep shearing. Then at last Bodo comes back for his supper, and as soon as the sun goes down they go to bed; for their hand-made candle gives only a flicker of light, and they both have to be up early in the morning. De Quincey once pointed out, in his inimitable manner, how the ancients everywhere went to bed, 'like good boys, from seven to nine o'clock'. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... so much as the flicker of an eyelid did Shere Ali betray that he heard the words. Linforth sought to revive that night so vividly that he needs must turn, needs must respond to the call, and ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... even hastened his steps in that direction, for their candle was burning perilously low. So nearly had it expired that they had hardly regained the old workings before its feeble flame gave a final flicker, and ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... was a smuggler; others, even, that he was a wrecker. True it was that often strange lights were seen to flicker outside the bar ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... now, through the crystalline flicker of the heat, he saw the dark rim of the wood, the cork forest of La Huerca for which he was looking, and which hid the river from his aching eyes. No foot-burnt wanderer in Sahara ever hailed his oasis with heartier thanksgiving; but it was still a league and a half away. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... and never coming out where there was an audience, as The Rowdy did. And then he could beat everybody, and at his own song, too! He was at them all now, one after the other—robin, song sparrow, oriole, flicker, everything—with a medley of trills and variations worked in just to show that he had a whole lot of music of his own if he ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the morning Helena lay in the deliciously cool water, while small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless, continuing perfectly in their flicker the rhythm of the night's passion. Nothing, she felt, had ever been so delightful as this cool water running over her. She lay and looked out on the shining sea. All things, it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less soiled. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... mind. The only witness against him was himself. He cast his mind back over the meeting and dinner but there had been no slips past the first shock of the chairman's announcement, and that had been unobserved by anyone. The psychologist they had hired might perhaps get a betraying flicker of expression from him in an interview, many well-trained observers of human reactions could read expressions that keenly, but the interviewing of all the Board by the psychologist was not likely. The Directors ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... inquired Fred, endeavouring to make out objects by the feeble flicker of the fire, while his friend struck ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... sputter and a flicker and a last expiring tremor, we had begun to realize that the going season was, indeed, nearly gone, something happened. There was a rally, and a brief return to animation. The corpselike season sat up and waved its hands. An electric current, applied to its extremities ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... to Cuba, then north again to the Lucayas and the Florida straits, looking for Spanish ships and their gold. The lights yet burned,—now brightly, now so sunken that it seemed as though the next hour they must flicker out. We, the players, flagged not in that desperate masque; but we knew that, in spite of all endeavor, the darkness was coming ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... was still a girl, and a girl of strong imagination. Her heart beat audibly; she put the lamp down in the middle of the room, where it might cast more light, and render less ghastly the last flicker of one wax-candle, the fellows of which had been left to burn out in their sockets. Then she sat down, covered her eyes, and tried to think connectedly of all that had ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... builds himself a mausoleum, and calls it a place of entertainment. The fragrance of innumerable libations and the smoke of incense-breathing cigars and pipes shall ascend day and night through the arches of his funeral monument. What are the poor dips which flare and flicker on the crowns of spikes that stand at the corners of St. Genevieve's filigree-cased sarcophagus to this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... camp-fire's flicker, Deep in my blanket curled, I long for the peace of the pine-gloom, When the scroll of the Lord is unfurled, And the wind and the wave are silent, And world is singing ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... pale, the lines on it standing out in sharp ridges; but not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did he betray the slightest nervousness. Yet Tad Butler realized fully the perilous nature of his undertaking, and that the least mistake on his part or on the part of those above him might mean a sudden end to his ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... he becomes formidable, and Mac Strann was one who had never feared before either man or beast or the powers of the storm. Even now he dreaded no reality, but there dwelt in his mind the memory of how Dan Barry had glared at him in the Gilead Saloon, and how a flicker of yellow light had glowed in the man's eyes—a strange and phosphorescent glimmer that might be seen in the darkness of night. When he turned the head of his horse away from the arroyo, he waited ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... procession that he led back across Europe, and daily his retinue grew smaller. Men and horses dropped from sheer fatigue helpless by the wayside, and were left there to die, with the hungry vultures perched on trees, patiently waiting for the last flicker of life to depart before they set to work to pick the bones of ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... the gloom of the death-bed. The roof was low, and seemed lower still by heavy intersecting beams, which I might have touched with my lifted hand. And the tall guttering candle by the bedside, and the flicker from the fire struggling out through the fuel but newly heaped on it, threw their reflection on the ceiling just over my head in a reek of quivering blackness, like an ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... paused a moment, and a faint flicker of a smile showed in the wrinkles about her eyes. I asked ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... taught mortal boy to shun the delusive insect created for his special undoing? So long as the heart has woes of its own breeding, so long also will it dodge the discipline of labor, and grasp at the flicker ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... read. Courtlandt watched him anxiously. There was not even a flicker of surprise in the official eye. Calmly he ripped off the sheet and tore it into bits, distributing the pieces into the various waste-baskets yawning about his long flat desk. Next, still avoiding the younger man's eye, he arranged ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... she flashed, without as much as the flicker of an eyelash. "I remember—a particularly good photo. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... the spot, but he arrived just in time to record the last flicker of life in the tortured eyes. Then, as one in a dream, Curtis gave the policeman the details of the crime, the name of the chauffeur, and the number of the car, his testimony being borne out to some extent by the hall-porter, and, so far as the car was ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... key from his pocket, opened the vault and went inside, nearly closing the door behind him. Uncle Bushrod saw, through the narrow aperture, the flicker of a candle. In a minute or two—it seemed an hour to the watcher—Mr. Robert came out, bringing with him a large hand-satchel, handling it in a careful but hurried manner, as if fearful that he might be observed. With one hand he closed and locked ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... his anger would persist; it had seemed to be too violent to last. However, it was plain that rage had overmastered the love he had proclaimed. Lida was very much woman and felt the feminine conviction that a lover would be able to find her if his heart were set on the quest. There was only a flicker of a thought along that line; it was mere irritation that was immediately swept away by her pity for him. She was able to comprehend man's talk then—she knew what Vittum meant when he spoke of the chance that was missed—and she understood how Ward Latisan would mourn if he heard too late ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... I saw Marie she was a bit cast down. She wished me to suggest something for her to do. Said she wanted a mission—a chance to do some good in the world. Thought she'd enjoy being a nurse. I felt sorry for the girl, and suddenly I saw the flicker ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... the trunk beginning to stand forth from the rest of the wood, and the whole picture getting dappled over with the flecks of sun that slip through the leaves overhead, and, as a wind goes by and sets the trees a-talking, flicker hither and thither like butterflies of light. But you know it is going forward; and, out of emulation with the painter, get ready your own palette, and lay out the colour for a woodland scene ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... playing absently with a few cards I had dealt to him at random. And the more I saw into him the more I saw of him. The wind swayed the lights so that his sunburnt face, whiskered to the eyes, seemed to successively flicker crimson at me and to go out. I saw the extraordinary breadth of the high cheek-bones, the perpendicular style of the features, the massive forehead, steep like a cliff, denuded at the top, largely uncovered at the temples. The fact is I had never before seen him without his hat; but ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... from the fire-flicker on the hearth to the office door, on whose farther side she knew Hartmann ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... covert of maple and beech: or, with a startling call, a red-crested cock of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from spur to spur, as though he were keeping close to the long swells of an unseen sea. Several times, a pert flicker squatting like a knot to a dead limb or the crimson plume of a cock of the woods, as plain as a splash of blood on a wall of vivid green, tempted him to let loose his last load, but he withstood them. A little later, he saw a fresh bear-track near a spring below the head of a ravine; and, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... drawled Carl impudently, with a lazy flicker of his lashes, "to apologize for my cousin's untimely intrusion. I really fancied she was safe at the farm. Unfortunately, the house belongs to her. Besides, your crystal gymnastics, Starrett, were as unscheduled as her arrival. As it is, you've nobly demonstrated an unalterable scientific ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... grow lighter and his breath come easier, while his head began to dance with merry thoughts. When he left the tavern, however hard he tried, it was impossible for him to preserve his dignity; laughter would flicker upon his lips. Then songs of his native land would throng to his memory and he would sing them aloud, beating time to them as he walked on. As long as he went through the central thoroughfares he would walk straight; no sooner did he reach ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... last dim flicker of the green tail lights had disappeared Donna retired to her room and cried herself to sleep. Once more she was left to battle alone with the world, and the days would be long ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... as soon as the door was shut on him and the little flicker of gas, Bernard fell into an anguish of sobs and tears, the work of her persevering love, softening and lessening the obstinate pride so far that the next visitors met with a much better reception than they might have done. The first came stumbling up with a ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was only stupidly dull under Mademoiselle Gamard's despotism, or else worn out by too much fasting. He seldom spoke, and never laughed. When it did so happen that he felt agreeably moved, a feeble smile would flicker on his lips and lose itself in the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... her face—a look that Lloyd had learned to know from long experience, an intangible and most illusive expression, nothing, something, the sign that only those who are trained to search for it may see and appreciate—the earliest faint flicker after ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... in Charlotte Street, he had also the power of looking at it from the outside. It would be strange, indeed, if this or any other power should be found lacking in him. I have often heard Rossetti—by the red flicker of the studio fire, when the gas was turned down to save his eyesight—give the most graphic and fascinating descriptions of the little group and the way in which they grew up to be what they were under the tuition of a father whose career can only be called romantic, and a mother ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... watching it, was thankful to see that at last the tardy dawn had begun to spread. Over the withered stretch of woodland to his right the Aurora swept between the stars, like an extinguishing angel, who caused them to flicker and, as he beat his wings about them, one by one to ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... and knocked about the country for six or seven years before I met Peter M'Laughlan again. I was young yet, but felt old at times, and there were times, in the hot, rough, greasy shearing-shed on blazing days, or in the bare "men's hut" by the flicker of the stinking slush-lamp at night, or the wretched wayside shanty with its drink-madness and blasphemy, or tramping along the dusty, endless track—there were times when I wished I could fall back with ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... beacon bright To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray; To spirit back the Muses, long astray, And flush Parnassus with a newer light; To put these little sonnet-men to flight Who fashion, in a shrewd, mechanic way, Songs without souls, that flicker for a day, To vanish in ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... comrade an instant. There wasn't a flicker of an eyelash to show that Ralph was the least bit nervous. The experiences of the last few days had ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... with the end of last century. As, to use their own beautiful expression, "'Tis always the darkest the hour before day," so the gloom had never settled down so darkly over the land, when light began to dawn, and the first symptoms of returning life to flicker over the face of the, to all seeming, dead nation. Its coming has been best described in the "History of the Catholic Association" by Wyse. On reading his account, it is impossible not to be struck with the very small share that ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... first he thought it must be the rising moon, but no orb appeared; and as the brilliance deepened, intensified into colour, and shot towards the zenith, he knew it for the aurora borealis. Soon the stars were blinded out by the vivid sweeping flicker of its rays; hues bright and varied as the rainbow thrilled along the iridescent roadways to the central point above, and tongues of flame leaped from arches in the north-west. Burning scarlet and amber, purple, green, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... up and down the roof, growing higher as they stole along. He saw them flicker over the eaves, lap the walls of the house, and finally clasp it like a red, flaring robe. But Whitey did not think of the fire in those terms, but as a thing of ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... alarm, and wondering vaguely what strange new circumstance was about to happen. The measured tramp-tramp of feet came nearer and nearer, and in another moment the flare of smoking torches illumined the vaulted passage, casting many a ruddy flicker and flash on the ivory-gleaming whiteness of the vast skeleton army that stood with such grim and pallid patience as though ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... hard, but Newman could not see whether his eyes betrayed anything; the look of his eyes was always so strange. Newman paused again, and then went on. "You and your mother have committed a crime." At this M. de Bellegarde's eyes certainly did change; they seemed to flicker, like blown candles. Newman could see that he was profoundly startled; but there was something admirable ...
— The American • Henry James
... as a man in the perturbed sleep occasioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for a similar purpose—each and all of which appear by turns to the dreamer the most reasonable and the most preposterous of conceptions, just as the reasoning or imaginative faculties flicker, alternately, one above the other. At last an idea occurred to me which seemed rational, and which gave me cause to wonder, very justly, that I had not entertained it before. I placed the slip of paper on the back of a book, and, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and little eye furtively scanning the ground for smokers' refuse;—all these moved in a steady stream across the fountain circle and out into the city by the Odeon, whose long arcades were now beginning to flicker with gas-jets. The melancholy bells of St Sulpice struck the hour and the clock-tower of the Palace lighted up. Then hurried steps sounded across the gravel and Hastings raised ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... on the walls. These were intended to represent various of the powers of Nature under allegorical similitudes, and as nothing can be made that does not belong to the general scheme, she could not fail at least to imagine a flicker of relationship between some of them, and thus a shadow of the reality of things found its ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... be the rescuers! It may be the Egyptians!" cried Mrs. Belmont, with a sudden flicker of hope. "Colonel Cochrane, don't you think it ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... furtive flicker of the Wyandotte's eyes which seemed to include everybody before him, then he said very coolly that he had seen no riffle that might indicate shallow water, but that there was a ford not far below, and we ought to strike ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... a little less adventurously, and it must be confessed, with a growing sense of his folly. The keen, dry morning air brushed away his fancies of the preceding night; the beautiful eyes that had lured him thither seemed to flicker and be blown out by its practical breath. He began to think remorsefully of his cousin, of his aunt,—of his treachery to that reserve which the little alien household had maintained towards their Spanish neighbors. He ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... were almost upon the group; and for once we were welcome to our enemies. Even Carmona's face brightened, a flicker of hope lit Lady Vale-Avon's grey eyes; and the Duchess deliberately courted us ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... The man who re-enlists in this Territory must be either drunk or Dutch." And Pike relapsed into gloomy silence again, his eyes fixed upon the faint flicker of the bar lights at Ceralvo's miles away; but Wing only laughed again, and, still puffing away at his pipe, went on down the winding trail to where in the deep shelter of the rocky walls a pool of water lay gleaming. Here he threw himself flat and, laying aside ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... When the flicker of summer falls faint on the Clubroom's gold and green, The sons of Adam sit them down and boast of strokes unseen; They talk of stymies and brassie lies to the tune of the steward's cough, But the Devil whispers in their ears, "Gadzooks! ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... her sisters stopped her, and even Billiard had to smile, though he felt grateful toward the little twin who was sorry he was hurt. By this time the pale candle flame had ceased to sputter and flicker uncertainly, but burned with a steady light, and with a thrill of exultation Billiard looked curiously about him, relieved to find no snakes or crawly things in the abandoned shaft, and pleased beyond measure to think he had actually braved the terrors of the dark to explore this mysterious ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... drops fell from the sky, like tears from an overcharged heart. The vault overhead was now black with rain clouds, and a flicker over the edge of the Punch-Bowl, like the quivering of expiring light in a despairing eye, gave evidence that a thunderstorm was gathering, and would ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... passionate words reached the ear of the dying woman, and her voice came again, but it was the dying flicker of the expiring lamp. She slowly opened her eyes and looked up in the face ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... the leader. There was just the flicker of a smile in his eyes now (Johnnie noted that those eyes were exactly the color of ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... persons shall catch, kill, injure, pursue or have in his possession either dead or alive, or purchase, expose for sale, transport or ship to a port within or without the state a turtle or mourning dove, sparrow, nuthatch, warbler, flicker, vireo, wren, American robin, catbird, tanager, bobolink, blue jay, oriole, grosbeck or redbird, creeper, redstart, waxwing, woodpecker, humming bird, killdeer, swallow, blue bird, blackbird, meadow lark, ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... March twilight settled deeper over the room. There was only a flicker on the brass andirons, a blur of pale blossoms where the potted azalea stood. The rain drummed steadily, and as steadily came the gentle modulations of Kirk's voice, as the ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... came to the end of the road, rose a hill with a broad plateau on its stomach. Here through the dull haze of the morning they saw smoky-orange lights beginning to flicker uncertainly as the wind that heralds the sunrise came fitfully up. The soft wet grass under their feet was flecked with little grayish-silver cobwebs, and here and there they heard the morning chirp of ground-nesting birds. As they went farther ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... that the man was dead. His hands and body were warm enough—but there was not a flicker of breath; he was as dead as any of the folk who lay six feet beneath the old gravestones around him. And Bryce's practised touch and eye knew that he was only just dead—and that he had died in his ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... white yacht was moored, probably the largest yacht that had ever threaded that ticklish navigation. She was a shallow-draft barge-yacht, rigged like a Thames barge, and her whiteness and the glint of her brass, and the flicker of her ensign at the stern were dazzling. Blue figures ran busily about on her, and a white-and-blue person in a peaked cap stood ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... needed rest, and there was a dose of malaria looming in the offing, as his aching head told him. It was as though his brains were arranged in slats, like a venetian blind, and these slats were opening and closing swiftly, bringing with each lightning flicker ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... itself. I would go and look at my own coffin! Why not? It would be a novel experience. The sense of fear had entirely deserted me; the possession of that box of matches was sufficient to endow me with absolute hardihood. I picked up the church-candle and lighted it; it gave at first a feeble flicker, but afterward burned with a clear and steady flame. Shading it with one hand from the draught, I gave a parting glance at the fair daylight that peeped smilingly in through my prison door, and then went down—down again into the dismal place where I had ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... wife ate sullenly, refusing to be drawn into the conversation, but by a wise compression of her lips and a flicker of amusement in her eyes, which seemed to say: "Oh, if only you could see how absurd you appear," she contrived very cleverly to render Martin miserably self-conscious. Hampered by this new and unexpected feeling, his attempts ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... eyes suddenly away from Marina lest she should trace the faintest flicker of a doubt within them, as the vision rose before him of that imperious body, so relentless in its decrees, so tenacious in its traditions, so positive in its autocracy; but the threatened invincibility ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... him, doctor," he heard Blakely say, in feeble, but commanding tone. "I will see to her." But Blakely was soon in no condition to see to her or to anybody. The flicker of strength that came to him for a second or two at sight of the tragedy, left him as suddenly—left him feebler than before. He had no voice with which to protest when the stretchermen, who bore away ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... and is now the mother of half—a—dozen little Cringles or so? However, I made a strong effort to bear my misfortunes like a man, and, folding my arms, I sat down on a chest to abide my fate, whatever that might be, with as much composure as I could command, when half—a—dozen cockroaches flew flicker ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... superior brightness appeared to flicker a moment in this gust of despair, but the next it was burning steady again. "DON'T 'cry,' Searle," I heard him say. "Remember the waiter. I've grown Englishman enough for that. For heaven's sake don't ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... ranged with our glasses, seeing nothing; but after dark several little points of light showed where their laager was. We sat all night among the rocks (I thought of you and the roast-turkey and holly), occasional heavy drops of rain falling, and a flicker of lightning now and then. Heavy clouds rolled up, and the night set in as dark as pitch. The level plain below us lay flat as a pancake from their hill to ours. So passed our '99 Christmas, picturesque possibly, but not very comfortable. ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... swinging lightly from his horse. "I have a preference that way myself." He advanced to within arm's length of Transley and for a few moments the two men stood measuring each other. It was steel boring steel; there was not a flicker of ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... crests and glistening; The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite store-houses by the docks; On the neighboring shores, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high ... into the night, Casting their flicker of black ... into the clefts of streets. These, and all else, were to me the same as they are ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... profile, intent on a sober-looking book. Again, he would gaze out of the window; and he gazed oftenest when a freight train hid the beauties of outside nature. The dun sides of freight cars make out of a window a passable mirror. Twice, in those dim and confused glimpses, he caught just a flicker of her eye across her book, as though, she, on her part, ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... oughtn't to grumble. Uncle Rimbolt is the kindest of protectors, and lets me have far too many nice things. Aunt has a far better idea of what a captain's daughter should be. She doesn't spoil me. She's like a sort of animated extinguisher, and whenever I flicker up a bit she's down on me. I enjoy it, and I think she is far better pleased that I give her something to do than if I was awfully meek. It all helps to pass the time till my dear old captain comes home.' Heigho! that means she's miserable, and I'm not to guess ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... downward the draught of air caused it to flare and flicker as though it were about to be extinguished, but it was nearly full of oil, and the wick had just been pricked up, so it continued to burn and throw an uncertain light upon the glistening masses of coal that formed the sides of the shaft. It had not been lowered more than ten feet ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... that suburb were lonely: he went down them, the new-fallen snow dulling his step. It had covered the peaked roofs of the houses too, and they stood in listening rows, white and still. Here and there a pale flicker from the gas-lamps struggled with the ashy twilight. He met no one: people had gone home early on Christmas eve. He had no home to go to: pah! there were plenty of hotels, he remembered, smiling grimly. It ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... came into straight out of the open air was long and somewhat narrow and not right high; it was well-nigh dark now within, but since he knew where to look, he could see by the flicker that leapt up now and then from the smouldering brands of the hearth amidmost the hall under the luffer, that there were but three men therein, and belike they were even they whom he looked ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... trembling. The flame continued to flicker, but the hand holding the candlestick failed to move, and Bobby knew that the eyes didn't waver, either. He forced his glance from the searching flame. He managed to lower ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... she said slowly, with the flicker of a smile curving those enticing lips, "that since you were so very friendly with Captain Kempt to-night he may expect you to smoke a cigar with him, and it will possibly happen that Katherine and I, who ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... enough in common to warrant that union. In a word and in the fullest sense of the word, it is sex comradeship. Pre-nuptial love cannot survive marriage any considerable time. It is doomed inexorably to flicker out, and when it has flickered out it must be replaced by affection, or else the parties to it must separate. We well know that many men and women, unable to build up affection on the ruins of love, do separate, or if they do not, continue ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... them confidence. The Laws of Rollo had been restored to their old strength by Harold Blacktooth, and at last Neustrians and Scandinavians seemed in a fair way to amalgamate and produce that nation of warriors and lawyers which they afterwards became. In 954 King Louis died after a last flicker of expiring power in retrieving Laon. But though Lothair followed him as King of the French, Hugh Capet was ruling in 956 as Duke of Paris, and it was to Hugh that Duke Richard of Normandy did homage for his fief. Thirty-one ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... Cinel-Eoghan were defeated, and the Monarch, O'Loughlin, was slain. Roderick O'Connor immediately assumed the reins of government, and was inaugurated in Dublin with more pomp than had ever been manifested on such an occasion. It was the last glittering flicker of the expiring lamp. Submission was made to him on every side; and had he only possessed the ability or the patriotism to unite the forces under his command, he might well have set all his enemies at defiance. An assembly of the clergy and chieftains of Ireland was convened ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... muscle; the mother's was like a handsome closed book. She went on with her knitting, and only showed that she had heard the proposal by a small pretence of finding it necessary to count the stitches in the heel she was turning. Still, there had been some faint, evanescent flicker on her face, some droop or lift of the eyelids, which Joris understood; for, after a glance at her, he said slowly, "For Katherine the marriage would be good, and Lysbet and I would like it. However, we will think a little about it; there is ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr |
