"Flicker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an arm flung across the table. Not a muscle of his lax body had grown more taut. But the eyes of the man—the terrible eyes that condemned men to their graves without a flicker of ruth—were fixed on the range-rider with a steady compulsion filled ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... she spoke, was foolishly vacant. Then, a lurid blaze began to flicker behind his ice-blue eyes, and a brickish color surged into his face. Wheeling on Gavin, he cried, his voice ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... their wandering, came to rest upon her uniform, so cool and comforting in its greenness. A flicker of light gleamed from the metallic insignia on her sleeve: "To Care for the Aged." Somewhere inside him an association clicked, a brief fire of response to a past event kindled into a short-lived flame, lighting the way ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... in Coahuila the Red-shafted Flicker is common. Miller (1955a:165-166) stated that C. c. nanus was common at Corte Madera Canyon, Boquillas Canyon, and Carboneras Canyon in the Sierra del Carmen and recorded a specimen also from Sierra de Jardin on August ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... body and rather sloping shoulders. His face was smooth, his jaw somewhat heavy, his eyes exceedingly keen, and he carried with him an indefinable air of authority. He observed, also, that the voice had in it something peculiarly clear and incisive. With a little thrill and a sudden flicker of the flame of hope, he pointed down the street that led ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... Holmes thought: a gray, cold evening. The streets in 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 was bitter cold: he buttoned up his coat tightly, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Will remained with her throughout the night. Just before death there came to her a brief season of long-lost animation, the last flicker of the torch before darkness. She talked to them almost continuously until the dawn. Into their hands was given the task of educating the others of the family, and on their hearts and consciences the charge was graven. Charlie, who was born ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... from the cabin they heard loud voices, and caught the flicker of several blazing torches amidst ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... flaming will flicker down to a glowing ash. One bandaged hand slowly smoothed his ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... monastic establishment, was a tall, thin, stern-looking woman, with a sallow complexion, an imperious compression of the lips, and small, grey eyes, that seemed to flicker with malignity rather than to beam with the pure ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... had asked me such a question there would have been short shrift with her. Charmion herself had never before attempted such personalities; but now, when she deemed it necessary, she spoke without a flicker of hesitation, her grey eyes staring full into mine. It would have ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... narrowly, a vague suspicion in his mind, and he thought he saw a slight flicker in the man's eye when ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... it was warm and we sat on a bench under the broad roof of the platform. I did my best to take her mind away from the dread which possessed her, but it was a wretched hour for both of us. Then we saw the flicker of lights down the track, and toward us came a small army of labourers who had been clearing the ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... great disaster, as we were soon to find out, for it was but a few minutes after the last flicker had died away, and left the night looking all the blacker after the bright light to which our eyes had become accustomed, when we all distinctly heard the approaching of many feet. Apparently the impi was about to attack us ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... round plump figure; he wore a little imperial and sharp, inquisitive moustaches; his hair was light brown and he was immensely proud of it. In Petrograd he was always very smartly dressed. He bought his clothes in London and his plump hands had a movement familiar to all his friends, a flicker of his hands to his coat, his waistcoat, his trousers, to brush off some imaginary speck of dust. It was obvious now that he had given very much thought to his uniform. It fitted him perfectly, his epaulettes glittered, his boots shone, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Egyptian beggar-girls was dancing to it on the floating quay down below us by the flicker of the arc-lamp. She was a tiny mite, with a shock of black hair and brown face and arms. She wore a pink dress with some brass buttons hung round her neck. She danced with all the supple gracefulness of the out-door tribes of the desert, never out of step, always true and rhythmic ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... exhibited on several remarkable occasions. Men would have marvelled less about him had they known that the man dressed in the long slate-coloured robe, with shaven head, and saintly-looking face, over which no one had ever seen a smile flicker, was in reality a pilgrim on his way to the Western Heaven, which he hoped to reach in time, and to become a ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... no doubt whatever 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 ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... scarcely entered, and were peering upwards at the black vault overhead, when an indescribable rushing sound filled the air of the cavern, and caused the flame of our torches to flicker with such violence that we could not see any object distinctly. We all came to a sudden pause, and I confess that at that moment a feeling of superstitious dread chilled the blood in my veins. Before we ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... is his answer. "I've known a derelict up-end and sift her engines out of herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weeks on her forward tanks only. We'll run no risks. Pith her, George, and look sharp. There's ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... a moment, and a faint flicker of a smile showed in the wrinkles about her eyes. I asked her ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... but she 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 ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... a trifle more sternly than usual, his handsome head was held high with fine military bearing. He came forward without faltering for even so much as the fraction of a waver. There was not a flicker in his eyes set straight ahead. One would never have known from his looks that he recognized the oncoming man, or had so much as realized that an officer was approaching, yet his brain was doing some rapid calculation. He had said in his heart if not openly that he would ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... wood-way winding high, Roofed far up with light-green flicker, Save one midmost star of sky. Underfoot 'tis all pale brown With the dead leaves matted down One on other, thick and thicker; Soft, but springing to the tread. There a youth late met a maid Running lightly,—oh, so fleetly! ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... the fatal spell that removes it beyond the scope of man's actual possessions. But Donatello felt nothing of this dream-like melancholy that haunts the spot. As he passed among the sunny shadows, his spirit seemed to acquire new elasticity. The flicker of the sunshine, the sparkle of the fountain's gush, the dance of the leaf upon the bough, the woodland fragrance, the green freshness, the old sylvan peace and freedom, were all intermingled in those long ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Manderson would see him on a matter of urgent importance. Mrs Manderson would see Mr Trent. She walked to a mirror, looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head at herself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door as Trent was ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... savagery, reflectiveness with activity. He could think best when thought and act might jump together, laugh most quietly when the din of swords and horses drowned the voice, love his neighbour most sincerely when about to cut his throat. The smell of blood, the sight of wounds, or the flicker of blades, made him drunk; but he was one of those who grow steady in their cups. You might count upon him at a pinch. Lastly, he was no fool, and was disposed to credit other people ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... characteristic, 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 lurid horrors of his material hell are more likely ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... men stood facing each other. Father Beret's eyes did not stir from their direct, fearless gaze. What Farnsworth had called a grin was a peculiar smile, not of merriment, a grayish flicker and a slight backward wrinkling of the cheeks. The old man's arms were loosely crossed upon his ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... are located near the ground in bushes or low trees. The three or four eggs are deposited at intervals of several days, and frequently young birds and eggs are found in the nest at the same time. Like the Flicker, this bird will frequently continue laying if one egg is removed at a time, and as many as twelve have been taken from the same nest, by this means. The eggs are light greenish blue. Size 1.20 x .90. They are usually laid ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... English, fell into his hands (1451). When Talbot was sent over to Bordeaux with five thousand men to recover the south, the old English feeling revived, for England was their best customer, and they had little in common with France. It was, however, but a last flicker of the flame; in July, 1453, at the siege of Castillon, the aged Talbot was slain and the war at once came to an end; the south passed finally into the kingdom of France. Normandy and Guienne were assimilated to France in taxation and army organisation; and all that remained to England across ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... compared with her husband she has little imagination. It is not simply that she suppresses what she has. To her, things remain at the most terrible moment precisely what they were at the calmest, plain facts which stand in a given relation to a certain deed, not visions which tremble and flicker in the light of other worlds. The probability that the old king will sleep soundly after his long journey to Inverness is to her simply a fortunate circumstance; but one can fancy the shoot of horror across Macbeth's face as she mentions it. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... corpse excepting for the slow, shallow and rather irregular breathing with its ominous accompanying rattle. But presently, by imperceptible degrees, signs of returning life began to make their appearance. A sharp slap on the cheek with the wet towel produced a sensible flicker of the eyelids; a similar slap on the chest was followed by a slight gasp. A pencil, drawn over the sole of the foot, occasioned a visible shrinking movement, and, on looking once more at the eyes, I detected a slight change that told me that the atropine was beginning ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... flicker of light from the point ahead. One ... two ... three flashes, a pause, then two more together. He had been read. Buck had dispatched scouts to meet them, and knowing his people's skill at the business, Travis was certain the Tatars would never suspect their flanking unless the Apaches ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... the river, and his eyes caught a flicker which became a flutter, like the agitation of a duck preening its ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... could plainly perceive the flicker of torches moving about the wharves and piers of Chhung-ju, and presently a few of those same lights appeared on the bosom of the river. The rebels had evidently rowed out in small boats, and were towing the barges left anchored in mid-stream to the shore. A moment before a sharp bend in ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... call button, knowing that the thumb pattern he had left on Wass' conference table would have already been relayed as his symbol of admission here. A flicker of light winked below the name, the wall to the right shimmered, and produced a doorway. Steering Vye to it, Hume nodded to the man waiting there. He was a flat-faced Eucorian of the servant caste, and now he reached out to draw Lansor over ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... 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
... is on the point of going out I throw it down. The little flame's last flicker has lighted up for me the edge of the poor black serge skirt, so worn that it shines a little, even in the evening, and has shown me the girl's shoe. There is a hole in the heel of the stocking, and we have both seen it. In quick ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... it in the open doorway, using the door-post as a rest for his head; and then the cottage was silent. The wind breathed more gently; the stars shone out; the air was soft after the storm; the moonlight made a bright flicker of light and shade over all the outer world. Now and then a grasshopper chirruped, or a little bird murmured a few twittering notes at being disturbed in its sleep; and then came a ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in its construction, and the tower was anchored to the rock by means of long, heavy irons. The light, merely a flicker, flashed out from this tower in 1699, and for the first time the proximity of the Eddystones was indicated all around the horizon by night. Winstanley's critics were rather free in expressing their opinion that the tower would come down with the first sou'wester, but the eccentric builder was so ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... only now, perhaps, that there could never be any other man in her life who could make her feel the extremes of emotion. In two weeks she had gone through every stage from eager expectation to apathy; and then, suddenly, during the last, vague flicker of dying hope—he came; and her life grew red again. She was even content that he should evince most interest in men—her brother and the fellow-students that thronged their rooms at all hours. Of these, one and all regarded the visitor as a ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... muscular tissue must be consumed. The higher our emotional state, the more we think or agitate ourselves, the greater must be the quantity of nerve substance burned up. All of the substance burned up in labour, in worry and in thought, must be replaced or the flame will flicker out! ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... invader, above all; how loud and unpleasing his voice is! The eternal malice in the depths of our soul pounces upon this tendency of grass to be "a common weed," of gnats to bite, of dogs to bark, of shadows to flicker, of a man to have an evil temper, of a woman to have an atrocious shrewishness, or an appalling sluttishness; and out of these annoyances or "faults" it feeds its desire; it satisfies its necrophilistic lust; and it rouses in the grass, ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... man 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 ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Melts into light, and window blinds are rolled, I hear a bounce upon the bed, I feel a creeping toward me—a soft head, And on my face A tender nose, and cold— This is the way, you know, that dogs embrace— And on my hand, like sun-warmed rose-leaves flung, The least faint flicker of the warmest tongue —And so my dog and I have met and sworn Fresh love and ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... hardship, and as they toiled doggedly around an abrupt bend they saw on a tiny plateau, high above the dark waters of the river, a faint flicker ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... that day, going the rounds of the dry-goods stores, giggling with the men clerks—a picture of sin that made men wet their lips. She was big, oversexed, and feline; rattling in silks, with an aura of sensuousness around her which seemed to glow like a coal, without a flicker of kindness or shame or sweetness, and which all the town knew instinctively must clinker into something black and ugly ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... awoke it was still pitch dark, except for the flicker of the veiled lamp; and the continual roaring and oscillation testified to the unrelaxed velocity of the train. He sat upright in a panic, for he had been tormented by the most uneasy dreams; it was some seconds before he recovered his self-command; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proved otherwise. The Company Commanders went forward into the trenches to find out what they could; to their right loomed a great black mass, and they debated whether it was a hill or a cloud. Suddenly an array of lights and a flicker of rifle-fire running along the top revealed it as the steep western slopes of Thiepval. A Company was just filing into the trenches when a rumour was brought by Lieut. Hughes that the attack was cancelled; inquiries were made and its truth ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... me that you have been very happy in your poverty," she adjured him, with the dim flicker of a returning smile. "Very likely there are people who are so constituted, but they are not my kind. I don't want to hear them tell about it. To me poverty ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of the tent door let in a sudden gust of wind and snow that caused the lamp to flicker uncertainly. A man in a snowy fur coat entered and hastily slipped off his outer garments. Mrs. Cavers did not look up. Martha ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... Mr. James Stipp's face closely as he looked at the cards, saw that he was not the sort of man to be taken unawares. There was not the faintest flicker of an eyelid, not a motion of the lips, not the tiniest start of surprise, no show of unusual interest on the manager's part: he nodded, opened a door in the counter, and waved the two ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... the farther ring, for six hours. The compounds dissolved in this fluid are scarce—only obtainable in the East, and even in the East months might have passed before I could have increased my supply. I had no months to waste. Replenish, then, the light only when it begins to flicker or fade. Take heed, above all, that no part of the outer ring—no, not an inch—and no lamp of the twelve, that are to its zodiac like stars, fade ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... good Doctor, less afraid of the sound of his own voice, and not so much in awe as some of the other witnesses, here in his eagerness overstepped the bounds of prudence. His words indeed brought a tremulous flicker of grateful emotion over the prisoner's face; but by carrying the inquiry into the region of character and opinion, he opened the door to a dangerous re-examination by the Crown lawyer, who required the exact meaning ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a smile wandered up, and died out like a flicker of firelight. She did not move. And then it was that June perceived under the softness and immobility of this figure something desperate and resolved; something not to be turned away, something dangerous. She tore off ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... She glanced at him; a flicker of light touched the strong face. "So good of you to say so! I believe that answer is the proper formula. Invented by our ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... "dictatorship of the proletariat" was thus begun. Kerensky's attempt to rally forces enough to put an end to this dictatorship was a pathetic failure, as it was bound to be. It was like the last fitful flicker with which a great flame dies. The masses wanted peace—for that they would tolerate ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... the yellow flame of evening sounds of music come and go, Through the noises of the river, and the drifting of the snow; In the yellow flame of evening, at the setting of the day, Sounds that lighten, fall, and lighten, flicker, faint, and fade away; What they are, behold, we know not, but their honey slakes and slays Half the want which whitens manhood in the stress of alien days. Even as a wondrous woman, struck with love and great desire, Hast thou been to us, EUTERPE, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... days the Belgian trenches were quite accessible from the rear. There were no long tunneled ways to traverse to reach them. One went along through the darkness until the sound of men's voices, the glare of charcoal in a bucket bored with holes, the flicker of a match, told of the buried army almost underfoot or huddled in its flimsy shelters ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... triangular foremost table. A more forlorn party, in more dismal circumstances, it would be hard to imagine. The motion here in the ship's nose was very violent; the uproar of the sea often overpoweringly loud. The yellow flicker of the lantern spun round and round and tossed the shadows in masses. The air was hot, but it struck a ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... the candle inside the lantern's glass began to flicker feebly, and then came the certainty that perseverance had been rewarded. Light filled the narrow way, and she looked timidly down the rickety stone steps, dreading to venture into the blackness beyond. Ahead lay the possibility of escape, behind lay failure and the certainty that no ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... they clambered into the cart and made a start. But before they had proceeded forty yards, however, John heard a voice calling to him to stop. He did so, and presently, holding a lighted candle which burnt without a flicker in the still damp air, and draped from head to foot in a dingy-looking blanket, appeared the male Cassandra of ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... became spheres of purply, pinkish bloom. The Washington parks grew softly bright as the lilacs opened. Pendulous willows veiled with green laces afloat in air the changing brown that was winter's final shadow; in the Virginia woods the white blossoms of the dogwood seemed to float and flicker among the windy trees like enormous flocks of alighting butterflies. And over head such a glitter of turquoise blue! As lovely in a different way as on that fateful Sun-day morning when Russell drove through the same woods toward Bull Run so ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... to tinkle Quicker, And your feet they flash and flicker— Twinkle!— Flash and flutter to a tricksy Fickle meter; And you foot it like ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... although it presents only one story to the north, it measures half-a-dozen at least upon the south; and range after range of vaults extend below the libraries. Few places are more characteristic of this hilly capital. You descend one stone stair after another, and wander, by the flicker of a match, in a labyrinth of stone cellars. Now, you pass below the Outer Hall and hear overhead, brisk but ghostly, the interminable pattering of legal feet. Now, you come upon a strong door with a wicket: on the other side are the cells of the police office and the trap-stair that gives ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the distillery the cooper-shop squatted beside the street, and the dim flicker of a candle cast its pitiful light ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... rode on quickly down the hill towards the river. I knew not how near the Danes might be, but I thought little of them, until suddenly through the dusk I saw a red point of fire flicker and broaden out into flame on a hilltop eastward, where I knew a beacon fire was piled against need. And then from every point along the Stour valley beacon after beacon flashed out in answer, until all the countryside was full of them; and I hurried ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... the Great North-West where all the rovers go," 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 all the experience I'd got, and sit once more ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... saw the landlady slowly going downstairs again, still shading the candle with her hand and peering up at him from time to time as she moved. A black, ugly, unwholesome object, he thought, as she disappeared into the darkness below, and the last flicker of her candle threw a queer-shaped shadow along the wall ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... mauve shadow of the hill ate up the village. Fires began to flicker amid the huts and away in the recesses of the plantation. The lowing of cattle added to the general clamour. As the western sky was still ablaze with incandescent colour stole the cold green of the advancing moon in ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... was black. In the room behind him the light had faded till it seemed as if night were come. The air was heavy and stifling. A flicker of lightning came and went in the ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... another young woman's story, I wager," said Sir John with a smile. "Truly, I was not much impressed with her. If I may be allowed to speak a word of warning, I should say beware of her. She could lie easily, I fancy, with never a blush or the flicker of an eyelid to betray her. No, it was not about her ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... couple of minutes, then he would come to, and by that time she would be away down wind on another tack, and not expecting anything; so when he'd hail and ask her to cash in, I (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment—but only just a moment—then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "It's synonymous with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... round and the figure of a man slid with it side-long, and stood behind it looking in. The figure seemed to lean forward out of the darkness; its face, pressed close against the panes, was vivid, as if seen in a strong daylight. She saw the flame of its red moustache and hair, the flicker of its faun-like tilted smile. Its eyes were fixed piercingly ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Pertinax, his eyes and lips suggesting a mere flicker of a smile. "But only let Commodus once wake up to the ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... burnt bitter, he sat with eyes fixed on the blaze. When the flames at last began to flicker and subside, his lids fluttered, then drooped; but he had lost all reckoning of time when he opened them again to find Miss Erroll in furs and ball-gown kneeling on the hearth and heaping kindling on the coals, and her pretty little Alsatian ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... two youthful students studying one page. I see two loving spirits walking through thick darkness. Along the horizon flicker the promises of day. They say, "O Holy Ghost, hast thou forsaken thine own temples?" Aloud they cry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... may mark what yet rests of life to Guy Darrell. But as he there stands and gazes into space, the two forms are before his eye as distinct as if living still. Slowly, slowly he gazes them down: the false smiles flicker away from their feeble lineaments; woe and terror on their aspects,—they sink, they ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Eminent Personage" (Volume XXVII., p. 110) and "A Second Letter to an Eminent Personage" (Volume XXVII., p. 113), were the last Thackeray ever wrote for Punch. The statement of his biographers that in the year 1850, "If we except one later flicker in 1854, Thackeray's long connection with Punch died out," is totally incorrect, for in 1851 there are forty-one literary items and a dozen cuts to his credit. But from that time until 1854 he only contributed "The Organ Boy's Appeal" (Volume XXV., p. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... you come to me," he assured her. "I have long desired to revenge myself upon your impudent mistress. Often she has made sport of me with her tricking shadows. Often she has even dared to make my own form flicker and dance before me—not as it is—indeed, but twisted and misshapen to please her own mischievous fancy." His eyes glinted with malice, and Black Shadow was well pleased to find him so willing ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... and, while he feeds her with bread and sweetmeats, keeps up a running comment of remarks and laughter at all around her, and the unspeakable solemnity of old Father Abraham's face is lit up, now and then, with the flicker of ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... hills—might rise to him from a dense 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 ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... occupies its present position, and, as it were, offers to weary travelers so inviting a seat. Yet often I am strangely awed, in gazing on the group so enveloped in unfathomable mystery. Who may say when another of its jewels shall flicker and go out? And when may not our own world to other planets be a 'Lost Star?' How childish associations cling to one in after years. I never looked up at Cassiopeia, without recalling the time when my tutor gave me as a parsing lesson, the first lines of the 'Task'—literally a task to me (mind ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... flame flickers once more in the huge oven, the baker scrapes incessantly with his shovel, the water simmers in the kettle, and the flicker of the fire on the wall dances as before in silent mockery. While in other men's words we sing out our dumb grief, the weary burden of live men robbed of the sunlight, the ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... of getting up to a farmer's early breakfast, when sometimes there were candles on the table to reveal the localities of the food! How she hated those candles, flaring in her eyes so early! How she loved the mellow flicker of them at night, and how she hated them in the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... a faint rustle, the swinging to and fro of the curtain door, and the man stood before her. Not a sound broke the stillness, not a movement caused a flicker to the name of the shaded hanging lamp, which, just above the girl's head, threw down the light on the radiance of her hair, and the wonder of her body which the diaphanous garment half concealed and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... weapons, and Eddring noticed that of the two Mrs. Ellison seemed the more frightened. The younger one was pale, but her eye did not flicker or falter. She looked straight at each man, at Bowles and Buckner, both impassive, at Calvin Blount, now beginning to flush under his fighting choler; yes, and at last at him, John Eddring, pale and serious, but steady as the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... heated air or gas rising from a stove will sometimes make things behind it tremble and dance. Now if a small candle were burning on the other side of the ascending vapor, its flame, though really steady, would seem to flicker." ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... second, but it was enough to make my heart jump. I had never seen the great man before, and he had never seen me. But in that fraction of time something sprang into his eyes, and that something was recognition. You can't mistake it. It is a flicker, a spark of light, a minute shade of difference which means one thing and one thing only. It came involuntarily, for in a moment it died, and he passed on. In a maze of wild fancies I heard the street door ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... eyes on it, and thought of all that had passed between them; and, by-and-by, love and grief made his eyes misty, and that pale light seemed to dance and flicker ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... tried to compose myself. I soon felt better. The change for my lungs, from the fetid atmosphere of the gambling-room to the cool air of the apartment I now occupied, the almost equally refreshing change for my eyes, from the glaring gaslights of the "salon" to the dim, quiet flicker of one bedroom-candle, aided wonderfully the restorative effects of cold water. The giddiness left me, and I began to feel a little like a reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of sleeping all night in a gambling-house; my second, of the still ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... so low only a few embers were alive now, and the candles were beginning to flicker and droop in the sconces. But the three ladies refused to find the little room either cold or dark; their talk was not half done yet, and their muffs would keep them warm. The shadow of the deepening gloom they found delightfully ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... at a cafe downtown today," Herr Domber said without the flicker of an eye. "I have a special cafe in mind where the sea food is excellent and ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... able to see. It opened a door leading into another 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 ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... lips glued tightly together in one firm, thin, straight line across his face, was glaring steadfastly at the corner of the ceiling, permitting no expression whatever to flicker in his eyes; noting which, Bobby turned to him ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... the gas gave a flicker and went out, turned off at the main. Kennedy lit a candle and made his way to his dormitory. There now faced him the more than unpleasant task of introducing himself to its inmates. He knew from experience ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... time Ridge watched the flicker of its flames, until they finally died down, and the darkness was only illumined by the fitful flashing of fire-flies. As these were the most brilliant he had ever seen, his eyes followed their zig-zag dartings until they exercised a hypnotic influence, and his heavy ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... Watching the flicker of a fire Were the Colonel played the outdoor host In brave old hall of ancient Night. But ever the dame grew shyer and shyer, Seeming with private grief engrossed— Grief far from Mosby, housed ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... tender raillery in the beam with which Flora held the young man's eye a second, and as she turned away there was accusation in the faint toss and flicker of the deep lace that curtained her hat. Both her companions saw it, but Irby she filled with an instant inebriation by one look, the kindest she had ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... lighted by the fitful flicker of the fire, for the nights were still chilly, and an old man, almost decrepit, sat dozing in his chair ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... bright to the brim With the brook that ran through it where the grayling did swim; In the shallows it sparkled, in the deeps it was dim, When the race was first run it had nearly drowned Jim, And now the bright irons of twenty-four horses Were to flicker its ripples with knockings ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... for the first time since I had come into the house; and I saw the impulse to some tart response flicker in her face and die away unexpressed. We stood and stared at one another for a long half-second or so; and when she looked away I fancied that there was something like fear in her evasion. It seemed to me that I saw the true spirit of her in the way her glance refused me as some one ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... one or the other who was talking. They were not asking it again as much and this was the way of arranging that there was not to be all there was of future. They took a walk together and they came oftener and they were not hidden by the light that made a flicker. They ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... enjoyment of the ludicrous, our friend Mr. W. Botha could not easily be surpassed; and I advise you, good reader, if you have the chance, to induce him to tell you the following story in his own words, and to watch the flicker of ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... questions of salvation. A child unbaptised could not be buried in consecrated ground, and was subject to all the sorrows of the unredeemed; but who could doubt that the priest would be easily persuaded by some wavering of the tapers on the altar upon the little dead face, some flicker of his own compassionate eyelids, that sufficient life had come back to permit the holy rite to be administered? The whole little scene is affecting in the extreme, the young creatures all kneeling, fervently appealing to the Maiden-mother, the priest ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... 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 against my face. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and few centissimi, sprawling in the unstinted sunshine, were nearer the essential truth. They were the profound, because the practical philosophers! Therefore let us gamble, gamble, gamble, be the stake small or great, as long as the merest flicker of life, or fraction of uttermost farthing, is left! And so, when Destournelle took up his lament again, she listened to him, for the moment, with remarkable ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... All the larks over the green corn sang it for me, all the dear 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
... late when the flicker of a candle came up stairs, and a pale lady, with a sweet sad face, appeared, bringing a pair of red and a pair of blue mittens for her Dolly and Polly. Poor Mrs. Blake did have a hard time, for she stood all day in a great store that she might earn bread for ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... run after him, when a flicker of light caught my eye. There in the straw that littered the roots of the ivy vines by the steps, a little tongue of flame was lapping up the ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... sea. The rain ceased as suddenly as it had come, as suddenly as the flow of water is stopped by the turning of a tap; and for about a quarter of an hour nothing further happened. Then the sheet lightning began to quiver and flicker among the clouds once more; and presently the pall immediately overhead was rent apart by a terrific flash of sun-bright lightning that struck straight down and seemed to hit the water only a few yards from the brig. Simultaneously with the flash came a crackling crash of ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Mrs. Indian's horse's tail flicker. Like to have a close-up, wouldn't you? Staring at us like that, it makes a fellow feel as if he's been stealing something of theirs and they're taking a good look in time for ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... 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 ...
— The American • Henry James
... the riders flicker confusedly in a jumble. One horse careers madly along for half the distance, is with difficulty pulled up, and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... out a thin gleaming of wires—a jury-rigged safety field. Within the flimsy-looking protective cage was a double bank of instruments, some of them alive with the flicker and glow of lights. Those must be the very expensive and difficult-to-build items Maulbow had brought out from the Hub. Beside them stood the machine, squat and ponderous. In the vague light, it looked misshaped and discolored. A piece of equipment ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... evening, he grew tired and found no place to rest, he climbed a hill and gazed around him in every direction to try to discover a light; after a long search he saw the flicker of a tiny spark and went toward it. He walked and walked half the night, then he came to a huge fire, by which a man as big as a giant was sleeping. What was the youth to do? After thinking a while, he crept into one leg of the man's ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... a miserable wretch got to cut hisself open, and then flicker out, without anybody to say ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... silence and solitude stole over him, his power of thinking, his cunning and resolution began to return. Listening yet a little while, and hearing no sound of any disturbance among the sleepers in the house, he ventured to light one of his matches; and, by the brief flicker that it afforded, picked his way noiselessly through the lumber in the studio, and gained the garden door. In a minute he was out again in the open air. In a minute more, he had got over the garden wall, and was walking freely along ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... intensely odd successions. Three weeks after this came Vereker's death, and before the year was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I had never seen, but I had had a futile theory that, should she survive him long enough to be decorously accessible, I might approach her with the feeble flicker of my plea. Did she know and if she knew would she speak? It was much to be presumed that for more reasons than one she would have nothing to say; but when she passed out of all reach I felt renannouncement indeed my appointed lot. I was shut up in my obsession for ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... her delight, as the swept round the corner and along the hard, clear stretch. The flicker of a smile was on the ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... it, and polish it till it looked glossy and soft. Indiana in her turn would adorn Catharine with the wings of the blue-bird or red-bird, the crest of the wood-duck, or quill feathers of the golden-winged flicker, which is called in the Indian tongue the shot-bird, in allusion to the round spots on its cream-coloured breast: [FN: The Golden-winged Flicker belongs to a sub-genus of woodpeckers; it is very handsome, and is said to be eatable; it lives on fruits and insects.] ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... dynamite of the Irish, sons of dispossessed Daimios returned from Europe and waiting for what may turn up, with ministers of the syndicate who have wrenched Japan from her repose of twenty years ago, circle, flicker, shift, and reform, in bewildering rings, round the foreign resident. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... of healing the sick, hypnotizing the well, transforming poverty into wealth, and changing age to youth, are the rays of light which flicker through the darkness and draw them ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... 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 ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... illumined the white and silver doublet, 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 ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... no flicker of breath; there was none of that pulsing of the body which denotes life; but still she had not the appearance of ordinary death. The Nais I had placed nine long years before to rest in the hollow of the stone, was a fine grown woman, full bosomed, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... the last flicker of the expiring flame, for the white lids drooped over the dark eyes; the cold fingers relaxed their hold, and Gerald Goddard knew the end ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... blind eyes, that made the words flicker and run into each other, he sought through Wentworth's long letter for her name. Bess, the retriever, had had puppies. The Bishop of Lostford's daughter had married his chaplain—a dull marriage, ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... with the old Sally just loafin' along," pursued Cap'n Amazon, sucking hard on his pipe, "when I spied a flicker o' wind comin', and the mate he sent the men gallopin' up the shrouds. I'd forgot the dog. So had ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... sort of gravity and placidness, something of the half-asleep air of a person ruminating. She has very slow gestures, the gestures of a somnambulist. With a mechanical movement she strikes a wax match, which gives a flicker, and lights the cigar she ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... the darkness to a deep and broad ravine, into which they descended. The sides and bottom of this ravine were clothed in bushes, and they grew thick on the edges above. It was much darker here, but Dick presently caught ahead of him the flicker of the first light that he had seen ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... veil hung about him which, dim and unreal in itself, served to make all things dim and unreal. He did not know whether he was asleep or awake, so strange was life, so vivid were his dreams. Mummie, Uncle John, the baby, Toby himself came with a flicker of the veil and disappeared vaguely without cause. It would happen that Toby would be speaking to Uncle John, and suddenly he would find himself looking into the large eyes of the baby, turned stupidly towards the ceiling, and again the baby would be Toby himself, a ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... same room with him, however grand it might be; and involuntarily almost she yielded half a doubtful step, while Mr. Sclater, afraid of offending Sir Gilbert, hesitated on the advance to prevent her. How friendly the warm air felt! how consoling the crimson walls with the soft flicker of the great fire upon them! how delicious the odour of the cockie-leekie! She could give up whisky a good deal more easily, she thought, if she had the comforts of a minister to fall back upon! And this was ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... arrives shortly after Robin-redbreast, with whom he associates both at this season and in the autumn, is the gold-winged woodpecker, alias "high-hole," alias "flicker," alias "yarup." He is an old favorite of my boyhood, and his note to me means very much. He announces his arrival by a long, loud call, repeated from the dry branch of some tree, or a stake in the fence,—a thoroughly ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... funny answer," said he. "You 'don't know the custom!' Well, my idea of you is, you don't know much about any business customs, on our side of the water or yours either." As he spoke he watched her face to catch any guilty flicker of an eyelid. "I want you to tell me what was your idea in going for a job ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson |
