"Riffle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for all their brownness, and he could not sleep of nights because of the sweat that was on his soul, for fear of what might come to her. He would lie in the little room under the roof and hear the elms moving like the riffle of silence into sound, thinking of his mother until at last he would be obliged to rise and move softly about the place, as if by the mere assertion of himself he could make her safer in it. He wished nothing so much as not to disturb her, but she must have been lying awake often herself, ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... the end-gate of the wagon, taking the paper with her. Harris was soaking a flannel shirt in the little stream, flattening it in a riffle and weighting it down with rocks. She went straight to him and sat on the bank, motioning him to a seat by her side. He dried his hands and took the paper ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... stream that, in place of the gush and foam of a few minutes before, there was now only a scant and gently falling veil of water playing over the bright gravel caught in the riffle-lined bottoms of the boxes. ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... breathing of the horses round the ashes of the mosquito smudge guided him across to saddles. He placed saddles, pack trees and provisions on the raft. Then, he wakened the old man and pulled the grunting horses to their feet. A little riffle, half wind, half light, stirred the lake mist, revealing glare patches of snow reflection ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... of the natural dangers of bars and snags, and those incident on a tremendous current, the situation often becomes exciting. I was once on the Fraser River in a steamer whose boiler was certified to bear 80 lb. of steam and no more. We were coming to a "riffle," or rapid, where the stream ran very fiercely, with great swirls and waves in it, and the captain sang out to the engineer, "How much steam have you, Jack?" ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... these: the average does not vary much. A mediocrity, not disagreeable, always rules; supremity has been, is, and always will be the stick in the riffle around which the little whirlpool will always centre. This year it happens to be Jose Querida who stems the sparkling mediocrity and sticks up from the bottom gravel making a fine little swirl. Next year—or next decade it may be anybody—you, Annan, or Sam—perhaps," he added with a slight ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... exist for the Little Woman. Presidents come and go, torchlight processions bloom and fade and leave not so much as a wind-riffle on the sands of memory. The stock market, too, was at this time but a name to her. Both of us have acquired knowledge since in this direction, but that is another story. Shares might rise and fall in those early days, and men clutch at each other's ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... head in a deep pool. It seemed to me that we had been threading the curves of the brook for at least two hours when I began to feel as if something were wrong. Even in the dark I had been aware of a sort of recognition of each pool, shallow, riffle, bend, bank or what not. Now, gradually, it came over me that I was among surroundings as unfamiliar as if I had not been in ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... and he tried to make himself believe that the lower boxes and the tables had caught it—that there was more in the mercury than there looked. But the tension as he took up riffle after rime with the one result was like watching a long-drawn-out race with all one's possessions staked on ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart |
