"Shifting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was coaling. Along the black wall of her other side, as I peered over the rail above, I saw far below a row of barges crowded with Italians. Powerful lights swung over their heads in the freezing wind, swung above black coal heaps and the lapping water. It was an inferno of shifting ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... very unreal; one minute the voices sounded up in the sky, and the next in his very ears, while the figures moved about, sometimes bending over him, sometimes retreating and melting away like shadows on a shifting screen. ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... with a merry westerly gale. When about seven leagues off (twenty-two miles) some gusts or scuds of wind suddenly arose, and the wind veering and shifting from point to point, was, as they say, like an old woman's breech, at no certainty; so we first got our starboard tacks aboard, and hauled off our lee-sheets. Then the gusts increased, and by fits blowed all at once from several quarters, yet we neither settled ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of my breakfast while Uncle Jake was changing his boots and shifting his outer clothing. He would accept only one of my small cheese sandwiches. "I got some bread and butter here," he said, but I 'took partic'lar notice,' as Tony puts it, that he ate none of the bread and butter. And he refused to take a second sip of my tea because his sensitive nose detected ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... into the air. The fine dust is stirred up in yellow clouds and moves along the road; the tramp of hoofs in unison resounds afar; the horses race along, pricking up their ears; in front of all, with his tail in the air and thistles in his tangled mane, prances some shaggy chestnut, constantly shifting his ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... story the first Baiga cut down two thousand old sal [88] trees in one day, and God told him to sprinkle a few grains of kutki on the ashes, and then to retire and sleep for some months, when on his return he would be able to reap a rich harvest for his children. In this manner the habit of shifting cultivation is accorded divine sanction. According to Binjhwar tradition Nanga Baiga and Nangi Baigin dwelt on the kajli ban pahar, which being interpreted is the hill of elephants, and may well refer to the ranges of Mandla and Bilaspur. It is stated in the Ain-i-Akbari ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... a vision of a face staring down on her, white as chalk under a black mustache and staring goggles, and another face, Delia's, white too, with eyes more strained and terrible than the goggles themselves. One second that look swept her and Miss Honey, and then, shifting, fell upon the General strapped securely into his carriage. Even as Caroline caught her breath, he flew by her like an arrow, his blue eyes round with surprise under a whirl of white parasol, the wicker body of the perambulator swaying and lurching. With that breath still in her ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... passions of every order of men, from the monk to the emperor, the knowledge of human nature was his first and most important science. He preserved a distinct and unbroken view of a scene which was incessantly shifting; and never failed to improve those decisive moments which are irrecoverably past before they are perceived by a common eye. The archbishop of Alexandria was capable of distinguishing how far he might boldly ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... or fishing-boats. Besides this, the condition of the estuary seemed to prohibit all attack from that side. The space between Bit-Yakin and the long line of dunes or mud-banks which blocked the entrance to it was not so much a gulf as a lagoon of uncertain and shifting extent; the water flowed only in the middle, being stagnant near the shores; the whole expanse was irregularly dotted over with mud-banks, and its service was constantly altered by the alluvial soil brought down by the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Ulai, and the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... be worse," said the girl firmly, never shifting the fixed determination of her gaze from the spot whence the constables had disappeared. "Willy, there is worse to come of this business, and Ralph should be told of it if ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... Among the shifting, sonorous, pulsing crowd glimpses could be had of Jerry's high hat, battered by the winds and rains of many years; of his nose like a carrot, battered by the frolicsome, athletic progeny of millionaires and by contumacious fares; of his brass-buttoned green coat, admired in the vicinity of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... attempted to reform anybody or anything in my life; I'd hate to begin with a job the size of this." He waved his cigarette toward the shifting ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... spot, with a marvellous view, rich forest, terraces, gardens, and water he abandoned for Versailles; the dullest and most ungrateful of all places, without prospect, without wood, without water, without soil; for the ground is all shifting sand or swamp, the air ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... to read it all to-day, the shifting of the stock; You'd think you see the caravans that loaf behind the flock, The little donkeys and the mules, the sheep that slowly spread, And maybe Dan ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... the evolutionary process, as if from without, we can get an adequate idea of the forces that really are at work, exactly the delusion by which the skillful juggler tries to deceive his audience when he directs their attention to the shifting objects that he manipulates, and away from ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... sense; festal seasons rather than festal days are what we have. Easter is celebrated in the month Abib, when the corn is in the ear (Exodus ix. 31, 32), Pentecost when the wheat is cut, the autumn festival when the vintage has been completed,—rather vague and shifting determinations. Deuteronomy advances a step towards fixing the terms and intervals more accurately, a circumstance very intimately connected with the centralisation of the worship in Jerusalem. Even here, however, we do not meet with one general festive offering on the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... made with a second instrument at Sobral gave a result of 0.93, but the observers are of the opinion that because of the shifting of the mirror which reflected the rays no value is to be attached ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... her course steadily, never shifting her helm for so much as a point. In half an hour or so we must be alongside one another, at this rate, and that Arngeir did not altogether like the look of, for it would seem as if she meant to find out all about us at least. There was some little sea running, and it might ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... went down red and angry far across the tawny flood of the rushing river. The night lights were set at the distant bend below. The stars came peeping through a shifting filmy veil. The big trees on the levee and about the flanking towers began to whisper and complain and creak, and the rising wind sent long wisps of straggly cloud racing across the sky. The moon rose pallid and wan, hung for a while over the dense black mass of moss-grown cypress in the eastward ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... sprang into the air, wavered, faltered, hesitated, then rocked into a steady glow, only shifting a little with the haze. On either side of him were rough, wooden stalls, and these were illuminated with gas, which sizzled and hissed like angry snakes. The stalls were covered with everything invented by man; here ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... lapse of thirty years, when Ootacamund had long enjoyed the advantage of a book-club and a circulating library, the tradition of Macaulay and his novel still lingered on with a tenacity most unusual in the ever-shifting society of an ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... breathing not only the spirit of beauty, but the spirit of individuality. He was not a simple character; his melancholy was shot with irony and laughter; sensuality and sentimentality both mingled with his finest imaginations and his profoundest visions; and all these qualities are reflected, shifting and iridescent, in the magic web of his verse. One thought, however, perpetually haunts him; under all his music of laughter or of passion, it is easy to hear one dominating note. It is the thought of mortality. The whining, leering, brooding creature can never for a moment ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... threads, like the talking of water-ripples against the side of a barge in a slow canal—all as soft as the moonlight, as exquisite as an odour, each sound tenderly truncated and dull. A great multitude of sheep was shifting its quarters in the night, whence and whither and why he never knew. To his heart they were the messengers of the Most High. For into that heart, soothed and attuned by their thin harmony, not on the wind that floated without breaking their ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... is the feature of society. The world is like a magic lantern, or the shifting scenes in a pantomime. TEN YEARS convert the population of schools into men and women, the young into fathers and matrons, make and mar fortunes, and bury the last generation but one. TWENTY YEARS convert infants into lovers, and fathers and mothers, render youth the operative generation, decide ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... head as the success of the defence disappointed his attack. To hit hard, to rush in and throw his enemy, was all he had of the tactics of offence. The younger lad, untouched, light on his feet, was continually shifting his ground; then at last he struck right and left. He had not weight enough to knock down his foe, but as Tom staggered, John leaped aside and felt the joy of battle as he got in a blow under the ear ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... waters into it, passing between the San Francisco range and the mountains of Dolores. The channel is arid. Mountain torrents rush through it only in the season of thunderstorms, and they have burrowed and ploughed through its surface, scarring it with deep furrows and shifting waterfalls. Near the mouth of the pass and at no great distance from the plain, one of these arroyos has cut through an ancient village, exposing on both banks the lower walls and rooms of its buildings, visible on the surface only as irregular lines and quadrangles ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... instincts back into the strict and rational Latin fabric of the State. Status was everywhere replacing contract, and habit replacing a reason for things. Above this medley the only absolute organization that could be was that of the Church. The Papacy was the one centre whose shifting could not even be imagined. The Latin tongue, in the late form in which the Church used it, was everywhere the same, and everywhere suited to rituals that differed but slightly from province to province when we contrast them with the millioned diversity ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... dropping down over the country-side before I was ready to return. I found our little store of goods intact, though most of them were rain-soaked, and as a measure of good fortune I retrieved the tent whose sudden departure had been the primary cause of our hurriedly shifting camp. There was a fair load in all, but when I had made it up and rolled everything packwise in the tent and fastened it on my shoulders with what odd bits of string I found handy, there wasn't anything ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... MAN is he who stands there, lofty and spotless, in bleeding patience! Men also are those brutal soldiers, alike stupidly ready, at the word of command, to drive the nail through quivering flesh or insensate wood. Men are those scowling priests and infuriate Pharisees. Men, also, the shifting figures of the careless rabble, who shout and curse without knowing why. No visible glory shines round that head; yet how, spite of every defilement cast upon him by the vulgar rabble, seems that form ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... which divide the room, small enough before, into two parts, the outer of which, towards the door, is a howling wilderness of draught and wet from under the door; and the inner part close, stuffy, and dim with smoke driven down the chimney by the shifting wind. Here the family are all huddled up together close over the embers. Here the cooking is done, such as it is. Here they sit in the dark, or in such light as is supplied by the carefully hoarded stock of fuel, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... change. Our religions, our civilisations, our ideas, our laws, change as do the nebulae and the shifting continents we build on. Yet through all changes a thread of continuity runs. It is all changing and no ending. Always Law and always, so far as we can see, what we call progression. A man is a fool who cares for his life. He is the true madman who wastes his years ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Tinkering, doctoring, shifting, deranging, Urged by a constant satiety on, Ever the new for the newer exchanging, Hazarding ever ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... the night. The fire had shivered itself to death, and, in place of its gleams, little squares of moonlight lay upon the floor, slowly, slowly shifting their way across the room. Something else was moving also, but the boys did not see it. Sleeping boys keep but a poor lookout. During the early hours of the night, Jacob Poot had been gradually but surely winding himself with all the bed covers. ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Lenore still slept, and even snored just a little, and the sunbeams, piercing in narrow streaks through the shutters, were incessantly and imperceptibly shifting and travelling over the floor, the furniture, Gemma's dress, and the leaves and petals ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... always a little breeze — that is, on deck. Down below it was worse; sometimes "hoggishly mild," as Beck used to put it. Our otherwise comfortable cabins had one fault; there were no portholes in the ship's side, and therefore we could not get a draught; but most of us managed without shifting our quarters. Of the two saloons, the fore-saloon was decidedly preferable in warm weather; in a cold climate probably the reverse would be the case. We were able to secure a thorough draught of air forward through the alleyway ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... fragrance of a cigarette; then Flora ran forward to meet us; and, on turning the corner, we found a great long figure lying on the bank, with hat half pulled over his eyes, gazing dreamily up into the shifting willow leaves and ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ago. The balance of culture has since then been gradually but steadily shifting in favour of other peoples. The present writer had occasion to make a special study of Byron's influence on the Continent. It turned out that one of the biggest and most important works upon the subject was written in Polish. It has therefore remained inaccessible. This is only ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... so many heterogeneous forms which it is almost impossible to classify in our rigid and at present necessarily artificial systems. We divide them into families and sub-families, genera and sub-genera, species and varieties, but there is an endless shifting of characters in these groups. The different groups would seem well limited after studying certain forms, when to the systematist's sorrow, here comes a creature, perhaps mimicking an ant, or aphis, or other sort of bug, or even a butterfly, and for which ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... and the very pulsations of the life of nature, in these calm hours, are to be read in these changing tints and shadows and ripples, and in the mirage-bewildered outlines of the islands in the bay. It is this incessant shifting of relations, this perpetual substitution of fantastic for real values, this inability to trust your own eye or ear unless the mind makes its own corrections,—that gives such an inexhaustible attraction to life ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... safety in openly defying Barney. And as a matter of fact what he had ordered was what, in the shifting currents of her thoughts, the steady momentum of her old ambitions and purposes had been pushing her toward. So she said, ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... earth. In the most important countries of America and Europe, and especially in those which have suffered most from the destruction of the woods, the superficial strata of the earth are colder in winter, and warmer in summer, than those a few inches lower, and their shifting temperature approximates to the atmospheric mean of the respective seasons. The roots of large trees penetrate beneath the superficial strata, and reach earth of a nearly constant temperature, corresponding to the mean for the entire ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... days, from the Rapidan to the James River, the army had to be supplied from an ever-shifting base, by wagons, over narrow roads, through a densely wooded country, with a lack of wharves at each new base from which to conveniently discharge vessels. Too much credit cannot, therefore, be awarded to the quartermaster ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... gain time, and if possible to obtain the opportunity of shifting the money from the place where she had first put it into another and safer one. "I want to be able," she thought, "to swear that I have no money with me in this house. If I can only get it into ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Parliament began to inquire into this matter, and the Commons voted that "the advising and passing of the said grants was highly reflecting upon the King's honour." William had already began to see on what shifting sands the poor fabric of his popularity was erected. He probably thought of another case in which his honour had been really pledged, and in which he had been obliged to sacrifice it to the clamours of these very men. He had failed in the attempt to keep his Dutch Guards; his last days were embittered; ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... sentry in the service had not the instinct for a foe afar off that Flick-Flack possessed. He gazed keenly southward, the poodle growling on; that cloud so dim, so distant, caught his sight. Was it a moving herd, a shifting mist, a shadow-play between ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... daughter, and the thing generally was beyond my willing enterprise. I requested Sir Roderick Murchison to act generally for me: which he did, as I understood, very gracefully.—In this year a proposal was made by the Government for shifting all the Meeting Rooms of the Scientific Societies to Kensington Gore, which was stoutly resisted by ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... tried to penetrate the secrets which the gray and shifting veil still hid from his view. Beside him lay the Italian knife, its steely surface shimmering in the vaporous light, there where a dull and ruddy stain had not dimmed its brilliant polish. The murderer gazed at his tool ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... anthropologists, in an effort to reconstruct its past, shows incessant movement—growth, expansion, and short-lived conquest, followed by shrinkage, expulsion, or absorption by another invader. To this constant shifting of races and peoples the name of historical movement has been given, because it underlies most of written history and constitutes the major part of unwritten history, especially that of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... coach at the siding which was the northern end of the new tote-road, the first man they saw was Orcutt, resplendent in striped mackinaw, Stetson hat, and high-laced boots. As the banker came toward them, McNabb stared about him in evident perplexity, his glance shifting from the piles of tarpaulin-covered material, to the loaded trucks that with a clash and grind of gears were just pulling out upon the new tote-road that stretched away between the tall balsam ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... but, I profess I do not know you well enough to contrive any one system of life that would please you. You pretend to preach up riding and walking to the duchess, yet from my knowledge of you after twenty years, you always joined a violent desire of perpetually shifting places and company, with a rooted laziness, and an utter impatience of fatigue. A coach and six horses is the utmost exercise you can bear; and this only when you can fill it with such company as is best suited to your taste, and how glad would you ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... pigeonholing my specimens, I chanced to look through the open window, and suddenly saw pass by, as in the shifting background of some scenic play, the lichenveiled stone walls and lotus-mantled moats of the old feudal castle of Uyeda. Poor, neglected, despised bit of days gone by!—days that are but yesterdays, aeons since as measured here. Already it was disappearing down the long perspective of the past; ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... and thorns. The dark ledges of rock thrust themselves above the surface here and there, like the bones of perished monsters. Arid and inhospitable mountain ranges rose before him, furrowed with dry channels of ancient torrents, white and ghastly as scars on the face of nature. Shifting hills of treacherous sand were heaped like tombs along the horizon. By day, the fierce heat pressed its intolerable burden on the quivering air; and no living creature moved, on the dumb, swooning earth, ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... off the reef the next day, shifting her cargo all upon one side and hoisting some sail, so that the wind bore her down, her keel lifted from the reef upon which she had fastened, and without damage she went into deep water. We spent four days in looking for you. We landed at the ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... lagoon running along the sea-coast, and very near to it, all the way to Mayumba. This lagoon is much traversed by boats and canoes, and, when the slave-trade was in vigorous operation, it afforded the Portuguese traders great facilities for eluding the vigilance of British cruizers, by shifting their slaves from point to point, and embarking them, according to a ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... "Wall, Steve," he said, shifting his quid of tobacco in a leisurely manner from one side of his mouth to the other, "you've got a soft thing again. You're a damned lucky fellow, Steve; dunno whether you know it ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... he lifted an inquiring gaze to Pierce Phillips. There was a general craning of necks, a shifting of ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... becoming more and more restricted and painful. There is swelling corresponding to the distended capsule of the joint, and on palpation the bodies moving under the fingers yield a sensation as of grains of rice shifting in a bag. If the bodies are so numerous as to be tightly packed together, the impression is that of a plastic mass having the shape of the synovial sac. The stiffness and the cracking on movement may suggest arthritis deformans, but the X-ray ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... seemed wonderfully pleased—for about five minutes; then Mr. Smith saw that his glance was shifting more and more frequently and more and more unhappily to Mellicent and Hibbard Gaylord, talking tennis ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... Ignorance, vice, poverty, and superstition could not rule intelligence, experience, wealth, and organization. It was here that the "one could chase a thousand, and the two could put ten thousand to flight." The Negro governments were built on the shifting sands of the opinions of the men who reconstructed the South, and when the storm and rains of political contest came they fell because they were not built upon the granite foundation of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... farthest Rosse's rocky ledge; From west to east, from south to north. Scotland sent all her warriors forth. Marmion might hear the mingled hum Of myriads up the mountain come; The horses' tramp, and tingling clank, Where chiefs reviewed their vassal rank, And charger's shrilling neigh; And see the shifting lines advance While frequent flashed, from shield and lance, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... would relieve the crew from such awful exposure and foolhardy risk of life on the icy roofs of the cars in winter, and for couplers which, by abolishing the iron link and pin, would save the constant and almost certain crushing of the hands which the shifting of the cars compelled when coupled in the ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... (if this new phasis of his ever-shifting character is to be called by such a name), was very far from being of that kind which Bacon condemns, as "withholding men from works of liberality," is apparent from all that is known of his munificence, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... I cannot help shifting at the great objects of our letters. We never converse on a less topic than a kingdom. We are a kind of citizens of the world, and battles and revolutions are the common incidents of our neighbourhood. But that is ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... himself, swallows at a dearer rate the juice of Middlesex turnip, instead of that Vinum Pomonae which Mr. Giles Leverance of Cheeshurst, near Dartmouth in Devon, will, at the price of forty shillings per hogshead, send in double casks to any part of the world. Had the wind been very sudden in shifting, I had lost my cider by an attempt of a boatman to exact, according to custom. He required five shillings for conveying my man a mile and a half to the shore, and four more if he stayed to bring him back. This I thought to be such insufferable impudence that I ordered him to be immediately ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... to take his attention from the shrieking yacht, now close to the scow, Scraggy advanced toward the swaying man. She tried to lift brave eyes to his face; but they were filled with tears as they met his drunken, shifting look. ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... about it that made Lambert think of a listening ear. He looked up and down the street in that uneasy, inquiring way that Lambert had remarked on his arrival, then came back and got himself a cigar. He stood across the counter from Lambert a little while, smoking, his brows drawn in trouble, his eyes shifting constantly to ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... from her military alliance with Belgium, has a whole system of alliances based largely on the newly formed States: shifting sands like Poland, Russia's and Germany's enemy, whose fate no one can prophesy when Germany is reconstructed and Russia risen again, unless she finds a way of remedying her present mistakes, which are much more numerous ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... and some were lying down, so there could not be the same busy gathering, bustling, and shifting to and fro with which children generally prepare themselves to hear a story; but their faces, and the turning of their heads, and many feeble exclamations of expected pleasure, showed that all such ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... form is truly related to the beauty of another; and then if beauty in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same," [Footnote: Symposium, Jowett translation, Sec.210.] is made by Shelley the justification of his shifting enthusiasms, which the world so harshly censured. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... makings for a cigarette," replied the boy, shifting uneasily to the other foot. "You said you'd pay me five dollars a month and find ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... already seen[10] that the Moon's nodes are perpetually undergoing a change of place. Were it not so, eclipses of the Sun and Moon would always happen year after year in the same pair of months for us on the Earth. But the operative effect of the shifting of the nodes is to displace backwards the eclipse seasons by about 20 days. For instance in 1899 the eclipse seasons fall in June and December. The middle of the eclipse seasons for the next succeeding 20 or 30 years will be found by taking the ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... worse, Mr. Monday," observed Leach, shifting his attitude like a man whose moral and physical action moved pari passu: "it might have been much worse, I once saw a man shot in the under jaw, and he lived a fortnight without any ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... scheme had many advantages. In the first place, it prevented the company from shifting from one playhouse to another, as was frequently the case with other troupes. In the second place, it guaranteed both the excellence and the permanency of the company. Too often good companies were dissolved by the ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... happy—oh, intensely happy for a while. Then a tiny cloud of indifference, thin and shifting like morning mist, rose between us. It darkened and lowered. He was a hasty, masterful man, but he was never rough to me. Gradually I came to see that time had changed me from a joy to a burden. How was it I lived? How ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... with his hand, to read his opponent's intention in advance from the eyes while he concealed his own; but the darkness, combined with my wooden face, made this impossible now. Every turn and trick of the game he knew, but the shifting shine and shadow disconcerted him. More than once I heard him curse softly when at a critical moment the scudding clouds drifted across the moon in time ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... and tapped her foot. Marsh had not ventured to remove his eyes from the weaving interplay of the dancers in his own set. Now, for an instant, he glanced beyond them into the next room. He received an impression of rapid, incessant, intricate shifting to and fro, the whole throng of dancers in movement as swift and disconcerting to the eyes as the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. It made him literally dizzy to see it, and he turned his eyes back ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... may be mentioned now there are of these real benefactors and preservers of the wayside characters, times, and customs of our ever-shifting history. Needless is it to speak here of the earlier of our workers in the dialectic line—of James Russell Lowell's New England Hosea Biglow, Dr. Eggleston's Hoosier School-Master, or the very rare and quaint, bright ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz walked up the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a curly-haired child sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled string. Liz flopped down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile on her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... interesting information lesson, for Peary's achievement became, under the skillful touch of that teacher, a type of all human achievement. I wish that I could reproduce that lesson for you—how vividly she pictured the situation that confronted the explorer,—the bitter cold, the shifting ice, the treacherous open leads, the lack of game or other sources of food supply, the long marches on scant rations, the short hours and the uncomfortable conditions of sleep; and how from these that fundamental lesson of pluck and endurance ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... face was vanishing in a shifting cloud that dissolved and reformed, as he watched, into pictures. He knew it was not there, the thing he saw; he knew he was regarding something as intangible as thought; but he got ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... said Uncle Dick, "is worth as much as a colonel in an army. He never has sore-backed horses, because he makes up his packs well and keeps them tight. A shifting, wabbling pack is bad for the horse. Why, you can pack almost anything on a horse—they even took pianos on slings between four pack-horses in some of the mountain mining-camps in Montana. And what do you suppose ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... history is an essential condition to an understanding of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion. The priests of Marduk could view with equanimity the rise and growth of Assyria's power. The influence of E-Sagila and E-Zida was not affected by such a shifting of the political kaleidoscope. Babylon remained the religious center of the country. When one day, a Persian conqueror—Cyrus—entered the precincts of E-Sagila, his first step was to acknowledge Marduk and Nabu as the supreme powers in the world; and the successors of Alexander ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... caught it on the fly! It must have been an accident. Here——" And he struck the ball into the air again. It went high—twice as high as the house—and again Gammire "judged" it; continuously shifting his position, his careful eyes never leaving the little white globe, until just before the last instant of its descent he was motionless beneath it. He caught it again, and ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... market-day in Brisighella, and the country folk had come in from the villages and hamlets of the district with their pigs and poultry, their dairy produce and droves of half-wild mountain cattle. The market-place was thronged with a perpetually shifting crowd, laughing, joking, bargaining for dried figs, cheap cakes, and sunflower seeds. The brown, bare-footed children sprawled, face downward, on the pavement in the hot sun, while their mothers sat under the trees with their baskets ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... much," concluded Mangles, dexterously shifting his cigar by a movement of the tongue from the port to the starboard side of his mouth. Cartoner did not seem to be very much interested in Miss Netty Cahere. He was a man having that air of detachment from personal environments which is apt to arouse curiosity in the human heart, more especially ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... boarding-house. This child was a deaf mute. But its soul had the inner sense that answers to hearing, and the shaping capacity which through natural organs realizes itself in words. Only it had to talk with its face alone; and such speaking eyes, such rapid alternations of feeling and shifting expressions of thought as flitted over its face, I have never seen in any other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... color and, shifting uneasily on her chair, scrutinized the lawyer's face. What was behind that calm, inscrutable mask? What theory had he formed? One newspaper had suggested suicide. She might herself come forward and declare that Robert Underwood had threatened to take his own ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... sorry for the man whose childhood knew only the roar and bustle and swiftly shifting scenes of the city. For him there is no return in after years, no illusion to be renewed, no joy of youth to be substantiated. His habitation has passed away or yielded to the inroads of commerce, his landmarks have vanished, ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... intently, but the only sound that broke the stillness was the click of a typewriter and the occasional shifting of some papers. Then he tiptoed his way to the next door, ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... there, I remember, with those seventeen-year-old hands that were all knuckles and bone and chapped skin, twisting those hands and shifting his weight from one foot to ...
— With a Vengeance • J. B. Woodley
... the step of the porch one May night when the moon was making shifting shadows through the trees and silvering the paths. Chilian was studying the face, and wondering a little what was flitting through the brain that now and then gave ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Forget-me-nots, her eyes. With bent Brows, sullen-creased, swart Adam gazed intent Upon a leopard, crouched low in its place Beneath his feet. Not once in Lilith's face He looked, nor sought her wistful, downcast eyes With shifting shadows dusk, and strange surprise. "O, Love," she said, "no more let us contend! So sweet is life, anger, methinks, should end. In this, our garden bright, why dost thou claim Ever the highest place, the noblest name? Freely to ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... Meadows where the bitter waters of the Amargossa River rise from their hidden depths to flow for a few hundred yards between gray hills of shifting sand, the trails of the two parties converged. By the time they reached this dismal oasis they were killing their oxen for such shreds of meat as they could strip from the bones; but as every wagon left the place, climbing the divide beyond, the occupants forgot their sufferings and talked ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... immemorial plagues of authors and free-spirited gentlemen; and here he had written many numbers of the Spectator. It was from hence, too, that he had despatched those little notes to his lady, so full of affection and whimsicality; in which the fond husband, the careless gentleman, and the shifting spendthrift, were so oddly blended. I thought, as I first eyed the window, of his apartment, that I could sit within it ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... bad way of increasing our resources of expression. Although there be a systematic and a best mode of acquiring language, there is also an inferior, yet not ineffective mode; namely, reading copiously whatever authors have at once a good style and a sustaining interest. Hence, for this purpose, shifting from book to book, taking up short and light compositions, may be of considerable value; anything is better than not reading at all, or than reading compositions inferior in point of style. The desultory man will not be without a certain ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... a tragic hand towards the engine, and Evan saw for himself what had happened. The main shaft on the port side had broken clean through. The sudden shifting of the strain had thrown the walking-beam out of plumb, and the connecting rods had snapped off and threshed wildly about. The ruin was complete, but fortunately, all ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... the first glimpse of "Lookout," but a trifling accident detained the train for several hours, and it was almost twilight when she saw it, a purple spot staining the clear beryl horizon; spreading rapidly, shifting its Tyrian mantle for gray robes; and at length the rising moon silvered its rocky crest, as it towered in silent majesty over the little village nestled at its base. The kind and gentlemanly conductor ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... busy even then shifting all possible comfortable furniture to a single story for the women in the building to occupy. The men would sleep on the floor for the present. Beds of boughs could be improvised on the morrow. At sunrise on the following ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... fresh, the trees are cool and green, and the mellow light of morning is over them all. A light, white morning mist comes up from the river, and the sun, which has just risen from behind the purple hills, away off where the sky touches them, turns the mist into shifting and shimmering silver, so that it makes the whole scene look brighter instead of dimmer. On the hill across the river is a glorious sight. It is a castle, the grandest and most beautiful you ever saw. Its walls are thick and strong ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products resulted in a short-term contraction of the economy, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995-97, the pace of the government program of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial shifting of assets into the private sector. Kazakhstan has enjoyed double-digit growth in 2000-01 thanks largely to its booming energy sector, but also to economic reform, good harvests, and foreign investment. The opening of ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... The emperor neglected the practice to instruct his son Romanus in the theory of government; while he indulged the habits of intemperance and sloth, he dropped the reins of the administration into the hands of Helena his wife; and, in the shifting scene of her favor and caprice, each minister was regretted in the promotion of a more worthless successor. Yet the birth and misfortunes of Constantine had endeared him to the Greeks; they excused his failings; they respected his learning, his ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... that they could give the dory some headway. But in which direction should they row? Small wonder that in these crooked channels, with the wind shifting continually from the shore and the veil of fog alternately lifting and falling again, they ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... Helen, as with tender Touch of rosy fingers slender She doth knit the story in Of Troy's sorrow and her sin, Feel sharp filaments of pain Reeled off with the well-spun skein, And faint blood-stains on her hands From the shifting sanguine strands. Gently, sweetly she doth sorrow: What has been must be to-morrow; Meekly to her fate she bows. Heavenly beauties still will rouse Strife and savagery in men: Shall the lucid heavens, then, Lose their high serenity, Sorrowing over what must ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... tribe. In Northwest America, on the other hand, it is of prime significance both in decoration and in organization—it, to a great extent, takes the place occupied elsewhere by the totem, and it is not always identical with the eponymous object of the clan, though this may be an accidental result of shifting social relations (new combinations of clans, or a borrowing of a device ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... didn't do that. He took something out of the breast of his tunic, put it in his mouth, lay down on his stomach, and, with his eyes on Wisp, puffed out his cheeks. Two or three seconds passed, during which I felt Wisp shifting about on his perch, and breathing quickly. Then he gave a sharp shriek, which went right through my head, slipped rapidly down my chest and legs and on to the floor, where he continued to squeal ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... suspend Their shifting vapours, and contend With rocks that suffer not defeat; And snows, and suns, and mad winds meet To battle where the cliffs defend At Crow's ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... army into the remotest part of Lusitania, and avoid an encounter with the Romans. That a body of three thousand horse should be made up for Masinissa, the flower of the whole cavalry; and that he, shifting about from place to place throughout hither Spain should succour their allies and commit depredations on the towns and lands of their enemies." Having adopted these resolutions, the generals departed to put in execution what they had resolved on. Such were ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... stemmed to some extent from inadequate staff work and improper planning. Poor staff work allowed a disproportionate number of Negroes with low test scores to be allocated to combat elements. Lack of early planning, constant reorganization and regrouping of black units, and continuous shifting of individuals from one type of training to another had confused and bewildered black troops, who sometimes doubted that the Army intended to commit ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... visualize the stage-picture in considerable detail; and we find that almost all modern dramatists do, as a matter of fact, pay great attention to what may be called the topography of their scenes, and the shifting "positions" of their characters. The question is: at what stage of the process of composition ought this visualization to occur? Here, again, it would be absurd to lay down a general rule; but I am inclined to ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... With her words the unpleasant tension had lightened. He dropped into an arm chair. Lawrence followed suit, his close-set eyes focused belligerently on Carroll's face, the hostility of his manner being akin to a personal menace. Naomi stood by the table, eyes shifting from one ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... the intervening door with a bound, and an instant later had burrowed under the crumpled papers. The shifting of the sun had left this corner of the repair shop in shadow, but I was scarcely outstretched in my hastily improvised hiding place, when I heard the blacksmith calmly open his outer door, where he stood smoking, clad in leathern apron, awaiting ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... about forty miles from here, and I have heard that the Yankees are on the line from there right and left. I believe our troops are at Florence; but I am not sure about that, because both parties are constantly shifting their position, and I hear very little, as you may suppose, of what is being done. Anyhow, I think we cannot do better than go on until we strike the railway, keep along by that till we get within a short distance of Mount Pleasant, and then cross it. ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... which suited his taste perfectly; and as he was very necessary to the Indians as an interpreter during their bartering transactions with the Whites, he was allowed to do just as he pleased. He was, however, fond of shifting from tribe to tribe, and the traders seeing him now with the Pawnies or the Comanches, now with the Crows or the Tonquewas, gave him the surname of "Turn-over," which name, making a summerset, became Over-turn, and by ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... To Carter their conduct seemed outrageous. It was incredible that in so short a time, at a pace so reckless, they would decide a question of such moment. They came bunched together, shifting and changing, with, through the dust, flashes of blue and gold and scarlet. A jacket of yellow shot out of the dust and showed in front; a jacket of crimson followed. So they were at the half; so ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... a morality of development. It teaches that there can no more be an immutable law of conduct, than there can be an immutable position for the steering-wheel of an aeroplane. The business of the pilot of an aeroplane is to keep his machine aloft amid shifting currents of wind. The business of a moralist is to adjust life to a constantly changing environment. An action which was suicide yesterday becomes heroism today, and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... changes little; its waters are clear, and they become icy cold as they approach the sea and mingle with the tide which flows into the great Gulf of St. Lawrence from the Arctic regions. The Mississippi, on the other hand, is a turbid, warm stream, flowing through soft lands. Its shifting channel is divided at its mouth by deltas created from the vast quantity of soil which the river carries in its current. On the low-lying, forest-clad, northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico it was not easy to find the ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... near at hand were the American Falls, with the sun shining on them and a cloud of pure white mist rising in an ever-shifting veil from the gorge into which plunged and roared the mighty volume of water. Then came Goat Island, with Horseshoe Falls beyond, shooting forth great boiling fountains of white spray and sending heavenward billow after billow of mist. Beneath them rushed the broad river, writhing and twisting, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... kept shifting his gaze from the woods before him to the tall sapling on Lookout Point. At last a smudge of red showed near the sapling's top for a minute, then disappeared, and he gave a shout of relief. "Walter's there all right," he called to his companions, "I ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... will need no support of any kind, and although they are peculiarly fleshy in texture, it is seldom they are injured, even by a gale. When grown in pots throughout, the chief points are to shift them often in the early stages, to promote free growth in every reasonable way, and to cease shifting when they are in pots sufficiently large to sustain the strength of the plants. Generally speaking, eight-inch pots will suffice for very fine Balsams, but ten-inch pots may be used for plants from an early sowing. They ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... ever shifting and becoming more and more lovely and fascinating, and the paradise was more extensive ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... back; so we stood up and began sparring. I played very steadily and light at first to see whether my suspicions were well founded, and in two minutes I was satisfied. My opponent tried every dodge to bring on a rally, and when he was foiled I could see that he was shifting his glove. I stopped and insisted that his gloves should be tied, and then we went ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... each end to the bulkhead placed near the center of the boats, thus leaving an open compartment, three and a half feet long, for the oarsman. All the loads were placed under cover, and securely lashed to prevent shifting. The boats were also provided with air-tight compartments in each end, and under the seat, containing sufficient air to float both boat and load, should all the other compartments be full of water. The boats ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... an opal of such marvelous changeability, such milk and fire shot with such shifting rainbows, that it was as though it had had birth of all the moods of all the women of ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... of fire, transfigured by the austere magnificence of dawn and the grim splendour of the shifting, roaring conflagration; and at our feet lay the orchard of the Councillor von Hollwig, and there the awakened birds piped querulously, and sparks fell ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... patted Jack on the head, rubbed his nose again dubiously, for it still smarted from the effects of the blow it had sustained, and retired to his bed once more. If he fondly hoped to sleep again, he soon found that his hope was based upon a most shifting foundation, for the whoops and cries and noises of all sorts, vocal and otherwise, that emanated from the next room destroyed all possibility of his doing anything of the sort. At first the very ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... The wind was shifting in a way that portended a nor'easter, and the weather would presently be too inclement for us to remain outside. That hastened M. Radisson's departure, though sun-dogs and the long, shrill whistling of contrary winds ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the race. Apparently illogical, they are the possessors of a rare and subtle super-logic. Apparently whimsical, they hang to the truth with a tenacity which carries them through every phase of its incessant, jellylike shifting of form. Apparently unobservant and easily deceived, they see with bright and horrible eyes. In men, too, the same merciless perspicacity sometimes shows itself—men recognized to be more aloof and uninflammable than the general—men of ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... history is a shining sea Locked in by lofty land, And its great Pillars of Hercules, Above the shifting sand I here behold in majesty Uprising ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Chester had been shifting about uneasily. He realized that, if his project did not miscarry, he would not see his aunt again, and his heart softened to her. Harsh as she was, she was the only protector he had ever known, and the boy had a vague wish to carry away with him some kindly word or look from ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... think them so," he concluded, his glance shifting rapidly between the judge and the ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... of whom took off their plaited hair girdles, joined them together, and then the band was passed round a likely tree, knotted round one of the wearers' loins, and the next minute he was apparently walking like a monkey up the tree, shifting the band dexterously and going on and on till he reached the crown of leaves and the fruit, which he began screwing off and pitching down into the sand, where they were caught up, the pointed end of a club-handle inserted, and the great husk wrenched off. Then a few chops with a stone axe made a ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... priest and layman advanced into the chamber the Old Maid's features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it was only the shadow of a tattered curtain waving betwixt the dead ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the priest hung up his chasuble on the stand and mounted the pulpit. After a noisy shifting of chairs and dragging of feet and coughing, the people sat still, with their faces turned to the priest. He began by reading out the notices in a snuffling tone: the intentions of the masses for the ensuing week; the names of those about to be married ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... entreaty and command. But there came no response. Thick and thronging the viewless presences seemed to gather, to look, and to listen; but no reply came to his ears, and no sight met his eyes save the swathed corpses and the white-gleaming bones on which the shifting moonbeams fell. ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... indexing finger. Out of the darkness and into the swaying gleam of the lanterns a black-robed figure, bent double with the weight of years, hobbled its weird way toward the diners. From a voluminous sable sleeve, a long thin hand projected itself, the wiry fingers clutching a tall staff. The shifting glow of the lanterns played fantastically upon the apparition's veiled head as, step by step, it drew slowly nearer. An audible sigh of amazement, mingled with dread of the unknown, swept the little company. Added to the unexpected materialization of the seeress ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... division of labour, or rather this shifting of responsibility on to another's shoulders, had its bad results, for while the dog improved every day in sharpness and conscientious performance of duty, the boy did the opposite. Tim became somewhat careless and lazy, ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... which the canes were crushed. The first man he met was Nokes, who acted as overseer, having a gang of Polynesian laborers under him—sleek, swarthy fellows from the South Sea Islands, with linen trowsers on and nothing else—who crept silently among the vats and machinery, shifting the ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... True, this does not involve that our idea shall not resemble the object that gave rise to it, any more than the fact that a looking-glass bears no resemblance to the things reflected in it involves that the reflection shall not resemble the things reflected; the shifting nature, however, of our ideas and conceptions is enough to show that they must be symbolical, and conditioned by changes going on within ourselves as much as by those outside us; and if, going behind the ideas which suffice for daily use, we extend ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... of war, Paddy whipped, Knockecroghery kicked; and Paddy, seemingly unconscious of danger, sat within reach of the kicking horse, twitching up first one of his legs, then the other, and shifting as the animal aimed his hoofs, escaping every time as it were by miracle. With a mixture of temerity and presence of mind, which made us alternately look upon him as a madman and a hero, he gloried in the danger, secure of success, and of the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... their Declaration of Independence. The procession began over there at the Presidio," I pointed to the north. "A brown-robed friar carrying an image of St. Francis led the little company of men, women and children over the shifting sand-dunes to this very spot where a rude church had been erected. Its sides were of mud plastered over a palisade wall of willow poles and its ceiling a leaky roof of tule rushes but it was the beginning ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... forming three thicknesses, in which the pin is pushed as far as it will go. In the case of large-bodied moths, or any valuable insects, it is as well to support the abdomen with a layer of wool, cross-pinning the body on either side to prevent it jarring or shifting. The box may then, for greater security, be wrapped in a sheet of wool and tied up. The address should not be written on the box, or the stamps affixed thereto, but on a direction label, otherwise some vigorous post-office sorter, or stamper, will convince you ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the curious lightness of a man spring-footed. His gaze held the other's shifting eyes as he plucked the knife from ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... famous Bossuet, and one of the early strongholds of the Reformation. The neighbouring country, pays Meldois as it is called, is one vast fruit and vegetable garden, bringing in enormous returns. From our vantage ground, for, of course, we get outside the vehicle, we survey the shifting landscape, wood and valley and plain, soon seeing the city with its imposing Cathedral, flashing like marble, high above the winding river and fields of green and gold on either side. I know nothing ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... amenable to further and further explanation. To this further explanation Philosophy gave notable assistance. To 'elaborate our concepts' has been said to be the whole business of Philosophy, that is, to arrest the vague and shifting meanings that float before our minds loosely attached to the words of ordinary careless speech, to fix their outlines, distinguishing, defining, ordering and organizing until each mass of meaning is improved and refined into a thought worthy ...
— Progress and History • Various
... formerly, and logicians of the present generation tend to doubt whether it has any vital significance.[33] They point out that in practice we intermingle the two kinds almost inextricably, that the distinction between facts and principles is temporary and shifting, and that we cannot fit some of the common forms of inference into these categories without ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... subdued and furtive Steve. Kirk's heart leaped at the sight of him. It was as if he had found something solid to cling to in a shifting world. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... Rosemary?" asked her brother, dexterously shifting Sarah's position so that she could not kick the fire with her shoes—a feat ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... somebody. If this chap fails to do it, it'll be done by some other chap.... Will you come into Holyhead with me and enquire about trains? There's a rumour that a whole lot of them have been taken off. They're shifting troops about...." ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... was not abated till the boat was drawn clear of the shore and floated free in the water. Then, without shifting its position as regarded the bank itself, the motion was continued down the current, until some eight or a dozen feet were passed. The hopes of Lena-Wingo were high, for the fact that the sentinel had failed to discover what was going on under his very eyes indicated that ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... put the house in its most shining order, to plan daily little special dishes, lest he come upon her unawares; to sit and sew upon her clothing, shifting and turning her patchwork materials until she had worked out clever combinations which conveyed small ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... their hair came down, or off, as the case might be, And lo! the rest of the crew were simple girls, like me, Who all had fled from their homes in a sailor's blue array, To follow the shifting ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... earth, and the clouds, both of the upper and lower strata, were all driving hurriedly east-southeast. We left the following day for Fort Dodge and Sioux City. At the former place they had had a slight shower only, with shifting winds; while at Sioux City not a particle of rain had fallen, the roads being not only dry but quite dusty. This was not a merely local storm, but was the only great easterly one covering any extent of territory and time, answering to the equinoctial, which visited the United ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... Berta exerted her nimble self to overtake Miss Sanders, who was sidling away in a strikingly unprincesslike manner, her eyes shifting guiltily. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... began again slowly, shifting his position in the chair, "raises in my mind, at least, a question which has often occurred to me before. Is it possible for a person, taking advantage of the scientific knowledge we have gained, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... area for us. We had grown so accustomed to shifting from one part of the line to another that we had already nicknamed ourselves the ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... a tax on luxury is no better than another tax, unless it hinders luxury, which cannot be said of the impost upon tea, while it is thus used by the great and the mean, the rich and the poor. The truth is, that, by the loss of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, we procure the means of shifting three hundred and sixty thousand, at best, only from one hand to another; but, perhaps, sometimes into hands by which it is not very honestly employed. Of the five or six hundred seamen, sent to China, I am told, that sometimes half, commonly a third part, perish in the voyage; so ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... structure is vertically above the middle line of the wire, and the support of the scale must be leveled in the direction of the beam, so as to cause the center of gravity to take this normal position. After the scale is thus leveled, if from any cause whatever, such as shifting the scale on a table, or shifting the table itself, the scale support is thrown out of level, the center of gravity of the poise and beam is shifted from the vertical line above the support, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... ready to offer good rents for the shops, on condition of being granted leases for eighteen years. The dwelling apartments rose in value by the shifting of the centre in Paris life —henceforth transferred to the region between the Bourse and the Madeleine, now the seat of the political power and financial authority in Paris. The money paid to him by the Minister, added ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a rapid shifting of attention between organic impulse to pair and organic dread of pairing, until an equilibrium is reached, which is not essentially different from the case, in human society, of that woman who, "whispering, 'I will ne'er consent,' consented." In either ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas |
