"Elfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vision, painted like a picture in the air, I saw the elfish figure of a man with frosty hair— A quaint old man that chuckled with a laugh as he appeared, And with ruddy cheeks like embers in the ashes ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... not so much wonder at it myself sometimes when I saw Kitty's pale cheeks flush with that delicious pink, her wide hazel eyes deepen and glow, her little face light up with elfish mirth, and her round, childish figure poise itself in some coquettish attitude. Then she had such absurd little hands, with short fingers and babyish dimples, such tiny feet, and such a wealth of crinkled dark-brown hair—such bewitching little helpless ways, too, a fashion of throwing herself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... expected of him, made no answer. At first he had been almost repelled by the girl, but he was becoming mildly interested in her. She could, he thought, be daring to the verge of coarseness, and he did not admire her pessimism, which was probably a pose; but there was a vein of elfish mischief in her that appealed to him. Sitting among the heather, small, lithe, and felinely graceful, watching him with a provocative smile in her rather narrow eyes, she ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... The occasion of this elfish concert, it seemed, was the birth of a fairy child, at which the fairies, with the exception of two or three who were discomposed at having nothing to cover the little innocent with, were enjoying themselves with that joviality usually characteristic of such an event. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... looked on and laughed With a shrill and sneering jibe; Her soul grew fat to see them chaffed, This mad and elfish tribe. The big black caldron boiled so high With food for these queer mites, That it lit the world throughout the sky, And down came all ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... West and changing the maps of the far East gives one a queer, I might even say a weird feeling. It is almost the sensation received when, after climbing through miles of silence to reach some Shinto shrine, you find voidness only and solitude,—an elfish, empty little wooden structure, mouldering in shadows a thousand years old. The strength of Japan, like the strength of her ancient faith, needs little material display: both exist where the deepest real power of any great people exists,—in ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... sensual indulgence? that fearful picture of a deliberate effort to shut out the thought of debts and duels, deceit and evil luck? In that music Mozart disputes the palm with Moliere. The terrific finale, with its glow, its power, its despair and laughter, its grisly spectres and elfish women, centres about the prodigal's last effort made in the after-supper heat of wine, the frantic struggle which ends the drama. Victurnien was living through this infernal poem, and alone. He saw visions of himself—a friendless, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... him entirely. He gave it up. The counting of discs was more tangible to his philosophy. His rusty black tile, so wondrously become a cornucopia of wealth, had by that same magic upset the old fellow into a kind of hysterical gaiety, which was most elfish and uncanny. He motioned Driscoll ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... spiky hair, and gave her an elfish glance. "Candys don't seem to like Weightses," he said. "Grampy didn't, nor ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... Bubbles' photograph was always appearing in the Sketch and in the Daily Mirror. She was constantly roped in to help in any smart charity affair, and she could dance, act, and sell, with the best. She was as popular with women as with men, for there was something disarming, attaching, almost elfish, in Bubbles Dunster's charm. For one thing, she was so good-natured, so kindly, so always eager to do someone a good turn—and last, not least, she had inherited her aunt's cleverness about clothes! She dressed in a way which Blanche Farrow thought ridiculously outre and queer, but still, ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... of these girls in particular whom I noticed every day, and whom, at last, I compassionately supplied with a couple of safety-pins, after explaining their uses. She was decidedly ugly. But sometimes you may see others here, with neatly chiselled limbs and elfish eyes of a sultry, troubling charm into which, if sentimentally disposed, you can read an ocean of love; these need not be supplied with safety-pins. An enthusiastic Frenchman at Gabes actually married one of these sphynx-like creatures—a hazardous and quixotic ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... our dreams of them that women cease to dwell in the abstract and become issues, to be met with more or less trepidation. Back among some of his idle dreams there had been a Kitty, blue-eyed, black-haired, slender and elfish. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... wild dark creature, slim and elfish, with a queer little smile that flashed sudden ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... trees to illustrate their dainty elfish dwarfishness, but realising that no one could guess the height without a scale, I took a second of the same with a small Indian sitting ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... her sharply, suspiciously. Kitty, quite conscious of the look, was straightway pricked by an elfish curiosity. Could she carry him off—trouble Mary's possession there and then? She believed she could. She was well aware of a certain relation between herself and Cliffe, if, at least, she chose to develop it. Should she? Her vanity insisted ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. A piquant, tricksy sprite, as naughty as she is bewitching—a creature of fire and air, more elfish than human, at once her mother's torment and her treasure.—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of very primitive men has hardly any tincture of philosophy. Nature can have little unity for savages. It is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical powers. 'Close to nature' though they live, they are anything but Wordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is likely to be at midnight, when the camp smoke rises straight to the wicked full moon in the zenith, and the forest ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... on a pile of untired wheels, and with an elfish grin began singing. Instantly the three humorists became silent and listened, the blacksmith pumping his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, fiend-like; supernatural, weird, uncanny, unearthly, spectral; ghostly, ghost-like; elfin, elvin[obs3], elfish, elflike[obs3]; haunted; pokerish [obs3][U.S.]. possessed, possessed by a devil, possessed by a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... flesh and blood,—was dim, elfish, wan, with large, mild eyes, as blue and misty as the nebulae that Herschel found in Southern skies,—eyes that looked at nothing, but seemed to penetrate the universe and shed soft solemn light over ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... lit up her face for a moment, as she flashed her beautiful wide eyes upon him. She seemed a part of that beauteous night, elfish and delicate as a moonbeam or a flower, fragile as the song of a bird. He could not speak, but stood drinking her in with his eyes and soul, his face wearing a mixed expression of rapture and pain. She knew what he felt, and like him, she, too, struggled ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... at the foot of the stairs. It came more faintly this time, deadened by the closed door of the staircase, but to his enlightened senses it proclaimed so clearly what it was—the echo of a cracked, shrill voice, of a laugh insane, uncanny, elfish—that he trembled lest Louis should hear it also and gain the clue. That was a thing to be avoided at all costs; and even as this occurred to him he saw the way to avoid it. Basterga and Grio were absent: if this ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... trottand in tronps from the twilight; Some saidled a she-ape, all grathed into green, Some hobland on a hemp-stalk, hovand to the hight; The king of Pharie and his court, with the Elf queen, With many elfish incubus was ridand that night. There an elf on an ape, an unsel begat. Into a pot by Pomathorne; That bratchart in a busse was born; They fand a monster on the morn, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... extreme end of the boat. With a quick turn, Madge ran after the escaping form. As it poised itself for a leap toward the shore, Madge caught at the cloak and dragged it away from the face, and for a brief instant she saw the face of a boy a little older perhaps than she was. It was a wild and elfish face, while a pair of ears, ending almost in points, stuck up through the masses of thick, curly hair that covered his head. But before she could get a distinct impression of his face the young man was gone, racing up the low embankment with great ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... a slab of stone that stretches some distance beyond the side of the pit! Bushes with twisted and fantastic arms, growing, they or their ancestors, from time immemorial in the clefts of the rock, reach towards the light, and the elfish hart's-tongue fern, itself half in darkness, points down with frond that never moves in that eternal stillness which all the winds of heaven pass over, to a thicker darkness whence comes the everlasting wail and groan of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... at times something elephantinely elfish in M. Hanaud's demeanour, which left Mr. Ricardo at a loss. But he had come to notice that these undignified manifestations usually took place when Hanaud had reached a definite opinion upon some point which had ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... there came a shell he dived to the bottom of his hole, then reappeared, showing his dirty, elfish face, until it was time to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... vex, tease, pique me sometimes about what she called my "bizarreries anglaises," my "caprices insulaires," with a wild and witty wickedness that made a perfect white demon of her while it lasted. This was rare, however, and the elfish freak was always short: sometimes when driven a little hard in the war of words—for her tongue did ample justice to the pith, the point, the delicacy of her native French, in which language she always ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the door, and pushed it; but the light Waned, faded, sank; and as she came within— Hark, hark! A spirit was it, and asleep? A spirit doth not breathe like clay. There hung A cresset from the roof, and thence appeared A flickering speck of light, and disappeared; Then dropped along the floor its elfish flakes, That fell on some one resting, in the gloom,— Somewhat, a spectral shadow, then a shape That loomed. It was a heifer, ay, and white, Breathing and languid ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... seemed mysterious prophecies of unknown good yet to arise out of the hours of life. How dreamy the winter twilight came in there,—as yet the candles were not lighted,—when the crickets chirped around the dark stone hearth, and shifting tongues of flame flickered and cast dancing shadows and elfish lights on the walls, while grandmother nodded over her knitting-work, and puss purred, and old Rover lay dreamily opening now one eye and then the other on the family group! With all our ceiled houses, let us not forget our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... skirt flapped about her ankles in such a very grown-up manner. Mary Rose's yellow hair had always been bobbed but no one had seen that it was trimmed before she left Mifflin and it hung in rather straight lanky locks about her elfish face. Some of the locks were long enough to be drawn under one of Ella's discarded red hair ribbons and Aunt Kate pinned back the others. The result was a very different Mary Rose from the one who ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... painted like a picture in the air, I saw the elfish figure, of a man with frosty hair— A quaint old man that chuckled with a laugh as he appeared, And with ruddy cheeks like embers in ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... walked between Dora and Susie to the side-hill where the first grasshoppers of spring were always found, felt at peace with all the world—even Smith—and it was in his heart to hug the elfish half-breed child as she skipped beside him. Dora's frequent, bubbling laughter made him thrill; he longed to shout aloud like a schoolboy given ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... with his elfish little countenance lighting up. He was very slight and small for his age, a little shadow darting across the sunshine. The half of the terrace lay in a blaze of light, but all was cool and fresh in the corner where Lady Markland's light chairs ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Elfish everything seems; for everything as well as everybody is small, and queer, and mysterious: the little houses under their blue roofs, the little shop-fronts hung with blue, and the smiling little people in their blue costumes. The illusion is only broken by ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... thought, looking down into her proud face. I cannot describe how very odd and elfish it did seem to have those sonorous words rolling out of the smiling mouth. The band striking up put an end to the quotation and to the confidences. As the exercises progressed and approached nearer and nearer the effort on which all her interest was concentrated, my ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... superannuated mastiff or bulldog grown old in office surpassed this fluffy midget in stoic dignity. He sometimes reminded me of a small, squat, unshakable desert cactus. For he never displayed a single trace of the merry, tricksy, elfish fun of the terriers and collies that we all know, nor of their touching affection and devotion. Like children, most small dogs beg to be loved and allowed to love; but Stickeen seemed a very Diogenes, asking only to be let alone: a true child of the ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... between us, and was no longer the object nearest to me. The girl whose light fingers grasped me, whose elfish charming face looked into mine—who, I thought, was betraying an interest in my feelings that she would not have directly avowed,—this warm breathing presence again possessed my senses and imagination like a returning siren melody which had ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... have yer table agin the wall," she broke out, "at a five-o'clock tea; I know, 'cause I've peeked in the windows up on the avenoo, an' I've seen your folks, too." She nodded over at Phronsie. "I know what I'll do." She tossed her head with its black, elfish locks, and darted off in triumph, dragging up from another corner a big box, first unceremoniously dumping out the various articles, such as dirty clothes, a tin pan or two, a skillet, an empty bottle—last of ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... room contains some admirable bits of the work of Richard Doyle, among other things a weird and grotesque, but charming cartoon of an elfish procession passing through a quaint and picturesque mediaeval city. It is a conte fantastique in colour—a marvel of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... her comprehension, however, she warmed toward him. It was so good to see him lounging on the sofa again, his green-gold eyes bright, his brown face with its elfish smile radiant now that his point was won. She knew he had been unkind to her both in word and act, but it was impossible not to forgive him, now that she enjoyed again ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... head of all armed with scythes—through the city, into the wide gates of the Greyfriars. Lovely is his bride in white, nor less so his widow in black—more so in grey, portentous of a great change. Sad, too, to the Sage the thought of leaving his first-born as yet unborn—or if born, haply an elfish Creature with a precocious countenance, looking as if he had begun life with borrowing ten years at least from his own father—auld-farrant as a Fairy, and gash as the Last ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... one danger in play of this kind, and that is, that deep down in the breast of every slippery, frothy, elfish Undine sleeps the germ of an unawakened soul, which suddenly, in the course of some such trafficking with the outward shows and seemings of affection, may wake up and make of the teasing, tricksy elf a sad and earnest woman—a creature of loves and self-denials ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, and Polly stretched out her arms to the rice and salt fish, and began to cry. "Oh," said I, "perhaps she can eat;" and from that day the little ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... greatest opera, "Der Freischuetz," appeared in 1821. The initial force of the German romantic school, he founded his operas on romantic themes, and depicted in tones the things of the weird, fantastic and elfish world that kindled his imagination. He has been called the connecting link between Mozart and Wagner, and in many of his theories he anticipated the latter. National to the core, he embodied in his music the finest qualities ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... the scene starts out upon the canvas in two or three strokes of the brush. The skeleton ship, with the dicing demons on its deck; the setting sun peering "through its ribs, as if through a dungeon- grate;" the water-snakes under the moonbeams, with the "elfish light" falling off them "in hoary flakes" when they reared; the dead crew, who work the ship and "raise their limbs like lifeless tools"—everything seems to have been actually seen, and we believe it all as the story of a truthful eye-witness. The details of the voyage, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... main thing, indeed, which has led me to seek this interview with Sprigg's father. I should hardly have come a thousand miles out of my way, since set of sun, had it been merely to gratify Manitou-Echo in an elfish whim. In brief, then, and in sweet earnest, too, the object we have in view is intended mainly for Sprigg's own good; and, as the means to this end, my son Manitou-Echo has sent, as a present to your son Sprigg, a pair of red moccasins, to put him, as I have just ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... back aghast. He could see no one at all, and this peeping, elfish-like voice, rising amid the storm to his ear out of the darkness, reminded him of the days when he believed in the other world—that is, of course, the world ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... before, with Sarah and Mary beside her—they had married during the war, but nothing had prevented them from coming back to make Billabong ready. Near them the storekeeper, Jack Archdale, and his pretty wife, with their elfish small daughter; and Mick Shanahan and Dave Boone, with the Scotch gardener, Hogg, and his Chinese colleague—and sworn enemy—Lee Wing. They were all there, a little welcoming group—but Norah could see them only through a mist ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... some fathoms deep, a phosphorescent and flashing cloud. It came inboard, and was suspended over the deck, a bulging mass, its bottom was unfastened, and out gushed our catch, slithering over the deck, convulsive in the scuppers. The mass of blubber and plasm pulsed with an elfish glow. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... "Wilhelm Meister"—the wonder and delight of the reader—is Mignon, the child-woman,—a pure creation of Goethe's genius, without a prototype in literature. Readers of Scott will remember Fenella, the elfish maiden in "Peveril of the Peak." Scott says in his Preface to that novel: "The character of Fenella, which from its peculiarity made a favorable impression on the public, was far from being original. The ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... bonnie Janet dreamed that the long-lost Robin was living in Elf-land, and that he was to pass through the streets with a cavalcade of fairies. But, alas! how should even a sister know him in the dim starlight, among the passing troops of elfish and mortal riders? The dream assured her that she might let the first company go by, and the second; but Robin would ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... like it used to be," she said with a shake of her elfish head and a twinkle in her brilliant eyes. "Clara's got real well and Pop's swore off, and there ain't no lively times like there used to be. Of course," she prophesied cheerfully, "Pop'll fall off in about a week—he ain't one to stick to ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... paper which bust up, not 'avin' the money to pay wages, thro' which, there was doo to him the sum of one pound seven and sixpence halfpenny, which I, bein' 'is widder, ought to 'ave, not that I expects to see it on this side of the grave—oh, dear, no!" and she gave a shrill, elfish laugh. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... English spy you're giving shelter to," he had said, when Martha Stoddard had told him that Anne was to live with them, "and she'll bring no luck to the house." But his wife had made no response; the dark-eyed, elfish-looking child had already found a place ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... the abrupt address, drew his fingers from the long beard he was playfully stroking and, eyeing me with elfish gravity, seemed to ponder the question as if some comprehension of its importance had found entrance into his small brain. Annoyed at the doctor's whim, yet trusting to the child's intuition, I waited with inner anxiety ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... hang, having no further use for them whatever. But on one of the Park benches, in the golden morning, the wonderment added, I remember, to my joy, for we hadn't, Lorraine and I, been the least bit overwhelmed about them: Lorraine only pretending a little, with her charming elfish art, that she occasionally was, in order to see how far Eliza would go. Well, that brilliant woman HAD gone pretty far for us, truly, if, after all, they were only in the manicure line. She was a-doing of it, as Lorraine says, my massive lady was, in the "parlor" where I don't suppose ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no more, probably. You had not enough of the artist's skill and science to give it full being: yet the drawings are, for a school-girl, peculiar. As to the thoughts, they are elfish. These eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream. How could you make them look so clear, and yet not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays. And what meaning is that in their solemn depth? And who taught ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... by the big red barn which loomed up in the background. Something in the appearance of the front door suggested to Peggy that it was not intended for daily use, and she made her way around to the side and knocked. A child not far from Dorothy's age, with straight black hair, and elfish eyes, opened the door, looked her over, and shrieked a ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... its light fell upon the white, elfish face of Benita, whose long dark hair streamed about her; it shone in her great eyes. Still she could see nothing, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... overhead made a merry sound as of shepherds piping on oaten straws in new grass where there are daisies; and there was a little elfish laughter of clarionets, and a fluttering among the cool flutes like spring wind blowing through crisp young leaves in April. The harps began to pulse and throb with a soft cadence like raindrops falling into a clear pool where brown ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... policemen had vanished almost as quickly as they came. It is very possible, of course, that they were fairies. In that case the somewhat illogical character of their view of crime, law, and personal responsibility would find a bright and elfish explanation; perhaps if I had lingered in the glade till moonrise I might have seen rings of tiny policemen dancing on the sward; or running about with glow-worm belts, arresting grasshoppers for damaging blades ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... herself nearing fifty; but her slim little wiry body and her elfish, wrinkled face, never still, but ever alive with the same vivacity that years ago had attracted William Allsopp, made her seem younger than her years; and her husband treated her as though she were still ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... volunteers to show us to the great-grandfather. Our elfish little girls at once offered, and went dancing off down the trail like autumn leaves in a wind. Whether it was the Indian in them, or the effects of environment, or merely our own imaginations, we both had the same thought—that in these strange, taciturn, friendly, smiling, pirouetting ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... air of childhood still clinging, as if from habit alone, to the outward insignia of maturity, in this mercurial, magnetic, and undaunted young person; and in her malicious elfish eyes could be read the solemn determination to force every possible claim that her double advantage, as child and adult, could, according ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... curious also how the wild things of the field and wood seemed unafraid of her. At times, returning to where he had left her hidden, he would pause, wondering to whom she was talking, and then as he drew nearer would hear the stealing away of little feet, the startled flutter of wings. She had elfish ways, of which it seemed impossible to cure her. Often the good man, returning from some late visit of mercy with his lantern and his stout oak cudgel, would pause and listen to a wandering voice. It was never near enough for him to hear ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light 275 Fell ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the same thing: what the day will bring forth. But each searcher into the dim and dangerous future has, of course, individual methods—some shuffling seven times and some ten, and so forth, and all intent upon placating the elfish goddess, Caprice. There is little Miss Banks, for example, but I must tell you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... Thousand Ships, in the Russell Isles; and the remaining twelve were from Pennduffryn on the east coast of Guadalcanar. In addition to these—and they were all on deck, chattering and piping in queer, almost elfish, falsetto voices—were the two white men, Captain Van Horn and his Danish mate, Borckman, making a ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... not to live in a state of perpetual mental hot water. It was privately whispered in the family circle that Polly encouraged her in her naughtiness. Whether that was the case or not, these two had a kind of quaint, elfish friendship between them, Firefly in her heart of hearts worshipping Polly, and obeying ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... a sense of her own incompetence. She had not expected to understand the boys; she had never had any experience of boys; but she had expected to win the little girl to her, and make her a little friend, perhaps almost a sister. Susan D. received her advances with an elfish coldness that had something not human in it, Margaret thought. The child was like a changeling, in the old fairy stories. That evening, when bedtime came, Margaret went up with her to the pretty room, hoping for a pleasant time. She sat down and took the little girl ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... dog's name, and he appeared in a fair way of "putting a girdle round the earth," if not in forty minutes like his elfish namesake, at least in an appreciable limited space of time, Teddy never being content except he carried about the unfortunate brute with him everywhere he went, hugging it tightly in his arms and almost smothering its life out by way of ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... I have an elfish maiden child; She is not two years old; Through windy locks her eyes gleam wild, With glances shy ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... shadow of the ship I watch'd the water-snakes: They mov'd in tracks of shining white; And when they rear'd, the elfish light Fell ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... unnaturally bright, and turned wistfully upon them as she entered. There were ashes upon the hearth and ashes upon the floor, a hair-brush upon the table and an empty plate upon the chair, with swarms of flies sipping the few drops of molasses and feeding upon the crumbs of bread left there by the elfish-looking child now in the bed beside its mother. There was nothing but poverty—squalid, disgusting poverty—visible everywhere, and Lucy grew sick and faint at the, to her, ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... Catholic noblemen that what they ought really to desire was a total and rapid transformation of the whole fabric of society, his efforts to found an association for the moral regeneration of mankind, and his elfish amusement of launching the truth upon the waters in the form of pamphlets sealed up in bottles. Shelley at this age perpetrated "rags" upon the universe, much as commonplace youths make hay of their fellows' rooms. It is amusing to read the solemn letters in which Godwin, complacently ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... Mrs. Vane, at lunch looked at the four bright faces before her, Vera, a small copy of herself; Elf, whose mischievous face was truly elfish; Nancy, whose gypsy beauty always pleased, and Dorothy, blue-eyed, fair-haired, whose lovable disposition shone from her eyes, and made her ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... broke forth with wild, elfish voices that mimicked his merriment till it died on his lips. He preferred utter loneliness to the vague sense of companionship given by these weird echoes. Somehow the strangeness of all that had happened to him had stirred his imagination, ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Tutors' Lane. It is something of a pity, nevertheless, that it must be given up, for Nancy was not particularly pretty, as young men nowadays measure beauty, and were it possible, the truth might have been hidden. She was something too elfish—and then there was the Billings mouth already mentioned. Gertrude Ellis, who spent much of her time with her aunt in New York and who had a proper care for her person, thought it a ridiculous pose for Nancy not to have something done about ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... her last vain pilgrimage to the Church of the Sacred Heart and stood before the glass, removing a thick black veil from the pale despair of her face, she was suddenly aware of a strange, unfamiliar smile lifting the drooped lines of her lips—an elfish smile which transformed her face to something different from her own. And immediately those smiling lips uttered words that fell as unexpectedly on her ears as though they had proceeded from the mouth of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... summer's night Mused a mischief-making sprite, Underneath the leafy hood Of a fairy-haunted wood. Here and there, in light and shade, Ill-assorted couples strayed: "Lord," said Puck, in elfish glee, "Lord, what fools these ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... lock. At last the bolts grated back, there was a pause, and then the door opened a little way, and Otto thought that he could see someone peeping in from without. By and by the door opened further, there was another pause, and then a slender, elfish-looking little girl, with straight black hair and shining black eyes, crept ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... enemy withstood, And stay'd their lives, fast ebbing with the sand. Long while this strife engaged the pretty band; But now bold Chanticleer, from farm to farm, Challenged the dawn creeping o'er eastern land, And well the fairies knew that shrill alarm, Which sounds the knell of every elfish charm. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... an old shingle, fallen from the roof, which she had appropriated as her agricultural tool, she began to dig about them, pulling up the weeds, as she saw grandpapa doing. The kitten, too, with a look of elfish sagacity, lent her assistance, plying her paws with vast haste and efficiency at the roots of one of the shrubs. This particular one was much smaller than the rest, perhaps because it was a native of the torrid zone, and required greater care than the others ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... into the darkness, a tiny elfish glimmer flickered in the void below, flickered and was gone, and he rubbed his eyes for playing him tricks. But the next wave broke slowly round the wide curve of the bay in a crescent of lambent flame, and a flood ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... the instrument. Her rippling passages are like music writ in water, and she has a singing touch too, and when she accompanies, the subordination and sympathy are admirable. She is not pretty, nor in any way got up, but is elfish and quaint-looking, and quite young. We sat quite near to Browning, who is a nice-looking old man, delightfully clean. He seemed to delight in Neruda and Piatti, and followed the music with a ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... course, was unable to find them; the effects of hunger probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length she peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and questioned: ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... an arm round her; they propelled her towards the house. They were lithe, supple creatures of twenty and twenty-one. Between them walked Neville, with her small, pointed, elfish face, that was sensitive to every breath of thought and emotion like smooth water wind-stirred. With her great violet eyes brooding in it under thin black brows, and her wet hair hanging in loose strands, she looked like an ageless wood-dryad between two slim young saplings. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... that—for it is the fashion now-a-days with novelists to give no encouragement to the insolence of mere beauty, but rather to prove to all whom it may concern how little a sensible woman requires to get on with in the world. Both have also an elfish kind of nature, with which they divine the secrets of other hearts, and conceal those of their own; and both rejoice in that peculiarity of feature which Mademoiselle de Luzy has not contributed to render ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that fairy-folk are necessarily malign? Example treads upon example to prove that the Breton fairy is seldom beneficent, that he or she is prone to ill-nature and spitefulness, not to say fiendish malice on occasion. There appears to be a deep-rooted conviction that the elfish race devotes itself to the annoyance of mankind, practising a species of peculiarly irritating trickery, wanton and destructive. Only very rarely is a spirit of friendliness evinced, and then a motive ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... sing thy praise From dawn till set of sun, and then The nightingale, the queen of song, In praise of thee poureth forth her lay Till every mellow silver note, Far floating in the silent trees, Is taken by an elfish choir, And chanted softly to the moon. The eagle her wee eaglets tells Of thee, that they may freedom love; Then soaring full beyond the clouds, She looks with vaunted pride on thee. So must thy spirit fill the ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... hay-harvest, Anna was a brown elfish mite dancing about. Tilly always marvelled over her, more than ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... days came and went; the riotous bees Tore the warm grapes in many a dusty-vine, And men grew faint and thin with too much ease, And Winter gave no sign: But all the while beyond the northmost woods He sat and smiled and watched his spirits play In elfish dance and eery roundelay, Tripping in many moods With snowy curve and fairy ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... look up. Soft Shoes had already raised the trap and was looking down into the room, his rather elfish face squeezed into a grimace, half of ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... serge, with a high-peaked cap of the same material drawn completely down over his head and face. Two round holes cut in this ghostly head-gear revealed simply two black glittering eyes, which shone with that singular elfish effect which belongs to the human eye when removed from its appropriate and natural accessories. As they passed out, the figure rattled a box on which was painted an image of despairing souls raising ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... elfish creature, nine years old, diminutive and pale. Her long, silky brown hair, which was as straight as an Indian's, like mother's, and which she tore out when angry, usually covered her face, and her ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the downy cheek Of the peach, and smoothed it sleek, And flushed it into splendor; And, with many an elfish freak, Gave the russet's rust a wipe— Prankt the rambo with a stripe, And the winesap blushed its reddest As they spanked ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... though, by the way, is an index of beauty amongst them), low foreheads, and dreamy-looking obliquely-set eyes. Their head-gear is much after the Chinese style, except, that in addition to the queue, they allow the remainder of the hair to develop itself, which it does in the wildest and most elfish manner. For dress, the untanned skins of the animals caught in the chase, with the hair outboard, answers all their requirements. At first one experiences a great difficulty in distinguishing the sexes, for the ordinary bearings by which we sight "danger" ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... opposite to the man who loved him so dearly. His figure and appearance had always been singular, but now it was more so than ever. He had been sleeping in his clothes, and he had that peculiar look of discomfort which always accompanies such rest. His black, elfish, uncombed locks, had not been cut since he left Durbelliere, and his beard for many days had not been shorn. He was wretchedly thin and gaunt; indeed, his hollow, yellow cheeks, and cadaverous jaws, almost told a tale of utter ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... world need not be reminded that a wet boat is an abomination; what, then, must it be when it is caused by hours of snowfall, large flakes softly wet? Everything gets drenched and sopping, and it really appeared as if these white hazelnut flakes were possessed by an elfish desire to baffle your most careful efforts to keep them out. My waterproof bag was to the human eye impervious; but there was one unnoticed opening not an inch long by half an inch wide, and the flakes discovered it at once. There was a japanned ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... power of command that forced an answer. Jock Binning, crutched and with an elfish face and figure and voice, had pulled down upon himself the office of revelator. The group swayed a little from him and he was left facing White Farm and the laird of Glenfernie. He had a wailing, chanting, elvish manner of speech. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... food, or climbing blades of grass as if they were trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the country. A mole throwing up its mound at the end of its burrow and making its way out at last with the long-nailed paws which looked so like elfish hands, had absorbed him one whole morning. Ants' ways, beetles' ways, bees' ways, frogs' ways, birds' ways, plants' ways, gave him a new world to explore and when Dickon revealed them all and added foxes' ways, otters' ways, ferrets' ways, squirrels' ways, and trout's and water-rats' ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... when she had imagined herself unobserved, and many other nameless little circumstances, that gave him a strong feeling of want of sincerity in his stepmother. Mrs. Owen brought with her into the family her little child by her first husband, a boy nearly three years old. He was one of those elfish, observant, mocking children, over whose feelings you seem to have no control: agile and mischievous, his little practical jokes, at first performed in ignorance of the pain he gave, but afterward proceeding ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ha, ha! [Resuming her former attitude.] As I was remarking, I'm a mass of inconsistency. On the stage the embodiment of elfish fun—— ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... impossibile'' is on his tongue as he quickens his pace — for what else can he do? A step, and the spell is shattered — all is cruel and alien once more; while every copse and hedge-row seems a-tinkle with faint elfish laughter. The Fairies have had their joke: they have opened the wicket one of their own hand's-breadths, and shut it in their victim's face. When next that victim catches a fairy, he purposes to tie up the brat in sight of his own ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... extra starvation on her own part, been able to buy a wondrous gold-and-crimson worsted bird suspended from an elastic string, a bird which bobbed up and down to command in the most lively and artistic manner? And had not her hired baby actually laughed at the clumsy toy—laughed an elfish and weird laugh, the first it had ever indulged in? And Liz had laughed too, for pure gladness in the child's mirth, and the worsted bird became a sort of uncouth charm to make them ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... interesting and unusual," she admitted. Then she rose and crossed over to his chair and perched herself, with odd, elfish, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... well have seemed unreal, the creature of a dream, fantastic, intangible, insensible, arch, not wholly without some touch of the malign. In his heart he groaned over her beauty as if she were lost to him forever in this elfish transfiguration. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... breathlessly thrilling, and during it Carmencita did not speak. At the window of the taxi she pressed her face so closely that the glass had continually to be wiped lest the cloud made by her breath prevent her seeing clearly; and, watching her, Van Landing smiled. What an odd, elfish, wistful little face it was—keen, alert, intelligent, it reflected every emotion that filled her, and her emotions were many. In her long, ill-fitting coat and straw hat, in the worn shoes and darned gloves, she was a study that puzzled and perplexed, and at thought of her future he ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... She peeped up in his face almost slyly. "Then they call her: 'You Kid, come here! Dirty little slut, take the broom and sweep out the bar! Idle little devil, fetch water for the kitchen!'" Her smile was peaked and elfish. She laid a cunning finger beside her pursed-up lips. "But though they scold and call bad names, they never come and fetch her down off the Little Kopje. Beat her when she comes in, and serve her ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... left still blooming on her virgin stem. It would have been difficult to guess her exact age. She owned to thirty-four, and a decade ago, when she had first joined her father in India, she must have possessed a certain elfish prettiness of her own. Now, thanks to those years spent under a tropical sun, she was ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... door was opened by an elfish-looking boy, and the earliest applicant was allowed to enter, the boy warning her, as she did so, to "be quick ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... his work in the afternoon he found a group of forlorn women and children standing beside the stoop. A pale, elfish-looking boy of ten, whose face appeared to be five years older, sat on the lower ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... people were sitting with Lady Maxwell when Tressady was announced. She rose to meet him with great cordiality, introduced him to little Lady Leven, an elfish creature in a cloud of fair hair, and with a pleasant "You know all the rest," offered him a chair beside herself and ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of lyrical verse. Some of it possesses the lightness of these elfish tales. The Barrel Organ, The Song of Re-Birth, and Forty Singing Seamen are among his finest lyrics. They display much rhythmic beauty and variety. He strikes a deeply sorrowful and passionate note in The Haunted Palace and De Profundis. A line like ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... sometimes shocked quite as she had shocked Gopher Prairie by these girls with their cigarettes and elfish knowledge. When they were most eager about soviets or canoeing, she listened, longed to have some special learning which would distinguish her, and sighed that her adventure had come so late. Kennicott and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... natural, even inevitable, which entranced Banneker when it did not appall him. After the meal was over, the girl seated herself on a low bench which Banneker had built with his own hands and the Right-and-Ready Tool Kit (9 T 603), her knee between her clasped hands and an elfish expression ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... bed—she was scarcely more than a girl, with shining dark eyes and a profusion of jetty ringlets about her elfish, pretty little face—seemed to feel that this speech was in the nature of a reproach. She hastened to detail her further activities ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... on eventide of the second day, the early evening gloaming of a chill autumnal rain-day, and I had been since morning dubiously lost in the somber trackless forest, when an elfish cry rose, as it would seem, from beneath the very hoofs of ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... SUCH a wonderfully interesting walk, all by herself, alone on the plain. It was really so queer and elfish to find one's self where one could see nothing above or around one anywhere but stars. Stars above one, to right and left of one, and some so low down they seemed as if they were picketed on the plain. It was so odd to find the horizon line ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... name is Oberon, and the Queen of the Fairies, whose name is Titania, had asked the Trolls to dinner. The Gnomes were very much annoyed at this, and the Elves still more so, for the chief glory of the Elves was that being elfish got you to know people; and it was universally admitted that the Trolls ought never to be asked out, because they were trollish. King Oberon said that all that was a wicked prejudice, and that the Trolls ought to be asked out to dinner just as much as ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... gem. Each of these countless sparks is a tiny animal, as perfect in its substance and as well adapted to its cycle of life as the highest created being. The wonderful way in which this phosphorescence permeates everything—the jelly-fish seeming elfish fireworks as they throb through the water with rhythmic beats—the fish brilliantly lighted up and plainly visible as they dart about far beneath the surface—makes such a night on the Bay of Fundy an ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... found out, however, that the princess was missing, and in a moment the palace was like a beehive in a garden; and in one minute more the queen was brought to herself by a great shout and a clapping of hands. They had found the princess fast asleep under a rose-bush, to which the elfish little wind-puff had carried her, finishing its mischief by shaking a shower of red rose-leaves all over the little white sleeper. Startled by the noise the servants made, she woke, and, furious with glee, scattered ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... sinuously wave together, as if weaving spells, alternately without and within the round, now with palms upward, now with palms downward; and all the elfish sleeves hover duskily together, with a shadowing as of wings; and all the feet poise together with such a rhythm of complex motion, that, in watching it, one feels a sensation of hypnotism—as while striving to watch a flowing and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Martin Luther, all testified that they had often seen him. The mediaval conception of the devil was sometimes comical, sometimes awful. Grimm says, "He was Jewish, heathenish, Christian, idolatrous, elfish, titanic, spectral, all at once." He was "a soul snatching wolf," a "hell hound," a "whirlwind hammer;" now an infernal "parody of God" with "a mother who mimics the Virgin Mary," and now the "impersonated soul of evil."21 The well known ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... son worked on. The hole grew larger and deeper. Clouds began to gather in the sky, throwing elfish shadows as they passed. Not until moon and stars faded away and streaks of daylight began to appear did Meitje Brinker and Hans look ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... parallel for stillness, but the night silence breaks into certain mellow or poignant notes. Late afternoons the burrowing owls may be seen blinking at the doors of their hummocks with perhaps four or five elfish nestlings arow, and by twilight begin a soft whoo-oo-ing, rounder, sweeter, more incessant in mating time. It is not possible to disassociate the call of the burrowing owl from the late slant light of the mesa. If the fine vibrations which are the golden-violet glow ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... lost nothing worth the keeping—do you think? You are just as slim and elfish, And I've grown a world less selfish; We look back on life together—and we wink. Over all those old misgivings of the heart, Growing pains of love and lover; Life's fun begins, its fevers over— Life was such a serious business at ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... back. He had forgotten until now that these mountains are dangerous. And something strange in the present proceedings, the loneliness of the place and the elfish character of his guide, suddenly warned him to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... but yawns and fissures, chasms and precipices, deep gashes in the hills, hills bursting up from the plains, rocks torn from their granite beds and tossed hither and thither in some grand storm of Titan wrath, rivers with no equal majesty, but narrow, deep, elfish, rising and falling in wild caprice, playing mad pranks with their uncertain shores, treacherous, reckless, obstreperous. Here we see the changes actually going on. The earth is still a-making. More than one ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... eyes shone with a hard, diamond-like brilliancy, fitful, but never soft or tearful. Her manner grew more and more moody and constrained, till even her matter-of-fact uncle and aunt, good easy souls, and her absorbed cousin, became curious and anxious. The little elfish black pony was in more frequent request than ever; for his mistress now went out at any hour that suited her whim, in any weather, chose the loneliest by-ways, and rode furiously. Often, at evening, she ascended a dark gorge of the western ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... her lap, the smallest, saddest specimen of infantile deformity. It had a large head—larger than most infants have—but its body was thin, elfish, and distorted, every joint and limb being twisted in some way or other. You could not say that any portion of the child was natural or perfect except the head and face. Whether it had the power of motion or not seemed doubtful; at ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and a little one—a boy of not more than seven years, with elfish brown locks, and eyelashes which swept the olive tint of his cheek. All curled up in a heap, in clothes which a man might have worn, so big and shapeless were they, with one arm under his head for a pillow, and the other tightly grasping a ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... elfish, with a wealth of yellow tresses falling down her back. She was tender and gay, too, and Keith liked to hear her laugh. When they played, she was always ready to fall in with any ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman |
