"Flutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boys were too much afraid of the Hare to do more than flutter and squawk a little, and as the Gentleman Goose did not seem inclined to make an attack single-handed, the Hare, with the children behind him, got to the door in safety. Peter, however, had to be dragged along by Ann and Rudolf, for the Lady Goose had just removed the ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... did I," he answered. "But a few days after you got hurt they quit us cold with no explanation. When we fell down on that first big order of albacore, Winfield & Camby lost interest and I haven't been able to get a flutter out of them since. The other dealers seem to be afraid of us for some reason. They come down and look us over, but that ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... flutter of conversation. People elbowed one another furiously in their desire to examine the chest. A dark, corpulent man, with curly black hair and an unmistakable nose, looked at the ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... satisfy myself. The gentlemen are coming! Am I all right, dear?" And the three glanced at one another with a swift scrutiny that nothing could escape, then grouped themselves prettily, and waited, with a little flutter of ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... knotted roots. Though near the house, it was a sylvan solitude; a little brook ran darkling and glimmering through it, wild strawberries and other woodland plants strewed the ground, and the sweet notes and flutter of small birds made the ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... stronghold in the sky, whose blue arch no longer passes, except with children, for the screen that hides from mortal eyes the glories of the celestial world. Only in poets' dreams or impassioned flights of oratory is it given to catch a glimpse of the last flutter of the standards of the retreating host, to hear the beat of their invisible wings, the sound of their mocking laughter, or the swell of angel music dying away in the distance. Far otherwise is it with the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... voice of counsel from my lips, and never did its sound deceive thee; never did my tongue raise the war cry, and the foe appeared not. Be warned then to beware the white man. He has fixed his serpent eye upon you, and, like the charmed bird, you flutter each moment nearer to ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... wonderland of amazing beauty, and that from its dark and hidden bowers, crusted with their glittering mantles of white, snow naiads must be peeping forth at him, holding their breath for fear of betraying themselves to his eyes. There was not the chirp of a bird nor the flutter of a wing—not the breath of a sound to disturb the wonderful silence. He was encompassed in a white, soft world that seemed tremendously unreal—that for some strange reason made him breathe very softly, that made him stand without a movement, and made him listen, as ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... and again We, watching, praised her beauty, praised her trim, Saw her fair house-flag flutter at the main, And slowly saunter seawards, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... a sea that is almost indescribable. The water no longer runs in waves of regular onward motion, but leaps up in pyramids and peaks. The wind swirls and strikes until wherever there is a chance for vibration or flutter, even in tightly furled sails, the fabric soon gives way. I once saw a brig go drifting past us in a West Indies cyclone with everything furled and closely lashed with sea gaskets. We were in company nearly at the height of the storm, when the center was only a few miles ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter—and the Bird is ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... down the dark, cavernous streets, in the great piazza, at the sindaco's, at college, at club, public offices, and hotels, at the grand old palaces, untouched since the middle ages—the glory of the city—at every house, great and small—flutter gaudy draperies; crimson, amber, violet, and gold, according to purse and condition, either of richest brocade, or of Eastern stuffs wrought in gold and needle-work, or—the family carpet or bed-furniture hung out for ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... used to spoil Tilly's morning amusement, and send her sorrowful into the house. But what did that matter to Jacky? He sometimes broke out worse than usual, and set the whole brood into an agitated flutter, which rather damaged the happiness of the family. But what did that matter ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... for a time appear to be dead, even buried. But the Easter morn soon dawns, and lo, Love ariseth! Love grieved, is like a bird with wet wings. It cannot fly; it cannot rise. It hops about upon the ground, chirping anxiously. But every flutter shakes away more drops; every moment in the sunshine is drying the tiny feathers; and very soon it soars to the tree top, all the better for the bath, which seemed to have robbed it ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... In the flutter of preparation all ranks were temporarily levelled, and social barriers taken down with the mutual consent of those separated by them; the night-clerk so far unbent as to personally request the colored hall-boy Number Eight to play a banjo solo at ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... and the usual peeping and spying, and eyeing of the 'creatures.' 'What impudence!' 'Well, I think!' ''Pon my word!' 'What next!'—exclamations that were pretty well lost upon the fair objects of them amid the noise and flutter and confusion of the scene. But ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... see how she came in, arm-in-arm with Joe; and how she made an effort not to blush or seem at all confused; and how she made believe she didn't care to sit on his side of the table; and how she coaxed the locksmith in a whisper not to joke; and how her colour came and went in a little restless flutter of happiness, which made her do everything wrong, and yet so charmingly wrong that it was better than right!—why, the locksmith could have looked on at this (as he mentioned to Mrs Varden when they ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... seen such love nor heard of it. Even the eyelids' flutter Holds eternity. Clasped to my breasts, you are far from me. I would keep you as a veil close to my face. I shudder with fright when you turn your eyes away, As one body, we spend the night, Sinking in the deeps of delight. As dawn ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... treated the poems there selected as being the work of a new writer; and even when the poems published by Lane came out, no one seemed to be aware that they were by a writer who was very much to the fore a quarter of a century ago. That book has had a flutter of success, but in how large a degree was the success owing to the curiosity excited by the book of a man of my generation being brought out now, and by the publisher of the men of this? With all my sympathy with the work of the younger men and my admiration ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... had received that very morning a letter from Mrs. Fordyce of Bellairs Crescent—a letter which had put her all in a flutter. It was a letter of warning, counsel, and reproof concerning Miss Peck's duty towards her young charge, and laying a strong injunction upon her to be exceedingly judicious in her treatment of the eccentric guests whom Gladys had again invited to Bourhill. It was not a wise epistle at all, though ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... would be quite so cheerful and stimulating to hear as those matter-of-fact words of Sue's. She soon reached the attic. She opened the door softly, and yet with a flutter at her heart. ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... she knelt down and prayed to his God, beginning with the old familiar words, "Our Father, which art in heaven," for He is the same God yesterday, to-day and for ever, the God of whom Akhnaton said, "He makes the young sheep to dance upon their hind legs, and the birds to flutter in the marshes," and as a modern writer said of Him, "The God of the simple pleasures of life, Whose symbol was the sun's disc, just as it was the symbol of Christianity. There dropped not a sigh from the lips of a babe that the intangible Aton did not ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Contemplation's sober eye Such is the race of man: And they that creep, and they that fly, Shall end where they began. Alike the Busy and the Gay But flutter through life's little day, In fortune's varying colours dressed: Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance, Or chilled by Age, their airy dance They leave, in dust ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... shall meet—it may be we shall meet And count our days up-gathered, one by one, Like poppies plucked among the burnished wheat, Beneath the red gaze of the August sun; And all our scattered dreams shall flutter home At last. Oh! silent, age-long wandering What since your setting forth have ye become? What gift from those far waters do ye bring?— A splash of rain, salt taste of frozen foam, Green sea-weed trailing from a ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... without talking, across the beach. When they reached the trail they dropped on all fours and pulled themselves noiselessly along. The slightest sound, the snapping of a twig, the flutter of a bird, brought them to quiet. An ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... and exalted by the vaguely comprehended glory of the future. It is before this picture that the visitor always lingers longest. The face is the purest expression of girlish loveliness possible to art. The Virgin floats upborne by rosy clouds, flocks of pink cherubs flutter at her feet waving palm-branches. The golden air is thick with suggestions of dim celestial faces, but nothing mars the imposing solitude of the Queen of Heaven, shrined alone, throned in the luminous azure. Surely no man ever understood ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... and fly away from him on first sight; and then he bewitches them nearer, and they are filled with pain seemingly, and flutter and fly about ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... heard the news, Little Primpton was agitated. Certainly it was distressed, and even virtuously indignant, but at the same time completely unable to divest itself of that little flutter of excitement which was so rare, yet so enchanting, a variation from the monotony of its daily course. The well-informed walked with a lighter step, and held their heads more jauntily, for life had suddenly acquired a novel interest. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... there is a little flutter among this brood. A gentleman, at the alley door, wishes to see M. Sorel. M. Sorel leads the gentleman out, through the alley gate, to the front street-door; then, retiring whence he came, he shortly appears from within at the front door, which opens only after a struggle. A knot ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... blood-soaked, and there was blood on the sacks and on the stony floor. It oozed from her side, and her hand was cold as the rocks, and there was no flutter at her wrist. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... embraced Anne tenderly, then there was a rush for the ferry. They stood on the deck waving to her until they could scarcely see the flutter of her handkerchief. After agreeing to meet the boys at the ferry, David escorted Anne back to the Southard's and spent a brief half ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... were too stiff. Neither Dundas nor Wilberforce moved in the highest circles. Portland, Spencer, and Windham held somewhat aloof, and Leeds, Sydney, and others had been alienated. Accordingly, the news that Pitt was paying marked attentions to Auckland's eldest daughter caused a flutter of excitement. Her charm and tact warranted the belief that in the near future the Prime Minister would dominate the social sphere hardly less than ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... a flutter above the trap-door, and a second pigeon alighted, with a second note, also ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... alongside a most inconsequential-looking little river. Its contents seemed a trifle too liquid for mud and a trifle too solid for water. On the nearer bank was a small village populated by short people and long dogs. Out in midstream, making poor headway against the semi-gelid current, was a little flutter-tailed steamboat panting and puffing violently and kicking up a lather of lacy spray with its wheelbuckets in a manner to remind you of a very warm small lady fanning herself with a very large gauze fan, and only getting hotter at ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... been perfectly happy in this hour of reconciliation. But as he again and again clasped me to his bosom, and lavished upon me the tenderest caresses, I involuntarily shrunk from the pressure, lest he should feel the note, which seemed to flutter, so quick and loud my ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... as they talked, they would hear the flutter of wings, and some half-dozen pigeons, with soft coos, would light on their shoulders. Then Maria would laugh aloud with delight, and Andrea would forget his wild dreams as they stroked the glossy wings and admired the bright eyes, all the while feeding them dried peas or grain with which their ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... communicating some gossip of the town to Marya Dmitrievna, and Gedeonovksy, who by this time had come in from the garden, and he was himself laughing aloud at the story he was telling. At the name of Lavretsky, Marya Dmitrievna was all in a flutter. She turned pale and went ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... club looked bright, but it was empty. Who dines at this club on Christmas but lonely bachelors? There was a flutter of surprise when I ordered a dinner, and the few attendants were, no doubt, glad of something to break the monotony of ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... was brought in, there was a great flutter among the ladies, and some of them even had the bad taste to produce opera-glasses. Brian noticed this, and he flushed up to the roots of his fair hair, for he felt his degradation acutely. He was an intensely proud man, and to be placed ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... woman had gone, a cock with red feathers would sometimes fly up to the window sill and looking into the room with his round inquisitive eye, would begin to crow loudly. Occasionally, too, a few hens would flutter as far as the foot of the bed, seeking crumbs on the floor. Toine's friends soon deserted the drinking room to come and chat every afternoon beside the invalid's bed. Helpless though he was, the jovial Toine still provided them with amusement. He would have made ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... cynically. "I, the silken hawk, came not to flutter your nest of doves, senor. I came but for a little hour to meet a man who—Ah, he is coming now. Sheriff Paul, I have that to tell ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... sit down there and rest, you'll begin to take another view of things. Here there are so many accidents, religious themes, disagreeable memories that hinder thought as it flies to the 'rose' room. Only follow the track! If it's muddy here and there, spread your wings and flutter. And talking of fluttering: I once heard a bird that sang of Polycrates and his ring; how he'd become possessed of all the marvels of this world, but didn't know what to do with them. So he sent ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... sounds heard were the rippling at the bows, the low sough of the zephyr through the rigging, the cheeping of blocks, as the sleepy helmsman allowed the ship to vary in her course, the occasional splash of a dolphin, and the flutter of a flying-fish in the air, as he winged his short and glittering flight. The air was warm, fragrant, and delicious, and the larboard watch of the tired crew of the Gentile, after a boisterous passage of forty days from Gibralter, yielded to its somnolent ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... said, earnestly, "my heart sings as it has never sung since its earliest love-flutter. I feel like a stainless god in a sacred garden, listening for the first time to the dear madness of the nightingale. No subtle Neapolitan ever stirred me as this wood-nymph does with her flaming hair and her frank eyes. No wonder ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... only cling, he was employed about sand banks of the irrigating canals, etc. hopping from one likely spot to another, clinging here and there momentarily, and always aiding himself in his inclined position by a flutter of his wings; holes seemed always to attract him. It is by no means a shy bird. I should observe however that I have seen this species running up and down cliffs, so that perhaps the rather loose sand would not give firm ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... genius, that its life-blood was transfused into his own almost against his will. "I wish," he exclaims, "I had never read the Emilius ... I had better have formed myself on the model of Sir Fopling Flutter."[70] He entered into the poet's creation with a sympathy amounting almost to poetic vision, and the ever-present sense of the reality of the artist's world led him to interpret literature primarily in relation to life. The poetry of character and passion is what he regards ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... death of Louis XIII, in 1643, the little chateau of Versailles was abandoned as a dwelling. Then followed a fall in values at Versailles and a great flutter of uncertainty among those that had followed the King there. This feeling of doubt lasted for seven years. The faces of the court favorites were turned back toward Paris, and individual fortunes were speculatively weighed in ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... was so great that it could never be appeased unless he called on her to put forth all her qualities and her power, to repay his exacting affection by a faithfulness tried to the very utmost limit of endurance. Every flutter of the sails flew down from aloft along the taut leeches, to enter his heart in a sense of acute delight; and the gentle murmur of water alongside, which, continuous and soft, showed that in all her windings his incomparable craft had never, even for an instant, ceased to carry her way, was ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... stood amazed at my evil fortune; that I should be too late, in the very thing of all things on which my heart was set! Then after eyeing sorrowfully every crick and cranny to be sure that not a single flutter of my love was visible, off I set, with small respect either for my knees or neck, to make the round of the outer cliffs, and come up ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... feeding in the wide pastures, tossed their heads at Vasda's approach, and galloped away with a thunder of many hoofs, and flocks of wild birds rose suddenly from the swampy meadows, wheeling in great circles with a shining flutter of innumerable wings and shrill ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... Now is seen The soft and delicate playing of the muscles In the white hand upon its work intent. The graces that around the lady stoop Clothe themselves in new forms, and from her fingers Sportively flying, flutter to the tips Of her unconscious rosy knuckles, thence To dip into the hollows of the dimples That Love beside her ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... goes about unattended, or with other unchaperoned girls, on social occasions. A girl must have an unusual measure of native dignity, as well as native innocence, always to escape the disagreeable infliction of either "fresh" or blase impertinence, if she has no mother's wing to flutter under. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... party set out for the nearest street-car, and a flutter of mingled gratification and embarrassment stirred Ann Eliza's bosom when it was found that Mr. Ramy intended to pay their fares. Nor did he fail to live up to this opening liberality; for after guiding them through the Mall and the Ramble he led the way to a rustic ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... Heaven! and this—this is Edith! He sinks into a chair by the bedside, and takes her wan, transparent hand in both his own, with a sort of groan. The light touch awakes her, the faint eyelids quiver, the large, dark eyes open and fix on his face. The lips flutter breathlessly apart. "Charley!" they whisper in glad surprise; and over the death-like face there flashes for a second an electric light of great ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... other noble deeds which have sprung from inspired madness. And therefore, let no one frighten or flutter us by saying that the temperate friend is to be chosen rather than the inspired, but let him further show that love is not sent by the gods for any good to lover or beloved; if he can do so we will allow him to carry off the palm. And we, on our part, will prove in answer to him that the madness ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... touched the heather, but, even so, my way was marked by a disturbance of the birds and animals of the wild. A grouse ran with a flutter and took wing with a cry, half in protest at being wakened from its sleep, half in alarm at my presence. A rabbit rushed from a sheltering hole in such a hurry that, as I could tell by its clatter among the bracken, it nearly fell over itself, as rabbits ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... child what about him, pray?" "O, mamma,—he's to call—in the course of the day. He was here just this minute,—and shortly you'll see he'll make you as happy as he has made me. I declare he has seen you come home—that's his ring; I will leave you and him, now to settle the thing" Fanny left in a flutter: her mother—the gipsy—she'd made her as giddy as though she'd been tipsy! Mr. Friendly came in, and the widow and he, were soon as delighted as Fanny could be; he asked the dear widow to change her estate;—she consented at once, and a kiss sealed ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... pinion betray them. And then when the twilight, the blessed one of the twin twilights, one in course towards day, one in course towards night, has deepened and has died, they can dare to be themselves, to spread their short wings, and to flutter on their vagrant and monotonous courses. It is a great though secret army—the army of the bats. It scours through cities. No weather will keep it quite restful in camp. No darkness will blind it into immobility. The mainspring ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and perhaps you will feel happier. It is my father's axe you are sitting on, and I must take it back as fast as I can, or I shall get a terrible scolding from my stepmother.' She then crumbled the bread on the ground, and was pleased to see the doves flutter quite cheerfully towards it. ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... screen showed a race of boats which melted without warning to a mass of white uniforms packed about the raised square of a roped-in Platform below guns and a turret clouded with men. Two tanned giants in wrestling tights scrambled under the ropes. There was a flutter of caps. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... are evil. If it were possible for human eye to discern and to detect the thoughts that flutter around the heart of an unregenerate man—to mark their hue and their multitude, it would be found that they are indeed 'evil.' We speak not of the thief, and the murderer, and the adulterer, and such like, whose crimes draw down the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the year 1803 came an interruption, Weimar society being thrown into a flutter by the visit of Madame de Stael, now on her famous tour of inspection. It was of course fitting that Schiller, as a local lion, should take his part in entertaining her; but the voluble lady was an ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... to the title or office, or authority you carry." And there is many a woman who puts on new and gay clothes, a new bonnet, or a new gown, in the highest fashion, and she sails into church with her chin in the air, and a flutter in her heart, knowing that all eyes are upon her. "Woman! all are admiring—not you,—but ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... but one thing left to do— And what's a sporting flutter worth Unless one takes a risk or two?— "I'll shock the world," I thought, "anew," And (ultimately) did so through The firm of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... marriage and when these important affairs are satisfactorily done with their wings wither away, and thenceforth they have to content themselves with running about on the earth. Now isn't this a remarkable parallel to one stage of human life? Do not men and women also soar and flutter—at a certain time? And don't their wings manifestly drop off as soon as the end of that skyward movement has been achieved? If the gods had made me poetical, I would sonnetise on this idea. Do you know any poet with a fondness for the ant-philosophy? If so, offer him this suggestion with liberty ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... successful inroads, nothing but the birds can ever protect us. Think of it, ye who can enjoy no music made by these winged choristers of the skies, except that of their agonizing screams, as they fall before your well-aimed weapons, and flutter out their innocent lives before your heartless gaze! Drive away as fast and as far as you please, from your cruel premises, all the little birds that you cannot destroy, and then find, if you can, those who will sympathize with you, when the caterpillars ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... Dick's movements—a circumstance which did not escape the notice of the group, and confirmed all their suspicions, Mr. Avenel, with a serious, thoughtful air, and a slow step, approached the group. Nor did the great Roman general more nervously "flutter the dove-cotes in Corioli," than did the advance of the supposed X. Y. agitate the bosoms of Lord Spendquick and his sympathizing friends. Pocket-book in hand, and apparently feeling for something formidable within its mystic recesses, step by step came Dick Avenel towards the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... singing birds; never was such a place for singing—the valley is full of music. In the oaks blackbirds whistle. You do not often see them; they are concealed by the thick foliage up on high, for they seek the top branches, which are more leafy; but once now and then they quietly flutter across to another perch. The blackbird's whistle is very human, like a human being playing the flute; an uncertain player, now drawing forth a bar of a beautiful melody and then losing it again. He does not know what quiver or what turn his note will take before ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... comprehension, the particular evolution of that solar satellite we call the "Earth" occupied but a slight fraction of time. And of that fraction of time man occupies but a small portion. All the whole human drift, from the first ape-man to the last savant, is but a phantom, a flash of light and a flutter of movement across the infinite face of the ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... has to say about that," interrupted the woman as that lady entered in a flutter of emotion springing ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... saying, "Dear Flutter, do not fear me. I will gladly ease your pain, if you will let me; I am your friend, and long to show you how I grieve for all the wrong I did you, when you were so kind to me. Forgive, and let me help and ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... friendship of John L. Sullivan, than whom in his prime no better man ever stepped into the ring. He is now a Massachusetts farmer. John used occasionally to visit me at the White House, his advent always causing a distinct flutter among the waiting Senators and Congressmen. When I went to Africa he presented me with a gold-mounted rabbit's foot for luck. I carried it through my African trip; and I certainly ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... "Don Fernando—Majesty?" Yet a third time she repeated it, as by rote; and, very slowly, understanding grew into the words, and with understanding, terror. The dark innocent eyes went appealingly from one to the other, and the lids began to flutter wildly in a kind of spasm. "Majesty? Majesty?" Then, suddenly, she flung both hands to her face, and a piteous ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... decided that he would first take a bath and then dress himself in a blue satin suit that had caught his fancy. He accepted his good fortune with calm composure and refused to have a servant to assist him. But Aunt Em was "all of a flutter," as she said, and it took Dorothy and Jellia Jamb, the housekeeper, and two maids a long time to dress her and do up her hair and get her "rigged like a popinjay," as she quaintly expressed it. She wanted to stop and admire everything that caught her eye, and she sighed continually ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... 'But just one flutter before we're done. Stiffen your lip and stand, my son; We'll take this bloomin' circus on: Ball-cartridge load! Now, steady!' With a curse and a prayer the two faced round, Dogged and grim they stood their ground, And their breech-blocks snapped with a ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... steps are led aright, but the Pacific zones are too broad for even winged wanderers. The fish that swarm on our coast do not seem to find home life or sporting places in this enormous sea. Only the flying fish disturb the silky scene and flutter with silver wings over the sparkling laces that glisten where the winds blow gently, and woo the billows to cast aside the terrors of other climes and match the sky of blue and gold in beauty; but, unlike the stars, the waves do not differ in glory, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... his brow, and sweeping far behind him. His round white shield hangs at his breast, with feathers radiating from the center like a star. His quiver is at his back; his tall lance in his hand, the iron point flashing against the declining sun, while the long scalp-locks of his enemies flutter from the shaft. Thus, gorgeous as a champion in his panoply, he rides round and round within the great circle of lodges, balancing with a graceful buoyancy to the free movements of his war horse, while with a sedate brow he sings his song to the Great Spirit. Young rival warriors look askance at ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... severely: "his legal mind takes such cut-and-dried views. Granted that it is a speculation, it seems a promising one; and nothing venture, nothing have. I don't know how you feel, Die, but I am quite willing to do my share." Then Dinah, who was in quite a flutter of excitement and pleasure, looked at her adviser ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is very remarkable. I have seen my brother knock down five or six dozen without missing more than one or two birds the whole time. One would be thankful to die such an instantaneous death as these young rooks. They seem to drop to the shot without a flutter; down they come, as straight as a big stone dropped from a high wall. Like a lump of lead they fall into the nettles. They hardly ever move again. It is difficult work finding ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... rock and scrub, stretching away to where, on the far horizon, some low hills cut the brazen sky-line. On the beach the so-called town of Sonmiani—a collection of dilapidated mud huts, over which two or three tattered red and yellow banners flutter in the breeze, and beneath which a small and shallow harbour emits a powerful odour of mud, sewage, and rotten fish. Every hut is surmounted by a "badgir," or wind-catcher—a queer-looking contrivance, in shape ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... there!" nodding over her shoulder. "He walked up with me—he wants to see you both. But"—her voice dropped to an intense whisper—"he has asked to see Miss Walton first—wants to speak to her alone! What does he mean?" Anne was in a tremendous flutter, and it was plain that wild ideas were coursing through her. "You are my chaperone, of course, but what can he want to see you for ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... antagonists. A noisy scuffle, and then a heavy fall ensued, but luckily we were both on the upper side. This unusual disturbance now brought out the inmates of the adjoining anderoon. In a moment there was a din of feminine screams, and a flutter of garments, and then—a crashing of our pith helmets beneath the blows of pokers and andirons. The villagers, thus aroused, came at last to our rescue, and at once proceeded to patch up a compromise. This, in view of the Amazonian reinforcements, who were standing ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... good-by and picked their way down the frozen embankment and across the ice-bridge; down and across and back to the Rosemary, where they found a perturbed chaperon in a flutter of solicitude arising upon their mysterious disappearance and ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... primitive seafaring town; the saltest, roughest, most piratical little place that ever was seen. Great rusty iron rings and mooring-chains, capstans, and fragments of old masts and spars, choke up the way; hardy rough-weather boats, and seamen's clothing, flutter in the little harbour or are drawn out on the sunny stones to dry; on the parapet of the rude pier, a few amphibious-looking fellows lie asleep, with their legs dangling over the wall, as though earth or water were all one to them, and if they slipped in, they would float away, dozing comfortably ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... a shutter, And, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a Purple Cow which gayly tripped around my floor. Not the least obeisance made she, Not a moment stopped or stayed she, But with mien of chorus lady perched herself above my door. On a dusty bust of Dante perched ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... jumped up in a flutter. He didn't take any notice of her excitement. 'I heard that you were living here,' he said, 'and knowing what sort of an old place it is, I've come to see if I can be of any use to you.' Here he looked about at ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... then, not a quarter of a mile in front of me, I beheld the Union Jack flutter in the air ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I press the button, no less than six little, picture maids flutter to my door, each begging for the honor of fastening me up the back. How delighted Jack would be to assign them this particular honor for life. Such whispers over the wonders of a foreign-made dress as they struggle with the curious fastenings! (They should hear my lord's fierce language!) ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... doctor and driver now turned their gaze beyond the lion-headed gateway to the winding walk that passed among the trees up to the old mansion house. Far off, through the great columns of the trees, there might indeed this morning now be seen the flutter of a gown of white. The faint sound of voices might be heard. Mary Ellen, conscientious marketer, was discussing joints and salads with her aunt. And then Mary Ellen, deliberately tying the strings of her bonnet under her chin, turned, answering her aunt's summons for replevin of ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... Outwardly there was nothing remarkable about him, nothing to distinguish him from the thousands of other lads in khaki that were to be seen everywhere one went, erect, trim, lovably conceited. Why, then, should the heart of Sahwah the Sunfish suddenly flutter at this casual meeting of the eyes with the man across the way, and why did she turn sharply around and look out of ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... remembered in the next; while of the creations which were honoured with the diploma of immortality a very much smaller proportion as a rule survive. Only some fifty per cent, of the prematurely laurel-crowned reach the goal; and often even upon their brows there flutter but a few stray leaves of the bay. A single poem, a solitary drama—nay, perhaps one isolated figure, poetic or dramatic—avails, and but barely avails, to keep the immortal from putting on mortality. Hence we need think it no disparagement to Sterne ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... flutter of flags and the cheers of onlookers, the 'ocean policeman,' H.M.S. Speedy, first took to the water on May 18th, 1893. Its birthplace was the banks of the Thames at Chiswick, but hardly had it settled itself ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... a breathless flutter; and Mr. Legrange, coming hastily to her side, drew her to a seat, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... bowed. At the sheik's side he observed, for the first time, Balthasar, leaning upon his staff, and two women closely veiled. At one of the latter he looked a second time, saying to himself, with a flutter about his heart, "'Tis she—'tis the Egyptian!" Ilderim picked ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... old man. Take heed lest his beams fall on you, 245 For the rays he darts around him Are the power of his enchantment, Are the arrows that he uses.' "Many years, in peace and quiet, On the peaceful Star of Evening 250 Dwelt Osseo with his father; Many years, in song and flutter, At the doorway of the wigwam, Hung the cage with rods of silver, And fair Oweenee, the faithful, 255 Bore a son unto Osseo, With the beauty of his mother, With the courage of his father. "And the boy grew up and prospered, And Osseo, to delight him, 260 Made him ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... my Cousin Cecile here," answered Pons, insisting on the relationship. There was a flutter of admiration ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... life, one would require the scrolls of eternity. War throws light on some of its stray pages as they flutter for a second on the wings of time and then disappear, but not before it has flung its cressets of light upon the black pall of doubt. Everyone now talks of psychic phenomena. In a paltry generation of superficial thinking the subject was one for jest, but ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... hotel, and made his way up the crooked street to the centre of the town. His way lay towards Market Jew Street, where he intended to hire one of the waiting cabs to drive him back to St. Fair. As he neared the top of the street which led to the square, his eye was caught by the flutter of a woman's dress in one of the narrow old passages which spindled crookedly off it. The wearer of the dress was his niece Sisily. She was walking swiftly. A turn of the passage took her in the direction of the Morrab Gardens, and he ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... then, but that earth threatened often Shall live on for ever that such things may be, That the dry seed shall quicken, the hard earth shall soften, And the spring-bearing birds flutter north o'er the sea, That earth's garden may bloom round my love's feet ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... floor,—the horror of these recollections swept in upon him and changed him from a man into a timorous child. He lay and shuddered until in every creak of the branches he heard the whisper of an enemy, in every flutter of leaves across the lawn a stealthy footstep, and behind every tree-stem he caught the ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... the Earl, "you do but flutter in the net; but I will urge you no farther, now—there is another encounter ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... rode up to the piazza steps, and, like the messenger in a novel, handed me a letter. It was from father. "Have everything in readiness to start to-morrow morning," he wrote. "I shall expect you at the house at six-thirty to-morrow night without fail." This letter threw me into a flutter of excitement. I was accustomed to short-notice orders from father, orders that carried no explanations; but they had always been sent through the mails. A messenger meant great need of haste. I recognized him as father's office-boy. Was my father ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... trifle in recognition of her greeting, wondering in sudden confusion if he were really not mistaken after all and had perhaps been appropriating a farewell that belonged to someone else; then amazed and pleased at the flutter of her handkerchief ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... them to the opposite point, Fig. 4; and I have a reptilian or dragon's wing, which would, with some ramification of the supporting ribs, become a bat's or moth's; that is to say, an extension of membrane between the ribs (as in an umbrella), which will catch the wind, and flutter upon it, like a leaf; but cannot strike it to any purpose. The flying squirrel drifts like a falling leaf; the bat flits like a black rag torn at the edge. To give power, we must have plumes that can ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... all skirts and spangles, were with us by this time, for they had been invited to tea. They came in dancing, and danced off and on most of the time. Even in the middle of what they were saying they would begin to flutter; it was not so much that they meant to dance as that the slightest thing set them going, such as sitting in a draught; and David found he could blow them about the room like pieces of paper. You could see by the shortness ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... several small unwieldy parcels and heavy books that slid persistently to the floor with the jarring of the train. When the conductor came through for tickets, she discovered that she had mislaid hers and it was necessary to flutter the pages of every book before the missing bit of pasteboard finally dropped from between the leaves of ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... we had the kitchen floor, a pool of water; and the rain had put out my fires already, as effectually as if it had been an overturned broth-pot. That I never took off my clothes that night I need not say, though of what was happening in the glen I could only guess. A flutter against my window now and again, when the rain had abated, told me of another bird that had flown there to die; and with Waster Lunny, I kept up communication by waving a light, to which he replied in a similar manner. Before morning, however, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... go further than this. Excited by success, she would climb the wood pile, large and heavy as she was, and, standing upon its edge, would flap her arms and flutter back in a frightened manner and brace herself to the leap, as Gilby had done. She was aided in this representation by her familiarity with the habits of chickens when they try to get down from a high roost. The resemblance struck her; she would cry ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... me much food for speculation during my residence in this apartment. In the morning I used to hear them gradually waking and seeming to call each other up. After a time, the whole fraternity would be in a flutter; some balancing and swinging on the tree tops, others perched on the pinnacle of the Abbey church, or wheeling and hovering about in the air, and the ruined walls would reverberate with their incessant cawings. In this way they would linger ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... pleasure than any borrowed character can afford. I saw the ranks of the theatre emulating each other in candour and humanity, and contending who should most effectually assist the struggles of endeavour, dissipate the blush of diffidence, and still the flutter of timidity. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... flutter of her white dress disappeared, Sir Victor Catheron emerged from the shadow of the trees, and the face, on which the rising moon shone, was white as ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... principles. Perhaps we may go on with them to principles, but we shall find them unable to get established in those along with us. Or if we may get so established along with them, we shall find them unable to weigh occurring events along with us.' CHAP. XXX. 1. How the flowers of the aspen-plum flutter and turn! Do I not think of you? But your house is distant. 2. The Master said, 'It is the want of thought about it. ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... that it would be improper to remain after the host and hostess were gone; that it would be equally wrong to offer to go with them, and quite inappropriate to witness the home-coming,—they took themselves off, but each resolved to flutter unseen in the neighbourhood until he, or she, could make quite sure that the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a flutter'd bird, came flying from far away: "Spanish ships of war at sea! ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... your cheeks redden so, and your heart flutter like a bird caught in a snare?" cried the spinster, looking thoughtfully, almost sorrowfully, into Helen's soft, loving, hazel eyes. "That step doesn't cross my threshold so often for nothing. You would know it in an army ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... dark eyes, and brilliant bloom, entered Saint John's together and passed up the aisle to a seat halfway between door and pulpit. By some miscalculation of Unity's they were very early, a fact which presently brought a whispered ejaculation of annoyance from Miss Dandridge. "I love a flutter when I come in and the knowledge that I've turned every head—and here we've entered an empty church! Heigho! Nothing to do for half ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the publication of Toland's famous work), which brought Locke into the most direct collision with some of the orthodox of his day. The vehement opposition which this little work aroused seems to have caused the author unfeigned surprise.—'When it came out,' he writes, 'the buzz and flutter and noise which it made, and the reports which were raised that it subverted all morality and was designed against the Christian religion ... amazed me; knowing the sincerity of those thoughts which persuaded me to publish it, not without some hope of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... shook His little bells, with that sagacious look, Which said, as plain as language to the ear, "If anything is wanting, I am here!" Yes, everything is wanting, gallant bird! The master seized thee without further word, Like thine own lure, he whirled thee round; ah me! The pomp and flutter of brave falconry, The bells, the jesses, the bright scarlet hood, The flight and the pursuit o'er field and wood, All these forevermore are ended now; No longer victor, but the ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... grimly at the thought of his own situation, the central figure in at least one act of this comedy, viewing it from the far side of the proscenium arch, gaping like the rustic in the metropolis who sees himself for the first time depicted upon the stage. What right had she—this little flutter-budget—to know these things—when he was denied them? Hermia—the report of her engagement had been disturbing, but some reason it seemed less important now than the fact that she was here—here in New York within twenty minutes of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... with a flutter of the heart. What was it? Had anything happened? Was anyone ill? Then she recognized that she was not unhappy. And she felt more than ever as though it were days since she had had ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... grew less. Hundreds of glow-worms were shimmering in the hedge. The grass-hoppers were whirring in the mielles beyond; a flutter of wings went by overhead. The leaves were rustling gently; a fresh wind was coming up from the sea ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... down and watched him, and looked off between whiles to the wonderful green walls of the glen. The summer blue was very clear overhead; the stillness of the place very deep; insects, birds, a flutter of leaves, and the grating of Dr. Sandford's boot upon a stone, all the ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and seemed ready to dispute about it. Others looking upon it as a messenger from Heaven, declared that they took it under their protection, and would suffer none to do it harm. It is certain we could not be far from land, for the butterflies continued to come on the following days, and flutter about our sail. We had also on the same day another indication not less positive, by a Goeland which flew around our raft. This second visitor left us not a doubt that we were fast approaching the African soil, and we persuaded ourselves we would be speedily thrown ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... whole noble enthusiasm with which they inspire me, for all that this world has to offer. As for this world, I despair of ever making a figure in it I am not formed for the bustle of the busy, nor the flutter of the gay. I shall never again be capable of entering into such scenes. Indeed, I am altogether unconcerned at the thoughts of this life. I foresee that poverty and obscurity probably await me, and I am in some measure prepared, and daily preparing, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... completes the rough outline of our plan. The next thing to do is to start and keep right on moving, for as old Omar has it, 'The bird of time hath but a little way to flutter,' and the birdshot is catching up with him. We have a year in which to build our road; if we do not hurry, the mill will have to shut down for lack of logs, when our contract with ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... by the best dancing-masters that money could bring to Storm. Perhaps the prettiest memory the rough old hall held was that of two tiny girls hopping about together, yellow heads bobbing, short skirts a-flutter, their baby ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... others warbling in the shade; all manifesting no more alarm at his presence than did the toucan. Crested orioles, hooded bullfinches, alight to pick up little grains or insects almost at his feet; humming-birds, variegated cotingas, red manaquins flutter before him in the sunbeams, pursuing invisible flies; little wood-peckers, black or green, hop around the trunks of the trees, stopping a moment to see him pass and then ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... knew it was time for him to learn, so they pushed the foolish little fellow out of the nest, and watched him spread his wings, and flutter to the ground. There he found more courage, and after a while he flew up to join ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... doctor's life. He was writing this book of his, writing it very deliberately and laboriously, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A NEW AGE, but much more was he dreaming and thinking about this book. Its publication was to mark an epoch in human thought and human affairs generally, and create a considerable flutter of astonishment in the doctor's own little world. It was to bring home to people some various aspects of one very startling proposition: that human society had arrived at a phase when the complete restatement of its fundamental ideas had become urgently necessary, a phase when the slow, inadequate, ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... into the shades of the forest, along the path of their usual walk. Though the air lay heavy between straight denuded trunks, the sunlit patches moved on the ground, and raising her eyes Lena saw far above her head the flutter of the leaves, the surface shudder on the mighty limbs extended horizontally in the perfect immobility of patience. Twice Heyst looked over his shoulder at her. Behind the readiness of her answering smile there was a fund of devoted, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Neapolitan catacombs. Next came the brief period of their artistic glory; then the syncretism of the Renaissance, when these winged messengers were amalgamated with pagan amoretti and began to flutter in foolish baroque fashion about the Queen of Heaven, after the pattern of the disreputable little genii attendant upon a Venus of a bad school. That same instinct which degraded a youthful Eros into the childish ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas |
