"Gliding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eagle, who in unshared exaltation looks down equally upon plain and mountain. Or you behold a hawk sallying from some crag, like a Rhenish baron of old from his pinnacled castle, and darting down towards the river for his prey. Or perhaps, lazily gliding about in the zenith, this ruffian fowl is suddenly beset by a crow, who with stubborn audacity pecks at him, and, spite of all his bravery, finally persecutes him back to his stronghold. The otherwise dauntless bandit, soaring at his topmost ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... are not surprised when called to teach it to themselves. Instinctively, we hide our emotion, we steady our hand, we check our words. There is the pity; there are grand unspoken thoughts, burning in the souls of many to-day, that may never reach the threshold of the lips. Men are gliding through the world disinterestedly, day by day, and they know not, often care not to know, that there are devoted hearts existing on their memories alone. There are pretty blue eyes weeping over the "garden gate" where "some one" is "waiting" and "wishing in vain." Let them weep. There are miseries ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... indistinguishable verity and illusion, strangely imposed upon the familiar, homely street of Calvinton, the machine ran smoothly, faintly humming, as the Frenchman drove it with master-skill—itself a dream of embodied power and speed. Gliding by the last cottages of Town's End where the street became the highroad, the car ran swiftly through the open country for a mile until it came to a broad entrance. The gate was broken from the leaning posts ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... caused great discomfort, inconvenience, and often alarm to all on board. The remark, "The Mendi roll, fresh every day for every meal, for breakfast, dinner, and tea," was made by some one at almost every mealtime, as we clutched at our food, gliding or jumping from end to end of the saloon table, accompanied by the smashing of crockery and upsetting of liquids and soup. We were hardly ever able to sit still at mealtimes, but were always rocking and rolling about, usually with our plates in our hands, as leaving them ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... glad to visit this favourite seaside resort of the Roman emperors. Even before we landed we could see the ruins of their villas deep in the clear waters of the bay, fish gliding through arches and the seaweed waving its pennons from the walls. The cliff at the back of the town presented a most impressive appearance, being pierced by great arched openings like the portals of a Roman bath. And such, indeed, they were, for on the promontory ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... persuasion, and some further development of his plan, I consented to wrap myself in an ample stage-cloak, and gliding into the churchyard, I waited in the porch according to the directions I had received from Ned, until near midnight, when I issued forth, and proceeded to examine the different tombs attentively. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... generous, affectionate, intelligent, and sprightly; a royalist, as was to be expected from her connections, without any of that political asperity which is as unwomanly as a long beard; religious, and occasionally gliding into a very pretty and endearing sort of preaching, yet not too good to partake of such diversions as London afforded under the melancholy rule of the Puritans, or to giggle a little at a ridiculous sermon from a divine who was thought to be one of the great lights ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in Mahommed, his giving himself up to thought of the Princess while gliding down the Bosphorus, after leaving his safeguard on her gate. He closed his eyes against the mellow light on the water, and, silently admitting her the perfection of womanhood, held her image before him until it was indelible in memory—face, figure, manner, even her dress and ornaments—until ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... native orb, the earth! For we are spirits threading fields of space, Whose gleaming flowers are but the countless stars! But now, dear love, adieu—a flash from heaven— A sudden glory in the silent air— A rustle as of wings, proclaim the approach Of holier guides to take thee into keep. Behold them gliding down the azure hill Making the blue ambrosial with their light. Our paths are here divided. I must go Through other ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... remainder of the day was to be given to the voluntary pleasures which each one would seek or make for himself, and in this the ladies and gentlemen showed themselves more ingenious than usual. In every direction goddesses were to be seen gliding through the bushes to escape the snares of some god, or seeking some agreeable rendezvous. At the edge of the lake lay charming gondolas ready for those who wished to rest and refresh themselves by a sail upon the dancing waves. For the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... things—tell excruciatingly funny jokes, which turn out when recalled next day to be utterly flat; or improvise the most beautiful music, which we never can recall with any precision, but which probably amounted to nothing; or play the best sort of baseball. The gliding or flying dream, which many people have had, reminds one of the numerous toys and sports in which defiance of gravity is the motive; and certainly it gives you a sense of power and freedom to be able, in ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... gliding up Beaver Run to his breakfast. It was past the middle of June, or, as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was the time when the snow water and the water from the spring rains had already gone down to the Big River: Beaver Run was still a fresh, rushing stream of ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... the effect that they had been disturbed for several nights previously by strange and inexplicable noises in the house occupied by them on Duchess street. They had been aroused from sleep at indeterminate hours by the sound of gliding footsteps just outside of the door of their bedroom. Once they had distinctly heard the sound of voices, which seemed to come from the large front room across the hall. As the door of that room was last closed and locked, they had not been able to distinguish ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... may be said of the frame of our spiritual, even with more emphasis than of our corporeal nature, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. In the maturity of his bodily and mental organization, health gliding through his veins, strength and symmetry clothing his form, intelligence beaming from his countenance, and immortality stamped on his brow, man is indeed the noblest work of God. In the degradation and corruption to which he can descend, he is the most odious and loathsome object in the creation. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... sleep," he went on in his chanting voice, "a hundred and fifty and three of them—a hundred and fifty and three; and when I dream in this place at night, I have seen the ghosts of every one of them arise from beside their forms and come gliding down the cave—the husband with the wife, the child with the mother—to look at me, and ask when the maiden returns again to take her heritage ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... crescent like silver rain, and bleached the few pink peach-blossoms, which bloomed timidly under the shelter of snow-mountains, to the pallor of fluttering night-moths, throwing out their clusters in sharp contrast against dark rocks. The River Tarn, gliding onward through the gorge toward the Garonne, was scaled with steel on its emerald back, like a twisting serpent. Over a bed of gravel, white as scattered pearls, the sequined lengths coiled on; and the snake-green water, the strange burnt-coral vegetation ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... be thwarted by a yearning fool! [Aside. This soft, sleek girl, to outward seeming good, I know to be a very fiend beneath— Whose sly affections centre on herself, And feed the gliding snake ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... his orders, and steered further westward. By this time the people on shore had caught sight of the cutter. They saw her come stealing out of the thin dark like a thought half thought, and go gliding along the shore like a sea ghost over the dusky water, faint, uncertain, noiseless, glimmering. It could be no other than the Fisky! Both their lady and their friend Malcolm must be on board, they were certain, for how could the one of them come without the other? and doubtless the marchioness, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... reconstructed as if by a miracle. Again, the scene resumes its old features—again, there is a sea on one side, and a lake on the other. But now, the Pool occupies only its ordinary limits—now, the mill-wheels turn busily once more, and the smooth paths and gliding streams reappear in their former beauty, until the next winter rains shall come round, and the next winter floods ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... the rigid position of the grim head poised in mid air on a neck that began like the muscular wrist of an athlete, thickening to where it was anchored on a branch three feet away to the size of an athlete's leg. And while the head, with the three feet of neck remained rigid, the body was gliding out and up, finding an anchorage in the forks of the tree on a level with the head, in readiness ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... again. And now they conversed very happily together for some time; though what they said might not be particularly worth recording. Lady Katrine was at Helen's elbow before she perceived her "looking for her sac;" and Lady Castlefort came for her third volume, and gliding off, wished to all—"Felice, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... with him, and how could she refuse? This was not a ball or party, it was only a dancing lesson; and somehow, all in a moment, she was floating around that little parlor on Willett's sustaining arm in long, graceful, gliding steps that seemed admirably adapted to his, and Willett's face glowed with delight and hers with pardonable triumph, for was she not showing the belles of the army the latest thing out in the ball-rooms of fashionable society? ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... charming. Frequently the mighty river rushes foaming and roaring past the rocks, which seem scarcely to allow it a passage; at other times it glides serenely onwards. At every turn we behold new beauties, and scarcely know on which side to turn our eager eyes. Meanwhile the ship sails swiftly on, gliding majestically through wildly ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... Satyr. Softly gliding as I goe, With this burthen full of woe, Through still silence of the night, Guided by the Gloe-worms light, Hither am I come at last, Many a Thicket have I past Not a twig that durst deny me, Not ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... goodnight. I also kissed Stella and went to bed. I reached my hut by the covered way, and before I undressed opened the door to see what the night was like. It was very dark, and rain was still falling, but as the light streamed out into the gloom I fancied that I caught sight of a dusky form gliding away. The thought of Hendrika flashed into my mind; could she be skulking about outside there? Now I had said nothing of Hendrika and her threats either to Mr. Carson or Stella, because I did not wish to ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... that moment, I thought how, of the lovely flowers that grew there, I would wind myself a chaplet and crown myself for joy: I would sing sul margine d'un rio,[77] my father's favourite song, and that my voice gliding through the windless air would announce to him in whatever bower he sat expecting the moment of our union, that his daughter was come. Then the mark of misery would have faded from my brow, and I should raise my eyes fearlessly to meet his, ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... "Pray observe the gliding of that verse; there is scarce a consonant in it: I took care to make it run upon liquids. Give me your opinion of it." "Truly," said I, "I think it as good as the former." "I am very glad to hear you say so," says he; ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... happen, they made their way down to the landing-place as quickly as possible. Bevan and the midshipmen had already reached the boat, and, jumping in, they pulled rapidly towards the Supplejack. As they did so, they caught sight of a vessel gliding across the harbour, which, having passed the brig, was ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... quite out into the stream, and was turning rapidly down the river. This change in the direction in which the steamer was going carried the pier and all the people that were upon it entirely out of the children's view and they saw themselves gliding rapidly along the shore of the river, which was formed of a long line of piers, with forests of masts surmounting them, and long ranges of stores and warehouses beyond. Nearer to the steamer, on the water ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... indeed make marvellous meeting. See with suasion firmly sweet That brisk trio, gaily greeting To that portal guide his feet. Neptune's hoarse hails his friend's approach declare, Probate, the winged sprite, about must play; With wanton wings that winnow the soft air In gliding state Lord Cupid leads the way To where grave Law must mark, assay, reprove Wanderings of young Desire, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... matter of perfect indifference to them whether customers called or not. The few soldiers in Portuguese uniform looked as if they had never done a day's drill since they left home. Groups sat in chairs under the trees and sipped cooling drinks or coffee. The very bullocks which drew the gliding wagons seemed to move more slowly than bullocks in other places. Frank and his friend drove in a wagon to the monastery, high up on the mountain, and then took their places on a little hand sledge, which was drawn by two men ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... each other. The rain took advantage of that, gliding under the awkward umbrella in order to brush with its fingers their hair and cheeks; between their lips they drank in a ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... you near me; I see your lashes shading eyes the gray of which is more delicious than all the blue of the sky and the flowers; your lips, which have the taste of a marvellous fruit; your cheeks, where laughter puts two adorable dimples; I see you beautiful and desired, but fleeing and gliding away; and when I open my arms, you have gone; and I see you afar on the long, long beach, not taller than a fairy, in your pink gown, under your parasol. Oh, so small!—small as you were one day when I saw you from the height of the Campanile in the square at Florence. And I say to myself, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... down the opposite rocks, presenting, on their irregular faces, strong masses of light and shade. Suddenly he heard the dash of a paddle, and, turning his eyes, saw a solitary and beautiful girl gliding over the lake in a coracle: she was proceeding from the vicinity of the point he had quitted, towards the upper end of the lake. Her apparel was rustic, but there was in its style something more recherchee, in its arrangement something more of elegance and precision, than was common to the mountain ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... me. Oh! my Renee, what an awful moment when, after a little pause full of delicious thrills of agony, I saw him gliding along like a shadow. When he had reached the garden safely, I said ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... difficulty in supposing that such links formerly existed, and that each had been formed by the same steps as in the case of the less perfectly gliding squirrels, and that each grade of structure was useful to its possessor. Nor can I see any insuperable difficulty in further believing it possible that the membrane-connected fingers and forearm of the galeopithecus might be greatly lengthened ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... conscious of a strange feeling of agitation, and, crossing to the piano, seated herself, and began to play softly the second strain in the spirit-stirring composition, gradually gliding into the jewel song quite unconsciously, and with trembling fingers. Then she awoke to the fact that Stratton had followed her to the instrument, against which he leaned, with the tones thrilling his nerves, tones set vibrating ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... his face as he spoke, but his eyes met hers with such uncontrollable worship in their gaze that she could not face them. His arm twined lightly about her waist, and without a further word they swung away in the long, gliding measure that seemed so perfectly in accord with the spirit of the dreamy music. She danced lightly as a fairy; "guided," as he would have said, "with the faintest touch of the rein," and he forgot the stiffness of the wounded thigh, and everything else but ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... blew out, and there came a spell of pleasant weather, with the Karluk gliding along, logging a fair rate where a less well-designed vessel would barely have found steerage way, riding on an almost even keel. Simms was still confined to his cabin, though now his daughter took him ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... she gave a little cry. I sprang up on her lap, and there, gliding over the table toward her, was the wicked-looking green thing. I stepped on the table, and had it by the middle before it could get to her. My hind legs were in a dish of jelly, and my front ones were in a plate of cake, and I was very uncomfortable. ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... snow fell, and the winter roads were suitable for travel. One day the moving portion of the city was on wheels: the next saw it gliding on runners. The little sleighs of the isvoshchiks are exactly like those of St. Petersburg and Moscow,—miniature affairs where you sit with your face within six inches of the driver's back, and cannot take a friend at your side without much crowding. They move ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... her main-topgallant-mast, and main-topsail yard were gone, and that she was evidently in other ways much damaged. The stranger passing within hail, a voice inquired, "What ship is that?" The third mate, Mr Reece, answered, and put the usual questions in return, but before these could be replied to, gliding by she had rounded to a short distance off. As I watched her I saw two females, who had apparently just come on deck to look at us. Presently a boat was lowered which soon came alongside, when who, to my surprise, should step on board but my old friend Captain Bland. I at once concluded ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... eyes in the situation above described, the objects we chance to view amid these changing spectra in the eye, must seem to move in a contrary direction; as the moon sometimes appears to move retrograde, when swift-gliding clouds are passing forwards so much nearer the eye of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... every school-day morning Claude rang the bell. Always full early his pirogue came gliding out of the woods and up through the bushy fen to the head of canoe navigation and was hauled ashore. Bonaventure had fixed his home near the chapel and not far from Claude's landing-place. Thus the lad could easily come to his door each morning ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... at the delay, and most unreasonably, too, since one night more could not matter much after so many months. As we had plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I brought up in the middle of the stream. The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides like a railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it long before the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but a dumb immobility sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by the creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into stone, even to the slenderest twig, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... eminent example to all mankind. The rest of the day is called afternoon; the very sound of which fine old Saxon word conveys a feeling of the lee bulwarks and a nap; a summer sea—soft breezes creeping over it; dreamy dolphins gliding in the distance. Afternoon! the word implies, that it is an after-piece, coming after the grand drama of the day; something to be taken leisurely and lazily. But how can this be, if you dine at five? For, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... journey, accomplished in most luxurious style, she had behaved like a child astonished at everything, and pleased at the least thing. With her face close to the window she saw through the transparent darkness of a lovely winter's night, villages and forests gliding past like phantoms. Afar off, in the depths of the country, she caught sight of a light glimmering, and she loved to picture a family gathered by the fire, the children asleep and the mother working ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... ebony head in at the drawing-room door, where sat Mrs. Grosvenor, so busily engaged making those garments for her husband, which she feared would be needed, alas! so soon that she had not perceived the hours were gliding on apace, and that it was long past the time when Sea-flower usually came tripping in from school to receive her evening kiss, and to tell over the ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... had dropped in midstream in docking the ship was on a long cable, and the Barang was gliding swiftly down over it. His men were at hand, but Rolfe needed little time to decide that it would be quicker to bring up on a fresh anchor than to heave in enough of the first chain to snub her way. He started to cast off ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... him with what speed and fury on that dangerous coast the treacherous tide came in. There was not a moment to spare, and as he flew back to the small shelter of the pebbly cove, the water was already gliding close to him, and stretching its arms like a hungry medusa round the seaweed-matted lumps of scattered rock over which ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... passed from one narrow street to another with quick and stealthy steps. Into this house he went, mounting the stairs swiftly, and disappeared for a few moments into some upper room; then as swiftly he came down again, and, gliding up alleys and half-deserted streets, entered one little cafe after another, and mounted to many a room whose occupants listened eagerly to his words and made a sign that they were understood. Long before darkness had fallen upon Sturatzberg ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... estate favors from elderly females of morbid sympathies, and a man whose mouth is full of plaints of his wrongs, and misappreciation. The rest of the leading conspirators have either departed this life in the odor of sanctity, surrounded by sorrowing friends, or are gliding serenely down the mellow autumnal vale of a benign ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... triumph, which I think we need not grudge him. As he stood on the bulwark looking over his shoulder at Peter gliding through the air, he invited him with a gesture to use his foot. It made ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Thuillier might be,—and she said nothing of her investments to any one, not even to her brother, although a large amount of Madame Thuillier's fortune went to swell the amount of her own savings,—it was difficult to prevent some ray of light from gliding under the bushel which covered ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... grave while still living, and I feel, as it were, the indescribable peace of annihilation, and the dim quiet of the Nirvana. I am conscious of the river of time passing before and in me, of the impalpable shadows of life gliding past me, but nothing breaks the cateleptic tranquillity ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the grass, and told them the story of his life, or as much of it as he could remember, from the day when he was first cradled in a warrior's brazen shield. While he lay there, two immense serpents came gliding over the floor, and opened their hideous jaws to devour him; and he, a baby of a few months old, had griped one of the fierce snakes in each of his little fists, and strangled them to death. When he was but a stripling, he had killed a huge ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... saw tugs and ferry-boats plying busily back and forth, and the flashing sails of great schooners. But presently they saw something like nothing they had ever beheld. Far in the distance was a line of moving objects, gliding through the waves in stately fashion, approaching one behind the other at equal distances. Just what was approaching the two scouts could not at first determine, so indistinct in outline were the moving bulks. But presently, as the oncoming objects drew nearer, the watchers saw that ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... revealed to him, the Orgie and Mystery will yield to him all, and more than all, they gave to Pythagoras of old. He will hold the key to every faith—nay more, he will form and feel new faiths for himself in studying mountains and seas. To him the cliff, high-rising above the foaming tide, the serpent gliding through the summer grass, the cool dark woodland path winding into arching leafy shadows, the brook and the narrow rocky pass, the red sunset and the crimson flower, gnarled roots and caverns, lakes, promontories, and headlands, will all have a strange meaning—not vague and ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... out of place the pretty, thoughtless Dutch girl looked among the spoils of far India, and Central America, and of Arabian and African worship and workmanship. But when the door opened, and Madame Jacobus, with soft, gliding footsteps entered, Hyde understood how truly the soul, if given the wherewithal, builds the habitation it likes best. Once possessed of marvellous beauty, and yet extraordinarily interesting, she seemed the very genius of the room and its strange, suggestive ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... the father of commercial canals, has propriety as well as happiness. Similitude for their course to the sinuous track of a serpent, produces a fine picture of a gliding animal of that species, and it is succeeded by these supremely ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... hand against the side wall had told him the wall-paper was pasted on canvas and not on a solid wall, and now he ripped the canvas away. The wall was of rough boards, scarred and marred. The opposite wall was the same. He kneeled on the bed and tried the rear wall. He felt the plastered wall gliding upward. He stood on the bed and ripped the canvas ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... to the ground, and turning to beckon on the ambushed warriors. He even remembered the way the yellow and red striped blinds of the log hut flapped in the wind, and how the horse that was hobbled outside raised his head from his hay, and pricked his ears uneasily, as the foe came gliding nearer and nearer. Then their way of fighting—he had thought it rather comic then—they hopped and pranced about like so many lively frogs, but the butchery would not be rendered any more agreeable by being accompanied by laughable gestures! And there was an ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... again, but in that brief halt, sustained nearly all of its loss. Just then, the Ninth Kentucky came to its support—the men yelling and gliding over the ground like panthers. The enemy gave way in confusion, and were pressed again on their right and rear by Cluke and Chenault, who were at this juncture reinforced by seventy-five men of Gano's regiment, who came up under Lieutenant ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... in the gondola, with one old and two newer friends, is marked with a white stone in my recollection. To bones aching with rough riding in Diligences by night as well as day, the soft cushions and gliding motion of the boat were soothing and grateful as "spicy gales from Araby the blest." The breeze from the Adriatic was strong and refreshing after the fervid but not excessive heat of the day, and the clear, mild moon seemed to invest the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... the music of Arabia In my heart, when out of dreams I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn Descry her gliding streams; Hear her strange lutes on the green banks Ring loud with the grief and delight Of the dim-silked, dark-haired musicians, In the brooding ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... French society, and, but for a little incident, would have remained of that opinion. In an unlucky moment he took it into his head he could waltz, and surprised the Countess Benvolio by claiming her hand for the next dance. "It seems werry easy," said he to himself as he eyed the couples gliding round the room;—"at all ewents there's nothing like trying, 'for he who never makes an effort never risks a failure.'" The couples were soon formed and ranged for a fresh dance. Jorrocks took a conspicuous position in the centre of the room, buttoned his coat, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... back at his ease, and amusing himself with watching her, admiring the graceful pose of her figure, the pretty face bending over the paper, and the small, white, shapely hand that was gliding swiftly ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... stir in the bed occupied by Dick. The boy rose on his pillow and looked cautiously around him. He called Mr. Hardesty, but there was no answer. At this Dick put one leg out of bed, and then the other, and stood firmly on the floor. Gliding cautiously over the carpet, he stooped over the sleeper, whose deep breathing assured him that all was safe. Then stepping softly to the chair on which Mr. Hardesty's clothes were lying, he selected that gentleman's nether garment, then went to the hearth and lifted the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... colors of which could never fade. He looked into the future, golden with the light of such a love, and he saw a vision of perfect happiness, of joy beyond all expression, of deep, calm content, surpassing anything which he had known. Hand in hand he saw two figures, himself and her, gliding through the years with a sort of effortless energy, tasting together of everything in life that was sweet, and pure, and beautiful; scattering all trouble and worldly vexation to the winds, by the touchstone of their undying ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... long while the airman perceived nothing. Suddenly close to the house facades on either side of the street, shadowy forms came gliding forward. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... a rustle like a faint hiss in the grass, and a green snake glides over the bank. The breath in the chest seems to lose its vitality; for an instant the nerves refuse to transmit the force of life. The gliding yellow-streaked worm is so utterly opposed to the ever present Idea in the mind. Custom may reduce the horror, but no long pondering can ever bring that creature within the pale of the human Idea. These are so distinctly opposite and anti-human that thousands of years have not sufficed ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... took the opportunity of gliding from the room. Sir Henry stretched his legs on an ottoman, and appeared immersed in the study of a print—the Europa of Paul Veronese—which hung over ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... of delicate creamy white, scarce less brilliant than the clouds which a gentle morning breeze was chasing westwards to the sea. And under the arcades of the temples cool shadows, dense and blue, trenchant against the white marble like an irregular mosaic of lapis lazuli, with figures gliding along between the tall columns, priests in white robes, furtive of gait, slaves of the pontificate, shoeless and silent and as if detached from the noise and bustle of the Forum, like ghosts that haunt the precincts ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... he fumed. His wrath could find no more words, but he made a stride towards Evander, menacing. Brilliana stepped dexterously between the two. As she told Tiffany later, she felt as if she were gliding ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... replied Sancho; and shaking his fingers he washed his whole hand in the river along which the boat was quietly gliding in midstream, not moved by any occult intelligence or invisible enchanter, but simply by the current, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... tide. A squall was met and the boat shipped water alarmingly, but fortunately the wind died away as quickly as it had come up. The Explorer was saved, and the journey was continued over the swiftly gliding torrent. ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... home, when the gold had faded from sea and sky, the palaces and towers of Venice rising low on the horizon as in a City of Dreams, the Lagoon turned by the moon into a sheet of silver, lights like great fireflies stealing over the water, ghostly gondolas gliding past,—then we were the real Lotus Eaters drifting to the only Lotus Land where ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... never knew whether he jumped purposely or lost his grip of that upright after the shock of the collision; but the next thing he realized he was straining himself with might and main to hold back the monoplane, already gliding along with sundry violent bumps, on the ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... lay still. It was delicious—the gliding, yet darting motion, like nothing she had ever felt before. It did not make her the least giddy, either; but a slightly sleepy feeling came over her. She felt no inclination to open her eyes; and, indeed, at the rate ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... ask the owl that sits in the hollow oak," said the gentle Anenome, gliding to Violet's side; "he must be very wise, for he never smiles, and seldom speaks more than three words at ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... the luggage hurriedly; the tall fellow lowered himself calmly and with a certain precision into the stern of the dory. The boatman set out toward the gliding mass of iron. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... am glad to say no more danger came to the ship. It rode safely through the storm, and in a few days, it was gliding swiftly ...
— Tum Tum, the Jolly Elephant - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... long, powerful oar-strokes of a man who, even in distant perspective, appeared larger than life-size. Instead of hailing the crew of the passing vessel, as was customary, the man gave no sign that he was conscious of the existence of any other craft than his own fast-gliding skiff. However, he steered straight for the boat, hove alongside, sprang on board with surprising agility, and, having fastened his light boat by a chain to a timber of the flat, stalked deliberately to the stern where Captain Pierce ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... souls of the nuns; they ceased prattling; but when Sister Martha, the nightingale of the sisterhood, began to sing a hymn the others followed her example. The sailors' songs were hushed, and the psalms of the virgin sisters, imploring the protection of the Almighty, seemed to float round the gliding boat as softly as the light of the circling moon. For hours—and with increased zeal as the comet rose in the sky—they gave themselves up to the soothing and encouraging pleasure of singing; but one by one the voices died away and their peaceful hymn was borne ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gliding and sliding, And falling and brawling and sprawling, And driving and riving and striving, And sprinkling and twinkling ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... marvelled that the waters had suddenly grown peaceful, and that now again they were gliding ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... broke the silence, pointing up the lake, to where a tiny point of red showed like a low-hung star through the gathering darkness. Moment by moment, other lights came into view, silently, steadily, until it seemed like some long, gliding sea-serpent, creeping down towards them ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... faced the wrong card, yet the dangerous trick was accomplished so quickly, so coolly, with never a lowering of the eyes, the twitching of a muscle, that a moment later the half-jealous watcher doubted the evidence of his own keen eyesight. As the final fateful card came silently gliding forth and was deliberately turned, face upward, amid bitter curses telling the disappointment of that breathless crowd, a young woman suddenly swept around the lower edge of the long table, brushing Winston with her flapping skirt as she passed, bent down, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... entirely satisfied in his mind, nevertheless softly followed the noiselessly gliding Jim to the lighthouse. Here Jim cautiously opened the door, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... battleships and the ladders taken in and the decks cleared for action, the crews going to general quarters. Then we steamed slowly toward the shore, each of the battleships being closely followed by her tows, which looked exactly like huge snakes gliding relentlessly after their prey. I do not suppose the suppressed excitement of this last half hour will ever be forgotten by those who were present. No one could tell at the last minute what would happen. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... can bend forward or backward, or twist from side to side a little, by the little pieces of bone of which it is built up gliding and turning upon one another, it is really very stiff and rigid, so as to protect the spinal cord and prevent its being stretched or pinched. Most of the movements which we call bending the spine are really movements ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... persuasion, she had let the old place, moved up to London with her eldest son, and taken for herself a lodging somewhere by Palace Stairs, which looked out upon the silver Thames (for Thames was silver then), with its busy ferries and gliding boats, across to the pleasant fields of Lambeth, and the Archbishop's palace, and the wooded Surrey hills; and there she spent her peaceful days, close to her Frank and to the Court. Elizabeth would have had her re-enter it, offering her a small place in the household: but she declined, saying ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... down as it moved on. Paine saw them all—Ronsin, Hebert, Momoro, Chaumette, Clootz, Gobel, the crazy and the vile, mingled together, the very men he had cursed in his garden at St. Denis—pass before him like the shadows of a magic-lantern, entering at one side and gliding out at the other,—to death. A few days later came Danton, Camille, Desmoulins, and the few who remained of the moderate party. Paine was standing near the wicket when they were brought in. Danton embraced him. "What you have done for the happiness and liberty of your country ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... graceful figure. The approach of Jacopo, still crossing himself, and calling upon all the saints for protection against the snares of the evil one, roused the perplexed youth from his reverie; and, stepping into the gondola, he was soon gliding rapidly over the canals in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... like some fair bark, in mortal conflict with the black and boiling waters and howling hurricane; long quivering on the brink of destruction, but at last outliving the storm, righting itself, and suddenly gliding into safe and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... a gentle, gliding heat, And quick'ning warmth, that makes the statua sweat; As rev'rend Ducaleon's black-flung stone, Whose rough outside softens to skin, anon Each crusty vein with wet red is suppli'd, Whilst nought of stone but ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... herded the tribes into the towns for his better security. Now there was no sign anywhere of habitation. The red boles of the mimosa trees, purple-brown cracked earth, yellow stubble of burnt grass, the skimming of myriads of birds above the tree-tops and shy wild animals gliding noiselessly in the dark of the forest—there was nothing more now. It seemed that no human foot had ever ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... lozenges of greeny-blue stone. It looked like a half-grown bedstead, the colour very pretty. If we had had an interpreter, we might have saved it from the ruin. What I carried away was a memory of the blue above, the gliding river below, hot sun and stillness, and the hum of a large, irridescent black beetle that went blundering through scarlet poinsettia leaves into the white, scented blossoms of a ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was three o'clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... to the beach at once. A morning mist lay over the sea. They could not see anything two hundred yards ahead. They were obliged to wait. At last the first sunbeams began to pierce this nocturnal mist. It slowly dispersed, gliding over the sea as clouds move in the sky. The king's hungry eye roved over the tossing waters before him, but he saw nothing, yet he could not banish the hope that somewhere behind that moving curtain he would find his refuge. Little by little ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... almost underneath the walls of her tent; the smell of spruce trees and balm-o'-Gilead and new-mown hay was in the air. She could feel the warmth of the sunshine already pouring upon her white roof; she could trace the gentle sway of the trees by the leafy patterns gliding forward and back. A cheeky gopher, exploring about the door of her tent, ventured in, and, sitting bolt upright, sent his shrill whistle boldly forth. She watched his fine bravery for a minute, then clapped her hands together, and ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... out at the dam, which was always worth looking at for its reflections of the heavens, but it was perfectly still. There was no raft gliding ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... her passion for rank, delighted in the society of this half-crazed old creature, and while the two women sat in the dark shop, with the names of dukes and marquises gliding lightly from their tongues, a workman would come in to buy a paper for a sou, or some woman, impatient for the conclusion of some serial romance, would come in to ask if the magazine had not yet arrived, and cheerfully pay the two cents that would ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... my arm and was gliding kitty-corner fashion, across the floor. Presently she and the stunning girl had saluted each other after the impulsive fashion of American girls, and were playing cat- in-the-cradle, to the amusement of those foreigners nearest. A nod, and I ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... commonplace. So they are. But did you ever take that well-worn old story, and press it on your own consciousness—as a man might press a common little plant, whose juice is healing, against his dim eye-ball—by saying to yourself, 'It is true of me. I walk as a shadow. I am gliding onwards to my doom. Through my slack hands the golden sands are flowing, and soon my hour-glass will run out, and I shall have to stop and go away.' Let me beseech you for one half-hour's meditation on that fact before this day closes. You will forget my words then, when with your own ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... The train was gliding perpetually on, and I bethought myself of the recommendation of one who is jumping from a running vehicle, to leap forward, because in jumping sideways or backward he invariably falls under the wheels. So I followed the recommendation and leaped. Fortunately, I reached the ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... framed in the darkness which had beset her on all sides, showing a deadly precipice right under her feet. With a convulsive movement she sat up straight, but had no power to rise. Ricardo, on the contrary, was on his feet on the instant, as noiseless as a cat. His yellow eyes gleamed, gliding here and there; but he too seemed unable to make another movement. Only his moustaches stirred visibly, like the feelers of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... theme, and for at least an hour he sang of my deeds, in an extremely loud and disagreeable voice, while he accompanied himself upon his fiddle, which he held downwards like a violoncello: during the whole of his song he continued in movement, marching with a sliding step to the front, and gliding to the right and left in a manner that, if intended to be graceful, was extremely comic. The substance of this minstrelsy was explained to me by Taher Noor, who listened eagerly to the words, which he translated with evident satisfaction. Of course, like all minstrels, he was an absurd flatterer, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Sea and into the dark of the Straits, then standing firm upon the ocean's floor, with my knees a little bent, I take the waters of the Straits in both my hands and whirl them round my head. But the ship comes gliding on with the sound of the sailors singing on her decks, all singing songs of the islands and carrying the rumour of their cities to the lonely seas, till they see me suddenly astride athwart their course, and are caught in the waters as I whirl them round my head. Then I draw in the waters ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... repeated Inez, as she kissed her hand to him; and then blushing, ashamed at her own boldness, she darted from the arbour, and was seen for an instant gliding towards the cottage of her nurse, in which, at the next moment, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... she showed no signs of weakening, he went out of the room with the same gliding step with which ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... the most wonderful dance. It transforms the heavy-footed sons of earth. Without a sound soles an inch thick float over the unplaned barn floor. They whirl about, light as leaves in an autumn wind. It is supple, quick, silent, gliding. Its noble, measured movements set the body free and let it feel itself light, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... get there in less than an hour or more,' muttered Nancy: brushing swiftly past him, and gliding rapidly down the street. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... the river. And no sooner have we all bathed than we board the two shallops and push off gaily, and go gliding under the trees and gathering a great treasure of water-lilies. Some one sings; some trail their hands in the cool water; some lean over the gunwale to see the image of the tall poplars far below, and the shadow of the boat, with balanced oars and their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... calling among the mountains; if you come cautiously around that bending hill, you may catch a glimpse of the great Pan himself. When the moonlight showers filled the forests with a magical light, one might see the untouched Artemis gliding rapidly among the mossy trunks. Beneath, in the deep abysses of earth, reigned the gloomy Pluto with the sad Persephone, home-sick for the upper air. By the sea-shore Proteus wound his horn, the Sirens ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... becoming more firmly wedged in by fresh ice hurrying down with the stream, and which, driven by pressure of the frozen impact, piled up against us with a horrid grinding noise until large sheets an eighth of an inch thick and as clear as crystal came gliding, as though alive, on to ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... I came at last upon the members of the provisional government, among whom Todt and Tschirner, after their first panic-stricken flight, were once more to be found gliding to and fro, gloomy as spectres, now that they were chained to the performance of their heavy duties. Heubner alone had preserved his full energy; but he was a really piteous sight: a ghostly fire burned in his eyes which had not had a wink of sleep for seven nights. He was delighted ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of oars. Soon the little cock-boat came gliding around the bend of the shore and floated into the mouth of the creek. Bill Saxby raised himself for a moment and ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Dorothy and Nancy were gliding rapidly over the frosty highway, Arabella was standing at Patricia's door, ringing the bell, and wondering why no one replied. Then some one came around ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... journey was much more tedious than the other, for we were now getting close to the spot, and we knew that though sometimes it was possible to walk close by a snake without disturbing it, at other times the slightest sound would send it gliding rapidly out ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... until his bedside could be reached, he and his wife made hasty arrangements to start, and were soon speeding across the fertile fields of Illinois. They crossed the mighty Mississippi, changed trains in St. Louis' big Union Depot, and after a few hours' ride their train was gliding past old ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... had some distaste or blame in his passion, and it hath haply fortuned that he hath judged or esteemed of others according to himselfe. In my Philip de Comines there is this: In him you shall find a pleasing- sweet and gently-gliding speech, fraught with a purely sincere simplicitie, his narration pure and unaffected, and wherein the Authours unspotted good meaning doth evidently appeare, void of all manner of vanitie or ostentation speaking of ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... some response; then her face relaxed into a contemptuous smile, and her crimson lips parted to reveal her even, gleaming teeth. She laughed, a rippling little laugh like the tinkle of steel links, and with a single gliding movement that permitted no avoidance she swept to within two feet of the now ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... these eminent men would take a pen and write roughly what questions they expected to find answered in it, what difficulties solved, what kind of information imparted. Such practices keep us from reading with the eye only, gliding vaguely over the page; and they help us to place our new acquisitions in relation with what we knew before. It is almost always worth while to read a thing twice over, to make sure that nothing has been missed or ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... swerved myself. Most of us in these days are pleased to laugh at superstitions, provided we are in good company round a roaring fire. I was here alone in a lonely field, at nine of the clock on a winter night, and there, flittering and gliding through the spinney was a something in white. Virgil believed in ghosts, and so did Joe Braggs, and I, by oft reading the one and listening to the other, had preserved an open mind. Apparently Sultan had his doubts, for ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... her lips, and once she paused in her work to answer a trilling bird in the branches overhead. She was all alone on the wide, shady lawn, and so engrossed in her own thoughts that she never heard the chug-chug of a motor-car gliding up the river road, nor saw the black-frocked figure leap nimbly from the machine and scurry up the walk to the kitchen door, as if in too big a hurry to enter the house in the proper manner. But she did hear the boisterous shouts of Cherry and Allee a few moments ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the same train with De Vayne, happy too, with a mind strengthened and expanded, with knowledge deepened and widened, with an honourable ambition opening before him, and friends and a fair position already won. All these results had sprung from those few and swiftly-gliding weeks. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... me to look round, and there, coming towards us, was she who said her name was Yva. Evidently all her weakness had departed also, for now she needed no support, but walked with a peculiar gliding motion that reminded me of a swan floating forward on the water. Well had we named her the Glittering Lady, for in the starlight literally she seemed to glitter. I suppose the effect came from her golden raiment, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... word hermaphrodite, I use it in its broadest sense. I simply mean that they are autogenetic. In the rhabdocoela the sexual organs appear in their simplest forms—a testis anterior to a single or double ovary. Other gliding worms have a more complex arrangement of the sexual organs, but most of them are true hermaphrodites. Next in the chain of evolutionary development, and one step nearer man, we find the soft worms (scolecidae); from a branch of this family the parent group of vertebrates was developed. ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... I walk continually A ghost, while yet in woman's flesh and blood; Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingers And gliding steadfast down your corridors I come by nightly custom to this room, And even on sultry afternoons I come Drawn by ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... out with the boathook so that the yard swung square across the length of the boat, we went sliding smoothly away to leeward with a long, easy, buoyant motion, a pleasant, musical gurgling of water along our bottom planking, and a swift gliding past us of tiny air bubbles and occasional morsels of weed that told us we were now travelling at the rate ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood |
