"Shifting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the impatient classes stirred nervously, counting off the minutes, sitting gingerly on the seat-edges for fear of wrinkling the carefully pressed suits or shifting solicitously the sharpened trousers in peril of a bagging at the knees. Heavens! how interminable the hour was, sitting there in a planked shirt and a fashion-high collar—and what a recitation! Would ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... Mr. Plank's big touring-car," observed Lydia Vyse, shifting Tinto to the couch and brushing the black and white hairs from her automobile coat. "How much does a car like that ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... estuary seemed to prohibit all attack from that side. The space between Bit-Yakin and the long line of dunes or mud-banks which blocked the entrance to it was not so much a gulf as a lagoon of uncertain and shifting extent; the water flowed only in the middle, being stagnant near the shores; the whole expanse was irregularly dotted over with mud-banks, and its service was constantly altered by the alluvial soil brought down by the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Ulai, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... immovable, his eyes shifting from side to side, now under the sail, now past it. He chewed vigorously on his quid of tobacco and spat. There was much less sign now of the twitchings round his eyes than there'd been earlier in the day, and his very calmness had a ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... scanned the river. Silence, silence everywhere, and no human sign. Haggard and bedraggled they puffed a third time slowly down Broadway, under the broiling sun, and at last stopped. He sniffed the air. An odor—a smell—and with the shifting breeze a sickening stench filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning. The girl settled ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... not quite clear. Our sources fail us, and we are at the mercy of doubtful rumours and more or less unreliable anecdotes. We have a vision of intrigues, mysterious conferences, threats and bribery, dimly discernible through a shifting mirage of tradition. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... me tell you it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only shifting and not surmounting a difficulty; that we would find the same enemy and the same or equal entrenchments at either place. The country will not fail to note—is noting now—that the present hesitation to move upon an entrenched ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... before no tempests. For all that Bishop Butler says, probabilities are not the guide of life, in its deepest and noblest aspects. They may be the guide of practice, but for the anchorage of the soul we want no shifting sand-bank, but that to which we may make fast and be sure that, whatever shifts, it remains immovable. You can no more clothe the soul in 'perhapses' than a man can make garments out of a spider's web. Religion consists of the things ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... neglect. There seemed to be no direct responsibility on the part of any heritor for its upkeep, and what seemed everybody's business became nobody's. This condition of laissez faire was confirmed by a sentimental though unreasonable objection to shifting into their right position a number of head-stones which time and weather had either displaced or Darwin's worms had covered up. It was only five or six years ago that a Committee was formed, which in ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... Jesus" involved the employment of two scaffolds, displaying the judgment-halls of Pilate and Herod respectively; and between them passed messengers on horseback. The plays contain occasional stage directions—e.g., "Here Herod shall rage on the pagond." We find also rude attempts at scene-shifting, of which an illustration occurs in the Coventry Play of ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... ever caught, but I know that the last time he got away he was not found during the day, but after nightfall he was discovered by moonlight in the locust-tree. His owner climbed for him, but the coon kept shifting about, and getting higher and higher, and at last he had to be left till morning. In the morning he was not there, ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... his party left Nauset harbor, to join the colony still lingering at St. Croix. In passing the bar, they came near being wrecked, and consequently gave to the harbor the significant appellation of Port de Mallebarre, a name which has not been lost, but nevertheless, like the shifting sands of that region, has floated away from its original moorings, and now adheres to ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... indexing finger. Out of the darkness and into the swaying gleam of the lanterns a black-robed figure, bent double with the weight of years, hobbled its weird way toward the diners. From a voluminous sable sleeve, a long thin hand projected itself, the wiry fingers clutching a tall staff. The shifting glow of the lanterns played fantastically upon the apparition's veiled head as, step by step, it drew slowly nearer. An audible sigh of amazement, mingled with dread of the unknown, swept the little company. Added to the unexpected materialization of the seeress was the surprise ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... one arm, shoved him toward the bureau. He got out of his shirt, Greenleaf shifting his grasp so as not to let go of him for a second. In trying to put the front collar button into the fresh shirt, ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... arms were wrapped against his chest, while the jacket's extra-long sleeves were tied behind his back. He walked where the attendants led him, but his eyes weren't looking at anything in the room. They stared at something far away and invisible, an impalpable shifting nothingness somewhere in the infinite distances beyond ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... The bay seemed a vast sheet of fire, as the crimson clouds cast their shifting shadows on its bosom; and, forgetting everything else, Beulah leaned out of the buggy, and said ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... light would still cut the poles, the days and nights would still be equal, and there would be no changes in the seasons, though there would be a rival revolution of the globe, by causing it to turn once a year, shifting the poles end for end. The inclination being to the surface of the table, or to the plane of the orbit, the phenomena that are known to exist are a consequence. Thus it is, that the change in the seasons ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the water snake you were helped by Iolaus," said the king, snapping out his words and looking at Heracles with shifting eyes. "That labor cannot ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... continued, and the Harpy was busy enough with the prize, shifting the prisoners and refitting both vessels, which had very much suffered in the sails and rigging. There was an occasional wonder on board the Harpy what that strange vessel might be, who had turned the corvette and enabled them to capture ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... and the Priest were in a small, dark chamber. A square doorway of massive stone let in gleams of shifting light, and the sound of many voices chanting a slow, strange hymn. They stood listening. Now and then the chant quickened and the light grew brighter, as though fuel had been thrown ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... and it bewildered me worse than any in the long chain of bewildering incidents. For five seconds or so he appeared not to see me; but when he grew aware his look changed suddenly to one of utter terror, and his eyes, shifting from me, shot a glance about the room as if he expected some new accusation to dart at him from the corners. His indignation and passionate defiance were gone: his eyes seemed to ask me, "How much do you know?" ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... within; in a corner, a bee busied himself buzzing loudly between flowers and sips of saccharine sweetness. Jocelyn Wray stepped in its direction, stooped. The sunlight touched the white neck, where spirals of gold nestled, and fell over her gown in soft, shifting waves. ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... was a drawbridge in two sections raised from the centre to let the larger vessels through. The place was full of interesting sights, and Keith loved in particular to press right up against the edge of the raised bridge as some steamer or small sailing vessel glided leisurely in or out of the ever shifting waters of ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... slept, and the facades of tumble-down tenements in which he had first beheld the light of day, he was a modest source of income. Any lumber-yard or any tenement sufficiently dilapidated would serve as a model; and the fact that in the shifting architectural life of New York the actual original scenes of the incidents had been demolished and built upon by new apartment-houses, or new railroad stations, or new factories seventy-five stories high, was an unobstructing triviality. Accounts of ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... longer, fell and powdered Mrs Roby's floor. The curtains of her little bed saved her face. There was a slushing and swishing and gasping and blowing now, which might have done credit to a school of porpoises. The Captain was washing. Something between the flapping of a main top-sail in a shifting squall and the currying of a hippopotamus indicated that the Captain was drying himself. The process was interrupted by an unusual, though not quite unknown, crash and a howl; he had overturned the wash-hand basin, and a double thump, followed by heavy dabs, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... at Rope Hauen is steep-to; and with the light breeze there was hardly a ripple on it. On a rising tide we ran the boats in straight upon the shingle; and in less than a minute the kegs were being hove out. By the light of the lantern on the beach I could see the shifting faces of the crowd, and the troop of horses standing behind, quite quiet, shoulder to shoulder, shaved from forelock to tail, all smooth and shining with grease. I had heard of these Cornish horses, and how closely they were clipped; but these ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... growing leaf is different from the under surface. The yellow butterfly, if you meet one in October, has so toned down his spring yellow that you might fancy him a pale green leaf floating along the road. There is a shining, quivering, gleaming; there is a changing, fluttering, shifting; there is a mixing, weaving—varnished wings, translucent wings, wings with dots and veins, all playing over the purple heath; a very tangle of many-toned lights and hues. Then come the apples: if you look upon them from an upper window, so as to glance along the level ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... also took a small basketful of jelly cookies along with her. We had to go back through the maple woods to the extreme end of Uncle Roger's farm—a pretty walk, through a world of green, whispering boughs and spice-sweet ferns, and shifting patches of sunlight. The raspberries were plentiful, and we were not long in filling our receptacles. Then we foregathered around a tiny wood spring, cold and pellucid under its young maples, and ate the jelly cookies; ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... when, catching a glimpse of the frightful weight of care and pain with which mankind is laden, I am oppressed by the thought that all improvement must come solely through the continued selfish shifting of that burden from side to side, from shoulder to shoulder; through the violent or cunning destruction of some of the intolerable effects of selfishness in the past by selfishness in the present and the future. And that in the midst of this terrible but salutary scuffle for ease and security, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... against the partition. "How did they feel, do you suppose—the people, the men and women, who belonged to such things?" As Lee watched her it seemed that she grew more remote, shadowy, like a memory of long vanished beauty made before his eyes from the shifting firelight and immaterial shadows. Mina Raff lost her reality in an unreal charm that compressed his heart. The atmosphere around her stirred with re-created ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... instruct, entertain and amuse. The author, outside of the historical interest of this little book, has aimed to cover a broad-enough field for all classes of readers to find some nourishing food—at least in the way of variety and shifting scenes—from the standpoint of a ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... Frank had made the big centre-table of plank, and the book-shelves as well. "He likes to tinker at such things," she said. "Whenever he gets blue or cross I set him to shifting the dresser or making a book-shelf, and he cheers up like mad. He's a regular kid anyway—always doing the things ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... fun," he answered, the uneasy grin still on his face and his eyes shifting. "I only wanted to see if you would ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... early we find Tyche worshipped as a goddess among the other deities, and it is an old notion that the gods send good fortune, a notion which set its mark on a series of established phrases in private and public life. But what is of interest here is that shifting of religious ideas in the course of which Tyche drives the gods into the background. We find indications of it as early as Thucydides. In his view of history he lays the main stress, certainly, on human initiative, and not least on rational calculation, as the cause ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... annoyed by the galling chains that cramped our wearied limbs on the tedious voyage. But I had several opportunities to have run away from Garrison before we got to the mouth of the Ohio river. While they were shifting us from one boat to another, my hands were some times loosed, until they got us all on board—and I know that I should have broke away had it not been for the sake of my wife and child who was with me. I could see no chance to get them off, and I could not leave them in that condition—and ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... that in future he will put on 'an antic disposition.' Towards them he has, in fact, already done so. His desire for a threefold oath; his repeated shifting of ground; his swearing by the sword on which the hands are laid (a custom referable to the time of the Crusades, and considered tantamount to swearing by the cross, but which, at the same time, is an older Germanic, and hence Danish, custom); his use of a Latin ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the wide gray plain, appeared a tiny dot, apparently an unimportant fixture of the landscape. An hour earlier it might not have been observed at all by even the keenest eye, and it would have needed yet more time to assure an observer even now that the dot was a moving object. Under the shifting play of the prairie sun the little object appeared now dark, now light in colour, but became gradually more distinct. It came always crawling steadily on. Presently an occasional side-blown puff of dust added a certain heraldry, and thus finally the white-topped wagon and its plodding ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... politics, and so indiscreet as to boast of his successful amours with certain ladies whom he ought not to have named. He affected pomp and splendour, though his profession demanded simplicity and humility. He was continually shifting parties, being a loyal subject one day and the next a rebel, one time a sworn enemy to the Prime Minister, and by and by his zealous friend; always aiming to make himself formidable or necessary. As ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... coal at Dewley Burn being at length worked out, the pit was ordered to be "laid in," and old Robert and his family were again under the necessity of shifting their home; for, to use the common phrase, they must "follow the wark." They removed accordingly to a place called Jolly's Close, a few miles to the south, close behind the village of Newburn, where another coal-mine belonging to the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... sweet picture of a dead game sport," he growled, shifting nervously in his chair. "I ain't got a gun; you an' Barbee have; go ahead an' call me ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... where he is!' said Ronald; and he moved the lantern up and down, and turned the night into a shifting puzzle- work of gleam and shadow. 'I think I'll ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... careless attitude, for a while remained near the mast, apparently engaged in some ordinary conversation. An occasional shifting of their position, however, took place,—though so slight that, even under a good light, it would scarce have been observed. A series of these movements, made at short intervals, ended in bringing the conspirators close up to the empty hogshead; and then one of ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... had to tell; but in spite of this, or because he could not always bear it in mind, the conversation almost invariably drifted back to the old subject of sheep, of which he was never tired. Even in his sleep he does not forget them; his dreams, he says, are always about sheep; he is with the flock, shifting the hurdles, or following it out on the down. A troubled dream when he is ill or uneasy in his sleep is invariably about some difficulty with the flock; it gets out of his control, and the dog cannot understand him or refuses ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... precursor, a rise in temperature, or a general weakness and shifting of the legs. Soon a painful, convulsive twitching of the muscles sets in, followed by muscular rigidity along the spine, in which condition the animal will move very stiffly and evince great pain in turning. Evidences of paralysis or paraplegia develop, retention or incontinence of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... official announcer rose above the hum of the crowd and there was a sudden, tense shifting of the nervous human mass. A dozen bookmakers turned leisurely to their slates, a dozen pieces of chalk were poised aggravatingly—and a hoarse grunt of disappointment rose from the watchers. Black Bill the favourite, yes, but bet fives to win threes? Hardly. Wait a minute; don't go ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... sardines, some twenty or thirty boxes still remaining in my supply of provisions—we resumed our journey down the troublesome rapid. We had to do that with ropes, Alcides, with his extraordinary way of thinking, actually going to the trouble of shifting a big rock out of the water, which took him the best part of an hour, rather than let the canoe go round it—in absolutely placid waters in that particular spot. I let him do it rather than have a quarrel, as I firmly believed that in consequence of the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... for us. We had grown so accustomed to shifting from one part of the line to another that we had already nicknamed ourselves the "Canadian ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... of mineral Veins. Ordinary metalliferous Veins or Lodes. Their frequent Coincidence with Faults. Proofs that they originated in Fissures in solid Rock. Veins shifting other Veins. Polishing of their Walls or "Slicken sides." Shells and Pebbles in Lodes. Evidence of the successive Enlargement and Reopening of veins. Examples in Cornwall and in Auvergne. Dimensions of Veins. Why some alternately swell out and ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... on the lip of Nature, even the broad leaves of the quassia rising and falling on the shifting breaths of air, without that peculiar rustling sound generally belonging to the ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... the protection of deserters from arrest, resistance to conscription, and perhaps other designs of a still more dangerous character." To the operations of this insidious foe were attributed the shifting of the vote in the Alabama elections, the defeat of certain candidates favored by the Government, and the return in their stead of new men "not publicly known." The suspicions of the Government were destined to further verification in the course of 1864 by the unearthing of a treasonable ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... mood, and was about passing without any courtesy of the sort, when the stranger, without taking the pipe from his mouth, raised the bottle, and with it beckoned him familiarly, while, with a sort of lurch of the head and shoulders, and at the same time shifting his seat to the end of the bench, he pantomimically invited him to share his seat and his cheer. There was a divine fragrance of whiskey about the spot, and Bob half relented; but he remembered his promise just as he began ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... think that the trouble lay with the clock; that I had been deceived in my conclusions, and that it was not running at the time of the crime. Mr. Gryce may have ordered it wound, and then have had it laid on its back to prevent the hands from shifting past the point where they had stood at the time of the crime's discovery. It was an unexplainable act, but a possible one; while to suppose that it was going when the shelves fell, stretched improbability to the utmost, there having been, so far as ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... don't think he has any," declared Tennelly, shifting uneasily in his chair. He had a feeling that Uncle Ramsey would get it out of him ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... carried with him on his rambles by sea-shore or through some country lanes, were the New Testament, Marcus Aurelius, and Tannahill's Poems; but perhaps it was the wise Emperor with whom he most closely communed as the waves rippled along the sand, and the shifting lights crossed the clear blue of the Arran hills. He had so entered into the spirit of that proud and patient stoicism, that he considered himself proof against anything that might happen to him in life or in death. It was a voice from far ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... means of which all connected instruments could at any moment be brought to zero from the central transmitting station, and thus be made to work in correspondence with the central instrument and with one another. He also originated the idea of using only one inking-pad and shifting it from side to side to ink the type-wheels. It was also in Edison's stock printer that the principle of shifting type-wheels was first employed. Hence it will be seen that, as in many other arts, he made a lasting impression in this one by the intrinsic merits ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... a safe distance, shifting his position from time to time, until the Indians had gathered all the firewood they needed and were sitting in a group around the heap. Chaska used the flint and steel and Henry saw the fire at last blaze up. The seven warmed their food over the fire and then sat around it in a close ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... be sure that everybody should be in the right place at the tea-table, and this the Widow thought she could manage by a few words to the older guests and a little shuffling about and shifting when they got to the table. To settle everything the Widow made out a diagram, which the reader should have a chance of inspecting in an authentic copy, if these pages were allowed under any circumstances to be the vehicle of illustrations. If, however, he or she ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... to live in a caravan. But I have always liked the idea of a caravan. And if you, alas, O reader, are a dweller in a railway-car, I commend the idea to you. Take it, with my apologies for any words of mine that may have nettled you. Put it into practice. Think of the white road and the shifting hedgerows, and the counties that you will soon lose count of. And think what a blessing it will be for you to know that your house is not the one in which the Merstham Tunnel murder ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Langogne, via Langeac, we traversed a region familiar to many a tourist as he has journeyed from Clermont-Ferrand to Nimes. The shifting scenes of gorge and ravine are truly of Alpine grandeur, whilst the railway is one of those triumphs of engineering skill to which Alpine travellers ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... till three o'clock again. Once I thought I was on the track of it. I have come to the conclusion now that it's one of those codes that depend upon shifting quantities. I shall start again to-night on a different idea. Shall I show ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... labor unions, and the policies of governors and presidents. The psychology of the Western farmer will concern him, and the tone of the daily press, and the methods of department stores. It will be his aim to know the subtle chemistry of public opinion, and to adapt the telephone service to the shifting moods and necessities of the times. HE WILL FIT TELEPHONY LIKE A GARMENT AROUND ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... duties of their several positions in the home have not changed. The family remains the social unit as it has been in all ages. Sociology, the science of social and political organization, is a permanent science. It does not change with the shifting temporal conditions of the people. Those things which made for the general welfare of ages ago are for the public weal now, and those things that endangered the state then ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... of the trial, though he was oblivious of most that was going on in the court-room, memory and fancy were keenly alert, and he rapidly lived over again many episodes of his past life. The dead and gone years rose up before him like the scenes of a rapidly-shifting panorama, even as the past is said to arise before the mental vision of those lying on beds of pain, just before the great mystery of the grave is unfolded to their view. Subjects and scenes long forgotten or seldom remembered presented themselves. There was the little Fifeshire ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... frontier, midway between his Walloon and Flemish possessions. From the point of view of international politics, his son Gislebert is a still more striking personality. Threatened by Charles the Simple, he concluded an alliance with the Emperor Henry, and succeeded thus in shifting his position from France to Germany and from Germany to France no less than four times. He was finally obliged to submit to the emperor, whose power was steadily growing, and married his daughter (925). Having risen against ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... smoothly over the sky. He suggested that they should walk to the ruined cloister of Nimbschen; but Louise responded very languidly, and he had to coax and persuade. By the time she was ready to leave the untidy room, the morning was more than half over, and the shifting clouds had balled themselves into masses. Before the two emerged from the wood, an even network of cloud had been drawn over the whole ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... difficulties and takes root on shifting sand, in fact they seem to be the most propitious ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... which lights up our memories with colors of crimson and gold. We should remember, however, that not only the glow of autumn and the flush of summer are beautiful, but that every season, every climate, every aspect in the shifting panorama of Nature, has a beauty as real. Our own region, be it arid with parching suns, or wet with frequent rains; be it always winter there, or always summer, is full of beauty. There is sunset on the desert, moonrise ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... is too universal. You find it everywhere; and to ascribe it everywhere to education would be but shifting ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... this movement, all evidence indicates that it is but the accentuation of a process which has been going on for more than fifty years. So silently indeed has this shifting of the negro population taken place that it has quite escaped popular attention. Following the decennial revelation of the census there is a momentary outburst of dismay and apprehension at the manifest ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... strips No bigger than the airy feathers That ducks preen out in changing weathers Upon the shifting ripple-tips. ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... hardest job I ever struck," he growled, shifting impatiently from shade to shade, and dratting the flies and dust; and even sank so low as to envy ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... baronet, his pale eyes shifting away from my glance; "too ill for Philadelphia, but not too ill for New York, where, I am told, he has been most of the time since ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again; Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt, And the long mountains ended in a coast Of ever-shifting sands, and far away The phantom circle ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... fall. The crimson orb sunk below the purple mountains, the sky was flushed with a rich and rosy glow. Then might be perceived the zealots, proud in their Talmudical lore, holding the skein of white silk in their hands, and announcing the approach of the sabbath by their observation of its shifting tints. While the skein was yet golden, the forge of the armourers still sounded, the fire of the cook still blazed, still the cavalry led their steeds to the river, and still the busy footmen braced up their tents, and hammered at their palisades. The skein of silk became rosy, the armourer ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... a lot of their happiness. No man able to work can be idle without feeling a sense of guilt at not doing his part in the world, for every time he sees the poor laboring people who are working for him, who are working everywhere, he is constantly reminded of his meanness in shifting upon others what he is able to do and ought to do himself. Idleness is the last place to look for happiness. Idleness is like a stagnant pool. The moment the water ceases to flow, to work, to do something, all sorts of vermin and hideous creatures develop ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... dark by the time the heavy tramp of the working party was heard returning from the fortifications. The great mess-pot, partly filled with pork and beans, was bubbling over the fire; Zeke, shifting his position from time to time to avoid the smoke which the wind, as if it had a spite against him, blew in his face, was sourly contemplating his charge and his lot, bent on grumbling to the others ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... case, where there is none to be made, and tax your correspondent (no matter in what soft phrase) with errors and confusions when he was guilty of none—it will go nigh to be thought by many an unworthy subterfuge, serving no other purpose than the fallacious one of shifting the question, and misleading ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... with waving semaphore arms, sighted, passed and left behind in a whirling sand-cloud in one and the same heart-beat. And for the central figure in the picture, the one constant quantity when all else was mutable and shifting and indistinct, the big, calm-eyed Norwegian on the opposite box, hurling his huge ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... glad, indeed, to do so," Oswald said modestly. "I know that I am very ignorant of real swordsmanship, and the men-at-arms have me quite at their mercy, when they insist upon my not shifting my ground. At home, I have only practised with my father's troopers, and we always fight on foot, and with stout sticks instead of swords, and without defences save our head pieces; but fighting in knightly fashion I knew nothing ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... narrow winding passages, through which the tides run with great force. The entrance to the river has a depth of only 10 or 11 feet at high-water, consequently, is available for small vessels only; the best anchorage for larger ones is five miles distant. The banks are constantly shifting, and the channel is intricate. When to this is added that the settlement—consisting of the townships of North and South Brisbane, and Kangaroo Point, is situated 14 miles from the river mouth—it was not surprising that a proposal had ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... the heart of these things; they are almost as precious as Picciola to the prisoner, and yield a fresh and constant joy such as the pleasure-seeking inhabitants of cities could not find in their whole round of shifting diversions. With a bright and cheerful interior, open fires, books and pictures, windows full of thrifty blossoming plants and climbing vines, a family of singing birds, plenty of work, and a clear head ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Farrell, "that we can't even offer you a bed. We're all packed up, ready to sail by the steamer to-morrow. Mrs. Farrell and I in fact are shifting quarters. ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... were deep, they were the lightest shades. They were bewitching commingled. We sat down to study and enjoy this singular spectacle. The tints remained during several minutes—fitting, changing, melting into each other; paling almost away for a moment, then reflushing—a shifting, restless, unstable succession of soft opaline gleams, shimmering over that air film of white cloud, and turning it into a fabric dainty enough to clothe ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... movement, is yet subject to definite laws. What these laws are has never been divulged.—"The wind bloweth where it listeth." Yet in viewing earth and atmosphere as vast reservoirs of vito-magnetic fluid, shifting back and forth to maintain an equilibrium, we believe we see the workings of the very force which moves and sways the atmosphere; which causes its currents, both general and special; and which gives rise to all its more ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... open place beneath. A narrow line of dew-brightened grass appeared and grew wider. The tops of the trees began to show. But The Maimed Man could not take his eyes off the mist, for it seemed to him that the open place was filled with the despairing arms of women and of children, and that through the shifting whiteness gleamed the whiteness of their serried faces. Behind him was the warm glow of the room, shining through the glass doors. But he did not dare go in as yet; it was necessary first to control the little flecks ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... its net-work of bands, she gazed upon it with an air of profound meditation, and put together whatever she had been able to pick up of natural history on the roofs, the yard, and the garden. Her thoughts were reflected in her shifting glance, and I was able to read in it the result of her examination: ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... manner that many of the blows directed at his burthen missed their aim. It was an understood thing, however, that the boy carrying the felon should aid him in every way in his power, by yielding, moving', and shifting about, so that it was only when he seemed to abet the master that the ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... were shifting along the canon walls as they had breakfast. As the morning sunlight spread to their camp Collie's natural curiosity in regard to Overland's pardner was satisfied. He saw a straight, slender figure, in flannel shirt and khaki. The gray eyes were peculiarly ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... a cynicism of its own. It laughed with its own laughter. A mind foreign to him spoke to him through the day.... "You would smile at life, Erik; well, here it is. Easy for a sleeper to smile. But smile now. Life is a surface, eh? shifting about into designs for the delectation of your eyes. Watch it shifting then. Darkness and emptiness in a can-can. Watch the tumbling streets that have no meanings. No meanings? Yet there's a torment in them that can hoist ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... third, the last of the three padlocks which had fastened the sarcophagus. I stooped to pick it up, and—Heaven is my witness that I am writing only the bare truth—before I had raised myself there was a sound of metal hinges creaking, and I distinctly saw the lid shifting upwards. I may have behaved like a coward, but I could not for my life stay for one moment. I was outside that dreadful building in less time than I can write—almost as quickly as I could have said—the words; and what frightens me yet more, I could ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... originally was, just like his neighbour. Some, when Chance comes round collecting the properties, are silly enough to sulk and protest, as though they were being robbed of their own instead of only returning loans. You know the kind of thing on the stage—tragic actors shifting as the play requires from Creon to Priam, from Priam to Agamemnon; the same man, very likely, whom you saw just now in all the majesty of Cecrops or Erechtheus, treads the boards next as a slave, because the author tells him to. The play over, each of them throws off his gold-spangled robe and his ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... refreshment to the tired Way-wanderer, when along the rough-hewn bench The sweltry man had stretched him, and aloft 150 Vacantly watched the rudely-pictured board Which on the Mulberry-bough with welcome creak Swung to the pleasant breeze. Here, too, the Maid Learnt more than Schools could teach: Man's shifting mind, His vices and his sorrows! And full oft 155 At tales of cruel wrong and strange distress Had wept and shivered. To the tottering Eld Still as a daughter would she run: she placed His cold limbs at the sunny door, and loved To hear him story, in his garrulous sort, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... from the sun, for the drowsers are mostly negroes and immune to that, as from young rocks that the dynamite blasts frequently toss a quarter-mile. Then over it all hang heavy clouds of soft-coal dust from trains and shovels, shifting down upon the black, white and mixed, and the enumerator alike; a dirty, ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... encourage the witness at all; he kept shifting from one foot to the other, looking uneasily at the Queen, and, in his confusion, he bit a large piece out of his teacup instead ...
— Alice in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... the surrounding houses, where our soldiers, attendants, and horses, weary and exhausted, were doubtless buried in profound sleep. Sparks and burning fragments were already flying over the roofs of the Kremlin, when the wind, shifting from north to west, blew ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... for the preponderance of perversive tendencies in the psychoneurotics by recognizing in these tendencies collateral fillings of side branches caused by the shifting of the main river bed through repression, and we then turned our examination to the sexual life of the infantile period.[12] We found it regrettable that the existence of a sexual life in infancy has been disputed, and that the sexual manifestations which have been ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... you who are not familiar with it to make a set at once. Usually, there are four bags to a set, but any number of persons from two to eight can play at bean-bags. Each player holds two, flinging to his opponent the one in his right hand, and rapidly shifting the one in his left to the right, so as to leave the left hand free to catch the bag which is thrown at him. A set of these bags would be a nice present for some of you little girls to make for your small brothers; and there are various ways of ornamenting the bags gayly and prettily. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... tend to doubt whether it has any vital significance.[33] They point out that in practice we intermingle the two kinds almost inextricably, that the distinction between facts and principles is temporary and shifting, and that we cannot fit some of the common forms of inference into these categories ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... centre of the activity of Catholic Europe—the French mind, first thrown by Protestantism into the vortex of controversy, gradually declined to the consideration of mere philosophical utopias, until, rejecting at last its long-received convictions, it abandoned itself to the ever-shifting delusions of opinions and theories, which led finally to skepticism and unbelief in every branch of knowledge, even the most necessary to the happiness of any community of men. Other causes, no doubt, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... happy and contented in a circle of ever-changing enchantments and pleasures. A Watteau-like country, plays, comedies, pastorals in the shade, a continual embarking for Cytherea, that would have been the setting she preferred. But once she had set foot on the shifting soil of the court, she could only realize her ideal imperfectly. Naturally obliging and good-hearted, she had to face enmity open and concealed, and to take the offensive to avoid her downfall. Necessity drove ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... sickly-looking, pining sort of creature, rocking about in evident pain, and moaning and fretting just as sick children do. Gradually its attention got fixed on the strange antics going on. The Ojah kept muttering away, quicker and quicker, constantly shifting the bone and cups and other articles on the cloth. His body was suffused with perspiration, but in about half an hour the child had gone off to sleep, and attended by some dozen old women, and the anxious father, was borne off in triumph to ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Miss Judy was in a very queer condition, and it would be as much as her place was worth to take her to Waterloo; but to drive with her to the chambers of that nice gentleman who was, she knew, one of her master's greatest friends, seemed a shifting of responsibility which was quite a way out of the dilemma, for not for worlds would Susan do anything really to hurt the ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... by huge cedar-trees, The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly And sway like masts, against a shifting breeze. ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... more, in depth, for the whole trunk itself is sometimes hollow. To ascertain in which hole the opossum is, the native drops in a pebble or a piece of bark, or a broken bit of stick, and then applying his ear to the outside, listens for the rustling motion made by the animal in shifting its position, when disturbed by what has been dropped upon it. A stick is sometimes made use of, if the hole be not very deep, for the same purpose, after inserting it in the hole, and twisting the rough end round and withdrawing it, he ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these sheltered, long-settled retreats; but are trampled under foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... vision, the human aura is seen to be composed of all the colors of the spectrum, the combinations of colors differing in various persons, and constantly shifting in the case of every person. These colors reflect the mental (particularly the emotional) states of the person in whose aura they are manifested. Each mental state has its own particular combination formed ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... maritime, composes another chamber of climates: whilst these again, each individually within its class, are modified into minor varieties by local circumstances as to wind, by local accidents of position, and by shifting stages of altitude. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... of the chief giants that revolted against Zeus, and who, as he fled and took refuge in Sicily, was transfixed by a thunderbolt, and buried under Etna. The fiery eruptions of the mountain are his breath, and the shaking of it ascribed to his shifting from one side to another. In the latter regard he serves in literature as the symbol of a blind, often impotent, struggle to throw off ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... inn, she remembered that, keeping her eyes upon the church, she had murmured a confused prayer to the Blessed Virgin for the recruits. What was the prayer? She could scarcely recall it. A woman's petition, perhaps, against the temptations that beset men shifting for themselves in far-off and dangerous countries; a woman's cry to a woman to watch over all those ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... in charge of a red-shirted foreman who were shifting a section of toy track on the "fill" felt the earth shake under them. Then came a dull roar followed by a cloud of yellow smoke mounting skyward from an opening high up on the hillside. Flashing through this cloud leaped tongues of flame intermingled ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... there is here no aspiration, no waiting for better things, but an animal joy in all that comes. It could never be the face of an artist; it is the face of a VIVEUR - kindly, pleased and pleasing, protected from excess and upheld in contentment by the shifting versatility of his desires. For a single desire is more rightly to be called a lust; but there is health in a variety, where one ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... demand brought out a hasty protest from a timid soul: "To that, I would not agree." A sort of shuffle, a stir, a shifting in seats seemed to take place all about ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... dropping her eyes gently as she came, and singing so that Dante could hear her. Then when she arrived at the water, she stopped, and raised her eyes towards him, and smiled, shewing him the flowers in her hands, and shifting them with her fingers into a display of all their beauties. Never were such eyes beheld, not even when Venus herself was in love. The stream was a little stream; yet Dante felt it as great an intervention between them, as if it had ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... capable of that, capable of guessing and yet of simultaneously hiding her guess. It wound him up a turn or two further, none the less, to impute to her now a weakness of vision by which he could himself feel the stronger. Whatever apprehension of his motive in shifting his abode might have brushed her with its wings, she at all events certainly didn't guess that he was giving their friend a hollow promise. That was what she had herself imposed on him; there had been ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... "development" over the centuries of its service to civilized men. Most past attempts to alter it significantly for man's use have either failed or have not led to lasting results, though their changing purposes over the years summarize, to a degree, America's shifting attitudes toward the utility of flowing water. Early projects under George Washington and others to assure the navigability of the main river above the Fall Line, which they saw as an artery for eastward and westward currents of trade, left only some quaint ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... Nietzsche's philosophy we must be prepared to be independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is perhaps the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one of thinking alone, of scoring off one's own bat, and of shifting ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... word—celebrare domestica facta—to give an imitation of the shifting manners of our own time, and paint scenes, the originals of which are daily passing round us, so that a minute's observation may compare the copies with the originals. It must be confessed that this style of composition was adopted by the author rather from the tempting circumstance ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... blazing and smoking, were falling in a shower from the part of the bag already consumed, and the fiery particles were fairly raining down on the man. But he still had his wits about him, though his perilous position was enough to make any one lose his mind, and he swung from side to side on the bar, shifting skillfully with his hands and dodging the larger particles of blazing canvas. When some small sparks fell on his clothing he beat them out with one hand, while with the other he clung ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons.... SHELLEY, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... hood—immediately lost in the narrow border of heads, where there was a continual eclipse of round contadina cheeks by the harsh-lined features or bent shoulders of an old spadesman, and where profiles turned as sharply from north to south as weathercocks under a shifting wind. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... to the long and lonely furrow which he had ploughed across the veld from the Orange to the Magaliesberg, and to prevent its being obliterated by the wayward and shifting sand of the desert, was the ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... by the same magistrates, and not orae in one court and another in another, as at Lacedaemon, has the same influence. The constitution of Carthage is now shifting from an aristocracy to an oligarchy, in consequence of an opinion which is favourably entertained by many, who think that the magistrates in the community ought not to be persons of family only, but of fortune also; as it is impossible for those ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... been the responsibilities of the Secretary of State and the Viceroy for the government of India "as by law established," they were on this occasion vastly greater. For two men of widely different temperaments had to work out together a scheme for shifting the very axis of government. They rose to the occasion. The Montagu-Chelmsford Report will rank with the great State papers which are landmarks of constitutional progress in the history of the British Empire. ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... given to the gradual shifting of the equinoctial points along the ecliptic from east ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... inertia, we fail to obey perfectly the law of duty which we recognize as imperatively binding upon us. There is, however, a more subtle kind of failure as regards our moral endeavor and achievement which is due to the unconscious shifting of these standards of right and wrong themselves. It is not merely that we fail to do that which we know to be right, but at times the very idea of right itself is strangely altered. The good insensibly assimilates to itself certain ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the earth in revolving is flattening at the poles and swelling at the equator, and the strata beneath the surface are shifting and sliding in an effort to accommodate themselves to the new position. Other scientists scout this idea, saying that earthquakes are not caused by the adjustment of the surface of the earth, but by jar and strain as the earth makes an effort to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... now grouped themselves closely together so as to effectually prevent the soldiers from pursuing her. The fracas that ensued gave Chiquita time to reach the carriage of the Duke of Vallombreuse—which, taking advantage of the stir and shifting in the throng, was slowly making its way out of the Place de Greve. She climbed up on the step, and catching sight of de Sigognac within, appealed to him, in scarcely audible words, as she panted and trembled—"I saved ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... of a monastery stood at the other end of the Park. A stately pile of crumbling mortar, and stones shifting from places they occupied for centuries. The outer walls stood and inside the square was a keeper's cottage hidden in a warm snug corner, concealed from prying eyes, unnoticeable until the ruin ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... Ted, shifting uneasily from one leg to the other, and glancing at the mate for support; "but they ain't fit for the likes of you to wear, sir." "I'm the best judge of that," said the ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... boatswain. "I only wish she had the wind freer. It will be no easy matter for that big ship, rigged as she is, to beat up this harbour, and when she is inside it is hard to say where she can bring up; for, with the wind shifting and veering about, there is no safe anchorage that ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... shifting fortunes of his party from a distance, and found time in the pressure of a large legal practice to aid each branch of administration in turn with his advice. But though he still inspired its councils, he no ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... by the blazing of trees and the clearing away of timber and undergrowth. There were no bridges save over the narrower streams, fording being the custom, till ferries were established at various points. Roads and town boundaries were alike undetermined and shifting. "Preambulators," otherwise surveyors, found their work more and more complicated. "Marked trees, stakes and stones," were not sufficient to prevent endless discussions between selectmen and surveyors, and there is a document ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell |
