"Checkered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... storm signals still showed in the south where the heavy clouds hung over the horizon. Overhead the sun shone, making kaleidoscope effects of the spring flowers in the checkered beds. Against the gray wall of the terraced garden the peach trees had been trained in foreign fashion and were full ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... better trained and better gifted, will explore them to far better purpose than I, and to the greater glory and benefit of mankind, when once I have given them the clew. Before I can do this, and in order to show how I came by this clew myself, I must tell, as well as I may, the tale of my checkered career—in telling which, moreover, I am obeying the last behest of one whose lightest wish was ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... a striped skirt and a white jacket fitted to her waist. The checkered shadows cast by the tree made spots of light and darkness over her face and her uncovered neck, the top button of her camisole being unfastened on account of the heat. De Buxieres had been perfectly well recognized by her, but an emotion, at least equal ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... also stood a large arm-chair and a large table, compasses, alembics, skeletons of animals suspended from the ceiling, a globe rolling on the floor, hippocephali mingled promiscuously with drinking cups, in which quivered leaves of gold, skulls placed upon vellum checkered with figures and characters, huge manuscripts piled up wide open, without mercy on the cracking corners of the parchment; in short, all the rubbish of science, and everywhere on this confusion dust ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... as 'Troilus and Cressida,' the most eccentric and inexplicable play of its time, or perhaps of any time, is probably 'The Rape of Lucrece.'" This may naturally be the verdict of a hasty reader at a first glance over the party-colored scenes of a really noble tragedy, crossed and checkered with the broadest and quaintest interludes of lyric and erotic farce. But, setting these eccentricities duly or indulgently aside, we must recognize a fine specimen of chivalrous and romantic rather than classical or mythological ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... lived a checkered life. I hope you have been able to bear prosperity with meekness, and adversity with patience. These things are all ordered for us far better than we could order them for ourselves. We may pray for our daily bread; we may pray for forgiveness of sins; we may pray ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... display of ignorance in others who came to visit us. Some ladies, occasionally gentlemen even, supposed the vines ran up trees, and that the fruit was gathered like cherries. It is possible that this may be read by some gentle spirit, some anxious inquirer after a brighter pathway through a checkered life, some one of my own sex whose aspirations may be in harmony with mine, and whose fortunes may have been infinitely more unpropitious, in the hope of gathering from my humble experience sufficient light to guide ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... which, with its eccentric drunken landlord, he has sketched in one of his novels; and when fortune proved less unkind to him, he took a cottage which lay between the highway and the forest, and there the first happy years of his life were spent. They were few, and they were checkered. His chief petty annoyance was his want of skill as a sportsman. He could never bring down game with his gun, and he was passionately fond of shooting. On taking up his abode in the country, the first thing he had made was a full hunting-suit in the most approved fashion, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... strangest fancies. Hardly a word was spoken; not a brace manned, nor a sheet touched. The ship moved along as if directed by some unseen hand, for there was no wind in that deep, dark cavern. Then the water became broken, and the surface checkered with phosphoric lights, flitting and dancing, like so many sprites on a revel. The arch overhead became covered with a pale light, which seemed to struggle against the darkness; then stars, or what appeared to be stars, were seen, as through a mist. Then they would suddenly change ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... everything," Berrington replied. It seemed to him that a bold course of action was the best to be taken under the circumstances. "For instance, I have a pretty accurate knowledge of the checkered past of Dr. Bentwood and the malignant scoundrel who calls himself Carl Sartoris. Of Miss Mary Sartoris I will say nothing. There are others here, too, whose past is not altogether wrapped in mystery. There are General Gastang and Countess ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... past tea-time, slanted from over the roof of the red house, and painted up that small procession—the deep blue frock of little Gyp, the glint of gold in the chestnut of her hair; the daisy-starred grass; the dark birds with translucent red dewlaps, and checkered tails and the tulip background, puce and red and yellow. When she had lured them to the open gate, little Gyp ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the armorial bearings of the founder of the fane, and the many alliances of his descendants. The sheen of their blazonry gleamed bright in the darkness, as if to herald to his last home another of the line whose achievements it displayed. Glowing colorings, checkered like rainbow tints, were shed upon the broken leaves of the adjoining yew-trees, and ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Hen being now corn-fed, and the Mill a thing she never would reach, the Mouse and the Grouse thought best to put an end to her checkered career and boil her in a pot over a slow fire; because that's the way to make a fowl who had traveled and endured so much grow tender and soft-hearted and fit to eat, corn and all, popped or unpopped—Pass ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... a wild, half-tamed broncho her career in the direction of accident became checkered. Once, after a day's search for her, Seth brought her home insensible. She had been thrown from her horse, an animal as wildly wilful ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... armorial bearings, consisting of pictures of the Lion, the Bull, the Waterman, and the Flying Eagle, which representing the signs at the cardinal points, constituted the genii of the seasons. Besides these, we have the checkered flooring or mosaic work, representing the earth and its variegated face, which was introduced when temple worship succeeded its grove form; the two columns representing the imaginary pillars of heaven resting upon the earth at Equinoctial points, and supporting ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... esteemed by the poor and the rich, both united to consecrate a monument to his memory. Kindly should we ever think of those who make our hearts and our tempers bright; who, without pomp of wisdom, help us to a cheerfulness which no proud philosophy can give; who, in the motley of checkered mirth and wit, sparkle on the resting-spots of life. Such men are rare, and as valuable as they are rare. The world wants them more than it wants heroes and victors: for mirth is better than massacre; and it is surely better to hear laughter sounding aloud the jubilee of the heart, than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... could be heard beyond them, and a hundred times a year the Pacific fogs came creeping over them long before dawn, and Santa Paloma awakened in an enveloping cloud of soft mist. Here and there the slopes of these hills were checkered with the sharp oblongs and angles of young vineyards, and hidden by the thickening green of peach and apple orchards. A few low, brown dairy ranch-houses were perched high on the ridges; the red-brown moving stream ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... whole, until the intellect has developed considerable generalizing power and learned to take pleasure in synthetic formulas. The thought of very primitive men has hardly any tincture of philosophy. Nature can have little unity for savages. It is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical powers. 'Close to nature' though they live, they are anything but Wordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is likely to be at midnight, when ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... celestial day. The air was so elastic and crystalline that it had the same effect on the landscape that a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and perfection. The landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang over fairy-land. ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... in a circus which they said was then at Washington. Going thither with them, he was drugged, shackled, despoiled of his free papers, and delivered to a slave trader who shipped him to New Orleans. Then followed a checkered experience as a plantation hand on the Red River, lasting for a dozen years until a letter which a friendly white carpenter had written for him brought one of his former patrons with an agent's commission from the governor of New York. With the assistance ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... must present about as absurd a figure as can well be conceived. He was bare-footed, and the left leg of his trousers was turned up to keep it from the floor, while the right, owing to the Captain's misfortune, barely reached his ankle. A checkered woolen shirt hung about him in folds, and over it he wore a garment that Cap'n Cod was pleased to style his "professional coat." It was a blue swallow-tail, with bright brass buttons. As worn by Winn the tails hung nearly to the floor, the cuffs were turned back over his wrists, and the ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... teepees rose in clusters along the outskirts of the heavy forest that clothes the sloping side of the mountain, the scene below was gratifying to a savage eye. The rolling yellow plains were checkered with herds of buffaloes. Along the banks of the streams that ran down from the mountains were also many elk, which usually appear at morning and evening, and disappear into the forest during the warmer part of the day. Deer, too, were plenty, and the brooks were alive with trout. ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... a knife at his belt, he looked so cruel and inexorable that one would have thought he was going to engage in bloody strife with his fellow men rather than to hunt a small animal. Around the hind legs of his horse the hounds gambolled like a cluster of checkered, restless balls. If one of them wished to stop, it was only with the greatest difficulty that it could do so, since not only had its leash-fellow also to be induced to halt, but at once one of the huntsmen would wheel round, crack ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... in connection with the very highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained society. She was a splendid scowling beauty, black-browed, with a flash of white teeth which was always like a surprise when her lips parted. She wore a checkered dress, of a curious pattern, and a camel's-hair scarf twisted a little fantastically about her. She went to her seat, which she had moved a short distance apart from the rest, and, sitting down, began playing listlessly with her gold chain, as was a common ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... great oak-tree, where light and shadow made a checkered round, Mistress Damaris Sedley sat upon the earth in a gown of rose-colored silk. Across her knee, under her clasped hands, lay a light racket, for she had strayed this way from battledore and shuttlecock and the sprightly ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... far-distant open country where it had been breathing all night the quivering pines, and brown swamps, and the white and gray checkered fields that would soon be upturned by the plowshares—a vagrant wind ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... usual placid self. "Good thing somebody in this spacer watches Video serials—Ali, you can brief us on all the latest tricks of space pirates. Nothing is so wildly improbable that you can't make use of it sometime during a checkered career." ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... our faithlessness, or His loving discipline meant to perfect our characters. We read the past best from the vantage-ground of the Temple. From its height we understand the lie of the land. Communion with God explains much which is else inexplicable. Solomon's judgment of Israel's checkered history will be our judgment of our own when we stand in the higher courts of the heavenly home, and look from that height upon all the way by which the Lord our God hath led us. In the meantime, it is often a trial for faith to repeat these words; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "The lectures had a checkered existence," smiled Mr. Hazen. "Many very amusing incidents centered about them. Were I to talk until doomsday I could not begin to tell you the multitudinous adventures Mr. Bell and Mr. Watson had during their platform career; for although Mr. Watson was ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... meaning to stay but for a good-natured five minutes of gossip. She had lived here forever, set in the picture with ash-tree and boulder. But when he came to the door he found sitting with her, in the checkered space behind ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... history. Niebuhr's son, young Barthold, soon attracted the attention of all who came to see his father, particularly of Voss; and he was enabled by their help and advice, to lay, in early youth, that foundation of solid learning which fitted him, in the intervals of his checkered life, to become the founder of a new era in the study of Ancient History. And how curious the threads which bind together the destinies of men! how marvelous the rays of light which, emanating from the most distant centres, cross each other in their onward course, and ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... this time, was growing fat. His increasing plumpness was perceptible from day to day, and it proved a constant source of mirth to his companion. One morning he appeared in a pair of checkered trousers purchased in South Africa during his skeleton period. They seemed on the verge of exploding from the outward pressure of the legs within. Elinor made no effort to suppress her merriment. She called him "Fatsy." ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... meat, each person knowing well his place. The day of the commercial traveller was not yet, and for these there was no special table, they being for the most part assigned to the Red Belt; there being a certain portion of the hall where the tablecloths were checkered red and white. It was not good to be in the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... his checkered career, Pig Head had heard, or read, of a way of catching golden eagles. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... lessons of the smoking furnace and the blazing torch. They are like the pillar of fire and cloud. Darkness and light; a heart of fire and a wrapping of darkness,—these are not symbols of Israel and its checkered fate, as Dean Stanley thinks, but of the divine presence: they proclaim the double aspect of all divine manifestations, the double element in the divine nature. He can never be completely known; He is never ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... exhausted," he said, sinking into, an armchair, and wiping his forehead with his broad checkered handkerchief. "You cannot imagine how I have been running about to-day! I wanted to take an omnibus to come home, but they ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... wind (irresolute) 605; oscillate &c. 314; vibrate between, two extremes, oscillate between, two extremes; alternate; have as man phases as the moon. Adj. changeable, changeful; changing &c. 140; mutable, variable, checkered, ever changing; protean, proteiform|; versatile. unstaid[obs3], inconstant; unsteady, unstable, unfixed, unsettled; fluctuating &c. v.; restless; agitated &c. 315; erratic, fickle; irresolute &c. 605; capricious &c. 608; touch and go; inconsonant, fitful, spasmodic; vibratory; vagrant, wayward; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... nearer; the first gust of wind had just struck them. It blew back the Filipino's little checkered frock. ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... why I too may not ask for it, and this simple concession, involving no public interest, will much soften the blow, which, right or wrong, I construe as one of the hardest I have sustained in a life somewhat checkered with adversity. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... in her pleasant room at the hotel. Her thoughts were far away from the checkered experiences of the frontier, for her husband—having received by the last mail a new book from an eastern friend—read while she plied her needle. Baby was in his crib in the bed-room adjoining, and Fannie and Helen were ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... a young peasant girl. She was sitting some twenty feet away from me, her head bowed pensively and her hands dropped on her knees; in one hand, which was half open, lay a heavy bunch of field flowers, and every time she breathed the flowers were softly gliding over her checkered skirt. A clear white shirt, buttoned at the neck and the wrists, fell in short, soft folds about her waist; large yellow beads were hanging down from her neck on her bosom in two rows. She was not at all bad-looking. Her heavy fair ...
— The Rendezvous - 1907 • Ivan Turgenev
... brimmed blue bonnet filled with lilacs and tied with an old rose ribbon, was more compelling than Jasper Penny had remembered her for, actually, years. A coffee-coloured India shawl, with a deep fringe and trace of a lining checkered in cherry and black slipping from her shoulders, toned her appearance to ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the frock-coated young ushers formed into double line through which the couple passed. The village green outside was flooded with sunshine, checkered by drooping elm branches. Bells began to ring from the library across the green and from the schoolhouse farther down. It was over—the fine old barbaric ceremony, the passing of the irredeemable contract ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... up a rocky ravine, the road being fairly under cover of over-arching rocks at times, thence over a billowy region of mountain summits-an elevated region of pine-clad ridges and rocky peaks-to descend again into a cultivated country of undulating hills and dales, checkered with fields of grain. These low rolling hills appear to be in a higher state of cultivation than any district I have traversed in Asia Minor; from points of vantage the whole country immediately around looks like a swelling sea ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... situated, and, seating himself upon the broad flat stone, cast his eyes over the river, upon which the beams of the morning were just beginning to cast their quivering light. The scene, once so pleasing, afforded him no joy. He turned away, and sent his long gaze over the checkered leaves of the forest, which spread like a sea over the beautiful valley. He was still dissatisfied. With a bound he sprang from the rock into the valley, and, alighting on his feet, snatched his bow, and took the path which led into the forest. In a few moments ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... chamber, but not to rest. I threw open the casement and gazed out at the genial rays of the moon. The dark green leaves of the linden trees were motionless, and the silvery rays struggling through them cast a checkered and faint tint of mingled light and shade on the pavement beneath. The cool fresh air soothed my throbbing temples. I sank back in my seat and gazed up at the innumerable stars in the boundless sky. I thought the stellar host glittered with unusual brilliance, as if there were ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... head was the first symptom: then convulsive retchings, followed by a dreadful struggle between life and death, which generally terminated in favour of the grim destroyer. The bodies, after the spirit which animated them had taken flight, were frightfully swollen, and exhibited a dark blue colour, checkered with crimson spots. Nothing was heard within the houses or the streets, but groans of agony; no remedy was at hand, and the powers of medicine were exhausted in vain upon this terrible pest; so that within a few days the greatest ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... thoughts were turned, when, just as she attained the middle of the avenue, the imperfect and checkered light which found its way through the silvan archway, showed her something which resembled the figure of a man. Lady Peveril paused a moment, but instantly advanced;—her bosom, perhaps, gave one startled throb, as a debt to the superstitious belief of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... had a checkered career, and lived in several smart families before, to assure her old age, she married this gentle, queer little farmer. She is a great find for me. But the thing balances up beautifully, as I am a blessing to her, a new interest in her monotonous life, and she never lets me forget ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... the aldermen had been much the same persons for about fifteen or twenty years. Some were in the produce business, others were butchers, two were grocers, and all of them wore blue checkered waistcoats and red ties and got up at seven in the morning to attend the vegetable and other markets. Nobody had ever really thought about them—that is to say, nobody on Plutoria Avenue. Sometimes one saw a picture ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... steadily until I was at two thousand metres. I had never flown so high before. "Over a mile!" I thought. It seemed a tremendous altitude. I could see scores of villages and fine old chateaux, and great stretches of forest, and miles upon miles of open country in checkered patterns, just beginning to show the first fresh green of the early spring crops. It looked like a world planned and laid out by the best of Santa Clauses for the eternal delight of all good children. And for untold ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... be deemed the brightest of Poe's checkered career. On every side acknowledged to be a new and brilliant literary light, chief editor of a powerful magazine, admired, feared, and envied, with a reputation already spreading rapidly in Europe as well as in ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... if they came to her dwelling, but they hastened to obey the summons, glad to feel that they should be welcomed, though quite uncertain concerning the nature of the interview she proposed. She was literally withered away, her face was scarcely larger than an infant's and completely checkered with fine wrinkles, her teeth were entirely gone and her mouth so sunken that her nose and chin almost met, her hair not silvery, but snowy white, except a little lock by each ear which still retained the sandy hue of childhood, her ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... to see neat rectangular patterns of roads and highways, cultivated fields and orangegroves, checkered towns and sprawling suburbs come to an abrupt stop where they were blotted out by the regimented uniformity of the onrushing grass. For miles we flew above its dazzling green until our eyes ached from the sameness and our minds were dulled from the lack of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and silver and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor pennons on the lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish cavalry, rushing about like shepherds' dogs in charge of a flock, caracoling up and down between the troops ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... peaks of Madera and Ometepec more distinct, the latter bearing south-west by west. Alone on the summit of a high peak, with surging green billows of foliage all around, dim misty mountains in the distance, and above the blue heavens, checkered with fleecy clouds, that have travelled up hundreds of miles from the north-east, thoughts arise that can be only felt in their full intensity amid solitude and nature's grandest phases. Then man's intellect strives to grapple with ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... following the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748): in this, she completely played her role of a youthful favourite, fond of peace, the arts, the pleasures of the mind, and advising and protecting all things happily. There was a second period, greatly checkered, but more frequently disastrous and fatal; this was the whole period of the Seven Years' War, the attempted assassination by Damiens, the defeat of Rosbach, and the insults of the victorious Frederick. These were harsh ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... another, is sounded, bringing to the bearer's mind all the crucial moments of Bluebeard's strange, perverted, wife-pursuing life, as well as all the aspirations and disappointments of Fatima's ambitious but checkered career. All the while that this complicated web of motives is being woven out of unresolved dissonances, the thirty first violins keep on playing the same three notes in ever-precipitated rhythms. This is radical, audacious, and effective. The notes are G flat, A sharp, ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mother, of whom I wished much to learn something, he would not speak, but adroitly changed the conversation to the subject of my own adventures, and these he made me recount from the beginning. If the lady enjoyed all the absurdities of my checkered fortune with a keen sense of the ridiculous, the colonel apparently could trace in them but so many resemblances to my father's character, and constantly broke out into exclamations of "How like him!" "Just what he would have done himself!" "His own ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... in the Strait of Gibraltar. Never was a race of seamen so admirably fitted for the daring trade of privateering as the crews of these tall sloops, topsail schooners, and smart square-riggers, their sides checkered with gun-ports, and ready to drive to ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... of weavers at work. In one, women are filling a distaff with cotton, twisting it with a spindle into thread, and weaving this on an upright loom. Beside them is a man, evidently an overseer, watching the weavers and their work. The other wall-painting represents a man weaving a checkered rug on a horizontal loom. Other monuments of ancient Egypt and of Mesopotamia bear witness that the manufacture of rugs dates a considerable time ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... case was prejudged, and he was now in the hands of the executioner. Slowly, and with trembling hands, the poor child removed his outer garment, his pale face growing paler every moment, and then submitting himself to the cruel rod that checkered his back with smarting welts. Under a sense of wrong, his proud spirit refused to his body a single cry of pain. Manfully he bore his unjust chastisement, while every stroke obliterated some yet remaining emotion of respect and love for his father, who, satisfied at length with strokes and ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... and fashioned, And the hidden reefs created, Where the ships are wrecked so often, Where so many lives have perished. Thus created were the islands, Rocks were fastened in the ocean, Pillars of the sky were planted, Fields and forests were created, Checkered stones of many colors, Gleaming in the silver sunlight, All the rocks stood well established; But the singer, Wainamoinen, Had not yet beheld the sunshine, Had not seen the golden moonlight, Still remaining undelivered. Wainamoinen, old and trusty, Lingering within his dungeon Thirty ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... dwells in the hall where the long shadows fall On the checkered and cool esplanade; I live in a cottage secluded and small, By a gnarly old apple-tree's shade: Side by side in the glen, I and my brother Ben,— Just the river between us, with borders as green as The banks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... hands into his pockets, and studied the checkered pattern in the ground shadow of the nearest arc lamp. Then he slowly shook ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... and fishes and lizards of stamped gold, covered her breast from the lower part of the neck to the upper part of the bosom, which showed pink and white through the thin warp of the calasiris. The dress, of a large checkered pattern, was fastened under the bosom with a girdle with long ends, and ended in a broader border of transverse stripes edged with a fringe. Triple bracelets of lapis-lazuli beads, divided here and there by golden balls, encircled her slender wrists, delicate as those of a child; and her ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... gives an interesting account of the life and fortunes of a young woman of that neighborhood who rose to a high station by means of her personal attractions, and, after a checkered life, died in Italy a few weeks ago. She was the daughter of John Peele, a small farmer at Corringham, near Gainsborough, who eked out a somewhat declining livelihood by dealing in horses, &c., having previously been in better circumstances. Being an only daughter, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... in the park were riding after the English manner, in neatly cut riding-trousers and light saddles. Fate in derision had made each youth bedizen his animal with a checkered enamelled leather brow-band visible half a mile away—a black-and-white checkered brow-band! They can't do it, any more than an Englishman, by taking cold, can add that indescribable nasal ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... not muddy as our streams now always are after a rain. One of the losses of Iowa through civilization has been the disappearance of our lovely little brooks. Then every few miles there ran a rivulet as clear as crystal, its bottom checkered at the riffles into a brilliant pattern like plaid delaine by the shining of the clean red, white and yellow granite pebbles through the crossed ripples from the banks. Now these watercourses are robbed of their flow by the absorption of the rich plowed fields, are ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... the Mountains, Cheviot and Galloway (three to fifteen miles off), Cumberland and Yorkshire (say forty and fifty, with the Solway brine and sands intervening). I live in total solitude, sauntering moodily in thin checkered woods, galloping about, once daily, by old lanes and roads, oftenest latterly on the wide expanses of Solway shore (when the tide is out!) where I see bright busy Cottages far off, houses over even in ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... use in Beauty forms, when properly treated, it is quite often unfortunate in forms of life, unless careful attention is given to arranging the material beforehand. The effect of a barn, for instance, with its front view checkered with violet, red, and yellow squares, may be imagined, or of a pigeon-house with a parti-colored green and blue roof, an orange standard, and red supports. Yet these are no fancy pictures I have painted, and if the child places the tablets in this fashion, they are often allowed ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to what his brother said, but he could not help beginning to think of other things. When they came out of the woods, all his attention was engrossed by the view of the fallow land on the upland, in parts yellow with grass, in parts trampled and checkered with furrows, in parts dotted with ridges of dung, and in parts even ploughed. A string of carts was moving across it. Levin counted the carts, and was pleased that all that were wanted had been brought, and at the sight of the meadows his thoughts passed to the mowing. He ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... There were still, hot hollows surrounded by wet rocks where he could hardly breathe for the heavy scents of the night flowers and the bloom along the creeper buds; dark avenues where the moonlight lay in belts as regular as checkered marbles in a church aisle; thickets where the wet young growth stood breast-high about him and threw its arms round his waist; and hilltops crowned with broken rock, where he leaped from stone to stone above the lairs of the frightened little foxes. He would hear, very faint and far off, ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... replied Dick. "We puts a red buoy on one side and a checkered buoy on t'other, and if the vessels keeps atween 'em they goes all right—if not, they ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Blackford, Marmion gazed on the martial scene. It was a Kingdom's vast array. Thousands on thousands of pavilions, white as snow, dotted the upland, dale, and down, and checkered the heath between town and forest. The relics of the old oaks softened the glaring white with ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... Rafael gazed at her, but respected her silence, trying in vain to guess the thoughts that were stirring behind her shining eyes, as green and golden as the sea under a noonday sun. What a wealth of romance must be hidden in that woman's past! What tragedies must have been woven into the checkered fabric of her ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... watching the girl. She was frightened. She sat all alone, plucking nervously at the red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She sat with her back to the light, bunching the cloth up into little folds, then ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... the ins and outs of politics during the first ten years of Louis Philippe's reign, which were checkered by revolts, emeutes, and attempts at regicide, I pass on to the next event of general interest,—the explosion of the "infernal machine" ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... his eyes seemed able to pierce the fantastic veil of creepers and leaves, to look past the solid trunks, to see through the forbidding gloom—and the mystery was disclosed—enchanting, subduing, beautiful. He looked at the woman. Through the checkered light between them she appeared to him with the impalpable distinctness of a dream. The very spirit of that land of mysterious forests, standing before him like an apparition behind a transparent veil—a veil woven of ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... the little chamber, nor was there over much of furniture, nor was that even of a high order—there was a bed with a red-checkered crazy-quilt; a washstand with severe, heavy white crockery; a rocking chair, homemade, of hickory; a rag mat, round, many-colored; and white muslin curtains on the windows. It wasn't luxurious, the little chamber—it was fresh and sweet ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... longer admitted of discussion. In a few moments more we emerged, without warning, from the scrub-crested sand-hills into the single white street of Citron City, where China-trees hung heavy with bloom, and magnolias, already set with perfumed candelabra, spread soft, checkered shadows over ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... boy more checkered and the little girl more operatic than before, sat on stools eating bonbons, while a French maid and the African footman hovered in ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... three-sixteenths of an inch in width and are even on the edges and smoothly dressed on the back. The hard, glistening outer surface of the cane is light in color and the dressed surface is dark naturally or artificially, and the weaving is so managed that a tasteful border and a checkered effect are produced by alternately exposing the light and dark sides. This piece probably very fairly represents the split-cane work of the whole cane-producing region. A similar piece of work from the gulf coast is ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... Spanish, Italian and Hanseatic merchants tried to outdo the Netherland traders in magnificent clothes and golden ornaments. Ulrich saw them all assembled in the Gothic exchange on the Mere, the handsomest square in the city. There they stood in the vast open hall, on the checkered marble floor, not by hundreds, but by thousands, dealing in goods which came from all quarters of the globe—from the most distant lands. Their offers and bids mingled in a noise audible at a long distance, which was borne across the square like the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brown coat, something like a dressing gown, and a checkered cap; he was leaning on an English bamboo cane, and his newly-shaven face shone with satisfaction; he was on the round of inspecting his ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... leaping downward through the checkered glades, his pockets stuffed with chestnuts. Like an angel with healing in his wings, Angelo comes to Gigi. When he spies him out, Gigi rises, unsteady on his little feet—rises up, forgetting all, and ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... sensitive nature the anodyne of feminine sympathy. Why so close and tender a friendship never ripened into marriage is an inquiry that may be consigned to the limbo of questions insoluble. It is enough that in the checkered chronicle of the loves of the poets, "blue-eyed Patty Blount" has an immortality almost as secure as ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... recall of these incidents in his checkered career a new thought blazed up in his mind—rather a blinding thought. As its rays brightened he halted in his course, and stood gazing across the street as if uncertain as to his next move. Perhaps, after all, it ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... aims, ends of endeavour, are by no means of a uniform or homogeneous character throughout the modern communities, still less throughout the civilised world, or throughout the checkered range of classes and conditions of men; but, with such frequency and amplitude that it must be taken as a major premise in any attempted insight into human behaviour, it will hold true that they are of a spiritual, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... their word the sons of Pandu went with Draupadi into exile, and passed twelve years in the wilderness; and many were the incidents which checkered their forest life. Krishna, who had stood by Yudhishthir in his prosperity, now came to visit him in his adversity; he consoled Draupadi in her distress, and gave good advice to the brothers. Draupadi with a woman's ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... was quiet. The pale-green sky was streaked along the horizon by a band of smoky red, and the gray prairie rolled into the foreground, checkered by clumps of birches and patches of melting snow. In one place, the figures of a man and horses moved slowly across the fading light; but except for this, the wide landscape was without life and desolate. Festing, however, knew it would not long remain a silent waste. A change was coming ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... never lets one of the members of even her most disciplined groups of cloud be like another; but though each is adapted for the same function, and in its great features resembles all the others, not one, out of the millions with which the sky is checkered, is without a separate beauty and character, appearing to have had distinct thought occupied in its conception, and distinct forces in its production; and in addition to this perpetual invention, visible in each member of each system, we find systems of separate cloud intersecting one another, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... with wet newspaper, stagnant slop jar, dirty tooth brush, filthy basin, sloppy soap—all humming with flies—is the worst I have ever seen and the most stomach turning. There is some freak from Boston in a checkered suit and goggles who walks around with some ideas for Indian betterment. I think they have reached the highest pitch in the fact that they do not scalp him! I had coffee, oatmeal and bacon all out of one bowl. I drink water that looks ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... The administrative offices were humming with frantic activity as Walter glanced down the rows of cubbyholes. In the middle of it all sat Bailey, in his black-and-yellow checkered tattersall, smoking a large cigar. His feet were planted on his desk top, but he hadn't started on his morning Western yet. He was busy glaring, first at the ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse
... "and put on a JUNGFERNKRANZ (maiden's-garland)," symbolically testifying how happy Ludwig junior still was. They had a son by and by; but their course otherwise, and indeed this-wise too, was much checkered. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... this was in accordance with the promises and threatenings of the Law, and it illustrated alike the perverseness of the nation and God's faithfulness in the fulfilment of his covenant. The incidents recorded in this book are of a peculiarly checkered character, and many of them are full of romantic interest. In the history of redemption, the book of Judges has a well-defined place. It unfolds to our view the operation of the Theocracy in the first stage of the nation's existence, and under ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... meandering curves, crossed at each turn by rustic farm-bridges, with clumps of trees fringing the deeper pools. The plain is skirted by a country road, bordered with majestic trees, and with farm-houses standing all along its winding course. Beyond, the land rises, and the slope is checkered, to the foot of the hills, with arable fields. The view is bounded by the craggy sides of the great hills which separate this quiet vale from the broad valley of the Connecticut. Here, all is soft and tranquil beauty. But just beyond the rugged barrier of those western hills lies a grander ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to the Insane Asylum. The reader has already seen how abnormal was his mind, and will not be surprised that his storm-tossed soul lost its rudder at last. But mid all its veerings he never lost sight of the Star that had shed its light upon his checkered path of life. He raved, and prayed, and wept, by turns. The horrors of mental despair would be followed by gleams of seraphic joy. When one of his stormy moods was upon him, his mighty voice could be heard ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... lived, there is reason to believe that the whole course and tenor of his career would have been altered. Her death was an irreparable blow, as it were, a prelude to the series of mischances that followed. The death of their daughter, the lovely Theodosia Alston, completed the tragedy of his checkered life. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... forthcoming production that was going to cost Homelovers, Incorporated some hundred thousand dollars. A dozen shapely girls in shorts and leotards were kicking their heels lackadaisically in the background, and a stout man with a wild checkered suit was wandering around the stage with an unlit cigar in his hand, begging the stagehands ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... seen) was Robert Scott, so called after my uncle, of whom I shall have much to say hereafter. He was bred in the King's service, under Admiral, then Captain William Dickson, and was in most of Rodney's battles. His temper was bold and haughty, and to me was often checkered with what I felt to be capricious tyranny. In other respects I loved him much, for he had a strong turn for literature, read poetry with taste and judgment, and composed verses himself, which had gained him great applause among his messmates. Witness the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... be prepared to find it a sort of outer garment under which the living body is ecclesiastical. Against this subjection to the influence and interests of the Church energetic governors rebelled, and the history of the Spanish domination is checkered with struggles between the civil and religious powers which reproduce on a small scale the mediaeval contests ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... moved down to the road, declining his invitation to come into the house. Westward, the sun had gone down and left the sky a glowing amber and rose. The fields rolled their young green like a checkered carpet over the low hills—the sweet, familiar hills. For an instant, in the hush of gathering twilight, we stood there silent and bridged the years; wiping out the strife, the toil, the ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... come to demand an accounting and to avenge. It seemed incredible, and yet there could be no other explanation. Malbihn shrugged. Well, others had sought Malbihn for similar reasons in the course of a long and checkered career. He fingered ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... toward the east, as the Grimsby man had predicted, with no sign of any storm as yet, but rather a prospect of winterly weather, and a breeze to bring the woodcocks in. The gentle rise and fall of waves, or rather, perhaps, of the tidal flow, was checkered and veined with a ripple of the slanting breeze, and twinkled in the moonbeams. For the moon was brightly mounting toward her zenith, and casting bastions of rugged cliff in gloomy largeness on the mirror of the sea. Hugging these as closely as their peril would allow, Carroway ordered silence, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... lived among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here the most cherished ties of earth were assumed. Here my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. To you, my friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange checkered past seems to crowd upon my mind. To-day I leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with and aid me I cannot prevail; but if the same almighty arm that directed and protected ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... court-yard, and, shaping their course in the direction indicated by the huntsman, entered the park, and proceeded along a glade, checkered by the early sunbeams. Here the noise they made in their progress speedily disturbed a herd of deer browsing beneath the trees, and, as the dappled foresters darted off to a thicker covert, great difficulty was experienced by the varlets in restraining the hounds, who struggled eagerly ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... three inches in diameter; for three, a GLOBE four inches in diameter; for five, a GLOBE six inches in diameter. PRANG'S CHROMOS will be given as premiums at the publisher's prices. Send stamp for a catalogue. GAMES, &c.—For two new subscribers, we will give any one of the following: The Checkered Game of Life, Alphabet and Building Blocks, Dissected Maps, &c., &c. For three new subscribers, any one of the following: Japanese Backgammon or Kakeba, Alphabet and Building Blocks (extra). Croquet, Chivalrie, Ring Quoits, and any other of the popular games of the day ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1875 • Various
... know the ways of the valley! That day when we rode into it every tree seemed to be waving its green arms in salute. As we swung through the gap, around the bend at the saw-mill and into the open country, checkered brown and yellow by fields new-ploughed and fields of stubble, a flock of killdeer arose on the air and screamed a welcome. In their greeting there seemed a taunting note as though they knew they had no more to fear ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... the gardens, his breast swelled with exultation. When he was out of sight, the hunchback whistled softly, and Cocardasse and Passepoil came out of the shadow of the trees. The lights were now rapidly dying out, and the gardens lay in darkness checkered by the moonlight. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... republic completed the second decade of its checkered existence, and has thus proved itself to be the most long-lived government which France has known since the advent of the great Revolution a century ago. No previous government has been able to stand eighteen years, so that the present republic ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... art thou now undergoing some bitter trial? The way of thy God, it may be, all mystery; no footprints of love traceable in the checkered path; no light, in the clouds above; no ray in the dark future. Be patient! "The Lord is good to them that wait for Him." "They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength!" Or hast thou been long tossed on some bed of sickness—days of pain and nights of weariness appointed thee? ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... renown. They were pure works of art. No moral was everlastingly perking itself in the reader's face, no labored lecture to prove what was self-evident interrupted the progress of the story. There is scarcely an allusion to any of the events which had checkered the novelist's career. References to contemporary occurrences are so slight that they would pass unheeded by any one whose attention had not been called beforehand to their existence. These works showed what Cooper was capable of when ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... we telephoned to Coney Island, and asked Dick Richards, the former keeper of Alice, to come and reason with her. Promptly he came,—and he is still guiding as best he can the checkered ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Stars am shinin' for us all, Hear de Angels callin', and The Debil has no place here. The singing was usually to the accompaniment of a Jew's harp and fiddle, or banjo. In summer the slaves went without shoes and wore three-quarter checkered baggy pants, some wearing only a long shirt to cover their body. We wore ox-hide shoes, much too large. In winter time the shoes were stuffed with paper to keep out the cold. We called them 'Program' shoes. We had no money to spend, in fact ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... an impressive chapter in the history of Europe; and one of the most striking episodes in the narrative is the checkered life of the last king of France—one week among the mightiest monarchs on the loftiest pinnacle of ambition, he was, the next, an exile in a foreign land—his past ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various |
