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More "Fluency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Reverend James McVean, who was born near Johnstown, New York, in 1796. He was a graduate of Union College in 1813, and of Princeton in 1819. It was said that he spoke seven languages with fluency and that the chair of Greek at Princeton was always open to him. He came to Georgetown about 1820 and married Jane Maffitt Whann in 1828. For twenty years he was the principal of a classical seminary for boys in Georgetown, the same one founded by Dr. David Wiley. ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... insolence of some low fellow, and with other advantages. But the point is, to be cool in danger and embarrassments, which, if a man cannot be, let him go into The Great Desert at his peril. It was for the same reason I would not bring with me an European servant from Tripoli, whose fluency in Arabic might have been attended with the greatest danger to us both instead of assistance. Said is pestered with questions about me or my affairs; but at times Said is stupid enough, and people get tired of asking him questions. I must mention, however, one thing to his credit ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... who came in almost immediately, was charming, speaking English with fluency, although he has never ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the vocal cords are the principal agents in the formation of the voice. The tongue, which many have supposed to be the most important organ in speaking, is not essential to sound. In several instances it has been removed, and the persons thus mutilated could speak with fluency. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... this gone out, had returned with a supply of palm leaves, and sat down to make a hat, while Lord Reginald opened one of the books, and with considerable fluency translated a portion of its contents. Dick listened attentively while he plaited away at the hat, stopping every now and then to ask ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... was an impediment to fluency of conversation, but after a moment Tommy mastered it and went on. "I say, Bicky, what's gone ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... darkness an endless, garrulous appeal for mercy. A sense of danger, of daring, had alone nerved Carthew to enter the forecastle; and here was the enemy crying and pleading like a frightened child. His obsequious "Here, sir," his horrid fluency of obtestation, made the murder tenfold more revolting. Twice Carthew raised the pistol, once he pressed the trigger (or thought he did) with all his might, but no explosion followed; and with that the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... avoit pu blesser Monsieur Mirobolant, et qu'il donnoit sa parole comme un gentilhomme qu'il ne l'avoit jamais, jamais—intende," said Pen, who made a shot at a French word for "intended," and was secretly much pleased with his own fluency and correctness in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... socket, and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louis thirty-four years and had never been across the river during that period. Then he wandered into a very flowing lecture, filled with classic names and allusions, which was quite wonderful for fluency until the fact became rather apparent that this was not the first time, nor perhaps the fiftieth, that the speech had been delivered. He was a good deal of a character, and much better company than the sappy literature he was selling. A random remark, connecting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... harshness made those in the next room tremble; yet feminine in her tastes, skilful with her needle, fond of embroidery work, striking the lute with a touch remarkable for its science and feeling, speaking many languages, including Latin, with fluency and grace; most feminine, too, in her constitutional sufferings, hysterical of habit, shedding floods of tears daily at Philip's coldness, undisguised infidelity, and frequent absences from England—she almost awakens compassion and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to suffer. It was not the pain and burden to me that it had been. I often whistled at my desk, and wrote with far more fluency than before. I accomplished my tasks impatiently, as anxious to be off to my helpful retreat as a drunkard is to ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... talked so well that the girl wondered why Mrs. Heeny had found her lacking in conversation. But though Undine thought silent people awkward she was not easily impressed by verbal fluency. All the ladies in Apex City were more voluble than Mrs. Fairford, and had a larger vocabulary: the difference was that with Mrs. Fairford conversation seemed to be a concert and not a solo. She kept drawing ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... out her hands to emphasise her helplessness, then let them drop to her sides again. There was a silence, for Maurice could not think of anything to say; her fluency made him tongue-tied. He struggled with his embarrassment until they were all but within earshot of the rest, at the bottom of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... threats against Julian, mingled with fierce cries and reproaches, calling him Asiatic, Greek, a cheat, and a fool pretending to be wise. And as it is commonly the case among soldiers that some men are found of remarkable fluency of speech, they poured forth such harangues ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... night. Cowper had a similar experience with 'John Gilpin,' and Burns's powerful dramatic tale, 'Tam O'Shanter,' was produced with great ease and rapidity. De Quincey records that, in his own case, his very best work was frequently done when he was writing against time. Scott's energy and fluency of composition are clearly indicated in the following passage in Lockharts ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... eating, with Henrietta Temple in the room, Ferdinand found that quite impossible. The moment she appeared, his appetite vanished. Anxious to speak, yet deprived of his accustomed fluency, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... still ringing in the ears of his conscience-stricken accusers, Edward O'Meagher Condon commenced to speak. He was evidently more of an orator than either of those who had preceded him, and he spoke with remarkable fluency, grace, and vigour. The subjoined is a correct report of his spirited ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... them, and they would follow him anywhere. He had been British Military Attache in Berlin for some years, and had thus acquired an intimate knowledge of the German Army. An excellent linguist, he spoke French with ease and fluency, and he used to astonish French soldiers by his intimate knowledge of the history of their regiments, which was often far in excess of what they knew themselves. His military acquirements were ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... little up the hill-side, Willie Ferrars was holding the hand of the chestnut-curled, black-eyed fairy, 'little Awk,' who was impressing him by her fluency in two languages at once, according as she chattered to him in English, or in French to a picturesque peasant, her great ally, who was mowing his flowery crop of hay, glancing like an illumination, with an under-current of ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... perfectly insensible to the labour; articles came from him as easily as ordinary talk; the fountain seemed to be always full, and had only to be turned on to the desired end. The chief fault which I should be disposed to find with these articles is doubtless a consequence of this fluency. He has not taken time to make them short. They often resemble the summing-up of a judge, who goes through the evidence on both sides in the order in which it has been presented to him, and then states the 'observations ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... labyrinth by which thou canst gain the embankment of the river, and from thence betake thyself speedily home, . . if thou hast a home..." here he paused, and a keen, questioning glance flashed in his dark eyes. "But,—notwithstanding thy fluency of speech and fashion of attire, methinks thou hast the lost and solitary air of one who is a stranger in the city ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the opening lines to herself, then turning the page began to translate from the Greek with great ease and fluency: ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... letters. It appears to me a certainty that the original sentence was written in a proper manner, and afterwards distorted by a law which we have yet to discover. Whoever possesses the key of this cipher will read it with fluency. What is that key? Axel, have you ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... and inherited sentiment, the growth of thousands of years, that English education has less effect than might be expected in loosening the bonds of beliefs which seem to every one but a Hindoo the merest superstition. Hindoos who can read English with fluency, and write it with accuracy, are often extremely devout, and Hindoo devoutness must ever appear to an outsider, even to a European as sympathetic as the author, to be no better than superstition. A Hindoo able to read English with ease has at his command all the rich stores of the knowledge ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... was lived among shadows and abstractions. He thought deeply, but he neither looked widely nor listened intently, and when all is said he remains no more than a brilliant amorist, too super-subtle for complete sincerity, whose fluency and sweetness ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... moment Tom is at his father's side. What need to describe the sacred joy of those first few minutes, even if it were possible? But unrestrained tenderness between man and man, rare as it is, and, as it were, unaccustomed to itself, has no passionate fluency, no metaphor or poetry, such as man pours out to woman, and woman again to man. All its language lies in the tones, the looks, the little half-concealed gestures, hints which pass themselves off modestly in jest; and such was Tom's first interview with his father; till ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... erect and firm. Then the pitying spectators seized Dilly Boy, and, holding him, unlocked the pinchers. He rolled over—it was the only easeful attitude—as he cursed all gins, crabs, and dynamiters with wondrous fluency. And may the potency of those coloured ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... attached, very little to do beyond an occasional forty-mile run to D.H.Q. and back over dull roads. The signal office was established in a large room on the side of the house nearest to the Germans. It was constructed almost entirely of glass. Upon this the men commented with a grave fluency. The windows rattled with shrapnel bursting 600 yards away. The house was jarred through and through by the concussion of a heavy battery firing over our heads. The room was like a toy-shop with a lot of small children sounding all the musical toys. The vibrators ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... rather opulent beauty, with large dark eyes for all men, and a luxurious manner of lying back and fanning herself. She talked, soft-voiced, in half a dozen languages, changing from one to the other without a break in either her fluency or her thought. Her little lithe, active husband sat around and adored her. He was apparently a very able citizen indeed, for he was going out to take charge of the construction work on a German railway. To have filched so important a job from the Germans themselves shows that he must have ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... promptly as parliamentary forms and mysteries would allow, there was a bill under the astonished noses of honorable lawgivers, removing the seat of legislation from Slowburg and centring it in Fastburg. This bill Mr. Thomas Dicker supported with that fluency and fiery enthusiasm of oratory which had for a time enabled him to show as the foremost man of his State. Great was the excitement, great the rejoicing and anger. The press of Fastburg sent forth shrieks of exultation, and the ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... rich enough finding their amusement in Parliament, which was regarded as the most interesting club in London, and in its debates, of which the charm, for those who take part in them, lies in the fact that for success not knowledge of a subject, but fluency, ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... And we started to do it too. And then, and then—it rained. Rained, sir, till our trains and guns were mired, and we couldn't budge! And all the time we knew that regiment after regiment was stacking arms off there at Shrevepoht. Did Little Joe rave? Opened Job his mouth? He did. His fluency gave the rain pointers. I sho'ly absorbed some myself, me, that have language tanks of my own. Well, I reckon all our hearts pretty near broke. But we had our Missouri general and our Missouri governor, and the Old Brigade just decided to come ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... discussion that require speaking without thought, on anything or nothing that can be at the moment invented, are likely to be mischievous. Thought suggests expression, and exact thought will find fit form. Sound thinking is the main thing. Practice for mere fluency tends to the habit of superficial thinking, and produces the wearisome, endless talker. In this connection emphasis may be laid upon the point of ending a speech when its purpose is accomplished, and that as soon as can be. Many speeches ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... symphony, down to pianoforte variations, rondos, and dances, and in none of them did he fail to be pleasing and intelligible, not even where, as especially in his sacred music, he made use—a sparing use—of contrapuntal devices, imitations, and fugal treatment. The naturalness, fluency, effectiveness, and practicableness which distinguish his writing for voices and instruments show that he possessed a thorough knowledge of their nature and capability. It was, therefore, not an empty rhetorical phrase to speak of him initiating his pupils "a la science du contre-point et ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the dust streaks moving southward. Down on the swampy bank, squat between the cypress knees, Steve drank again, and then again,—in fact, emptied the squat, black bottle. The stuff filled him with a tremendous courage, and conferred upon him great fluency of thought. He waxed eloquent to the cypress roots upon the conduct of the war. "Gawd! if they'd listen ter me I'd te—tell them how!—I'd bui—build a bridge for the whole rotten army to cross on! Ef it broke I'd ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... fellow as a rule, and, like the Emperor, perfectly willing to admit that his navy is closely modelled on that of Great Britain. Moreover, in addition to a thorough knowledge of his profession, he is able, in two cases out of three, to converse with useful fluency in English, French, and in some cases ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... superintending the fitting out of his new vessel. Our hero made good progress during the few months that he remained at the pension, and when McElvina returned to take him away, not only could speak the French language with fluency, but had also made considerable progress in what Sir W. C—- used to designate in his toast as "the three R's,"—viz., "Reading, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... from his trance of watching, it was to turn upon Watton with impatience. How long was this thing going on? The British workman spoke with deplorable fluency. Couldn't they push their way ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... curse with amazing fluency in French and Arabic, while his orderly fell into half-hysterical prayer. Bristol—stolid Englishman though he was—had to make a strong effort to keep his teeth from chattering. The two Italians, one with an ugly wound on the jaw, burst ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... who had drawn close to Norah, and was contemplating his right hand, which had been nearly shaken off by the four from Billabong. The Hindu's English was not equal to his sense of friendship, and conversation with him lacked fluency. It was some time before Jim could make him understand that they wanted him to return to the station—and indeed, it was Norah who made ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... dotting of his i's. I have also received your letter bearing date June 1st; and note, with great satisfaction, your statement that he has been most assiduous in his studies, and that he is already able to converse with some fluency in Spanish. ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... thought of his duplicity which these recollections aroused—thoughts which were interrupted by The Sheik, who instructed the Hon. Morison to write a letter to the British consul at Algiers, dictating the exact phraseology of it with a fluency that indicated to his captive that this was not the first time the old rascal had had occasion to negotiate with English relatives for the ransom of a kinsman. Baynes demurred when he saw that the letter was addressed to the consul ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... French valet,—that inestimable valet, Jean Desmarais,—sitting over a small fire, was watching the operations of a coffee-pot, and conversing, in a mutilated attempt at the language of our nation, though with the enviable fluency of his own, with the various loiterers who were beguiling the hours they were obliged to wait for an audience of the master himself, by laughing at the master's Gallic representative. There stood a tailor with his books of patterns ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deliberation; a free stream of ideas spontaneously obeying a sense or order, harmony, and form. Eloquence in the informal discourse of the parlour or the country walk did not mean in Diderot's case the empty fluency and nugatory emphasis of the ordinary talker of reputation. It must have been both pregnant and copious; declamatory in form, but fresh and substantial in matter; excursive in arrangement, but forcible and pointed in intention. No doubt, if he was a sage, he was sometimes ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... informs us, that Thomas Hunt, the author, was educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, and was esteemed a person of quick parts, and of a ready fluency in discourse, but withal too pert and forward. He was called to the bar, and esteemed a good lawyer. In 1659 he became clerk of the assizes at Oxford circuit, but was ejected from the office at the Restoration, to his great loss, to make room for ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... plectro. Charles d'Orleans, that captive and captivating prince, wrote thousands of rondeaux; even before his time a gallant company of gentlemen composed the Livre des Cent Ballades, one hundred ballades, practically unreadable by modern men. Then came Clement Marot, with his gay and rather empty fluency, and Ronsard, with his mythological compliments, his sonnets, decked with roses, and led like lambs to the altar of Helen or Cassandra. A few, here and there, of his pieces are lighter, more pleasant, and, in ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the Castilian with much elegance and correctness. She had an easy fluency of discourse, which, though generally of a serious complexion, was occasionally seasoned with agreeable sallies, some of which have passed into proverbs. [23] She was temperate even to abstemiousness in her diet, seldom or never tasting wine; [24] and so frugal in ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... reading of Italian, even very crabbed and ancient Italian which might have puzzled more than one "elegant scholar," became quite easy and familiar to me, but I have never attained a colloquial mastery over the language. I can talk, to be sure, with the most incorrect fluency, and I can make myself understood—at all events by Italians, whose quick, sympathetic apprehension of one's meaning, and courteous readiness to assist a foreigner in any linguistic straits, are deserving of grateful ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... look of anxiety and depression invaded her small face. He guessed that she was thinking of her pictures, and began timidly to speak to her about them. When they returned to the world of art, his fluency left him; he felt crushed beneath the weight of his own ignorance ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... astonishment soon gives way to softer emotions; all they do and say breathes the utmost frankness and sincerity. One circumstance which I cannot help remarking is, that after living so many years in this sequestered retreat, they speak French with equal fluency and purity. I was likewise much struck with the little resemblance there is between them. Lady Eleanor has a charming face, embellished with the glow of health; her whole appearance and manner announce vivacity and the most unaffected gaiety. Miss Ponsonby has a fine countenance, ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... conceived he had been some while observing me from a distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on the breech of a piece of cannon. So soon as our eyes met, he drew near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a good fluency but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this sweetness and fluency, the scientific construction of the metre of the 'Faery Queene' is very noticeable. One of Spenser's arts is that of alliteration, and he uses it with great effect in doubling the impression of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... difficulty with the left hand was remedied; after that I am sure I could make a real clavier player out of her. It is a pity; she has so much genius, reads respectably, has a great deal of natural fluency and plays with ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... be seen on horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... dress—as to spelling; spelling borrowed from Artemus Ward. The appropriator of the tale had a wide reputation in the West, and was exceedingly popular. Deservedly so, I think. He wrote some of the breeziest and funniest things I have ever read, and did his work with distinguished ease and fluency. His name has passed out ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... by this cascade of smooth fluency, Valerie, still with her deepened color, here murmured that she, too, cared for the truth, but the current bore her on. "I don't think you see it, mama, else you could hardly have hurt ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... self-knowledge, self-control" needful to make a sound race they have an encouraging share. Of artistic, poetic, or scientific talent, of wit, originality, or inventiveness, there is yet but little sign. In writing they show facility often, distinction never; in speech fluency and force of argument, and even, sometimes, lucidity, but not a flash of the loftier eloquence. Nor has the time yet arrived for Young New Zealand to secure the chief prizes of its own community—such posts and distinctions as go commonly to ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... unnecessary, for, while his speech lacked in the characteristic fluency of other speeches, while the shock and pain caused his argument to be somewhat labored, yet it was with a soldierly firmness and iron determination, which more than all things in Roosevelt's career discloses to the country the real Roosevelt, ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... The copious ridicule of the press has no effect upon this serious gathering. Its verbose platitudes and pretentious inanities continue to be repeated, furnishing almost as good an antithesis to science and philosophy as Mrs. Eddy and her disciples. There is no lack of fluency and ingenuity in the use of language, and occasionally there are glimmering and flashes of common sense, but to wander through the first report of the present session, in pursuit of a correct philosophic idea, is as unprofitable as to wander all day through wintry snows to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the musical structure of "Hansel und Gretel" in the Wagnerian manner, but has done it with so much fluency and deftness that a musical layman might listen to it from beginning to end without suspecting the fact, save from the occasional employment of what may be called Wagnerian idioms. The little work is replete with melodies which, though original, ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... into the water—to pave the way for her boy, I suppose; for she could not have deceived herself so far as to think Catherine would allow her to settle the temperature. During the ablution she kneeled down opposite the little Gerard, and prattled to him with amazing fluency; taking care, however, not to articulate like grown-up people; for, how could a cherub ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... been so kind as to favor me. The appearance and manners of the audience are more interesting to me than those of the stage-actors. Besides, I like to accustom my ear to the Spanish, which I now speak with considerable fluency and correctness. I have devoted much study to this and the French language since I have been in Spain, and am now making some progress in the Italian, through the Spanish. I am convinced that no man can properly understand a people without knowing something of their language, which ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... you should learn to write a good commercial hand, and also acquire, as soon as possible, a very thorough knowledge of the French language. For these you should employ the best teachers that can be found. Your wife can help you in many ways. She has learned to spell correctly, to read with fluency and expression, and to play quite well on the piano. You will find it very profitable to read good books aloud to each other. I advise you not to go to places of amusement oftener than once a fortnight, and always to choose such places as will be suitable and pleasant for your wife. I ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... all-important sense underlying the sound-symbols. But in works of imagination mar. wants a treatment totally different, a style which, by all or any means, little mattering what they be, can avoid the imminent deadly risk of languor and monotony and which adds to fluency the allurement of variety, of surprise and even of disappointment, when a ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... this is based the logical topic of Aristotle, of which teachers and rhetoricians could avail themselves, in order, under certain titles of thought, to observe what would best suit the matter they had to treat, and thus enable themselves to quibble and talk with fluency ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... the imagination, the heart, and the conscience of man, he should possess, or attain to, the mechanical ingenuity that can satisfy man's constructive understanding, the elegance that can please his sensuous taste, the fluency that can blend ease with instruction, and the music that can touch through the ear the inner springs of his being. Heart and genius, art and nature, sympathy with man and God, love of the beautiful apparition of the universe, and of that divine halo of Christianity which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... have mastered English remarkably well," I could not help remarking, for she was speaking with great fluency, and with hardly any accent. This seemed to please her, for she gave me one of those ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... completing his task a man reads his own composition with utter amazement at its depth, its grasp, its beauty, and force of expression, and wonders whence came the thoughts that stand on the page before him. If called to speak in public, opium gives him a copiousness of thought, a fluency of utterance, a fruitfulness of illustration, and a penetrating, thrilling eloquence, which often astounds and overmasters himself, not less than it kindles, melts, and sways the audience he addresses. I might dilate ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... eyes on Worth's face talked louder than her tongue, but that also gained fluency as he looked back at her and nodded. "Stunts!" she repeated his word bitterly. "I didn't expect you to come back asking me to do stunts. I hated it all so—working out things like a calculating machine!" Her voice sank to a ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... Signor," said the Grand Judge. "Believe me, however, the most eloquent advocate has less influence over a conscientious judge than the facts of the case, the light which illumines them, and which it is their duty to make brilliant in our eyes, rather than seek an opportunity to display their fluency and their political opinions, or, worse yet, to produce ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... white men while he listened. Of the blanket-vending, depot-haunting type was this young man, with a ready smile and a quick eye for a bargain and a smattering of English learned in his youth at a mission, and a larger vocabulary of Mexican that lent him fluency of speech when the mood to talk was on him. Half of his hair was cut so that it hung even with his ear-lobes. At the back it was long and looped up in the way a horse's tail is looped in muddy weather, and ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... seen in comparing his early prose — the war letters and "Tiger Lilies", for instance, or such essays as "Retrospects and Prospects" — with that of his maturer years. I doubt if justice has been done to Lanier's best style, its clearness, fluency, and eloquence. It may be claimed without dispute that he was a rare good letter-writer; perhaps only Lowell's letters are more interesting. The faults of his poetry are not always seen in his best letters. In them there is a playfulness, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... seated in a stiff, high-backed arm-chair, with a small round table, containing a desk and a work-basket on one side of her, and her little boy on the other, who stood leaning his elbow on her knee, and reading to her, with wonderful fluency, from a small volume that lay in her lap; while she rested her hand on his shoulder, and abstractedly played with the long, wavy curls that fell on his ivory neck. They struck me as forming a pleasing contrast to all the surrounding objects; but of course their position was immediately changed ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... its most important exhibit three portraits by J. C. Johansen, on wall B, all typical of the brilliant fluency of this remarkable painter. Among the landscapes here the most important are the two Schofields on wall D, typical of the best and sanest phase of Impressionism in America. Very important too are the canvases by Daniel Garber ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... to New York, and, if called upon to read aloud, would have shown the effects of want of practice, in his frequent blunders. But the daily lessons in reading which he now took began to remedy this deficiency, and give him increased fluency and facility. It also had the effect of making him wish that his education had not been interrupted, so that his Cousin Charles might not be ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... spoke their tongue as easily as he spoke any other that came to the post, naturally and with quiet fluency. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... may be wrong and he, right, all through. But ... 'more intense than Sappho'!—more intense than intensity itself!—to think of that!—Also the word 'poetry' has a clear meaning to me, and all the fluency and facility and quick ear-catching of a tune which one can find in the world, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... half-way, their talk lapsed, and lapsed, and lapsed. The breaks became more numerous and lasted longer. Condy began to wonder if he was boring her. No sooner had the suspicion entered his head than it hardened into a certainty, and at once what little fluency and freshness he yet retained forsook him on the spot. What made matters worse was his recollection of other evenings that of late he had failed in precisely the same manner. Even while he struggled to save the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... more than that in the brass match-safe in question, but her instinct of hoarding had led her to keep it a secret from her husband. Now she lied to him with prompt fluency. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... this winter: "The children, in whose welfare you take so kindly an interest, are making most favourable progress. The eldest, "Pussy" (the Princess Royal at three years of age), is now quite a little personage. She speaks English and French with great fluency and choice of phrase.... The little gentleman (the Prince of Wales) is grown much stronger than he was.... The youngest (Princess Alice) is the beauty of the family, and is an extraordinarily ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... two islands of an archipelago, in an ocean of heather, sat a boy and a girl, the girl knitting, or, as she would have called it, weaving a stocking, and the boy, his eyes fixed on her face, talking with an animation that amounted almost to excitement. He had great fluency, and could have talked just as fast in good English as in the dialect in which he was now pouring out his ambitions—the broad Saxon ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... stopped his fluency by inquiring whether he had been into them all; and when he said he had not, she took advantage of that admission to inform him that in two days' time she should be able to tell him a great deal more than he was likely to tell her, upon his method ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... great one—had preceded him to Rome, but it was found to fall short of his merits. He has consummate oratorical power, fluency and choice of expression, and though he always speaks extempore his speeches might have been carefully written out long beforehand. He speaks in Greek, and that the purest Attic; his prefatory remarks are polished, neat and agreeable, and occasionally stately ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... place, we find ourselves in a situation unparalleled in the world's history." Ralph had the air of one who is saying aloud for the first time what he has said to himself many times. At any rate, he proceeded with an unusual fluency and glibness. "Circumstances alter cases. We can't handle this situation by any of the standards we have formerly known. In fact, we've got to throw all our former standards overboard. There are five of these girls. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Guillaume Farel, a celebrated French reformer, was born in 1489. He died on the 13th Sept. 1565. The most remarkable features of his character were dauntlessness and untiring energy and zeal. He possessed a sonorous and tuneful voice, fluency of language, and passionate earnestness; yet, although seldom failing to arrest the attention of large audiences, he often, by imprudent torrents of denunciation, aroused against his doctrines ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... began, with fascinating fluency. "You thousand-legged, double-jointed, ox-footed truck horse! Come on out of here and I'll lick the shine off your shoes, you blue-eyed babe, you! What did you get up for, huh? What did you think this was ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... pudding-faced Tartar-physiognomied boy of fifteen, whose intellects, with fostering, if not great, might at least have been respectable, had he not lost all confidence in his own powers from the constant jeers and mockeries of those who had a greater fluency of speech without perhaps so much real power of mind. Although slow, what he learnt he invariably retained. This lad's name was Gossett. His father was a wealthy yeoman of Lynn, in Norfolk. There were at the time but three other midshipmen in the ship, of whom it can only ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... with these grandparents since his mother lost her reason and was removed to the asylum at St. John's. The child was almost destitute of clothing, and covered with vermin. He has the face of a seraph, and a voice that lisps out curses with the fluency of a veteran trooper. Ananias is David's shadow; he follows him everywhere, and echoes all his words as if they were gems of wisdom, far above rubies. Indeed, when David has ceased speaking, one waits involuntarily for Ananias to begin in his ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... subtle one of all which flames through several pages of his Defensio Secunda. It is Milton now, almost alone, that we remember as Cromwell's laureate; but among the sub-laureates there were some by no means insignificant. Old George Wither, though his marvellous metrical fluency had now lapsed into doggrel and senility, had done his best by sending forth, in 1654-5, from some kind of military superintendentship he held in the county of Surrey (Wood calls it distinctly a Major-Generalship at last, but that is surely an ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... dignity of mien and fluency of talk, was Dick Wormwood, whose sole delight is to find every thing wrong. Dick never enters a room but he shows that the door and the chimney are ill-placed. He never walks into the fields but he finds ground ploughed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... his influence over me was certainly the growing love of clearness and fluency to which he had trained me. I had already had to write the above-mentioned fugue for ordinary voices; my feeling for the melodious and vocal had in this way been awakened. In order to keep me strictly under his calming and friendly influence, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... and as the French soldiers were quite glad to beguile the time away by talking with their captives, he succeeded at the end of the journey, which lasted nearly a month, in being able to chat with a certain amount of fluency. Verdun was one of the four places in which British prisoners were confined. At that time France had fifteen thousand prisoners, England forty thousand. By an agreement between the governments these were held ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... very metropolis of this lyric realm was Mitylene of Lesbos, where, amid the myrtle groves and temples, the sunlit silver of the fountains, the hyacinth gardens by a soft blue sea, Beauty and Love in their young warmth could fuse the most rigid forms to fluency. Here Sappho was the acknowledged queen of song—revered, studied, imitated, served, adored by a little court of attendants and disciples, loved and hymned by Alcaeus, and acclaimed by her fellow craftsmen throughout Greece as the wonder of her age. ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... Iraq, military and civilian, are handicapped by Americans' lack of language and cultural understanding. Our embassy of 1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are at the level of fluency. In a conflict that demands effective and efficient communication with Iraqis, we are often at a disadvantage. There are still far too few Arab language—proficient military and civilian officers in Iraq, to the detriment of the ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... Weissenfels in 1674, he had begun his operatic career at Brunswick at the age of eighteen; three years later he took over the direction of the opera at Hamburg, where he produced a large number of operas composed by himself. As a composer, Keiser had a singular fluency of melody in a style that hovers between those of Germany and Italy; had he been a man of more solid character he might have accomplished greater things. But he had inherited from his parents a love of pleasure and debauchery; ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... procured for him, according to Macward, the name of the Scots Cicero. Along with a distinct articulation be possessed great fluency. When he preached in Glasgow, which being the minister of a neighbouring parish was frequently the case, he was much admired and followed (Koelman's "Het Leven en Sterven van Mr. Hugo Binning" prefixed to his translation of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... in his fancy; and against his lips, like water against a dam, rushed vigorous sentences from the great deeps opened in his soul by grief and change, and then leaped over in a beautiful, glittering flood. He wondered vaguely at his vehemence and fluency, at the silence in the hall, that these great people should listen to him at all. They heard him with astonishment, the leaders with interest, the Senator with tears; and Monsignor looked once towards ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... objected, that there is an argument of much force to excuse the overflowings of that zeal, which our friend shews or means for our cause. And it must be confessed, that the easy and smooth fluency of his elocution bestowed on him by nature, and cultivated by continual practice, added to the comeliness of his person, the harmony of his voice, the gracefulness of his manner, and the decency of his dress, are temptations too ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... a wild forest, compared with the gentle, limpid fluency of his [Brenz's] language. If small things dare be compared with great, my words are like the Spirit of Elijah—a great and strong wind, rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks; and his is the still small ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... his clear insight, his capacity for grasping a subject, his aptness of illustration, his quickness of retort, and, alack! the embarrassment of the wealth of language. If he could only economise that, and guard against the fatal fluency that besets him, converting what might be a sharp direct speech of twenty minutes into a windy weariness of hour-and-a-half or two hours, he would take high rank among ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... heard of their coming, he said, and gave them welcome. His wish was to be on friendly terms with them, and the people of their nation, one of whom, a great chief he seemed and full of wisdom, was even now his guest. Rolfe, who already spoke the native tongue with considerable fluency, replied, in suitable language, that he was grateful to the chief for the words he had let fall; that his guest was indeed a man of renown—his more than father and friend—and that it was with the object of visiting him, as ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... With the characteristic fluency of his nation, Mr. Clinch described his landing on those enchanted shores, viz, the Rhine Whirlpool and Hell Gate, East River, New York. He described the railways, tram-ways, telegraphs, hotels, phonograph, and telephone. An occasional oath broke from the baron, but he listened ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... little dog could she remember him, but it was especially the animal, the giver very dimly. I alluded to our excursion—her eyes sparkled, all the details, even the most minute incidents came back to her, and she related with the utmost fluency, in a rapture of delight, a picnic with breakfast in a hut built of branches and an extravagant quantity of wine—which we had ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... a little less fluently, of which I was glad. Fluency and accuracy are a bad pair. I would rather people stumbled and stammered out their ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... I asked Stella to marry me. Nearly every fellow I knew had done as much, particularly Peter Blagden; and it is always a mistake to appear unnecessarily reserved or exclusive. And this time in declining—with a fluency that bespoke considerable practice,—she informed me that, as the story books have it, she was shortly to be ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... a right to presume that Cleopatra, when she first appeared upon the stage of history as a girl of fourteen, was simply a very beautiful and accomplished Greek princess, who could speak several languages with fluency, as precocious as Elizabeth of England, skilled in music, conversant with history, and surrounded with eminent masters. She was only twenty-one when she was an object of attraction to Caesar, then ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... become more and more rare, and two months of constant conversation with Malcolm and others had enabled Ronald by this time to speak with some fluency in the French tongue. None of the soldiers paid any attention to the newcomers, whose dress differed in no way from that of Frenchmen, as after the shipwreck they had, of course, been obliged to rig themselves out afresh. Malcolm stopped ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... by repetition and rhythm. A slight movement of curiosity in the rear benches, and a whisper that it was the maiden effort of a new preacher, helped to prolong the interruption. A heavy man of strong physical expression sprang to the rescue with a hysterical cry of "Glory!" and a tumultuous fluency of epithet and sacred adjuration. Still the meeting wavered. With one final paroxysmal cry, the powerful man threw his arms around his nearest neighbor and burst into silent tears. An anxious hush followed; ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... work which rescued him from despondency. He applied for a post at Delhi; and, as soon as this was granted, he was all eagerness to leave Calcutta. But he had used the time well in one respect: he had acquired the power of speaking Persian with ease and fluency, and this stood him in good stead in his dealings with the princes and the peasants of the northern races, whose history he was to ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the Hall. The place seemed to be absolutely deserted. And, now, in the breakfast-room an almost breathless silence was broken only by the slow grumbling of one monotonous voice, undulating about the limited range of a minor third, and proceeding with the steady fluency of a lunatic's muttering. I suppose I ought to have guessed the reasonable origin of those sounds, but I didn't, not even when the muttering fell to a pause and was succeeded by a subdued chorus, that ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Thackeray,—I hope you received my note and last poem. I hope still more earnestly that you won't think I am putting my spite against your chastening hand into a presumptuous and troublesome fluency. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... was very considerable. The captain, Don Hernan Escalante, was a refined, highly-educated man. His knowledge on most matters was extensive, if not profound; he spoke several languages, and among them English, with a fluency few Spaniards attain. Few Spaniards indeed of that day were equally accomplished. His first lieutenant, Pedro Alvarez, was every inch a seaman, and like many seamen despised all who were not so. Again the captain stopped before the chart, and placing his finger on it, observed: "Here I hope ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... long speech. Voluble as Osterman himself, he, nevertheless, had at his command a vast number of ready-made phrases, the staples of a political speaker, the stock in trade of the commercial lawyer, which rolled off his tongue with the most persuasive fluency. By degrees, in the course of his speech, he began to insinuate the idea that the wheat-growers had never expected to settle their difficulties with the Railroad by the work of a single commission; that they had counted upon a long, continued campaign of many years, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... Magnus, his state of sullen fury made him indifferent even to threats of punishment. He swore with a determination and fluency worthy of a better cause. For myself, I could not endure his neighborhood. It seemed to me I could not live through the days that must intervene before the arrival of the Rufus Smith in the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... mental characteristics known to arise from traceable hereditary sources may be mentioned factors in musical ability, artistic composition, literary ability, mechanical skill, calculating ability, inventive ability, memory, ability to spell, fluency in conversation, aptness in languages, military talent, acquisitiveness, attention, story-telling, poetic ability; and, on the other hand, insanity, feeble-mindedness of many types, epilepsy. These are suggestive of ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... simple fluency in Hindustani, with her manner of not realising that she was speaking to a foreigner who could not understand her. What she explained was that, having heard that Jane's Mem Sahib came here to meditate ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... brought up in one of the Yankee settlements on the Missouri, and had, from a mere youth, spent his life as a hunter in the wilderness. He could speak English, French, or Indian with equal ease and fluency, but it would have been hard for anyone to say which of the three was his native tongue. The younger man, who occupied the stern of the canoe, acting the part of steersman, was quite a youth, apparently about ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... prospect of a lord and a duchess under his roof. Leaning on the arm of Mrs. Fry, the duchess was formally introduced to us individually. Mrs. Mott conversed with the distinguished guests with the same fluency and composure as with her own countrywomen. However anxious the English people were as to what they should say and do, the Americans were all quite at ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... was in the pulpit, Dr. Tyng was the prince of platform orators. He had every quality necessary for the sway of a popular audience—fine elocution, marvelous fluency, piquancy, the courage of his convictions and a magnetism that swept all before him. His voice was very clear and penetrating, and he hurled forth his clean-cut sentences like javelins. A more fluent ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... and persistent, and patient, and had never respected his brother one half as much as when he was stammering over the German pronunciation, which he could not well master. But he learned to read with a tolerable degree of fluency, and to speak a little, too, while he could understand nearly all Arthur ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... on a fine summer day two months after, the C—— let go her anchor in Gibraltar Harbour to await her orders. A tall, fine-looking man came aboard to solicit business of a legitimate character. He spoke English with fluency and an almost correct accent. The captain knew he had some business connection with the syndicate, but did not give him any reason to suppose he had this knowledge. He was cognisant of the characteristics of these ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... Nelly, Marion, Tom, Fred, and myself. We were plotting mischief in the shadow of the Ariadne's anchors, right in the eyes of the ship. I forget the immediate cause of this piece of foolhardiness, but I remember Fred's hated fluency about 'dolphin-strikers,' 'martingales,' and what not; and, finally, my own assertion that I would touch the ship's forefoot, where we saw it gleaming below the glassy surface of the water, and Fred's mocking reply ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Lubin," etc., and she told us the story quite through of several I never heard of, always singing the sujet when she came to the airs, and comically changing parts in the duets. She speaks French with the same fluency as English, and every now and then, addressing herself to the S. S.—"Que je vous adore!"—"Ah, permettez que je me mette 'a vos pieds!" etc., with a dying languor that ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... at her fluency of manner. "You're a bit unstrung, that's all. Look in at your club ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... apparently took place in the early 'twenties,' she was sent with a present of fruit to a neighbour's house, and there found a guest, a tall and splendid figure, arrayed in masculine costume, and engaged in smoking a narghila. The stranger, who talked Arabic with elegance and fluency, discoursed on the subject of astrology, and tried to dissuade the Emira from taking a projected journey to the west, where she declared the sun had set, and the hearts of the people retained not a spark of the virtues of their forefathers. 'Soon afterwards,' continues ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... this province [of St. Augustine] administers—in which it is necessary to know the Tagal, Pampanga, Ylocan, and Bisayan tongues, which are all different languages—each of those religious was a minister. [They were also asked to name] those who had sufficient fluency in the language to preach the gospel and declare the mysteries of the faith to the Indians; and whether there were any religious of their faction who were qualified to be preachers in this convent of Manila and in other Spanish ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... up with a strangely beaming look and broke out in a discourse of sounds that were wholly unintelligible. You need not smile. It was a true language, I am confident; it flowed forth with a moving warmth and fluency; and the gestures which accompanied it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... himself down heavily in a chair and buried his face in his hands. James began to talk, and as he talked his fluency ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... complexion is dark, but not disagreeably so; their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small. The men are taller than the English peasantry, and far more active. They all speak the English language with fluency, and in their gait and demeanour are easy and graceful; in both points standing in striking contrast with the peasantry, who in speech are slow and uncouth, and in manner ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... nothing in particular. Ted has managed to discuss the moon—it is high now, a round white lustre—the night, which is warm—the art of garden decoration, French, English and Italian—the pleasantness of Southampton after New York—all with great nervous fluency but so completely as if he had met Elinor for the first time ten minutes ago that she is beginning to wonder why, if he dislikes her as much as that, he ever suggested leaving the dance-floor ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... cacique assisted in absorbed wonder, while the dignity and Solemnity of the ceremonies and the beauty of the sacerdotal vestments impressed him by their favourable contrast to the repugnant rites and filthy robes of the priests of his own religion. Fray Luis spoke the Quiche language with fluency, and during several days he gave instructions and explanations, which resulted in the cacique's conversion; that of the others followed as a matter of course. The friar had brought with him the contract signed by the Governor, and he explained ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... that these old women—I mean women of old—were all good talkers, and they didn't speak like meek, passive, submissive girls wrought up to sudden action by wrong, indignation or revenge, but they spoke with a freedom, vigor and fluency that ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... plead the cause of the emancipation of his people and of its literary pre-eminence; David Neto, a student of philosophy; Benjamin Mussafia, Orobio de Castro, David Abenator Melo, the Spanish translator of the Psalms, and Daniel de Barrios, poet and critic—all using their rapidly acquired fluency in the Dutch language to champion the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... you that I have missed you, how I have longed for you," he went on, not speaking with the fluency for which some of his men friends envied him, but brokenly, as if the words were all inadequate to express his meaning. "All the way up to London I thought of you—I could not help thinking of you. All the time I was there, whether I was alone ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... cuts almost examined out of them, and the encyclopedia book, from "Safety-lamps to Stranglers," practically had its contents torn out and devoured. In after life Aladdin could always speak with extraordinary fluency, feeling, and understanding on anything that began with S, such as Simeon Stylites and Senegambia. But the poems of Poe were what made his sickness worth while and put the call upon all his after life. We learn of the critics and professors ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... fuss about it. Labe, who had chosen the holiday season to go on one of his periodical vacations, as rather white and shaky and even more silent than usual. Mr. Price, however, talked with his customary fluency and continuity, so there was no lack of conversation. Captain Zelotes ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... drowsy, excepting Nelly, Marion, Tom, Fred, and myself. We were plotting mischief in the shadow of the Ariadne's anchors, right in the eyes of the ship. I forget the immediate cause of this piece of foolhardiness, but I remember Fred's hated fluency about 'dolphin-strikers,' 'martingales,' and what not; and, finally, my own assertion that I would touch the ship's forefoot, where we saw it gleaming below the glassy surface of the water, and Fred's mocking reply that ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... gathering. Its verbose platitudes and pretentious inanities continue to be repeated, furnishing almost as good an antithesis to science and philosophy as Mrs. Eddy and her disciples. There is no lack of fluency and ingenuity in the use of language, and occasionally there are glimmering and flashes of common sense, but to wander through the first report of the present session, in pursuit of a correct philosophic idea, is as unprofitable as to wander all day through wintry snows to find a little game ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... had her in his power again. She was planning the order of exercises for the meeting, which was as it should be; but it was not as right that she was leaping forward in her thoughts to the criticisms which the girls would make upon the part she should take, the hope that they would admire her fluency and spirituality, and say to her when ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... limbs. She is not satisfied to spend the night excepting on the softest down, and excepting on hair-cushioned lounges, she loves best to take a horizontal position. Her voice is of penetrating sweetness; her movements are full of grace. She speaks with marvelous fluency. She does not apply herself to any hard work; and, nevertheless, in spite of her apparent weakness, there are burdens which she can bear and move with miraculous ease. She avoids the open sunlight and wards it off by ingenious appliances. For her to walk is exhausting. Does she eat? This is a mystery. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... actually crossed his path, and to him that was a sign indicative of good fortune. I have seen him go into ecstasies of joy over an incident of this kind; and woe unto the person who interrupted the current of his happiness. He would curse him with amazing fluency until resentment choked the power of expression. This same human phenomenon was, in early life, shipwrecked on one of the hidden shoals with which the north-east coast abounds, at the very moment when he was taking from the girdle in the galley a hot cake he ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... his ire, and that minister's County Government Bill was fiercely denounced as the "crowning dishonour to Tory principles," and the "supreme violation of political honesty." The audacity of Lord Randolph's attitude, and the vituperative fluency of his invective, made him a parliamentary figure of some importance before the dissolution of the 1874 parliament, though he was not as yet taken quite seriously. In the new parliament of 1880 he speedily began to play a more notable role. With the assistance of his devoted adherents, Sir ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... lapsed. The breaks became more numerous and lasted longer. Condy began to wonder if he was boring her. No sooner had the suspicion entered his head than it hardened into a certainty, and at once what little fluency and freshness he yet retained forsook him on the spot. What made matters worse was his recollection of other evenings that of late he had failed in precisely the same manner. Even while he struggled to save the situation Condy was wondering if they two ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... country he belonged. His father was a Canadian, his mother a Scotchwoman. He was born in Canada, brought up in one of the Yankee settlements on the Missouri, and had, from a mere youth, spent his life as a hunter in the wilderness. He could speak English, French, or Indian with equal ease and fluency, but it would have been hard for anyone to say which of the three was his native tongue. The younger man, who occupied the stern of the canoe, acting the part of steersman, was quite a youth, apparently ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... said he, in a loud but broken voice; and holding fast to the back of the chair, he poured out his soul and theirs before the Lord with all the fervour and the fluency of real feeling. There was no stumbling over misapplied texts now, no awkward objections in his throat, but only glowing Bible words of thankfulness and praise and joy. And every heart was uplifted and calm as ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... be the same man whom they knew as Gilbert Pollingray a month back? I see the change, I feel the change; but I have no retrospection, no remorse, no looking forward, no feeling: none for others, very little, for myself. I am told that I am losing fluency as a dinner-table talker. There is now more savour to me in a silvery laugh than in a spiced wit. And this is the man who knows women, and is far too modest to give a decided opinion upon any of their merits. Search myself through as I may, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... There is deposited the celebrated Blarney stone, a touch of which imparts to the tongue of the pilgrim the gift of persuasion. So famous has this stone become, not only in Ireland but in England, that the most plausible fluency is characterised by its name, which at once confers on such oratory the stamp of unapproachable eloquence. It must be confessed, however, that in many instances "Blarney" conveys doubts of the speaker's ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... was burnt brick-red by the desert, took a keen interest in Abdur Kad'r's daily outpourings. He had no Arabic, but he appreciated the speaker's fluency. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... first went abroad, she had no fluency in talking French, although she was well acquainted with the literature. To show how, at every period of her life, she missed no opportunity of acquiring information or improvement, I may mention that many years ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... with her usual kindness, prefaced the special matter of her application to Tom by making various inquiries about his mother and his own temporary change of situation. Thus far Tom was able to meet her questions with tolerable fluency, and no more embarrassment than was inseparable from the novelty of his situation. But, when she proceeded to question him about his knowledge of Captain Edward Nicholas, Tom faultered and betrayed the greatest confusion. The truth was that he knew him well, and was ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... a cloud or even with prison records; but their natural charm, their audacity, and their great punctilio as to "honour" deeply impressed the ordinary citizen. As one chronicler of the times puts it, they had "fluency in harangue, vigour in invective, ostentatious courage, absolute confidence about all matters of morals, politics, and propriety"—which is an excellent thumbnail sketch. Many of these ex-jailbirds rose to wealth and influence, so that to this day the sound ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... chatting with his jailer, worked his hardest to add to his knowledge of the language, and as the French soldiers were quite glad to beguile the time away by talking with their captives, he succeeded at the end of the journey, which lasted nearly a month, in being able to chat with a certain amount of fluency. Verdun was one of the four places in which British prisoners were confined. At that time France had fifteen thousand prisoners, England forty thousand. By an agreement between the governments these were held captive in certain prisons, so that they could, when occasion ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... eyes glittered with sparks; his golden curls fell low on his white forehead; and from his lips, shaded by a tiny mustache, the words came out with increasing boldness and fluency, and more thickly intermingled with ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... intelligence of the sprightly, talkative, sanguine child, and to underestimate the intelligence of the child who is less emotional, reacts slowly, and talks little. One occasionally finds a feeble-minded adult, perhaps of only 9- or 10-year intelligence, whose verbal fluency, mental liveliness, and self-confidence would mislead the offhand judgment of even the psychologist. One individual of this type, a border-line case at best, was accustomed to harangue street audiences and had served as "major" in "Kelly's Army," ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... not the superficial gracefulness of Bellini it is because Wagner, in spite of himself, was driven by his daemon to aim at expressiveness, and, as in the Dutchman a very short time afterwards, fell between two stools. His tunes lack the fluency of the Italians because he did, in a half-hearted way, want to utter genuine feeling; they are not finely, accurately and logically expressive as they are in Tannhaeuser and Lohengrin, because the Italian influence, and the necessity of writing to please the gallery, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... the time with a metrical fluency, he scraped a little jig on the violin, while Dummer led off a procession which solemnly capered round the room in sundry stages of conscious awkwardness. Mr. Bultitude shuffled along somehow after the rest, ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... made love. He pleased her, and she desired to please him. My reader knows her wit, her finesse, her fluency; but he cannot conceive how god-like was her way of making love. I can put a few of the corpses of her words upon paper, but where are the heavenly tones—now calm and convincing, now soft and melancholy, now thrilling ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... then followed, all of whom spoke with great ease and fluency, and some in the most impassioned strains, working themselves and their audience up to the highest pitch of excitement, now shouting with frenzied violence till their eyes glared from their sockets, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... midshipman's life had neither disqualified nor disgusted me with the luxuries of the table; nor did I manifest the slightest backwardness or diffidence when invited by the gentlemen to take wine. I answered every question with such fluency of speech, and such compound interest of words, as sometimes caused the propounder to regret that he had put me ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... compact and symmetrical figure, and rather dark complexion. His conversation and deportment denoted the cultivation, delicacy, and graceful poise of an accomplished gentleman; and he delivered his English with a correctness and fluency very noticeably free from the peculiar spasmodic effort that marked his royal brother's exploits in the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... eyes upon him. Rosemary stood by the quay for a few minutes, uncertain what to do. Two or three deep-eyed, long-lashed Monegasque men smiled at her kindly, as Monegasque men and Italians smile at all children. She had learned to lisp French with comparative fluency, during the months she and "Angel" had spent in Paris; and now she asked where the people went who had come in on those pretty ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... he expressed himself with more fluency and self-possession than are usually found in the first attempts of a public speaker, was not effective in addressing an unlettered crowd; for a crowd of this kind is all heart—and we know that Randal Leslie's heart was as small as heart could be. If he attempted to speak at his own intellectual ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... than that in the brass match-safe in question, but her instinct of hoarding had led her to keep it a secret from her husband. Now she lied to him with prompt fluency. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... growth of metrical laws, and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges, and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations, are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman, it is enough—the fact will prevail ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... said he, thoughtfully; "yet I often speak with more fluency when under such excitement than I can possibly do ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... tasks was confirmed. As has been intimated, he entered as a pupil at Athens; but as the course of instruction in that institution was not in harmony with his tastes, he soon withdrew, applying himself afterwards to the study of the French and German languages (a ready fluency in both of which he finally acquired), and especially to the art dearer than all other studies. A recluse, owning and soliciting no guidance but that of his text-book, in the quiet of the woods, or, if that were inaccessible, the retirement of his chamber, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... before the recent alteration of University and College statutes came into force. An ignorant monk was certainly a rarity, an absolutely unlettered or uneducated one was an impossibility, and an abbot or prior who could not talk and write Latin with facility, who could not preach with tolerable fluency on occasion, and hold his own as a debater and man of business, would have found himself sooner or later in a very ridiculous and very uncomfortable position, from which he might be ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... does not obey its own laws, and gives little impression of real power. Art is not the prize of luck or the effect of chance, but of conscious combination of vital elements. Mr. Hirst, though he does give evidence of Keats' fluency of fancy and expression, has really produced a finer work of art. We think it is so important that a poem, to be altogether worthy of the name, should be deeply meditated and carefully finished, that we hazard this last opinion at the expense of being berated by all ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... of necessity come to be a better understanding and a larger respect for the positions of the opponent. The men who would be selected as leaders or speakers to enforce the contentions of the party, would have to possess some reasoning faculty as well as oratorical fluency. The voters, instead of being shut in with one group of arguments more or less reasonable, would be brought into touch with the arguments of other groups of citizens. I can conceive of no better method for bringing ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... shade of a tree behind the house, seated upon a rug, and occupied in a conversation which would not have disturbed a sick-room. The pursuers came upon them, boldly sat beside them; and Laura began to talk with unwonted fluency to Corliss, but within five minutes found herself alone with Richard Lindley upon the rug. Cora had promised to show Mr. Corliss an "old print" in ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... off to the tribune and spin out their ideas; "they were all astonished at hearing their thoughts expressed as fully as if reflected in a mirror." No individual on the Committee, or in the Convention, equaled him in promptness and fluency, for the reason that he was not obliged to think before he spoke: with him, the faculty of speaking, like an independent organ, acted by itself, the empty brain or indifferent heart contributing nothing to his loquacity. Naturally, whatever ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... not at ease as she led them from room to room. Her manner was rather that of one seeking to conceal trepidation, and her fluency seemed a little ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... opportunity of revisiting in the capacity of a transient the scenes of his former idleness; and the holiday-task set him by his large-hearted patron was to prove in as few folios as possible that China ought to be a Monarchy and not a Republic—a theme on which every schoolboy could no doubt write with fluency. Consequently Dr. Goodnow, arming himself with a limited amount of paper and ink, produced in very few days the Memorandum which follows,—a document which it is difficult to speak of dispassionately since it seems to have been deliberately designed to ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... that of the French, these accounts, as far as we could judge by comparing them with the official details, and with the information of officers who had borne a part in the campaign, were tolerably correct. The fluency with which they talked of military operations, of occupying positions, cutting off retreats, defiling over bridges, debouching from woods, advancing and retreating, marching and bivouacking, shewed the habitual current of their thoughts; and they were always more willing to enter ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... pupils' "Practise Concert," and here the results attained were little short of marvelous. Small children, both boys and girls, played difficult pieces, like the Grieg Variations for two pianos, the Weber Invitation to the Dance, and works by Chopin and Liszt, with accuracy and fluency. Almost every selection was played from memory. The tone was always musical and often of much power, and the pupils seemed thoroughly to understand what they were doing and the meaning of the music. They certainly exemplified ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... themselves by reason of her color and her fluency in their idiom, displayed an ability to master those remorseless obscurities of spelling and arithmetic which had seemed sufficient to dethrone reason in any but a Saxon mind, then the peon children began to find some personal ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... was to keep life fixed and constant, and all about her she found life fluent and changing. Or perhaps life was constant, and the fluency was in her. Or perhaps the difficulty was all in this man, about whom she had never been able to take any position that he did not shortly oust her from it. Considering her resolution only last night, she too had thought, when she began, that she was ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... commodious; and not far off that of the chief, which was large, well-built, and convenient. It was thoroughly furnished with chairs, sofas, tables, and beds, and the floors covered with mats; while on the tables were several books, which he could read with fluency. Ten years before this he and his people were naked savage cannibals. Missionary meetings were held in the island to assist in sending the gospel to other lands. Thus spoke an aged native at one of them ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... its literary pre-eminence; David Neto, a student of philosophy; Benjamin Mussafia, Orobio de Castro, David Abenator Melo, the Spanish translator of the Psalms, and Daniel de Barrios, poet and critic—all using their rapidly acquired fluency in the Dutch language to champion the cause ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... recent years, several examples of heredity in song have been vouchsafed to us. The younger Hood had his father's fluency, but, apparently, very little of his imaginative power. Philip Bourke Marston was, in the lyric vein, as successful, perhaps, as Dr. Westland Marston had been in the dramatic, and it is probable that he will always be more largely ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... the colored leaders was one Amos Brown, a young negro with some education, who to the gift of fluency added enough shrewdness to become a leader. He was while in power one of the most dangerous men in the State, and so long as he had backing enough, he staggered at nothing to keep the negroes stirred up. One of his schemes was to get money from the negroes with which to pay, as he ...
— Mam' Lyddy's Recognition - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... which this principle fitted even some of the meanest of this people for their work and service, furnishing some of them with an extraordinary understanding in divine things, and an admirable, fluency, and taking-way of expression, gave occasion to some to wonder, saying of them, as of their Master, "Is not this such a mechanic's son, how came he by this learning?" As from thence others took occasion to suspect and insinuate they were Jesuits in disguise, who had the reputation ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... transpierce and transport me; but this vivid sentiment that is natural to me has been variously handled by variety of forms, not so much higher or lower (for they were ever the highest of every kind), as differing in colour. First, a gay and sprightly fluency; afterwards, a lofty and penetrating subtlety; and lastly, a mature and constant vigour. Their names will better express them: ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... him, and while still enjoying the confidence of the Republican leaders and subject to the needed restraints of party, a most effective speaker, whether in the House or upon the stump. He had something of Burke's torrent-like fluency, and something of Chatham's spirit of command, with a piercing, audacious sarcasm all his own. He was often unjust and unreasonable, but never dull. He never spoke in his life without being at ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... we find ourselves in a situation unparalleled in the world's history." Ralph had the air of one who is saying aloud for the first time what he has said to himself many times. At any rate, he proceeded with an unusual fluency and glibness. "Circumstances alter cases. We can't handle this situation by any of the standards we have formerly known. In fact, we've got to throw all our former standards overboard. There are five of these girls. There are five of us. Voila! Following ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... swing, ascending to a height beyond any that I have since seen in fairs or public gardens. Horror was at my heart regularly as the swing reached its most aerial altitude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the swoop downwards threatened always to make me sick, in which it is probable that I must have relaxed my hold of the ropes, and have been projected, with fatal violence, to the ground. But, in defiance of all this ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... such occasions, to confine him in irons. He was also represented as being extremely reserved, and refusing to answer any questions respecting himself, whether addressed to him by officers or seamen; that he spoke with fluency all European languages, on which account, he was extremely useful as an interpreter, both on the coast of Peru and Chili, and on that of Brazil; that he was a first rate swordsman, either with the small-sword or sabre, and a dead shot with ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... all they do and say breathes the utmost frankness and sincerity. One circumstance which I cannot help remarking is, that after living so many years in this sequestered retreat, they speak French with equal fluency and purity. I was likewise much struck with the little resemblance there is between them. Lady Eleanor has a charming face, embellished with the glow of health; her whole appearance and manner announce vivacity and the most unaffected gaiety. Miss ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... words have become uncontrollable. It is further noticeable in them that mere ejaculations, or sounds which are only the result of a state of feeling, instead of a desire to express thought, are generally articulated with accuracy. Patients who have been in the habit of swearing preserve their fluency in that division of ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... been secretary to Sir Alexander Ball, governor of Malta—and a copious field was here afforded for the exercise of his colloquial eloquence. For nearly two hours he spoke with unhesitating and uninterrupted fluency. As I retired homewards (to Kensington), I thought a second Johnson had visited the earth, to make wise the sons of men; and regretted that I could not exercise the powers of a second Boswell, to record the wisdom and the eloquence which had ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... sister, was not absolutely pretty, perhaps, but she was nice-looking, and there was something in her expression that made people say she was clever; she could talk on occasions with a fluency that was quite surprising, and that would cast Nan into the shade. "If I were only as clever as Phillis!" ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... the balustrade which divided his sanctum from the main office, and listen with an astute expression, and just the glimmer of a smile, to the talk of the incipient millionaires, who bragged with such ease and fluency of this or that Bonanza. When all declared with one accord that "if Lame Gulch panned out as it was dead sure to do, Springtown would be the biggest little town in all creation," Hillerton's smile became slightly accentuated, but a wintry chill ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Felisius; Catsius was ventured upon by his contemporaries, but the honest grey-beard stuck to his paternities)—was a man of practical wisdom—great experience—much travel—considerable learning—and wonderful fluency. He had occupied high offices of state, and retired a patriarch amidst children and children's children, to that agreeable retreat which we mentioned as not far from The Hague, where we have often dreamed his sober and serious—but ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... prefer to French. It is all the same to me. We ought to strive to become proficient in foreign tongues. At the school where I was at Brighton there was a little girl in the fourth form who could write, and even speak, Greek with admirable fluency. It impressed me very much, for I myself knew so little of the language. And ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... outward aspects, was extremely bright and cheerful. We had, as a family, a keen sense of fun, much contempt for convention, and great fluency of speech; and our material surroundings were such as to make life enjoyable. Even as a child, I used to say to myself, when cantering among Scotch firs and rhododendrons, "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places." A graver element ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... provocation. In personal appearance he was rather under the middle height, and he dressed with precision and neatness. His countenance was pleasing, but was only expressive of power when lit up by congenial conversation. He was fond of society and talked with fluency. His remains rest close by the ashes of Sheridan, in Westminster Abbey, and over them a handsome monument has lately been erected to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... or Clerical Hand is a writing that preserves a close affinity for the round regular hand of the average school-boy, with the difference that while the characters are formed on regular copybook model, the hand is written with considerable fluency and firmness. It is generally only a little out of the perpendicular, sloping slightly towards ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... Bull's Other Island, the hero is in each case nothing more nor less than a new impersonation of Bernard Shaw. (In John Bull's Other Island I take Larry Doyle as the hero.) The hero is a man who on every possible occasion either gets up and argues with extraordinary fluency and good sense as if he were a very brilliant young man in a debate, or else is forced into the sort of action which that brilliant debater would have advocated. Broadbent, in John Bull's Other Island, is not a person at all; he is a brilliantly conceived caricature of English ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... lordship. The unprecedented scale of the entertainment necessitated the engagement of a certain number of supernumeraries," replied Keggs with an easy fluency which Reggie Byng, now cooling his head on the lower terrace, would have bitterly envied. "In the circumstances, ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... naturally so flexible that executive difficulties were always easy to her, and, before she had attained her ninth year she could execute a prolonged shake with fluency. Her father not being prosperous at the time, it became a necessity for him to look for support to his little Adelina, who had shown such remarkable promise; and, accordingly, she began to take singing lessons—not, as is stated in Grove's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... by Part 1 should result in giving to the pupil some fluency of expression, some confidence in his ability to make known to others that which he thinks and feels, and some power to determine that the theme he writes, however rough-hewn and unshapely it may be, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... of journalized letters. But he wrote "Lavengro," as it were, with his life's blood. It cost him the same agony that parts of "David Copperfield" cost Dickens, while he had none of Dickens's trained fluency or descriptive power. His lack of ease in writing often gives a wrong impression of insincerity or artificiality. Most of his apostrophes, even the most strained, are expressions of genuine feeling, which he was simply incapable of ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... champagne never intoxicates; that it only exhilarates, makes the conversation fluent, shakes up the humor, and has no bad effect except a headache next day. Be not deceived. Champagne may not, like whiskey, throw a man under the table; but if, through anything you drink, you gain an unnatural fluency of speech and glow of feeling, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... shall come out from under the tyrannical power of instructors, and can do as I like; for my part, I am tired to death of this continual,—'Miss Winifred, this piece must be executed with milder intonations;' or, 'Miss Winifred, that chapter of Spanish must be told with greater fluency.' I have come to dread the very name of Professor, and I never can look out of the window but I see some pale-faced gentleman of the profession approaching, with his badge under his arm; but those edifying ideas all vanished at the first strain ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... Chinese woman. Being unaccustomed to foreign manners, they would never eat at the same table with us, but would come in during the evening with their mother, to join the family circle and read aloud to us some of their father's official despatches. This they would do with remarkable fluency and intelligence. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... man. After we had exchanged the usual compliments, after I had thanked him for the honour he had done me the day before, I asked him to tell me his name. He answered me in the following manner, speaking with great fluency, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... became a hearer of Antiochus of Ascalon, with whose fluency and elegance of diction he was much taken, although he did not approve of his innovations in doctrine. And Cicero made up his mind that if he should be disappointed of any employment in the commonwealth, to retire from pleading and politics, and pass his life ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... of King Charles IX. of Sweden, and the grandson of the renowned Gustavus Vasa. He was a precocious child, and it is told (though it appears rather incredible) that at the age of twelve he spoke Latin, French, German, Dutch, and Italian with great fluency, besides having a superficial acquaintance with Polish and Russian. There can be no doubt, however, that he was well taught, and that he possessed a remarkable facility in acquiring languages. For all that, he was far from being a bookish boy. In ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... She puts most of the blame of your illness on me, though perhaps that is because it was me she was talking to. Insists that as I can go to the Plain of Fire where the Sidhe live I ought to be able to find a way of curing you. She has expressed that idea to me many times, with a fluency and wealth of illustration that would make a bard envious. Here she comes now. I'll just slip out and see if the horses are ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... alone prevented her from executing her productions in marble. She was also familiar with the literature, not only of her own nation, but of the Latin, Spanish, Italian, and English languages, which she spoke with fluency and correctness, a rare accomplishment for a French woman. During the Empire and the Restoration she was intimate with Madame Recamier and Madame de Stael, and for penetration and readiness of mind and charm of manners ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... proud of this, its fluency and general appositeness. He plucked up his spirits, thinking he might be going to manage ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... their manner and expression; for, during the delivery of their brother-in-law's oration, Miss Patsey Hubbard seemed to be generally looking down at the floor, while Charlie was looking up at the ceiling: and there were many others present, who thought Mr. Clapp's fluency much more striking than his common sense, or his sincerity. It is always painful to hear a good cause injured by a bad defence, to see truth disgraced by unworthy weapons employed in her name. It would have been quite impossible for Mr. Clapp to prove half his bold assertions, to justify ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... regard to other matters, who have not the remotest idea as to the nature or geography of our country. An instance has come to our knowledge of an intelligent Hungarian who, by intercourse with the world, had acquired a fluency in five languages, and who inquired of an American gentleman if his country were not situated somewhere in England. The late Mr. Cooper, when placing his daughters at a celebrated seminary on the continent, found a great curiosity had been created by the rumor that they were coming, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... of rage, the Jewess kept her eyes steadily fixed upon Burrell, and held her hand within the bosom of her vest. When he paused, she addressed him at first in broken English, and then finding that she could not proceed with the eagerness and fluency her case required, she ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Taee (pronounced Tar-ee), was the magistrate's eldest son. I found that during my last sleep or trance I had made still greater advance in the language of the country, and could converse with comparative ease and fluency. ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... food, and began to utter violent threats against Julian, mingled with fierce cries and reproaches, calling him Asiatic, Greek, a cheat, and a fool pretending to be wise. And as it is commonly the case among soldiers that some men are found of remarkable fluency of speech, they poured forth ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... amounting in all to about L 40. His great hobby, and indeed the business of his life, was to angle. I found he had read Isaac Walton very attentively; he seemed to have imbibed all his simplicity of heart, contentment of mind, and fluency of tongue. We kept company with him almost the whole day, wandering along the beautiful banks of the river, admiring the ease and elegant dexterity with which the old fellow managed his angle, throwing the fly with unerring certainty at a great distance and among overhanging ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... required to make up for the thinness of their members by the strength of their eloquence. Practice makes perfect, and it is not to be wondered at therefore if a large proportion of The Twenty had become fluent. But more were wanted, and of our friend O'Mahony's fluency there could be no doubt. Therefore he was sent for, and on the very day of his arrival he proved to the patriotic spirits of Dublin that he was the man for Cavan. Three days afterwards he went down, and Cavan obediently ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... the conventional restraints of a hypocritical society,—when two souls in perfect accord met and mingled in poetical union, then—but here the colonel's speech, which had been remarkable for a certain whiskey-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost inaudible, and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have heard something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus. Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... libretto. The German version, in which the opera had its first hearing in Munich six years before, is in a vastly different case—neither uncouth nor halting, even though it lacks the characteristic fluency essential to Italian opera buffa; yet no more than did the speech of most of the singers at the Metropolitan performance. The ripple and rattle of the Italian parlando seem to be possible only to ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of the topical recitation are found in history or reading lessons, where narration abounds. Narration deals with a succession of events, and is always found one of the easiest forms of discourse. In proof of this, one has but to note the fluency and ease with which a child will narrate the events of a game, a trip, or an accident, whereas if you call upon him for logical explanations or even for description, as for example, "Just what kind of looking team was it that ran away?" much more difficulty will be ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... of the eloquent way in which the tiger spoke, and admired his fluency of speech. But still his thirst was not quenched. So he let down his vessel again, which was now caught hold of by the serpent, who addressed him thus: "Oh, my protector! Lift me up. I am the king of serpents, and the son of Adisesha, who is now pining ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... Elmendorf had been revealed behind those curtains when she was in conversation in the parlor, and it dawned upon her at last that Cary's tutor was as good a listener as talker, and there were times when Mr. Elmendorf was fluency itself. He was a shrewd fellow, too, and he read his ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... pretty general in French, and somewhat exclusive in Latin; two of our party understanding the dead language, but ignorant of the living, framed with great difficulty ponderous but by no means Ciceronian sentences, which they launched at our host, who replied with great fluency, showing that for conversational purposes, at least, his command of the language was much better than theirs. Being anxious to attend the early mass in the morning, and tired from our ride, we were soon shown to our rooms. Walking along the passages and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... practice both hands at first slowly on nothing but passages, trills, mordents, etc., until the difficulty with the left hand was remedied; after that I am sure I could make a real clavier player out of her. It is a pity; she has so much genius, reads respectably, has a great deal of natural fluency and plays with a ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... surprize me every day the deeper I get into it. Every thing is proper in it; nothing borrowed, as amongst us. Here are no auxiliary verbs. The prepositions are in great number. This it is that gives great ease, fluency, and richness to the expression of whatever you require, when you are once master enough to join them to the verbs. In all their absolute verbs they have a dual number. What we call the imperfect, perfect, and preter-perfect tenses of the indicative mood, admits, as with us, of varied ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... Boston would certainly be mistaken for him. His figure, however, was better than Cicero's, who is reported to have had a long neck and rather slender legs. He resembled Cicero in his refined tastes, his admiration for great writers his command of language, his tact, fluency, fiery invective, and in the anti-climax of his career. If he had prepared his speeches for a body of men like the Roman senate, he might have been more nearly Cicero's equal. He used to wear a high-crowned soft felt hat, which was remarkably suited to the Roman-like contour of his face. He was skillful ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... with equal fluency," said Ibrahim, evasively, as a pang shot through his heart. "But tell me thy name, Christian—for thou art a brave ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... translation was less cultivated than at present. If something like the general sense could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of a practised poet; if the charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing fluency could be made consistent with a fair interpretation of the poet's meaning, his words were less jealously sought for, and those who could read so good a poem as Pope's Iliad had ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... extraordinary accountant; he had a variety of information upon all points that rendered him more convenient than any cyclopaedia in Sir Miles's library; and as he spoke both English and Italian with a correctness and fluency extremely rare in a Frenchman, he was of considerable service in teaching languages to, as well as directing the general literary education of, Sir Miles's favourite niece, whom we shall take an early opportunity to describe ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... appropriator of the tale had a wide reputation in the West, and was exceedingly popular. Deservedly so, I think. He wrote some of the breeziest and funniest things I have ever read, and did his work with distinguished ease and fluency. His name has passed out ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... difficult for a young man to know himself looked up to—be the cause what it may—without his feelings and his conduct being affected by such homage. Nature had endowed me, if not with eloquence, at least with considerable fluency of speech; and as my natural diffidence—which at first was great—wore away, whether by extempore prayer or seasonable exhortation, the effects I produced exceeded those, the fruits of zeal, of those about me. I became admired as ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... one of the most delightful pleasure grounds in the world. "I had no conception that a poet could be the owner of such a paradise, and his house is as elegant as his scenes are charming." The poet, apart from his rapid treatment of Adamo, did not succeed independently in attaining to Hayley's fluency among these surroundings. "I am in truth so unaccountably local in the use of my pen," he wrote to Lady Hesketh, "that, like the man in the fable, who could leap well nowhere but at Rhodes, I seem incapable of writing at all except at Weston." ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Here Theron's fluency came to a sharp halt. There were adverbs enough and to spare on the point of his pen, but the right one was not easy to come at. "Gratefully," "faithfully," "sincerely," "truly"—each in turn struck a false note. He felt himself not quite any ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... languidly and vaguely to consider the question of the repast. The waiter had placed a carte in Lady Agnes's hands and she studied it, through her eye-glass, with a failure of interest, while he enumerated with professional fluency the resources of the establishment and Grace watched the people at the other tables. She was hungry and had already broken a morsel from a long ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... interpreting the printed page in such manner as to give pleasure and instruction to themselves and to those who listen to them. In his eighth year at school the pupil is supposed to be able to read, with ease and with some degree of fluency, anything in the English language that may come to his hand; but, that he may read always with the understanding and in a manner pleasing to his hearers and satisfactory to himself, he must still have daily systematic practice in the rendering of selections not too difficult for comprehension ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... William McLeod Raine, Dane Coolidge, Eugene Cunningham,. B. M. Bower, the late Ernest Haycox, and other manufacturers of range novels who have known their West at firsthand, he would find, spottedly, a surprising amount of truth about land and men, a fluency in genuine cowboy lingo, and a respect for the code of conduct. Yet even these novels have added to the difficulty that serious writing in the Western field has in getting a hearing on literary, rather than merely Western, grounds. Any writer of Westerns must, like all other creators, ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... procession of events. Drill in dates is only one method to this end. There may be a rapid review in battles, generals, wars, treaties, proclamations, and inventions. Such exercises encourage the classification of facts and stimulate fluency of expression. It is of the highest importance for the student so to arrange in his mind what he has learned in recitation that he can call to his command at a second's notice the fact, date, or illustration he desires. There will be many ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... It was on the Sunday following, the ninth day clear from the date of the mischance, that the great event of the seven years took place. My young acquaintance had two or three days free of engagements, and he spent these in watching the preparations for the procession. He spoke French with a fluency and purity which excited my envy, and he spent most of his spare time among the village people, who talked and thought and dreamed of nothing but the procession. Wherever he went Scraper accompanied him, and wherever Scraper went Lil was to be seen ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... to other parts of Europe, including a few weeks in London, and had then come out to the past, where he had been for some years trading and speculating in the various islands. He now spoke Dutch, French, Malay, and Javanese, all equally well; English with a very slight accent, but with perfect fluency, axed a most complete knowledge of idiom, in which I often tried to puzzle him in vain. German and Italian were also quite familiar to him, and his acquaintance with European languages included Modern Greek, Turkish, Russian, and colloquial Hebrew ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... assumed, at Redgrave's request, the position of lady of the house pro tem., and described the "change of plans," as she called it, which led to their transfer from the St. Louis to the Astronef with an imaginative fluency which would have done credit to the most enterprising ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... out into song. "'Infinite riches in a little room,'" my note-book says, again; and truly the song is marvelous,—a prolonged and varied warble, introduced and often broken into, with delightful effect, by a wrennish chatter. For fluency, smoothness, and ease, and especially for purity and sweetness of tone, I have never heard any bird-song that seemed to me more nearly perfect. If the dainty creature would bear confinement,—on which point I know nothing,—he would make an ideal parlor ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... and was therefore an authority, said that he wouldn't come if there were any more. Pudge, as his nickname suggests, was plump. He was a round-faced, jovial youngster who learned everything with consummate ease, wrote with great fluency and sometimes real beauty, peered through his horn-rimmed spectacles amusedly at the world, and read every "smut" book that he could lay his hands on. His library of erotica was already famous throughout the college, his volumes of Balzac's ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... been nourished for years upon its own thoughts, to speak this new language so eloquently, to stand so calmly on its feet. The deliverance of his thought is so perfect that this work adapts itself to our mood and has the quality of poetry. This fluency Emerson soon lost; it is the quality missing in his poetry. It is the efflorescence ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... already notorious bard with this "cordon bleu" and thus gilding a lily, should throw the office open to competition by public exam, and, after carefully weighing such considerations as the applicant's res angusta domi, the fluency of his imagination, his nationality, and so on—should award the itching palm of Fame to the poet who succeeded best in tickling ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the mist cleared from his vision, and his palpitating heart subsided into comparative tranquillity. After a few pardonable incoherencies, he was launched into his subject, and spoke with the thoughtful fluency which knowledge alone can sustain. For knowledge is the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... and his receptive mind was soon stored with the exploits of Radisson and Groseillers, Joliette, Marquette, and other famous pathfinders, with whose exploits a century and a half before, aided by his fluency in French, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... to have drawn upon it such a degree of neglect as certainly cannot be praised. The students in those schools are often distinguished by their compositions in the learned languages, before they can speak or write their own with correctness, elegance, or fluency. A classical scholar too often has his English style to form, when he should communicate his acquisitions to the world. In some instances it is never formed with success; and the defects of his expression either deter him from appearing before the public at all, or at least ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... revolvers, and returned to the tent—to be greeted with a volley of profanity which, for fluency and vocabulary, was distinctly marvelous. Gradually, it died away—for want ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... she began, sitting very close to Mrs. Waltham, whose lap she kept touching as she spoke with excited fluency. 'I've seen Mrs. Yottle. My dear, what do you think she has ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... afraid, he became conscious that something in this young girl had silenced within him any inclination to gay effrontery, any talent for casual gallantry. Her lifted eyes, with their clear, half shy regard, had killed all fluency of tongue in him—slain utterly that light good-humour with which ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... concluded his address, her Majesty instantly replied, with much earnestness and fluency ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Mathilde Festa-Piacentini, in the ancient manner to harmonize with the court. It represents "The Return from the Crusade" of one noble Pandolfo, and bears date and description in Latin. Quaint old-time stiffness and weather-worn coloring combine with modern correctness and fluency. The young artist is the wife of the architect of the pavilion and has won a silver medal in the Italian section of Fine Arts. Below this lunette stands a bronze copy of an antique David with the marble head of Goliath. Other interesting murals ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... in a decent brown suit, spoke with fluency, and at the same time with that accent of moderation and savoir faire which some Englishmen in all classes have obviously inherited from centuries of government by discussion. Lady Charlotte, whose Liberalism was the mere varnish of an essentially aristocratic ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... booted and spurred, he was saluted with the bad tidings on every hand. The young imps on the verandah were not disappointed in their hope of hearing him "swar," which he did with a fluency and fervency which delighted them all amazingly, as they ducked and dodged hither and thither, to be out of the reach of his riding-whip; and, all whooping off together, they tumbled, in a pile of immeasurable giggle, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... can be taken from it to be included in what they are obliged to speak extempore. And tho this may be done, there will still be a lack of connection, and the incoherence will be discoverable from the different coloring and inequality of style. Thus there is neither an uninterrupted fluency in what they say extempore, nor a connection between it and what they recite from memory, for which reason one must be a hindrance to the other, for the written matter will always bring to it the attention of the ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... it was, questioned him a good deal, as well as others: and he repeated the same tale with great fluency, with many gibes and aphorisms such as that the Jesuits had laid a wager that if Carolus Rex would not become R.C.—which is Roman Catholic—he should not much longer remain C.R. He said too that he had been reconciled to the Church on Ash Wednesday of last year; but that "he took God and His ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... avoid superlatives. He is not so conscious of is powers and so ambitious of effect as the white-eyed flycatcher, yet you will not be less astonished and delighted on hearing him. He possesses the fluency and copiousness for which the wrens are noted, and besides these qualities, and what is rarely found conjoined with them, a wild, sweet, rhythmical cadence that holds you entranced. I shall not soon forget that perfect June day, when, loitering in a low, ancient ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... which is one of Spenser's signal characteristics, may be perceived in his Eclogues, as also a native gracefulness of style, which is another distinguishing mark of him. Perceivable, too, are his great, perilous fluency of language and his immense fecundity of mind. The work at once secured him a front place in the poetical ranks of the day. Sidney mentions it in his Apologie for Poetrie;{5} Abraham Fraunce draws illustrations from it in his Lawyers Logicke, which appeared in 1588; Meres ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... some time past I have taken lessons from a person who was twelve years in Pekin, and who speaks Manchu and Chinese with fluency. I pay him about six shillings English for each lesson, which I grudge not, for the perfect acquirement of Manchu is one of my most ardent ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... the pulpit, Dr. Tyng was the prince of platform orators. He had every quality necessary for the sway of a popular audience—fine elocution, marvelous fluency, piquancy, the courage of his convictions and a magnetism that swept all before him. His voice was very clear and penetrating, and he hurled forth his clean-cut sentences like javelins. A more fluent speaker I never heard; not Spurgeon or Henry ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... when I was coming back one old half-blind man spoke to me in Gaelic, but, in general, I was surprised at the abundance and fluency of the ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... a camel; had witnessed a midnight attack of thieves on her brother's camp; had seen justice administered with long sticks, in the open under trees; could speak Urdu and even rough Punjabi with a fluency that was envied by her seniors; had altogether fallen out of the habit of writing to her aunts in England, or cutting the pages of the English magazines; had been through a very bad cholera year, seeing sights unfit to be told; and had wound up her experiences by ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... well-to-do in his affairs. I conceived he had been some while observing me from a distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on the breech of a piece of cannon. So soon as our eyes met, he drew near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a good fluency but ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reduction in rank to pass unnoticed. He does not understand the French tongue, though he speaks it with great fluency and incredible success. He holds ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... centuries must have elapsed before the poetical language of the Greeks could have attained the splendor, copiousness, and fluency found in the poems of Homer. The first outpourings of poetical enthusiasm were, doubtless, songs describing, in few and simple verses, events which powerfully affected the feelings of the hearers. It is probable that the earliest were those that referred to the seasons and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... she writes, 'the famous Indian Chief, Captain Brant. His manners are polished: he expressed himself with fluency, and was much esteemed by General Haldimand.' The strenuous scenes through which Brant had lived, indeed, seem to have left but little impression on his face. 'I dined once with him at the General's,' continued the baroness. 'In his dress he showed ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... and the fluency of their vows show them to be 'false as dicers' oaths,' mere verses of the moment, made to please a facile mistress. One long poem, which cannot be styled a Rispetto, but is rather a Canzone of the legitimate type, stands out with distinctness from the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... One must have a quick and vivid imagination, and natural fluency—but these are all. Genius makes all the difference between what is good and what is bad. Sometimes you have a song of Miriam that lives while the world lasts, sometimes a poor little song ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... and told his stories with the fluency of a man accustomed to public speaking, and the animation and point of a man accustomed to the society of men of wit as well as of men of action. His recollections were wonderfully distinct, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Olynthides had bought me Nonius Libo came to inspect me. He talked to me in Latin and in Greek, commended my fluency and polish in the use of both, had me write out a letter in each at his dictation, read both and commended my accuracy, script and speed; questioned me about the history of music, painting, and sculpture and as to my opinions on the works of various sculptors, painters, architects ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... ardour of opposition to cloud their reason, or transport them to such expressions as the dignity of this assembly does not admit. I have hitherto deferred to answer the gentleman who declaimed against the bill with such fluency of rhetorick, and such vehemence of gesture; who charged the advocates for the expedients now proposed, with having no regard to any interest but their own, and with making laws only to consume paper, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... had before this gone out, had returned with a supply of palm leaves, and sat down to make a hat, while Lord Reginald opened one of the books, and with considerable fluency translated a portion of its contents. Dick listened attentively while he plaited away at the hat, stopping every now and then to ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... primitive Egyptian, through the medium (so far as concerned myself and other untravelled members of the company)—through the medium, I say, of Messieurs Gliddon and Buckingham, as interpreters. These gentlemen spoke the mother tongue of the Mummy with inimitable fluency and grace; but I could not help observing that (owing, no doubt, to the introduction of images entirely modern, and, of course, entirely novel to the stranger) the two travellers were reduced, occasionally, to the employment of sensible forms for ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hackers who are next to inarticulate in person communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely because they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing with people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
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