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Roving   /rˈoʊvɪŋ/   Listen
Roving

noun
1.
Travelling about without any clear destination.  Synonyms: vagabondage, wandering.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Roving" Quotes from Famous Books



... feel badly about it. I know how you all felt toward me. But I'm on a roving commission. I have no wireless apparatus and no definite instructions. I've been lampooned and ridiculed in the papers, and I'm going to give them my answer—that is, as I said, if I'm any good. If I'm not I'll ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... the caves and was roving amongst them, he heard steps retreating before him and an imperfect rustling sound. He gave pursuit, and caught a breathless woman who besought him not to deliver ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... determined. "We'll stop there to break the news. Then we'll be wedded, you and I, according to the custom of your people. Our honeymoon—years of it—will be spent in the Nomad, roving the universe. Mado'll agree, I know. Wanderers of the heavens we'll be, Ora. But we'll have each other; and when we've—you've—had enough of it, I'll be ready to settle down. Anywhere you say. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... Those bulging brief-cases had apparently contained the dearest of his roving brother's possessions, judging from the way Rupert had fussed if they were a ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... Wahpanucka of the Delawares did not agree. So the little band of Delawares continued rambling until they reached the Choctaw Nation, where they again tried to make terms with the Chief of the tribe. Evidently no agreement was reached between that Chief and Wahpanucka, for the Delawares continued their roving until they reached the Chickasaw Nation, ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... lord, the character of Lycurgus or of Solon. Before you finish reading this essay, amuse yourself with giving laws to some wild people in America or in Africa. Establish these roving men in fixed dwellings; teach them to keep flocks.... Endeavour to develop the social qualities which nature has implanted in them.... Make them begin to practise the duties of humanity.... Cause the pleasures of the ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... in those days to have been seventeen and James Ray. When he was in the fort I dogged his footsteps, and listened with a painful yearning to the stories of his escapes from the roving bands. And as many a character is watered in its growth by hero-worship, so my own grew firmer in the contemplation of Ray's resourcefulness. My strange life had far removed me from lads of my own age, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of roses and mignonette floated in as the party gathered about the breakfast table. They came from the flower-beds just outside, which Clover sedulously tended, watered, and defended from the roving cattle, which showed a provoking preference for heliotropes over penstamens whenever they had a chance to get at them. Cows were a great trial, she considered; and yet after all they were the object ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... the recurrence of impassioned, violent strikes and riots not only improbable, but impossible; and furthermore, such improvement will go far towards eradicating the hatred and bitterness in the minds of the employers and in the minds of the roving, migratory laborers. This accomplished, the two conflicting parties will be in a position to meet on a saner, more constructive basis, in solving the further industrial problems arising between them. ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist belted suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking up Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... like this, but what gets me is Vandersee's attitude again," remarked Barry, with his eyes roving keenly over the stretch of land ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... seriously, not moving, while Mr. Atwater cast an eye about the lawn, seeming to search for something, and his gaze, thus roving, was arrested by a slight movement of great areas behind a lilac bush. It appeared that the dome of some public building had covered itself with antique textiles and was endeavouring to ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... far the larger portion of the vilayet is to-day a desert, owing to the neglect of the irrigation canals on which the fertility of the valley depends. From the latitude of Bagdad northward the region between the two rivers is an arid, waterless, limestone steppe, inhabited only by roving Arabs. From the latitude of Bagdad southward the country is entirely alluvial soil, deposited by the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, possessing great possibilities of fertility, but absolutely flat and subject to inundations at the time of flood of the two rivers. At that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... his eye was continually roving about for signs of water. How gladly would he have welcomed the sight of even a little mossy pool, or some moisture in the crevice of a rock! He did not despair. He had hitherto only explored the shore; water ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston

... the proceeds of which were to be considered the property of Fladge, he allowing the generous stipend of one shilling a week to the artist. Here, then, Mr. Fladge becomes sensible of the fact that some good always come of great evils, for indeed his criminal was so far roving a mine of wealth that he only hoped it might be his fortune to receive many more such enemies of the state: he cared not whether they came from Fetter or Fuddle's court. With sense enough to keep his heart-burnings well stored away in his own bosom, Nicholas ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... her gaze was still roving from one object to another, and threw his wet outer clothing, boy fashion, on ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... thought, glanced at me. "The wide world. Should like, for instance, a roving commission such as yours—to look for a scoundrel with a lot of money-bags, who may be in London ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... man whose name had set her thoughts roving was handsome, as the glance at him already given might have foreshadowed. But his features had a graver impress than his age seemed to account for, and the sober tone of his letter to Susan implied that something had given him a maturity beyond his years. The story was not an uncommon one. At ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... woods They slowly went, beneath a firmament Of boughs, and clouded leaves, filmy and pale In the sunshine, but shadowy on the grass. And roving odours met them on their way, Sun-quickened odours, which the fog had slain. And their green sky had many a blossom-moon, And constellations thick with starry flowers. And deep and still were all the woods, except For the ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... April inclusive; these caravans consist of several hundred loaded camels, accompanied by the Arabs who let them to the merchants for the transportation of their merchandise to Fez, Marocco, etc., and at a very low rate. During their routes they were often exposed to the attacks of the roving Arabs of Sahara who generally commit their depredations as they approach the confines of the desert."[8] The wind sometimes rolls up the sand like great billows of the ocean, and caravans are often buried under the pile, and then the wind, shifting, scatters ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... were silent, while Mr. Truck proceeded to get the sun and the time. As soon as he had run through his calculations, he came to them with a face in which the eye was roving, though it was still ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... a thousand obstacles: there was danger from flood, danger from wild beasts, danger from the roving savage, danger from false friends, danger from the furious rapids on rivers, danger of loss of sight, of health, of use of motion and of limbs, in the new, strange ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... face and roving eyes the young people recognised Gibbie, the half-witted gipsy lad. An expression of disappointment crossed his face as he looked over the group and seemed to miss ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae

... faults. He was hasty and reckless. He was unsteady, too, and preferred a roving idle life to a busy one; but he had redeeming qualities. He was bold and generous. Above all, he was unselfish, and therefore speedily became a favourite with all who knew him. Glynn's history is briefly told. He was an Englishman. ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... learn that reports have been received by the British Legation in Peking, of large tracts being under poppy cultivation in Shensi, a province where lawlessness is rampant, and where the unfortunate residents are harassed, plundered and murdered by large roving bands of Tufei, the Chinese equivalent for robbers or thieves. The reports come from missionaries and foreign travellers and naturally ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... all the troops at Little Rock were reviewed by Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, late of the Army of the Potomac. He lost a leg at the battle of Gettysburg, which incapacitated him for active service, so President Lincoln gave him a sort of roving commission to visit and inspect all the western troops. In conducting the review at Little Rock, on account of his maimed condition he rode along the line in an open carriage. The day was exceedingly hot, the troops on our side of the river were ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... than Solomon, and he reigned three centuries before Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. After the slabs were procured, it was necessary to send them on the backs of camels a journey of eight hundred miles across the Great Desert, through a region which was more or less infested at all seasons with roving bands of robbers. Mr. Williams well remembered the interview between his father and the Arab camel owner, who told several conflicting stories by way of preliminary to the confession of the actual facts, in order to account for the non-arrival ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... Writing of it later he said: "Our life was as full of romance as heart could desire. We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hairbreadth 'scapes from the roving bands of Federals who were continually visiting that Debatable Land. . . . Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashes on the beach of fair Burwell's Bay, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... a secret I bear about me; wherefore (saving only my good friend Nicholas Frant who ... perished) I have ever been a solitary man walking alone and distrustful of my fellows. For, Martin, I have here the secret of a treasure that hath been the dream and hope of roving adventurers along the Main this many a year—a treasure beyond price. Men have sought it vainly, have striven and fought, suffered and died for it, have endured plague, battle, shipwreck, famine, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... said, in reporting the mischief to Captain Atherton, "and all the queer doin's are on the first floor. Do you see that it looks as if the same person that went all over Captain Seaford's house, has been roving through this one? Nothing was stolen there, but everything had been ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks

... prince's favour for ever, being banished his courts, and cast down to the horrible pits, you may be sure they would now add to their former pride what malice and rage against Shaddai, and against his Son, they could. Wherefore, roving and ranging in much fury from place to place, if perhaps they might find something that was the King's, to revenge (by spoiling of that themselves) on him (1 Peter 5:8); at last they happened into this spacious country of Universe, and steer their course towards the town of Mansoul; and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... upon Pagratide, likewise stalking about with restlessly roving eyes, like a hunter searching a jungle. The foreigner paused with one foot tapping the marble rim of a small fountain, and ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... like a mad bull, and, it is said, uncommonly like his father. We all send our kind love to you, and father, and Tom. By the way, where is Tom? You did not mention him in your last. I fear he is one of these roving fellows whom the Scotch very appropriately style ne'er-do-weels. A bad lot they are. Humph! you're one of 'em, Mister Sam, if ever there was, an' my only hope of ye is that you've got some ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... holy priest That I may sained be; For I have lived a roving life Fifty years under ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... sword, and a spear inlaid with gold; but he gave Helgi a gold ring and a mantle, and Grim a shield and sword. After that he took Helgi and Grim into his body-guard, and thanked them for their good help. They were with the earl that winter and the summer after, till Kari went sea-roving; then they went with him, and harried far and wide that summer, and everywhere won the victory. They fought against Godred, King of Man, and conquered him; and after that they fared back, and had gotten much goods. Next winter ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders

... wished to find Margery's brother among these unhappy men. No! he was certain that if he was alive he was living on some unfrequented island, unable to get away. The Southern Cross touched at several islands, for the captain had a roving commission, to go where he thought best. At each of them Charley left on shore a number of cards on which he had written, "Jack Askew, a friend of your father's, Charley Blount, is looking for you. Send word to Callao, on the coast of Peru, and he will assist ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston

... had descended to the platform and were breasting the rigour of the night. Frank Rainer introduced them as Mr. Grisben and Mr. Balch, and Faxon, while their luggage was being lifted into the second sleigh, discerned them, by the roving lantern-gleam, to be an elderly greyheaded pair, of the ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... Richard Adams, and I am the son of a Cumberland yeoman who married a Welshwoman. Therefore I have Celtic blood in my veins, which perhaps accounts for my love of roving and other things. I am now an old man, near the end of my course, I suppose; at any rate, I was sixty-five last birthday. This is my appearance as I see it in the glass before me: tall, spare (I don't weigh ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... three delights that do good, and three that do us harm. Those that do good are delight in dissecting good form and music, delight in speaking of the good in men, and delight in having many worthy friends. Those that do harm are proud delights, delight in idle roving, and delight in the joys of ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius

... had in view some very important object. The nearest settlement—Anadyrsk—was almost two hundred and fifty miles distant; the country along the lower Anadyr was said to be wholly destitute of wood, and inhabited only by roving bands of Chukchis, and a party landed there without an interpreter would have no means of communicating even with these wild, lawless natives, or of obtaining any means whatever of transportation. If there were any Americans there, they were certainly in ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... flattered himself. The horse whinneyed because he inhaled the faint odor of his kind. He drew down on the rein and settled into a swinging trot, which to Maurice's surprise was faster and easier than the canter. They covered a mile this way, when Maurice's roving eye discovered moving shadows, perhaps ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... of fish, and put in their leisure fishing overside, when they sometimes pull up ghastly souvenirs. But they all want guns. Those who have three-pounders clamour for sixes; sixes for twelves; and the twelve-pound aristocracy dream of four-inchers on anti-aircraft mountings for the benefit of roving Zeppelins. They will all get them in time, and I fancy it will be long ere they give them up. One West Country mate announced that "a gun is a handy thing to have aboard—always." "But in peacetime?" I said. "Wouldn't ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... were now in circumstances which obliged them to become essentially dependent upon agriculture; and thus far raised in social rank that, by the natural course of their habits and the necessities of life, they were effectually reclaimed from roving and from the savage customs connected with a half 5 nomadic life. They gained also in political privileges, chiefly through the immunity from military service which their new relations enabled them to obtain. These were circumstances ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... back, or whispering in his ear, There stood a sprite ycleped Phantasy; Which, wheresoe'er he went, was always near: Her look was wild, and roving was her eye; Her hair was clad with flowers of every dye; Her glistering robes were of more various hue Than the fair bow that paints the cloudy sky, Or all the spangled drops of morning dew; Their colour changing still at every ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... Wilfred; but in roving round the world for more than eleven years I have learnt to take care of myself. Depend upon it, I shall use that knowledge, not only to care for myself, but for others. Be careful then. Justice is sometimes as strong a feeling as revenge, and if needs be I shall take terrible means that justice ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... in one hand, and a glass of milk in the other, and showed about as much animation as a marble statue. Even her glance was roving out of the window, and somehow the whole effect of the child was too much for ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells

... sit in the holy hush of those brown old monastic aisles, thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved to go a roving with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and buttresses; winding in among the intricacies of the pendent ceiling, and wriggling my fancied way like a wood-worm. I could have sat there all the morning long, through noon, unto night. But at last the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... disappointment to the duke, who did not, however, reproach his wayward son, but only wrote and asked him if he would now take a commission in the army. But the young man, who had lost all his youthful military ardor, and contracted a roving habit that made him averse to all fixed rules and all restraints, replied by saying that his income was sufficient for his wants, and that he preferred the free life ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... had returned unpaid, and sore with defeat. The town was scoured by mutinous seamen and soldiers, roving even into the palace of the sovereign. Soldiers without pay form a society without laws. A band of captains rushed into the duke's apartment as he sat at dinner; and when reminded by the duke of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... in the Antidote Shop, but his lack of public spirit was growing apparent. He ignored invitations from the Dream Shop, and never attended any of the popular public executions. When roving mobs were formed to have a little fun in the Mutant Quarter, Barrent usually pleaded a headache. He never joined the Landing Day Hunts, and he was rude to an accredited salesman from the Torture of the Month Club. Not even visits from Uncle Ingemar ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... two was a very handsome man, tall, slender and nervous, the Venetian type. His black eyes were keen and energetic and roving, suggesting a temper less calculating than hasty. The mouth, partly hidden under a graceful military mustache, was thin-lipped, the mouth of a man who, however great his vices, was always master of them. From his ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... married quarters when he died. For a while her parents hoped she would make her widowed home in Boston; but her heart had been given irrevocably to the British army—to its distinguished correctness, to its sober glories, its world-wide roving, and its picturesque personal associations. Though she had seen little of England, except for occasional visits on leave, she had become English in tastes and at heart. For a year after Gerald's death she lived with his family ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... out its ocean-like expanse, embellished with groves, garlanded with flowers of gorgeous colors waving in the summer breeze, checkered with sunshine and the shade of passing clouds, with roving herds of the stately buffalo and the graceful antelope. And again the gloomy forest would appear, extending over countless leagues, where bears, wolves, and panthers ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... "I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me where I am to-day nor where I shall ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... do not really fear death. But they do dread captivity. They are so fond of their roving life, their vast liberty—room! An Indian is too brave to commit suicide, save in the most rare and desperate cases. But his heart breaks from home-sickness, and he dies there in despair. And then to see his helpless little children die, one by one, with the burning fever, which ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller

... enjoyment to live in these shady forests. The oak attains a finer and more luxuriant growth on the Hungarian soil than in any part of Germany. The hogs find food in profusion, and commonly stuff themselves to such a degree that they lose all desire for roving about: so that dog, master, and ass, lead a comparatively easy life, and are left to the quiet enjoyment of nature. But the lot of the Kanasz is a pitiable one when, at the close of summer, he has to drive his swine to market. From Debreczin, nay even from the ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... her eyes there sprang a sudden rebellion. Out there by the stables Don and Solomon were frolicking, ready at a moment's notice to dash away at Firefly's heels. Away in front of the house stretched the road and the prairie, calling irresistibly to her restless, roving spirit. And vacation had been so long in coming! If grandmother were going to be like Aunt Lucinda— Again there flashed into her mind the wish so often voiced in Woodford: that there might be two of her, so that one might stay at ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs

... there. Look at the foliage, the blossom, the fruit. Look at the reptiles crawling at your feet, and take care they do not sting you. Look at the birds chattering and fluttering on the trees, and they will charm you. Look at the animals roving through the woods, and take care ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... leading down to the ultimate Thames of his genius, we know that his progress as a lover was a progress from infidelity to fidelity, from wandering amorousness to deep and enduring passion. The image that is finally stamped on his greatest work is not that of a roving adulterer, but of a monotheist of love. It is true that there is enough Don-Juanism in the poems to have led even Sir Thomas Browne to think of Donne's verse rather as a confession of his sins than as a golden book of love. Browne's quaint poem, To the deceased Author, before ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... chirped drowsily from hedge and thicket, and the warm, still air was full of the slumberous drone of a myriad unseen wings. Therefore Beltane sought the deeper shade of the woods and, risking the chance of roving thief or lurking foot-pad, followed a devious course by reason of ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... flying colours as soon as an opportunity to present yourself for examination offers itself, I intend to give you an acting order as lieutenant, to place you in command of a small schooner with a good strong crew, and to send you off upon a roving commission to do your best to put down these piratical outrages that are so frequently occurring under our very noses. Now, what d'ye think of my scheme, youngster? Is the job too big for ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... Lane's efforts to exterminate the roving bands of guerillos and rancheros involved great rapidity of movement, and he had officers and men under his command eminently fit for such service. One of the most pestiferous of the guerillo ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... wandering, n. rambling, ranging, roving, strolling, itineracy, peregrination, pilgrimage; digression, expatiation, departure, deviation, divergence, errantry; aberration, delirium, raving, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... all to which the sable bird was put was to guide the roving pirates on their expeditions. Before a start was made a raven was let loose, and the direction of his flight gave the viking ships their course. In this manner, according to the old Norse legends, did Floki discover Iceland; and many other extraordinary ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... been a mining engineer who had never accomplished anything more remarkable than proving himself a failure in his profession. He was of a roving, adventurous disposition, the kind of a man to whom the fields just ahead always look greenest, and as a result his life had been a remarkable series of ups and downs—mostly downs. Bob's mother had been an artist of more or less ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... till he landed there in pursuit of the crown; and yet an English birth and some stay, though in his very childhood, was a better way of accounting for the purity of his accent, than either of the preposterous tales produced by lord Bacon or by Henry. The former says, that Perkin, roving up and down between Antwerp and Tournay and other towns, and living much in English company, had the English tongue perfect. Henry was so afraid of not ascertaining a good foundation of Perkin's English accent, that he makes him learn the language twice over.(43) "Being sent with ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... superficially. I whispered to Fred not to shackle him again too soon, and sat near and watched him, close enough for real safety, yet not so close that he might not venture to try tricks. He said nothing whatever, but I noticed that his eye, after roving around the tent, kept returning again and again to a chop-box that stood near ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... very mistakes there is a singular wisdom. Mr. Ruskin has spoken with sufficient eloquence of the serious loveliness of the row of heads of the women on the right, who talk to each other as they sit at the foreshortened banquet. There could be no better example of the roving independence of the painter's vision, a real spirit of adventure for which his subject was always a cluster of accidents; not an obvious order, but a sort of peopled and agitated chapter of life, in which the figures are submissive pictorial notes. These notes are all there in their ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... men below who had been alive only minutes earlier had been close friends of his; Shann had never known anyone but acquaintances in his short, roving life. Most people had ignored him completely except to give orders, and one or two had been actively malicious—like Garth Thorvald. Shann grimaced at a certain recent memory, and then that grimace ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... due part in the repast, and Mr. Bleak began to entertain a new respect for this common flower of which he had been unduly inappreciative. Although the trellis screened them from observation, Quimbleton seemed ill at ease. He kept an alert gaze roving about him, and spoke only in whispers. Once, when a bird lighted in the foliage behind them, causing a sudden stir among the leaves, his shaggy beard whirled round with every symptom of panic. Little by little this apprehension began to ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... knitting, but she dropped her work into the large pocket of her black apron, and moved up an easy-chair for her guest. Edith forgot to take it. Her eyes were roving about the room, attracted by the curiosities, though she dared not ask a ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May

... Explorations and the Banking Cartel and Terra Baldur-Marduk Spacelines. Nick Emmert had his corps of spies and stool pigeons, and the Terran Federation had people here watching both him and Emmert. Rainsford could be a Federation agent—a roving naturalist would have a wonderful cover occupation. But this Big Blackwater business was so utterly silly. Nick Emmert had too much graft on his conscience; it was too bad that overloaded ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... you! Softly! Imbecile, may the devil take you! What are you afraid of? Say? A lantern and a mirror. That's all! Softly with those oars, miserable wretch! They incline the mirror at will and light the sea to find out if any folks like us are roving over it. They're on the watch for smugglers. We're out of reach; they're too far away, now. Don't be afraid, boy, we're ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... the present day are aware how extensively piracy prevailed two centuries ago. There was no part of the high seas that was free from the depredation of roving robbers. At times they threatened towns on the coast, and at others they attacked ships on mid-ocean; and they seem to have followed their lawless pursuits at will. When caught, there was little delay in bringing them to trial and securing a conviction; and trivial ...
— Piracy off the Florida Coast and Elsewhere • Samuel A. Green

... her father had to leave her that made him make that bargain. He hadn't that in him that would make him care for a white slip of a girl as she was then, and, any way, he knew that the girl and the money would keep till he was sick of roving. It's as nasty a trick as could be that he's served her, playing dead dog all these years, and coming to catch her unawares. I tell ye the main thing he has on his mind is revenge for the letters she wrote him when she first got word of his tricks, and then, too, he's coming ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... with Emanuel Sard's squat features and parrot nose, having robbed Mr. Sard of Quintana's cipher and of $4,000 at pistol point. And one morning, while roving around the guide's quarters at Ghost Lake Inn, Smith beheld Sard himself on the hotel veranda, in company with ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... conclusion of hostilities, peace was declared, the crew of a privateer found it exceedingly irksome to give up the roving life, and were liable to drift into piracy. Often it happened that, after a long naval war, crews were disbanded, ships laid up, and navies reduced, thus flooding the countryside with idle mariners, and filling the roads with begging and starving seamen. These were driven to go to sea if they could ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... expedition, were entirely demolished by the French, because they were thought to be no longer necessary. It is, however, probable enough, that this fort Assumption would have been a check upon the Chicasaws, who are always roving in those parts. Besides, the steep banks of Prud'homme contain iron and pit-coal. On the other hand, the country is very beautiful, and of an excellent quality, abounding with plains and meadows, which ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... military purposes, running between the presidio itself and the town of San Antonio de Bejar. Though again partially overgrown, it is sufficiently clear to permit the passage of wheeled vehicles, having been kept open by roving wild horses, with occasionally some that are tamed and ridden—by Indians ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... And now her eye, roving round the room, fixed itself with the drunkard's divine unerring instinct upon Denis. What a nice, modest, gentlemanly-looking boy! ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... knowledge and old experience had suggested working the mines to M. Bonnat. Some forty years ago the English merchants of 'Cabo Corso' used to send their people hereabouts to dig; and more recently Mr. Carter had spent, they say, 4,000l. upon the works. He was followed by another roving Englishman, who was not more successful. The liberation of pawns and other anti-abolitionist 'fads' had so raised the wage-rate that the rich placers were presently left to the natives. We exchanged reminiscences, and he at once ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... much time and ingenuity in gaining an honest living, as they do, in seeking to impose upon their fellow-men, their efforts would often be crowned with abundant success. Just so of many a dishonest bee. If it only knew its true interests, it would be safely roving the smiling fields, in search of honey, instead of longing for a tempting and yet dangerous ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... how wilt thou say but that the foemen whom we go to meet in Upmeads may be some of those very Burgers: hast thou heard whether they have found a new dwelling among some unhappy folk, or be still roving: maybe ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... only half hearing Leila's remark. Her eyes were roving up and down the platform in an effort to pick up any girl whom the Sans might deliberately choose to overlook. She saw no one. The considerable number of girls who had descended the car steps were being taken in tow by the new self-constituted reception ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... strange goddess, Des," he said, his weary eyes roving out over the turgid, yellow stream, "and she has been kind to you, though, God knows, you have played a man's part in all this. She has placed in your possession something for which at least five men have died in vain, ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... you and every playhouse bill Style the divine, the matchless, what you will, For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, And grew immortal in his ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... deprive me of an heir, and now you are impatient to drive me out of the world. Whither, O whither would you go wandering about, wasting your life? And why leave your house, your hearth, your home? You know not what toils and peril he brings on himself who goes rambling and roving. Let this whim pass, my son; be sensible, and do not wish to see my life worn out, this house fall to the ground, my household go ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... mean. Isn't it enough that I am obliged to sell the beast? Now you want me to sell everything. If you want me to leave, carry me out into the churchyard. It is nothing to you Germans to move from place to place, you are a roving people and have no country, but a peasant is like a stone by the wayside. I know everything here by heart. I have moved every clod of earth with my own hands; now you say: sell and go elsewhere. Wherever I went I should be dazed ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... none, however, can presume t' appear Within his reach, but must his vengeance fear; For he on ev'ry side his terror throws; But when he changes from his first repose, Moves but one step, most awfully sedate, 160 Or idly roving, or intent on fate. These are the sev'ral and establish'd laws: Now see how each maintains ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... and satiny maple wood was, however, "out of fashion" when the roving shipmasters began to bring in logs of Santo Domingo mahogany in the holds of their far-wandering barks, and the cabinetmakers to cut beautiful shapes of sideboards, and curving legs and backs of chairs, as well as the tall carved headposts and the head and footboards ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler

... bows and arrows, and with skin black and hard as that of the elephant, riding on that car possessed of the splendour of fire, he looked, while employed in afflicting and routing the Pandava host, like a roving cloud in the welkin, decked with flashes of lighting. (As Alayudha came to battle), the principal kings of the Pandava army endued with great might, and armed with (sword and) shield, and clad in mail, engaged in fight, O king, with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... entered, received Odo with the flighty good-nature of a roving mind; but as her deep-blue gaze met his her colour rose, her eyes lingered on his face, and she invited him to a seat at her side. Maria Clementina was of Austrian descent, and something in her free ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... the cacolets swaying unevenly as they marched. Then came the light armoured-car batteries and in the centre the horse-artillery. Out on the flank the plain was black with the horses of the mounted divisions, disposed in brigades, and on the right the Imperial Camel Corps had a roving commission. So the army marched steadily forward to the assault, a wonderful spectacle. There was this to be said for the fighting in Palestine: you fought in the open most of the time; with certain limitations you could see your enemy and he could see you. The personal ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... there is the travelled and the untravelled kind. The travelled, formerly rare, is now dreadfully common in these countries. The old travelling bore was, as I find him aptly described—"A pretender to antiquities, roving, majestic-headed, and sometimes little better than crazed; and being exceedingly credulous, he would stuff his many letters with fooleries and misinformations"—vide a life published by Hearne— Thomas Hearne—him to whom Time said, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... powerless, and determined at all events not to offer the throats of themselves and their families to the Roman Catholic knife, they organised themselves into a volunteer police to prevent murder, and to awe into submission the roving bands of assassins who were scaring sleep from the bedside of every Protestant household. They became the abhorrence of traitors whose crimes they thwarted. The Government looked askance at a body of men who interfered with the time-honoured ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... the plain. My eyes kept roving about: there wasn't much hope for me, but miracles have happened. Most of the scattered structures were hastily thrown together sheds of sheet iron. Barracks, they looked like. But, every so often I spied spheres of concrete, the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... announced that the Emperor of Germany, who is fond of roving about the world, will start on his much-discussed trip to the Holy Land about the middle of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 5, February 3, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... Demorest fancied, too, that there was a little of the old fighting look in his eye, but it softened quickly as his friend approached, and he burst out with his curt but honest single-syllabled laugh. "Ha! You look a little less like a roving Apache than you did when you came. I really thought the waiters were going to chuck you. And you ARE tanned! Darned if you don't look like the profile stamped on a Continental penny! But here's luck and ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... shores of a bay. Some brightly colored stones attracted his attention and he picked several of them up and put them in his pockets. In the station at Pittsburgh he took them out and held them in his hand. A light came in at a window, a long, slanting light that played over the stones. His roving, disturbed mind was caught and held. He rolled the stones back and forth. The colors blended and then separated again. When he raised his eyes, a woman and a child on a nearby bench, also attracted by ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... home, few connections, a great many acquaintance, a good constitution, and extraordinary spirits. He possesses nothing but his clothes, no property of any sort; he leads a vagrant life, visiting a number of people who are delighted to have him, and sometimes roving about to various places, as fancy happens to direct, and staying till he has spent what money he has in his pocket. He has no servant, no home, no creditors; he buys everything as he wants it at the place he is at; he has no ties upon him, and has ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... that he is not of the ruling Party makes a free lance of him. When his people are in power, he will have to take office and wear the shackles. To-day, with every quality which would make him the greatest Foreign Minister England has ever had since Disraeli, he is nothing more nor less than a roving diplomatist, Emperor of his country's Secret Service, if you like to put it so. Furthermore, look a little into that future of which I have spoken. The present English Government will last, at the most, another two years. I tell you that when they go out of power, whoever comes ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... on one side, lending her an ear. By the gait of him he is looking another way. Yes; for now my lady turns, he turns too, and they halt front to front; his pallid visage half averted from her observation, his glittering eyes roving with bold stealth over the populous garden, and his thin-lipped, scarlet mouth working and twisting incessantly in the covert ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... us that many of his countrymen went away to sea for a few years and saved money, the wise ones bringing it home and investing it in a plot of land; "but," he added, "they do not all succeed, for many of them have become so accustomed to a roving life, and know so little of farming, that they cannot manage to make it pay. I have worked very hard myself, and am getting along all right;" and, looking at his surroundings, we certainly thought he must be doing very ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... the roving foot And joy of the roving eye, God send you store of morrows fair And a good rest by ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... alluding to just now was the cordiality of the friendships which spring up between the sailors themselves, who, it must be recollected, have no other society, and all, or almost all, whose ordinary social ties have been broken either by the chances of war, or by the very nature of their roving and desultory life, which carries them they really know not where, and care ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... good reprisals for what had been taken, by successful raids on the castle or the garrison. Fleet-footed, and well aware of every spot which would afford concealment, these hardy Celts generally escaped scot-free. Thus occupied for several centuries, they acquired a taste for this roving life; and they can scarcely be reproached for not having advanced in civilization with the age, by those who placed such invincible ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... aside, well out of Kitty's roving sight. She had noticed how his hands had trembled as he brought it; she did not notice that her own shook a little in thus putting it ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... knife, which had been painstakingly lashed to a trimmed shaft of wood. Since he had emerged from that clouding of mind which still gripped the Hunter, he had done what he could to prepare for another attack from any roving beast. And he also had Hume's ray tube—its single charge to be used only in ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... use of must be in a great measure his own work; this makes the number of languages equal to that of the individuals who are to speak them; and this multiplicity of languages is further increased by their roving and vagabond kind of life, which allows no idiom time enough to acquire any consistency; for to say that the mother would have dictated to the child the words he must employ to ask her this thing and that, may well enough explain in what manner languages, already formed, are taught, but it ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... of these vessels very much; for a kindly feeling had sprung up amongst us, and interchanges of courtesies had made us friends. But thus it is in this roving life; and it may be best that the acquaintance thus stumbled upon remains but long enough to please, and is gone before the gloss of novelty is rubbed off,—before familiarity deadens or destroys ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... cheeky as a crow and as prying as a magpie and I venture to say thee is a roving scamp. But I may as well talk ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... exposed country-side, there was little rest for him even in times of so-called peace, and his whole life was spent in raids and outfalls upon the Brabanters, late-comers, flayers, free companions, and roving archers who wandered over his province. At times he would come back in triumph, and a dozen corpses swinging from the summit of his keep would warn evil-doers that there was still a law in the land. At others his ventures were not ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... return'd him no reply, But raised new visions to his roving eye. He saw broad Delaware the shores divide, He saw majestic Hudson pour his tide; Thy stream, my Hartford, thro its misty robe, Play'd in the sunbeams, belting far the globe; No watery glades thro richer vallies shine, Nor drinks the sea a ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... divide my choice; I bid them all depart: His name, his love, his gracious voice, Have fixed my roving heart. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... present them to her. She was very grateful, but suggested that it might please her papa if they were given to him. Would she superintend them, then, and choose the topics for illustration? Yes, she would do that; and so the young man was furnished with a roving commission. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... crackling blaze of mesquite, sagebrush and live-oak limbs, while over us twinkled the friendly stars, and he told me many a strange story of his roving life. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... mother, the ship's boy did all the emptying, you know," Mr. Dickett urged tolerantly. "It seems a roving sort of life, to us, I know, and unsettled, but if they like it, why I ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon



Words linked to "Roving" :   traveling, travelling, unsettled, peregrine, nomadic, wandering, travel, drifting, rove



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