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More "Knuckles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked like a pretty one, and Gibson went after it. It was an inshoot, and the batter afterward declared it grazed his knuckles ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... apothecary. Now he took up the broken thread. To come to a decision; that was the task which forced from him his look of distress. He drew his face slowly through his palms, set his lips, cast up his eyes, knit his knuckles, and then opened and struck his palms together, as if to say: "Now, come; let me make ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... cried Elizabeth, rapping her knuckles with her stick, "and behave thyself, or theaw shanna ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was dressed in a long black topcoat, high collar and string tie. The clicking noise was explained when he rubbed his long white hands together, making the knuckles pop ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... are ever jealous of their country's honour. There is a strong popular feeling against any encroachments by the Russian Bear. Our young officers are ever eager for a chance to distinguish themselves, and our men," she added gaily, "have fists all knuckles, always doubled for a ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... engagements of this kind were of continual occurrence, in which men were so badly beaten as to die from the effects. The weapons used were fists, clubs, axes, tent-poles, etc. The Raiders were plentifully provided with the usual weapons of their class—slung-shots and brass-knuckles. Several of them had succeeded in ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... a lot of others. We were just starting on 'Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching', when Denny stopped short. He stood first on one foot and then on the other, and suddenly screwed up his face and put his knuckles in his eyes and sat down on a heap of stones by the roadside. When we pulled his hands down he was actually crying. The author does not wish to say it ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... us two Elijahs so hard that if we turned 'em down again we ought to have the Audubon Society after us. It won't do to put the crown aside too often. I know this is something like paternalism, but don't you think Opportunity has skinned its knuckles about ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... as yet still hung in space, but some blessed solid thing on which it was possible to stand. As, with a feeling of thankfulness and relief such as she had never before experienced, she allowed her weight to rest on it and found that it did not give, she felt a sharp blow on the knuckles of her left hand, which made her withdraw it quickly and lean against the wall to steady herself. Mark was throwing stones at her fingers to make her leave go sooner. Another missed her narrowly, ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... these orders; but my heart smote me for my selfishness, when I witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play with him any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should sometimes come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes come and see me on a Wednesday, he revived; and vowed to make another kite for those occasions, of proportions ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... as Poor Richard says, and scarce in that; for, it is true, we may give advice, but we can not give conduct. However, remember this: They that will not be counseled can not be helped; and further, that, If you will not hear Reason, she will surely rap your knuckles, ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... go home," said the elder of the two, resting her knuckles upon her hips, and looking at their goings-on as a whole. "I do hope Daisy will fetch round again now. I have never been more frightened in my life, but I don't mind breaking ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... unconsciously touched it when he had raised her and strained her to him one mad instant in his arms. In fact, he did not see those stains; his eyes were closed to such details—and the crimson marks, too, on her gown! His knuckles were bleeding; he was unaware of it. He was not, outwardly, a very presentable adorer but he became suddenly a most daring one. His grimy hand touched the shining hair, half-unbound; he raised one of the marvelous tresses—his hungry lips swept it lightly—or did he but breathe a ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... for a look at her as she read. Ringing salvos of laughter greeted the play and stirred the sleigh-bells on the startled horses beyond the door. The programme over, somebody called for Squire Town, a local pettifogger, who flung his soul and body into every cause. He often sored his knuckles on the court table and racked his frame with the violence of his rhetoric. He had a stock of impassioned ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... knock, at the door, as fast as knuckles could go. And then, as if the comer could not wait, the door was opened, and Mary Hodgson stood there as white ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... the moon was shining brightly in the sky overhead when Bumpus, being awakened by some sort of dream, suddenly sat upright, digging his knuckles into his eyes, as if hardly able to believe that he was not safe and sound in ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... the rescue his two friends, who, for the last instant, had been too spellbound to move. The farmer squared his fists and received the newcomers on his knuckles. He was a clean hitter, and from the way he pirouetted and skipped you would have said he could dance, too. The three young sports, considerably the worse for wear, fled pell-mell for the barbed-wire fence that bordered the road, and went over it in the twinkling of an eye. Only ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... raw-boned woman in crepe, with a mourning comb in her hair which curiously lengthened her long face—sat stiffly upon the sofa, her hands, conspicuous for their large knuckles, folded in her lap, her mouth and eyes drawn down, solemnly awaiting the opening of the coffin. Near the door stood a mulatto woman, evidently a servant in the house, with a timid bearing and an emaciated face pitifully sad ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... from; another with a round ring, whose line formed the base; and another with holes, three or five, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, which was called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and in knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw your toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... hiding something beneath her long blue coat, and acting as if she had great ado to keep it there. It must have been a heavy, slippery something, because all the while she talked she kept hitching it up and clenching it till her knuckles turned ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... chair where he had flung himself on his knees when Walden had entered his mother's cottage,—and rubbed his knuckles hard into his eyes with a long ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... grate with their tea-table not yet cleared between them. Aunt Ellen, ninety-three years of age, with a lace cap on her head and a white silk shawl over her shoulders, was sitting upright in her low chair, knitting. She wore no glasses, and her old hands, meagre, almost transparent, with large knuckles, and skin that looked as if it had been polished, fumbled a little with her needles and the thick wool. Her eyesight was failing, though in the pride of her great age she would not acknowledge it; but her ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... 'ready to break with laughing at seeing them two brawl and scramble like madmen, and Sir George's new periwig torn off his crown,' he sees 'the iron walking' and daggers out, and playing the part of him who taketh a dog by the ears, 'purchased such a rap on the knuckles, that I wished both their pates broken, and so with much ado they staid their brawl to see my bloody fingers,' and then set to work to abuse the hapless peacemaker. After which things Raleigh writes a letter to Cecil, which is still more offensive in the eyes of virtuous ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to Thrushcross Grange. On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. As I knocked for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar- faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... could be and still be felt as two. At each successive putting down of the instrument I would bring the points a little nearer together and a little lower down on the hand. By the time a dozen or more stimulations had been given I would be working down near the knuckles, and the points would be right together. From that on I would use only one point. It might be necessary to repeat this a few times before the illusion would persist. A great deal seems to depend on the skill of the operator. It would be noticed that the first impression was ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... nothing could be better; capital practice, sir," and so forth. And at the close of all this, amid the sobs of kind Mrs. Julaper and the general whimpering of the humbler handmaids, the Doctor standing by the bed, with his knuckles on the coverlet, and a glance now and then on the dead face beside him, said—by way of 'quieting men's minds,' as the old tract-writers used to say—a few words ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... notion, some folks will never have to boast of—so trot, and fetch the bowl for me, do you hear, and set up the nine-pins. You've sense enough to do that, have not you? and as for your lesson, I'll drive that into your head by and by, if I can," added he, rapping with his knuckles upon ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... success, to bring the night's receipts into something like a counterbalance to the daily bill: this had just been presented by the landlord, who had placed his bulky person immediately behind him, looked over his shoulder, and having encircled him with his arms for the sake of leaning with his knuckles upon the table, had fairly pinned in the poor manager, who continued at intervals upon every perplexing interruption from his antagonist to wheel round and face him like a stag at bay. Nearer to Bertram ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... answer but his whistling stopped suddenly and the knuckles of his clasped hands whitened. Atherton looked away quickly and his eyeglass fell with a little tinkle against a waistcoat button. There was another long pause. Finally the music died away and the stillness was broken only ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... over his face and neck, and then died away, leaving him of an ashy paleness. He was standing by his desk, and he reached out one hand and rested it on some books, gripping the backs of them with a grip that made his knuckles stand out like white knots. He did not ask Hal to sit down. Commonplace amenities died in the stress of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... looked at him sidewise, hesitating, for I wanted to speak to him. I was wondering, too, whether he knew that I had been fighting with Shock, for my hands were very dirty and my knuckles were cut. ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... such a howl of terror as these men gave vent to when this misfortune befell me. They rushed upon deck with their hearts in their mouths, tumbling, and peeling the skin off their shins and knuckles in their haste; and it was not until they heard the laughter of the watch on deck that they breathed freely, and, joining in the laugh, called themselves fools for being frightened by a ghost story. I noticed, however, that, for all their pretended indifference, ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... into a hand, like a human hand." The disc changed into a human hand, the fingers slightly bent, the soft, white fingers of a woman with the pink of the flesh and the wrinkles at the knuckles visible. The wrist seemed to fade gradually into nothingness, the end of the hand was as indeterminate as are things in a dream, but the ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... and dug the fire into a blaze. "What's doing on you, man? You've skinned your knuckles like potato peel. Man, man, what for ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... sank into the man's body—through his body into the earth; Captain Madwell came near falling forward upon his work. The dying man drew up his knees and at the same time threw his right arm across his breast and grasped the steel so tightly that the knuckles of the hand visibly whitened. By a violent but vain effort to withdraw the blade the wound was enlarged; a rill of blood escaped, running sinuously down into the deranged clothing. At that moment three men stepped silently forward from behind the clump of young trees which had ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street drawing-room. All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on his sleeve, and he said to himself: "If it were only to see her hand again I should have ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... lifting the second, and this being replaced, he began to sound others with his knuckles, to find that they all gave forth the same dull ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... Graustark sat agape. With his concluding words, Mr. Blithers deposited his clenched fist upon the table with a heavy thud, and, as if fascinated, every eye shifted from his face to the white knuckles of that ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... forward. She saw Raymond's knuckles grow white and hard as his hands gripped the back of his chair. His eyes dilated, and for a moment he could not ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... asperity—Melchard's voice, which he had heard for the first time while he clung with his fingers to the window-sill of the bedroom and with his shoe-tips to the string-course below it, sinking his head even below his defenceless knuckles. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... this creditable thing. Both joined forces to fling clods. In the greater world, however, Shelby's simple act won swift approval. In the cartoonists' fancy the wires of the puppet-show had gone awry, the dog bit the heel at which it slunk, the usurper's knuckles were rapped by the sceptre he would have seized. The press teemed with anecdotes and personal gossip of the governor. Everything he did or said became of interest: his dress, his habits of work, his Tuscarora stories, his domestic life. An admirer on Long Island who bred bulldogs sent ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Those who were able, crawled or staggered in the collecting of firewood. Long, Indian fires were built that accommodated all. Shorty, aided by a dozen assistants, with a short club handy for the rapping of hungry knuckles, plunged into the cooking. The women devoted themselves to thawing snow in every utensil that could be mustered. First, a tiny piece of bacon was distributed all around, and, next, a spoonful of sugar to cloy the edge of their razor appetites. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... softly to her; he ventured to take her hand. And while he was looking up appealingly to her, Macleod was regarding his face. He was calculating to himself the precise spot between the eyes where a man's knuckles would most effectually tell; and his hand was clinched, and his teeth set hard. There was a look on his face which would have warned any gay young man that when Macleod should marry, his wife would ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... turned his head. Dimly he saw a giant bridge and a long drab train moving across it. He picked up the fallen man's cap and tried it on. Not a particularly good fit, but it would serve. He then trotted round the deckhouse to the street side, jumped to the wharf, and sucking the cracked knuckles of his right hand fell into a steady dogtrot which carried him to the station he had left so hopefully an hour and ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... against the encroaching multitudes of men that had steadily spread themselves over the surface of the earth, wresting the hunting grounds from the lower orders, from the moment that the first ape shed his hair and ceased to walk upon his knuckles. Even the species with which Tarzan was familiar showed here either the results of a divergent line of evolution or an unaltered form that had been transmitted without variation for ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... except his own compassion, thought we ought to open the door and succor Eumolpus, in his peril; but being still angry, I could not restrain my hand; clenching my fist, I rapped his pitying head with my sharp knuckles. In tears, he sat upon the bed, while I applied each eye in turn, to the opening, filling myself up as with a dainty dish, with Eumolpus' misfortunes, and gloating over their prolongation, when Bargates, agent for the building, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the collar, spitefully digging his knuckles into my neck, and propelled me out of the room ... almost into the arms ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... we sat, and began to play 'put.' A precious greasy old lot of cards they were; and so many dirt-spots on them, that it required a fellow with sharp eyes to make out the dirt from the Clubs and Spades. However, we got on somehow. When one was ready to play, he knocked the table with his knuckles, as a signal to the other; and for hours and hours we shuffled and dealt and knocked until it was late in the night, which I ought to have told you was Saturday night. At last, just as we ended a game, and when we were listening ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... climbed another flight of stairs. He had to strike a match to look for a bell or knocker, and then found neither. He knocked on the door with his knuckles. There was no reply. He was on the point of departure, when he noticed that the door was ajar. After a moment's hesitation ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... knuckles of the Jew struck under the ear of the man from 'Rapahoe. It was a beautiful blow, and Buckhorn was knocked over in a twinkling, striking heavily on his shoulder in ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... know it. Shorthand typists are not wanted these days, the schools are turning out thousands of 'em, all more or less bad; but I—I ain't talking about that, dear—" He took a step towards her, and then recoiled, seeing her knuckles shine whitely as she gripped the ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... notches and the longer ones reached farther and farther along the window-sill, until Ward began to foresee the time when he must start a new row. Day by day his cheek-bones grew more clearly defined, his eyes bigger and more wistful. Day by day his knuckles stood up sharper when he closed his hands, and day by day Nature worked upon his hurt, knitting the ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... once, Captain Applegarth knocked with his knuckles on the panel of the closed door of one of the larger state rooms, running athwart the ship ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... wooden shield with its moulded leather covering, the velvet coat emblazoned with the arms of England and France, and the empty sheath. The gauntlets were once embellished with little figures of lions on the knuckles; these have been detached by "collectors," vandals almost as ruthless as Blue Dick and his troopers, and without their excuse of mistaken religious zeal. The helmet still has its original lining of leather, showing that it was actually worn. The sword which fitted the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... forget means sanity. Incessantly to remember, means obsession, lunacy. So the problem I faced in solitary, where incessant remembering strove for possession of me, was the problem of forgetting. When I gamed with flies, or played chess with myself, or talked with my knuckles, I partially forgot. What I ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... back to Harvey. "He looks ill," he said, which is true. His honestly-painted knuckles make diagnosis easy. My friend thought that this great man would probably have dosed him well, and, as he added, would not have bothered him about too much sugar, nor forbidden champagne. I had to reply that whatever ills were in the England of that day,—and there was much ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... vill you?" cried Abraham, rapping his knuckles against the hatch. "I likes to hear vot you says. You can have ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to our pronunciation, is called "toung." The delinquent is obliged to kneel down, and a man stands over him with a bent elbow and clenched fist. He first rapidly strikes him on the head with his elbow, and then slides it down until his knuckles repeat the blow, the elbow at the same time giving a violent smack on the shoulders. This is repeated until it becomes a very severe punishment, which may be carried to great excess.—Two Years ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... he said, pointing toward Juan. "White Calf, me big chief," pointing to himself. "Heap fight!" Then he clinched his hands and thrust them forward, knuckles downward, the Indian sign for death, for falling dead or being struck down. With his delivery this was unmistakable. "Me," he said, "me dead; white man go. Big chief" (meaning Juan), "him dead; Injun heap take horse," ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... spoke his companion flushed. A wave of warm colour surged over her face and bare neck and receded again, leaving her very pale. Her hands closed over the book lying in her lap, as if glad to hold on to something, and their knuckles were white against ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... His hard knuckles were pressed upon the table, he leaned forward towards her. Even his tone was altered. His blandness had all vanished, his grey eyes were as ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... creature wore, like a stray parcel of sunbeams that would shine. Her delicate, tiny figure was as round as a child's,—her funny hands as quaint as some fat baby's, with short fingers and dimpled knuckles. She was a creature as much made to be petted as a King-Charles spaniel,—and petted she was, far beyond any possibility of a crumpled rose-leaf. Mrs. Bowen was fat, loving, rather foolish, but the best ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... like the tiny knuckles of a fairy's hand, knocking lightly and playfully on the inside of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... arms of his chair. His knuckles grew white with the strain. "Where—where did you find ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... diseased, so that the case assumes the appearance of a chronic form of rheumatism. The early history of attacks of sharp pain in the great toe and the appearance of hard deposits (chalk stones) in the knuckles and the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... honour that they should be at Saumur, and so they were: but Michael Stein is an awful black man to deal with when his back is up: he thinks no more of giving a clout with his hammer, than another man does of a rap with his five knuckles." ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... berry sorry!" says that Sambo vagabond, then. "Christian George King cry, English fashion!" His English fashion of crying was to screw his black knuckles into his eyes, howl like a dog, and roll himself on his back on the sand. It was trying not to kick him, but I gave Charker the word, "Double-quick, Harry!" and we got down to the water's edge, and ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... and the dungeon's window, though still barred, was uncovered. The night was clear and fine, and the still water gleamed fitfully as the moon, half-full, escaped from or was hidden by passing clouds. Sapt stood staring out gloomily, beating his knuckles on the stone sill. The fresh air was there, but the ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... knew he was fighting desperately, viciously, and against impossible odds. The satisfying crunch of his left fist against a leering green-bronze face was followed by an excruciating pain as one of his knuckles was driven back. Hardly knowing he had pressed the release of the ray, he was mildly astonished to see that two of the guards were enveloped in the blue vapor. Scintillant tiny sunbursts within ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... happened since I saw you last. I'm no longer Jimmy Gollop, candy drummer. I'm Mr. James Gollop, Sales Manager for one of the best institutions on earth, and I'm going to make good. I know I shall. I feel it here," and he tapped his breast with his knuckles. She did not observe his gesture, for she had turned still further from him, and was looking out of the window as if half distracted ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... In the affair I hurt my hand; while it was healing I went to 'Frisco and took in the theatres." He held up the member indicated, reversed this time for inspection. A white jagged scar ran diagonally over the knuckles. "It's entirely well now." ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... step on the stair, a girl's low laughter, Rustle of silks, shy knuckles tapping the oak, Dinner and mirth upsetting my rooms, and, after, Music, waltz upon waltz, till ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not daunted, he scrambled to his feet. Yorke, blowing upon his knuckles with all the air of an old-time "Regency blood," waited with heaving chest ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... Paris. He was named peer of France for his conduct in the riots which occurred during the ministry of Casimir Perier. Baron Gouraud was one of the generals who took the church of Saint-Merry, delighted to rap those rascally civilians who had vexed him for years over the knuckles; for which service he was rewarded with the grand cordon ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... staring as I rushed back, and sure enough, there was the girl with her face pressed against the barrel, and her hands gripping the table edge. Her features were hidden, of course, but there was something about her strained position, her white knuckles— ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... approaching briskly, as if the owner were in haste and knew whither he was bound. Up the steps they came lightly; then the room and the whole silence round about rang and echoed with a peremptory signal. Evidently this man rapped on the board door to awaken and alarm, for instead of his knuckles he used some hard and ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his smooth, hairless countenance. His hands were large, long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their thinness. He had a great, high brow, ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... of a ripe durian on each shoulder in front and an immature one above each nipple. On the lower part of the upper arm was a tatu of an edible root, in Penihing called rayong. Over the back of his right hand, toward the knuckles, he had a zigzag mark representing the excrescences of the durian fruit. In regard to the presence of spirits, number of souls, blians, disease, and its cure, restrictions for pregnant women, the child's cradle—the ideas of the Bukats ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... his father. Martin was pale and haggard and his bony hands clutched his thin knees until the knuckles were strained and white. ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... Jupiter himself, excepting that in some instances he has a very small beard, in form resembling a peg. The hands and feet, like the rest of the figure, have general forms only, without particular detail; the fingers and toes are flat, of equal thickness, little separated, and without distinction of the knuckles; yet, altogether, their simplicity of idea, breadths of parts, and occasional beauty of form, strike the skilful beholder, and have been highly praised by the best judges, ancient and modern. In their basso-relievos and paintings, which require ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... if I wanted to go down on my knees to every boy in uniform," cried Betty, gripping the arms of her chair till the knuckles showed white. "No matter how hard we try we can't make up to them for what they're giving up—and giving up so cheerfully. And they're so dear and appreciative and thankful for every little thing that we have done for them, it makes me want ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... ear became itchy at the bare idea. He made a desperate blow at it, and skinned his knuckles, while a hitherto unconceived intensity of desire to scratch his head and blow his nose ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Kittredge—I dunno what all. Abs'lom never jawed back none. He jes made a dart an' snatched this hyar leetle critter out'n his mother's arms, stiddier waitin' fur the law, what he summonsed himself. Blest ef I didn't hev ter hold my revolver ter his head, an' then crack him over the knuckles, ter make him let go the child. I didn't want ter arrest him—mighty clever boy, Abs'lom Kittredge! I promised that young woman I'd keep holt o' the child till the law gins its say-so. I feel sorry fur her; she's ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... sullen defiance and I saw the knife glitter where she gripped it, half concealed by a fold of her petticoat. Here one of the men muttered some unintelligible word and pointed scornfully at me, whereupon the old woman rapped him smartly over the knuckles and fixed her uncomfortably shrewd gaze on my person, scanning me over very keenly, more ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... for such a place under the existing circumstances; for of late the populace, or, perhaps, the townspeople, were extremely pugnacious, and many were the disputes that were settled by the very satisfactory application of the knuckles to the head of the party ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... mouth; to say nothing about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made for the wearer—long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating in huge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails—a shambling gait, notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to awaken—so noiseless his stealthy advances—the unchained mastiff in ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... bewildered Max sighed, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, as though hardly knowing whether he ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... He had cussed Aleck for repeating the epithet in the bunk house, and he had tried to lick Bud Norris, and had failed. He blamed Mary V for his skinned knuckles and the cut on his lip, and for all his other troubles. Johnny did not know about the coat, though he had it on; and if he had known, I doubt whether it would have softened his mood. He was ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... the Queen thither 'to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus' torment.' Another time he protested that he must disguise himself as a boatman, and just catch a sight of the Queen, or else his heart would break. He drew his dagger on his keeper, Sir George Carew, and broke the knuckles of Sir Arthur Gorges, because he said they were restraining him from the sight of his Mistress. He proposed to Lord Howard of Effingham at the close of a business letter, that he should be thrown to ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... for show seemed neither resentful nor distressed, ready enough most times to exhibit his merits, anxious only for the chance of a good master and the momentary avoidance of the lictor's flail. At the praefect's bidding he cracked his knuckles or showed his teeth, strained the muscles of his arm to make them stand up like cords, turned a somersault, jumped, danced or stood on his head if ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... said Anthony; "I wish he were. Oh, if you could see my papa—ha! ha!—you would not forget him in a hurry; and if he chanced to box your ears, or pinch your cheek, or rap your head with his knuckles, you would not ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... in his sudden enlightenment and wrath but he bethought himself in time and with whitened knuckles he drove the poniard held in his hand deep into the wood of the floor. This, in a mild way served to express his feelings. At the question the dwarf swaggered into the ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... and crawl down towards the bolt, but with infinite slowness and caution. In so doing they crept into the moonlight. The actual motion was imperceptible, but slowly, slowly, the fingers came out whiter and whiter; but the hand between the main knuckles and the wrist ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... it was called, because of fat old joints, and hams, and rounds, and barons of sea-beeves and walrusses, which then crowned the stratum-board. All piled together, glorious profusion!—fillets and briskets, rumps, and saddles, and haunches; shoulder to shoulder, loin 'gainst sirloin, ribs rapping knuckles, and quarter to none. And all these sandwiched right over all that went before. Course after course, and course on course, my lord; no time to clear the wreck; no stop nor let; lay on and slash; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... two sitting squat in the middle of the trail; and if the windfall had been opaque, one of the two wore an expression on his face as if he had guessed. He was tossing a handful of little pebbles up from his palm and catching them on the backs of his knuckles. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... inquired Lucille, reappearing from behind the flagon. "I hate them myself, even on the funny-bone or knuckles—but on ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... whatever. Mr. McPherson shook hands warmly with the old folk, but kept the young people in their places, and well did every youngster know that did he not conduct himself in the sanctuary with becoming propriety, the cane the elder carried would likely come rapping down smartly on his unrighteous knuckles. J. P. Thornton's welcome was kindly but stately. He had grown stout and slightly pompous-looking during the passing years, and his fine, well-dressed figure lent quite an air of dignity to the whole church. But Lawyer Ed, ushering a stranger into the ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... the spirits of evil snatch their prey Almost out of the very hand of God; And day by day their power is more and more, And men and women leave old paths, for pride Comes knocking with thin knuckles ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... against. At first this was a light duty, but as time passed by it became extremely irksome, and when Larry was awakened by Will to take his second spell of watching, he vented his regrets in innumerable grunts, growls, coughs, and gasps, while he endeavoured to rub his eyes open with his knuckles. ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... at the assembled company with a kindly little smile on his tired face. Then, slowly and luxuriously, he yawned. When his mouth closed again, after a view of caverns measureless to man, he rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles, and then heaved a great sigh and, apparently, resigned himself to ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... him. His knuckles stung from the impact of the blow he had delivered in Milligan's place. He hungered to have one of these three stir a hand ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... Yes. I daresay there are. It's the right place for them. But what I mean—" He looked at his bony knuckles. "Is that sort of thing always dreaming? Is it dreaming? Or is it something else? Mightn't ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... mother had been a concert pianist; now she had such large arthritic knobs on all of her knuckles that her hands had become claws. Though there was still that very same fine upright in the cabin that I had learned to play as a child, she had long since given up the piano. Her knees also had large arthritic knobs; this proud woman with a straight back ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... man could invent an unfairer scheme to settle private quarrels! Give a man heavy muscles and huge knuckles, tough hide and thick skull, add half the courage of a yellow dog, and how can he lose at that game? The old-time duellists with their swords were a hundred times fairer. A long sword to his wrist and the smallest man had a chance; which is as it should be, or else we might as well pick ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... stranded under a tree with a newspaper and several books. Her polished cheekbones and knuckles glimmered yellow in the shade. By her side was a long cane chair, in which lay a white silk wrap and a bit of needlework, tumbled together as the Countess had left them when she went in to receive her visitors. Miss Skeat rose as the ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... become too publicly known. Mike was stalking up and down with his hands clasped behind his back, glum as a miniature Napoleon and talking bitterly. The Chief was sprawled in a chair. Haney sat upright regarding his knuckles with a thoughtful air. ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... The Jam-wagon was bleeding about the knuckles. Several of Locasto's teeth had been loosened, and he spat blood frequently. Otherwise he looked as fit as ever. He pursued his man with savage determination, and seemed resolved to get in a deadly body-blow that would ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... a moment's pause. Miss Cairns, unwilling to remain, and unable to withdraw, clasped her hands unhappily and stared at the floor. Livingstone exclaimed in indignant protest. Hanley moved a step nearer and, to emphasize what he said, tapped his knuckles on the desk. With the air of one confident of his advantage, he ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... the flitting Newport fair ones. When they, as in duty bound, said that they saw nobody whom they cared about now she was married, that she was the only woman on earth for them,—she rapped their knuckles briskly with her fan, and bid them mind their manners. All this mode of proceeding ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to the skipper's cabin, I rapped gently with my knuckles on the panel of the door, and bent my head to listen for a reply. I knew that Captain Roberts was a light sleeper, and judged that it would not take much to awake him. Nor was I mistaken, for immediately following upon my low ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... was prosing, I was examining the box. It was at least well made. It weighed certainly under two ounces. I struck it with my knuckles; it sounded hollow. There was no hinge; nothing of any kind to show that it ever had been opened, or, for the matter of that, that it ever could be opened. The more I examined the thing, the more it whetted my curiosity. That it could be opened, and ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... upon the handle of his sword and his knuckles had grown white, but now he drew it away, and, followed by those who were with him, strode towards the door, the dancers giving way before him, the most angrily and slowly, and with glances at the muttering and shouting peasants, but some gladly and quickly, ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... That's the thanks I get. You know the way I've tried to make this little home one a child could be proud of. Take the time that fine young Bryant fellow came to call. Why, that little parlor of ours was fit for a princess. His knuckles didn't suit her! They cracked, she said. I've heard of lots of excuses for not taking to boys, but that beats all. Three girls out of the sewing club already married and Flora engaged to that well-to-do Bankhead boy, and mine holds herself above ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... among them, were sitting about when Billy, sniffing and rubbing his knuckles in his eyes to such an extent that of necessity notice must ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... The soft whagh of the drake, which is not in this species blessed with the loud quack of the female bird, sufficiently established the identity of the duck. Then muskrats, and the oyster-eating coon, came round, no doubt scenting my provisions. Brisk raps from my knuckles on the inside shell of the canoe astonished these animals and aroused their curiosity, for they annoyed ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... love of the native land and the yearning to stand in front of it, and such is the hate of being triumphed over by fellows who kiss one another and weep, and such is the tingling of the knuckles for a blow when the body has been kicked in sore places, that the heart will at last get the better of the head—or at least it used to be so in England. Wherefore Charley Bowles was in arms already against his country's enemies; and Harry Shanks waited for little except ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... he fetched me—called me—whatever you like to name it—I burst into his studio like a bullet. He was sunk in a big chair, gaunt as a mummy now, and all the life in him seemed to burn in the bottom of his deep eye-sockets. At the sight of him I fiddled with my knuckles ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... and with the advent of tea, he had accomplished what she had fervently wished for the night she had met him—he succeeded, by several easy moves, in isolating her from her aunt, and, notwithstanding her admiration, her desire to tap with her knuckles the metal of her idol and listen for a ring of hollowness, she was alarmed. Yet, perversely, she knew that he would not exhibit his paces before his wife—naturally a disinterested spectator—or before her aunt, who was hardly "intimate" enough. The long-desired hour found her disquieted. She did ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... he installed his secretary and overwhelmed him with work. The young man spent his nights in writing, and, like all great workers, he contracted a bad habit, a trick—he took to chewing paper. The late M. de Malesherbes use to rap people over the knuckles; and he did this once, by the by, to somebody or other whose suit depended upon him. The handsome young secretary began by chewing blank paper, found it insipid for a while, and acquired a taste for manuscript as having more flavor. People ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... about troubles! Think of poor Northcliffe. He thinks he's saved the nation from its miserable government, and the government now openly abuses him in the House of Commons. Northcliffe puts on his brass knuckles and turns the Times building upside down and sets all the Daily Mail machine guns going, and has to go to bed to rest his nerves, while the row spreads and deepens. The Government keeps hell in the prayer-book because without it they wouldn't know what to do with Northcliffe; and Northcliffe ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... The knuckles of the Gentleman-in-Powder here made themselves heard, and thereafter the door opened to admit his calves, which were immediately eclipsed by the Marquis, who appeared to be in ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... fancied he saw something moving among the trees. He ducked back and remained quiet for some time. Then, reassured by the continued silence, he emerged, sauntered to the back entrance, and after a brief preliminary study of the shuttered windows, assailed the door with a pair of grimy knuckles. ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... with me hot-footin' it after him. An' somewhere he treed thet lion, right below me, in a box canyon, sort of an offshoot of the second rim, an' I couldn't locate him. I blamed near killed myself more'n once. Look at my knuckles! Barked em slidin' about a mile down a smooth wall. I thought once the lion had jumped Don, but soon I heard him barkin' again. All thet time I heard Sounder, an' once I heard the pup. Jim yelled, an' somebody was shootin'. But I couldn't find nobody, or make nobody hear ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... syndactylus which remained for some time in his possession, says: "He invariably walks in the erect posture when on a level surface; and then the arms either hang down, enabling him to assist himself with his knuckles; or, what is more usual, he keeps his arms uplifted in nearly an erect position, with the hands pendent ready to seize a rope, and climb up on the approach of danger or on the obtrusion of strangers. He walks rather quick ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... her was crying rubbing the knuckles of her shabby old gloves in her eyes, the bugles on her bonnet ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... of children ranged by their desks, fresh-faced and in their cleanest clothes, suggested thoughts innocent and deep as the gospel story; and if Parson Endicott was long-winded, and Mr. Sam spoke tunelessly and accompanied his performance on the bones, so to speak—that is, by pulling at his knuckles till the joints cracked—consolation soon followed. For third and last came the turn of the Inspector, who had halted on his progress through the county to attend a ceremony of the kind in which he took delight. He had ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... there is a retinue of mouldy gigs and chaise-carts in the street; and herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, over-run the house, sounding the plate-glass minors with their knuckles, striking discordant octaves on the Grand Piano, drawing wet forefingers over the pictures, breathing on the blades of the best dinner-knives, punching the squabs of chairs and sofas with their dirty fists, touzling the feather beds, opening and shutting ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... to the house and opened the little garden gate, quite a little hum of excitement following him as he walked up to the door and knocked upon it with his knuckles. ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... made a last effort to control himself. His knuckles tightened on the edge of the vat. "I don't know what you've been talking about," he grated wildly. "But I want to get out of here! I want to go back where I came from! Do you understand—whoever, or whatever ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... sat on the divan. Her mouth was pulled into a straight line. Her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that the knuckles showed white. Diana stood beside her mother. Her fists were clenched at her sides. She shivered with fury. Her gaze ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... the man whose demeanour is "always calm," but whose passions are strong. How do you know that his passions are strong? Because he "gives them away" by some small, but important, part of his demeanour, such as the twitching of a lip or the whitening of the knuckles caused by clenching the hand. In other words, his demeanour, fundamentally, is not calm. You know the man who is always "smoothly polite and agreeable," but who affects you unpleasantly. Why does he affect you unpleasantly? Because he is tedious, and ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... the struggle was ended—a little ceremony that served to restore the status quo. He had not the least rancor against Tommy Ashe. It had all seeped away in the blind fury of that clash. He thrust out a hand upon which the knuckles were cut and bloody. And the man upon whose countenance he had bruised those knuckles took it with ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... I grappled with the enemy, and exerting all my strength rolled him over. Over and over we went struggling towards the fire, and when I got him within a foot or so of it I came out on top, and, digging my knuckles into his throttle, banged his head upon the stony floor in reckless rage, until all of a sudden it seemed to me he was done for. I relaxed my grip, but the other man never moved. I shook him again, like a terrier with a rat, but he never ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... her shoulder. His face twitched. Emma said in a low voice: "I help Miss Maria wean 'im, en he bit me on de knuckles wid 'is fust toofs. Nevuh had no trouble wid 'im, 'cept to dust 'is britches wunst in a w'ile. Ah, Lawd! I sho did love dat chile! Use to rake chips for de wash-pot fire, en sit roun' en wait for ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... small island, Martin cut the soles of his feet to ribbons on the coral whilst chasing a shark—at least, so he says, but from the glimpse I caught of him I thought it was the other way about. The coral-cuts have all become Solomon sores. Before my last fever I knocked the skin off my knuckles while heaving on a line, and I now have three fresh sores. And poor Nakata! For three weeks he has been unable to sit down. He sat down yesterday for the first time, and managed to stay down for ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... containing the money, and yours, also with money, and a rap on the knuckles besides; it was scarcely merited, as I can prove in ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... crowds used to besiege it! What a strange confusion of news-boys! The struggling public, with late letters; the bustling redcoats, with their leather bags, a scene of anxious life and interest seldom exceeded. And now the letter-boxes are all closed; you weary your knuckles in vain against the sliding door in the wall. No response. Every hand within is fully occupied in letter-sorting for the mails; they must be freighted in less than half an hour. Yet, on payment of a shilling ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... twirls the spotty globe to find it; - This little speck the British Isles? 'Tis but a freckle,—never mind it! - He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till they crack their iron knuckles! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... was Fanny Faringfield, Madge's younger sister, coming along the street, her knuckles in her eyes, the tears streaming down her face; and behind her, with his fists in his coat pockets, and his cruel, sneering laugh on his bold, handsome face, came Ned, the eldest of the four Faringfield young ones. He and Fanny were returning from ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... came to protest against the cruelty of the village schoolmistress to her offspring. The cruelty of the teacher was almost as unendurable to him as that of a bad father or husband. He would not hear of any justification for rapping school-children over the knuckles with a ruler. If one ventured to say that there were such things as demon- children and that they had a power to probe and prod even the best of good people into a kind of frenzy in which they were hardly accountable for their acts, the plea roused his deepest indignation. Indeed, it was only ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... was, ten minutes later, when Archey found her in the office—knew it from the way he looked at her and the hesitation of his speech—but it wasn't until they were shaking hands in parting that she saw the cut on his knuckles. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... half unwilling tenderness in his voice, and his big bony hand rested gently on the fat lady's shoulder, as he spoke. She bent her head to one side, till her large red cheek touched the brown knuckles. It was, in a way, almost grotesque. But there was that something in it which could make youth and beauty and passion ridiculous—the outspoken truthful old rake and the ever-forgiving wife. Who shall say wherein pathos lies? And yet it seems to be something more than a mere hack-writer's ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... burst through a hedge on the side of the road opposite the wall, and ran on, sheltered by the hedge, until, to his delight, he plunged headfirst into a stream of water. The fall knocked him out for a moment, but the cold water revived him, and he did not mind the scraped knee and the barked knuckles he owed to the sharp stones in the bed of the little brook. He changed his course at once, following the brook, since in that no telltale ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... conversation I am not a brilliant success. Partly, indeed, that may be owing to the assiduity with which my aunt suppressed my early essays in the art: "Children," she said, "should be seen but not heard," and incontinently rapped my knuckles. To a larger degree, however, I regard it as intrinsic. This tendency to silence, to go out of the rattle and dazzle of the conversation into a quiet apart, is largely, I hold, the consequence of a certain elevation and breadth and tenderness of mind; ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... a rare, localized, papillary or wart-like formation, occurring usually about the knuckles or other parts ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... already, when one of the soldiers fell bleeding on the snow. Close to him fell the young Cossack who had given him the muffler and breeches. He held out his hand, groaning. Yakob wanted to stop, but the captain would not let him, but rapped him over the head again with his knuckles. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... at the door, and it appeared to him that his knuckles had hardly fallen upon the panel before the valve was flung suddenly open. An indescribable and heavy odor fell upon him and for the moment overpowered his senses, and he found himself standing face to face with a figure ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... long muddy hill-slope, near where the knuckles of it dip out of sight into the bottom of the valley, one notices a line of heads. In some places they are clear and in others they cannot be seen. But we guess that it is the line ready to ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... his hand, and gave him a caning. "There!" he exclaimed, "I hope that will make you do something." But the boy folded his arms and answered very quietly, "I came to school to have something beaten into my brains and not into my knuckles." It was very hard for the teacher to do much with such a lad, particularly as the boy was so often really very helpful ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... sake, I presume, of not disturbing our movements by breathing; and I noticed the same action in a young Orang. The poor little creature was sick, and was amusing itself by trying to kill the flies on the window-panes with its knuckles; this was difficult as the flies buzzed about, and at each attempt the lips were firmly compressed, and at the same ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... about the Christian bearing of crosses, and went out to clean the car. Dully, patiently, he scraped linty grease from the drip-pan, gouged at the mud caked on the wheels. He used up many minutes in washing his hands; scoured them with gritty kitchen soap; rejoiced in hurting his plump knuckles. "Damn soft hands—like ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the other, stopping short his walk, "I broke my knuckles on an Irish hackman's teeth. Last week the fellow drove me from the North River boat to my house in Union Square, and I offered him seventy-five cents. He was very insolent and demanded a dollar. If I had had a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... ages ago. I stood mute before this apparition of remote antiquity. My uncle, usually so garrulous, was struck dumb likewise. We raised the body. We stood it up against a rock. It seemed to stare at us out of its empty orbits. We sounded with our knuckles his ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... run on," said the iron-grey giant, rubbing his knuckles together sheepishly. "You don't know Sis ef you go on that away. Many's the time that chile 'ud foller me up an' say, 'Pap, ef you see my shawl a-haugin' out on the fence, Puss'll be asleep, an' don't you come a-lumberin' in an' wake her up, nuther.' An' many's the time ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... mentioned; and the fear of the fire of perdition, it may be added, is their continual "torment." The Koran helps them out, in their dread of corporal torments. I need not refer to the celebrated passage, which represents the wicked in the regions of the lost as "gnawing their fingers and knuckles in the rage and agonies of their pain." But in Rev. xvi. 10, we also have—εμασσωντο τας γλωσσας αὑτων εκ του πονου "they gnawed their tongues for pain." In both cases the picture is too terrible ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... up as he struck. He had been hit squarely on the jaw with a force that made even Tom Reade's hardened knuckles ache. ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... rushed upon his antagonist with great impetuosity, foreseeing, that, should he have the good fortune to overturn him in the first assault, it would not be an easy task to raise him up again, and put him in a capacity of offence. But the momentum of Crabclaw's head, and the concomitant efforts of his knuckles, had no effect upon the ribs of Tapley, who stood firm as the Acroceraunian promontory; and stepping forward with his projected fist, something smaller and softer than a sledge-hammer, struck ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... I dined with him, and could hardly leave him at eight, to go to Lady Jersey's, where five or six foreign Ministers were, and as many ladies. Monteleon played like the English, and cried "gacco," and knocked his knuckles for trump, and played at small games like Ppt. Lady Jersey whispered me to stay and sup with the ladies when the fellows were gone; but they played till eleven, and I would not stay. I think this letter must go on Saturday; that's certain; and it is not half full ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... now hammered on the door with quick knuckles was no bashful person. Mr. Day had no chance to escape from the kitchen Miss Peckham turned the knob and walked ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... them had the courage to return, though their opponents were little better than boys. Fired at their pusillanimity, I darted by and seized the little gownsmen, one in one hand and the other in the other, pressed my knuckles in their neck, shook them heartily, and dragged them out of the box. The two other collegians of our squadron, seeing this intrepid advance, followed up the victory; Hector and Andrews again blustered and lent their aid, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... into a long pig! As for Jack, he clenched his teeth, and shook his fist towards the sea, saying at the same time that he was sorry he had not broken Tararo's head, and he only hoped that one day he should be able to plant his knuckles on the bridge of that chief's nose! After they had 'pumped me dry,' as Peterkin said, I begged to be informed of what had happened to them during my long absence, and particularly as to how they got out of ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... pressing his knuckles to his lips, raised out of himself by the accord of voices and the lingering note of melancholy that was in the hour, the note of the dividing of ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... were about twenty feet long, so I had to reckon on a clear drop of something over thirty feet. The poker and shutter held splendidly firm, and I found little difficulty in lowering myself, though I barked my knuckles most unpleasantly on the rough stucco of the wall. As I reached the extremity of my rope I glanced downward. The red splash of the eiderdown, just visible in the light from the adjoining window, seemed to be a horrible distance below me. My spirit failed me. My determination began to ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... Germans—fine tall men and well equipped; I can see them yet. Then Napoleon, who was only Bonaparte in those days, breathed goodness knows what into us, and on we marched night and day. We rap their knuckles at Montenotte; we hurry on to thrash them at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcola, and Millesimo, and we never let them go. The army came to have a liking for winning battles. Then Napoleon hems them in on all sides, these German generals did not know where to hide themselves ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... pressed with his knuckles upon a certain spot of the carpet in one corner of the space just mentioned, letting me know that a portion of the flooring, about sixteen inches square, had been neatly cut out and again adjusted. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... gloryous state can donate to a citizen. He sthraps on three gatlin' guns, four revolvers, two swords, a rifle, a shot gun, a baseball bat, a hand grenade (to be used on'y in case iv thirst), a pair iv handcuffs, brass knuckles, a sandbag, a piece of lead pipe in a stockin', a rabbit's foot f'r luck, a stove lid an' a can iv dinnymite, an' with siveral iv his cillybrated knives behind his ears, in his hair, between his teeth, an' gleamin' fr'm his pockets, he sallies forth on his sacred mission, an' gives ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... still decorated with a bruise that young Mosher had planted there. The boxing of Dick & Co., this summer, was real work. It was done with bare knuckles, though, of course, without anger or the desire to do injury. Boxing with bare knuckles was Prescott's own idea for hardening himself and his chums for the rough work ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... tears welled over her white under-lids. She put up both her little hands, and rubbed the salt drops away with her knuckles, like ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... already on the landing at the top of the stairs, and Shorthouse, still sitting upright in bed, heard a heavy body brush past his door and along the wall outside, almost immediately afterwards the loud knocking of someone's knuckles on the door of ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... no, Johnny hit him. His knuckles went crunch and Harry Bettis' nose went crunch and Bettis fell down. He lay there, his nose not looking ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... puzzled and scared, something brushed very lightly,-even coquettishly,—against his knuckles. He started in nervous fright. An instant later, the same thing brushed his knuckles again, this time more insistently. The man, in a spurt of fear-driven rage, grabbed at the invisible object. His fingers slipped along the smooth ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... that shalt my fair girl's finger bind, Wherein is seen the giver's loving mind: Be welcome to her, gladly let her take thee, And, her small joints encircling, round hoop make thee. Fit her so well, as she is fit for me, And of just compass for her knuckles be. Blest ring, thou in my mistress' hand shall lie, Myself, poor wretch, mine own gifts now envy. O would that suddenly into my gift, I could myself by secret magic shift! 10 Then would I wish thee touch my mistress' pap, And hide thy left hand underneath ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... when you hit it with your knuckles, didn't it?" prompted Zerkow, eagerly, his lips trembling, his fingers hooking themselves ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... street quarrel, I endeavoured to separate the parties by remonstrance. I rushed between them, holding out my cane; but a sharp cut across the knuckles, which I had received from one of the small men, together with his evident intention to follow it up, robbed me of all zest for pacific meditation; and, keeping my eye upon the one who had cut me, I drew a pistol (I could not otherwise defend myself), and fired. The man fell dead in ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... reeled on, stumbling as he went, turning, twisting, hitting hard and sure with all the strength that many good clean years in the open had stored within him. Blows fell upon his curly head as it rose now and again out of the storm—blows of guns, of knives, of bony knuckles. Yet he staggered forward, bleeding, exhausted, feeling nothing of the blows, seeing only the distorted faces that snarled ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... fear, have no fear! if he breathes a syllable, 'twill be to bruise his own knuckles; he will have to fight to defend his own head. We shall teach him not to insult the mysteries of the goddesses.[55] But fasten a rope to the window, tie it around your body and let yourself down to the ground, with your heart bursting with the fury ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... took your friend Barney, sir, stripped him of the insignia of his rank, consisting of a pair of brass knuckles and a canteen of rum, and dragged him before a military court. The presiding general went through the usual legal formalities that sometimes cause a case to hang on the calendar of a South American military court as ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... his pipe. His face was troubled; and two or three times he pulled the pipe out of his mouth, thrust his knuckles under his hat, and took a step toward the young surveyor. He also cleared his throat. He evidently had a word to say. But ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... Collar got one from me that made him remember home and mother, I'll bet. Anyhow, my knuckles ached for two days afterwards. And Jonadab was just as busy. But I cal'late we'd have been ready for the oven in another five minutes if the door hadn't bu'st open with a bang, and a loud dressed chap, with the sweat pourin' down ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the bewildered Max sighed, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, as though hardly knowing whether he ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... came back to Harvey. "He looks ill," he said, which is true. His honestly-painted knuckles make diagnosis easy. My friend thought that this great man would probably have dosed him well, and, as he added, would not have bothered him about too much sugar, nor forbidden champagne. I had to reply that whatever ills were in the England of that day,—and there was much dyspepsia ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... occurrence for such a place under the existing circumstances; for of late the populace, or, perhaps, the townspeople, were extremely pugnacious, and many were the disputes that were settled by the very satisfactory application of the knuckles to the head of the party ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Nile, opposite to Thebes, and enlarged the temple of Ptah, at Memphis, which he adorned by a beautiful colossal statue, the fist of which is (now in the British Museum) thirty inches wide across the knuckles. But the Rameseum, or Memnonium, was his greatest architectural work, approached by an avenue of sphinxes and obelisks, in the centre of which was the great statue of Ramesis himself, sixty feet high, carved from a single stone of the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... give Clewer Head-knuckles?" McTurk echoed. At the twentieth repetition—no boy can stand the torture of one unvarying query, which is the ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... came from outside. But the hand became instantly tense. It fell upon the sill and clutched it so hard that the knuckles stood out, white, strained and garish. Banneker's own strong hand descended upon the wrist. A voice said softly ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The Cockney's fists were clenched in a manner which promised that action would immediately follow declaration. Carter intervened peremptorily while Josef discreetly withdrew out of reach of the tough, bunched knuckles. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... soon be out of print, and you will not have many more of the same sort. [Laughter and applause.] They are full of the glitter and bluster of German militarism—"mailed fist," and "shining armor." Poor old mailed fist! Its knuckles are getting a little bruised. Poor shining armor! The shine is being knocked out of it. [Applause.] There is the same swagger and boastfulness running through the whole of the speeches. The extract which was ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... made Aunt Lizzie Philbrick so nervous that as an extra precaution she pinned the flap of her tent down securely with a row of safety-pins and Mr. Stott not only slept in more of his clothes than usual but put a pair of brass knuckles ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... man's knuckles pressed themselves firmly into the nape of my neck. "Hullo! By gosh, sir, if ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... soft whagh of the drake, which is not in this species blessed with the loud quack of the female bird, sufficiently established the identity of the duck. Then muskrats, and the oyster-eating coon, came round, no doubt scenting my provisions. Brisk raps from my knuckles on the inside shell of the canoe astonished these animals and aroused their curiosity, for they ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... were the fingernails entirely lacking from Myrin's hand, but the lower joints of her four fingers, from the palm to the knuckles were grown ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... was provided with a heavy bronze knocker, but strangely enough the newcomers did not avail themselves of its use, but rapped on the wooden panels with their knuckles, giving three successive raps at ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... not spring at her this time. She stood up, and put her hands together, and twisted them till the knuckles were white, and she spoke as if there were cotton in her throat when she begged the old woman to give her the doll. She promised never to be a bad girl any more; to give every cent she could get to Mrs. Brown—every one; to do everything Mrs. Brown asked her to do; and she ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... you a rap over the knuckles in a minute," smiled Mrs Hamps, who was now leaning an elbow on the table in easy intimacy. And she went on in a peculiar tone, low, mysterious, and yet full of vivacity: "I can't quite make out who that little nephew is that ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... said, sorter soft-like; 'I 'm a-goin' to take whut yer owe me out of yer right now.' An', by gory, gents, he sure did. I can't say as how I see much o' the fracas, 'ceptin' the dust, but when thet long-legged Lane jerked out a pearl-handled pop-gun I jist naturally rapped him over the knuckles with my '45.' an' then tossed him over inter the bunch. Say, thet beat any three-ringed circus ever I see. The kid he pounded Albrecht's head on the platform, occasionally interestin' Lane by kickin' him in the stomick, while I jist waltzed 'round promiscous-like without seein' ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... don't go to so much trouble to have his eyes out. The age is a fast one, you know; so, when the man feels like having his glims doused, he just jumps into the midst of a crowd of real b'hoys, runs his head, good-naturedly, you know, against a pair of knuckles, and the business is settled with "neatness and despatch," as ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... tossed his hat in the closet, opened the incubator on his culture tubes, trying to look busy. He slammed the door after one whiff and gripped the edge of the work table with whitening knuckles. "Why?" ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... trees on the edge of the clearing with painful anxiety. Once he thought that he heard a voice, but it was only the moan of one branch against another as the wind bent some tree. He stepped back from the window and rubbed his knuckles across his forehead, obviously puzzled. It might be that, after all, he was wrong. So he turned back once more toward the main room of the cabin to make sure. Instead of opening the door softly, as a suspicious man will, he cast it ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... with the wind in my face, and I could hear the snapping of jaws and the rending of flesh—yes—yes—AND A MAN'S TERRIBLE LAUGH! If the wind had shifted—if that pack of devils' souls had caught the smell of me—tonnerre de dieu!" He shuddered, and the knuckles of his fingers snapped as he clenched and unclenched his hands. "But I stayed there, M'sieu, half buried in a snow dune. They went on after a long time. It was so dark I could not see them. I went to the kill then, and—yes, he ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... I daresay there are. It's the right place for them. But what I mean——" He looked at his bony knuckles. "Is that sort of thing always dreaming? Is it dreaming? Or is it something else? Mightn't it ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... yet dry on Patsy's small face. He had kneaded them in with his knuckles, but the smears caused by the process were not visible in the moonlight, even if there had been any one to see them. It was not only the hardship of being driven out when the meal of hot potatoes was on the table, to search for that "ould ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... never, never can," cried Grace. "I hope he'll bruise all his knuckles and break all his finger nails trying to open the box, and still ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... take me! I tell you there isn't a pugilist in England cares to stand up to him with the muffles, or bare knuckles!" ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... jealous of their country's honour. There is a strong popular feeling against any encroachments by the Russian Bear. Our young officers are ever eager for a chance to distinguish themselves, and our men," she added gaily, "have fists all knuckles, always doubled for a ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... troubled thickness apparent in the voices of those who emerge from a deep grief. As he speaks, his large hands, roughened by trench toil and by riding, wander aimlessly until some emotion grips him when the knuckles harden and he clutches at his knees or at the edge of the table. And all the while he will be breathing hard like a man who has swum a distance. When he reads his poems he chants and one would think that he communed with himself save that, at the pauses, he shoots ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... of this speech upon Trent was curious. For an instant his face was flooded with the emotion of surprise. As this passed away he gradually drew himself together, as he sat, into a tense attitude. He looked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of the chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon. But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was, I had no ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... trail in this bunch o' beef cattle, smooth an' contented an' with every man jack rollin' fat an' dimpled to the knuckles. They've had their last fuss. I'll feed 'em an' I'll work 'em from now on, an' you won't know 'em when we hit the market. Where you headin' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... ignorant girl—for Azalea was not the person to perceive or appreciate these defects. She saw her, with mute wonder, blooming out before her very eyes, from a stout, stocky, frowzy child, with coarse red cheeks and knuckles like a bootblack, into a tall, slender girl, whose oval face was as regular as a conic section, and whose movements were as swift, strong, and graceful, when she forgot herself, as those of a race-horse. There were still the ties of habit and romance between them. Azalea, whose ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... The chaos in herself amazed her. The glass showed her that she was very pale, and she wondered if such pallor was a sign of madness. "I will not go daft!" she whimpered, and began rubbing her cheeks with her knuckles to bring back the colour; and saw among the quiet reflected things the queer face, its features pulled every way ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... jaunty Juvenal of the chimney-piece delivered himself of his persuasive allocution, he took up his little groups successively from the table, held them aloft, turned them about, rapped them with his knuckles, and gazed at them lovingly, with his head on one side. They consisted each of a cat and a monkey, fantastically draped, in some preposterously sentimental conjunction. They exhibited a certain sameness of motive, and illustrated chiefly the different ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... crouched as though to spring. As quick as the gleam of a viper's tongue, Leighton's long arms shot out. Straight for the man's throat went his hands. They closed, the long, white fingers around a swarthy neck, thumbs doubled in, their knuckles sinking into the throat. Lewis felt as though it were his own eyes that started from their sockets. With a scream, he ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... brazen gauntlets, the helmet, the wooden shield with its moulded leather covering, the velvet coat emblazoned with the arms of England and France, and the empty sheath. The gauntlets were once embellished with little figures of lions on the knuckles; these have been detached by "collectors," vandals almost as ruthless as Blue Dick and his troopers, and without their excuse of mistaken religious zeal. The helmet still has its original lining of leather, showing that it was actually worn. The sword which fitted ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... have wrought in her. I doubt very much whether she ever returns to literary labor. The work itself was almost heart-breaking, but the effect upon her of the sneers and cynical insolences of the literary rough who came at her in mask and brass knuckles was to give her what I fear will be a lifelong disgust against any writing for the public, especially in any of the periodicals. I am not sorry that she should stop writing, but I am sorry that she should have been silenced in such a rude way. I doubt, too, whether the Young Astronomer will ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... long remain inactive. He was rapidly seized with a violent desire to do something to help, which manifested itself in insane attempts to assist everybody at once. At last, after having taken all the skin off his knuckles in attempting to hammer in nails in aid of the carpenter, and then nearly tumbling over a fairy housemaid, whose broom he was offering to carry, he gave it up as a bad job, and stood aside with his friend ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... strange intruder was a woman, and that the dress she wore was of silk. Further, I could tell that when she reached the hearth she knelt before the empty fireplace, not for warmth, but as if seeking something. I could hear what seemed a faint irresolute tapping with the knuckles; then just as, once more, the wind fell into a moan without, there came a sudden and fearful noise, which roused us out of our stupor and filled the place ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... lunched and young Brodrick and I dined together on board the Triad with the hospitable Vice-Admiral. We were all very cheery at the happy turn of our fortunes; outwardly, that is to say, for there was a skeleton at the feast who kept tap, tap, tapping on the mahogany with his bony knuckles; tap, tap, tap; the gunfire at Helles was insistent, warning us that the Turks had not yet "taken their licking." But when I get back, although there is nothing in from Hunter-Weston there is an officer from Anzac who has just given me the complete story of Birdwood's demonstration on the 28th. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... polished that you are quite sure it must have been brought up in some distinguished family. The scent of old lavender and spiced rose leaves, and a stick or two of white orris root, haunt this relic: my lady's laces must be kept fresh, and so must my lady's long white mitts—they reach from her dainty knuckles quite to her elbow. And so must her cobwebbed silk stockings and the filmy kerchief she ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... came down reluctantly, snow-burned, snow-estranged, to the house in the hollow, between the knuckles of the mountain tops. He saw its lights shining yellow, and he held back, wishing he need not go in, to confront those people, to hear the turmoil of voices and to feel the confusion of other presences. He was isolated as if there were a vacuum round his heart, or a sheath ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... as he spoke his companion flushed. A wave of warm colour surged over her face and bare neck and receded again, leaving her very pale. Her hands closed over the book lying in her lap, as if glad to hold on to something, and their knuckles were white against ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... about you, your honor? I have been trying to strike a light for the last half-hour till the tinder box is full of water, and I have knocked all the skin off my knuckles." ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... Shorty appeared at the Elkhorn. From his bleeding knuckles and the skin off one cheek, it was evident that he had given Stine and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... scrub, at the reeking tub, for eighteen hours at a stretch, perchance, Till our bowed backs ache, and our knuckles smart, and the lights through the steam like spectres dance; Ankle-deep in the watery sludge, where the tile is loose or the drainage blocked! Oh, I haven't a doubt that the dainty dames—if they only ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... alive and a sort of pigsty in which they could rest at night. Often they were so tired that they fell asleep at their job. To keep them awake a foreman with a whip made the rounds and beat them on the knuckles when it was necessary to bring them back to their duties. Of course, under these circumstances thousands of little children died. This was regrettable and the employers, who after all were human beings and not without a heart, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... she stopped, appalled. The door did not open, the steps did not cross her threshold. Instead, knuckles ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... at his side. Without changing his attitude he rapped with his knuckles gently twice upon the boards of the stair. She turned towards him with a gasp of the breath. He rapped again twice, fearful lest she should speak to him. She understood that he had given her the signal to go. She turned on her heel and slipped back ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... herself toppling along on tiptoe. We paused at a door near the head of the great staircase, and L'Amour knocked timidly with her rheumatic knuckles. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... a dye, a play called cockal. (So also in Rider.) Hucklebones and knucklebones are syn.: but the latter is modern and liable to give a false idea, besides being tautological. It has nothing to do with the knuckles and derives from the German "Knochel" (dialectically ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... come to Ivy from the great, gay world a vague rumor, that, instead of knocking at a door, like a Christian, with your own good knuckles, for such case made and provided, modern fashion had introduced "the ringing and the dinging of the bells." This vague rumor found a local habitation, when Mr. Clerron came down upon the village and established himself, his men and women and horses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... inordinately vain of her hands, and says her husband married her for their sake, which I can quite believe. I am glad they are on her and not on Minora, for if Minora had had them I should have been annoyed. Minora's are bony, with chilly-looking knuckles, ignored nails, and too much wrist. I feel very well disposed towards her when my eye falls on them. She put one forward now, evidently thinking it would be ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... people began their film with a showing of the 'mountains which jutted out into the ocean and suggested roughly the five knuckles of a giant's hand clenched and lying flat upon the surface of the water.' That formation of the sea wall is just outside of Santiago. 'The waves tunnelled their way easily enough until they ran up against those five mountains and then they had to fall back.' How natural ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... sunder with Tantalus' torment.' Another time he protested that he must disguise himself as a boatman, and just catch a sight of the Queen, or else his heart would break. He drew his dagger on his keeper, Sir George Carew, and broke the knuckles of Sir Arthur Gorges, because he said they were restraining him from the sight of his Mistress. He proposed to Lord Howard of Effingham at the close of a business letter, that he should be thrown to feed the lions, 'to save labour,' as the Queen was still so cruel. Sir Arthur Gorges ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... clatter of glasses, the rapping of knuckles, the bravos, and hears, are nothing more on all similar occasions than the reverberations of such an appeal. Captain W—— ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... single note of music. It was all very flat, very uninteresting. But Louis led the way through a swing door to a staircase, and then, pushing his way through some curtains, along a short passage to another door, against which he softly knocked with his knuckles. It was opened at once, and a commissionnaire stood gazing stolidly out at us, a commissionnaire in the usual sort of uniform, but one of the most powerful-looking men whom I had ever seen in ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... next depression April; and so on to the small knuckle, which stands for July. Then go back to the forefinger for August, and proceed as before until all the months are named. It will be found that all the short ones fall between the fingers, while the knuckles stand for the ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... appreciable moment it occurred to me that perhaps I'd better climb down. I did so, very slowly and stiffly, making the sad mistake of jumping down from the height of the step. How that did injure my feelings! The only catastrophe I can remember comparable to it was when a teacher rapped my knuckles with a ruler after I had been making snowballs bare handed. My benumbed faculties next swung around to the proposition of proceeding up an interminable gravel walk—(it is twenty-five feet long!) to a forbidding flight of stairs—(porch steps—five of them!) I ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the Swede's chief runner, his number one bouncer, as ugly a brute as ever thumped a drunken sailor. The bully objected, with a deal of obscene threatening, to my fancied raiding of his property. We had it out with bare knuckles in the Swede's big back room, with all the little tables pushed against the wall to make fighting space, and the toughest crowd in San Francisco standing by to see fair play. I was the younger, and as hard as nails, he was soft and rotten with evil living, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... days. He says she fetched th' pianny two or three wallops that made Cassidy jump out iv his chair, an' Cassidy has charge iv th' steam whistle at th' quarry at that. She wint at it as though she had a gredge at it. First 'twas wan hand an' thin th' other, thin both hands, knuckles down; an' it looked, says Slavin, as if she was goin' to leap into th' middle iv it with both feet, whin Donahue jumps up. 'Hol' on!' he says. 'That's not a rented pianny, ye daft girl,' he says. 'Why, pap-pah,' says Molly, 'what ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... right to think so. That was one reason, but not the only one. I have heard it said that that play enlarges the knuckles, and I don't choose to have these little hands of mine robbed of their beauty," he added, playfully raising ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... wrote to Bob. He had been reading his contract over. There had come to him a strong temptation to quit. Several fellows had gotten bruised in practice. Jimmy Blackwell had the skin taken off his knuckles when someone stepped on his hand; Harry Knowlton got a clip over one eye; Tom Barley had his wind knocked out. It would be but a matter of time before something happened to him. In the letter to Bob, he wrote: "I don't know why I'm ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... drumming with her knuckles on the floor in the corridor. She says that it is against her principles to knock on the door when it has an engaged sign on it. Shall I ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... that the hand was ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street drawing-room. All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on his sleeve, and he said to himself: "If it were only to see her hand again I should have ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... attack on Bloody Run, when the brook that afterward bore this name turned red with the blood of soldiers. People saw it in the smoky streets when the city was burned in 1805, and on the morning of Hull's surrender it was found grinning in the fog. It rubbed its bony knuckles expectantly when David Fisher paddled across the strait to see his love, Soulange Gaudet, in the only boat he could find—a wheel-barrow, namely—but was sobered when David made a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... you will, may be we shall live long enough to sell our little place here, and go into the woods again, and clear up a farm. It is a hard sort of work; but then it stoutens the knees, and knits the knuckles, and gives a capable soul, and a ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... her as she read. Ringing salvos of laughter greeted the play and stirred the sleigh-bells on the startled horses beyond the door. The programme over, somebody called for Squire Town, a local pettifogger, who flung his soul and body into every cause. He often sored his knuckles on the court table and racked his frame with the violence of his rhetoric. He had a stock of impassioned remarks ready for ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... night. I noticed that their reach of arm was immense, and that when they went from one tree to another, they squattered across the open ground in a most inelegant style, dragging their long arms with the knuckles downwards. I should think the big male and female were over six feet each. The others would be from four to five. I put out my hand and laid it on Wiki's gun to prevent him from firing, and he, thinking I was going to fire, gripped ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... heard a gentle tap-tap inside. "What can that be?" said Pandora, raising her head; and again came the tap, tap. It sounded like the knuckles of a tiny hand knocking lightly on the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... ye—fire, billets, and all—I've seen nothing like to warm my bare nose and knuckles since we left Halton, two long days agone. Verily, to my thinking, there's as much timber burnt there daily as ye would pile here for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... provocation, offense; indignity &c (insult) 929; grudge, crow to pluck, bone to pick, sore subject, casus belli [Lat.]; ill turn, outrage. Furies, Eumenides. buffet, slap in the face, box on the ear, rap on the knuckles. V. resent, take amiss, take ill, take to heart, take offense, take umbrage, take huff, take exception; take in ill part, take in bad part, take in dudgeon; ne pas entendre raillerie [Fr.]; breathe revenge, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... kill the boy and seize the box!" His hand was outstretched to take the box from the table, when the same stick which had extinguished the lights gave his knuckles such a rap that he uttered a yell of pain. Though the lights were extinguished, through the windows the faint starlight dimly illuminated the scene. Charles Stevens saw the outline of his uncle, who seized the box and hurried with it ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... not a trace of embarrassment or of suspicion. The little dynamo with the prodigious head and the baby mouth and the intense, deepset, restless eyes stood by his chair, and with knuckles on the table much of the time, talked down into the flowers directly in front of him. He spoke sometimes in a husky, low voice, now and again in a smothered shriek, again in a tragic whisper. He was in a small gathering and he seemed to know that ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... house, trying to lessen his weight as if he were walking on thin ice; and the old house cracked its knuckles, but his foot-fall made not a sound. She placed a chair for him and sat down with her hands in her lap, and how expressive they were, small and thin, but shapely. She was pale and neat in a black gown. To him she had never looked so frail, and her eyes had never appeared so deeply blue, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... visited Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to Thrushcross Grange. On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. As I knocked for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar- faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn, and shouted ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... tattooed, not only with the broad band above and below the mouth, but with a band across the knuckles, succeeded by an elaborate pattern on the back of the hand, and a series of bracelets extending to the elbow. The process of disfigurement begins at the age of five, when some of the sufferers are yet unweaned. I ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... especially to novels. In the present instance I should say that the proceeding was dangerous but effective—perhaps not entirely in the way in which it was intended to be so. "Honest Janin,"[356] as Thackeray (who had deservedly rapped his knuckles earlier for a certain mixture of ignorance and impudence) called him later, was in his degree almost as "clever" a man as young Dumas; but his kind was different, and it did involve the derogatory connotation of cleverness. It is enough to say of the present subject ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... touched the panel with the mailed knuckles of his right hand, and a low voice from ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the punt and rested her chin upon the knuckles of her shapely hands. This kind of talk was little to her liking. She had often doubted Willy Forrest, but had never questioned his title to the ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... fool, Langdon!" Duncan exclaimed hotly, after that pause; and he clenched his hands until his knuckles turned white under the strain, half-raising the right one, until it seemed as if he intended to strike a blow with it. But Patricia's father gave no heed to the gesture. Instead, he dropped back upon his chair, and laughed aloud, ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... Suzanna's hands were locked till they showed white at the knuckles. "If you don't cut the goods away the green petticoat won't gleam through the lace! You see, it's a rose dress and a rose has shining ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... holes, three or five, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, which was called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and in knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw your toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment with the savage pluck of so many little Sioux. ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... you... utterly... Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song You might have been.... 'Twas a great night... With never a waste look over a shoulder Curved to the crook of the wind... And a great word we threw For memory to play knuckles with... A word the waters of the world have washed, Leaving it stark and without smell... A world that ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... I says, and not a bit did I know what I was talking about. Captain Clyde rapped the table with his knuckles. ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... Nothing!" cried McNally with comical disgust. "The matter's with us." He rapped his knuckles on his head. "Solid, all the way through!" said he. "Why, save from nat'ral born human imbelicity, should horses be living like gentlemen while gentlemen ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... stood upright and hit straight, with the result that he hurt his knuckles very much on his opponent's skull, without seeming to disturb the latter to any great extent. In the process he received one of the windmill swings on the left ear. The crowd, strong pro-Billites, raised ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... steps had the stair? She wished she knew. No need! The colossal trampling announced the lessening distance in an increasing volume of sound not to be misunderstood. It turned the curve; it reached the landing; it advanced—slowly—down the hall; it paused before her door. Then knuckles of iron shook the frail panels. Her nerveless tongue gave no invitation. The knocking became more imperious; the very walls vibrated. The handle turned, swiftly and firmly. With a wild instinctive movement she flung herself into the ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... me how the gang waylay the unwary traveller, enter into conversation with him, and have him suddenly seized, when the superior throws his own linen girdle round the victim's neck and strangles him, pressing the knuckles against the spine. Taking off his own, he passed it round my arm, and showed me the turn as coolly as a sailor once taught me the hangman's knot. The Thug is of any caste, and from any part of India. The ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... her hands on the table and Patricia could see that the fingers were twisted together until the knuckles showed white. ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... an Irishman, which made me feel that these gaudy colours I have burst into are not so famous as I supposed; and on the eighth day I find myself insulted in twenty-seven places by an angry mosquito, whom in the small hours of the morning I had occasion to rap over the knuckles and turn out of my billet. And I've got a nasty cold, and nobody loves me or cleans my buttons, and if I want to go anywhere there are no more motor cars and they make me pay a penny for the tram, and my wife doesn't think I'm a hero any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... your hand." Featherstone it was, and he pressed his lips against the knuckles of the sometime King; but the words were spoken coldly, like words of duty. Lost in amazement at this unusual scene, Miss Windsor had failed to observe a young man follow soberly and even sadly in the footsteps of the other two and stand aloof, though expectantly. Her eyes and those of the ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... sheriff spoke the last word almost in a scream, and he beat Wambush's knuckles so furiously that the knife ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... Miss Cairns, unwilling to remain, and unable to withdraw, clasped her hands unhappily and stared at the floor. Livingstone exclaimed in indignant protest. Hanley moved a step nearer and, to emphasize what he said, tapped his knuckles on the desk. With the air of one confident of his advantage, he spoke slowly ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... his bleeding knuckles. "I feel as if I had tasted blood, as they say, and I'm ready to ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... a job as a dog anywhere. He spent all his time at this kind of thing. In his spare time at the office, he used to lie on his stomach on the floor and see if he could lift himself up with his knuckles. If he could, then he tried some other way until he found one that he couldn't do. Then he would spend the rest of his lunch hour on his ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... visitor was waiting. He proved to be a spare, stooping man, with lips so thin and white as to be almost invisible. His eyes, which he hardly raised from the floor, were bright with the fire of fever, and his shaking hands, one of which held a cap, concealing the other, were narrow, and the knuckles stood out with ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... previously was as nothing. These stupendous waves of sound pounded us until it seemed as if we must disintegrate beneath them. Wails and screams engulfed us. Mrs. Drayle dropped to her knees beside her husband. The doctor seized my arm and I saw the knuckles of his hand turn white with the pressure of his grip, yet I felt nothing but the awful vibrations that drummed like riveting machines upon and through my nerves and body. It was not an attack upon the ears alone; it crashed upon ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... have hauled and jammed and hopped and wedged ourselves through a mile or more of vertical ascent. Whenever I recall that time, there comes into my head the heavy clank of our golden chains that followed every movement. Very soon my knuckles and knees were raw, and I had a bruise on one cheek. After a time the first violence of our efforts diminished, and our movements became more deliberate and less painful. The noise of the pursuing Selenites had died away ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Holland a good while ago, and died when their time came. Some of them may have had fine equipages and postilions, but the most of them were sure only of footmen. My father started in life belonging to the aristocracy of hard knuckles and homespun, but had this high honour that no one could despise: he was the son of a father who loved God and kept His commandments. Two eyes, two hands, and two feet were the capital ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
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