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More "Sleight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inconsistency is not a peculiar art of his own, I dare say. Even in him it was probably quite unconscious, well as he was aware of most of the refinements of his craft; and perhaps it is only a sleight of hand that might come naturally to any good story-teller. But it is interesting to follow Flaubert's method to the very end, for it holds out so consummately; and I think it is possible to define it here. I should say, then, that ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... thrown into the river. Slight rain began to fall, and the scene was brought to a dramatic conclusion by the exhausted chief being ignominiously carried away on the back of a strong young man. At the house another stone was produced by the same sleight-of-hand, but more strenuous measures had to be adopted in order to remedy the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... about his skill at sleight-of-hand tricks," said the man in spectacles, seriously. "And we wouldn't hold his croquet habits agin him. Some men drink, some gamble, some do worse; every man has his weakness, and croquet may be his. What we want to know is this: can ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... of huge extent, which includes that particular proposition, without ever reflecting that it includes a great deal more. The fatal facility with which Mr. Gladstone multiplies expressions stately and sonorous, but of indeterminate meaning, eminently qualifies him to practise this sleight on himself and on his readers. He lays down broad general doctrines about power, when the only power of which he is thinking is the power of governments, and about conjoint action when the only conjoint action of which he ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Fair of St. Germain, "which lasts from Candlemas to the Monday before Easter;" and Fassmann one day took a walk of contemplation through the same. Much noise, gesticulation, little meaning. Show-booths, temporary theatres, merry-andrews, sleight-of-hand men; and a vast public, drinking, dancing, gambling, flirting, as its wont is. Nothing new for us there; new only that it all lies five generations from us now. Did "the Old Pretender," who was then in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... their slumber, they saw every falling crumb, they knew where we had hung our fish, and were ready as we turned our backs to make away with it. It was impossible to leave anything eatable for a single instant. Nothing but the sleight of hand of a conjurer could equal the ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... de cause uv 'em?" asked the Persimmon, suddenly bringing his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... slang, like a thorough "glutton," and honestly enjoys a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three- in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities by which he lives. Athelred, on the other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever knew to shine in conversation. You may see him sometimes wrestle ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were many entertainments, such as races, walking matches, quoits, and like games. Commander J. V. Bleecker, en route to take charge of the Mercedes reclaimed in Manila Bay, was a masterly artist in sleight-of-hand performances, and contributed ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... at all. He had taken these bonds to substitute for others in different brokers' offices, and it so happened that there were no similar securities in the building; thus the deficiency could not be covered up even by John's expert sleight of hand. Of course, if there had been other bonds of the same kind in another vault it would have been a simple matter to substitute them. But there were not. So John pushed the remaining one hundred and fifty bonds into a ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... merchandise haue bene comprised within some few yeeres or at least wise haue not bene of any long continuance, let vs now withdraw our selues from our affaires in Russia, and ascending somewhat higher, let vs take a sleight suruey of our traffiques and negotiations in former ages. First therefore the reader may haue recourse vnto the 137 page [Footnote: This refers to the original edition] of this Volume & there with great delight and admiration, consider out of the iudicial Historiographer Cornelius Tacitus, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... laid his head down upon the desk before him, and remained in that position for some time. At length without at all raising it he began to play his knuckles against the lid, with a degree of alacrity which would not have disgraced the activity of a sleight-of-hand man. He at last rose, drew a long breath, and wore a very smiling face; but this was not all—O sanctity! O religion! Instead of going to his Bible, as one would imagine he ought to have done, instead of even taking up a psalm-book, and indulging in a spiritual song, he absolutely ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the cunning tradesmen, and all the bad money they had was tendered in payment among the good, that by ignorance or oversight some might possibly be made to pass; and as these took it, so they were not wanting again in all the artifice and sleight of hand they were masters of, to put it off again; so that, in short, people were made bites and cheats to one another in all their business; and if you went but to buy a pair of gloves, or stockings, or ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... performed the sleight-of-hand trick, and again he was non-committal—a second shrug alone expressing his views, the performance ending by his pushing a wooden chair in the direction of Harry, who was still ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... But, as we may see by early drawings done as preliminary studies for engravings, the method of his pen strokes had changed less than the character of the forms they rendered; the conception of the design as a whole had advanced more rapidly than the skill and sleight of hand which expressed it. The engraver has by 1511 become capable of expressing a greater variety of speed in the stroke, makes it taper more finely, and can follow the tongue-like lap and flicker as the pen rises and dips again before leaving ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... specimen of the high-class "gentleman swindler." He was adept at sleight of hand tricks, and no bolder or more ruthless crook ever lived. He was received in the best society, and was a member of some of the most exclusive clubs. On many of his depredatory expeditions he had not hesitated to use the knife ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... reins, and, by some sleight-of-hand, the jaded horse which drew the botte was suddenly transformed into a fine Roman steed, the botte itself into a light carriage as swift as the Tuscan carrozzelle, and the whole disappeared in a cross street, while Peppino said ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... with quick, nervous gestures. "You'll be in your grave before you know it. You can't stand this." He shot out his hand and produced his watch with the celerity of a sleight-of-hand performer. "Let me ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... have several, in case of emergencies. For one thing, we could easily be street showmen. You can do fancy shooting and I can do sleight-of-hand tricks ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... about to put his helm on his head; and now Skarphedinn bore down on them, and hews at Thrain with his axe, "the ogress of war," and smote him on the head, and clove him down to the teeth, so that his jaw-teeth fell out on the ice. This feat was done with such a quick sleight that no one could get a blow at him; he glided away from them at once at full speed. Tjorvi, indeed, threw his shield before him on the ice, but he leapt over it, and still kept his feet, and slid quite to the end ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... was as large as the valley of Glencoe. Yet Wordsworth loved intensely all the more beautiful aspects of the country, and of country-life. No angler and no gardener, indeed,—too severely and proudly meditative for any such sleight-of-hand. The only great weight which he ever lifted, I suspect, was one which he carried with him always,—the immense dignity of his poetic priesthood. His home and its surroundings were fairly typical of his tastes: a cottage, (so called,) ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... obtain'd the prize, Both by the judgment of the English eyes, And of some sent from that sweet enemy France; Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance; Townfolks my strength; a daintier judge applies His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise; Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; Others, because of both sides I do take My blood from them who did excel in this, Think nature me a man of arms did make. How far they shot awry! the true cause is, Stella look'd on, and from her ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... individual, the contingent, the particular, he ascends, by induction, from the particular to the general; and then, by a strange paralogism, "the universal" is confounded with "the general" or, by a species of logical sleight-of-hand, the general is transmuted into the universal. Thus "induction is the pathway from particulars to universals."[678] But how universal and necessary principles can be obtained by a generalization of limited experiences is not explained by Aristotle. The experiences ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... one did come in, and I remarked I had been there all the evening and had not played. I had an invitation to play with him, which ended, by a little sleight of hand, in my favour; and on that I had calculated as much as on any good fortune I might meet. The person I played with observed it not, and, when we left off playing, I had some six or seven pounds in pocket. This, to me, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Cizard iust To such a Favorites glasse: What Cannon is there That does command my Rapier from my hip To dangle't in my hand, or to go tip toe Before the streete be foule? Either I am The fore-horse in the Teame, or I am none That draw i'th sequent trace: these poore sleight sores Neede not a plantin; That which rips ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... terrible Argantes met, and glad of an opportunity to settle their quarrel, withdrew to a glade in the forest. Tancred, stung by the taunts of cowardice for his former failure to keep his appointment, fought bitterly. He had not the sheer strength of his antagonist, but his sleight at last overcame, and Argantes fell. Weakened by pain and loss of blood, Tancred fell senseless, and was thus found by Erminia, who had met Vafrino the spy in the camp of the Egyptians and had fled with him. They revived Tancred, and carried him home ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... his berth, pitched into his clothes, slopped his face and hands, raked his hair, and tumbled on deck. In other words, by sleight of hand and foot, he made a sea-toilet and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Conservatives were in their hearts as angry as were their opponents. What was to be gained but the poor interval of three months? There were clever men who suggested that Mr. Daubeny had a scheme in his head—some sharp trick of political conjuring, some "hocus-pocus presto" sleight of hand, by which he might be able to retain power, let the elections go as they would. But, if so, he certainly did not make his scheme known to his ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... they are exercises in craft rather than genuine inspirations. Mrs Hawksbee stands for nothing in Mr Kipling's achievement save only for his power to create an illusion of reality and enthusiasm by sheer finish of style. She is not a creation. She is only the best possible example of the clever sleight-of-hand of an accomplished artificer. She is in literary fiction cousin to the witty, flirtatious ladies of the modern English theatre. Her conversation is delightful, but it belongs to nobody. It does not even belong to her author. Mrs Hawksbee talks as all ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... to your future wife for so much cash down to the Church. If your inamorata were your first cousin, you could remove her several degrees with five hundred dollars, and make her no relation at all for a little more. Such little sleight-of-hand performances are as nothing to a well-trained clergyman. Slip a check into one hand, and a request to marry your aunt into the other, let a clergyman shake them up in the coffers of the Church, and when one comes out gold, the other will appear as a blushing bride not even related ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... the University barge in great style, just as the eight was preparing to start; and though he was not able to "feather his oars with skill and dexterity," like the jolly young waterman in the song, yet his sleight-of-hand performances with them proved not only a source of great satisfaction to the crews on the river, but also to the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... under, according to the taste of the rider; or shoes without stockings, or stockings without shoes, as weight may be required or rejected. They sit well forward on to the withers of the horses; do not seem over steady in their saddles, but cling like monkeys, their whole sleight-of-hand appears to consist of a dead pull; and their mode of running, with their time for lying back or making play, seems to be entirely governed by their masters, who, on a mile-course, they must frequently pass in heats, and who appear ever on ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... did of landscape-painting. What do I care for the birds pecking at Zeuxis's grapes, or Zeuxis himself trying to draw back Parrhasius's curtain? Imitative art is the lowest trickery. There are twenty men in England now capable of the same sleight of hand; and yet these are recorded as the very highest triumphs of ancient art by the only men who have handed down to us any ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... in her actions. With all the seeming of cutting a slice from the loaf for him, she put loaf and slice back in the bread box and conveyed to him one of her own two slices. She believed she had deceived him, but he had noted her sleight-of-hand. Nevertheless, he took the bread shamelessly. He had a philosophy that his mother, because of her chronic sickliness, was not much ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... it is open, and newspapers and letters in rich profusion meet our gaze; with a quick sleight the captain distributes them, sends a half dozen to their owners in the forecastle by the steward, and then ensues a silence broken only by the snapping of seals, and the rattling of paper. Suddenly Mr. Stewart uttered ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... love Ishi as a brother, and he looked upon me as one of his people. He called me Ku wi, or Medicine Man; more, perhaps, because I could perform little sleight of hand tricks, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... had to bring the ship to, to bring them in, and it was then as much as eight or ten men could do; so that one would expect, when an Indian had struck one of these fish, from his light float, it would easily run away with the man and the bark-log; but they have some sleight in their way of management, by which the strength and struggling of these fish are all in vain. There are hardly any birds to be seen in this country ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... spoke; "By sleight of sword we may not win, But scuffle 'mid uncleanly smoke Of arquebus and culverin. Honour is lost, and none may tell Who paid good ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... room for deception, though many of the tricks performed by Indian jugglers are really the result of clever sleight-of-hand." ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... refreshment-room, and the passengers had to purchase tickets from him before they could enjoy their ride. The boy was also a clever conjuror, and, arrayed in a brown wig and a long white robe, used to cause no little wonder to his audience by his sleight-of-hand. With the assistance of various members of the family and the village carpenter, he made a troupe of marionettes and a small theatre for them to act in. He wrote all the plays himself the most popular being "The Tragedy of King John"—and he was very clever at manipulating ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... kind of wickedness, such as I never read of in any books of theology wherein is much to be learned. I have spoken with some, however, knights and men of this world, who deemed that he did but beguile our eyes by craft and sleight-of-hand. ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... rules of longevity by taking a second cigar after dinner, now pushed the box across the desk to his son. Jack said that he would "roll one"; he did not care to smoke much. He produced a small package of flake tobacco and a packet of rice paper and with a deftness that was like sleight of hand made a cigarette without spilling a single flake. He had not always chosen the "makings" in place of private stock Havanas, but it seemed to suit his ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... and when she could, without danger of being observed from the road, assisted, though in a very dainty, amateur way. But Malcom did not aim to put in as many hours as possible, but seemed to do everything with a sleight of hand that made his visits appear too brief, even though she had to pay for them. As a refuge from long idle hours, she would often go up to Malcom's little place, and watch him and his assistant as they deftly dealt with nature in accordance with her moods, making the most ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... service, though not small, is not perhaps the greatest she is able to perform. She is active and intelligent, perhaps, and may even aspire to the profits of some trade. What is it that makes one calling more lucrative than another? Not superior strength of shoulders or sleight of hand; not the greater quantity of brute matter that is reduced into form or set into motion. No. The difference lies in the mental powers of the artist, and the direction accidentally given ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... son of Annawan was caught, with the dove of his nest and her squab, far from his own dwelling, and among the men of thy colour. Thy race had killed or driven away the beasts of the chace; and there was nothing upon which the red archer could show the sleight of his hand and the truth of his eye. White men would give him no food, but drove him from their cabins, saying, 'You are an Indian.' At the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... as orthodox as yourself. But where you begin to draw general conclusions from your own private experience, I must beg pointedly and finally to differ. You will not have forgotten, I believe, my daring and single-handed butchery of the five secret witnesses? Nor the sleight of mind and dexterity of language with which I separated Lelio from the merchant's family? These were not virtuous actions; and yet, how am I to tell you? I was conscious of a troubled joy, a glee, a hellish gusto in my author's bosom, which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ransoms, [Sidenote: Owen Glendouer wasted the English marches.] amongst whom the lord of Baqueuille the marshall of Britaine was one. All this summer, Owen Glendouer and his adherents, robbed, burned, and destroied the countries adioining nere to the places where he hanted, and one while by sleight & guileful policie, an other while by open force, he tooke and slue manie Englishmen, brake downe certeine castels which he wan, and some he fortified and kept for his owne defense. Iohn Trenor bishop of Assaph, considering with himselfe how ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... powder being out of a man's hair and his frills rumpled. So he absented himself for an hour, and returned freshened by a plunge in the river and a puff in his wig. But, alas! he found that Mistress Betty, without quitting Mistress Fiddy's bedchamber, and by the mere sleight of hand of tying on a worked apron with vine clusters and leaves and tendrils all in purple and green floss silks, pinning a pink bow under her mob-cap, and sticking in her bosom a bunch of dewy ponceau polyanthuses, had beat him ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... white rocks in a dark sea, several little piles were left untouched. To the owners of these a number of silver pieces were tossed—tossed so deftly that we might almost say it rained silver on those regions of the table. No wizard of legerdemain ever equalled the sleight of hand with which these men pitched, reckoned, manipulated, and raked ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... fights and the robberies they related, the ladies of their acquaintance whom they praised or disparaged, the encomiums they bestowed on each other, the absent bravoes whom they named, the clever tricks they played, jumping up from supper to exhibit their sleight of hand, the picked words they used, and, finally, the figure of the host, whom all respected as their lord and father,—were I to attempt this, I should entangle myself in a maze, from which I could never extricate myself. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... (and being a dealer he is usually a genius), who had really ticketed the article thirty pounds, approaches it, removes the ticket by a little sleight-of-hand and says, "Thirty-eight guineas, Sir," without a blush (the dealer who blushes is hounded from the ring). This method of dealing is direct action of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... in friendly emulation of the others, as a pass-the-time. I improved a little in drawing easily and firing snap-shot. The art was good to know, bad to depend upon. In the beginnings it worried me as a sleight-of-hand, until I saw that it was the established code and that Daniel himself looked ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... pain, though, in ten minutes, and the first hint we had thereof was a squeal and feat of sleight of heel, in which, to all appearances, Juan stood perpendicularly upon his nose and fore-feet for half a minute, like a fleshly tripod, while his rider, or rather his late rider, rolled over and over, the centre ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... you must indure worse luck sometime, or you will never make a good Angler. But what say you now? there is a Trout now, and a good one too, if I can but hold him; and two or three turns more will tire him: Now you see he lies still, and the sleight is to land him: Reach me that Landing net: So (Sir) now he is mine own, what say you? is not ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... is divided into (a) formal and (b) informal drinking. "Formal drinking" is usually played after dinner and is more and more coming to take the place of charades, sleight-of-hand performances, magic lantern shows, "dumb crambo," et cetera, as the parlor amusement par excellence. "Formal drinking" can be played by from one to fifteen people in a house of ordinary dimensions; ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... Davis's "Gallegher" there is nothing complicated; one thing follows another in a perfectly natural way; yet there are many questions in the reader's mind as to how the little rascal will turn out, and whether he will accomplish his mission. Much more cleverness is shown by the sleight-of-hand trickster, who, unassisted and in the open, with no accessories, dupes his staring assembly, than by him who, on the stage, with the aid of mirrors, lights, machines, and a crowd of assistants, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... which this writer establishes history. Without any and against all evidence, in the license of his imagination alone, he had thrown out the suggestion that Mather attended the executions, as the ministerial comforter and counsellor of the sufferers. Then, by a sleight of hand, he transforms this "phantasy" of his own ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... word. The deceiver by stratagem leaves it to the person himself whom he is deceiving to commit the errors of understanding which at last, flowing into ONE result, suddenly change the nature of things in his eyes. We may therefore say, as nit is a sleight of hand with ideas and conceptions, so stratagem is a sleight ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... to the sensitive uneasy murmur which responded like a delicate instrument to the fluctuations of the game. Each feat and manoeuvre of Knype drew generous applause in proportion to its intention or its success, and each sleight of the Manchester Rovers, successful or not, provoked a holy disgust. The attitude of the host had ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... By almost sleight-of-hand Irene suited the deed to the word, for a cold frog of enormous size suddenly began to crawl along Rosamund's neck. Rosamund suppressed a shudder, for she would not for the world show the girl that she loathed ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... Newman tries, by cunning sleight-of-hand logic, to prove that I did not believe the accusation when I ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... the daughter of Onomaus, King of Elis: when that hard condition was proposed of death or victory [in a race], they made no account of it, but courageously for love died, till Pelops at last won her by a sleight." ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to as the most consummate master of legerdemain he had seen. Nor was he a mean authority as to this, being himself, with his tools at hand, a capital conjuror;[193] but the Frenchman scorned help, stood among the company without any sort of apparatus, and, by the mere force of sleight of hand and an astonishing memory, performed feats having no likeness to anything Dickens had ever seen done, and totally inexplicable to his most vigilant reflection. "So far as I know, a perfectly original genius, and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... body, demanded an audience of the queen, and solicited reparation. A proclamation was issued, in which three hundred pounds were offered for the discovery of the author. From this storm he was, as he relates, "secured by a sleight;" of what kind, or by whose prudence, is not known; and such was the increase of his reputation, that the Scottish "nation applied again that he ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... feats of Magic and Sleight of Hand in the Town Hall this evening, commencing at 8 o'clock. In the course of the entertainment he will amuse the audience by his wonderful exhibition of Ventriloquism, in which ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... an exclamation as he drew his hand from the straw behind him, and produced an egg. The Mexicans glanced up. Pete dug in the straw and fetched up another egg—and another. Brevoort leaned forward as though deeply interested in some sleight-of-hand trick. Egg after egg came from the abandoned nest. The Mexicans laughed. The supply of eggs seemed ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... down into his trouser-pocket, the reins in one hand, and brought up a handful of silver. He held his hand down to the coach lamp, separated some of the silver from the rest by a sort of sleight of hand—or rather sleight of fingers—and handed the fourteen shillings over ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... replied Vidal, lowering with all submission the point of his weapon—"I have already given you a proof of sleight which has alarmed even your experience—I have ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... during the coming night her couch might be carried away, the millet in going and returning might be shed upon the path. "Allah bless thee, Ho thou the Wazir!" cried the Caliph: "this device of thine is passing good and fair fall it for a sleight than which naught can be slyer and good luck to it for a proof than which naught can be better proven." Now as soon as it was even-tide, the couch was carried off as had happened every night and the grain was strown broad cast upon the path, like ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Lady Robert than to her housekeeper. But two memories of my fourth year are perfectly defined. The first is the fire which destroyed Covent Garden Theatre on the 5th of March, 1856. "During the operatic recess, Mr. Gye, the lessee of the Theatre, had sub-let it to one Anderson, a performer of sleight-of-hand feats, and so-called 'Professor.' He brought his short season to a close by an entertainment described as a 'Grand Carnival Complimentary Benefit and Dramatic Gala, to commence on Monday morning, and terminate with a bal masque on Tuesday night.' At 3 on the Wednesday morning, the ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Zoza, who was never seen to laugh. The unhappy father, who had no other comfort in life but this only daughter, left nothing untried to drive away her melancholy. So he sent for folks who walk on stilts, fellows who jump through hoops, for boxers, for conjurers, for jugglers who perform sleight-of-hand tricks, for strong men, for dancing dogs, for leaping clowns, for the donkey that drinks out of a tumbler—in short, he tried first one thing and then another to make her laugh. But all was time lost, for nothing could bring ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... shone in answer to fitful moonlight, and they presented to his imagination a strange and unfamiliar appearance. Under the sleight of the hour they were changed and towered majestically above him. The Mill slept and in the creepy stillness, the river's voice, which he had hardly heard till now, was magnified to a considerable ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... has he approached, under cover of darkness, and, one by one, relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely, and you will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying about on the ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he may find her out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg, leaving only the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him. The birds, especially the ground-builders, suffer in like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... time some of the folk from the great outside world had found their way into this fairyland, but all except one had been companions of Dorothy and had turned out to be very agreeable people. The exception I speak of was the wonderful Wizard of Oz, a sleight-of-hand performer from Omaha who went up in a balloon and was carried by a current of air to the Emerald City. His queer and puzzling tricks made the people of Oz believe him a great wizard for a time, and he ruled over them until Dorothy arrived on her first visit ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... been a music-hall singer when her husband was a sleight-of-hand artist, "The Great Malino, the Wizard of Milan." Her voice had long since left her; she had nothing of her beauty but its yellow ruins; and her life was made up of the consideration of two great grievances: first, that her ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... old Marda the cook. "Senor Juan Canito is pleased to be merry at the doors of his betters;" and she flung a copper saucepan full of not over-clean water so deftly past Juan's head, that not a drop touched him, and yet he had the appearance of having been ducked. At which bit of sleight-of-hand the whole court-yard, young and old, babies, cocks, hens, and turkeys, all set up a shout and a cackle, and dispersed to the four corners of the yard as if scattered by a volley of bird-shot. Hearing the racket, the rest of the maids came running,—Anita and Maria, the twins, women ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... that you did not prescribe cold cream for my bruised lip, instead of cayenne pepper. Beware, you base twelve ounces to the pound huckster, you gimlet-eyed seller of dog sausage, you sanded sugar idiot, you small potato three card monte sleight of hand rotton egg fiend, you villian that sells smoked sturgeon and dogfish for smoked halibut. The avenger ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... would seem, by some sleight of hand, he found the fatal shilling in his palm, and had promised to go before the nearest magistrate to be sworn in as one of his Majesty's marines the next morning. And after that he ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... smile, and in bowing to an acquaintance nearly lost a bun. He saved it by sheer sleight of hand, and noting that his companion was still intent on the shops, wondered darkly what further burdens were in store for him. He tried to quicken the pace, but Miss Hartley was ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... appear, was afraid of venturing to Paris. He knew that his sleight of hand would be too narrowly watched in the royal presence; and upon some pretence or other he delayed the journey for more than two years. Desmarets, the Minister of Finance to Louis XIV., thinking the "philosopher" dreaded foul play, twice sent him a safe conduct under the king's seal; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... these magical representations; he wrote the pieces. He had a diversity of talents; he was clever at sleight of hand. Besides the voices he imitated, he produced all sorts of unexpected things—shocks of light and darkness; spontaneous formations of figures or words, as he willed, on the partition; vanishing figures in chiaroscuro; strange things, amidst ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of her, who deemed somewhat, that his kinsman had been minded at the first to sell her to the lord of Utterbol. And Ralph thinks his game a hard one, yet deems that if he could but find out where the damsel was, he might deliver her, what by sleight, what by boldness. ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... Petersburg—"de populariser l'idee du cadastre." He talked for quite a long time, with careless self-confidence solving all difficulties, and juggling with the most weighty administrative and political questions, as a sleight-of-hand performer juggles with his balls. The expressions: "This is what I would do, if I were the government"; "You, as a clever man, will immediately agree with me"—were never absent from his tongue. Lavretzky listened coldly to Panshin's ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... should say, "Excuse me, there is no thoroughfare this way." Turning abruptly to the left, Mr Jones found himself confronted by another grave gentleman of powerful frame and resolute aspect, who, by a species of magic or sleight of hand known only to the initiated, slipped a pair of steel bracelets on Mr Jones's wrists, and finally, almost before he knew where he was, Mr Jones found himself seated in a cab with the strong gentleman by his ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the song of "Mr. Dooley," in the chorus of which the audience joined with vigor. The song is not new, but Smith's particular version, as well as his vocal rendition, was. The dwarf, who posed somewhat as a magician and sleight-of-hand man, undertook for some reason or other to attempt the great Indian box trick. Two gentlemen from the audience were invited to come on the stage to tie the performer with a rope. This was a most unfortunate move. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... parent tree? In the case of cuttings from plants it is easy to elude the difficulty by making a parade of the sharp and sudden act of separation from the parent stock, but this is only a piece of mental sleight of hand; the cutting remains as much part of its parent plant as though it had never been severed from it; it goes on profiting by the experience which it had before it was cut off, as much as though it had never ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... same game, in which, in addition to the element of chance involved in determining the numbers or positions of certain sticks or counters, there was also an opportunity for the player who was manipulating them to deceive by dexterous sleight of hand. The simplest form in which this is found is guessing in which hand a small stone or bone is held. It would hardly seem that this artless effort could be transformed into an amusing and exciting game; yet it has attracted the attention of all travellers, and ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... it, but I can possess it any moment I choose. You don't know my skill in sleight of hand; I might practise as a conjuror if I liked. Mamma says sometimes, too, that I have a harmonizing property of tongue and eye; but you never saw that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... that Mr Quilp's attention was restricted, as several other matters required his constant vigilance. Among his various eccentric habits he had a humorous one of always cheating at cards, which rendered necessary on his part, not only a close observance of the game, and a sleight-of-hand in counting and scoring, but also involved the constant correction, by looks, and frowns, and kicks under the table, of Richard Swiveller, who being bewildered by the rapidity with which his cards were told, and the rate at which the pegs travelled down the board, could not be prevented ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... manner is the merest sleight O' hand; yet therein dwells its might, For if the heavier touch intrude ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... a guard Make sure of them, and lead to camp. That done, we're free for a dark-room fight If so you say." The other laughed; "Trust me, Major, nor throw a damp. But first to try a little sleight— Sure news of Mosby ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... golden their housings, and they champ on bits of ruddy gold: for the absent Aeneas a chariot and pair of chariot horses of celestial breed, with nostrils breathing flame; of the race of those which subtle Circe bred by sleight on her father, the bastard issue of a stolen union. With these gifts and words the Aeneadae ride ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... laid aside the inky napkin which he had pulled out of his desk expecting an upset, and prepared for the worst. A note was dashed off in two minutes,—signed, sealed, addressed, in half a minute, and Mr Sudberry leaped off his stool. His hat was thrown on his head by a species of sleight of hand, and he appeared in the outer office suddenly, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... spake the champion bold of mind; And thus the Colourist rejoin'd: In truth, my Lord, I apprehend, If I by words with him contend, My case is gone; far he, by gift Of what is call'd the gab, can shift The right for wrong, with such a sleight, That right seems wrong and wrong the right; Nay, by his twisting logick make A square the form of circle take. I therefore, with submission meet, In justice do your Grace intreat To let awhile your judgment pause, That works not words may plead our cause. Let Merc'ry then to ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... by listening attentively, succeeded in getting an impression that Richard through lucky dexterity and sleight had obtained some strange hold in stocks on Mr. Harley, and now in a foolish leniency was about to let him go. This excited Mr. Fopling hugely; he put ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... when Macdonald, putting the finishing strokes to his shoe, let his hammer periodically tinkle with musical clangor on the anvil, ringing forth a tintinnabulation that chimed melodiously on the ear—a sort of anvil- chorus accompaniment to his mechanical skill. He was a real sleight-of- hand man, and the ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... is some infernal trick about this; but how do you account for it? It is beyond Bedney's sleight of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... host followed him to the check room. Unseen by Warren, Shirley inserted a handkerchief from his own pocket into the overcoat pocket of the other with a sleight-of-hand substitution, in the withdrawal of the guest's small ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... my best audience and my keenest critic at the innumerable sleight-of-hand performances that I have had the pleasure ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... funeral tears That by the gods were to Electrum turn'd), Not flint or rock, of icy cinders flam'd, Deny the force[48] of silver-falling streams. Envy enjoyeth poetry's unrest;[49] In vain I plead; well is to me a fault, And these my words seem the sleight[50] web of art, And not to have the taste of sounder truth. Let none but fools be car'd for of the wise: Knowledge' own children ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... their arms, fell upon one another with smiting, till the most part was slaughtered. And when the day broke, they looked and found no Moslem slain, but saw them all on horseback, armed and armoured; wherefore they knew that this was a sleight which had been played upon them, and Kurajan cried out to the remnant of his folk, "O sons of whores, what we had a mind to do with them, that have they done with us and their craft hath gotten the better of our cunning." And they were about to charge ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Soldier spoke; "By sleight of sword we may not win, But scuffle 'mid uncleanly smoke Of arquebus and culverin. Honour is lost, and none may tell Who paid good ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... sleight would reach An aim, consumes the worth in speech, And sets a crimson rose ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... interest was not with him. The Manchester men detested him. The church in all its denominations was on terms of cool and reciprocated indifference with one who was above all else the man of this world. The press he knew how to manage. In every art of parliamentary sleight of hand he was an expert, and he suited the temper of the times, while old maxims of government and policy were tardily expiring, and the forces of a new era were in their season ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... pulled out of his desk expecting an upset, and prepared for the worst. A note was dashed off in two minutes,—signed, sealed, addressed, in half a minute, and Mr Sudberry leaped off his stool. His hat was thrown on his head by a species of sleight of hand, and he appeared in the outer office suddenly, like a ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... her if she would care to talk to a manager about going on an "eleven weeks' circuit," as assistant to a sleight-of-hand performer. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... his chief, doing sleight-of-hand tricks with a bundle of letters which lay on his desk. 'Get on with your work, Psmith. We have ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Master of Sleight: "The deed is the righting of wrong, And the quelling a bale and a sorrow that the world hath endured o'erlong, And the winning a treasure untold, that shall make thee more than the kings; Thereof is the Helm of Aweing, the wonder of earthly things, And thereof ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely and you will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying about on the ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he may find her out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg, leaving only the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him. The birds, especially the ground-builders, suffer in like manner ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... noble sir," replied Vidal, lowering with all submission the point of his weapon—"I have already given you a proof of sleight which has alarmed even your experience—I ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... used them, many things to have helped us against such sins, and to have kept us clean and upright. "There is also a sin unto death," (I John 5:16), and he can tell how to labour, by argument and sleight of speech, to make our transgressions, not only to border upon, but to appear in the hue, shape, and figure of that, and thereto make his objection against our salvation. He often argueth thus with us, and fasteneth the weight ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Bodb suspected his daughter of lying he cast her into a "Druidic sleep," in which she revealed her wickedness.[1117] In other cases spells are cast upon persons so that they are hallucinated, or are rendered motionless, or, "by the sleight of hand of soothsayers," maidens lose their chastity without knowing it.[1118] These point to knowledge of hypnotic methods of suggestion. Or, again, a spectral army is opposed to an enemy's force ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... law, to forbid his entrance into their territories, or to turn him out after he had entered,—the right of expelling undesirable emigrants being constantly exercised, even by the United States. This amazed him. He had absolutely persuaded himself that I could, by some sleight of hand, transform him into an American citizen; that he could then at once begin attempts to reestablish the fine old Polish anarchy in Austria, Russia, and Germany; and that no one of these nations would ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... I said. "The members of the Gutenberg Club are men of brains—not children. Card tricks are hackneyed, and sleight-of-hand shows pall." ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... said the bass voice of Doctor Brown, "and until you show me the source of this 'occult' energy, I shall so contend. Animal magnetism and sleight-of-hand! What do you think, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Andromeda and Arcturus and their bright neighbours wheeling for half a summer night around a pole-star in the waters. One star or two—delicate visitants of streams—we are used to see, somewhat by a sleight of the eyes, so fine and so fleeting is that apparition. Or the southern waves may show the light—not the image—of the evening or the morning planet. But this, in a pool of the country Thames at night, is no ripple-lengthened light; it is the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... vows, Who led in either hand a Syrian spouse; And youthful Joseph, famed for self-command, Was seen, conspicuous midst his kindred band. Then stretching far my sight amid the train That hid, in countless crowds, the shaded plain, Good Hezekiah met my raptured sight, And Manoah's son, a prey to female sleight; And he, whose eye foresaw the coming flood, With mighty Nimrod nigh, a man of blood; Whose pride the heaven-defying tower design'd, But sin the rising fabric undermined. Great Maccabeus next my notice claim'd, By Love to Zion's broken laws ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... were reciters, singers and dancers; and the lower orders were tumblers, sleight-of-hand men and general entertainers. What may have been the origin of our hornpipe is illustrated in fig. 30, where the figures dance to the sound of the horn in much the same attitudes as in the modern hornpipe, with a curious resemblance to the ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... to attain to "general notions." Concentrating all his attention on the individual, the contingent, the particular, he ascends, by induction, from the particular to the general; and then, by a strange paralogism, "the universal" is confounded with "the general" or, by a species of logical sleight-of-hand, the general is transmuted into the universal. Thus "induction is the pathway from particulars to universals."[678] But how universal and necessary principles can be obtained by a generalization of limited experiences is not explained by Aristotle. The ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... trifling ceremonies (as some men count them), they are but labouring to hold our thoughts so bent and intent upon those smaller quarrels, that we may forget to distinguish betwixt evils immanent and evils imminent, and that we be not too much awake to espy their secret sleight in compassing ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... that unfamiliar place, he stayed in the bath-room, with window wide open, for half an hour before he was found. He became so expert in flying out of the door that it was a difficult matter to pass through without his company; we had to train ourselves in sleight-of-hand to outwit him. There were two ways of getting the better of him; mere suddenness was of no use,—he was much quicker than we were. One way was to go to the room on the other side of the passage, where he was sure to follow, and before ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... point I am as orthodox as yourself. But where you begin to draw general conclusions from your own private experience, I must beg pointedly and finally to differ. You will not have forgotten, I believe, my daring and single-handed butchery of the five secret witnesses? Nor the sleight of mind and dexterity of language with which I separated Lelio from the merchant's family? These were not virtuous actions; and yet, how am I to tell you? I was conscious of a troubled joy, a glee, a hellish gusto in my author's bosom, which seemed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are three methods of cheating: the first by hidden cards, the second by marked cards, the third simply by sleight of hand, this being generally used in connection with marked cards. These tricks require great skill and extreme delicacy of touch, for the marks, which are generally at the edge of the cards, are so slight as to be altogether imperceptible save to a ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... very busy with her progeny and her paraphernalia and impedimenta of various sorts—it was marvelous how she managed to gather them all together with only two hands—and she was ready also. But even in the midst of this sleight of hand performance, she did not forget her self-constituted ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... the said knife, and then a slight turn of the wrist, and presto—it disappeared. As the performer's mouth was nowhere near, what had become of the greasy mass at first puzzled me, but watching closely, for the sleight-of-hand was marvellous and the passage between knife and mouth instantaneous, I ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... beauty as well as utility, to save rather than display. In short, let us subordinate mere knowledge to the work of invigorating the will, energizing productive effort and clarifying moral vision. Let us make safe men rather than vociferous mountebanks; let us put deftness in daily labor above sleight-of-hand tricks, and common sense, well trained, above classical smatterings, which awe the multitude but butter ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... a silent judge, one whose right it is to entrap the plotters and whose glory to deceive them. Your occupation is a nightly hunting, most feared when it is not seen. You rob the robbers, and strive to circumvent the men who make a mock at all other citizens. It is only by a sort of sleight of hand that you can throw your nets around robbers; for it is easier to guess the riddles of the Sphinx than to detect the whereabouts of a flying thief. He looks round him on all sides, ready to start off at the sound of an advancing footstep, trembling at the thought of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... quoted to justify the tradition which Lincoln left behind him at the bar of Illinois. His weak as well as his strong qualities have been indicated. He never learned the technicalities, what some would call the tricks, of the profession. The sleight of plea and demurrer, the legerdemain by which justice is balked and a weak case is made to gain an unfair advantage, was too subtle and shifty for his strong and straightforward intelligence. He met these manoeuvres sufficiently well, when practiced by others, but he never could ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... periodically tinkle with musical clangor on the anvil, ringing forth a tintinnabulation that chimed melodiously on the ear—a sort of anvil- chorus accompaniment to his mechanical skill. He was a real sleight-of- hand man, and the anvil was ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... this time only be seal'd up With a Feather through his nose, that he may only see Heaven, and think whither he's going, Nay beyond-Sea Sir, we will proclaim you, you would be King Thou tender Heir apparent to a Church-Ale, Thou sleight Prince of single Sarcenet; Thou Royal Ring-tail, fit to fly at nothing But poor mens Poultry, and have every Boy Beat thee from that too with his Bread ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... when well played; *Game of Fortune*, for ladies and gentlemen. Amuses old and young; *The Album Writer's Friend*, 275 select Autograph Album Verses, in prose and verse, (new); *50 Choice Conundrums or Riddles*, with answers, (new); *13 Magical Experiments*, astonishing, including Mind Reading, Sleight of Hand Tricks, &c., Chemical Processes, Optical Illusions; *11 Parlor Games*; *Magic Music*; Order of the *Whistle and Game of* Letters. We guarantee package is worth ten times the amount we ask for it. It is the best collection of Games, etc., ever offered by any ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... Ulysses was approaching the abode of Circe he was met by Hermes, who said: "Come then, I will redeem thee from thy distress, and bring deliverance. Lo, take this herb of virtue, and go to the dwelling of Circe, that it may keep from thy head the evil day. And I will tell thee all the magic sleight of Circe. She will mix thee a potion and cast drugs into the mess; but not even so shall she be able to enchant thee; so helpful is this charmed herb that I shall give thee ... Therewith the slayer of Argos gave me the plant ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... to account for spiritual manifestations by attributing them wholly to fraud and sleight of hand on the part of the medium. But while it is true that the results of trickery have often been palmed off as genuine manifestations, there have been, also, marked exhibitions of supernatural power. The mysterious rapping ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... actions. With all the seeming of cutting a slice from the loaf for him, she put loaf and slice back in the bread box and conveyed to him one of her own two slices. She believed she had deceived him, but he had noted her sleight-of-hand. Nevertheless, he took the bread shamelessly. He had a philosophy that his mother, because of her chronic sickliness, was not much ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... hide it, but I can possess it any moment I choose. You don't know my skill in sleight of hand; I might practise as a conjuror if I liked. Mamma says sometimes, too, that I have a harmonizing property of tongue and eye; but you never saw that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... lusty for to play; And merely for their mirth and revelry, Out to the Warden eagerly they cry, That be should let them, for a merry round, Go to the mill and see their own corn ground, And each would fair and boldly lay his neck The Miller should not steal them half a peck Of corn by sleight, nor ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... detective play!" were the first words that sprang to her lips. "Well?" As she faced around her eyes glittered in the lantern's rays. "Well, have you any other little tricks to show me? Are you a sleight-of-hand artist, too, Lanny? Are you going to take a machine gun out ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... A scholar loveth a widow lady, who, being enamoured of another, causeth him spend one winter's night in the snow awaiting her, and he after contriveth, by his sleight, to have her abide naked, all one mid-July day, on the summit of a tower, exposed to flies and gads and ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to bet, sometimes independently, sometimes in partnership with, the gentlemanly Smith. He was borne on by the excitement of varying fortune, a varying fortune absolutely under control of the dealer, whose sleight-of-hand was perfect. And the varying fortune had an unvarying tendency in the long run—to put three stakes out Of five into the pockets of the gamblers, who found the little game very interesting ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... he answered her. "It's a confounded fine professional job. It takes more than sleight of hand—it takes genius, ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... maws. But here and there, like white rocks in a dark sea, several little piles were left untouched. To the owners of these a number of silver pieces were tossed—tossed so deftly that we might almost say it rained silver on those regions of the table. No wizard of legerdemain ever equalled the sleight of hand with which these men pitched, reckoned, manipulated, and ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... agreed on, the king acquainted his royal consort and the whole court that the great sleight-of-hand genius had discovered himself, and soon, in a full assembly, his majesty proceeded to question him, and lay on him ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... with impunity," the Scotch lords, in a body, demanded an audience of the queen, and solicited reparation. A proclamation was issued, in which three hundred pounds were offered for the discovery of the author. From this storm he was, as he relates, "secured by a sleight;" of what kind, or by whose prudence, is not known; and such was the increase of his reputation, that the Scottish "nation applied again that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... was twelve yards away. Ranse took one of Curly's ankles and dragged him like a sack of potatoes to the brink. Then with the strength and sleight of a hammer-throw he hurled the offending member of society ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... "Excuse me, there is no thoroughfare this way." Turning abruptly to the left, Mr Jones found himself confronted by another grave gentleman of powerful frame and resolute aspect, who, by a species of magic or sleight of hand known only to the initiated, slipped a pair of steel bracelets on Mr Jones's wrists, and finally, almost before he knew where he was, Mr Jones found himself seated in a cab with the strong gentleman ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... to begin, let us begin right. I have not much sympathy with finical, fussy gardening. One of the chief fascinations of gardening is the endless field it affords for skilful sleight of hand, short-cuts, unconventional methods, and experiments. The true gardener soon ceases to be a man of rules, and becomes one of strategy, of expedients. He is prompt to act at the right moment. Like the artist, he is ever seeking and acting ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... was one of those four fountains rare, Of those in France produced by Merlin's sleight, Encompassed round about with marble fair, Shining and polished, and than milk more white. There in the stones choice figures chiseled were, By that magician's god-like labour dight; Some voice was wanting, these you might have thought ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... suthin' to tell ye. The fact is Sleight wants to buy the Pontiac out and out just ez she stands with the two fifty ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... gentleman whom you have so graciously permitted me to bring to your house. This is Phadrig the Adept, as he is known in his own ancient land of Egypt, a worker of wonders which really are wonders, and not mere sleight-of-hand conjuring tricks. He has been good enough to accompany me in order to convince the learned of the West that the Immemorial East could still teach ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... they fought, he and she, a sore fight, yet sorer than the first. Bartus right soon found himself unable to cope with her might and would have sought safety in flight, but of the greatness of her prowess could not avail unto this sleight; for, as often as he turned to flee, she drave after him and still clave to him and pressed him hard, till presently she smote him with the sword in his throat, that it issued gleaming from his nape, and sent him after his brother. Then she wheeled about in the mid-field and plain where cut ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... believe that his religious vows did not allow him to handle animals—openly—and so he would beckon Roy into the darkness of the temple with a most mysterious air, and would extract all sorts of things from his sleeves just like a sleight-of-hand performer. He was a rich man when ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... of sliced bread at intervals up the table, and saucers containing butter and jam. The stewards came to each person with an enormous pair of pots and, murmuring "tea or coffee?" poured something by sleight-of-hand ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the water in bewilderment, as if her senses were the victim of some sleight of hand. Not a speck or spot resembling a man's head or face showed anywhere. By this time she was alarmed, and her alarm intensified when she perceived a little beyond the scene of her husband's bathing a small area of water, the quality of whose surface ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... transgression and injury, under one procedure, which is—summary; as, from the character of the judges and executioners, into whose hands the sinner has fallen, you would expect; sufficiently prankish too. With one sleight of their magical hand they turn the impoverished heiress of ill-possessed acres forth upon the highway, doomed to earn, with strenuous manual industry, her livelihood; until, from the winnings of her handicraft, she is moreover able to make good, as far as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... sit all day with their heads out at the orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them with food from morning to night. For a time the young are fed on the wing by their parents; but the feat is done by so quick and almost imperceptible a sleight, that a person must have attended very exactly to their motions before he would be able to perceive it. As soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, the dams immediately turn their thoughts to the business of a second brood: while the first flight, shaken off and rejected by ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... into an old wound or between the skin and the flesh. It was to counteract the influence of the fire-eating marabouts that the French government sent over Robert Houdin, the ingenious mechanician, but though he eclipsed their wonders by tricks of electricity and sleight, he has left but a lame explanation of the "juggleries" of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the smile, and in bowing to an acquaintance nearly lost a bun. He saved it by sheer sleight of hand, and noting that his companion was still intent on the shops, wondered darkly what further burdens were in store for him. He tried to quicken the pace, but Miss Hartley was ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... out for Rome. The biographies are in agreement as to their number; they were twelve, including Francis; but the moment they undertake to give a name to each one of them difficulties begin to arise, and it is only by some exegetical sleight of hand that they can claim to have reconciled the various documents. The table given below[4] briefly shows these difficulties. The question took on some importance when in the fourteenth century ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... ascendant Virgo, his descendant Pisces, and his sinister aspect Taurus. Mars' house is Aries-Scorpio, his ascendant Capricorn, his descendant Cancer and his sinister aspect Libra." Now when the astronomer saw her acuteness and comprehensive learning and heard her fair answers, he bethought him for a sleight to confound her before the Commander of the Faithful, and said to her, "O damsel, tell me, will rain fall this month?" At this she bowed her head and pondered so long, that the Caliph thought her at a loss for an answer and the astronomer said to her, "Why dost thou ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... was the admiration of the whole mill staff. If a man but held up his plate as a slight indication that he was ready for more, the host could flip him a slice of beef or pork with the dexterity of a sleight-of-hand magician. At his signals, "Here, Bob, mon!" "Hi, Peter, lad!" "Look oot, Sam!" away flew each man's portion, hitting his plate with unerring precision. He had never been known to miss anybody in his life, not even Miss Euphemia, away at the ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... smiling right into his blue eyes. "The Tom Dorgan I mentioned is a sleight-of-hand performer at the ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... subsequent nights, there would rarely be a score of people in the house who did not know the secret. The great majority might know nothing else about the play, but that they knew. Similarly, in the case of any mechanical truc, as the French call it, or feat of theatrical sleight-of-hand, it is futile to trust to its taking unawares any audience after the first. Nine-tenths of all subsequent audiences are sure to be on the look-out for it, and to know, or think they know, "how it's done."[4] These are the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... again from this "sleight of hand with Fancy's golden apples," to the novel, in the 'O.T.' (1836), which marks no advance on the 'Improvisatore'; and in the next year he published his best romance, 'Only a Fiddler,' which is still charming for its autobiographical ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... fills, And thence into the royal ear instils. The queen incensed, his services forgot, Leaves him a victim to the vengeful Scot.[9] Now through the realm a proclamation spread, To fix a price on his devoted head.[10] While innocent, he scorns ignoble flight; His watchful friends preserve him by a sleight. By Harley's favour once again he shines; Is now caress'd by candidate divines, Who change opinions with the changing scene: Lord! how were they mistaken in the dean! Now Delawar[11] again familiar grows; And in Swift's ear thrusts ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... I would call attention to the following facts. The fastening of Miss Fay's neck to the back of the cabinet at first is utterly gratuitous. It offers no additional difficulty to any manifestations, and appears only intended to prevent the scrutineers seeing behind her. A very simple exercise of sleight of hand would enable the gallant Colonel to cut the one ligature that binds the two wrists, when, for instance, he goes into the cabinet with scissors to trim off the ends of the piece of calico in the opening trick. The hands being once free all else is ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Wherever he was, he never passed by an opportunity to obtain possession of his neighbor's valuables. If the monied man would accept a hand at euchre or poker, why, he was so much the easier cleaned out; if not, false keys, pick-locks, or sleight-of-hand, soon relieved the unfortunate victim ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... showed him openly his bare head and the bare left side; and when he weened to have smitten him upon the bare head, then lightly he avoided the left leg and the left side, and put his right hand and his sword to that stroke, and so put it on side with great sleight; and then with great force Sir Launcelot smote him on the helmet such a buffet that the stroke carved the head in two parts. Then there was no more to do, but he was drawn out of the field. And at the great instance of the knights of the Table Round, the king suffered ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... and thrown into the river. Slight rain began to fall, and the scene was brought to a dramatic conclusion by the exhausted chief being ignominiously carried away on the back of a strong young man. At the house another stone was produced by the same sleight-of-hand, but more strenuous measures had to be adopted in order ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... of these magical representations; he wrote the pieces. He had a diversity of talents; he was clever at sleight of hand. Besides the voices he imitated, he produced all sorts of unexpected things—shocks of light and darkness; spontaneous formations of figures or words, as he willed, on the partition; vanishing figures in chiaroscuro; strange things, amidst which he seemed to meditate, unmindful of the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... supposed to dwell in Igorot or Kalinga land, she speaks in a dialect unfamiliar to her hearers, orders them to dance in Igorot fashion, and then instructs them in dances, which she or her townspeople could never have seen. [124] At times she carries on sleight-of-hand tricks, as when she places beads in a dish of oil, and dances with it high above her head, until the beads vanish. A day or two later she will recover them from the hair of some participant in the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... fast to eight-strand twine, we had to bring the ship to, to bring them in, and it was then as much as eight or ten men could do; so that one would expect, when an Indian had struck one of these fish, from his light float, it would easily run away with the man and the bark-log; but they have some sleight in their way of management, by which the strength and struggling of these fish are all in vain. There are hardly any birds to be seen in this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... said Orme, politely, "in offering so simple a test as this; but now, if you still think I had the kris in my clothing—how that could be, I don't know, I'm sure—and if you still wish to call my little performance sleight of hand, then I'll do something to prove what I have said, and make it quite plain that all my friend here has said is true and more than true. Watch now, and you will see blood drip from the point of this blade—every drop of blood it ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... obscuring the brightness in the west. Then came a cloud-like haze, scudding on the very surface of the stream, wherein the plash of horses' feet announced their entrance. They rode slowly on, but the channel was deep, and it seemed as though some sleight and witchery was about them, for the mist became so dense that the clouds seemed to have dropped down to encompass and enfold them. The stream gradually became deeper, until the foremost horse was wading to the belly, labouring and snorting from the chillness ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... all the rest amaz'd stood still, Expecting which should take or kill. This HUDIBRAS observ'd; and fretting Conquest should be so long a getting, He drew up all his force into 820 One body, and that into one blow. But TALGOL wisely avoided it By cunning sleight; for had it hit, The upper part of him the blow Had slit as sure as ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... trick about appearing to know so much and that those reading chaps were awful humbugs. How the trick was performed he did not venture to explain, but he was as firmly persuaded that it was managed by some species of conjuring as that Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook performed their wonders by sleight of hand. That one human brain should actually contain the amount of knowledge John Short appeared to possess was not credible to the Honourable Cornelius, and the latter spent more of his time in trying to discover how John "did it" than in trying to "do it" himself. ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... for deception, though many of the tricks performed by Indian jugglers are really the result of clever sleight-of-hand." ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... simplicity, of truth. The playful but searching satire which the author has ever at command just touches the declamation of his opponent, and it falls like a house of cards. He sums up with a judgment as fair and as calm as if he had been speaking of a writer of some distant period. Astonished at the sleight of hand which had disarmed, and at the generosity which had spared him, M. de Pontmartin, in the first moment of his defeat,—before he had had time to recover his (bad) temper, to arm himself for more fiery assaults ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... gave the box back to the conductor, then took the letter from between his knees, holding it in his right hand, when Jennie, as if swayed by the motion of the car, lurched against him, and, with a sleight of hand that would have made her reputation on a necromantic stage, she jerked the letter from the amazed and frightened man; at the same moment allowing the bogus document to drop on the floor of the car from her ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... to sell or mortgage government land, but who could wait six months or a year for the government to issue a patent (deed) to the land? Many of the settlers must borrow money to make proof. So the homestead loan business became a sleight-of-hand performance. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Canito is pleased to be merry at the doors of his betters;" and she flung a copper saucepan full of not over-clean water so deftly past Juan's head, that not a drop touched him, and yet he had the appearance of having been ducked. At which bit of sleight-of-hand the whole court-yard, young and old, babies, cocks, hens, and turkeys, all set up a shout and a cackle, and dispersed to the four corners of the yard as if scattered by a volley of bird-shot. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... hand of perfect friendship. You've been reaching out for a long time, pasha, and it didn't save the steamer or the cotton-mills; and it didn't save us when we were down by Sobat a while ago, and you sent Halim Bey to teach us to be patient. We got out of that nasty corner by sleight of hand, but not your sleight of hand, pasha. Your hand is a quick hand, but a sharp eye can see the trick, and then it's no ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... omens threat the brightest fair That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care; Some dire disaster, or by force, or sleight; But what, or where, the fates have wrapped in night. Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, Or some frail china jar receive a flaw; Or stain her honour, or her new brocade; Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade; Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball; Or whether ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... his skill at sleight-of-hand tricks," said the man in spectacles, seriously. "And we wouldn't hold his croquet habits agin him. Some men drink, some gamble, some do worse; every man has his weakness, and croquet may be his. What we want to know is this: can ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... dark cloud of unmeaning words? Is it so difficult for a man to cant some one or more of the good old English cants which his father and grandfather canted before him, that he must learn, in the schools of the Utilitarians, a new sleight of tongue, to make fools clap and wise men sneer? Let our countrymen keep their eyes on the neophytes of this sect, and see whether we turn out to be mistaken in the prediction which we now hazard. It will before long be found, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to such timing as belongs to sleight-of-hand, but the split-second quickness of the left-hander was as conclusively victorious as if the matter had been deliberate, and now he had margin to realize that he need not ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... club entertainment, I am told that, despite my absence, it was a wonderful success, redeemed from failure, the treasurer of the club said, by the voluntary services of a guest, who secured admittance on one of my cards, and who executed some sleight-of-hand tricks that made the members tremble, and whose mind-reading feats performed on the club's butler not only made it necessary for him to resign his office, but disclosed to the House Committee the whereabouts of ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... not deny that Danny must have been a liberal education in that sort of sleight of hand, but the letter saved her the painful confession. While Elinor took Marty to her room and Judith explained the uses of the various conveniences, push buttons and the like, Patricia devoured ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... dream—a false thing—a lie—a nightmare; that the journey along the Path is but an illusion; that everything is "nothing"; that there is no soul; that You are God in disguise, and that He is fooling Himself in making believe that He is You; that Life is but a Divine masquerade or sleight-of-hand performance; that You are God, but that You (God) are fooling Yourself (God) in order to amuse Yourself (God). Is not this horrible? And yet it shows to what lengths the human mind will go before it will part with some pet ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... win a little one," the gambler announced as he politely returned the bill-case to its owner. He lifted another shell, and by some sleight-of-hand managed to replace the pellet upon the table, then gravely flipped a five-dollar gold piece to one ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... with, and an absence of the crushing burden of interest money. No fruits yield any returns before the second or third year; and there are often Unfavorable seasons and glutted markets. Nature's prizes are won by patient, persistent industry, and not by Wall Street sleight ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... Christ; (13)till we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; (14)that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, by cunning craftiness after the wily manner of error; (15)but holding the truth, may in love grow up into him in all things, who is the head, Christ; (16)from whom all the body, fitly framed together ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... tells me," said Yerkes, "that the Congo government is the rottenest aggregate of cutthroats, horse-thieves, thugs, yeggs, common-or-ordinary hold-ups, and sleight-of-hand professors that the world ever saw in one God-forsaken country. He says they're of every nationality, but without squeam of any kind—hang or shoot you as soon as look at you! He says if there's any ivory buried in those parts they've either got ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... examples of skill in sleight of hand is more than I know. I can only say that I never was more completely mystified by any professor of legerdemain on the public platform. After the performance of each trick, he asked leave to time himself by looking at his watch; being anxious to discover ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... hint than Halbert Glendinning. He said he himself had a desire to go westward. The pedlar looked at him with a very doubtful air, when the old dame, who perhaps thought her young guest resembled the umquhile Saunders, not only in his looks, but in a certain pretty turn to sleight-of-hand, which the defunct was supposed to have possessed, tipped him the wink, and assured the pedlar he need have no doubt that her young cousin was a ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... have been in a grievous error: we thought that we had been at war with rebels against the lawful government, but that we were friends and allies of what is properly France, friends and allies to the legal body politic of France. But by sleight of hand the Jacobins are clean vanished, and it is France we have got under our cup. "Blessings on his soul that first invented sleep!" said Don Sancho Panza the Wise. All those blessings, and ten thousand times more, on him who found ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... play mine, and use every advantage to save my money; and there was one I possessed which his reverence did not. The cards being my own, I had put some delicate little marks on the trump cards, just at the edges, so that when I dealt, by means of a little sleight of hand, I could deal myself any trump card I pleased. But I wished, as I said before, to have no dealings for money with his reverence, knowing that he was master in the house, and that he could lead me a dog of a life if I offended him, either by winning his money, or not letting him win mine. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... but the matter's simply this: I've been fool enough to play cards with him for rather high stakes lately, and I fancy that I've detected my man peeping over my cards, and using a little sleight of hand in his ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... far: Hood is a central figure in the group and the period, and the tendency of the time may be almost as much due to him as he to the tendency. Mainly, we have to fall back upon his own idiosyncrasy: he was born with a boundlessly whimsical perception, which he trained into an inimitable sleight-of-hand in the twisting of notions and of words; circumstances favored his writing for fugitive publications and skimming readers, rather than under conditions of greater permanency; and the result is as we find it in ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... special request, with the song of "Mr. Dooley," in the chorus of which the audience joined with vigor. The song is not new, but Smith's particular version, as well as his vocal rendition, was. The dwarf, who posed somewhat as a magician and sleight-of-hand man, undertook for some reason or other to attempt the great Indian box trick. Two gentlemen from the audience were invited to come on the stage to tie the performer with a rope. This was a most unfortunate move. Two well-known yachtsmen, ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... show of studying the card and succeeded in pocketing the bill with the same effortless sleight-of-hand that the other had used in ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... and he wisely observed their doings. My Lord Mayor, my Lord Willbewill, and Mr. Recorder were also all taken with the words of this tattling Diabolonian gentleman, forgetting that their Prince had given them warning before to take heed that they were not beguiled with any Diabolonian sleight; he had further told them that the security of the now flourishing town of Mansoul did not so much lie in her present fortifications and force, as in her so using of what she had, as might oblige her Emmanuel to abide within her castle. For the right doctrine of Emmanuel was, that the town of Mansoul ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... tradesmen, and all the bad money they had was tendered in payment among the good, that by ignorance or oversight some might possibly be made to pass; and as these took it, so they were not wanting again in all the artifice and sleight of hand they were masters of, to put it off again; so that, in short, people were made bites and cheats to one another in all their business; and if you went but to buy a pair of gloves, or stockings, or any trifle, at a shop, you went with bad money in one hand, and good money in the other, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... Ishi as a brother, and he looked upon me as one of his people. He called me Ku wi, or Medicine Man; more, perhaps, because I could perform little sleight of hand tricks, than because ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... had not read a book. Often, when I tried to catch him, he confounded me by quoting the identical words of a passage in some work which I could have sworn he had never set eyes on. I daresay it was due only to some juggling, like the conjuror's sleight of hand that apparently lets you choose a card, but in fact forces one on you; and he brought the conversation round cleverly to a point when it was obvious I should mention a definite book. He talked very well, with an entertaining flow of ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three-in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities by which he lives. Athelred, on the other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... "I am clever at sleight-of-hand," said he, "or I could never have worked it. I just flashed it before your eyes, uncle, and made you think that you saw the clasp. Forgive me; I thought it ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... blind caprice of will, Not in cunning sleight of skill, Not for show of power, was wrought ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security's sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... exclamation as he drew his hand from the straw behind him, and produced an egg. The Mexicans glanced up. Pete dug in the straw and fetched up another egg—and another. Brevoort leaned forward as though deeply interested in some sleight-of-hand trick. Egg after egg came from the abandoned nest. The Mexicans laughed. The supply of ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Batavia. They left me senseless because I would not say "enough." I was getting a good deal of reputation as a wrestler. I liked wrestling better than fighting; and though a smallish man always, like my fellow Iowan Farmer Burns, I have seldom found my master at this game. It is much more a matter of sleight than strength. A man must be cautious, wary, cool, his muscles always ready, as quick as a flash to meet any strain; but the main source of my success seemed to be my ability to use all the strength ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... which distinguished the Wondersmith and Madame Filomel. True gypsies they seemed, who would not have been out of place telling fortunes, or stealing chickens in the green lanes of England, or wandering with their wild music and their sleight-of-hand tricks through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... cuffs and stuck out his elbows. Then he opened the packet and inserted his thumb and fore-finger, slowly, gingerly, like a conjurer performing a sleight-of-hand trick before a puzzled audience, and, beaming all over his face, extracted from the tobacco a glittering object which he held out before ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... that's about all thou canst do. Dost think that a man's greatness hangs on so little a thing as his sleight of hand at cutting his name on ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... she by sleight, (Follow, my love, come over the strand) And all to help this forlorn knight, And she the fair flower ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... imposing subject for a speech. If it should ever be printed on a programme, it would prove awe-inspiring. Next to making a good speech, I'd like to be skilled in sleight-of-hand affairs. I'd like to fish up a rabbit from the depths of an old gentleman's silk tile, or extract a dozen eggs from a lady's hand-bag, or transmute a canary into a goldfish. I'd like to ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... for the once famous sleight of hand performer Patler. His house is a cozy, pretty affair, freshly painted and nestled under great embowering trees. Close by is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... "Tom Sleight," answered Henry, "the chap I'm telling you about. He belonged to a good family, his father being a Magistrate for Monmouthshire; but there had been no doing anything with young Tom from the very first. At fifteen he ran away from ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... own up to it, an' there's no use beatin' about the bush. The guilty party wot stole the locket an' transferred it by sleight-of-'and to poor Sue is no less a person than yer own ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... digging on the farm that his spade is not adapted to. To mark out a drain in the turf by a line, he mounts his spade with one foot, and hops backward on the other, with a celerity surprising to behold. Then he cuts the sod in squares, and, with a sleight of hand, which does not come by nature, as Dogberry says reading and writing come, throws out the first spit. When he comes on to the gravel or hard clay, where another man would use a pick-axe, his heavy boot comes down upon the treader, and ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... works shone in answer to fitful moonlight, and they presented to his imagination a strange and unfamiliar appearance. Under the sleight of the hour they were changed and towered majestically above him. The Mill slept and in the creepy stillness, the river's voice, which he had hardly heard till now, was magnified to a considerable murmur. From far away down the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... in the case of the Welsh Giant) with an excess of the hospitable politeness of a landlord, ripping themselves open, rather than hint at the possibility of their guests being versed in the vagabond arts of sleight-of-hand ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... indeed, a certain sleight whereby he slung it across his shoulder, but no reason in the world for tossing it upon the hearse with a slam. They covered its nakedness with velvet, and the cocher, having taken a cigar from his pocket, and looking much as if he would like ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... by the same fire, munching his hard tack as he read. Murphy, watching him, saw his lips quiver and work over one bearing half a dozen postmarks—a letter from his mother, conveyed across the lines by some sleight-of-hand of influence or pay, and mailed and remailed from place to place, till weeks had grown into months since it was written. Noncommittal as it had need to be—filled with home items to the last page—there his heart stood still, to bound again furiously back, and his breath came sharp and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... legerdemain he had seen. Nor was he a mean authority as to this, being himself, with his tools at hand, a capital conjuror;[193] but the Frenchman scorned help, stood among the company without any sort of apparatus, and, by the mere force of sleight of hand and an astonishing memory, performed feats having no likeness to anything Dickens had ever seen done, and totally inexplicable to his most vigilant reflection. "So far as I know, a perfectly original genius, and that puts any sort of knowledge ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... forgotten the pain, though, in ten minutes, and the first hint we had thereof was a squeal and feat of sleight of heel, in which, to all appearances, Juan stood perpendicularly upon his nose and fore-feet for half a minute, like a fleshly tripod, while his rider, or rather his late rider, rolled over and over, the centre of a cloud of impalpable ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... your kindred, you must deceive society, you must deceive all but God, and Him you cannot deceive. Deception does not injure others so much as it injures ourselves. Marriage is too important a crisis in one's life to be decided by sleight of hand, or a sort of jugglery which says: "Presto, change! Now you see ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... composition of a Jean Glover, a girl who was not only a whore, but also a thief; and in one or other character has visited most of the Correction Houses in the West. She was born I believe in Kilmarnock,—I took the song down from her singing, as she was strolling through the country, with a sleight-of-hand blackguard. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... money; and there was one I possessed which his reverence did not. The cards being my own, I had put some delicate little marks on the trump cards, just at the edges, so that when I dealt, by means of a little sleight of hand I could deal myself any trump card I pleased. But I wished, as I said before, to have no dealings for money with his reverence, knowing that he was master in the house, and that he could lead me a dog of a life ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... transported, upward soare, The flowry Meddowes, and the pastures o're; Where the greene Grove its coole shade yeilds To th'stately grasse plotts, and ripe swelling fields: Straight, 'mid'st the river Swans, up hyer A winged fowle above the cloudes I'aspire; The lively Lakes below, I sleight, And with sweet straines a bird ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... time they cease to be members of the parent tree? In the case of cuttings from plants it is easy to elude the difficulty by making a parade of the sharp and sudden act of separation from the parent stock, but this is only a piece of mental sleight of hand; the cutting remains as much part of its parent plant as though it had never been severed from it; it goes on profiting by the experience which it had before it was cut off, as much as though it had never been cut off at all. This will be more readily ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... you think so," the boy asserted modestly. "It seemed to me afterward that I had been very stupid. It all was so quick! Almost like sleight-of-hand." ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... lance Guided so well, that I obtain'd the prize, Both by the judgment of the English eyes, And of some sent from that sweet enemy France; Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance; Townfolks my strength; a daintier judge applies His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise; Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; Others, because of both sides I do take My blood from them who did excel in this, Think nature me a man of arms did make. How far they shot awry! the true cause is, Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face Sent ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... guard Make sure of them, and lead to camp. That done, we're free for a dark-room fight If so you say." The other laughed; "Trust me, Major, nor throw a damp. But first to try a little sleight— Sure news of ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... quarters and to try anther place, where odd jobs were found for the man, and where the woman made friends in private families, for whom she did a little sewing. But it was too late for the man; his privations had destroyed his sleight of hand, though he knew it not; the fine workman was gone. He took painters' paralysis, and very often when work was offered his hand would drop before he could begin it; then the long years of tramping about ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... music-hall singer when her husband was a sleight-of-hand artist, "The Great Malino, the Wizard of Milan." Her voice had long since left her; she had nothing of her beauty but its yellow ruins; and her life was made up of the consideration of two great grievances: first, that her husband was always ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... being afeard to see it, for they would have had him to have bore a part in saying the words, in the roome of one of the little girles that was so young that they could hardly make her learn to repeat the words, did, for feare there might be some sleight used in it by the boy, or that the boy might be light, call the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as Sir G. Carteret's cook, who is very big, and they did raise him in just the same manner. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... ride into the branding pen, a rope within their hands, They will catch them by each forefoot and bring them to the sands; It's altogether in practice with a little bit of sleight, A-roping Texas cattle, it ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... had diminished to the sensitive uneasy murmur which responded like a delicate instrument to the fluctuations of the game. Each feat and manoeuvre of Knype drew generous applause in proportion to its intention or its success, and each sleight of the Manchester Rovers, successful or not, provoked a holy disgust. The attitude of the host had passed beyond morality ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... profit by the credulity of others, and who even invent tricks in order to fasten their authority upon the people in an illegitimate manner. These tricks themselves are not performed in the majority of cases as conscious sleight of hand. They may have been such at their inception, but their origin has been forgotten by subsequent generations, and nothing has remained but the bare wonderful, inexplicable fact of their performance. Thus they have become in course of time hallowed; and the shaman ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
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