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More "Thumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the use of the pen. The remainder of the space was loaded with parchment upon parchment, deed upon deed, paper upon paper. Some, especially those underneath, had become dark and discoloured by time; the ink had changed to a dull red, and the imprint of many a thumb inferred how many years they had been in existence, and how long they had lain as sad mementos of the law's delay. Others were fresh and clean, the japanned ink in strong contrast with the glossy parchment, new ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... great roll of evil smelling grayish unbleached calico from the schoolroom cupboard and heaved it on to the table. It was very heavy. The scissors were blunt and left deep red-blue indentations on finger and thumb. She was rather pleased that the scissors hurt ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... follow because he was a butcher that he was to have butchering ideas for ever, or that he was to know nothing of 'literature,' as she termed it—that is, novels. Mr. Mumbles had read 'Puss in Boots,' 'Jack the Giant Killer,' 'Tom Thumb,' 'Jack and the Bean Stalk,' 'Whittington and his Cat,' and 'Mother Goose' in his childhood. In his boyhood he had gone through 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' and 'The Seven Champions of Christendom,' and therefore knew there ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... letters asking about sucking the thumb, as introduced by dainty Miss Vanity Vaux in Draw it mild, Daisy. Only the tip of the thumb should be sucked; those of you who put the whole thumb into your mouths must not complain if you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... cautious manner, talking and cooing to him all the time, and at last I caught him, and the little fellow was so glad to be with friends once more, he curled himself in my hands, and put two little wet paws around a thumb and held on tight. It was raining, and he was soaking wet, so he must have been out of doors. It would have been heartbreaking to have been obliged to come away without finding that little grayback, and perhaps never know what became of him. I know where ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... any too easily, Sam. Things are in a fearful snarl. But I telephoned to Mr. Powell, the lawyer, to look after matters during my absence. I think we've got those brokers under our thumb—at least I hope so. But if we haven't, we stand to lose a ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... Vidrik seiz'd the stone, But to stir it in vain did he try; The Giant took it with finger and thumb, And lifted ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... the doorway, and Evan was sufficiently astonished. Deaves was neatly dressed in black as for a funeral, carrying a highly-polished silk hat over his thumb. He was pale and moist with agitation, and looked not at all ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... said the barkeeper, with a jerk of the thumb toward the crowd surrounding the pugilist. "He's ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... very broad across the shoulders, with one shoulder lower than the other. He is quite bald, and there is a cicatrice on his left cheek where a Malay cut him. There is a squint in one of his eyes, and there is a scar along the ball of his right thumb." ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... as there was the faintest chance of his pushing his own interests in any other quarter. No person living would be capable of so certainly extracting the correspondence from him, on such ruinously cheap terms as his old master. "I'll no' put myself under Sir Paitrick's thumb," thought Bishopriggs, "till I've gane my ain rounds among the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... long aisle the emperor led his bride, flashing with the light of jewels, among them the unlucky regent diamond, which glittered on her bosom. After the Spanish fashion, she crossed her brow, her lips, her heart, her thumb, as she knelt for the nuptial benediction. The ceremony over, the archbishop conducted the married pair to the porch of the cathedral, and they drove along the Quai ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... and most persons have received the impression that the vibratory motion was an actual change of position of the molecular in space instead of a change of form. Make a ring of wire five or six inches in diameter, and, holding it between the thumb and finger at the twisted ends, pluck it with a finger of the other hand; the ring will vibrate, have three nodes, and will give a good idea of the character of the vibration that constitutes what we call heat. This vibratory motion may have a greater or less amplitude, and the energy ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... the blade and drew it speculatively across his calloused old thumb, while with his mild blue eyes, which his spectacles enormously exaggerated, he fixed the ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... asked us to tell him more about those Egyptian bees, of which he had never heard before; and after the meal he went out to see the colonies in the garden. He walked up to a hive and boldly caught one of the bees between his thumb and forefinger. Holding it fast, he picked up a pea pod for it to sting, so that he could see how long ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... country," they would infallibly have come to the conclusion that he was afflicted with gout. Over his shoulders he slung a powder-horn and shot-pouch, the latter tastefully embroidered with dyed quill-work, A pair of deer-skin mittens, having a little bag for the thumb, and a large bag for the fingers, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... modesty and timidity, and her gait must also be bashful and maidenly. Her long robe falls to her feet in simple folds, while Peitho holds hers up saucily, between her forefinger and thumb, as if stealthily dancing with triumph over her recent victory. Indeed the figure of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... said, as we appeared. He jerked a thumb towards the classroom. 'I've locked dem in. What's doin', Buck?' he asked, indicating me with ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... said the woman, and she kissed the red and golden-colored leaves, and while she did so the flower opened, and she could see that it was a real tulip. Within the flower, upon the green velvet stamens, sat a very delicate and graceful little maiden. She was scarcely half as long as a thumb, and they gave her the name of "Thumbelina," or Tiny, because she was so small. A walnut-shell, elegantly polished, served her for a cradle; her bed was formed of blue violet-leaves, with a rose-leaf for a counterpane. Here she slept at night, but during the day she amused herself on ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the back of a man's left hand, the 6th Division occupied the third finger, the 29th Division the main finger, the 20th Division the index finger, the 12th Division the portion below the index finger down to the lower portion of the thumb when fully extended, the 55th Division occupied the thumb. Such was the situation when the enemy delivered a heavy counter-attack, on the morning of the 30th November, on the 29th, 20th and 12th Divisions of the III Corps and the 55th Division of ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... timid way for "a position," and shrinking from the turmoil and dirt of some walks of life, without spreading among the uncultivated a contempt for culture and increasing their confidence in the rule of thumb. The mere "going to college" is recognized as a sign of pecuniary ease, and of a desire for social advancement, but not as preparation for the kind of work which the bulk of the community is doing, and thus makes mental culture seem less desirable, and cultivated ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... own eloquence, the brand-new copy of the second edition of "The Complete Poetical and Philosophical Works of Watts McHurdie, with Notes and a Biographical Appreciation by Martin F. Culpepper, 'C' Company, Second Regiment K.V." The colonel, with his thumb in the book, pokes the fire in the stove, and sits down again to drink his joy unalloyed. Watts is working on a saddle, but his arms and his hands are not what they were in the old days when his saddlery won ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... clear and simple.' She pressed back the thumb which he had left untouched. 'I reply in ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... no bigger than a hickory nut. He had taken it from her and was running his thumb over its surface while she was speaking. He could feel the tiny nose and the little indentations that ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... thee thrice the concern of being shown a ridiculous lover." And now that he had discovered that he could touch the nerves of Pope, he throws out one of the most ludicrous analogies to the figure of our bard:—"When crawling in thy dangerous deed of darkness, I gently, with a finger and a thumb, picked off thy small round body by thy long legs, like a spider ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... said absently. He lifted one of Wolf's fore legs and examined the foot-pads, pressing them and denting them with his thumb. "Kind of soft," he remarked. "He ain't been on trail ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... be th' slough hit him with a brick wanst, an' he ain't been able to do fractions since. Thin he's got inflammathry rheumatism enough to burn a barn, an' he can't turn a page without makin' ye think he's goin' to lose a thumb. He's got wife an' childher, an' he's on in years; but he's a polisman, an' he's got to be rayformed. I tell him all I can. He didn't know where St. Pethersburg was till I tould him it was th' capital iv Sweden. They'll not give him th' boots on that there question. Ye bet ye'er life they ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... glaciers as a pure spiritual essence, the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. The clearest of Alaskan air is always appreciably substantial, so much so that it would seem as if one might test its quality by rubbing it between the thumb and finger. I never before saw summer days so white and so full of ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... that auto-erotic manifestations are common in infancy, and that the rhythmic function of any sensitive spot, primarily the lips, may easily pass into masturbation. He regards the infantile manifestations of which thumb-sucking is the most familiar example (Luedeln or Lutschen in German) as auto-erotic, the germ arising in sucking the breasts since the lips are an erogenous zone which may easily be excited by the warm stream of milk. But this ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ahead of the Indian ponies and brought his rider under the cliff as Carmena reached the foot of the ladder. She called out to him in a tone of joyful greeting and hastened forward to offer her hand. The man ignored her welcome and jerked a thumb up at the window from which Lennon ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... at his fingers, which shone green and purple in the vivid light thrown by the tuned-in pin-set, and counted ships. The thumb for the Andromeda, lost with crew and passengers, the index finger and the middle finger for Release Ships 43 and 56, found with their pin-sets burned out and every man, woman, and child on board dead or insane. The ring finger, the little finger, and the thumb of the other hand were ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith
... easy as lying: govern these vantages with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these ...
— Swan Song • Anton Checkov
... it is only at this price that he can exist at all.—Disobedience to God, which actually means to the priest, to "the law," now gets the name of "sin"; the means prescribed for "reconciliation with God" are, of course, precisely the means which bring one most effectively under the thumb of the priest; he alone can "save".... Psychologically considered, "sins" are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... his roof of thatch, Smoked thoughtfully and slow; The Slaver's thumb was on the latch, He seemed in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... left hand, counting from the thumb, is the finger upon which the engagement and wedding rings are worn. The engagement ring varies in extravagance according to the means of the groom, and has almost always a set of some description; the wedding ring is always the same, a plain, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... answered: "I yi, my larky! Much obleeged to you fur puttin' out de fire, but smoke me ag'in ef you ketch me gwine 'way from dis holler widout Mars'er Bushie," giving a side-long roll of his big black thumb toward ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... more independent air, and even ventures to chalk odd figures on the black board in the theatre. He has been known, previously to the lecture, to let down the skeleton that hangs by a balance weight from the ceiling, and, inserting its thumb in the cavity of its nose, has there secured it with a piece of thread, and then, placing a short pipe in its jaws, has pulled it up again. His inventive faculties are likewise shown by various diverting objects and allusions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... traitor," added Browne, "who perversely refused to come out of the water to be cooked, in accordance with the royal will, and who nearly bit off the sacred thumb of one of our majesties, in resisting the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... gun from the bed and Pete gave him the stakes. He folded the bill lovingly and tucked it away; but he flipped the coin from his thumb, spinning in the sun, caught it as it fell, and glanced ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... to find which way the wind is blowing, if there is only very light breeze, is to throw up little bits of dry grass; or to hold up a handful of light dust and let it fall, or to suck your thumb and wet it all round and let the wind blow over it, and the cold side of it will then tell you which way the wind ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... had already fainted from the loss of blood. The doctor seized the artery, and, as no other ligature was forthcoming, he remained under fire for three hours holding a man's life, between his finger and thumb. When at length it seemed that the enemy had broken into the camp he picked up the still unconscious officer in his arms, and, without relaxing his hold, bore him to a place of safety. His arm was for many hours paralysed with cramp from the effects ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... Shorsha! I haven't heart enough,' said Murtagh. 'Thank you for your tale, but it makes me weep; it brings to my mind Dungarvon times of old—I mean the times we were at school together.' 'Cheer up, man,' said I, 'and let's have the story, and let it be about Ma-Coul and the salmon and his thumb.' 'Well, you know Ma- Coul was an exposed child, and came floating over the salt sea in a chest which was cast ashore at Veintry Bay. In the corner of that bay was a castle, where dwelt a giant and his wife, very respectable and dacent ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... it should slip out or be stolen, and so he must take the box to the window and let the moonlight shine upon the fleecy cotton, and find that it is still there, and cover it safely over again and creep back to bed, wishing that he might see a "thumb's bigness of burnished plumage" sheltering it with her speck of a breast. Ah! to have a little humming-bird's egg to love, and to feel that it was his very own, was something to Timothy, as it is to all starved human hearts full of love that ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the water here, and one of the men makes a billy of tea. The water is better cooked. Pint-pots and sugar-bags are groped out and brought to the kitchen hut, and each man fills his pannikin; the Irishman keeps a thumb on the edge of his, so as to know when the pot is full, for it is very dark, and there is no more firewood. You soon know this way, especially if you are in the habit of pressing lighted tobacco down into your pipe with the top of your thumb. The old slush-lamps are ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... happen?-Because he lost the use of one of his hands or of his right thumb, and Mouat had a sort of sympathy with him as being unable to earn his bread as he used to do before, and therefore he let him alone for a season until he could get round again, and regain perfect health and ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... loon! Whaur's yer een for the tickit gillie?" The old paymaster jabbed indignant thumb over his shoulder to indicate the big ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... an interest in the girl, that is, in her music,' he continued. 'She has a good voice, and possesses other good qualities; but refinement—good heavens, where should she get it?' So saying, he repeatedly rubbed the thumb and forefinger of his right hand together. I was quite confused at being undeservedly credited with such a considerable knowledge of music, and was just on the point of explaining the true state of affairs, when some one passing the store called in 'Good evening, all!' ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... he said, indicating the fleeing musicians with his thumb. "Allee samee muchee flaid noisee," and then his round face dimpled ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... SCHOOLS OF ART.—The most noted pupil of Lysippus was Chares, who gave to the world the celebrated Colossus at Rhodes (about 280 B.C.). This was another of the wonders of the world. Its height was about one hundred and seven feet, and a man could barely encircle with his arms the thumb of the statue. [Footnote: The statue was not as large as the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. The height of the latter is 151 feet.] After standing little more than half a century, it was overthrown by an earthquake. For nine ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Tai-yue was the first to smile and make a remark. "It's your nurse having a row with Hsi Jen!" she said. "Hsi Jen treats her well enough, but that nurse of yours would also like to keep her well under her thumb; she's indeed an old dotard;" and Pao-yue was anxious to go over at once, but Pao-ch'ai laid hold of him and kept him back, suggesting: "It's as well that you shouldn't wrangle with your nurse, for she's quite stupid from old age; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Brit muttered, staring at the low ceiling. "Can't prove nothing—couldn't convict anybody if we could prove it. Bill Warfield's got this county under his thumb. Rabbits in a trap. Raine, you better pack up and go home to your mother. There's goin' to be hell a-poppin' if I live ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... chief, as his thumb-point at will Silently over the sword's edge played. —"Ay!" said the smith, "but there's one thing, still: Who is the smiter, shall smite with this blade?" Jealous, their eyes met; and fury awoke. "I am the smiter!" Antar cried. One ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... afraid the driver purposely delayed the Deerfoot, for when Mike shouted an angry reproach, he looked around, put his thumb to his nose, twiddled his fingers, and then moved slowly over ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... — N. touch; tact, taction^, tactility; feeling; palpation, palpability; contrectation^; manipulation; massage. [Organ of touch] hand, finger, forefinger, thumb, paw, feeler, antenna; palpus^. V. touch, feel, handle, finger, thumb, paw, fumble, grope, grabble; twiddle, tweedle; pass the fingers over, run the fingers over; manipulate, wield; throw out a feeler. Adj. tactual, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Took leave of all customers, finished my business, and satisfied myself that there are not more than six lace-importers in New York whom I would trust, most of whom we shall have arranged with Mr. S. Pickersgill for our future journey. Visited Barnham Museum, the owner of Tom Thumb; and found out he is an English-bred boy, and no American giant. Spent a quiet evening with Mr. and Mrs. Pearce. Retired to bed early: could not sleep ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... bluff old Sir Geoffrey loved brandy and mum well, And to see a beer-glass turned over the thumb well; But he fled like the wind, before Fairfax and Cromwell, Which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, resting it against the second finger. Heat it in the upper flame, slowly at first, then strongly, but heat only a very small portion in length, and keep it in constant rotation with the ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... colors,—big cats, little cats, black cats, white cats, gray cats, yellow, spotted and brindle cats, and at least a dozen of them fell sprawling into the clock. Among them, to Davy's dismay, was Solomon, with the other mitten drawn over his head and the thumb sticking straight up like a horn. This gave him a very extraordinary appearance, and the other cats evidently regarded him with the gravest distrust as they clustered together at Davy's end of the clock, leaving ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... said my father, pressing his finger and thumb on the wound at the back and palm of the ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... was lying helpless, in danger of bleeding to death, when a Rough Rider came to his assistance. There was only one thing to be done—to stop the bleeding till a surgeon came. A tourniquet could not be applied where the wound was. The Rough Rider put his thumb on the artery and held it there while he waited. The fighting drifted away over the hill. He followed his comrades with longing eyes till the last was lost to sight. His place was there, but if he abandoned the wounded cavalryman it was to let him die. He dropped ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... was unspeakable. He expected an outburst of wrath unappeasable, a summons for an executioner; instead, Mahommed's eyes became humid, and resting his elbow on the table, and his face on the thumb and forefinger, he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... while tramping along with his sac de voyage, Henry shelled the peas, casting the pods behind him, after the manner of Tom Thumb, never dreaming that the peas thus left to chum familiarly with his toilet things might suffer from the contact and get a new flavor. He was surprised to see how the "bushel" had diminished in volume ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... at night, and already very weary, I came to a lone house, where I asked admittance, and was refused, until I bethought me of the power of money in so poor a country, and held up one of my guineas in my finger and thumb. Thereupon, the man of the house, who had hitherto pretended to have no English, and driven me from his door by signals, suddenly began to speak as clearly as was needful, and agreed for five shillings to give me a night's lodging and guide me the ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glance went, not to my doublet, but to the man within. "A trader!" he said curtly. "A trader carrying contraband brandy. A good commandant would send you back where you belong. No, no, monsieur, wait! I am not threatening you. Though you know as well as I that the thumb-screws are rather convenient to my hand should I care to use them. But there should be no necessity for that. Montlivet, I hardly understand your reluctance in the matter of this Englishman. We should be one in this affair, whatever our private concerns. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... a firmer hold on more and more places in the Golden West. Nor was this all; for Portugal, which had many ships and large oversea possessions, was becoming so weak as to be getting more and more under the thumb of Spain; while Spain herself had just (1571) become the victorious champion both of West against East and of Christ against Mahomet by beating the Turks at Lepanto, near Corinth, in a great battle on landlocked ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... ever notice," he asked, "that you can touch flame all right if you are only quick enough? Now, see me take the top off that candle." If Dicky had a fault it was a tendency to boastfulness. He took the lighted wick between his thumb and his knife-blade, and skilfully scooped the top off. It blazed for two seconds on the edge of the blade—just long enough to show us that all the flame had come with it. Then it went out, and in the darkness at my side I heard ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... her own mistress, the interrogatory was more meant for the Condesa, between whose fingers and thumb she saw the thing she was to ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... a thumb and three fingers to each side of the brim of his hat; lifted it a little way off his head; put it on again carefully; passed one hand all down his face, beginning at the forehead and ending at the chin; looked ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... about the Oise, as a matter of fact. In these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of its channel, that I strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, and had to paddle all the rest of the way with one hand turned up. Sometimes it had to serve mills; and being still a little river, ran very dry and shallow in the meanwhile. We had to put our ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unfolded five fingers and a thumb and surveyed them gravely for a moment. "It is strange that this once measured three inches by two and couldn't hit out any better ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... pressed between the pages of an entertaining volume. The icebergs of the Arctic, the bananas of the tropics, the camels of the East, the buffaloes of the West, and the cannibals of the South, are equally at our service. We can hold the mountains, rivers, seas, and human races between our finger and thumb, and thus, as we gently dally with care, we may see the wonders of the world as in a pleasant dream. Thus may we enjoy the perils and hardships of travel at a very small sacrifice ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... produced by a fall. Make a clove hitch, by passing two loops of cord over the thumb, placing a piece or rag under the cord to prevent it cutting the thumb; then pull in the same line as the thumb. Afterwards apply ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... handed it to him. He took it, turned it over, looked at the policeman half frightened, and pointed with his fat thumb at Mackaye. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... their higher moral principles and their more rigid self-examination for the 'great' things, as they suppose, and let the little things often take care of themselves. What would you think of the captain of a steamer who in calm weather sailed by rule of thumb, only getting out his sextant when storms began to blow? And what about a man that lets the myriad trivialities that make up a day pass in and out of his heart as they will, and never arrests any of them at the gate with a 'How camest thou in hither?' 'Look ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fellow stopped, before answering, to stuff a pipe with tobacco, punching it in with a fat thumb. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... steps towards me. "Doctor," said he gravely, "you've got to consider this. It's important. I'm not here to play marbles. It's a sure thing. I give you up there"—he made a movement of his thumb to the quarterdeck—"just this chance. Strike a bargain and I'll see you through. There's not a hap'orth of harm will come to any. Otherwise——" ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... Pharisaical air, and thank God that we are not like those wicked Italians and Germans who have no scruple about swallowing slave grown sugar. Surely this sophistry is worthy only of the worst class of false witnesses. "I perjure myself! Not for the world. I only kissed my thumb; I did not put my lips to the calf-skin." I remember something very like the right honourable Baronet's morality in a Spanish novel which I read long ago. I beg pardon of the House for detaining them with such a trifle; but the story is much to the purpose. A ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bank, and I was helping him to make the boat secure, I said, "Well! the new boat has done bravely!" "Between you and me, my dear fellow," said he, as he laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip, that I think must have left his thumb-mark on the skin, "if the boat had not behaved better than any boat of her class that I ever saw, there would have been a considerable probability of our being dined on by the fishes, instead of dining together, as I hope ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Fairlegh? how are you? That stupid fool has made 'em too tight for anybody but Tom Thumb, and be hanged to him. Ever read fairy tales, Fairlegh? I did when I was a little shaver, and wore cock-tailed petticoats—all bare legs and bustle—'a Highland lad my love was born'; that style of thing, rather, you ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... saw her. His color rose and he began to mark up the table with his thumb nail. I could see he felt his fix. The girl—Indian right through—showed no surprise at seeing him there, but that did not mean she would keep her mouth shut about it next ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... They are always very powerful, and are usually very large. It is told of one troll that, had she not made a misstep, she would have succeeded in wading from Norway to Iceland; and of another, that the thumb of his glove held four bushels, good measure. In some instances, however, it is possible for many trolls to enter one room of an ordinary dwelling house. There are trolls with three heads, with six heads, with nine heads, and with twelve heads. Sometimes they ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... days. They depended entirely on Kamionker, who, if he did not treat them generously they, on their side, were not generous towards the peasants, whom they plied with drink. Through his subordinates, Kamionker held thousands of peasants' families under his thumb. Therefore they all came to his inn. He did not himself look after his humble customers, but left them to his wife and his two strong and ugly daughters, who carried bottles and glasses round the tables, together with salted herrings, and different ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... been," said he to himself; "Mowgli the Wolf have I said that I am. Now Mowgli the Ape must I be before I am Mowgli the Buck. At the end I shall be Mowgli the Man. Ho!" and he slid his thumb along the eighteen-inch blade of ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... goin' to be," returned that unabashed gentleman, calmly sticking a thumb in his belt, and in so doing pushing his jacket aside, so as to further expose the military trappings about his round little person, "I's a-goin' to be a ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... sir, I pray your pardon—at your cost! His right hand lacks the thumb and arrow-finger, And though he vows it was a falling tree That crushed them, you may trust your Sheriff, sir, It was the law that clipped them when he last ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Neale," remarked the policeman, jerking his thumb over the Hollow, "this, in a manner of speaking, belongs to nobody. Some say it belongs to the Crown—I don't know. All I know is that nobody has any rights over it—it's been what you might term common land ever since anybody can remember. This here Mr. Horbury that's ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... operation, one being a piercing instrument made of pig bone and sharpened, and the other being a small wooden plug, also sharpened. The operator first visibly, but silently, engages in two incantations, during the former of which he holds up the thumb and first finger of his right hand, and during the latter of which he holds up the two instruments. He then with the thumb and first finger of his right hand holds the septum of the nose of the person to be operated upon, whom I will ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... So, thumb and finger went to work To move the stubborn lid; And, presently, a mighty jerk The mighty mischief did; For all at once, ah! woeful case! The snuff came puffing ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... sins which few men have the courage to antagonize in public. Theoretically the pulpit is supposed to cannonade all sin of every variety and species, but, alas, it is usually too cowardly. The Spirit-filled man fears no one from Sandow down to Tom Thumb, from a plug-hat Bishop to a little pusilanimous ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... slavery has not altogether passed, but on the higher hills already flame the harbingers of Reason's glorious morn. Gone is the Inquisition with its sacred infamies—the Christian rack is broken and the thumb-screw rusted in twain. The persuasive wheel no longer whisks the non-conformist into full communion, the Iron Virgin has ceased to press the writhing heretic to her orthodox heart. The faggot has fallen from the hand of the saintly fanatic ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to me, as he would have done had he been in charge of the iron-barred gate of the Colosseum two thousand years ago. All that had saved the girl then from the jaws of his hungriest lion was the twist of Nero's thumb. All that saved her now was the nod of the Judge's head—both had the giving ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... him that he might as easily crush Skiddaw. For myself, popularity is not the mark I shoot at; if it were, I should not write such poems as 'Roderick;' and Jeffrey can no more stand in my way to fame, than Tom Thumb could stand in my way ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... whole design at a very small size, say an inch and a half high, in pencil. This small sketch should determine, first, the general balance of the page; second, the inter-relations and spacings of the various lines and words and their relative importance and sizes. From this thumb-nail sketch the design should be drawn out at full size in pencil, and much more carefully. In this redrawing the separate letter shapes and their harmonious relations to each other should be determined, and such deviations made from the smaller sketch ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... was here on probation; that the good-natured and seemingly lazy de Wiart was studying him and finding him satisfactory, that very soon his desires would be fulfilled, and that he would be let loose like a beast on the land of his longing, a living whip, an animated thumb-screw, a knife with a ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... off her engagement ring and holds it between her finger and her thumb, as she rocks ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... he got up and shook out the coat. "Well, Babe, old socks, how's things goin'? How"—he threw his thumb back over his shoulder toward the east—"how 'bout over there? What news ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the rejoinder. "When I went back to the room I found my brother-in-law sitting on the edge of the lounge, or what you call it, all dressed but his coat, rubbing his chin between his finger and thumb, and gazing with despairing perplexity at his feet. It seems that my sister had got past all the other dilemmas, but in a moment of inadvertence had left the shoe question to him, with the result that he had put on ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... The doctor smiled as he unbound his hand, which was in a most shocking mangled state. Instead of proceeding to amputate the hand, the doctor, after having washed it in warm water, informed him that he would save his thumb and little finger, if he would stand steady while he took off the three middle fingers. "Very well, sir, if you please, but be sharp," was his reply.—I held his arm, and Mr. Clare, who was a skilful surgeon, in a very few minutes took out ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... count ten very slowly,' he replied pensively, 'and if by the time I have finished you are not seated on the back of that chair, your feet crossed so as to overlap, your right thumb in the corner of your mouth, a pleasant smile on your countenance, and the Gainsborough hat on your head, you will need no more hats ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... imaginary axis, as you may have seen youth of tender age and limited pugilistic knowledge, when they show how they would punish an adversary, themselves protected by this rotating guard,—the middle knuckle, meantime, thumb-supported, fiercely prominent, death-threatening. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... a hush. Involuntarily, the Barville crowd ceased its uproar. Grant, taking Roger's signal, nodded and twisted the ball into the locking grip of two fingers and a thumb. His arm swung back and whipped forward, a white streak shooting with a twisting motion from those fingers. It seemed like another swift one, shoulder high, and, with confidence strong in his heart, the red-headed batter sought to ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... to fight about that, my dear. I am so completely under his thumb that I always obey him in everything. You must not, therefore, expect to range me on ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... rabbits, which they now skinned and cooked. I say cooked, but perhaps I should say warmed. Dexterously stripping off the skins they slit open the abdomen, removed the entrails, and, after squeezing out the contents by drawing between thumb and fingers, they replaced the interminable string in the cavity, closing the aperture with the ears, and stowed the carcass in the hot ashes for a few minutes. Then they ate the whole thing with complete satisfaction. We ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... a bit farther, and met another fellow, who had a bottle under his arm, and, instead of a stopper, held his thumb in it. "Why do you hold your thumb there?" "If I pull it out, I squirt a hundred miles, and besprinkle everything that I choose. If you like, take me also into your service; it may be to your advantage and ours too." ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... animals, and indeed they are directed, and even formed in a very particular manner. In order to advance, he raises both his front-legs at once, and places them at a small distance forward; at the same time the thumb of each foot points outward, and the creature catches with the claw at any thing which it can lay hold of; then he stretches behind him his two hind-legs, so that the five toes of each foot are also directed backward; he supports himself on the sole of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... back—that's him there, talkin' to the guy with the fur on his jaw," informed the barkeeper, making a gesture with his thumb. "What's your poison?" ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... lift an edge of the skin with finger and thumb nail and carefully tear skin free from body, using scalpel when necessary ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... embarrass me. I opened boxes, purses, pocketbooks, etc., with great ease, and unnoticed, while appearing to be engaged on something quite different. Were a sealed parcel offered me, I cut a small slit in the paper with the nail of my left thumb, which I always purposely kept very long and sharp, and thus discovered what it contained. One essential condition was excellent sight, and that I possessed to perfection. I owed it originally to my old trade, ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... than ither folk, Aislie Gourlay. But wha tell'd ye this?" "Fashna your thumb about that, Annie Winnie," answered the sibyl, "I hae it frae ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... why, when you come to a really rich man all I've got wouldn't be a pinch to him." Mr. Dassonville illustrated with his own thumb and fingers how little that would be. "We don't have really rich men in a place like Harmony," he concluded. "You have to go ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... blew a long cloud and stared at the fire; at the smoke mounting and the grey ash dropping; at David Faed dealing the cards and licking his thumb between each. Long Ede shifted from one cramped elbow to another and pushed his Bible nearer the blaze, murmuring, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... creation of further representative bodies, the method of election is all important. All other departments or human activity show continuous improvement, and the substitution of scientific for rule-of-thumb methods of election is an improvement long overdue. It may even be said that the continued successful working of representative institutions demand such an improvement. The accomplishment of other electoral reforms can be more easily attained by the adoption of a system which allows ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... BACK VIEW. Notice the line of arm and racquet is straight and the hand on top of the handle. The thumb in my stroke is around the handle, but may be placed up the handle if desired. Personally, I do not use it, and do not advocate it, as it tends to detract from the freedom ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... Here's Musther Talcott: if he was fur carving a fort or a big gun, the eyes and the face of him would be little but scowls and puckers; and there he sits, though it's only the dumb likeness of a church that he's at, by the same token that it's no bigger than me thumb, and, by the howly piper, you'd think the light that flings away from the big colored windy down the church was stramin' in his face, he looks so paceful-like; and he no betther than a heretic nayther, though he's the heart of a good ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... genius of the first order. As it is, he lived on the slope of greatness and could not be steadfast and calm. His life was one long agony of self-assertion. Poor, poor Haydon! See how the world treats those who try too openly for its gratitude! 'Tom Thumb for ever' over the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... into slippers—truth compels me to say they would more properly be called shoes down at heel—her stockings were wofully dirty, and, horror of all horrors, out at the heels! There she sat, with her feet on the fender, her face on her hands, and her elbows on her knees, with her thumb-worn novel lying in ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... almost insupportably heavy before it shows any signs of repletion. The shirt and pair of everyday pantaloons which Lemuel had dropped that morning into its voracious maw made no apparent effect there, as the clerk held it up and twirled it on the crook of his thumb. ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... size, only a "wandering voice." But it was an enticing voice, a sweet-toned succession of z-z-z in ascending scale, and it was so persistent that when we really made the attempt, we had no trouble in getting sight of the little beauty hardly bigger than one's thumb. He was a wary little sprite, and though he looked down upon us as we turned opera-glasses toward him,—a battery that puts some birds into a panic,—he was not alarmed. He probably made up his mind then ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... Indies, about the year 1744. She was of the Mandango nation, 24 years of age, her breasts were very flat, she had a rough voice, and a masculine countenance. The clitoris was two inches long, and in thickness resembled a common sized thumb, when viewed at same distance the end appeared round and of a red colour, but upon closer examination was found to be more pointed than that of a penis, and having neither prepuce nor perforation; when handled it became half erected, and was in that state fully three ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... thought it over the more certain he became that their actions were linked up somehow with his own investigations. Why not? The girl had spied upon Podmore, who was in league with Nickleby; she had dealings with Jimmy Stiles who, according to Nathaniel Lawson, was very much under Nickleby's thumb. There was enough Nickleby mixed up in it for all sorts of possibilities. He wondered ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... after the experiment[9]. After this, the syphon (GH, Pl. IV. fig. 3.) guarded, as before, with a bit of paper, to prevent its filling with mercury, is to be introduced under the bell-glass, having the thumb placed upon the extremity, G, of the syphon, to regulate the passage of the air; and by this means the air is gradually admitted, so as to let the mercury fall to its level. This being done, the bell-glass is to be carefully removed, the globules of melted iron contained in the cup, and those ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... of course not!" The man leaned forward and placed one hand, palm up, on the desk. "Last year I had an accident ... stupid ... lost a thumb." He shrugged apologetically, "It took almost ...
— Beyond Pandora • Robert J. Martin
... Nelson himself—physiologically speaking—was but three-quarters of a man. And the smoke of Waterloo blown by, what was Anglesea but the like? After Saratoga, what Arnold? To say nothing of Mutius Scaevola minus a hand, General Knox a thumb, and Hannibal an eye; and that old Roman grenadier, Dentatus, nothing more than a bruised and battered trunk, a knotty sort of hemlock of a warrior, hard to hack and hew into chips, though much marred in symmetry by battle-ax blows. Ah! but these warriors, like anvils, will stand a deal ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... unceasingly isolated the King of Spain; in what manner she had shut him up with the Queen, and rendered him inaccessible, not only to his Court but to his grand officers, his ministers, even his valets, so that he was served by only three or four attendants, all French, and entirely under her thumb. At the death of the Queen this solitude continued. Under the pretext that his grief demanded privacy, she persuaded the King to leave his palace and to instal himself in a quiet retreat, the Palace of Medina-Celi, near the Buen-Retiro, at the other end of the city. She preferred this because it ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... peace while men like him are going about the world? Ill should we stand before blessed Saint Benignus, and sour would be his face when he comes to judge us at the Last Day, were we to spare an enemy of his when we had him under our thumb! Brother, the bards and the gleemen are an evil race, ever cursing and ever stirring up the people, and immoral and immoderate in all things, and heathen in their hearts, always longing after the Son of Lir, and Aengus, and Bridget, and the Dagda, and Dana the Mother, and all the false ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... mysel'; it were his doing,' jerking his thumb toward Philip: 'a'm ready to stand by what a've done. Yo've getten a warrant a'll be bound, for them justices is grand at writin' when ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of plateless pies, just as the newsboy on the train secures a pile of magazines. The caterer marches down the length of the table with the half-inquiring, half-defiant announcement, "Pies, gentlemen! pies, gentlemen!" At every step he reaches for a pie, gives it a dexterous twirl between his thumb and finger, and sends it spinning to the recipient with a skill and accuracy of aim which would have done credit to the disk-thrower of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... important of his works are Das Trauerspiel in Tirol, 1826, treating of the tragic story of Andreas Hofer; Kaiser Friedrich II., 1827, a drama of the Hohenstaufen; the comic heroic epic, Tulifaentchen, 1830, a satiric version of an heroic Tom Thumb; Alexis, 1832, a trilogy setting forth the destruction of the reforms begun by Peter the Great; Merlin, 1832; and his two novels, Die Epigonen, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... composed of a solitary ruby, in the upper rim of the cartilage of either ear,—a chain of gold, curiously wrought, and intertwined with a string of small pearls, around his neck,—a massive bangle of plain gold on his arm,—a richly jewelled ring on his thumb, and others, broad and shield-like, on his toes,—complete his outfit in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... among the bad men of the West. While Buck was not a bad man, he had to rub elbows with them frequently, and he believed that the sauce for the goose was the sauce for the gander. So be bad removed the trigger of his revolver and worked the hammer with the thumb of the "gun hand" or the heel of the unencumbered hand. The speed thus acquired was greater than that of the more modern double-action weapon. Six shots in a few seconds was his average speed when that number was required, and when ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... been made of various materials, but its use is somewhat inconvenient for the Gun Captain, and he cannot feel that the vent is stopped. At the Experimental Battery of the Ordnance Yard the naked thumb is used, and experience shows that the gun is never so hot as to occasion the least inconvenience, ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... worn were likewise a curiosity to us. These gloves have no fingers, but are made like a baby's glove, with a thumb at each side; and when rowing or at other hard work if the man wears out the palm of his glove, he simply reverses it and makes use of the other thumb. These gloves are generally knitted of grey wool, the thumbs being white, and resemble ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Frank sat, and seemed designed, on purpose, to furnish no temptation to pilferers. There was a table, two chairs, a painted plaster statue of a gray-bearded man in black standing on a small bracket with a crook in his hand; a pious book, much thumb-marked, lay face downwards on the table beside the oil lamp. There was another door through which the monk had disappeared, and that was absolutely all. There was no carpet and no curtains, but a bright little coal fire burned on the hearth, ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... world, or how you have learned to set up trade with strange humans and non-humans alike. To each his own mystery. On Khatka every boy before he becomes a man must learn to navigate the jungle, and with no instruments to help him, only what lies in here." He touched his thumb to his forehead. "So through generations we have developed our homing instincts. Those who did not, also did not live to father others who might have had the same lack. We are hounds who can run on a scent, and we are migrators who have better than ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... in a hard voice. "Go ahead, an' get done with it. I'm tired of standing here." He had released his thumb from the spring of the electric torch, and the light went out, making the spot seem all the blacker ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... mechanic who is not prepared to tackle the new problems that will arise. For all this next century this particular body of mechanics will be picking up new recruits and eliminating the incompetent and the rule-of-thumb sage. Can it fail, as the years pass, to develop certain general characters, to become so far homogeneous as to be generally conscious of the need of a scientific education, at any rate in mechanical and chemical matters, and to possess, down to its very lowest ranks and orders, a common ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... gallery, which was otherwise clear of patients (for they were all out), there was a poor little dark-chinned, meagre man, with a perplexed brow and a pensive face, stooping low over the matting on the floor, and picking out with his thumb and forefinger the course of its fibres. The afternoon sun was slanting in at the large end-window, and there were cross patches of light and shade all down the vista, made by the unseen windows and the open doors of the little ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... nothin' for him to do except to put his thumb in at the place where the eyebrows was, an' get down out of the car, an' then she told me, would you believe that with her an' John Bunyan in their second hour of chasin' around like a pair of crazy cockroaches ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... be found at his stall in the market," was written of the vacant-faced peasant. "You will first attract his attention by asking the price of something. When he is looking at you, touch your left thumb lightly with the forefinger of your right hand. Then utter in a low distinct tone the words 'The Lamp is lighted.' That is ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the law of probabilities is applied in the case of the identification of persons "wanted" by the police. For example, the official description of an absconding forger runs as follows:—"He has a habit of rubbing his right thumb against the middle finger as if turning a ring. He frequently strokes his right eyebrow with right forefinger when engaged in writing; when perplexed, he bites his lower lip and ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... wild beast's blood in his veins. The fowler hastens to the slaughter. With his thumb, he stifles the beating of the captives' hearts, staves in their skulls. The little birds, so many piteous heads of game, will go to market, strung in dozens on a wire ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... howes o' life to some: Green loans whaur they ne'er fash their thumb, But mark the muckle winds that come, Soopin' an' cool, Or hear the powrin' burnie drum In the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shoulder's difference between them, might on the whole have been considered, from a theatric point of view, as a failure. Whereon the little man seized the calabash of beer, and filling therewith a cow's horn, his thumb on the small end, raised it ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... wrappings curl back, and finally wither and fall. In the plane-tree, or sycamore, this inner wrapping of the bud is a little pelisse of soft yellow or tawny fur. When it is cast off, it is the size of one's thumb nail, and suggests the delicate skin of some golden-haired mole. The young sycamore balls lay aside their fur wrappings early in May. The flower tassels of the European maple, too, come packed in a slightly furry covering. The long ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... feet,—sipping her Sangaree as daintily as you please. She was the most ignorant old creature that ever was known, could neither read nor write, and made a sad jumble of the King's English when she spoke; yet, by mere natural quickness and rule-of-thumb, she could calculate to a Joe how much a Shipmaster's Washing-Bill came to. And when she had settled that according to her Scale of Charges, which were of the most Exorbitant Kind, she would Grin and say, "He dam ship, good consignee;" or, "He dam ship, dam rich owner; stick ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... enough at a large number of not very good plays of the lighter kind, with a few poems and miscellanies, it is reasonably enough supposed that he lived by his pen. The only product of this period which has kept (or indeed which ever received) competent applause is Tom Thumb, or the Tragedy of Tragedies, a following of course of the Rehearsal, but full of humour and spirit. The most successful of his other dramatic works were the Mock Doctor and the Miser, adaptations of Moliere's famous pieces. His undoubted connection ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... performer has four. One of these he conceals in the palm of the hand by which he lifts the cup. The handle of the cup can be grasped between the outstretched fingers—(first and second)—and the ball is securely held by the muscle at the ball of the thumb. By bending the first and second fingers that hold the cup, its lip is brought in close proximity to the secreted ball. By a sharp or jerky movement forward to place the cup on the ground, and at the same time releasing the muscle of the ball of ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... I can fancy such an encounter for the querulous old reformer. "Mike! blast you, you booby, you've broken my drill!" And Mike, (putting his thumb deliberately in the armlet of his waistcoat,) "Meester Tull, it's not the loikes o' me'll be leestening to insoolting worrds. I'll take me money, if ye plase." And with what a fury "Meester" Tull would have slashed away, after this, at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... wabblings and contortions climbed up the tree. He stared speechless with amazement as the moth crept around a limb and clung to the under side. There was a big pursy body, almost as large as his thumb, and of the very snowiest white that Freckles ever had seen. There was a band of delicate lavender across its forehead, and its feet were of the same colour; there were antlers, like tiny, straw-colored ferns, on its head, and from its shoulders hung the crumpled wet wings. ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... sense of being moved or used. The commentator adds that the sacred thread also should be wound round the thumb, as the Grihyasutras declare. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... assuredly knows what you are not. He will answer you quietly and to the point. If you have been fortunate enough to have ridden range, hunted or camped with him or his kind, ask him, as he stands with thumb in belt and wide Stetson tilted back, the trail to heaven. He will smile and point toward the mesas and the mountains of his home. Ask him the trail to that other place with which he so frequently garnishes his conversation, and he will gravely point to the mesas ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... there," continued the ghastly voice. "It's a plot, see?—to kidnap Nelson. There's a gal in it—o coorse. Thinks she can twiddle the A'mighty round her thumb because her face ain't spotty. Lay that in Nelson's ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... so much swollen that I can scarcely keep my pen steady between my thumb and finger, yet my stomach is easy, and my breathing comfortable, and I am eager to hope all good things of my health. That gained, I have a cheering, and I trust prideless confidence that I shall make an active, and perseverant use of the faculties and requirements ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... meaning, Mr. Glascock?" Mr. Glascock was not sure that he did, but the minister went on to make that meaning clear. "It is the multitude that with us is educated. Go into their houses, sir, and see how they thumb their books. Look at the domestic correspondence of our helps and servants, and see how they write and spell. We haven't got the mountains, sir, but our table-lands are the highest on which the bright sun of our Almighty ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... mad antics with each other to keep from freezing. At the next station we drank large quantities of hot milk, flavored with butter, sugar and cinnamon, and then pushed on, with another chubby hop-o'-my-thumb as guide and driver. The storm grew worse and worse: the wind blew fiercely over the low hills, loaded with particles of snow, as fine as the point of a needle and as hard as crystal, which struck full on our eyeballs and stung them so that we could scarcely see. I ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... step, with one leg over the other, and rubbing the top of his boot with a vigor which betrayed to me some secret mirth. He looked up at me from under his straw hat with the grin of a malicious Puck, glanced towards the group, and made a curious gesture with his thumb. There were several empty pint-bottles on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Several constructions are used, as shown here. Sometimes the wire is passed through a hole, and a screw tapped in at right angles to the hole is screwed down upon the wire. Sometimes the wire is clamped between two shoulders, one on the screw, the other on the post. The screw is often a flat-headed thumb screw or has a milled edge. Sometimes the screw has a slot and is ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... Captain, "is a band of leather going around the hand, with a thimble fitted into it where it comes across the root of the thumb. The sailor's needle differs only from the common one in being longer and three-cornered, instead of round. It is used for sewing sails and other coarse work on shipboard. The needle is held between the thumb and forefinger, and is ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... delicately placing the thumb of her left hand on the tip of her nose, and opening the fingers, which she slightly moved to and fro. Philemon answered this provocation by putting his arm around her waist; and then the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... his favourite place, and I tried again, after giving my friends caution to be on the look out. This time I was successful, I put my hand gently under his belly, and by a tickle, secured the rascal, by thrusting the fore-finger and thumb of my right hand in his gills. I got him on to land, my friends ran about in exstacy, and I think I never saw a finer trout than he proved to be—real Eden. We gave a shout of triumph, after which we cut him on the nose to kill him. From tail to snout he measured one foot four inches; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... the hill," said Daniel, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder, and speaking in a ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... Marshall found was said to be worth about fifty cents, and the second over five dollars. Almost all, though, that was found was like beans or small seeds or in fine dust. No one tried to weigh or measure such gold more correctly than to call a pinch between the finger and thumb a dollar's worth, while a teaspoonful was an ounce, or sixteen dollars' worth. A wineglassful meant a hundred dollars, and a tumblerful a thousand. Miners carried their "dust" in a buckskin bag, and this was put on the counter, and the storekeeper ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... genuine, and then it goes in. For instance, have you ever heard of Percy Pook, the bookie? I have got a real ripe thing in about Percy this week, the absolute limpid truth. It will make him sit up a bit. There, just under your thumb." ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... represents our middle age, when we come to our [Greek: akme], or height of stature and strength; then begins our declining age, from thence to the end of our forefinger which amounts to a little fall, but from thence to the end of the thumb there is a great fall, to show, when man goes down (in his old age) he falls fast and far, and breaks (as we say) with a witness. Now, if our very fingers' end do read us such a divine lecture of mortality, oh, that we could take it out, and have it perfect (as we say) ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... green as sea water, at other times they are grey or nearly grey, most often they are hazel green. And your feet are like hands, and your ankle—see, I can span it between forefinger and thumb.... Your hair is faint, like flowers. Your throat is too thick, you have the real singer's throat; thousands of pounds lie hidden in that whiteness, which is mine—the whiteness, not ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Slim, sucking his thumb, which he had that minute gashed with the knife. He rose and carried the dish of pared potatoes over to the kettle of boiling water waiting to receive them, but half way over he tripped on the apron, which had slipped down under his feet, and sat down ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... lasted, like other follies, its appointed time, and the town became merry after another fashion. It was next thought the height of vulgar wit to answer all questions by placing the point of the thumb upon the tip of the nose, and twirling the fingers in the air. If one man wished to insult or annoy another, he had only to make use of this cabalistic sign in his face, and his object was accomplished. At every street corner where a group was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... to the way she wore her shirtwaists. Miss Gussie Fink could wear a starched white shirtwaist under a close-fitting winter coat, remove the coat, run her right forefinger along her collar's edge and her left thumb along the back of her belt and disclose to the admiring world a blouse as unwrinkled and unsullied as though it had just come from her own skilful hands at the ironing board. Miss Gussie Fink was so innately, flagrantly, beautifully clean-looking ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... do not use words to conceal ideas, then there is no question but that the rank and file, those caring nothing about the offices personally, are in advance of their leaders and party publications. Unfortunately the average voter studies the science of politics—good government,—only when thumb-screwed by bad legislation. When happy and revelling in plenty, this cunning thrift of politicians is good enough "statesmanship" for pretty much all of us; then we can really admire the brightness of the great "Magnetic" ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... in astonishment. Not a tree bigger than his thumb gave shade. The gate of the cattle corral stood but a few feet from the kitchen door, and rusty beef-bones, bleaching skulls, and scraps of sun-dried hides littered the ground or hung upon the fence. Exteriorly the low cabin made a drab, depressing ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... those who desire, instead of a system for the discharge of honest but unfortunate debtors upon the surrender of their estates, a criminal code and a thumb-screw machine for the collection of doubtful and desperate debts. They covet a return to the primitive practices which prevailed in Rome, when the debtor was sold into slavery or had his body cut into pieces and distributed pro rata among ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... she called it. It did not follow because he was a butcher that he was to have butchering ideas for ever, or that he was to know nothing of 'literature,' as she termed it—that is, novels. Mr. Mumbles had read 'Puss in Boots,' 'Jack the Giant Killer,' 'Tom Thumb,' 'Jack and the Bean Stalk,' 'Whittington and his Cat,' and 'Mother Goose' in his childhood. In his boyhood he had gone through 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' and 'The Seven Champions of Christendom,' and therefore knew there was something in the world besides scrags ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... strange effect on the miser. His hard, selfish heart, which had never felt a generous feeling for anyone, warmed up, and grew suddenly soft in tenderness towards these helpless, hungry little ones. Tears moistened his eyes. He put his thumb on the latch of the door. The latch was gently lifted and the door opened. He took the loaf from under his coat and threw it into the room. The little girls, still waiting and watching on their knees, saw the loaf go bouncing over the floor. They jumped up on their feet, and clapped ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... dear girls." The flash digger held up the brilliant between his finger and thumb. "That bit of carbon ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... craning his neck. He drew back, a look of stupefaction in his face. He held up his large thumb ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... citing as it will serve to show the dislike the people have to the feudal system and the dread they have of its re-establishment, tho' they can know nothing about it except by tradition. The piece performed was called Le petit Poucet (Tom Thumb and the Ogre); but I missed my old acquaintance the Ogre and his seven-league boots of Mother Goose, and found that in this melodrama he was transformed into a tyrannical and capricious Seigneur Feodal. There was a very pretty young lady about 16 years of age accompanied by her ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... by all accounts it would be easy to reckon them; but seriously, is it true that the lower joint of your right thumb is horny, in consequence of having caught the character of your conscience from having kissed ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the office but here he crossed his legs and fidgeted. When his story was interesting he read the best, that is the funniest, paragraphs to his wife; when it did not hold him he coughed, scratched his ankles and his right ear, thrust his left thumb into his vest pocket, jingled his silver, whirled the cigar-cutter and the keys on one end of his watch chain, yawned, rubbed his nose, and found errands to do. He went upstairs to put on his slippers—his elegant slippers of seal-brown, shaped like medieval shoes. He brought ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... bit farther, and met another fellow, who had a bottle under his arm, and, instead of a stopper, held his thumb in it. "Why do you hold your thumb there?" "If I pull it out, I squirt a hundred miles, and besprinkle everything that I choose. If you like, take me also into your service; it may be to your advantage and ours too." George replied: ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... Done,' said Mike, flipping his own license with his thumb; 'they're important. I've heard em called tickets of ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... with a grin threw the door open and indicated with his thumb that Swetenham and Dick might advance. He winked at them as they passed him, a fund of malignant impudence in his eyes. The room inside was small and scattered with a profusion of clothes. Fanny, attired in a long silk dressing wrap, sat on a low chair by the only table, ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... said her father proudly—as he opened the end door of the stove and picked up a coal for his pipe, placing it without undue haste in the bowl, and carefully pressing it down with his thumb. Leaning back in the chintz-covered rocking chair, he spread his feet out to the heat which came from the oven door, and repeated, "No fear of Pearlie—there ain't a girl in the country better able to ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... my foot upon the weasel. The soft muck underneath yielded, and I held him without hurting him. He let go his hold upon the chicken and seized the sole of my shoe in his teeth. Then I reached down and gripped him with my thumb and forefinger just back of the ears, and lifted him up, and looked his impotent rage in the face. What gleaming eyes, what an array of threatening teeth, what reaching of vicious claws, what a wriggling ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... think Snogger is in some way under Link's thumb," put in Dave. "Anyway, the two seem to have a good deal ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... can say it, don't you see that is enough?" said Lois lightly. "I enjoy all this work, besides; and so will you by and by when you get the lettuce and radishes, and some of my Tom Thumb peas. And I am not going to ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... (1 1/4: 1), Gorilla (1 1/5: 1), Chimpanzee (1 1/16: 1). In all, the fore limbs are terminated by hands, provided with longer or shorter thumbs; while the great toe of the foot, always smaller than in Man, is far more movable than in him and can be opposed, like a thumb, to the rest of the foot. None of these apes have tails, and none of them possess the cheek pouches common among monkeys. Finally, they are all inhabitants ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... sir—wish I did! wouldn't be long a finding out, though—on'y he says: 'Jem, you stop 'ere wi' they'" (pointing his thumb up the staircase). "So, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... He dug the nail of his right middle finger into his thumb, looked thoughtful, and ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Zony,' I says, 'a great, big man like you oughtn't to come down on a little cuss who's all thumb-hand-side and left feet.' ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... through you? Come along, do!" and opened her housewife, and put on her thimble, and threaded her needle, and got out the button, and made Martin stand in a patch of moonlight, and stood herself in front of him, and took the neck of his shirt deftly between her left finger and thumb, and began to stitch. And Martin looking down on the top of her smooth little head, which was all he could see of her, said anxiously, "You won't prick me, will you?" and Jane answered, "I'll try not to, but it is very awkward." Because ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... replied, with his good nature entirely restored. "You can see that you get me right under your thumb when you talk that way. But we must both be on our guard against your fault, you know, or pretty soon you'll be taking the whole work of ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... with his knees knocking together, 'I never was so mortified in all my life—specially in front of all the gentry here,' pointing his thumb toward the Spanish prisoners, 'but the fact is, Cap'n, I've clean forgot ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... a grain feels soft when rubbed between the thumb and finger, then turn into a colander. Drain off the water and pour over the rice several cups of cold water. Drain that off, too, and place the rice where it can have moist heat for a while before serving. A good plan ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... vain. But thine are COMMON comforts!...To omit Pipe-panegyric and tobacco-praise, Think what a general joy the snuff-box gives, Europe, and far above Pizarro's name Write Raleigh in thy records of renown! Him let the school-boy bless if he behold His master's box produced, for when he sees The thumb and finger of authority Stuffed up the nostrils: when hat, head, and wig Shake all; when on the waistcoat black, brown dust, From the oft-reiterated pinch profuse Profusely scattered, lodges in its folds, And part on the magistral table lights, Part on the open ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... thumb-screw at this shop. The thumbs are put into this instrument through the two circular holes at the top of it. By turning a key, a bar rises up by means of a screw from C to D, and the pressure upon them becomes painful. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... Between thumb and forefinger he balanced a sugar-crusted comfit of coriander seed steeped in marjoram vinegar, and having put his question he bore the sweet-meat to his mouth. The ladies looked at him, and from him to me. Then Madonna Paola spoke, and there seemed ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... Marcos bore no address. It was sealed, however, in red wax, which had the impress of Nature's seal, a man's thumb—unique ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... that I'd be just as pleased if he stayed away altogether," she said. "That's all I can tell you. Maybe you'd get something more out of her. She knows more than she says, anyhow," and she pointed with her thumb at the door of the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Here, for instance, the way he—" Meighan stopped suddenly. He had been pulling the mattress away from the front of the safe, and now, with a sharp, exultant exclamation, he stooped quickly and picked up a small object from the floor. He held it out, twirling It between thumb and forefinger, for Kenleigh's inspection—a flashy scarf pin, horseshoe-shaped, of blatantly ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... possible removed from Havemeyer's humdrum existence was that of Phineas Taylor Barnum, the greatest showman the world has ever seen, the originator of the great travelling circus, the exploiter of Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind, the owner of Jumbo, the most famous elephant that ever lived, whose name has passed into the English language as a ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... that she fell forward upon one knee. His revolver was yet in his right hand, gleaming in the starlight, but before he could raise or fire it I had grasped the steel barrel firmly, and the hammer came down noiselessly upon the flesh of my thumb. The next instant we were locked close together in fierce struggle for the mastery. He was the heavier, stronger man; I the younger and quicker. From the first every effort on both sides was put forth solely to gain command of the weapon,—his to fire, mine to prevent, for I ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... flush of energy, evoked under the spell of Io's enchantment, he had filled his spare hours with work, happy, exuberant, overflowing with a quaint vitality. A description of the desert in spate, thumb-nail sketches from a station-agent's window, queer little flavorous stories of crime and adventure and petty intrigue in the town; all done with a deftness and brevity that was saved from being too abrupt only by broad touches of color and light. And he had had ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Her dress was perfection—so were her jewels. One saw that her corsetiere was an artist, and that everything had cost a great deal of money. She had taken off one glove and Amaryllis saw her bare hand—it was well-shaped, save that the thumb turned ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... Sir Henry, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, and pointing along the road by which he had just travelled; and then, as if the effort had been too much for him, he fell back panting ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... strolling over to one of the windows that faced the sea and looking out. "Mr. Crowninshield makes it a rule never to stow away other folks where he wouldn't be stowed himself. It isn't a bad principle, either. You'll have a couple of the chauffeurs for company." With his thumb he motioned to other rooms flanking the narrow hall. "They may josh you some at first. That's part of starting out in the world. Keep a civil tongue in your head and if you don't mind 'em they'll soon quit. If they don't it's up to you to find the way to get on with 'em. Half of life is learning ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... time was short and had hurriedly scribbled on the back of a sheet of instructions printed in German script the few words he could summon strength to write. The scrap of paper was torn and smudgy and a thumb-print in blood was impressed on one corner. Each word was more shaky and labored than the preceding one, as if each had been traced only by a supreme effort. On it was written in German, "Good-bye, Mother and Father. My leg is crushed. The French are very kind and...." ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... him that the watch needed winding, and he stood for several seconds twisting the stem-crown between thumb and forefinger while stupidly comprehending the fact that he must have been asleep ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... I have imagined a man three hundred thousand miles high picking up a ball like the earth and looking at it and holding it in his hand. It would be about like a billiard-ball to him, and he would turn it over in his hand and rub it with his thumb, and where he rubbed over the mountain ranges he might say, 'There seems to be some slight roughness here, but I can't detect it with my eye; it seems perfectly smooth to look at.' The Himalayas to him, the highest peak, would be one-sixty-thousandth ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... given for the ordinary, and eight for the extraordinary. The executioner inserted a horn into the patient's mouth, and if he shut his teeth, forced him to open them by pinching his nose with the finger and thumb.] ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to do is to remove them. This is usually done by a wire placed around the polypus and by the thumb-screw in the instrument, tighten the wire until it has cut through ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... out a drawer. He found, after hunting, some notes. He counted two off, licking his big thumb with a pompous gesture, and having recounted them passed them heavily to me. I took them as a ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... you about was the nicest chap I ever see. He was kind to me, too. When I cut my thumb most off—see the scar?—a-slicin' bread in that boardin' house, the missis put me out 'cause I couldn't do ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... his horse which he returned to at once. After watering and feeding his tired beast he turned in at a coffeehouse and bought a lunch—not being able to afford a meal. Everywhere he went men pointed a timid or admiring thumb at him. They were unobtrusive about it, but it annoyed him at the moment. His mind was too entirely filled with perplexities to welcome strangers' greetings. "I must earn some money," was the thought which brought with it each time the offer of the Express Company. He determined ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... articulum aequantem crassitudine, acutum utrobique et costis octo pulchre formatis constantem. [A diamond of marvellous value, as long as two joints of an infant's finger, and as thick as one of the joints of its thumb, sharp on both sides, and of a beautiful octagonal shape.] This pretended adamas juvenis pariensis resisted the action of lime. Petrus Martyr distinguishes it from topaz by adding offenderunt et topazios in littore, [they ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... complained of the lack of uniformity in neckties. Some wore a Tom Thumb variety, and others wore scarves. This was a state of things to be deplored, and he considered that the Raad should put its foot down and define the size and ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... of remembered anguish, as he shrugged his half-limb, and described the matter. Afterwards, in a reply to a question of mine, whether he still seemed to feel the hand that had been amputated, he answered that he did always; and, baring the stump, he moved the severed muscles, saying, "There is the thumb, there the forefinger," and so on. Then he talked to me about phrenology, of which he seems a firm believer and skilful practitioner, telling how he had hit upon the true character of many people. There was a great deal of sense and acuteness in his talk, and something ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tricks; their features have scarcely accentuated, their hair has merely curled into loose rings, but their eyes have come forward from below the forehead, eyes and forehead working together already; and there are great holes, into which you may dig your thumb, in the cheeks. Those of fourteen or fifteen have deplorably thin arms, and still such terrible calves; and a stomach telling of childish gigantic meals; but they have the pert, humorous frankness of Verrocchio's David, who certainly flung a jest at Goliath's unwieldy person ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... you my sister! Look at my hand.' Sol extended his hand. 'Look how my thumb stands out at the root, as if it were out of joint, and that hard place inside there. Did you ever see anything so ugly as that hand—a misshaped monster, isn't he? That comes from the jackplane, and my pushing against it day after day and year after year. If I were found drowned ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... wallet open to his FBI shield. Lynch gave it a good long examination, peering at it from every angle and holding it up to the light two or three times. He even wet his thumb and rubbed the badge with it. At last ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... When you buy them, see that they are elastic and firm, that they come naturally and easily to a good point, without any scraggy hairs. Test them by moistening them, and then pressing the point on the thumb-nail. They should bend evenly through the whole length of the hair. Reject any which seem "weak in the back." If it lays flat toward the point and bends all in one place near the ferrule, it ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... formation of adhesions when the tendon passes through muscle than through interosseous membrane. The palmaris longus is anastomosed with the abductor pollicis longus (extensor ossis metacarpi pollicis), thus securing a fair amount of abduction of the thumb. The flexor carpi ulnaris may also be anastomosed with the common extensor of the fingers. The extensors of the wrist may be shortened, so as to place the hand in the position of dorsal flexion, and thus improve the attitude and ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... point of comparison. In geometry the point of comparison is extent, and the unit of measure is now the division of the circle into three hundred and sixty parts, now the circumference of the terrestrial globe, now the average dimension of the human arm, hand, thumb, or foot. In economic science, we have said after Adam Smith, the point of view from which all values are compared is labor; as for the unit of measure, that adopted in France is the FRANC. It is incredible that so many sensible men should struggle for forty years against an idea so simple. But ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... she leaves this in a few days for Mrs. Bazalgette's house. You tell me you have got a warm invitation there. Then make the play there, and, if you can't win her, say you don't deserve her, twiddle your thumb, and see a bolder lover carry her off. You foolish boy, she is only a woman; she is to be won. If you don't mind, some man will show you it was as easy as you think it is hard. Timid wooers make a ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the height of the mercury, both before and after the experiment[9]. After this, the syphon (GH, Pl. IV. fig. 3.) guarded, as before, with a bit of paper, to prevent its filling with mercury, is to be introduced under the bell-glass, having the thumb placed upon the extremity, G, of the syphon, to regulate the passage of the air; and by this means the air is gradually admitted, so as to let the mercury fall to its level. This being done, the bell-glass is to be carefully removed, the globules of melted ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... that all laugh'd, and clap'd him on the shoulder, Making the bold wagg by their praises bolder. One rub'd his elboe thus, and fleer'd, and swore, A better speech was neuer spoke before. Another with his finger and his thumb, Cry'd via, we will doo't, come what will come. The third he caper'd and cried, All goes well. The fourth turn'd on the toe, and downe he fell: With that they all did tumble on the ground, With such a zelous laughter so profound, That in this spleene ridiculous appeares, To checke their folly ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... he said to himself; "but never mind, she will tell me all to-morrow. I shall win her; it will be my delight to guard her, to help her, and if necessary to save her. She is under someone's thumb; but I ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... or I'd never dare to sell it when Martha wasn't here. As it is, I daresay she'll raise a fuss. Martha's the boss of this establishment I can tell you. I'm getting awful tired of living under another woman's thumb. But come in, come in. You must be real tired and hungry. I'll do the best I can for you in the way of tea but I warn you not to expect anything but bread and butter and some cowcumbers. Martha locked up all the cake and ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was saying in a fluent, abominable, literal translation into Spanish. "Take the knife so... thumb upwards. Stab down in the soft between the neck and the shoulder-blade. You get right into the lungs with the point. I've tried it: ten times. Never stick the back. The chances are he moves, and you hit a bone. There are no ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... furnished' by its owner. My spirits are easily affected by weather, and I hate solitude. And I dislike to be master of things that are not mine. 'Be careful not to break us,' say the glass and china. 'You'd better not spill ink on me,' growls the carpet. 'None of your dog's-earing, thumb-marking, back-breaking tricks here!' ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... goes to be examined. Wan iv th' wild la-ads down be th' slough hit him with a brick wanst, an' he ain't been able to do fractions since. Thin he's got inflammathry rheumatism enough to burn a barn, an' he can't turn a page without makin' ye think he's goin' to lose a thumb. He's got wife an' childher, an' he's on in years; but he's a polisman, an' he's got to be rayformed. I tell him all I can. He didn't know where St. Pethersburg was till I tould him it was th' capital iv Sweden. They'll not give him th' boots on that ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... "Not so different, after all." He ripped it open ruthlessly with his thumb. "Here's where I get set back a few dollars starting another domestic plant. Blamed ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... dunno what he is, I dunno what you are, lady, but I figure that you and Caroline Smith and everybody else in this house is under the thumb of ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... fairly between the generals. The traditions of the English mess tables have been preserved by Sterne, who was brought up at the knees of old soldiers of William. "'There was Cutts's' continued the Corporal, clapping the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of his left, and counting round his hand; 'there was Cutts's, Mackay's Angus's, Graham's and Leven's, all cut to pieces; and so had the English Lifeguards too, had it not been for some regiments on the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, and received the enemy's fire in their ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his jingling bells; 'but I presume your Majesty has no objections to my walking on my hands:—I am free, I hope.' 'Perfectly,' said Normo, 'hands or feet, it's all the same to me; only do my bidding.' 'I thought as much,' said Willi; so, swinging his limber legs into the air, Willi, thumb after thumb, essayed progression. But soon, his bottled blood so rushed downward through his neck, that he was fain to turn a somerset and regain his feet. Said he, 'Though I am free to do it, it's not so easy turning digits into toes; I'll walk, by gad! which is my other ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... where they could not be seen, that is, in the dark places. The grown imps look like old men with beards, but no one ever heard of a kabouter that was taller than a yardstick. As for the babies, they are hardly bigger than a man's thumb. The big boys and girls, in the kabouter kingdom, are not much over a ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... they quaff is none of your visionary drink, such as a drouthie body has dished out to his lips in a dream; nor is it shadowy and unsubstantial, like the vessels they sail in, which are made out of a cockel-shell or a cast-off slipper, or the paring of a seaman's right thumb-nail. I once got a hansel out of a witch's quaigh myself—auld Marion Mathers, of Dustiefoot, whom they tried to bury in the old kirkyard of Dunscore; but the cummer raise as fast as they laid her down, and naewhere ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... say that the object of the lady's visit was to discover if the knife had been poisoned. Finding that all question would be useless, she had recourse to an artifice to effect her purpose, suggested by the discovery of a splinter buried in Bertha's thumb. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... Matthew, jerking his thumb towards a row of old buildings, "and them's the cow-houses," with a jerk the other way. "Old pony's with master's mare, as he drives hisself. I've nought to say to pony; it's your business. And I'll want a hand with cart-horses and plough-horses. ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... the shingle men lifted the stretched string between his thumb and his forefinger, and he let it go, and it snapped ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... intimated, is "Christian in its disposition, and well-behaved beyond most of its kind," will readily bite, if it is held in the fingers and anything is put to its jaws. But that is nothing. So would you, most gentle reader, if a great giant pinched you between his thumb and finger, and held your hands and feet and head; and if, too, like our spider, you could not see enough to distinguish friends from foes. Spiders, then, will bite. But to the second part of the inquiry our answer must be less positive. They have a very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... turn out to be? so very, very tiny that about fifty thousand waves are contained in a single inch of space! I have drawn on the board the length of an inch, and now I will measure the same space in the air between my finger and thumb. Within this space at this moment there are fifty thousand tiny waves moving up and down. I promised you we would find in science things as wonderful as in fairy tales. Are not these tiny invisible messengers coming incessantly from the sun as wonderful as any fairies? ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... faint ridge the whole length of the cut, as if the knife had a tiny gap in its edge. That is where the beaver's two upper teeth meet, and the edge is not quite perfect. He cut that stick, thicker than a man's thumb, at a single bite. To cut an alder having the diameter of a teacup is the work of a minute for the same tools; and a towering birch tree falls in a remarkably short time when attacked by three or four beavers. Around the stump of such a tree you find ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... A thumb indicated the door in the rear of the hall. Thither P. Sybarite betook himself on the instant, spurred by the demands of an appetite insatiable once ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... "And when Moses lifted up his hands Israel overcame." That at times he joins his hands, and bows down, praying earnestly and humbly, denotes the humility and obedience of Christ, out of which He suffered. He closes his fingers, i.e. the thumb and first finger, after the consecration, because, with them, he had touched the consecrated body of Christ; so that if any particle cling to the fingers, it may not be scattered: and this belongs to the reverence ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... a work of considerable time, for with their masts they would have to clear away the branches to a considerable height. Down near the water the branches by which we pushed ourselves along were those of the undergrowth, with many rattans and other creepers varying from the thickness of one's thumb to that of one's wrist, and these would take a great deal of chopping before one of their war boats could be pushed through, but higher up they would probably have much thicker branches to contend ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... namely (1) the product which the business yields in excess of simple interest on the capital, and (2) the wages that unorganized laborers may offer to accept. It is possible that the workmen may demand the former amount and the employers may offer the latter; and if so, compromising is a rule-of-thumb mode of doing justice. In the case of a strong union and a highly profitable business the employers may offer more than the minimum amount, and the award that is a compromise between the terms of the contending parties will then be well above that which is a fair mean between ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... foot, were made to terminate with the claws of the animal; and they were so long that they came up the thigh under the coat, or "jumper," as the men called it, and thus served instead of trousers. He also wore fur mittens, with a bag for the fingers, and a separate little bag for the thumb. The hair on these garments was long and soft, and worn outside, so that when a man enveloped himself in them, and put up the hood, which well-nigh concealed the face, he became very much like a bear or some such creature standing on ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... him the great man sat fidgeting in his chair; and, happening to put his thumb and finger into his vest pocket, he found the lavender-colored bonbon he had placed there the ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... the future, we cannot do better than make free use of it. The author opens with an announcement that he means to give exact quantities for every dish, and then, like a true Neapolitan, lets quantities go entirely, and adopts the rule-of-thumb system. And I must say I always find the question of quantities a difficult one. Some books give exact measures, each dish being reckoned enough for four persons, with instructions to increase the measures in proportion to the additional number of diners ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... know when you got your thumb on that kid," he said. "She's the shifty one, all right. Talk along to you sweet as honey, but all the time she's watching for some chance to throw the harpoon into you. Venomous—regular vixen. No sense of humour—laughs ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... has become a large business. Establishments are made at several places in Maryland and Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle. These places of deposit are strongly built, and well supplied with iron thumb-screws and gags, and ornamented with catskins ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... there was nothing to be done but rest on one haunch and try to look wise, being continually bothered by the flies. After a while he began to grow stronger and more comely, his ears darkened, and his eyes—put in, as they say, with a dirty thumb—grew larger, taking on that exceeding brightness that made passers-by look and look again. He was also allowed further afield when his turn came. There were walks along the river-banks, in company with half-a-dozen of the others; and before he was six months old he could ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... Saffy wouldn't look at me for a long time—that's the last of the litter, you know; she shrieked when they called to her to come to me, and cried, 'That's ugly Corney! I won't have ugly Corney!' So you may see how I am used! But I've got her under my thumb at last, and she's useful. Then there's that prig Mark! I always liked the little wretch, though he is such a precious humbug! He's in bed—put out his knee, or something. He never had any stamina in him! Scrofulous, don't you know! They won't let me go near him—for fear of frightening ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... said Spike, breaking in upon Mr. Brimberly's astounded questioning, "is he nutty?" And he jerked his thumb toward the door through which Mr. Ravenslee ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... so?—said the young man, making his fists revolve round an imaginary axis, as you may have seen youth of tender age and limited pugilistic knowledge, when they show how they would punish an adversary, themselves protected by this rotating guard,—the middle knuckle, meantime, thumb-supported, fiercely prominent, death-threatening. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Like fireflies nesting in the hand of God gleams the city, dim-swathed by fairy palms. A long, thin thumb, mist-mighty, points shadowy to the Spanish Main, while through the fingers foam the Seven Seas. Above the calm and gold-green moon, beneath the wind-wet earth; and here, alone, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that," was my reply. "But there is no more dangerous criminal than the medical man who is beneath the thumb of a millionaire. There have been several before the assizes in various cities of Europe. Many, thanks alas! to the power of gold, have never been unmasked. There have been cases in Hungary, in France, in Italy, and in Russia—even one case in England ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... O. Company, where he had been an officer; of the East Indies, where in former years he had lived lavishly; of the Royal Engineers, where he had served for a period; and of a dozen other sides of life, each introducing some vigorous thumb-nail portrait. He had the talk to himself that night, we were all so glad to listen. The best talkers usually address themselves to some particular society; there they are kings, elsewhere camp-followers, as a man may know Russian and yet be ignorant of Spanish; but this fellow ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... something when Mother, half-way between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass paddock was all on fire. "So it is, Dad!" said Joe, slowly but surely dragging the head off a fly with finger and thumb. ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... saying to the men he had them back under his thumb for the time being; for when I told him of my discovery of the hut he called them to attention, turned them to the right, and marched them off as obedient as a machine, Tugendheim following like a man in a dream between his four guards and struggling ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... what's all this?" he exclaimed, searching sedulously for his double eyeglass—which all the while he held between his finger and thumb. "Now, young people, you must not occupy my time any longer. Harry, see this self-willed little lady into a cab; and you need not return until the afternoon. If you are in time to find me before I leave, that will do quite well. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... fish, not much larger than your thumb-nail, crowd in the shallow, sandy parts of the sea near the coast. There they often end their lives in the shrimp-trawl, as we have ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... taking them from the Workhouse and boarding them out among cottagers and others in the country, had been quietly at work for some dozen years before the Marston Green Homes were built, but whether the latter rule-of-thumb experiment will prove more successful than that of the ladies, though far more costly, the coming ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... a tell-tale!" said Dotty, slipping off half a dozen rings in haste. "There, I won't wear but just two—one on each thumb. Who wants the old watch? Tick's all out of it. You don't know, Prudy, how tight those rings fit. I could wear 'em on my forefinger, but I shan't, you make ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... represented by the mastersingers and their typical music, are disclosed by a study of the comedy to be associated with the passion of the young lovers, Walther and Eva. They differ in every respect—melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic,—from those which stand for the old guildsmen and their rule-of-thumb notions. They are chromatic, as ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... flush of prosperity, when he drove about in a hired carriage resplendent with the d'Entragues coat of arms, which cost him five hundred francs a month; had a majestic coachman in fine livery and a Tom Thumb groom; sported himself in gorgeous garments and strutted about in the Opera foyer, amidst the real or ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... years. At the present moment I could point out ten or twelve such cases, where men of thirty or forty are in farms, and to all appearance perfectly free and independent, and yet as completely under the parental thumb as they were at ten years old. Why do they not throw off the burden? Because they have imbibed the same creed, and intend to carry it out in their own persons. These men, if they think thus of their own offspring, cannot be expected to be more tender towards the lower class around ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... rushed past the ticket-puncher she made a vicious lunge at my out-stretched hand with an enormous pair of pincers, missing the ticket and partially amputating my thumb. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... strange trembling and tottering as she sang. At the end, after the audience had greeted her with no stinted measure of applause, she proudly handed the music-roll to my uncle, and permitted him to dip his thumb and finger into a little porcelain snuff-box, fashioned in the shape of a pug dog, out of which she took a pinch herself with evident relish. She had a horrible squeaky voice, indulged in all sorts of ludicrous flourishes and roulades, and so you may imagine ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... who confines her activities to the home will do many money-saving chores and require fewer clothes than she would if she, too, went to business. Notwithstanding these individual variations, the foregoing rules of thumb will be helpful in keeping you within ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... in the tree did not bear fruit," said the monkey. The turtle laughed and agreed, but when the monkey climbed in the tree he only ate and did not throw down any fruit. "Give me, monkey," said the turtle. "The thumb still eats," replied the monkey. Then he pushed a banana up his anus and after that threw it down. The turtle ate it and again asked for fruit. "The little finger still eats," said the monkey. Then he finished eating the fruit and he slept on the banana tree. The ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... expression, being the president of the Water Color Society, which he helped to found. An example of this kind of work is his picture called "Free from Care." A bright-faced boot-black stands leaning against a wall, with one thumb thrust in his trousers pocket, and a general air of having thrown aside business responsibility for a ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... everything. Nowadays we are beginning to realise that the results achieved by this type of mind, the general laws of Nature's behaviour formulated by its endeavours, are frequently of immense practical importance—of far more importance than the mere rules-of-thumb beyond which so-called practical minds never advance. The classic example of the utility of seemingly useless knowledge is afforded by Sir WILLIAM HAMILTON'S discovery, or, rather, invention of Quarternions, but no better example of the utilitarian ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... soup; and the waiter of the American dining-room can scarcely place a dish upon the board without making it eloquent of a blighted existence.) Having dashed the stews upon the reading-table before the fire, and rescued a drowning fly[1] from one of them with his least appetizing thumb-nail, the melancholy Irish attendant polished the spoons with his pocket-handkerchief and hurled them on either side of the plates. Perceiving that his German associate, in listlessly throwing the mugs of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... ruffled, led the way into the entry. "That's the butter's pantry," she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... declined; Dilworthy argued; said he was bound to be elected, and could then ruin him (Noble) if he voted no; said he had every railway and every public office and stronghold of political power in the State under his thumb, and could set up or pull down any man he chose; gave instances showing where and how he had used this power; if Noble would vote for him he would make him a Representative in Congress; Noble still declined to vote, and said he did not believe ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... neighbor, and a very familiar one. She holds in her arms a pretty child, a little boy— quite naked, like the son of a goddess; he has a medal hung round his neck by a little silver chain. I see him sucking his thumb and looking at me with those big eyes so newly opened on this old universe. The mother simultaneously looks at me in a sly, mysterious way; she stops—I think blushes a little—and holds out the little ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... in a great hurry!" said he to his neighbour clerk. "What's he got that great big ring on his thumb for?" And the other replying: "Don't you know 'em—rheumatic rings?" he added: "Doesn't look a rheumatic customer, anyhow!" And then both of them pinned up cheques, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... told the dancers they would have a hop by themselves, which they did. However, this was forgiven; and, at his departure, he was presented with the emperor's picture, set with brilliants. Pitrot received it with sang froid, pressed his thumb upon the crystal, crushed the picture to pieces, adding, "Thus I treat men not worthy of my friendship." This fellow behaved equally ill in France, Prussia, and Russia; but, at length, scouted by all his patrons, and, after giving his thousands to opera girls, he wandered about ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first. You remember the astonishment and incredulity of Atahualpa the Peruvian King; how he made the Spanish Soldier who was guarding him scratch Dios on his thumb-nail, that he might try the next soldier with it, to ascertain whether such a miracle was possible. If Odin brought Letters among his people, he ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... theirs, almost simultaneous in the two minds, was not wholly a failure as a thumb-nail sketch of Mr. George Crooper. And yet there was the impressiveness of size about him, especially about his legs and chin. At seventeen and eighteen growth is still going on, sometimes in a sporadic way, several ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... ground; it was white with alkali, and as seemed to them they were clearly outlined, through the yellow weeds. Then an alarming thing happened. The buffalo carcass had not been the only occupant of the wallow. Jack nudged Scout Trudeau, and pointed with his thumb. A king rattle-snake, over four feet long and as thick as their arm, was gliding ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... what manner she had shut him up with the Queen, and rendered him inaccessible, not only to his Court but to his grand officers, his ministers, even his valets, so that he was served by only three or four attendants, all French, and entirely under her thumb. At the death of the Queen this solitude continued. Under the pretext that his grief demanded privacy, she persuaded the King to leave his palace and to instal himself in a quiet retreat, the Palace of Medina-Celi, near the Buen-Retiro, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... tube up to the black mark, the tube of the air bulb is introduced into the lime water in such a way that its orifice shall be in perfect contact with the bottom of the other tube, and then, while the bulb is held between the fore and middle fingers of the upturned hand, one presses slowly with the thumb upon its bottom so as to expel all the air that it contains. This air enters the lime-water bubble by bubble. After this the tube is removed from the water, and the bulb is allowed to fill with air, and the same maneuver is again gone through ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... the abbot to one of the commissioners in London. Jack Horner, a poor lad, was chosen as the messenger. Tired, he rested in as comfortable a corner as he could on his way. Hungry, he determined to taste the pasty he was carrying. Inserting his thumb into the pie, he found nothing but parchment deeds. One of these he pulled out and pocketed, as likely to be valuable. The Abbot Whiting of Mells was executed for having withheld the missing parchment. In the Horner family was discovered years ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... offers himself to thee again; therefore, receive him humbly by faith into thy heart, and bid him welcome, for he deserveth it." Upon which words the Lord discovered his love to the child; and he gave a kind of leap in his bed, and snapped his finger and thumb together with abundance of joy. And from that time forward, in full joy and assurance of God's love, he continued earnestly praising God, desiring to die, and to be with Christ. And on Friday morning he sweetly went to rest, using ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley
... Berserkism by writing books whose pages reek with bloodshed. The most placid, benevolent, gold-spectacled paterfamilias I know, a man who thinks it cruel to eat live oysters, has a curious passion for crime and gratifies it by turning his study into a musee maccabre of murderers' relics. From the thumb-joint of a notorious criminal he can savour exquisitely morbid emotions, while the blood-stains on an assassin's knife fill him with the delicious lust of slaughter. In the same way predestined spinsters obtain vicarious ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... upon the ground near Lylda, and after a moment she climbed into it, two soldiers lifting her up the side of my thumb as it lay upon the ground. In the hollow of my palm, she lay quite securely, and very carefully I raised her up towards my face. Then, seeing that she was frightened, I ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... the right way," said Mr. Winston, as he spoke he placed his thumb on a brass nail and the gauze door rose, instead of opening, and without any noise displayed the contents of ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... himself represents him in a dark doublet having wide sleeves and a square collar closed in front. His thumb is in his pallet, and the other hand, with fingers taper and delicate as those of a hand by Van Dyck, holds one of his brushes. The smooth face, with regular features, is pale and thoughtful, and with the womanliness of the aspect increased from the dark hair, which is divided slightly to one ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... her voice worked its will on Mr. Campbell, as on all others. He came in, sat down, hooked his thumb into his vest pocket, and ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was just herself in a pretty little morning house gown of blue gingham. She was minus the dust-cap and the ruffled apron, but she had a dab of flour on the left cheek, and a smutch of crock on her forehead. She had, too, a cut finger on her right hand, and a burned thumb on her left. But she was Billy—and being Billy, she advanced with a bright smile and held out a cordial hand—not even wincing when the cut finger came under ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... he sat down and wept; and from the streaming tear drops sprang into being, as his first boon, a progeny of ghosts and goblins, of an aspect so loathsome and dreadful, that he was ready to faint away. At one time, after profound meditation, different beings spring forth: one from his thumb, another from his breath, a third from his ear, a fourth from his side. But enough of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... a question," said Holmes, with his finger and thumb in his waistcoat pocket. "Should I be too early to see your master, Mr. Silas Brown, if I were to call at five o'clock ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... see a gardener using any spraying contrivance on the end of a hose. In his thumb and forefinger, which he skillfully moves over the flowing stream, he has a combination of sprayers that can produce the heaviest stream or the finest mist at will. This is to be recommended, but few will care to follow the course of ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue
... baby reached out and closed his little fingers about Tenney's thumb. Tenney stood there, his heart swelling within him at the contrast between the child's forgivingness and her cruelty. Now she had the child's outer things off, and she rose with them in one hand, carrying the child on the other arm, and it was ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... daily, for many days successively. In these occupations the natives make use of a peculiar shrill whistle to frighten down the birds; it is produced by pulling out the under lip with the fore-finger and thumb, and pressing it together, whilst the tongue is placed against the groove, or hollow thus formed, and the breath strongly forced through. Whistling is also practised in a variety of other ways, and has peculiar sounds well known to the natives, which ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... had been sipping his wine. As Emily suddenly looked up and addressed him, he twirled the glass carelessly between his thumb and finger, remarking, as if this were the only feature of the story that at all impressed him, "A mole, did you say? ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... Minerva to save your life," replied Jimmy disrespectfully, "her nake ain't no bigger 'n that," making a circle of his thumb and forefinger. "Miss Cecilia, Miss Cecilia," he shrieked tantalizingly, "is ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... secure evenness of touch. Double passages, such as double thirds and sixths, should be divided and each half practised separately, with legato touch. Octaves should be practised with loose wrists and staccato touch. As a preparatory study practise with thumb alone. The thumb must always be kept curved, with joints well rounded out; it should touch the keys with its tip, so as to keep it on a level with the other fingers. Paderewski is ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... make a great difference to a sailor. When we got on deck, the man at the wheel struck eight bells (four o'clock in the morning), and "All Starbowlines, ahoy!'' brought the other watch up, but there was no going below for us. The gale was now at its height, "blowing like scissors and thumb-screws''; the captain was on deck; the ship, which was light, rolling and pitching as though she would shake the long sticks out of her, and the sails were gaping open and splitting in every direction. The mizzen topsail, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... rolling his head against the back of the sofa, and looking up at the chandelier, "sometimes a man has more freedom than he's got any use for. I don't know as I want to be back under Tweet's thumb, but I guess the Scripture was about right where it says it ain't good for a man to be alone. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... in feathers all fine, Who stood on the ocean's rim; There were numberless leagues of excellent brine— But there wasn't enough for him. So he knuckled a thumb in his painted eye, And added a ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... given Drake an exaggerated reverence for the printed page. He was inclined to set Mallinson on a pinnacle, and scourge himself at the foot of it for his earlier distrust of him. He opened the book again at the beginning, and let the pages slip across beneath his thumb from cover to cover; 413 was marked on the top corner of the last; 413 pages actually written and printed and published; all consecutive too; something new on each page. He turned to ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Is the free edge or the root the thickest? Trim closely the thumb nail and the nail of the middle finger of one hand and try to pick up a pin, or other minute object, from a smooth, hard surface. The result indicates what use of the nails? Suggest ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... mumbled something, but her enunciation was indistinct, owing to the fact that her thumb was in her mouth. Helen finished tying a bow of ribbon upon the leg of a stool, patted it ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... or thumb in order to turn over leaves. Many respectable people are addicted to this habit, but it is a vulgar one. Besides, it is entirely useless. The same remarks might be applied to the habit of suffering the corners of the leaves to turn up, in 'dog's ears.' Keep every ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... a table, placing your hands upon it, clenching the fists, keeping the back of the hand on the table, the thumb doubled over the fingers. Now fix your gaze upon the fist for a while, then gradually extend the thumb, keeping your whole attention fixed upon the act, just as if it was a matter of great importance. Then gradually extend your first finger, then your second and so on ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... in process of formation. Thus, the Finns, Lapps, Tartars, and Mongols, have no generic words for river, although even the smallest streams have their names. They have not a word to express fingers in general, but special words for thumb, fore-finger, etc. They have no word for tree, but special words for pine, birch, ash, etc. In the Finn language, the word first used for thumb was afterwards applied to fingers generally, and the special word for the bay ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... grinder, too, taken on at the same time, a short round-looking man, with plump cheeks, and small eyes which were often mere slits in his face. He had a little soft nose, too, that looked like a plump thumb, and moved up and down and to right and left when he was intent upon his work. He was the best-tempered man in the works, and seemed to me as if he was always laughing and showing his two rows ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... that the servant who was doing it should not be frightened. Although the dog had learned to trust me thoroughly, he snapped at me once involuntarily and bit me—apparently very slightly—in the upper joint of my right-hand thumb. There was no wound visible, but it was soon evident that the periosteum had become inflamed from the contusion. As the pain increased more and more with the use of the thumb, I was ordered to do no writing until my hand was quite healed. If my plight was not quite so terrible ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... white man could have done better. He threatened the right flank—Captain Perry hastened men to strengthen it and then White Bird turned the left flank. The volunteers ran away, Chief Joseph grabbed the best position; now he had the soldiers under his thumb, and they ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... my father was an intelligent man. From my cradle onward I was surrounded by replicas of ancient art; at ten years of age I read Gil Blas, at twelve La Pucelle. Where others had Hop-o'-my-thumb, Bluebeard, Cinderella, as childhood friends, mine were Venus and Apollo, Hercules and Lackoon. My husband's personality was filled with serenity and sunlight. Not even the incurable illness which fell upon him soon after our marriage could long ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... months. For five months of this time she had been stitching the seams and hems of umbrella covers for 35 cents a hundred. Her usual output was about 200 a day. By working very fast, she could in a full day make 300, but when she did, it left her thumb very sore. ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... grade, caramel; boil the sugar for a few minutes and dip the point of a spoon into it; if the sugar falls in large drops from the spoon it has reached the 1st grade; continue the boiling for a few minutes longer; dip your first finger into it and press the finger against the thumb; then open the fingers and if the sugar forms a thread between the 2 fingers it has reached the 2d grade; after boiling a little longer dip in a spoon and if a pearl hangs onto a long thread of the ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... rises) I God, woman, a man can't git no peace wid somebody like you in town. (He goes angrily into the store followed by MRS. ROBERTS. The boy sits down on the edge of the porch sucking the baby's thumb.) ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... from the bad taste of the time by his papers upon Chevy Chase, though he had gone some way to meet it by endeavouring to satisfy the Dennises of 'that polite age,' with authorities from Virgil. Among the jests was a burlesque criticism of Tom Thumb. What Addison thought of the 'little images of Ridicule' set up against him, the last paragraph of this Essay shows, but the collation of texts shows that he did flinch a little. We now see how he modified many expressions in the reprint of this Essay ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of nationality in Europe bristles with difficulties. It cannot be solved by theory and rule of thumb. What is a nation? Shall it be determined by speech, by blood, by geographical boundary, by historic tradition? The freedom and independence of a country can and ever should be assured when with one voice it demands the same. It is seldom as ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... as that through without cratin'?" says I to a guy behind the chicken wire, jerkin' me thumb at Mr. Sleuth. "What's ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... gradually becomes more definite in details limned from life. 'The Jesuits have so many loopholes for escape, pretexts, colors of insinuation, that they are more changeful than the Sophist of Plato; and when one thinks to have caught them between thumb and finger, they wriggle out and vanish' (ib. vol. i. p. 230). 'The Jesuit fathers have methods of acquiring in this world, and making their neophytes acquire, heaven without diminution, or rather with augmentation, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... lifted to strike her. The young woman stooped her head with a cry. He darted round the table to interpose between them. But the mother had caught hold of her; the handkerchief had fallen from her neck; and the youth saw five blue bruises on her lovely throat—the marks of the four fingers and the thumb of a left hand. With a cry of horror he rushed from the house, but as he reached the door he turned. His hostess was lying motionless on the floor, and a huge gray wolf came ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... have any bitter, sour, or otherwise undesirable taste or aroma. Texture registers more accurately the physical nature of the ripening. The cheese should not be curdy and harsh, but should yield quite readily to pressure under the thumb, becoming on manipulation waxy and plastic instead of crumbly or mealy. Body refers to the openness or closeness of the curd particles, a close, compact mass being most desirable. The color of cheese should be even, not ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... of considerable time, for with their masts they would have to clear away the branches to a considerable height. Down near the water the branches by which we pushed ourselves along were those of the undergrowth, with many rattans and other creepers varying from the thickness of one's thumb to that of one's wrist, and these would take a great deal of chopping before one of their war boats could be pushed through, but higher up they would probably have much thicker branches to contend with. It may be that they can lower their masts; but even if they ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... repaired, I came upon the chest, and opening it, discovered my boys' hoard, and in it this packet of books. I sat down on the top of the chest and read them all through, from Jack the Giant-killer down to Hop o' my Thumb without rising, and this in the broad daylight, with the yellow sunshine nestling beside me on the rose-coloured silken seat, richly worked, of a large stately-looking chair with three golden legs. Yes I could tell you all those stories, not to say the names ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... the housewife saw it, and she nipped it between her finger and thumb, and, because it was only half-baked, it fell with a "splatch" ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... to it. When she reached the chorus she stopped. Then away up in the balcony sounded the tiny treble of a boy's soprano, sweet as the ring of silver. The audience turned, to a man, and we seen, perched among the newsboys, the littlest, golden-haired youngster, 'bout the size of your thumb, his eyes glued to the face of his mother on the stage below, pourin' out his lark song, serious and frightened. Twice he done it, while by main stren'th I held his father to the enjoyments of a two-dollar ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... space between the rafters is filled up with what they call ribs—viz. the wood of the bread-fruit tree, split up into small pieces, and joined together so as to form a long rod the thickness of the thumb, running from the ridge pole down to the eaves. All are kept in their places, an inch and a half apart, by cross pieces, made fast with cinnet. The whole of this upper cagelike work looks compact and tidy, and at the first glance is admired by strangers as being alike ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... tramp, in a hard voice. "Go ahead, an' get done with it. I'm tired of standing here." He had released his thumb from the spring of the electric torch, and the light went out, making the spot seem all the ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... the aged butler, filling his clay from Shelton's pouch; then, taking a front tooth between his finger and his thumb, he began to feel it tenderly, working it to and fro with a sort of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fie! (273). fiakr-o cab. fiancx-o betrothed man, fiance. fid-i to rely upon, trust. fidel-a faithful, loyal. fier-a proud, haughty. fil-o son. filozof-o philosopher. fin-i (trans.), to finish, end. fingr-o finger; "dika fingro", thumb; "montra fingro", index finger; "longa fingro", middle finger; "ringa fingro", ring-finger; "malgranda fingro", little finger. firm-a firm, steady. fisx-o fish. fizik-o physics, physical science. flag-o flag, banner, small standard. flank-o ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... eyes in my head when I chose you, Babet, and the soft place was in my heart!" replied Jean, heartily. The compliment was taken with a smile, as it deserved to be. "Look you, Babet, I would not give this pinch of snuff," said Jean, raising his thumb and two fingers holding a good dose of the pungent dust,—"I would not give this pinch of snuff for any young fellow who could be indifferent to the charms of such a pretty ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... are plump, with light, semi-transparent fat, soft breast-bone, tender flesh, leg joints which will break by the weight of the bird, fresh colored and brittle beaks, and windpipes that break when pressed between the thumb and fore-finger. They are best in fall ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... a small drawer under the shelf, and brought out an ugly-looking weapon, tried the hammer movement with his thumb, and handed it over to me with ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... glass five inches long and three inches wide. Along the lower edge of each strip was pasted a slip of white paper. He asked people to pass their hands through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the natural oil) and then making a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. Under this row of faint grease prints he would write a record on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Germans who have no scruple about swallowing slave grown sugar. Surely this sophistry is worthy only of the worst class of false witnesses. "I perjure myself! Not for the world. I only kissed my thumb; I did not put my lips to the calf-skin." I remember something very like the right honourable Baronet's morality in a Spanish novel which I read long ago. I beg pardon of the House for detaining them with such ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... grin threw the door open and indicated with his thumb that Swetenham and Dick might advance. He winked at them as they passed him, a fund of malignant impudence in his eyes. The room inside was small and scattered with a profusion of clothes. Fanny, ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... touched each one of the ten little fingers, and as he touched them he said their names: "Little Thumb; Forefinger; Thimble-finger; Ring-finger; Little Finger; Little Thumb; Forefinger; Thimble-finger; Ring-finger; Little Finger!" And as he named the fingers, one after another, the tiny fairies bowed their tiny heads; there was a fairy for ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... to some: Green loans whaur they ne'er fash their thumb. But mark the muckle winds that come Soopin' an' cool, Or hear the powrin' burnie ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hired dress-suit case with an effort to please, Add a half-dozen stumbles and trips; Remove his right thumb from the cranberry sauce, Roll in ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... an attestation in Mr. Hastings's favor, and we shall produce it as a part of our evidence. Oh, my Lords, consider the situation of a people who are forced to mix their praises with their groans, who are forced to sign, with hands which have been in torture, and with the thumb-screws but just taken from them, an attestation in favor of the person from whom all their sufferings have been derived! When we prove to you the things that we shall prove, this will, I hope, give your Lordships a full, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... histories. The eldest, a homebred lordling, who, from the moment he slipped his mother's apron-strings, had fallen into folly, and then, to show himself manly, run into vice, lost his life in a duel about some lady's crooked thumb, or more crooked mind. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... counting their money. It was evident that Mr. Books was not in sympathy with the great enterprise his employers were developing, for he was continually saying witty but malicious things about Gusher, and would even point significantly with his thumb over his right shoulder. When a more than ordinarily verdant customer would come with his money, Mr. Books would shrug his shoulders, drum with his fingers on the desk, and hum a tune to ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... separated from his father. He believed the reason to be, because she had seen him once vomit the paws of a dog and the fingers of a child. He added that the Lord of the Forest had strictly forbidden him to bite the thumb-nail of his left hand, which nail was thicker and longer than the others, and had warned him never to lose sight of it, as long as he was in ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Howard was at Cadiz with Walter Raleigh and the young Earl of Sussex, and would by no means hear of it. So Master Bailiff Stubbes, who, 'tis said, doth owe Sir Thomas forty pound, and is therefore under his thumb, forthwith refused the company license to play in Stratford guildhall, inn-yard, or common. And at that the master-player threw his glove into Master Stubbes's face, and called Sir Thomas a stupid old bell-wether, and Stratford burgesses silly sheep ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... and many privileges, on account of the danger and unpleasant nature of his task. He has worked at this saw for about forty years, and in that time has handled, according to his record, some twenty-five millions of horns, or over two thousand for every working day. He has scarcely a whole finger or thumb upon either hand—many of them are entirely gone; but most of these were lost during his apprenticeship. The least carelessness was rewarded by the loss of a finger, for the saw cannot be protected with ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... mother and five children, the oldest thirteen, the youngest not yet three, a poor, deformed, little thing that has consumption of the bowels, brought on by scanty and irregular food. Its tiny legs are scarcely thicker than my thumb, and you cannot look at its patient, wasted, little face, that looks old enough to have endured twenty-five years of misery, instead of three, without the heartache. I ask the mother how she earns her living, and she points to a package that has just come in. Picking it up, and untying the ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... Villon writes as one having a very full knowledge of all branches of the subject, and in days when foreign competition has enforced on English manufacturers the importance of no longer being content with rule-of-thumb methods which have come down to them from their forefathers it certainly should be worth the while of English tanners to see what lessons they can learn from French practice, and French practice, we should imagine, could hardly have a better exponent ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... said Adair, absently rolling his cigarette between his thumb and finger. "Also, it's another pity that I am such a hopeless quitter. I believe I could pull this thing out yet, if I could ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... him, he hops a little nearer; not too near, however, either to mislead you or to put himself in your hands, but just near enough to tempt you to try to tempt him. You hold out a nut, and then, with a quick dart and a sharp peck with a bill trained to certain and sure work, your thumb and finger lose that which they held, and Mr. Bluejay is eating it in perfect security well beyond your reach. Oh, he is a fascinating creature is this bunch of beautiful blue feathers decorating the harshest voice of all birddom in ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... encountered unexpected difficulties, and his progress was finally checked by a box canon from which he escaped with difficulty, spending a night without food or water on a chilly mountain top known as "Thumb Peak." The following morning he managed to cross to a high mountain called Santo Tomas, whence he returned to Baguio. He was, however, of the opinion that the trip down the canon could be made without special difficulty by a party suitably provided ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... Mr. Dolph was as comfortably stout as a man should be who is well fed and forty. He stood with his back to the fire, pulling at his whiskers—which formed what was earlier known as a Newgate collar—with his right thumb and forefinger. His left thumb was stuck in the armhole of his flowered satin waistcoat, ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... fast? In cases where there are serious complaints to remedy but where there are no life threatening disease conditions, a good rule of thumb is to fast on water for one complete day (24 hours) for each year that the person has lived. If you are 30 years old, it will take 30 consecutive days of fasting to restore complete health. However, thirty fasting days, done a few days here and ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... never lives the span of life allotted to man. After many small warnings his thumb weakens. He neglects that; and he gets touches of paralysis in the thumb, the arm, and the nerves of the stomach; can't digest; can't sweat; at last, can't work; goes to the hospital: there they galvanize him, which does him no harm; and boil him, which ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... and on the eastern front had been added that Gothic porch of which Emily had heard,—and a flagrantly modern Gothic porch it was, flanked by two comical little turrets, with loopholes, from which a thread-paper or Tom Thumb might have defended it. Otherwise it resembled a church porch, except for the formidable points of a sham portcullis; but there was no denying that it greatly increased the comfort of the house, with its two sets of heavy doors, and the seats on either side. The great hall ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... matter," continued Mr. Bangs, catching a white moth between his thumb and forefinger and taking apparent pleasure in its annihilation, "and I've decided not to get a new man in for the summer, but to let you take the work for the present and see what you can do ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... but her arm was linked in Agatha's, and she was drawn along in spite of herself. Smilash did not move. Agatha strolled on coolly, and as she passed him, adroitly caught the apron between her finger and thumb and twitched it from his face. Instantly Henrietta uttered a piercing scream, and Smilash caught her in ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... very many of the captains were more accomplished than the stolid persons concerning whom so many droll legends still linger; but the fact remains, that valuable property and valuable lives were entrusted to men who wrought solely by rule of thumb, and that the trust was, on the whole, very wisely bestowed. With clumsy old craft that sailed in heavy weather as though they were dragging an anchor at the bottom, and that missed stays on the ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... in his work, unbent his back, stood up, and regarded his thumb with as much intentness as if he were an Indian fakir pledged to look at nothing else for a stated number of years. He pinched the nail, shook his hand, and then, abandoning it as an object of interest, was about to inflate the mended tyre ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... wondering where the driver of the milk wagon was all this time. And so were Uncle Lucky and Billy Bunny, and if you'll wait a minute I'll tell you, as soon as my typewriter behaves itself, for it got so excited when Luckymobile ran into the milk wagon that it caught my thumb and pinched it. ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... Beer complained of the lack of uniformity in neckties. Some wore a Tom Thumb variety, and others wore scarves. This was a state of things to be deplored, and he considered that the Raad should put its foot down and define the size ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... an' for instance here's one who's double-crossin' you," said Pearce, in slow, tantalizing speech, as if he wore out this suspense to torture Kells. And without ever glancing at Joan he jerked a thumb, in significant ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... the poor befogged boy, holding the doomed bill between his thumb and finger, and staring gloomily at the flickering candle. At last the look of indecision vanished, and he began rapid ...
— Three People • Pansy
... of this series is almost as thick as that employed for series XII. There is a vast difference, however, in its appearance, as the paper of series VI. is much harder than that of series XII. It feels greasy when rubbed between the thumb and finger, and the color of the paper is distinctly different from ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... them up with a kiss. She pursed up her lips, and gave a most fascinating little nip to her vowels, which, as a rule, she sounded short. "Money," said she again, and the ten-dollar note fluttered like a green leaf from between the large thumb and forefinger of her coarse ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder up the stairs. "My Captain, you know; if he's the friend of your Captain, I suppose you ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... will," said Vas Kor, feeling the point of his blade with his left thumb. "In the name of Nutus, Jeddak of Dusar!" he cried, and ran ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mysteriously measured it with a calculating eye, and had estimated, and scowled in doubt, and scratched her head, and pursed her sweet red lips, and had secretly spanned the baby, from chin to toe and across the back, with an industriously inquiring thumb and little finger. But a borrowed baby, it seems, is of no use whatsoever; the satisfaction is said to be temporary—nothing more—and to leave a sense of vacant arms and a stinging aggravation of envy. So what Pattie ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... partly persuadable, though dreadfully ill of rheumatism. They rouse Comte Maurice; and Valori, by this Comte's caprices, is driven out of patience. "He talked with a flippant sophistry, almost with an insolence" says Valori; "nay, at last, he made me a gesture in speaking,"—what gesture, thumb to nose, or what, the shuddering imagination dare not guess! But Valori, nettled to the quick, "repeated it," and otherwise gave him as good as he brought. "He ended by a gesture which displeased me"—"and went to bed." [Valori, i. 148, 149.] ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... said Lamb meditatively, cracking a walnut between his finger and thumb, and slowly skinning it—"I don't know; Gilks might have done us a ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... came breathless from the grocery with a great bottle of fancy pickles; Billy brought up beer from the cellar; Clem Cudahy cut a thick slice of butter from a two-pound square, and helped it into the serving-dish with a pudgy thumb. A large fruit pie and soda crackers were put on the table with the main course, when they sat down, hungry ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... more beautiful than the scenery of Port Louis harbour. High above the town rises La Pouce, or the thumb mountain, clothed with trees to its very top. It forms one of an amphitheatre of queer-shaped mountains, at the foot of which nestles comfortably the capital of the island. To the left, seen over a range of hills, rises "Pieter ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the boy. "What d'you think I came 'way off here for? Just to sit around and suck my thumb? Huh! I guess I can do as much toward finding Uncle Brocky as ever you will, ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... but for the ancient law permitting convicted felons to plead, as it was called, the benefit of clergy, Jonson might have been hanged for this deed. The circumstance that the poet could read and write saved him; and he received only a brand of the letter "T," for Tyburn, on his left thumb. While in jail Jonson became a Roman Catholic; but he returned to the faith of the Church of England a ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... or a hen on a het girdle; but she's a yauld, poutherie Girran for a' that, and has a stomack like Willie Stalker's meere that wad hae disgeested tumbler-wheels, for she'll whip me aff her five stimparts o' the best aits at a down-sittin and ne'er fash her thumb. When ance her ringbanes and spavies, her crucks and cramps, and fairly soupl'd, she beets to, beets to, and ay the hindmost hour the tightest. I could wager her price to a thretty pennies, that for twa or three wooks ridin at fifty miles a day, the deil-stricket a five gallopers ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... cavalcade and the forest had vanished, and there was the motor-car, just spinning past him. He was on the Wimbledon Common of the twentieth century once more. He stroked his clean-shaven chin with his finger and thumb, and walked slowly along the path by the side of the road, and then across ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... Norman retorted, indicating the Count with his thumb. "Or 'twill be up with you—on ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... party. He sucked his thumb and looked solemnly at the aunts and cousins. He even tried to put the puppy cat in his mouth. Natsu took him away at last and put him to bed. Then everybody had tea and good things to eat until it ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Forcheville who had read a letter addressed to Swann, he might have found words in it of another, a far more tender kind! He took a firm hold of the card, which was sliding to and fro, the envelope being too large for it and then, by moving it with his finger and thumb, brought one line after another beneath the part of the envelope where the paper was not doubled, through which alone it ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Princess of Cashmere at the great fair at Cabul, which is the most important fair in the whole world. And this was the reason why the old Prince of Cashmere had brought his daughter to the fair: he had lost the two most precious objects in his treasury; one was a diamond as big as my thumb, on which, by an art then known to the Indians, but now forgotten, a portrait of his daughter was engraved; the other was a javelin, which of its own accord would strike whatever mark ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... several days before the village people discovered who she was. The information had to be obtained, by a process like mental thumb-screwing, from the old man who tended Evelina's garden, but at last they knew. She was the daughter of a cousin of Evelina's on the father's side. Her name was Evelina Leonard; she had been named for her father's cousin. ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... it unmolested. In such conflicts they bite viciously, tear each other with their hooks, and scream incessantly, till, taking to flight, the persecuted one reaches some place of safety, where he hangs by one foot, and grasping the fruit he has secured in the claws and opposable thumb of the other, he hastily reduces it to lumps, with which he stuffs his cheek pouches till they become distended like those of a monkey; then suspended in safety, he commences to chew and suck the pieces, rejecting the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... underneath it: at the same time he felt along the tiger's skin on the opposite side to the hole, rolled the bullet about under the cuticle where it had lodged after passing through the animal, and deftly making an incision with his knife drew it forth betwixt his thumb and finger. He handed it to the gentleman whose guests we were, and to whom the rifle belonged which had been placed in our howdah, and then modestly withdrew from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... window accordingly, leaped out into the court, and arrived thus at the entrance-door before the Rhingrave, who thought the devil must have carried him there. The Duc de Coislin, however, had managed to put his thumb out of joint by this leap. He called in Felix, chief surgeon of the King, who soon put the thumb to rights. Soon afterwards Felix made a call upon M. de Coislin to see how he was, and found that the cure was perfect. As he was about to leave, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... you're gone, we shall make a temporary grave. I dare say two," and he jerked his thumb ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... great lords alone can eat it. Dessert is a cause of ruin. Adolphe often hears Caroline say to Madame Deschars: "How do you manage?" Conferences are held in your presence upon the proper way to keep cooks under the thumb. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... something else just as bad! Probably she'll withdraw her permission and keep you under her thumb as she ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Vanar chief, to ire inflamed; And, as the Rakshas near him drew, Ten leagues in height his stature grew. Then straight, her threatening jaws between, A gulf of twenty leagues was seen. To fifty leagues he waxed, and still Her mouth grew wider at her will. Then smaller than a thumb became, Shrunk by his power, the Vanar's frame.(797) He leaped within, and turning round Sprang through the portal at a bound. Then hung in air a moment, while He thus addressed her with a smile: "O Daksha's child,(798) farewell at last! For I within thy mouth ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... to swear to the performance of them; first in the manner of my own country, and afterward in the method prescribed by their laws; which was, to hold my right foot in my left hand, to place the middle finger of my right hand on the crown of my head, and my thumb on the tip ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... bones and leather waiting for them with his own Hard Cash, and with theirs; for, creeping awestruck round that mummified figure seated dead on his pool of sovereigns, they soon noticed in his left hand a paper: it was discoloured by the vapour, and part hid by the dead thumb; but thus much shone out clear and amazing, that it was a banker's receipt to David Dodd, Esq., for L. 14,010, drawn at Barkington, and signed for Richard Hardie by Noah Skinner. Julia had drawn back, and was hiding her face; but soon curiosity struggled with awe ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... flotillas Have been embodied as by sorcery; Soldiers made seamen, and the ports transformed To rocking cities casemented with guns. Against these valiants balance England's means: Raw merchant-fellows from the counting-house, Raw labourers from the fields, who thumb for arms Clumsy untempered pikes forged hurriedly, And cry them full-equipt. Their batteries, Their flying carriages, their catamarans, Shall profit not, and in one summer night We'll ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... hooded women, heads of Artemis with the crown of Cybele, winged heads, or heads covered with the Phrygian cap, portrait-heads of girls or children, with their sharp profiles still perfect, and the last dab of the clay under the thumb of the artist, as clear and clean as when it was laid there some ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ROSBROOK, Saddler, of Barrow, near Bury, Suffolk, was attacked with a scrofulous complaint in his left thumb, from whence it removed to his left hip and thigh; from thence to the left knee, and then into his face and the glands of his throat; from whence issued a clear water, insomuch that he was under the necessity of keeping a piece of sponge constantly applied to it, especially at meal times. In ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... Novella. This picture, which represents the Adoration of the Shepherds, was painted in 1485, when the artist was thirty-six. It is essentially pleasant: a religious picture on the sunny side. The Child is the soul of babyish content, equally amused with its thumb and the homage it is receiving. Close by is a goldfinch unafraid; in the distance is a citied valley, with a river winding in it; and down a neighbouring hill, on the top of which the shepherds feed their flocks, comes the imposing procession of the Magi. Joseph is more than commonly perplexed, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... heathen, as its use has been almost universal. From its shape, having neither beginning nor ending, it is regarded as an emblem of eternity, constancy, and integrity. It is placed on the fourth finger of the woman's left hand, and the ancient ceremony of doing so was to place it first on the thumb at the Name of the first Person of the Trinity; on the next finger, at the Name of the Son; on the third at the Name of the Holy Ghost, and then on the fourth finger, and leaving it there at the word "Amen." The ring is, also, frequently ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... hand he clutched the sill, with the other he reached up and shifting the safety-catch on with his thumb, let his revolver ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... a great many of them. The minister and doctor usually had a ring at every funeral they attended. It is told of an old Salem doctor, who died in 1758, that he had a tankard full of mourning-rings which he had secured at funerals. Men sometimes wore thumb-rings, which seems no queerer than the fact that they carried muffs. Old Dr. Prince of Boston carried ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... direct to her own mistress, the interrogatory was more meant for the Condesa, between whose fingers and thumb she saw the thing she was ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... short by as many too broad, to elicit the admiration of the gallants of the present age, who rave, and go distracted about gossamer divinities scarcely six inches in circumference. She was about four feet four in stature, and her foot would have crushed Cinderella, and used her slipper for a thumb-cot. Such was Mary Madeline Mumbles in her eighteenth year, and never was child more like parent, than was this young lady ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... fish cut under the gills and squeeze out the contents by pressing upward from the middle with the thumb and finger. To open large fish split them from the gills halfway down the body toward the tail; remove the entrails and scrape and clean, opening far enough to remove all the blood from the backbone, and wiping ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... ways, and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I've got to have two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... something the matter with my right thumb, and can't (as you see) write plainly. I sent a word to poor Robert Chambers,[32] and I send my ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... sweetest kisses frae her glowing mouth; While hard and fast I held her in my grips, My very saul came louping to my lips; Sair, sair she flet wi' me 'tween ilka smack, But weel I kenned she meant nae as she spak. Dear Roger, when your jo puts on her gloom, Do ye sae too and never fash your thumb: Seem to forsake her, soon she'll change her mood; Gae woo anither, and ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... on him. Another story, the moral of which was "to teach girls the danger of coquetry," is told by Schoolcraft (Oneota, 381-84). There was a girl who refused all her suitors scornfully. In one case she went so far as to put together her thumb and three fingers, and, raising her hand gracefully toward the young man, deliberately open them in his face. This gesticulatory mode of rejection is an expression of the highest contempt, and it galled the young warrior so much that he was taken ill and took to his bed ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Physical exuberance is the first. To a considerable extent joy depends on an overplus of health. The joy of artistic creation, for instance, lies not so intensely and intoxicatingly in what you may some time accomplish as in what has actually just started into life under your pencil or clayey thumb, your bow or brush. For what you are about to receive, the Lord, as a rule, makes you duly thankful. But with the thankfulness is always mingled the shadowy apprehension that your powers may fail you when next you wish to use them. Thus ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... wound or giving cooling drink was a pleasure worth risking life for at any time. It was here that I received my only wound during the campaign. I threw myself too hastily on the ground, in obedience to the command of those around me, to escape a threatening shell, and fell heavily on the thumb of my right hand, dislocating it. It was bound up on the spot and did not inconvenience me much, but it has never returned to its ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... called for more cases. The next two yielded projectile-type handguns for ten men, with ammunition, and standard Planeteer space knives. The space knives had hidden blades, which were driven forth violently when the operator pushed a thumb lever, releasing the gas in a cartridge contained in the handle. The blades snapped forth with enough force to break a bubble or to cut through a space suit. They were designed for the sole purpose ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... in a chessboard pattern, and with a tunic pleated in horizontal rows; his right elbow is supported by the left hand, while the right is raised to a level with his eyes, his fist is clenched, and the thumb inserted between the first and second fingers in the customary ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... I have (a) had all my teeth out; (b) partially sprained my right thumb; (c) am very hot; (d) can't smoke with comfort; whence I may leave even official intelligence to construct an answer ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... eternally on the move. It's their hellish industry and activity that gives them such a pull, and makes most people afraid of them. But when a hand like that takes them by the throat"—he held up his right hand as he spoke, with the thick uncouth fingers and massive thumb arched menacingly in a powerful muscular tension—"when THAT tightens round their neck, and they feel that the grip means business—my God! what good ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... ringed, though, like the earth-worm, but smooth and glossy, dappled with darker spots, especially on one side, which may be the upper one. Put round its mouth twelve little arms, on each a hand with four ragged fingers, and on the back of the hand a stump of a thumb, and you have Synapta Digitata (Plates IV. and V., from my drawings of the live animal). These hands it puts down to its mouth, generally in alternate pairs, but how it obtains its food by them is yet a mystery, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... reading-table littered with books, magazines or papers. In a rack or case at the wall are to be found copies of the "Seattle Union Record," "The Butte Daily Bulletin," "The New Solidarity," "The Industrial Worker," "The Liberator," "The New Republic" and "The Nation." Always there is a shelf of thumb-worn books on history, science, economics and socialism. On the walls are lithographs or engravings of noted champions of the cause of Labor, a few photographs of local interest and the monthly Bulletins and Statements of the Union. Invariably ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... cease." Well pleased, the saint wrote on with careful pen. The candle was consumed; the devil then Lighted his thumb; the saint, quite undisturbed, Finished his treatise to the final word. Then he looked up, and started with affright; For lo! the thumb blazed with a lurid light. "Your thumb is burned!" said he. The child of sin Changed to his proper form, and with a grin Said, "I will quench it in the martyrs' blood Your book will cause to ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... decide for themselves.' I said that because I didn't want Mrs. Vyse to think us old-fashioned. She goes in for lectures and improving her mind, and all the time a thick layer of flue under the beds, and the maid's dirty thumb-marks where you turn on the electric light. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... get me under their thumb!" growled Werner to Glutts. "I know they would like nothing better than to find all sorts of fault and ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... his waistcoat pocket, drew out a crown-piece, held it for a moment betwixt finger and thumb, and dropped it into ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... frequent use of her large learning and culture in her novels. In the earlier ones a Greek quotation is to be found here and there, while in the later, German seems to have the preference. In The Mill on the Floss she describes Bob Jakin's thumb as "a singularly broad specimen of that difference between the man and the monkey." Such references to recent scientific speculations are not unfrequent. If they serve to show the tendencies of her mind towards ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... appeared. He jerked a thumb towards the classroom. 'I've locked dem in. What's doin', Buck?' he asked, indicating me with a ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... always to my news. This fellow is a perfect savage, as strong as a cart-horse and as fierce as the devil. He chewed Downing's thumb nearly off before they could master him. He hardly speaks a word of English, and we can get nothing out of ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on February 15th, I again had difficulty in getting a room; so I waited, and whilst my men searched about for a place where I could sleep, an extremely tall fellow came up to me, and having felt with his finger and thumb the texture of my tweeds and expressed ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... bacon-flick, cut me a good bit; Cut, cut and low, beware of your maw; Cut, cut and round, beware of your thumb, That me and my merry men may have ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... found in France several human hands were engraved, but having only four fingers each. On this point Mr. Lartet assures us that some savage tribes still depict the hand without the thumb. Representations of birds and reptiles are very rare; fishes are more common. On a piece of reindeer's horn was found this representation of the head and chest of an ibex. Of special interest to us is a ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... about again," said the captain, as he appeared, in his usual gruff but not unkind tone. "When I brought the ladies aboard, I didn't think that they'd prove so useful in looking after the sick; though I doubt if she," and he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at his wife, "has troubled ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... full minute Rod stood as motionless as if he had been paralyzed, scarcely breathing in his excitement. The four fingers and thumb of the hand had left their impressions with startling clearness. The fingers were long and delicately slender, the palm narrow. The imprint had assuredly not been made by the hand of ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... then there's no accountin' for tastes, as Dr. Colles said, when he saw me bite Cusack Rooney's thumb off." ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... has been found to have no optical activity. After the dish has been thoroughly rinsed, enough water is added to bring the contents of the flask to about 80 c.c. and it is gently rotated until all the sugar has dissolved. The flask should be held by the neck with the thumb and finger, and the bulb not handled during this operation. Care must be taken that no particle of the sugar or solution is lost. To determine if all the sugar is dissolved, the flask is held above the level of the eye, in which position any undissolved crystals ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... reputation they gave me. I recall that one of my aunts came in one day and, seeing me out in the yard most ingloriously tousled, asked my good mother: "Is that your child?" Poor mother! I have often wondered how much travail of spirit it must have cost her to acknowledge me as her very own. One thumb, one great toe, and an ankle were decorated with greasy rags, and I was far from being ornamental. I had been hulling walnuts, too, and my stained hands served to ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... driving like a piston; the American had craned his neck and in order to protect his face held it pressed close to George's breast. Drennen's right arm was about George's body, caught against the floor as they fell, Drennen's left hand with thumb sunken deep was already at the Canadian's throat. The snarl upon Drennen's face was the more marked now, more filled with menace and hate as his body experienced the torture of the ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... of different sizes. Sometimes they were as small as one's thumb, sometimes as large as the hand of a child of four years old. The most remarkable feature of these tiny figures was the enormous head and the pointed hump that so often adorned their backs. Their look was on the whole more comical than ugly. ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... rounded, the neck stout and short, the muzzle sharper than that of the beaver, and the whiskers very long and stiff. There are, as in the beaver, two incisor teeth, and eight molar, above and below—twenty teeth in all. The limbs are short. The fore feet have each five fingers not webbed, the thumb being very small: the hind feet have the same number of toes; the great toe and three next toes being joined by a web which extends to their ends, and the little toe being free, but edged with a membrane on its inner side. The nails are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... fellow-beings was before herj and at another time she would have found much to interest and amuse her. In one corner a newly imported German with an Orson-like head, thumb-ring, and the fragrance of many meerschaums still hovering about him, was hammering away upon some disputed point with a scientific Frenchman, whose national politeness was only equalled by his national volubility. A prominent statesman was talking with ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... reply, Duvall placed his hand in his pocket and drew out, between his thumb and forefinger, a tiny white pellet, no larger than the head of a match. "You are no doubt acquainted, Monsieur de Grissac," he said, ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... as he got up and shook out the coat. "Well, Babe, old socks, how's things goin'? How"—he threw his thumb back over his shoulder toward the east—"how 'bout over there? What ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the pot, and sinking his voice to a whisper, "but there wasn't but fifteen in the bag, and the woman took twelve of 'em fur her kittle, and ye can't make three taters look act'ally crowded in two gallons of soup, can ye, Bill?" And the old man punched that personage in the ribs with the thumb of the hand that was free from service, while he kept the ladle ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... mention of more than a few of the many interesting books, manuscripts, works of art, antiques and relics, found in this Library and Museum. Among them stands the desk at which little "Willie" sat at school, also a ring which he wore at his thumb (later in life), and upon which are engraved the letters "W.S." and a "true lover's knot." I spent nearly an hour here, a studying how things looked in Shakespeare's time. The ground floors of the house, are covered with flagstones broken in varied forms, as accident ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... the permanent K.P. here," Fuselli jerked his thumb towards the door of the building. "Not a bad job, off two days a week; no drill, good eats.... At least you get all you want.... But it surely has been hell emptying ash cans and shovelling coal an' now all they've done ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... quite wrong, George," Andrew said. "The voices of women vary like the thumb-marks of criminals. There are no two attuned exactly alike. It is the receptive organs that are at fault. We, who have lost one sense, find the others a little keener. The laughter of that girl—George, will you keep me a few days longer? Somehow I cannot bring myself ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... second look for Sukey to recognize in that miserable creature, drawing every breath in pain, the haughty Captain Snipes, who had scourged and disgraced him. Snipes had severe internal injuries and was dying. Sukey's thumb lifted the hammer of his gun, then he gazed on the agonized face of his enemy, and, the tears starting to his eyes, he let down the hammer. At this moment Fernando came up, and ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... chestnut coller, smart active boy, and swagers in his walk. Susan is about 35 years old, dark chesnut coller and stout built, speaks rather slow and has with her four children, three boys and one girl—the girl has a thumb or finger on her left hand (part of it) cut off, the children are from 9 months to 8 years old. (the youngest a boy 9 months and the oldest whose name is Lloyd is about 8 years old) The husband of Susan (Joe Viney) started off ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... to hear, or to care. He was afar, wandering from it. "Ever notice that he has only one thumb? Same way with his father. Probably a family trait. I wish there were more families like 'em. This house is full of trollops and rascals. So is Newport. The house at Newport is full of rapscallions. Believe I'll offer it to the Government for a hospital. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the singular effects of excessive thirst upon the eyes of the horses; they absolutely sunk into their heads until there was a hollow of sufficient depth to bury the thumb in, and there was an appearance as though the whole of the head had shrunk with them, producing a very unpleasant and ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Furneaux, snapping a thumb and forefinger. "Don't worry about that! Put yourself in the position of the Chinese Ambassador. He can't even guess who may be the ruler of China from one day to another. Yesterday it was an old woman, today a dictator, tomorrow the mob; who can foretell what shape the lava erupted ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... a little sandy kitten which trembled exceedingly through all its fluffy fur, and piteously mewed. He held it forth to us, finger and thumb about its tiny neck, across the narrow way; but stretch as far as we could we could not reach it. Willy undertook to catch it if it were thrown, but the young man said that for worlds he would not endanger the ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... hand for his map of La Palma de la Mano de Dios, Jose, the Indian, had traced the course of the river along the base of the fingers flowing toward the gulf which lies between the edge of the palm and the thumb—this same inner edge of the hand representing roughly the high ground that shuts out the waters of the sea. The thousands of acres of The King's Basin lands lie from sea level to nearly three hundred feet below. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... palm with finger and thumb very daintily, and, before I knew what she was doing, or could have moved to hinder her if I had the mind, she raised her arm over her head and with all her strength flung the guinea into ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... "Keep your thumb on that," said he; "I'm not supposed to precognosce every lodger in Tynree upon his politics. I'm off Clan Chattan myself, and not very keen on this quarrel—that's to say, I'll take no side in it, for my trade is feeding folk and not fighting them. Might I be asking if you were of the band of ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... particular, can be shown clearer than daylight," says Harvey. "The vena cava enters the heart at an inferior portion, while the artery passes out above. Now if the vena cava be taken up with forceps or the thumb and finger, and the course of the blood intercepted for some distance below the heart, you will at once see it almost emptied between the fingers and the heart, the blood being exhausted by the heart's ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the housekeeper, completing her meaning by a movement of the thumb toward the upper story. "That's by his way of it; but I've an idee of my own. He tried to bribe me, Mr. Michael. Bribe—me!" she repeated, with inimitable scorn. "That's no' kind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Little passed his arm around her neck, and with his thumb opened widely the patrician-veined lids of her sweet blue eyes. "Thank Heaven, there is yet no dilation of the pupil; it is not too late!" He cast a rapid glance around. The nozzle and about three feet of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... nothing have. My uncle will be gazetted to-day. Poor man, he will be delighted; and as he certainly owes it much to me, he will, I suppose, be very grateful—or hate me ever afterwards—that is a toss up. A benefit conferred is a complete hazard between the thumb of pride and the forefinger of affection. Heads gratitude, tails hatred! There, that's a simile in the fashion of the old writers: 'Well ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with fear; it is just the sight of that poor fellow's blood. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that. Why, I saw Will Atkins, who was one of the best fighters and single-stick players in Hedingham, go off in a dead swoon because a man he was working with crushed his thumb between two heavy stones. Look, Lionel, what cracks there are in the wall here. I don't think it will stand long. We had better run up and tell Captain Vere, for it may come toppling down with some of ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... luciscope and then he made a few adjustments with a thumb-screw that projected from the side ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... of the snaffle, somewhat as the rough-rider or colt-breaker uses the reins of a single snaffle; but the reins should enter the hands outside instead of inside the fourth fingers, and they should quit the hands between the first and second fingers instead of between the first finger and thumb, as will be explained in ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... the rifle the other deer, which was a doe, scampered a few yards, then, turning back her head, gazed with wondering eyes upon her fallen mate. Johnny took from his pocket a cartridge, and, holding it between thumb and finger, looked inquiringly at Dick. Dick shook his head, and in another instant the doe had scampered out of danger. Dick helped Johnny skin and dress the deer, and learned a lot while doing so, but he seemed less happy than a boy should be ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... elevations, a set of characters when examined and measured under the microscope utterly different from those in every other case. Each is unique, in its pits, lines, circles and irregularities. The laws of chance are as much against two of them having the same markings as they are against the thumb prints of two human subjects being identical. The firing-pin theory, which was used in a famous case in Maine, is just as infallible as the finger-print theory. In this case when we find the owner of the gun making an 'L' mark we ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... decided air of relief. He entertained a wholesome dread of Sergeant Horrocks. Now he became more communicative. Horrocks had not come to arrest anybody. "I see," he went on, gazing out across the prairie, "this is not a warrant business, eh? Guess Gautier is back there," with a jerk of a thumb in a vague direction behind him. "He's in his shack. Gautier's just ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... steamboat landing, Mahaffy, I've been experiencing a most extraordinary coincidence." The judge paused. By a sullen glare in his deep-sunk eyes Mr. Mahaffy seemed to bid him go on. "Back east—" the judge jerked his thumb with an indefinite gesture "back east at my ancestral home—" Mahaffy snorted harshly. "You don't believe I had an ancestral home?—well, I had! It was of brick, sir, with eight Corinthian columns across the front, having a spacious paneled hall ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Mount Sinai" (Koran xxiii. 20); and Mohammed would use no other, because it prevents decay and scents the mouth. Hence Koran, chaps. xcv. 1. The "Miswak" is held with the unused end between the ring-finger and minimus, the two others grasp the middle and the thumb is pressed against the back close to the lips. These articles have long been sold at the Medical Hall near the "Egyptian Hall," Piccadilly. They are better than our unclean tooth-brushes because each tooth gets its own especial rubbing' not a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... severe, only a row of six cartridges grouped around the central barrel being admissible. Self-cockers are now the only style seen in the best circles.[19] Much of the effectiveness of the gun was formerly destroyed by having to thumb up the hammer, especially when the person with whom you were conversing wore the self-cocking variety. It has been found that on such occasions the old-style gun was but little used except in the way of circumstantial ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... Involuntarily, the Barville crowd ceased its uproar. Grant, taking Roger's signal, nodded and twisted the ball into the locking grip of two fingers and a thumb. His arm swung back and whipped forward, a white streak shooting with a twisting motion from those fingers. It seemed like another swift one, shoulder high, and, with confidence strong in his heart, the red-headed batter sought ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... is an essentially modern creation; created, as it is, out of thin vapour, and moulded by melancholy rules of thumb. Drama was Religion to the Greeks, and in the old Elizabethan days great playwrights wrote ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... as we appeared. He jerked a thumb towards the classroom. 'I've locked dem in. What's doin', Buck?' he asked, indicating me with ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... Psalter of our Lady, in French, exhorts the devout Christian who pronounces these words in the introduction, Holy Lady, open thou my lips, &c. "to make two signs of the cross when he repeats them, one upon his lips with his thumb, and the other upon himself with his hand, as the priests do when they begin their canonical hours." This method, he assures us, will procure the devotee the honour and happiness of being canon or canoness of heaven; and ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... the envelope with thumb and finger. She drew it out. Its length surprised her. It was a long, official looking envelope, not bulky but most important looking. In the upper left-hand corner ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... it the louder for such compliments, turned it on his broad thumb, shook it over his great head with its shock of sand-coloured and grey hair; making, as the more saturnine of his guests confided in each other, "a ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... injured, "anybody'd think I was a ghost. I'll stand for being called lots of things, but a phantom—Ouch! Now what's the idea?" For Grace's thumb and forefinger had come together in the fleshy ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... a paper flew off the table, but being in haste she had not stopped to see what it was. Now, the stamp and the letter could hardly have come together without hands, for they lay a yard apart, and here, also, on the unwritten portion of the page, was the mark of a small green thumb. Jill had been winding wool for a stripe in her new afghan, and the green ball lay on her sofa. These signs suggested and confirmed what Mrs. Minot did not want to believe; so did the voice, attitude, and air of Jill, all very unlike her ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... never seen anything more beautiful than the scenery of Port Louis harbour. High above the town rises La Pouce, or the thumb mountain, clothed with trees to its very top. It forms one of an amphitheatre of queer-shaped mountains, at the foot of which nestles comfortably the capital of the island. To the left, seen over a ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... it. I don't like to hear reading," replied Enna in her imperious way, at the same time taking quiet possession of Elsie's little rosewood rocking-chair—a late present from her papa, and highly prized by the little girl on that account—and beginning to scratch with her thumb nail upon ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... "I was hoping you would be disappointed in him, especially after having been wooed by me this morning. I could take you if I wished, of course; but I prefer to win you in the ancient manner. Dismiss him!" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... parvitude[obs3], parvity[obs3]; duodecimo[obs3]; Elzevir edition, epitome, microcosm; rudiment; vanishing point; thinness &c. 203. dwarf, pygmy, pigmy[obs3], Liliputian, chit, pigwidgeon[obs3], urchin, elf; atomy[obs3], dandiprat[obs3]; doll, puppet; Tom Thumb, Hop-o'-my- thumb[obs3]; manikin, mannikin; homunculus, dapperling[obs3], cock-sparrow. animalcule, monad, mite, insect, emmet[obs3], fly, midge, gnat, shrimp, minnow, worm, maggot, entozoon[obs3]; bacteria; infusoria[obs3]; microzoa[Microbiol]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... spoonful of Rose water to them, to keep them from Oyling, when they are beaten to fine past, take halfe a pound of Sugar finely beaten and searsed, put it to your past, and beat it till it will twist between your fingers and thumb, finely without knots, for then it is enough, then make thereof Pyes, Birds, Fruits, Flowers, or any pretty things, printed with Molds, and so gild them, and put them into your Stove, and use them at ...
— A Book of Fruits and Flowers • Anonymous
... countenance he raised his hands to protest to the nation. Meanwhile the guests suddenly disappeared, and Grandpapa seriously damaged the broad disc of his unmentionables; while Uncle Caleb, shaking his sides with laughter, stood his comely figure in the doorway, the thumb of his right hand to his nasal organ, and his fingers making five angles, quizzing the General in his dilemma. Esteeming it rather an ugly situation for Mister President Pierce, for whose dignity I had a special regard, I picked ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... be called shoes down at heel—her stockings were wofully dirty, and, horror of all horrors, out at the heels! There she sat, with her feet on the fender, her face on her hands, and her elbows on her knees, with her thumb-worn novel lying in ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... tall, slender young man, who hastily advanced towards the table, around which the company were seated. His appearance excited the utmost astonishment in the whole group: curiosity was exhibited in every countenance—the magnum remained poised midway in the hand of Palmer—Dr. Small scorched his thumb in the bowl of his pipe; and Mr. Coates was almost choked, by swallowing ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Plate 18, passes external to the radial border of the wrist, beneath the extensor tendons, B, of the thumb; and after winding round the head of the metacarpal bone of the thumb, as seen at E, Plate 19, forms the deep palmar arch E, Plate 18. This deep palmar arch lies close upon the forepart of the carpo-metacarpal joints; it sends off branches to supply the deeply situated muscles, ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... Acknowledging a mutual and increasing interest in the intelligent inventor, we nevertheless parted in a wilderness of doubt. There was a mystery in the matter,—a surprise for the world or a surprise for ourselves,—which time, it would seem, with its busy thumb and finger, must be left to unravel at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... He disengaged her arm and stepped briskly away. Then he whirled on them, smiling sardonically, and started to speak, but instead looked with distaste at the chattering Geiger counter he held between fingers and thumb. ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... It is far easier to treat life as if it were dead, men as if they were dolls. It is everlastingly difficult to keep the mind flexible and alert. The rule of thumb is not here. To follow the pace of living requires enormous vigilance and sympathy. No one can write conclusively about it. Compared with this creative statesmanship, the administering of a routine or the battle for a platitude is a very simple affair. But genuine politics is not an inhuman ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the fender, emptied it amongst the ashes, and wiped it with her apron. The apron was also used to wipe the butter plate, on which there was an unusually black mark, with lines resembling the imprint of a very big thumb. In about half-an-hour after they had refreshed ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... about by an occluding wall, with an alley of lime trees for sober pacing: then and there is the fit time and place for the first pipe of the day. Pack your mixture in the bowl; press it lovingly down with the cushion of the thumb; see that the draught is free—and then for your saeckerhets taendstickor! A day so begun is well begun, and sin will flee your precinct. Shog, vile care! The smoke is cool and blue and tasty on the tongue; the arch of the palate is receptive to the fume; the curling vapour ascends the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... hand-bag, and I placed it on my lap and, with my thumb, slipped back the catch. As I keep my tickets and railroad- guide in the bag, I am so constantly opening it that I never bother to lock it, and the fact that it is strapped to me has always been sufficient protection. ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... first heard of Mr. Charles Stratton, whom he presented to the world as General Tom Thumb—exhibiting him in both ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the front carriage, we next see the action of loading; the ramrod having at its other extremity a sheep-skin mop, larger than the bore of the piece, and called "a sponge." This instrument, before loading, is invariably used, whilst the touch-hole or "vent" is covered by the thumb of the gunner especially numbered off for this important duty; and the air being thus excluded, the fire, which often remains within the bore, attached to either portions of cartridge-case or wadding, is extinguished. Serious accidents have been known to occur from a neglect of this important ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... spinning the coin upon his thumb, "ha, now do I dream indeed; may thy waking be ever as joyous. Farewell to thee, thou kind, sweet, youthful fool, and if thou must hang some day on a tree, may every leaf voice small prayers ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... bull had gathered itself for a final rush, and, when it had actually started to charge, he dropped to the ground like a flash. In a fraction of a second his powerful right arm went out, and he gripped the nostrils of the bull, pressing his thumb and forefinger home as far as he could. Then he twisted, ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... do, for lustier fighter and mightier dwarf never was. Thus, but for thy witch-like witcheries, the which, Witch, witch do prove thee, but for this and the power and potency of thy spells, now might he crack out thy life 'twixt finger and thumb—" ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... not look, but Tommy looked, and there was none. He assured her of this so earnestly that Bob fell in love with him on the spot, and chucked him under the chin, first with her thumb and then with her toe, which feat was duly reported to Shovel, who could do it by the end of ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... bursting. See their nice loose clothes, with neither a pin to stick nor a button to fly off! They do not wear socks nor stockings, for it is not very cold in Japan. One little tot has on a pair of straw sandals, and the girl and old man wear clogs, held on by a strap passing between the "thumb of the foot," as the Japs call the big ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the poor creature keep it clean (she was naturally dirty), poulticed it several times, and anointed it with healing salve. In a short time a perfect cure was effected. After that an Indian while at work in the woods was attacked with a sudden pain near the first joint of his thumb, which disabled him. He appealed to Mackenzie, who, to his surprise, found a narrow red inflamed stripe about an inch wide, extending from the man's thumb to his shoulder. The pain was very violent, and accompanied with ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... requires it, men require it, and have a right to require it. The mightiest witness for Him is the witness of a pure life, and if we go about the world professing to be His messengers, and carrying His epistle in our dirty fingers, the soiled thumb-mark upon it will prevent men from caring for the message; and the Word will be despised because of the unworthiness of its bearers. 'Be ye clean that bear the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... for one in your position to take," said the Count, placing the index of the right hand successively on the thumb and three fingers of the left,—"four courses, and ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... slaves has become a large business. Establishments are made at several places in Maryland and Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle. These places of deposit are strongly built, and well supplied with iron thumb-screws and gags, and ornamented with catskins and other ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy. Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught But now and then with pressure of his thumb To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube, That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud Streams far behind him, scenting all ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... was interrupted by a series of tremendous poundings that issued from the counting-room within. The entrance door was closed. Young Mr. Bowdoin cocked his thumb at it. "How many children has the governor got in ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... the clock. He went to the door and looked down the lane. Then, with a sharp in drawing of the breath, he took his seat again. The movement roused Donald Ward. He fumbled in his pocket and took out his tobacco box and pipe. He held up the box—a round metal one—between his finger and thumb. Neal, watching, noticed with surprise that his uncle's hand trembled. Donald held the box without opening it for perhaps two minutes. Then, when he was satisfied that his hand had become quite steady, he filled his pipe. He rose, took a red peat from the hearth, and pressed it into the ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... to be found at his stall in the market," was written of the vacant-faced peasant. "You will first attract his attention by asking the price of something. When he is looking at you, touch your left thumb lightly with the forefinger of your right hand. Then utter in a low distinct tone the words 'The Lamp is lighted.' That is all you are ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... reply than by applying his thumb to his nasal organ; and gyrating his fingers in a manner so significant that we will not endeavor to interpret his meaning. Having executed this manoeuver, he hastily left the room, but remained at such a ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... vessels, each containing 2 pints of water. Four of these were given for the ordinary, and eight for the extraordinary. The executioner inserted a horn into the patient's mouth, and if he shut his teeth, forced him to open them by pinching his nose with the finger and thumb.] ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... we must admit eppur si muove; it moves, or is believed by foreign savants to move, for a peasant medium, Eusapia Paladino. Mr. Lecky declares (1865) that Church miracles have followed Hop o' my Thumb; they are lost, with no track of white pebbles, in the forest of Rationalism. {26a} And then Lourdes comes to contradict his expectation, and Church miracles are as common as blackberries. Enfin, mankind, in the whole course of its history, has never got quit of experiences which, whatever ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... last. Spread it evenly with a broad knife, over the top of each queen-cake, ornamenting them, (while the icing is quite wet) with red and green nonpareils, or fine sugar-sand, dropped on, carefully, with the thumb ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... will you stay for a little minute or two till she comes back again? Curly's gone for the doctor because Ph[oe]be's done something to one of her bones; and Janetta's tying up Julian's thumb because ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... head smartly to the left, at the same time bringing the right hand up to the salute.... "Sa-lute!" Reginald Arbuthnot Wilkins whizzed his head round to the left, but accidentally brought the wrong hand up. There was a crash as his left thumb met his left eye-ball, and Reginald was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... in the bank." Oliver regarded it intently, thinking it quite too small to be dangerous. "I ought to be able to put my thumb in it," he added cheerfully, "but either there is something wrong with that Dutch story or there is something wrong with ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... when Mother, half-way between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass paddock was all on fire. "So it is, Dad!" said Joe, slowly but surely dragging the head off a fly with finger and thumb. ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... doubt if they would. 'Twould be wholesale murder, with all those hands inside. Besides, there'll be some arrests for this other job, and that'll cool their blood. No; what I 'm afraid of is those men in here,' said the old man, pointing with his thumb over ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... interrupted Muller, showing him the writing on the package; "here is the same hand, but it is written with a fine hard pencil, and you can see distinctly that this is a woman's handwriting. And besides, the skin on a man's thumb does not show the fine markings that you can see here on these bits of bread that have been ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... sufficient candour at my own very great peril. But truth has an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to suffer by it." Behold, again, the fairest of poets. Young's "Imperium Pelagi" was ridiculed in Fielding's "Tom Thumb;" but let us not forget that it was one of his pieces which the author of the "Night Thoughts" deliberately refused to own. Not long after this Pindaric attempt he published two Epistles to Pope, "Concerning the Authors of the Age," 1730. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... here's one who's double-crossin' you," said Pearce, in slow, tantalizing speech, as if he wore out this suspense to torture Kells. And without ever glancing at Joan he jerked a thumb, in significant ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... significant to Jack Sargent. It resulted in the two riding out on the trail, only to meet the purchased cattle, Joel on one point and Forrest on the other, directing the herds to the tanks below. The action bespoke its intent, and on meeting Forrest, the latter jerked his thumb over his shoulder, remarking, "Drop back and pilot the wagon and remuda into the ranch. We're taking this passel of cattle into the new tanks, and will scatter them up and down the creek. Lovell's ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... hand as though to hook his thumb into the armhole of his vest, remembered that he had only a coat buttoned round ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... of a ship in the Indian Ocean, when he was speedily brought back to the present by a vigorous poke in his ribs. He turned hurriedly; and the officer of the watch with perfect clearness conveyed to him by a jerk of his thumb, and a quizzical expression, that the flagship was making a general signal. Mac shoved up the answering pennant, roused the other drowsy signaller, and elicited the information that the New Zealand ships would anchor 1 1/2 miles S.S.E. of Ras ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... her drapery, and her flowing locks that waved in the wind; a beauty that might have moved her Barbarian destroyers to pity and remorse. 10. The manly or divine form of Hercules, [96] as he was restored to life by the masterhand of Lysippus; of such magnitude, that his thumb was equal to his waist, his leg to the stature, of a common man: [97] his chest ample, his shoulders broad, his limbs strong and muscular, his hair curled, his aspect commanding. Without his bow, or quiver, or club, his lion's skin carelessly thrown over ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... would indicate that some of the gypsum had remained unchanged. Before use the plaster is ground very fine. This point is of considerable practical importance. The consistency attained should be such that the material may be rubbed between the finger and thumb without any feeling of grittiness. Should there be particles of a size to be characterized as "grit," these will after use appear at the surface of the mould, with the result that the mould will have to be abandoned long before ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... declined to accept their resignations, both returned—Seward with alacrity, Chase with reluctance. One of the clues to Lincoln's cabinet policy was his determination to keep both these factions committed to the Government, without allowing himself to be under the thumb of either. ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... position, and standing before a glass, he endeavoured, the pistol in his right hand, to bring the muzzle to bear on his left temple. He found this impossible, and signified his annoyance with a grunt. Then he tried the pistol with his thumb on the trigger and his hand clasping the back of the butt. Here ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... that he was talking, over a much greater span, to Art Kuzak. "First phase about completed, Art... Finger to thumb—in spite of the troubles ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... too!" contradicted Patricia. "You've got to! I won't let you do anything else! Now say yes right away—there's a dear!" she coaxed, pinching Polly's mouth with a thumb and forefinger, her favorite ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... intellectual shop-front. Business smartness pays better in the town, and the low intellectual qualities which are contained in it are educated by town life. The knowledge of human nature thus evoked is in no sense science, it is a mere rule-of-thumb affair, a thin mechanical empiricism. The capable business man who is said to understand the "world" and his fellow-men, has commonly no knowledge of human nature in the larger sense, but merely knows from observation how the average man of a certain limited class is likely to act within ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... upon me was one that brings a reminiscent chuckle even to-day. As my eye fell on the antique dressing-table, I seemed to see, suddenly and laughably, Margarita, sweeping down the stairs, enveloped in a billowy peignoir, her hair loose, her eyes flashing furiously, in her extended finger and thumb, held as one would hold a noxious ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... hand and the thumb of your left hand in your waistcoat pocket. You are polished and cool, and have an irreproachable repose of manner. There are no improper wrinkles in your cravat; your shirt-bosom does not bulge; the trowsers are accurate about your admirable boot. But you look very stiff and brittle. ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... shipbuilding were generally better than the English. The French, then and afterwards, were more scientific, the English more rule-of-thumb. Yet when it came to actual handling under sail, especially in action, the positions were reversed. The English seafaring class was far larger in proportion to population and it had far more practice at sea. Besides, ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... loose in the crumbly earth among the rootlets. Then, brought out from the shadow, the sunlight shone and glistened on the particles of sand that adhered to it. Particles adhered to my skin—thousands of years between finger and thumb, these atoms of quartz, and sunlight shining all that time, and flowers blooming and life glowing in all, myriads of living things, from the cold still limpet on the rock to the burning, throbbing heart ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... from the end of the thumb to the end of the forefinger (both extended)—about equivalent to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... eyed him, chin between two fingers and thumb. When he spoke again it was with lowered voice. "Is it altogether kind to the girl?" ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... kind of rest-cure that'll agree with you, nor I guess any of us at Champo. There ain't no trouble with her that's bothering you?" He pointed with a backward jerk of his thumb to ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... mistaken in the darkness for a house. They then perceived with amazement that this was nothing more than a huge mitten, and that the wing in which they had all slept was the separate place for the giant's great thumb! Learning that Thor and his companions were on their way to Utgard, as the giants' realm was also called, Skrymir, the giant, proposed to be their guide; and after walking with them all day, he brought them at nightfall to a spot where he proposed ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... another and more serious problem. In three days—two, now—an American naval vessel would turn up, with scientists and chemists on board. It was to be doubted whether anything like an overt act would be risked by that vessel. If all the governments of South America were under The Master's thumb, then cabled orders from his deputies would race three navies to the spot. And the government of the United States does not like to start war, anywhere. Certainly it would not willingly enter into a conflict with the whole southern continent for the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... little way with my thumb and let it go again as I get my aim—that is all. It is a rapid way of firing, but I don't advise you laddies to try it, or you may blow off your heads. Besides, the aim, except in practised hands like mine, is not so accurate. To hit well it is better to raise the weapon. ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... beat time for the Morris. They are now fallen into disuse. The pipe or whittle was of wood, really an early form of the flageolet, over a foot long; sometimes it had a metal tongue in the mouthpiece; two finger-holes and a thumb-hole to vary the note, and was played with the left hand. From the left thumb the tabour, or dub, was suspended by a loop: the dub was a miniature drum, elaborately made, and was beaten by a stick held in the right ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... have plenty of space, for by my project you will use the parlor wall. You do not mark on the wall; that would cause trouble. You only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks. These will leave ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the marks of the teeth on it; This is certainly not altogether pleasant, and it is better to cut it, a bit at a time, after buttering it, and put piece by piece in the mouth with one's finger and thumb. Never help yourself to butter, or any other food with your own knife or fork. It is not considered good taste to mix food on the same plate. Salt must be left on the side of the plate and ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... place; but its comparative anatomy is exceedingly hostile to the idea that it is an animal in a state of transition. It has been found of various sizes, from that of the thickness of a quill to that of the thumb, but its form of organs has been always the same. It is surely a perfect animal of a peculiar species. And it adds one instance more to the number already known of the wonderful manner in which life is produced and perpetuated in every part of our globe, ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... and a quarter of an inch in diameter, pointed at the top, round at the base, light brown in general color, and, like many other pine seeds, handsomely dotted with purple, like birds' eggs. The shells are thin and may be crushed between the thumb and finger. The kernels are white, becoming brown by roasting, and are sweet to every palate, being eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs, horses, and men. Perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the whole crop is ever gathered. Still, besides supplying their own wants, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... determined to bring down one of the carriage horses, which were marvelous brutes for speed. Scharfenstein kept popping away at the driver, but without apparent result. Finally Maurice secured the desired range. He raised the revolver, rested the barrel between the left thumb and forefinger and pressed the trigger. The nearest carriage horse lurched to his knees, a bullet in his brain, dragging his mate with him. The race had ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... up the samurai sword. My hands were very hot and dry, but perfectly steady, and I tested the edge of the heavy weapon upon my left thumb-nail as quietly as one might test a razor blade. It was as keen, this blade of ghastly history, as any razor ever wrought in Sheffield. I seized the graven hilt, bent forward in my chair, and raised the Friend's Sword high above my head. With the heavy weapon poised ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... a man arose from ocean, From the waves a hero started, Not the hugest of the hugest, Nor the smallest of the smallest. As a man's thumb was his stature; Lofty as the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... Tokay on our table, Like a pigmy castle-warder, Dwarfish to see, but stout and able, Arms and accoutrements all in order; And fierce he looked North, then, wheeling South Blew with his bugle a challenge to Drouth, Cocked his flap-hat with the tosspot-feather, Twisted his thumb in his red moustache, Jingled his huge brass spurs together, Tightened his waist with its Buda sash, And then, with an impudence nought could abash, Shrugged his hump-shoulder, to tell the beholder, For twenty such knaves he would laugh but the bolder: And so, with his sword-hilt ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... a subject or person. The scholar who should use this vilest of vulgarisms deserves to have his right thumb ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... me tell you you'll never stand it." A stubby thumb made motion up the narrow street. "You see this town. I won't say what it is—you realize for yourself; but bad as it is, it's advanced civilization alongside of the country. You'll have to go ten miles out to get any land that's not ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... in the work, for it has ever been my happy fortune to be intent on whatever I might be doing at the moment. I think I served my uncle well, for I had much of the merchant's aptitude, and the eye to discern far-away profits. He liked my boldness, for I was impatient of the rule-of-thumb ways of some of our fellow-traders. "We are dealing with new lands," I would say, "and there is need of new plans. It pays to think in trading as much as in statecraft," There were plenty that looked askance ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... to reveal all the clues to you now; partly because I might be infringing the copyright of another, partly because I have forgotten them. But the idea roughly is that if a man holds his cigar between his finger and thumb, he is courageous and kind to animals (or whatever it may be), and if he holds it between his first and second fingers he is impulsive but yet considerate to old ladies, and if he holds it upside down he is (besides being an ass) jealous and self-assertive, and if he sticks a knife ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... really came, and with the suddenness which was characteristic of all his movements, he left Florence. Having occasion to pass through Bologna, he neglected to procure the little seal of red wax which the stranger entering Bologna must carry on the thumb of his right hand. He had no money to pay the fine, and would have been thrown into prison had not one of the magistrates interposed. He remained in this man's house a whole year, rewarding his hospitality ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... signi libri, was to "extend the hand and make a movement as if turning over the leaves of a book." For a missal the monk was to make a similar movement with a sign of the cross; for the gospels the sign of the cross on the forehead; for an antiphon or book of responses he was to strike the thumb and little finger of the other hand together; for a book of offices or gradale to make the sign of a cross and kiss the fingers; for a tract lay the hand on the abdomen and apply the other hand to the mouth; for a capitulary make the general sign and extend ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the cabbages through a knot-hole. At last she learns to open the gate. It is a great triumph of bovine wit. She does it with her horn or her nose, or may be with her ever ready tongue. I doubt if she has ever yet penetrated the mystery of the newer patent fastenings; but the old-fashioned thumb-latch she can see ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... performs. The motor localization seems to be the most perfect. Indeed, experimentation on the brains of monkeys has been successful in mapping out motor areas so accurately that such small centers as those connected with the bending of one particular leg or the flexing of a thumb have been located. Yet each area of the cortex is so connected with every other area by the millions of association fibers that the whole brain is capable of working together as a unit, thus unifying and harmonizing our thoughts, emotions, ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... until but little more than half its bulk remains. The upper edges being carefully worked to a fine edge, the only housewifery implement that the blacks possess is perfect. With the implement in the right hand, between the thumb and the second finger—the sharp edge resting on the thumb-nail—the beans are planed, the operator being able to regulate the thickness of the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... forget my first servant. I was eight or nine, in velveteen, diamond socks ('Cross your legs when they look at you,' my mother had said, 'and put your thumb in your pocket and leave the top of your handkerchief showing'), and I had travelled by rail to visit a relative. He had a servant, and as I was to be his guest she must be my servant also for the time being - you may be sure I had got my mother to ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... who is not prepared to tackle the new problems that will arise. For all this next century this particular body of mechanics will be picking up new recruits and eliminating the incompetent and the rule-of-thumb sage. Can it fail, as the years pass, to develop certain general characters, to become so far homogeneous as to be generally conscious of the need of a scientific education, at any rate in mechanical and chemical matters, and ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... introduced a thumb and finger, but she withdrew them with a promptness and a look of horror upon her face which suggested the presence of some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the preceptor and the assistant, lay their Mid[-e] sacks upon his back and after a few moments a m[-i]gis shell drops from his mouth—where he had been instructed to retain it. The chief Mid[-e] picks up the m[-i]gis and, holding it between the thumb and index finger of the right hand, extending his arm toward the candidate's mouth says "w! w! h[)e] h[)e] h[)e] h[)e]," the last syllable being uttered in a high key and rapidly dropped to a low note; then the same words are uttered while the m[-i]gis ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... elastic. "Now," said she to Vizard, "give me a little opening in the middle to plaster these strips across the wound." He did so. Then in a moment she passed the elastic under the sufferer's head, drew it over with the styptic between her finger and thumb, and crack! the styptic was tight on the compressed wound. She forced in more styptic, increasing the pressure, then she whipped out a sort of surgical housewife, and with some cutting instrument reduced ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... a great deal of it, and he is reluctant under any circumstances, to surrender it to another; to have a man deliberately confiscate it with the authority which lies in a lump of lead the size of a child thumb is not pleasant. ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... proceed to a certain point, so that no plant may be passed over. On the small basket being filled, the leaves are emptied into another large one, which is put in some shady place, and in which, when filled, they are conveyed to the manufactory. The leaves are generally plucked with the thumb and forefinger. Sometimes the terminal part of a branch, having four or five young leaves attached, is plucked off. All old leaves are rejected, as they will not curl, and ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... said, indicating the fleeing musicians with his thumb. "Allee same muchee flaid noisee," and then his round ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... Sunday. It was worse even than that. One night—we were sitting out on the veranda—her scarf slipped, and I saw a scar on her arm, near her shoulder." Hardy stopped abruptly and began to roll a little pellet of bread between his thumb and his forefinger; then his tense expression faded and he sat back in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... together. To pass lines round a sail to keep it from blowing loose. To secure the falls of a tackle together by means of spun yarn, rope yarn, or any lashing wound round them. To snap the finger and thumb; ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... afther gittin' it meself! Here's Musther Talcott: if he was fur carving a fort or a big gun, the eyes and the face of him would be little but scowls and puckers; and there he sits, though it's only the dumb likeness of a church that he's at, by the same token that it's no bigger than me thumb, and, by the howly piper, you'd think the light that flings away from the big colored windy down the church was stramin' in his face, he looks so paceful-like; and he no betther than a heretic nayther, though he's the heart of a good Catholic, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... as she rose from her seat with an affected yawn and stretch. In speaking she looked at her mother, and not at the painter to whom she had been sitting for nearly two hours. The young man in question stood embarrassed and silent, his palette on his thumb, brush and mahlstick suspended. His eyes were cast down: a flush had risen in his cheek. Miss Bella's manner was not sweet; she wished evidently to slight somebody, and the painter could not flatter himself that the somebody was Mrs. Morrison, the only other person in the room ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... drawing my right hand, with the forefinger and thumb pressed together, nimbly from my right haunch to my left shoulder, "you have condescended to resume the paternal arts to which you were first bred—long stitches, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... bean, I'll take your place—I want to die!' The brother, with overwhelming anguish, replied, 'No, I will keep my own place; I am stronger, and better able to die than you.' Major Cocke, when he drew the fatal bean, held it up between his finger and thumb, and, with a smile of contempt, said, 'Boys! I told you so: I never failed in my life to draw a prize!' He then coolly added, 'They only rob me of forty years.' Henry Whaling, one of Cameron's best fighters, as he drew his black bean, said, in a joyous tone, 'Well, they ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... cakes I 've a nimble wrist And I tosses 'em 'igh on a spoon. And the Duke and Patch yer can hardly match Fer their breakfast they stretch till noon. And I heaps the fire and I greases the iron, And the Duke, he kisses me thumb. Me Darlin', me dear, it 's perfectly clear I 've lovin' yer ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... thicket, had just crossed the brook on the half-decayed log that spanned it, when, as he emerged from the water-willows on the other side, he started with a sudden shock. For there was Hannah, with a white, white face, holding out a little note folded like an old-fashioned thumb-paper. ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... circle of white foam ascended higher and higher, and then gradually contracted itself into a spinning black tube, which wavered about for all the world like a gigantic loch-leech held by the tail between the finger and thumb, while it was poking its vast snout about in the clouds in search of ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... is it?" he asked, with a jerk of his thumb toward a cloud of blue-and-yellow butterflies drifting over a shining puddle—"five miles as the crow flies, and through ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... substance like damp sawdust. He seemed puzzled for a moment what to do with it. Finally he took it out and scattered it along the grass-grown slope of a railway cutting. Then he returned to his tool chest, took out a chisel and grimly felt its edge with his thumb. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... said Peggy. She bent forward and picked with finger and thumb at the fluff of the blanket. Then she said, intent on the fluff: "If a man had done a thing like that for me, I should have crawled after him to the ends of the earth." Presently she looked up with a flash of the eyes. "Why isn't this ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... precise hair, which are always associated with widowhood in low life. It is only in higher circles that women can lose their husbands and yet remain bewitching. The late Mr. Drabdump had scratched the base of his thumb with a rusty nail, and Mrs. Drabdump's foreboding that he would die of lockjaw had not prevented her wrestling day and night with the shadow of Death, as she had wrestled with it vainly twice before, ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... pointed with his thumb to the woman standing by his side. She was twenty-seven perhaps, plump, and in a coarse fashion pretty. She wore a white dress and a large white hat. Her fat calves in white cotton stockings bulged over the tops of long white boots ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... is the correct size?" Tresco held an old-fashioned ring between his forefinger and thumb, and tested with the point of a burnisher the setting ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... and leave a cheery tavern like this?" All at once the crinkle of a chill ran across the Chevalier's shoulders. The thumb, the forefinger and the second of the priest's left hand ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... year Ten Hundred Seven. Emerson has written, "Nothing is of less importance on account of its being small." And so I maintain that, in the year Ten Hundred Seven, Rhode Island was just where it is now, and the Cosmos quite as important. Let Pawtucket protest and Providence bite the thumb—no ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... these were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intellect; and that any man of sound head, and practised in wielding logic with a scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fungus-heads to powder with a lady's fan. At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book; and recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... at all concentrated upon her. He felt, on this afternoon, a new, a fresh interest in things. The carpet before him was a vast country and he did not propose to explore it, but sucking his thumb, stroking the bear's coat, feeling the firelight upon his face, he felt that now something would occur. He had realised that there was much to explore and that, after all, perhaps there might be more in this ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... where some man's finger-tips had rested. Nothing but the pressure of fingertips could have caused just the appearance presented by these spots. By scrutinizing them closely I could even tell where the thumb had rested, and at once foresaw the possibility of determining by means of these marks both the size and shape of the hand which had left behind it so neat ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... married a month or more When underneath her thumb went Jim, It can't be right for the likes of her To put upon the likes of him. It's a great big shame, and if she belonged to me I'd let her know who's who; Putting on a fellow six foot three And her ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... brush into his mouth and held it between his teeth as a poodle carries a stick, while he used his thumb on the canvas. The modern painter paints with everything, not excepting his fingers. He glanced at his model and then at his work, and got ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... he put one foot on the keg. He made no other move; but if ever a man's back was eloquent of determination, his was. From where I lay I could see the fingers of his left hand shut tight over his thumb, pressing till the knuckles were white and the cords in the back of his hand stood out in little ridges. I'd seen that before, and I recalled with a start when and where I'd heard that soft, drawly voice. I knew I ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... let everybody know that he never cared two flips of his thumb for anybody. If anybody wanted him, they must come and seek him, and be thankful if he could find time to hear their nonsense. For he understood not the system only, but also the nature of mankind. The people at the Thornwick did not want ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... with a willow wand about six feet in length, perfectly straight, and rather thicker than a man's thumb. He began to peel this, observing that to ask a good woodman to shoot at a target so broad as had hitherto been used, was to put shame upon his skill. "For my own part," he said, "and in the land where I was bred, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... room looked harder too, and disenchanting. The figures of its occupants began filing through the door. The little man was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes smouldering upon the backs of the retreating members, his thumb and finger raised to the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of water. Four of these were given for the ordinary, and eight for the extraordinary. The executioner inserted a horn into the patient's mouth, and if he shut his teeth, forced him to open them by pinching his nose with the finger and thumb.] ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Jackson Crick. My Mistress name was Mary Ann, though she wasn't his fust wife—jest a second wife, and a widow when she captivated him. You know widows is like dat anyhow, 'cause day done had 'sperience wid mens and wraps dem 'round their little finger and git dem under their thumb 'fore the mens knows what gwine on. Young gals have a poor chance against a young widow like Miss Mary Ann was. Her had her troubles with Marse Tom after her git him, I tell you, but maybe best not to ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... off! They do not wear socks nor stockings, for it is not very cold in Japan. One little tot has on a pair of straw sandals, and the girl and old man wear clogs, held on by a strap passing between the "thumb of the foot," as the Japs call the big toe, ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... we should expect to be guilty of misinterpreting Nature, yet he does so at times. He does so in this passage: "If Nature wants a thumb, she makes it at the cost of the arms and legs." As if the arm were weaker or less efficient because of the thumb. What would man's power be as a tool-using animal without his strong, opposable thumb? His ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... possibilities of pleasurable sensations which may be repeated by the proper stimulation. Besides the hunger-satisfaction that it brings, the act of sucking is pleasurable in itself, and so the baby begins to suck his thumb or his quilts or his rattle. Later, this impulse to stimulate the nerves about the mouth finds its satisfaction in kissing, and still later it plays a definite part in the wooing process; but at first the child is self-sufficient and finds his pleasure entirely within ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... the table to interpose between them. But the mother had caught hold of her; the handkerchief had fallen from her neck; and the youth saw five blue bruises on her lovely throat—the marks of the four fingers and the thumb of a left hand. With a cry of horror he darted from the house, but as he reached the door he turned. His hostess was lying motionless on the floor, and a huge gray wolf came ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... my pock'," he growled, hitting her arm away fiercely, his teeth clenched. "Aft' my money, eh? Think you're winning, don't you? In league with the Pater against me. Think you'll always have me under your thumb, nev' giv' free hand. There's not a man on God's earth would stand it, damned if there is—tied to wom' apron strings ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... office half an hour earlier than usual, I was aware of a small figure in the dining-room—a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... spread abroad, they are white; so that these trees in their season appear extraordinarily pleasant, and yield a very fragrant smell. When the fruit is ripe it is round, and about the bigness of a man's thumb; of a dark brown colour, inclining to red, and about 2 foot or 2 foot and a half long. We found many of them under the trees, but they had no pulp in them. The partitions in the middle are much at the same distance with those brought to England, of the same substance, ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... a needle of granite! Begorra, the sight of it sthrikes me quite dumb! An' look at the quare sort of figures upon it; I wondher can these be the thracks of her thumb! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... seemed to tell Jane at once that this was to be a confidential matter. She jerked with a dirty thumb in the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Artillery practice, designed for belligerent Christians. Finally down from its shelf he dragged the ponderous Roman, Seated himself at the window, and opened the book, and in silence Turned o'er the well-worn leaves, where thumb-marks thick on the margin, Like the trample of feet proclaimed the battle was hottest. 80 Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying pen of the stripling, Busily writing epistles important, to go by the Mayflower,[17] Ready to sail on the morrow, or next day at latest, God willing! ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... this, it is hardly necessary to say that Ossaroo did his best in the manufacture of that rope—every strand of it being twisted between his index finger and his thumb, as smoothly and evenly as if he had been ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... thrashed. But he was warm, and he did sleep for hours at a time. At what must have been dawn he heard the farmer at the stalls in the stable below. He felt refreshed, cozily drowsy, and he did a shameless thing, a trick of vagrants and road-wallopers: he put his thumb to his nose, aimed his hand toward the supposititious location of the farmer below, and twirled his outspread fingers in a flickering manner. It is believed that he intended to convey spirited defiance, or possibly insult, by this amazing ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... many things; among the rest, about the Latriggs. There was more than one pretty girl at Up-Hill then, and the young men all knew it. Tom and his mother were always finger and thumb. He was her youngest boy, and she fretted after him all ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with the missing eye covered by a black patch, worked demoniacally in the gathering darkness with each leaping flame of the ignited torches. The hand that clutched the knife was a thing of horror; two fingers and half the thumb remained from some drunken brawl to serve the Spaniard in future play for work or debauch; and the man, crouching low over his stone, made a picture of incarnate hate that had no humor ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Mr Allen's house. It's a bit of a surprise to find an English gentleman.—Yes, gentleman, Mr Roberts: he is evidently quite a gentleman, although he is completely under that Yankee scoundrel's thumb. But what was I saying? Oh, it's rather a surprise to find an English gentleman living like this in an out-of-the-way West ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... laugh at the memory of this tragic evening, as she laughed at George's stern ultimatums, and at Junior's decision to be an engineer, and at Jinny's tiny cut thumb. But she had no sense of humor now. As she ran to the corner, and poured the whole distressful story into her husband's ears, she felt the walls of her castle in Spain ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... most dexterous manner. She had a firm idea that Berwin had, in her own emphatic phrase, "done something" for which he was wanted by the police, and was always on the look out to learn the secret of his isolated life, in order to betray him, or blackmail him, or get him in some way under her thumb. As yet she ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... the noble sculptures of the facade which the carpenters had just nailed up, freshly painted and newly repaired. This poet was stretched upon his back, eating, in that convenient posture, his dinner out of an earthen pot, plucking the viand from it, whatever it was, with his thumb and fore-finger, and dropping it piecemeal into his mouth. When the passer asked him "Where are you from?" he held a morsel in air long enough to answer "Da Lucca, signore," and then let it fall into his throat, and sank deeper into a reverie in which that crude ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... had most at heart, seemed by his calmness to dominate time and circumstances. It was as though the murderer were running away at one end of an unbreakable thread of which Don Luis held the other, and as though Don Luis could stop his flight at any time by a mere movement of his finger and thumb. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... with a profound obeisance, proffering the tart at the same time between his thumb and forefinger, "will you so far honour an entire stranger? I can answer for the quality of the pastry, having eaten two dozen and three of them ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will be the bearer of his letter to the signorina. I must see her reply. She is a good patriot; so am I; so are you. Good patriots must be prudent. I tell you, I must see her reply to this Lieutenant Pierson." Barto stuck his thumb and finger astride Luigi's shoulder and began rocking him gently, with a horrible meditative expression. "You will have to accomplish this, my Luigi. All fair excuses will be made, if you fail generally. This you must do. Keep upright while I am speaking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... zone, this," he thought. "The sooner I'm through it the better," but as his thumb sought a lever there was a blinding flash very close to him, and following on the heels of the explosion he felt his machine quiver and the front tyre burst with a report like ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... route four times a day, and there are eighty of you to be dosed each time," Smoke informed Laura Sibley. "So we've no time to fool. Will you take it or must I hold your nose?" His thumb and forefinger hovered eloquently above her. "It's vegetable, so you needn't ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... the Psalter of our Lady, in French, exhorts the devout Christian who pronounces these words in the introduction, Holy Lady, open thou my lips, &c. "to make two signs of the cross when he repeats them, one upon his lips with his thumb, and the other upon himself with his hand, as the priests do when they begin their canonical hours." This method, he assures us, will procure the devotee the honour and happiness of being canon or canoness of heaven; and our lady, to reward so conspicuous and instructive ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... and various layers and wrappers of outer garments; and having given a twitch here, and a pull there, and variously adjusted and arranged him, and kissed him heartily, she set him on the floor to collect his thoughts. Baby seemed quite used to this mode of proceeding, for he put his thumb in his mouth (as if it were quite a thing of course), and seemed soon absorbed in his own reflections, while the mother seated herself, and taking out a long stocking of mixed blue and white yarn, began to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ground his teeth, "never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!" (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) "I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage—with a stern ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... elbows with bows. The wide collar and cuffs are edged with beautiful Flemish lace points. The feather fan and the strings of pearls about the throat and wrists might form a part of any modern costume. It strikes us, however, as a very singular fashion for a lady to wear a large seal ring on the thumb. ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... been at it, but not to its detriment. S. Christopher, S. Jerome, and S. Augustine are sweetly together in a delectable country; S. Christopher (as the photograph on the opposite page shows) bearing perhaps the most charming Christ Child of all, with his thumb in his mouth. The Piombo—another company of saints—over the high altar, is a fine mellow thing with a very Giorgionesque figure of the Baptist dominating it, and a lovely Giorgionesque landscape ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the never tiresome recital, how Phronsie fell down the stairs leading from the kitchen to the "provision room" in the little brown house, with the bread-knife in her hand; and how, because she cut her thumb so that it bled dreadfully, mother decided that she could at last have a pair of shoes bought especially for her very own self; and how Deacon Brown's old horse and wagon were procured, and they all set forth, except mother, ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... past the ticket-puncher she made a vicious lunge at my out-stretched hand with an enormous pair of pincers, missing the ticket and partially amputating my thumb. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... as one who is athirst, and gluing her lips to the body of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil and began to give extreme unction. First, upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous odours; then upon the mouth that had uttered ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort and tore the glove from the base of the thumb into the palm of the hand—and tried to hide the rent. She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the fiber, is sorted into four classes—first, Binani; second, Totogna; third, Sogotan; and fourth, Cadaclan. A bundle of these is then taken up in the left hand, and, while with the right the first three sorts are inserted between the fingers, the fourth is held between the thumb and forefinger. This last description is no longer used in fine weaving, and is therefore sold with bandala. After the fine sorts have been pounded in a rice-mortar, in order to render the fiber soft and pliable, they are ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the suddenest and wildest enthusiasm; one, of solitary and anxious consideration. . . . By the way, as I was unpacking the big box I took hold of a book, and said to 'Them,'—'Now, whatever passage my thumb rests on, I shall take as having reference to my work.' It was TRISTRAM SHANDY, and opened at these words, 'What a work it is likely to turn out! Let us ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... "I hope you've forgot nothink? Miss 'Melia's gownds—have you got them—as the lady's maid was to have 'ad? I hope they'll fit you. Shut the door, Jim, you'll get no good out of 'ER," continued John, pointing with his thumb towards Miss Sharp: "a bad lot, I tell you, a bad lot," and so saying, Mr. Sedley's groom drove away. The truth is, he was attached to the lady's maid in question, and indignant that she should have been ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cases upwards for water and downwards for minerals. The motion varies according to individual temperaments: in some hands the turning is slow and but slightly felt, or scarcely perceptible by lookers-on; with others it rotates rapidly, and when held tightly by the thumb, the bark of the branch or twig often peels off; and, with very susceptible operators. I have seen the rod fly, out of the hands, or, if very tightly ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... to him. He took it, turned it over, looked at the policeman half frightened, and pointed with his fat thumb at Mackaye. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... finger breadths, finger lengths, and hand breadths as did the ancient folks who called an arm length a cubit. Nor has the span been forgotten, especially by boys in their games with marbles; the space from the end of the thumb to the end of the little finger when the hand is extended must have been an important measurement from ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... about bother, my missus says, 'I'd sooner have Catharine here, and me have tea up there with her, notwithstanding there must be a fire upstairs and I've had to send Lucy to the infirmary with a whitlow on her thumb—yes, I would, than be at a many tea-parties ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... coffin floatin' in de air in dat room—" she shivered, "and I heard a heap o' knockings. I dunno what it bees—but de sounds come in de house. I runs ev'y squeech owl away what comes close, too." Nancy clasped her hands, right thumb over left thumb, "does dat—and it goes on away—dey quits hollerin', you chokin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... then sauntered downstairs, his hands in his pockets, his heart as light as air. Unconsciously he jingled the coins. A broad smile came over his face as he drew forth a certain piece. Holding it between his thumb and ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the room and the rest clap hands and then dodge, and he fires his revolver at the point the sound seems to come from, and the object is not to get shot. You may have noticed Sasha Basmanoff has no left thumb? He lost it last year on ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... eyed him suspiciously for a long while. At last he dropped the rifle in the hollow of his arm, keeping a ready thumb ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... me—with Sedley, that I would write her funeral sermon; that it should be every word in praise of her life and conversation, that it should be all true, and yet that the diocesan should be unable to lay his thumb on Quodling, my little ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... right-hand glove—the kid gave with a little shriek, the thumb splitting out. She was in a state of acute indecision. Could she retire from this contest without endangering her authority, without loss of prestige, or must she insist? She had no real wish to hasten to her ex-pupil's bedside. She would be glad to put off doing so, glad to wait. She was ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... really an artist. Some men would have smirked with triumph, but he merely jerked a thumb ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... convicted felons to plead, as it was called, the benefit of clergy, Jonson might have been hanged for this deed. The circumstance that the poet could read and write saved him; and he received only a brand of the letter "T," for Tyburn, on his left thumb. While in jail Jonson became a Roman Catholic; but he returned to the faith of the Church of England a ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... now—an American naval vessel would turn up, with scientists and chemists on board. It was to be doubted whether anything like an overt act would be risked by that vessel. If all the governments of South America were under The Master's thumb, then cabled orders from his deputies would race three navies to the spot. And the government of the United States does not like to start war, anywhere. Certainly it would not willingly enter into a conflict with the whole southern continent for the solution ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Society; dreamed dreams of the ascending spiral whose law others had groped at, but he would be the first to formulate; caught and fondled the secret of the whole great Design; reduced it to a rule-of-thumb to do his bidding; bestrode the whole world like a ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... freshly flavorful, cool as springwater. Doak rubbed the beaded moisture with a thumb. "Pretty town," he said. "Pretty country ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... feet, no legs beneath him, he scarcely still felt young Frau Nettenmair swimming along beside him, hanging to his right fin, the most beautiful among the beautiful, just as he was the most jovial among the jovial, the thumb on the hand ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... rush; but they were still drunk from the Revolution, and their ardour soon passed. Your own people, the people of Germany, are a peaceable, home-loving people. You have always had to keep them under your thumb by forced service, by conscription, by the most rigorous laws; you have always had ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... he regards: No; 'tis mere spleen and spite to living bards. Had Greece but been as carping and as cold To new productions, what would now be old? What standard works would there have been, to come Beneath the public eye, the public thumb? ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... large kettle or saucepan, and into the water put the lye. Allow the water to come to the boiling point, and then add the corn and let it boil until the skins will slip off the grains when they are pressed between the thumb and the finger. Take from the stove, stir sufficiently to loosen the skins, and then remove them by washing the grains of corn in a coarse colander. Cover the grains with cold water and return to the fire. When the water boils, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... Cleek, jerking his thumb in the direction where Borkins had stood the night before. "I've what you calls an appointment wiv 'im, yer know. And.... 'Ere the blighter is! Good evenin', sir. Pleased ter see yer again, though lookin' a bit pale abaht the gills, if yer ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... indicating the fleeing musicians with his thumb. "Allee samee muchee flaid noisee," and then his round face ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... all the scores; if there is something wrong in a department the output score shows it at once, the superintendent makes inquiries and the foreman looks alive. A considerable part of the incentive to better methods is directly traceable to this simple rule-of-thumb method of rating production. The foreman need not be a cost accountant—he is no better a foreman for being one. His charges are the machines and the human beings in his department. When they are working at their best he has performed ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... better. He threatened the right flank—Captain Perry hastened men to strengthen it and then White Bird turned the left flank. The volunteers ran away, Chief Joseph grabbed the best position; now he had the soldiers under his thumb, and ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... called it. It did not follow because he was a butcher that he was to have butchering ideas for ever, or that he was to know nothing of 'literature,' as she termed it—that is, novels. Mr. Mumbles had read 'Puss in Boots,' 'Jack the Giant Killer,' 'Tom Thumb,' 'Jack and the Bean Stalk,' 'Whittington and his Cat,' and 'Mother Goose' in his childhood. In his boyhood he had gone through 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' and 'The Seven Champions of Christendom,' and therefore knew there was ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... He tossed over a package of papers that he produced from an inside pocket. "Look those over at your leisure. I think we better sue the sons of guns. Let me know what you think." He fished about in a tight-drawn waistcoat pocket with a chubby thumb and forefinger, pulled out a strip of paper, and flipped it to Keith as casually as though it were a cigarette paper. "There's a little something as a retainer," said ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... small wood faggots; and when all the wood is burnt, sweep out the oven clean and free from all ashes. Divide your dough into four-pound loaves, knead them into round shapes, making a hole at the top with your thumb, and immediately put them out of hand into the oven to bake, closing the oven-door upon them. In about two hours' time they will be thoroughly baked, and are then to be taken out of the oven, and allowed to become quite cold before they are put away ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... had read a letter addressed to Swann, he might have found words in it of another, a far more tender kind! He took a firm hold of the card, which was sliding to and fro, the envelope being too large for it and then, by moving it with his finger and thumb, brought one line after another beneath the part of the envelope where the paper was not doubled, through which alone it ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... sometimes started on a hot-bed, in thumb-pots, or on inverted turf, or sods, cut in convenient pieces; and about the last of May, if the weather is warm and pleasant, transplanted to hills in ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... therefore to give it a place. About 6 feet of the lower extremity of the large gut of the Buffaloe is the first mosel that the cook makes love to, this he holds fast at one end with the right hand, while with the forefinger and thumb of the left he gently compresses it, and discharges what he says is not good to eat, but of which in the squel we get a moderate portion; the mustle lying underneath the shoulder blade next to the back, and fillets are next saught, these are needed up very fine with a good portion of kidney ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... on the origin of the Roman numerals. Originally men counted by their fingers; thus, to mark the first four numbers they used an I, which naturally represents them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... greasy rascal," the Captain snapped at him, to add: "What do you say? A Deputy? Where?" The fellow pointed with his thumb in the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... Patricia. "You've got to! I won't let you do anything else! Now say yes right away—there's a dear!" she coaxed, pinching Polly's mouth with a thumb and forefinger, her ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... with the palm upward; the index finger pointing north. The thumb is the Mountain road; the index-finger the Telegraph road; where the thumb joins the hand is the Yellow Tavern in open fields; and ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the indication of his thumb, and noted the lighted window to which he pointed. A moment later he was gone, and as I joined Michelot, I chuckled softly ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... follies are often more calamitous than the ambition of kings; and that intolerance and bigotry have been infinitely greater curses to mankind than ignorance and error. Better any error than persecution! Better any opinion than the thumb-screw, the rack, and the stake! And he knows also how unspeakably absurd it is, for a creature to whom himself and everything around him are mysteries, to torture and slay others, because they cannot think as he does in regard to the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... took out a large pair of scissors, and, kneeling down by my father, commenced severing his long pigtail from his head. My father was too sound asleep to be roused: in a minute the tail was off, and my mother rose up, holding it, with an expression of the utmost contempt, between her finger and thumb. She then very softly laid it down by his side, and replaced the scissors in the cupboard; as I expected that she would go upstairs again, I concealed myself in the back kitchen. I was correct in my supposition. A moment afterwards I heard her ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... show the right way," said Mr. Winston, as he spoke he placed his thumb on a brass nail and the gauze door rose, instead of opening, and without any noise displayed the contents ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... the well threw the leg across the cellar, and turned swiftly to go down into the well; but the officers were too quick for him, and had him out in a twinkling. Whilst they held him, dripping upon the floor, the inspector jerked his thumb in the direction of the offending leg, and the landlord, having harpooned it with one of the pitchforks, ran with it upstairs and so into the ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... cases, that it fails to reach the ground. And in almost all the footprints of the primeval birds of the Connecticut there are only three toes exhibited. Peculiar, ill understood laws regulate the phalangal divisions of the various animals. It is a law of the human kind, for instance, that the thumb should consist of but three phalanges; while the fingers, even the smallest, consist of four. And, in the same way, it is a law generally exemplified among birds, that of the three toes which correspond to the fingers, the inner toe should be composed of three phalanges, the middle ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Gracefully she removes, without taking her eyes off the altar, the glove from her right hand, and with her thumb turns the ring of Ste-Genevieve that serves her as a rosary, moving her lips the while. Then, with downcast eyes and set lips, she loosens the fleur-de-lys-engraved clasp of her Book of Hours, and seeks out the prayers appropriate ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and adventures, most interesting of which, to Janet, was a short account of the fight of a sheriff's posse with the train-robbers intrenched near the Post Oaks, a most determined encounter in which the sheriff was among those killed while Steve Brown received only a blunted thumb, for the clumsy appearance of which his story was ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... convention. Both comments point Mr Wells' expression of what he calls in this book "the essential antagonism ... in all human affairs ... between ideas and the established method—that is to say, between ideas and the rule of thumb." And he adds: "The world I hate is the rule-of-thumb world; the thing I and my kind exist for primarily is battle with that, to annoy it, disarrange it, reconstruct it." This confession is so lucid and characteristic that I cannot ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... her buskins. We moderns, owing to our horrible system of footgear, which is hardly less absurd than the Chinese shoe, no longer know what a foot is. That of Nyssia was of a perfection rare even in Greece and antique Asia. The great toe, a little apart like the thumb of a bird, the other toes, slightly long, and all ranged in charming symmetry, the nails well shaped and brilliant as agates, the ankles well rounded and supple, the heel slightly tinted with a rosy hue—nothing was wanting to the perfection of the little member. ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... few circumstances in life that can be properly treated by rule of thumb. Good judgment is called for at every turn; and the habit of considering relative values in regard to all affairs is one that the student should constantly cultivate, no matter what ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... taken up the bag that he had invented for the noiseless filing of keys. Now he handled it as though it were a tobacco-pouch, putting in finger and thumb, and shrugging over the puzzle with a delicious face; nevertheless, he showed me a few grains of steel filing as the result of his investigations, and murmured in my ear, "These sweet police! I, for my part, could not but examine the life-preserver with which I had once smitten Raffles himself ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... sight over the line of the wood he suddenly wheeled round, and, holding his immense wings extended, dived as a rook will downwards through the air. He twisted from side to side like a coin partly spun round by the finger and thumb, as he came down, rushing through the air head first. The sound of his great vanes pressing and dividing the air was plainly audible. He looked unable to manage his descent; but at the right moment he recovered his balance, and rose a little ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... this to them," put in the cowboy who appeared to know him, and suiting act to word he placed his thumb to his nose and twiddled his finger. "Do that, Pan. That'll shore shut ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... learning. His voice was low and his manner modest—a great man who in the game of human affairs played below the limit of his abilities. McGlenn roused himself. When emphatic, he had a way of turning out his thumb and slowly hammering his knee with his fist. In his sky there was a cloud of pessimism, but the brightness of his speech threw a rainbow across it. He was a poet in the garb of a Diogenes. Many of his theories were wrong, but all were striking. Sometimes ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... leaned across the bed and lifted slightly the arm that lay there, taking the wrist between his thumb and finger. "I think we had better let Mr. Peck rest a while," he said to the company generally, "We're doing him ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... honey, if we would eat it, in a good book; and the family must be poor indeed, which, once in their lives, cannot, for, such multipliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's books out of ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... call him, in the choicest societies, by his Christian name of Maxime. I would say, 'Bon jour, Maxime; comment vas-TU?' in the Princess's hearing, and could see him bite his lips for fury and vexation. But I had him under my thumb, and her Highness too—I, poor private of Bulow's regiment. And this is a proof of what genius and perseverance can do, and should act as a warning to great people never to have ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... back blankly into the Doctor's smiling eyes for a moment, then looked long at the penknife on the floor, and finally stooped and cautiously took it between his forefinger and thumb, eyeing it doubtfully the while. Then he suddenly sat down, pulled out his pocket handkerchief, and mopped off the perspiration that freely bedewed ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Harker, "and when the scoundrel has been unmasked, you need have no fear of any future danger. In my master's chain of villainy there was a single flaw; but that flaw has broken the whole chain. The poor tool, whom he had had so long beneath his thumb, whom he had trodden under his foot remorselessly, suddenly regained his freedom—which he had bartered for the safety of ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... of happy voices, spelling aloud life's first lessons, prophesied the future glory of the State. The curriculum of the old field school was the same everywhere—one Webster's blue backed, elementary spelling book, one thumb-paper, one stone-bruise, one sore toe, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... some of them most elaborate. In making them, the ground within the ceremonial hogan is evenly covered with fine brown earth, upon which the figures are drawn with fine sands and earths of many colors allowed to flow between the thumb and the first two fingers. The Navaho become so skilled in this work that they can draw a line as fine as a broad pencil mark. Many of the paintings are comparatively small, perhaps not more than four feet in diameter; ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... he said in a mellifluous voice. "Ye know I was tucked up in yonder"—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder—"tendin' to the countin' of the votes, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... melted lead, took a small portion of it out, placed it in his mouth, and then gave it in a solid state to some of the company. This performance, according to his account, was also very easy; for he seized only a very small particle, which, by a tight compression between the forefinger and the thumb, became cool before it reached the mouth. At this time Mr. Smith made his appearance, and M. Chabert forthwith prepared himself for mightier undertakings. A cruse of oil was brought forward and ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... he wouldn't, I know; but he is under the thumb of that doctor; and you know how HE hates me—If you don't ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... but, said he, I do not need to ask you what your name is,—I know that you are Asa-Thor. But what have you done with my glove? He stretched out his hand and picked up his glove. Then Thor saw that the glove was the hall in which he had spent the night, and that the adjoining room was the thumb of the glove. Skrymer asked whether they would accept of his company. Thor said yes. Skrymer took and loosed his provision-sack and began to eat his breakfast; but Thor and his fellows did the same in another place. Skrymer proposed that they should lay their store of provisions together, ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... after I wrote my last letter to you, as I was whetting my scythe for the last swath of the season, my hat half fell off, and suddenly raising my hand to catch it, I thrust it against the scythe and cut my thumb just upon the joint. It has healed, but I shall never find it quite as agile as formerly. I could not use the hand—my right hand—for more than a fortnight. It was like losing a sense to lose its use. After a week of inaction in Concord, I went ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... year ago the people of Panama lived in fear under the thumb of a dictator. Today democracy is restored. Panama ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George H.W. Bush • George H.W. Bush
... and renewed the fly-catching. Dad tried to spit, and was going to say something when Mother, half-way between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass paddock was all on fire. "So it is, Dad!" said Joe, slowly but surely dragging the head off a fly with finger and thumb. ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... I been," said he to himself; "Mowgli the Wolf have I said that I am. Now Mowgli the Ape must I be before I am Mowgli the Buck. At the end I shall be Mowgli the Man. Ho!" and he slid his thumb along the eighteen-inch blade of ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... rings and their bracelets and their thumb-rings and their golden treasures were fetched to them, and their apparel, both purple and blue and black and green, yellow, vari-coloured and ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
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