"Fingered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Persephone every year on her ascent from the lower world, and the expression "The chamber of the Horae opens" is equivalent to "The Spring is coming." 'Rosy-bosomed'; the Gk. rhodokolpos: compare the epithets 'rosy-fingered' (applied by Homer to the dawn), ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... to the less tragically minded, and in yet another the world-renowned Faux displays the announcement of his conjuring marvels. A peep-show of the siege of Gibraltar allures the patriotic. Toy-shops, presided over by attractive damsels, lure the light-hearted, and the light-fingered too, for many an intelligent pickpocket seizes the opportunity to rifle the pocket of some too occupied customer. There is a revolving swing, and go-carts are drawn by dogs for the delight of children. Hucksters go about selling gin, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... saw the sacred dance with which that great god is propitiated. In a booth two stories high, in front of the temple, was a small stage upon which sat three old priests. One beat a drum, the second played a flute, while the third fingered a guitar. To this music a very pretty young daughter of a priest, gorgeously arrayed in sacred robes, postured with a fan, keeping time to the music. This was all. But, like the tom-tom beating of the Buddhist which we heard at the same moment ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... jolly old nook, one's too contented to move, lest raising a finger even should break the spell. What WILL be perfect will be your just sitting down—DO sit down—and scolding me a little. That, my dear Nanda, will deepen the peace." Some minutes later, while, near him but in another chair, she fingered the impossible book, as she pronounced it, that she had taken from him, he came back to what she had last said. "Has he talked to you much about his ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... a pity. An open break? Open breaks in friendship are always unfortunate." Lyons looked grieved, and fingered his beard meditatively. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... seated himself in the darkness to watch the stars slowly seeming to pass from east to west, and as he said half-aloud those words about being alone he slowly fingered the revolver-holster on one side of his belt and the hunting-knife in its sheath, which done, he pulled at the strap which slung his rifle, and getting it round to the front he rested it upon his knees, and began mechanically ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... that the supreme moment had come. There was a look of almost superhuman cruelty and malice in the little Frenchman's eyes as he fixed them on the impassive figure of Sir Percy, the while with slightly trembling hands he fingered that piece of paper and smoothed out its creases with ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... nervous whistle. "I see what you mean, pal. With all our eggs in one basket, we sure can't afford to get butter-fingered ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... origination of permanent varieties were not the result of infinitesimal improvements, but were sudden and complete at once. The Japan peacocks, the short-legged sheep, the porcupine man and his family, and the six-fingered men, were not at all the results of a slow process of evolution; on the contrary, they were born so, complete at once, in ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... would not exchange his blinding waste of snow and dark fields of water for the luxuriance of tropic vegetation. Why should we exchange the glories of the land we live in for the footworn and sight-worn, the thumbed and fingered beauties of other lands? If we desire novelty and adventure, seek it in the unexplored regions of the great Northwest; if we crave grandeur, visit the Yellowstone and the fastnesses of the Rockies; if we wish the sublime, gaze in ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... hath as fine a hand at picking a pocket as a woman, and is as nimble-fingered as a juggler. If an unlucky session does not cut the rope of his life, I pronounce he will be ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hardly considered a failing, however, for it had its advantages in shopping; if he was slow himself, he was quite willing that others should be so too, and to stand in unmoved calm while Mrs Jones fingered a material to test its quality, or Mrs Wilson made up her mind between a spot and a sprig. It was therefore a splendid place for a bit of talk, for he was so long in serving, and his customers were so long in choosing, that there was an agreeable absence of pressure, and time to drink ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... She looked regretfully at the piano and the old, neatly bound folios of music with 'M. A.' upon the covers, and she wondered how it was that no one cared to hear her 'pieces' now. She went over to the music-stand and fingered them in a contemplative way. How industriously she used to practise 'Woodland Warblings,' 'My Pretty Bird,' 'La Sympathie, Valse Sentimentale pour le Piano,' and 'Quant' e piu bella,' ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... health, and song—I mean 'treatise,' or whatever he calls it—say 'lecture.' Wish we'd had a piano. Never will travel without one again. Mem.—Gong and piano. I don't pretend to be a thorough musician, but as a one-fingered player I'd give Sir CHARLES HALLE odds and beat him. Now then—let's see where were we. Another tumbler iced. Good. Allez! Captain, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... nothing, but was examining an arrow, almost twenty inches long and thick, made of cane, with a point of metal very sharp but badly fastened. He fingered the deep blood groove in the scooplike head of the arrow and ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... any words could have told. She stood silently by, a mute but eloquent protest, while Jean took the bags of gold dust one by one from the chest, and poured their contents into the water below. When the last bag was emptied he took the packet of bills and fingered them gently. Even his purpose seemed to be shaken by the seductive feel of the familiar paper. Suddenly he thrust them into the hole, and his staff thrust viciously at them as he pushed them under the ice where they would quickly ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... suggest is that this unfortunate man was destroyed by a French criminal of the class which I have indicated, the bullying apache type, which is so common in France. Why the murder was committed," the commissioner fingered his paper-knife carelessly, "what led to it and who committed it, and more especially who instigated the crime, are matters which seem to me to defy detection. Do ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... and booze. Certina ain't the worst of 'em, any more than it's the best. I may squeeze a few dollars out of easy boobs, but you, Andy Certain, you and your young whelp here, you're playin' the poor suckers for their lives. And then you're too lily-fingered to touch a mining proposition because ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... his chest, rolling weakly from side to side. Eddie doubted whether he could speak if he wished to. The Chilean was working at the controls, increasing the tension of those terrible tentacles. Eddie raised himself to his knees, watching Cadorna narrowly. He fingered the knife Lina had used in freeing him. No, he couldn't use that. The Chilean would cry out and queer everything. He laid it on the floor, ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... to intersect variation? The two cases of which I have mentioned the history, give a most excellent illustration of what occurs. Gratio Kelleia, the Maltese, married when he was twenty-two years of age, and, as I suppose there were no six-fingered ladies in Malta, he married an ordinary five-fingered person. The result of that marriage was four children; the first, who was christened Salvator, had six fingers and six toes, like his father; the second was George, who had five fingers and toes, but one of them was deformed, showing a tendency ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... admiration; muttered remark, "By George, but he's deep!") He fingered his clues. "And now let us ask these mute witnesses to speak ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... though pretty well educated, he could not speak the English language. But he had a proud spirit and an indomitable will. He sought employment as a printer, choosing this as a means of learning the English language. Though he had never fingered a type in his life, he had that confidence in himself which inspired the conviction that he could overcome any difficulty presenting itself between his will ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... his sickle. Irishman-like, he forgot to move the sound fingers out of the way, and two of them shared the fate of their injured companion. Paddy walked into the nearest township, had his wounds dressed, and felt no inconvenience from the venom. Under the soubriquet of "Three-fingered Tim," this individual may frequently be met with at Sydney, and, for a glass of grog, will be delighted to recount the whole affair, with the richest of Milesian brogues. The second case was that of a woman. She was going from the hut to the fireplace, when she trod on a snake, which bit her just ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... you inspect the copper-plate on which my pattern was deeply engraved? Didn't you perceive an impression of it taken in cobalt colour at a cylindrical press, upon a leaf of thin paper, streaming from a plunge-bath of soap and water? Wasn't the paper impression daintily spread, by a light-fingered damsel (you KNOW you admired her!), over the surface of the plate, and the back of the paper rubbed prodigiously hard - with a long tight roll of flannel, tied up like a round of hung beef - without so much as ruffling the paper, wet as it was? ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... knaves picking pockets, policemen on the lookout, quacks (other quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is Vanity Fair; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... not fitted the answer to either of these sharp-pointed queries when a pair of light-fingered hands came from behind to clap themselves upon his eyes, and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... was new. Most of what was called the valuable property was owned by an English syndicate, but there were many who had small claims scattered here and there on the mountainside, and Three-fingered Hoover and I were rightly reckoned among these others. The camp was new and rough to the degree of uncouthness, yet, upon the whole, the little population was well disposed and orderly. But along in the spring ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... hand in her pocket and fingered a silver coin, but poverty is a grim, tyrannous stepmother to tender ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... injustice that I myself must do injustice in order not to succumb to it when it grips me so hard! Listen! Not long ago I was going across the street when I met that pock-marked thief, Fritz, whom I had thrown into jail a few years ago because for the third time he had shown himself light-fingered in my house. Formerly the scoundrel never even dared to look at me; now he walked boldly up and offered me his hand. I felt like boxing his ears, but I bethought myself and did not even spit. We have been cousins for a week now, and it is proper for relatives to greet each other! The minister, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... sweet words? The harbour of his rest to the storm-tossed mariner—surely that is sweet! The dream of Heaven's bliss which cheers the poor ascetic priest on his path of sacrifice—surely that is sweet! The sight of Dawn, the rosy-fingered, coming in his promise to glad the watching Earth—surely that is sweet! But, ah! not one of these, nor all dear delightful things that are, can match the honey-sweetness of thy words to me, O Antony! For thou knowest not—never canst thou know—how drear my life ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... who knew the story, not only of the glass lying beneath his hand to-day, but of all the glass the world has known, from the colored beads inhumed with the Pharaonic princesses to the ruby salver he so fondly fingered as he talked. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Mrs. Nuddle scorned the lily-fingered tulip-fleshed beauties. Their sentimental alarms had nothing in common with her problem, which was the riddle of a husband who was faithful only to the bottle, who was indifferent to the children he got so easily, and was poetical only in that he never ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Paul fingered the bill nervously. Fifty dollars! If he chose to use it to meet the deficit on the school paper he could now take his own savings for the new typewriter he wanted so much. Who would be the wiser? Had not Mr. Carter given him the money? It was ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... dainty-fingered May with gentle hand shall fold and put away The snow-white curtains of his winter tent, and spread above him her green coverlet, 'Broidered with daisies, sweet to sight and scent and Summer, from her outposts in the hills, Under the boughs with heavy night-dews wet, shall place her gold and ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... unprepossessing, most of them, for the time was not yet when sea-going was considered, save as a last resource, like selling newspapers or going to America. These men were mostly artisans, thick-fingered mechanics who had gone to sea, driven by some obscure urge or prosaic economic necessity, and the sea had changed them, as it changes everything, fashioning in them a blunt work-a-day fatalism and a strong, coarse-fibred character admirably adapted to their way of life. But that way ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... chambers of art in themselves, took care, as an influence, of the general manner, and made people bland without making them solemn. They were only people, as Mrs. Stringham had said, staying for the week or two at the inns, people who during the day had fingered their Baedekers, gaped at their frescoes and differed, over fractions of francs, with their gondoliers. But Milly, let loose among them in a wonderful white dress, brought them somehow into relation with something that made them more ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... rural retirement, Sechard senior showed a careful countenance among his vine props; for he was always in his vineyard now, just as, in the old days, he had lived in his shop, day in, day out. The prospect of thirty thousand francs was even more intoxicating than sweet wine; already in imagination he fingered the coin. The less the claim to the money, the more eager he grew to pouch it. Not seldom his anxieties sent him hurrying from Marsac to Angouleme; he would climb up the rocky staircases into the old city and walk into his son's ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... revolver neatly hidden under the fulness of the blouse on the right hip and fingered ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... turned out to hunt wild pigs in the jungle, the people who stay at home may not touch oil or water with their hands during the absence of their friends; for if they did so, the hunters would all be "butter-fingered" and the prey ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... motions of his fingers and thumbs. But I could see that he was not listening only: he was pondering and reasoning upon what I told him. When I had finished my story, he remained silent for some minutes: but he still stared at me with the same relentless and stony gaze, and he still fingered his knees, following up his right hand with his left, as slowly and deliberately as if he had been composing a fugue ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the volume with beating heart. He nervously fingered the leaves at first without receiving any distinct impression of the contents, his brain was so full of other thoughts. At last he noticed that the entries were regular and consecutive, and though written in different hands, were clear to follow. He reached the month of June, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... understood. There are Gentlemen by birth, Gentlemen by education, Gentlemen's Gentlemen, Gentlemen of the Press, Gentlemen Pensioners, Gentlemen, whom nobody thinks it worth while to call otherwise; Honourable Gentlemen, Walking Gentlemen of strolling companies, Light-fingered Gentlemen, &c. &c. very respectable Gentlemen, and God ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... down the strip of level beach the soldier hummed an old ballad song of Man, which Rose had loved to sing, and clean forgot the savage who, crouching in the shadow, fingered the knife hilt hidden in his waist cloth, and never removed the gaze of his snaky eyes from the figure ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to those which serve for the maintenance of the respiratory current; their intestine is always found empty, and they appear only to live for love. But what is most remarkable is, that they now appear under two different forms. Some (Figure 3) acquire powerful, long-fingered, and very mobile chelae, and, instead of the single olfactory filament of the female, have from 12 to 17 of these organs, which stand two or three together on each joint of the flagellum. The others (Figure 5) retain the short thick form of the chelae of the females; but, on the other hand, their ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... corner of the room, hoping that it would escape attention. But it had been seen already. Nobody knew what kind of a thing it really was, but everybody recognised it as a weapon of some sort. Some of the boldest busied themselves about the corner, so as to have a look at it. They fingered the covering of the handle, scratched the guard with their nails, bent the blade, handled the small leather ball. They were like hares sniffing at a gun which had been lost in the wood. They did not understand its use, but they knew it ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... stout, comfortable man, leaned on the counter and fingered lovingly the bracelet which he had lifted out of its nest of blue plush. Archie, leaning on the other side of the counter, inspected the bracelet searchingly, wishing that he knew more about these things; for he had rather a sort of idea that the merchant ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... likewise leaned back as far as his chair would permit, and fingered tenderly a tingling ear. "Whatcha gonna take Harpe's job for?" he asked, puzzled. "I thought you liked the Bar S ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... took up her book. She heard her husband's heavy tread descending the stairs, and the wheels of his carriage as he drove off. Then she threw the volume away with a little impatient exclamation. She rose from her chair, and began walking up and down the room restlessly. Every now and then she fingered an ornament, moved a piece of furniture, or rearranged some draperies. Once she stopped in front of a mirror ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... towards the small ones, and to help them as much as possible she used, as soon as she left school, to lend a hand at haymaking or harvesting on neighbouring farms; or, by preference, at milking or butter-making processes, which she had learnt when her father had owned cows; and being deft-fingered it was a kind of work in ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... all that live, in all things which you affect; which makes you so envious and grudging. It afflicts you to the heart when any goddess seeks the love of a mortal man in marriage, though you yourselves without scruple link yourselves to women of the earth. So it fared with you, when the delicious-fingered Morning shared Orion's bed; you could never satisfy your hate and your jealousy till you had incensed the chastity-loving dame, Diana, who leads the precise life, to come upon him by stealth in Ortygia, and pierce him through ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... The report sent Tom's heart into his mouth again. Several of the boats pushed off at once into the stream; and the crowds of men on the bank began to be agitated, as it were, by the shadow of the coming excitement. The St. Ambrose fingered their oars, put a last dash of grease on their rowlocks, and settled their ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... looking shy and awkward as she fingered an ornament on a small table, seemed singularly a part of her background. Her evening dress, slipping off her thin shoulders, was as faded and out of date as her carpet. It had once been delicately blue and gauzy, but its gauziness hung in crushed folds ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the boys rose in a curious way, making a highly pitched jeering snarl, while a number of unpleasant missiles that were held ready were fingered and held behind backs, but from a disinclination to become the victim of the sailor's marking, no lad was venturesome enough to start the shower intended to greet the newcomer. It was held in abeyance for the moment, and then became impossible, ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... was again in my own room, and had taken off the brown frock, I held against my cheek, for a long, long minute, that fold against which his head had rested; I fingered the broken coin; I looked long and long at the hand his lips had touched; and though I had told a shameless lie, I was ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... which had been lying all the time in her lap, white upon black, had at length drawn and fixed Gibbie's attention. They were very lady-like hands, long-fingered, and with the orthodox long-oval nails, each with a quarter segment of a pale rising moon at the root—hands nearly faultless, and, I suspect, considered by their owner entirely such—but a really faultless hand, who has ever seen?—To Gibbie's eyes they were such beautiful things, that, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Dicksie fingered wildly on the piano at some half-forgotten air, and in a fever of excitement walked out on the porch to see where they were. To her relief, she saw Marion sitting near Sinclair under the big tree in front of the ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... yet more forward; she seemed to crouch as if she wanted to get out of sight. Christina suddenly stopped and looked at her for an answer. Anna fingered her splashed apron; she tried to speak, but a lump rose in her throat, and she could not see for the hot tears that would, against her will, rush to ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... but hie thee to bed, good Denys. Next to Margaret I love thee best on earth, and value thy 'coeur d'or' far more than a dozen of these 'Tetes d'Or.' So prithee call me at the first blush of rosy-fingered morn, and let's away ere the woman with the hands ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the lessons began, it might almost be said it was only when a spectator was present that he was not sobbing. For Rosie, who was an awkward, ungraceful young person, proved to be the dullest and most butter-fingered pupil ever invented for the torture of teachers; at least, so Lancelot thought, but then he had never had any other pupils, and was not patient. It must be admitted, though, that Rosie giggled perpetually, apparently finding endless humour in her own mistakes. ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... time with this, or near the end of August, a to me very interesting genus of grasses, Andropogons, or Beard-Grasses, is in its prime. Andropogon furcatus, Forked Beard-Grass, or call it Purple-Fingered Grass; Andropogon scoparius, Purple Wood-Grass; and Andropogon (now called Sorghum) nutans, Indian-Grass. The first is a very tall and slender-culmed grass, three to seven feet high, with four or five purple finger-like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... a Bible that had lain dusty and unopened on a shelf. It was his mother's book, and he found therein many little tokens of her presence. Here was a verse underlined; at some gracious passages the page was much fingered and worn; in one place there were stains that looked like the mark of tears; then again, in one page, there was a small tress of hair, golden hair, tied in a paper with a name across it, that seemed to be the name of a little sister of his mother's that died a child; and again there ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... door, Colihan could have sworn he saw the Personnelovac wink. He walked over to it and fingered the lever. It was ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... fact that confusion frequently results from putting a stop to them: witness the case narrated by Sir Walter Scott of his school-fellow, who became unable to say his lesson after the removal of the waistcoat-button that he habitually fingered while in class. But why do they facilitate the mental actions? Clearly because they draw off a portion of the surplus nervous excitement. If, as above explained, the quantity of mental energy generated is greater than can find vent along the narrow channel of thought ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... there was no shadow of a doubt in the honest stationer's mind; it was as clear as daylight. No one else had been in the shop except the curate, who had never been near the tray. Coote had; he had touched and fingered all its contents; he had had this very pencil in his hand, he had quitted the shop abruptly, and started running as soon as he ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... laid her strong, young arm around the bent and shaking little shoulders. Uncle Tucker rested on his spade and looked away across the garden wall, where the little yard of graves was hid in the shadow of tall pine trees, and his big eyes grew very tender. Miss Lavinia fingered a shoot of the vine that had fallen across her thin old knees with a softened expression in her prophet-woman face, while something new and sweet stirred in Everett's breast and woke in his tired eyes, as across half a century was wafted the ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... trying as the Indians and the negroes, and in particular showed a lawless disregard for their masters' property, an indifference to the authority of the weal-public, and a lazy disinclination to work; one writer describes them as "tender fingered in cold weather." The Mt. Wollaston lot that followed Morton to Merry Mount were but the forerunners of hundreds of others. The Bradstreets' servant, John, may be taken as a type of many refractory bound servants. He was brought to trial in 1661, for "stealing several ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... He fingered the instruments and the control, half hoping and half fearing that he would alight upon the combination that would put the machine in flight. Often had he watched the British air-men soaring above the German lines and it looked so simple he was quite sure that he could do it himself ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... expected to see a heavy, domineering man. Instead, a slender, stealthy man in the uniform of a General rose from behind a tapestry topped table, revealing, as he did, a slight stoop in his back, perhaps a trifle foppish. He held out a long-fingered hand. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of the ball, the cry of the victim; he saw the blood flow. And this building up of circumstance was like a consecration of the man, till he seemed to walk in sacrificial fillets. Next he considered Davis, with his thick-fingered, coarse-grained, oat-bread commonness of nature, his indomitable valour and mirth in the old days of their starvation, the endearing blend of his faults and virtues, the sudden shining forth of a tenderness that lay too deep for tears; his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... neither increased in quantity nor improved in quality,—he has only procured a window in a leading thoroughfare. He can catch his butterflies more cunningly, he can pin them on his cards more skilfully, but their wings are fingered and tawdry compared with the time when they winnowed before him in the sunshine over the meadows of youth. This species of regret is peculiar to the class of which I am speaking, and they often discern failure in what the world counts success. The veteran does not look back ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... not over-fond of officers of the law; he detested lawsuits, and he had a horror of legal documents. Therefore he groaned at the sight, and, throwing open a window, fingered his watch-chain nervously, as one who is about ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... hung back. She had not played her trump card yet, and the time was short. She caught her mother's slim white hand in hers and fingered nervously at the rings. "Mama," she almost whispered, "Virginia says it's Jewish mamas' fault that Santy Claus don't come to see Jewish children. If the mamas would just go to Santy and tell him to come—You will, ...
— The Little Mixer • Lillian Nicholson Shearon
... horsemanship, because horsemanship requires no brains; driving a "buggy" in good style is respectable, but "shoving along" a four-in-hand the highest exercise of human intellect, as for Milton and Shakspeare, and such inky-fingered old prigs, who never had a good horse in their lives, they despise such low fellows thoroughly. Their chief companions, or rather, their most intimate friends, are the fellows who hang about livery stables, betting-rooms, race-courses, and hippodromes; crop-eared grooms, chaunters, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... sense in which fine gentlemen, with all the delicacy of Agag about them, trip to the hustings about election time, and protest that they too are working men. I really mean my words to be taken in their direct, literal, and straightforward sense. In fact, if the most nimble-fingered watchmaker among you will come to my workshop, he may set me to put a watch together, and I will set him to dissect, say, a blackbeetle's nerves. I do not wish to vaunt, but I am inclined to think that I shall manage my job to his satisfaction sooner than he will do his piece ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... some distance apart, two low-seated rush-bottomed high-backed prie-dieu had been placed. Upon the one on the left a little nun knelt, her loose black habit concealing all the outline of her figure. The white linen pall was turned back, across the chest of the corpse, to where the shapely long-fingered hands were folded upon an ebony and silver crucifix. By some harsh irony of imagination Lionel Gordon's voice rang in Poppy's ears: "My good girl, pull yourself together. Gehenna! you're the luckiest woman living. You're made, great ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... exclaimed hotly. She resolved to have nothing more to say to him. She felt that his brutality gave her the right to have done with him. And then her glance was arrested by his powerful hand, where it lay on the table beside him. It was blunt-fingered and broad and red, with the back covered by yellow hairs which extended down to ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... pocket-book, which was stuffed full of old papers. The old man fingered them lovingly and with careful touch, until he found the one he sought. It was a somewhat long document, written on blue, official-looking paper, and attested by several seals. He read it from beginning to end with close attention, and gave a grunt of satisfaction ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... very moment when his being becomes possible, the inherent qualities and limitations of a man are settled for good and all, whether he will be a negro or a white man, whether he will be free or not of inherited disease, whether he will be passionate or phlegmatic or imaginative or six-fingered or with a snub or aquiline nose. And not only that, but even before his birth the qualities that are not strictly and inevitably inherited are also beginning to be made. The artificial, the avoidable handicap ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Nottingham's rash experiment. Everywhere the spring triumphed; on the chestnut trees below which Jeannie and Lord Lindfield had sat on the afternoon of the thunderstorm last year a million glutinous buds swelled and burst into delicate five-fingered hands of milky green; and on the beech-trunks was spread the soft green powder of minute mosses. The new grass of the year was shooting up between the older spikes, making a soft and short-piled velvet, on which the ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Veneering; forty, wavy-haired, dark, tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious, filmy—a kind of sufficiently well-looking veiled-prophet, not prophesying. Reflects Mrs Veneering; fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not so much light hair as she might have, gorgeous in raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propitiatory, conscious that a corner of her husband's veil is over herself. Reflects Podsnap; prosperously feeding, two little light-coloured ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Jimmy fingered the cigarette case in his pocket, knowing the consolation and the wisdom to be found in tobacco; but he did not like to produce it, and he had already noted that Walter's room was innocent of any ash-tray; so, instead, he racked his brains for ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... accordingly he thought he could talk of affairs of state, and put his spoke in the wheel in the council. And he knew one thing more: he could embroider braces with roses and other flowers, and with arabesques, for he was a tasty, light-fingered fellow. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... fingered the edges of her book. "You mustn't let your fancy run away with you, Imogene," she said, with a ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... good, obedient children, there was not a word she said that showed she trusted either the Lord or us, or thought there was anything between us and heaven that might make us good because we wanted to be. You couldn't keep your eyes from the big gad and ruler on her desk; she often fingered them as she prayed, and you knew from her stiff, little, sawed-out petition that her faith was in implements, and she'd hit you a crack the minute she was the least angry, same as she had me the day before. I didn't ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... quit me first and get away with it, kiddo. I may be a soft-fingered sort of fellow, but a queenie can't quit me first and get away with it. Ask 'em about me round here; they know me. If anybody in this little duet is going to do the quitting act first it ain't going to be you. What's the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the Christian church, have placed upon lasting record some transient follies which would otherwise have sunk into oblivion, and the sermons of bishop Pilkington, a warm polemic of this time, may be quoted as a kind of commentary on the proclamation. He reproves "fine-fingered rufflers, with their sables about their necks, corked slippers, trimmed buskins, and warm mittons."—"These tender Parnels," he says, "must have one gown for the day, another for the night; one long, another short; one for winter, another for summer. One furred through, another but ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... occasion, across a Sunday-noon, lace-spread breakfast table, when she was slim and cool fingered in orchid-colored draperies, and his newest gift of a six-carat, pear-shaped diamond blazing away on her right hand. "Say, aren't these Yvette ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... something of men, says there is one hidden away in me somewhere, if only I'll take the trouble to dig it out. I should like to be with you and your guests all the time. I like play, and I have been very lonely all my life." He fingered the papers irresolutely. "My place is here, not with your guests; there's the width of the poles between us. I ought not to know anything about the pleasures of idleness till the day comes when I ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... out she could not restrain herself any longer, but plucked a handful of it. The ogress came home and was going to cook her pottage when she found that some one had been stealing the parsley, and said, "Ill luck to me, but I'll catch this long-fingered rogue and make him repent it; I'll teach him to his cost that every one should eat off his own platter and not meddle with ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... plans laid glowing On the anvil of thy heart; Times thou'st raised thy hand for throwing In life's battle many a dart? How each plan unstricken lingered Till the mouldful heat was gone? How each dart was faintly fingered, Resting in the end unthrown; Of the Faith thou pawn'dst for Fancies— Substance for a fadeful beam? Doth it taunt with bartered chances— Sterling strength for drowsy dream? Doth it brand thee apathetic? Twit with lost days ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... slept not, though the wild bees made A dreamlike murmuring in the shade, And on me the warm-fingered hours Pressed with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "Yellow-fingered Jack we call him sometimes, the coast fever," said Dick. "If they would but take better care of themselves and not drink those poisonous spirits and sleep on shore at night, they might keep out of his clutches. I give this as a hint to you, Harry. I have been there a score of times, ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... the trees of the Parnassian Grove,—as the place was christened by the young ladies of the Institute. The cry of the children was not in vain. From the pockets of demure fathers, from the bags of sharp-eyed spinsters, from the folded handkerchiefs of light-fingered sisters, from the tall hats of sly-winking brothers, there was a resurrection of the missing oranges and cakes and sugar-things in many a rejoicing family-circle, enough to astonish the most hardened "caterer" that ever contracted to feed a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... gentry must be light-fingered too, they say to themselves, or they would not be after putting their hands into our tar. What else can bring ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the evil, eager fingers of the beggars no doubt) into deep water. He rose with a gasp, and was first conscious of a strange smell of dirt and tallow and something that he did not know, but was afterwards to recognise as the scent of sunflower seed. He was pushed upon, pressed and pulled, fingered and crushed. He did not mind—he was glad—this was what he wanted. He looked about him and found that he and all the people round him were swimming in a hazy golden mist flung into the air from the thousands of lighted candles that danced in the breeze blowing through the building. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... Mexican, then," said Lola. "It sounds more ripe." She meant mellow, no doubt. Now, as she fingered the pretty muslin, she seemed to gather resolution to speak of something which had its difficulties. "Tia," she pursued, "he is ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... now, The "Conversazzhyony's" over; And "Red Hoss Mountain's" gloomy brow Looks down where lies "Three-fingered Hoover." ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... with well-pressed suits, clean collars, and carefully shaved faces murmured to sleekly gowned women who fingered wine glasses, smiled archly. ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... breed roe-deer; Example, but not meddling. See that hollow— I knew it once all heath, and deep peat-bog— I drowned a black mare in that self-same spot Hunting with your good father: Well, he gave One jovial night, to six poor Erfurt monks— Six picked-visaged, wan, bird-fingered wights— All in their rough hair shirts, like hedgehogs starved— I told them, six weeks' work would break their hearts: They answered, Christ would help, and Christ's great mother, And make them strong when weakest: So they settled: ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... moving spirit. Despite his assertion that he was no scholar, the manager's mind was the storehouse of a hundred plays, and in that depository were many bags of gold and many bags of chaff. From this accumulation he drew freely, frankly, in the light-fingered fashion of master playwrights ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... and I nodded. He turned and trotted lightly after the departing column. I remember his pensive mien as he moved down the grove, and how a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his place under the window and was ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... contracted at the corners, like that of a Sardinian, was always on the qui vive of irony. His hair, thin and reddish, fell straight, and showed the skull in many places. His hands, coarse and ill-joined at the wrists to arms that were far too long, were quick-fingered and seldom clean. Goupil wore boots only fit for the dust-heap, and raw silk stockings now of a russet black; his coat and trousers, all black, and threadbare and greasy with dirt, his pitiful waistcoat with half the button-moulds gone, an old silk handkerchief ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... During their eating the noise of thunder sounded and the splash of the storm drifted in through the dusty basement windows. A thick-wristed, red-fingered waitress slopped back and forth between their table and an odorous kitchen door. Lockwood kept his eyes fastened steadily upon the nervous features of his friend. He thought as the silence increased between them: "This man's got ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... he explained rapidly, as he found a flashlight and drew his companion through the door and along a narrow passage. Soon he opened another door and led her into a tiny compartment so low that they could not stand upright—a mere cubicle of steel. Carefully closing the door, he fingered dials upon each of the walls of the cell, then folded himself up into a comfortable position, instructed Nadia to do the same, ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... tiny oil-stove, and stirring the contents of a steaming dish that stood thereon. Beside the bed was a sister of mercy, with the white coif on her smooth hair, her white robes girdled at the waist by a rosary which she fingered, mechanically. Finally, in the bed, shaded by curtains which, on one side, were drawn tight, on the other thrust wide apart, lay the huge form from which ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... home cannot be too proud, from Field-Marshal to officer's servant. As one of Mr. Punch's correspondents at the front writes: "Dawn to me hereafter will not be personified as a rosy-fingered damsel or a lovely swift-footed deity, but as a sturdy little man in khaki, crimson-eared with cold, heralded and escorted by frozen wafts of outer air, bearing in one knobby fist a pair of boots, and in the other a tin ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... grunted. "The way I hear it, your whole department has given up, so I'm assigned to help you out of your usual fumble-fingered confusion." ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... was again restored to favour, and the women with swift, shy gestures fingered my dress and hat, my army belt, and the red silk handkerchief at the throat of my sailor collar, saying, "Mariloa, mariloa" over and over, which in their tongue means "pretty" or "good," depending on ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... port. An epergne of glass and burnished ormolu, in the form of supporting oak leaves, with numerous sockets for candles, was set, filled with fruit, in the centre of the table; silver lustre plates were laid; but Jasper Penny heedlessly fingered the stem of a wine glass. He said suddenly, "I'm going ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... girlish as herself, and during the meal, which was long and somewhat solemn, entertained the guest with considerable liveliness. It was only after she had left them to their wine, over which the banker loved to linger in the old-fashioned way that Mr. Wade put on his grave financial air. He fingered his glass thoughtfully, as if choosing, not a subject of conversation, but a suitable way of approaching ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... the herders go too far for damages—too far! They are putting their coulter too deep!" said a farmer fresh from the field. He had still a bag of seed-grain around his neck, and now and again he thrust in his hand and fingered ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock |
