"Poker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... porter that it was a mistake to consider him a medical expert; that he professed no science save that of draw poker; that if a false impression prevailed in the hotel it was through a blunder for which he was in no way responsible; and that, much as he regretted the unfortunate condition of the highborn the Baron out of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... on mine with that queer stare of the cross-eyed. I could make nothing of the facial expressions of this man. He would have been disturbing to play poker against. I would have said he was afraid of that little figure! Afraid, yet very much attached to it. I set it down and he wrapped ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... recreations. Andy Johnson was a good business man and wealth producer; murder was the direction in which his private understanding of personal disagreements was exercised and vented. Some men turn to poker playing, which is as wasteful as murder and not half as dignified. Count Fosco is the villain par excellence of novels. I do not remember what he did, because "The Woman in White" is the best novel in the world to read gluttonously at a sitting ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... red-haired and fiery-tempered, and she loved Anne with all the strength of her loyal heart. As yet she did not like Judy. It was all very well to look like a princess, but that was no reason why one should be as stiff as a poker. She hoped Anne would not love Judy better than she did her, and she noted jealously the rapt attention with which Anne observed the newcomer and listened to all ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... all by itself, not easy to find, though it had four bells, which nobody dared to ring, for fear of his head and the burden above it. But a boy would go up the first Sunday of each month, and strike the liveliest of them with a poker from the smithy. And then a brave parson, who feared nothing but his duty, would make his way in, with a small flock at his heels, and read the Psalms of the day, and preach concerning the difficulty of doing better. And it was accounted to the credit of the Doones that they never came ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... a bridge over a burn they had to cross; and under the bridge lived a great ugly Troll, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker. ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... themselves from the group and occupied themselves with writing. Several started a game of stud poker at one of the many tables. Harris wrote a few letters before joining in the play, and as he looked up from time to time he caught many curious glances leveled upon him. Morrow had been busily spreading the tidings that a would-be squatter was among them and ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... them in a ramble. They rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple, till at last he appeared in his shirt, with his little black wig on the top of his head, instead of a nightcap, and a poker in his hand, imagining, probably, that some ruffians were coming to attack him. When he discovered who they were, and was told their errand, he smiled, and with great good humour agreed to their proposal: 'What, is it you, you dogs! I'll have a frisk with you.' He was soon ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... five punchers gathered around the table playing draw-poker under the light of a flaring oil lamp. McCabe extended a breezy invitation to Buck to join them, which he accepted promptly, drawing up an empty box to a space made for him between Slim and Butch Siegrist. With scarcely ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... did, but so far as talk was concerned a very different fact ruled as first favorite. It was known all over the barracks by breakfast time that Case, the bookkeeper, had bluffed out the young swell from the Columbia who had come down to teach them how to play poker and fight Apaches. "Willett stock" among the rank and file had not been too high at the start, had been sinking fast since the affair at Bennett's Ranch, and was a drug in the market when the command, as was then the custom of the little army, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... "devil's horn." Of further plants related to his Satanic majesty is the clematis, termed "devil's thread," the toad-flax is his ribbon, the indigo his dye, while the scandix forms his darning-needles. The tritoma, with its brilliant red blossom, is familiar in most localities as the "devil's poker," and the ground ivy has been nicknamed the "devil's candlestick," the mandrake supplying his candle. The puff-balls of the lycoperdon form the devil's snuff-box, and in Ireland the nettle is his apron, and the convolvulus his garter; while at Iserlohn, in Germany,[7] "the mothers, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... from the flame there poured up torrents of apparently thick black smoke. He could not think the flame was really smoky, but to make sure he tried, first a Bunsen gas flame and then a hydrogen flame. They all showed the same effect, and smoke was out of the question. He then used a red-hot poker, a platinum wire ignited by an electric current, and ultimately a flask of hot water, and he found that from all warm bodies examined in dusty air by a beam of light the upstreaming convection currents were dark. Now, of course smoke would ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... different from the way he spoke before, 'and what's more, I didn't want her back, and what's more yet, I'm not goin' to pay you a red cent.'—'Now, look a-here,' says I, mighty sharp, 'none o' that, old man; fork over the money or I'll lay you out stiff as a poker, and help myself. I'm not a fellow to be fooled with, and there's nobody in this house can stop me.' Old Groppeltacker, he didn't turn a hair, but just sot there, and says he, 'Before you blow any more, suppose you take my little gold ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... quoted from the book, Seth planted himself before Tilly, with the long poker in his hand, saying, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... have I that you will keep your word?" replied Hans, who felt emboldened by the outside situation of his customer, and the shop poker, of which he had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Matthews in an amusing essay on the art of preface- writing and, true to his own theory, he announces his volume as 'the most interesting, the most entertaining, and the most instructive book of the decade.' Entertaining it certainly is in parts. The essay on Poker, for instance, is very brightly and pleasantly written. Mr. Proctor objected to Poker on the somewhat trivial ground that it was a form of lying, and on the more serious ground that it afforded special opportunities ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... was asking her whether she was all right, a door slammed twice downstairs; and you can imagine how it made me feel. My mother and I looked at one another; and then I lit her candle, and taking the poker from the fender, went downstairs with the lamp, beginning to feel really nervous. The cumulative effect of so many queer happenings was getting hold of me; and all the apparently reasonable ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... the fire. He had a long back like the long back of a tramhorse. He shook the poker gravely and nodded his head at the fellow out of ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the following procedures as having been in use, according to legend, to determine the justice of the suspicion: Flinging the child on a dung-heap; putting in the oven; holding a red-hot shovel before the child's face; heating a poker red-hot to mark a cross on its forehead; heating the tongs red-hot to seize it by the nose; throwing on, or into, the fire; suspending over the fire in a pot; throwing the child naked on the glowing embers at midnight; ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... your nose! She didn't go for to do it a-purpose, you old grampus," retorted Bobby, intending the remark to be taken as a gentle yet affectionate reproof. "A doctor's bin an' set my leg," continued the boy, "an' made it as stiff as a poker wi' what 'e calls splints. He says I won't be able to go about for ever so ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... the under-housemaid said. "I had got my poker ready, and I would have given it them nicely if I could have got within reach. Miss Penfold was just as cool as if she had been eating her breakfast, and so was we ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... I've left the poker in between the bars to get red-hot. Put that to your touch-hole. Beats slow match hollow; don't ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... suits me well enough," muttered Mr. Fleming philosophically, as he retired to his private office. "I lost a lot at poker last night—and here are two salaries for almost a full week that won't go into anyone's pockets but my own. First, last and always, a business man, ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... of the game for four players, which adds an element characteristic of poker, appears to have been suggested about 1904, but was really introduced at the Bath Club, London, in 1907, and then was gradually taken up by a wider circle. The laws were settled in August 1908 by a joint committee of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... "Poker face," laughed McNabb. "But run along now—the two of ye. It's many a long day since Dugald an' I have had a powwow with our feet cocked up on bales of Injun goods." As the two walked arm in arm toward the door, McNabb called to the girl, "Here, lass, take your ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... declared the other suddenly, and, suiting the action to the word, she swarmed over the sill; but she left one huge boot in the snow, and Nan, laughing delightedly, ran for the poker to fish for it, and drew it in and ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... profits or expenses? So with me, who when I followed a praetor, inscribed more gifts than gains. "O Memmius, well and slowly didst thou irrumate me, supine, day by day, with the whole of that beam." But, from what I see, in like case ye have been; for ye have been crammed with no smaller a poker. Courting friends of high rank! But may the gods and goddesses heap ill upon ye, reproach to Romulus ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... on toward the hotel and a midnight lunch there was one house that was usually worth lingering before, though good music is rare on the Zone. Then there was the naughty poker game in bachelor quarters number—well, never mind that detail—to keep an ear on in case the pot grew large enough to make a worth-while violation of the law that would warrant the ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... that! You know I used to think I understood human nature, but I never started with that woman. I did live at her expense,—I had to,—and she stood for it until I got to hanging round the saloons too much. She used to pay my dues in the club, damned if she didn't, until I got fired for too much poker in the chamber over the gate. I must say she was a good sport: as a fair-minded man, I've got to admit that. And she swung the lash over me—never laid it on, but made it sizz—whistle—till I'd duck and sniffle; ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... see each other's faces," observed Sir Harry, cheerfully. "Will you allow me to take the liberty, though I have not known you for seven years—and hardly for seven minutes!" And then he seized the poker, and broke up an obstinate piece ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... we set in pleasing, &c., i.e., we have made up our mind to please. The metaphor is taken from primero (a game, seemingly, not unlike the Yankee 'poker'), where to 'set up rest' meant to stand on one's cards; but the expression was also used in a military sense. Vid: Furness' Variorum Shakesp., Rom. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... cell most of the time before the hanging, and two days before the aforesaid he paid Brislane $50 for a story to be printed exclusively in his paper. Then this newspaper man, which I consider unethical under the circumstances, played Brislane poker, and what with the doomed man's lack of concentration and his inability to take advantage of the turns of the game, therefore, this newspaper man won back his $50 ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... guests were several young fellows of the fashionable set, rich men's sons and their parasites, a few of the big down town operators who hadn't yet got hipped on "respectability"—they playing poker in a private room—and a couple of flush-faced, flush-pursed chaps from out of town, for whom one of Joe's men was dealing faro from what looked to my experienced and accurate ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... and new for the trip, big brown eyes that look at you dreamily, and a rather Jewish face. Not a bad-looking chap by any means, but oh, such a particularly verdant sort of greenhorn. The only one point on which he showed a single grain of sense was in refusing to play poker with me. He didn't want to offend me; he hoped most sincerely that I should take no offence, but a friend had extracted a promise from him before he left home to play no card games with strangers. The fact was, he was really ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... a remarkably grave and sly character, and Poker was a wag—an incorrigible wag—in every sense of the term. Moreover, although they had an occasional fight, Dumps and Poker were excellent friends, and great favourites ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... have to git the water to wash her own hands with. But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git Otheller out of his snug government birth, now goes to work & upsets the Otheller family in most outrajus stile. Iago falls in with a brainless youth named Roderigo & wins all his money at poker. (Iago allers played foul.) He thus got money enuff to carry out his onprincipled skeem. Mike Cassio, a Irishman, is selected as a tool by Iago. Mike was a clever feller & a orficer in Otheller's army. He liked his tods too well, howsoever, & they floored him ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... he slipped silently from the room, was aware that Hannah meditated a vigorous attack upon her midnight visitors. She took the long kitchen poker in her hand, shook it with a grim smile, and thrust the end of it into the heart of ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... inner, unknown elements of his nature so stirred; had never felt this blind, raging protest. It was a muddle of impressions: the picture of the poor soul with his clamor for a job; the satisfied, brutal egotism of Brome Porter, who lived as if life were a huge poker game; the overfed, red-cheeked Caspar, whom he remembered to have seen only once before, when the young polo captain was stupid drunk; the silly young cub of a Hitchcock. Even the girl was one of them. If it weren't for the women, the men would not be so keen on the scent for gain. The ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... stamp it out. Though I do not play for money myself, I never could see any great harm in those poor boys out there getting a little relaxation from their terrible nervous strain by a game of bridge or poker for a few francs. But a game which was founded wholly on dishonesty was something which I felt was unworthy of our men. Whenever I saw them crowding round a little spot on the grass I knew there was a game of crown and anchor going on, and I would shout, "Look out, boys, I am going ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... in a poker game, and it sure is queer how things will turn out. I've sot hour after hour in them games, without ever takin' a pot. And then, 'long about four o'clock in the mornin', the luck'd turn—it'd take a turn for ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... law—and a bad stove is a bad stove. How'd you like to cook on this?"—pointing with the poker to the broken lining. She opened the oven door and started to express her opinion of the oven; but she was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of what it would mean, year after year, to have that stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster trying to bake in that oven—and the thought of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... out a flask and put it to his lips. I ran back to the dining-room, and seized a heavy poker from the fireplace. In my terror and excitement I rained blows on the lock of the door, and I fired a cartridge into it. It gave way, ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... dice are the real weapons of the "sportsman," but particularly the former. Besides the English games of whist and cribbage, and the French games of "vingt-un", "rouge-et-noir," etcetera, the American gambler plays "poker", "euchre", "seven-up," and a variety of others. In New Orleans there is a favourite of the Creoles called "craps," a dice game, and "keno," and "loto," and "roulette," played with balls and a revolving wheel. Farther to the South, among the Spano-Mexicans, ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... "at sunrise in the morning." And so I bade her good by, insisting on leaving in the pew my own great-coat. I knew she might need it before morning. I walked out as the sexton closed the door below on the last of the down-stairs worshippers. He passed along the aisles below, with his long poker which screwed down the gas. I saw at once that he had no intent of exploring the galleries. But I loitered outside till I saw him lock the doors and depart; and then, happy in the thought that Miss Jones was in the safest place in New York,—as ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... you would call trick photography. I need a photographer, some lights, a little space, a microscopic lens and the complete developing during the night. And, I'll pay cash, as I have done with some suspicious poker losses in this temple of the muses on bygone evenings. Which, I may urge with gentle sarcasm is more than I have frequently received at ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... have elaborate instruments, sir—I don't read any more books—the world's literature is here" (tapping his forehead). "I've thought too much to care for other men's ideas. Like old women, I was saying, sir. 'Give me a poker,' I yelled—' give me anything.' I sent for my trephine. Great God, how the blood flew, and the bone creaked! I raised the depressed bone. The man lives. I've done everything, in my life. And now a cursed quack ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... in corners, Wind snatches the sparks, Tongs and poker jangle together Like the iron bones Of a man that ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... received their friends weather permitting on Monday evenings, and some favored youths of Mr. Sanborn's school would go there to play whist, make poker-sketches, and talk with the ladies; while Mrs. Alcott, who had played with the famous automaton in her younger days, would have a quiet game of chess with some older person in a corner. Louisa usually sat by the fire-place, knitting rapidly with an open book in her lap, and if ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Reggie, almost a captain now, was popular with the servants, especially with the stern Sophia, head-housemaid, and she decreed that he had reached the status of a visitor, and must, therefore, have a fire in his bedroom at night. He sat before it now, swinging the poker which had just stirred it to a cheerful blaze. He had carefully switched off the light, for they were very economical of the electric light at Redmarley. It had cost such a lot ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... movement of the hand he placed the roll of papers in the very centre of the glowing fire. Mrs. Luttrell uttered a faint cry, and struggled to rise to her feet, but she had not the strength to do so. Besides, it was too late. With the poker, Dino held down the blazing mass, until nothing but a charred and blackened ruin remained. Then he laid down the poker, and faced Mrs. Luttrell with a ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... stairs raced the two men, and into the kitchen. There they found Patty standing on a side table, armed with a long poker, while Mona danced about on the large table, brandishing a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. Patty was in paroxysms of laughter at Mona's antics, but Mona herself was in terror of her life, and yelled ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... Astrarium. And there, in the little back room, which was deserted by the artistes, now that the theater was closed, but which would soon again be the intersecting point of so many vagabond existences ... where the nigger cake-walker from Chicago would play poker with the equilibrist from Japan ... where the profs and the bosses would exchange complaints about the strictness of the regulations concerning the work of apprentices ... where little girls, worth their weight in gold, would come, coyly, encompassed by Pas and Mas, but with ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... felt this strange feeling before," said he, "I cannot help thinking there's something wrong about that closet." He made a strong effort, plucked up his courage, shivered the lock with a blow or two of the poker, opened the door, and there, sure enough, standing bolt upright in the corner, was the last tenant, with a little bottle clasped firmly in his hand, and his face—well!' As the little old man concluded, he looked round on the attentive faces of his wondering ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... rape. She told her husband that during his absence in 1888, stumping the State for the Prohibition Party, the man came to the kitchen door, forced his way in the house and insulted her. She tried to drive him out with a heavy poker, but he overpowered and chloroformed her, and when she revived her clothing was torn and she was in a horrible condition. She did not know the man but could identify him. She pointed out William Offett, a married ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... seems to have been recommended to the Chicago Convention, as afterwards to the country, mainly on the strength of his humble origin, his skill as a rail-splitter, and his alleged ability to bend a poker ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... and Harry another, and at last they gave up guessing. 'Unless,' said Harry, 'it is the fender, or the poker.' ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... "Fanny" Farquhar, of the British army, for his teacher; and he studied the book of war in the midst of shells and bullets, which means that the lessons stick in the same way as the lesson the small boy receives when he touches the red-hot end of a poker to ascertain how ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... President's body-guard of secret-service men had an all-night stud-poker session in the yellow guest-room that he actually made speeches against the League of Nations," Morris went on, "and at that, the room will never look ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... long she found herself trying to remember facts to fit his theories, a mode of going in double harness which is apt to lead to remarkable but fallacious results. In the intervals of theorising Claudius indulged in small experiments. But Barker and the Duke played poker. ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... to the drawing-room filled with the blind rage that makes a man curse God and wish that he could die. The fire was black, and I mechanically took up the poker to stir it. A tempest of impotent anger shook my soul. I saw things red before my eyes. I had an execrable lust to kill. I was alone amid a multitude of gibbering fiends. As I stooped before the grate I felt something scrabble my shoulders. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... six tables with layouts for games of chance. Faro, "klondike," roulette, stud-poker, almost anything possibly to be desired was there. All were in full blast. Three deep the men were gathered about the wheel and the "tiger." Gold money in stacks stood at every dealer's hand. Bostwick had never seen so much metal currency in ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... expressed it—as though she had not strength to live another day without a cow. Her next proceeding would have been to buy a milking-stool. It was a tasteful milking-stool, this one she had selected, ornamented with the rough drawing of a cow in poker work: a little too solid for my taste, but one that I should say would wear well. The pail she had not as yet had time to see about. This galvanised bucket we were using was, I took it, a temporary makeshift. When Robina had leisure she would go into the town and purchase something at an art stores. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... Humphreys. "I wanted to bring home to you in a very convincing manner the power which the hypnotist exercises over his subject. I could have done it even more convincingly, perhaps, by commanding you to take that perfectly cold poker in your hand, and then suggesting to you that it was red hot, when—despite the fact of the poker being cold—your hand would have been most painfully blistered. But probably the 'adder' experiment was ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... time and again, they ain't big enough to fight the outfit, and the quicker they git out the less lead they'll carry under their hides when they do go. What they want to try an' hang on for, beats me. Why, it's like setting into a poker game with a five-cent piece! They ain't got my sympathy. I ain't got any use for a damn fool, no way ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... In such case the snake cure didn't cure. The hat was retained in defiance of winds, by a leathern cord caught about the back of the head, not under the chin. This cord was beautiful with a garniture of three or four perforated poker ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... out of the great Panjandrum's boots when he played "Catch who catch can" on the immortal occasion of the gardener's wife marrying the barber. Now, Stephen French was a man of habitual self-restraint, and yet upon reading Ben Minthrop's letter he got up and—ignoring the poker and tongs—kicked the fire with a savagery that showed how little the best of us has softened by civilization. And yet the letter was distinctly friendly, even modest and grateful—without one kick-inspiring sentence. Stephen began pacing his library floor, hurling his thoughts broadcast, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... however, did not know this. Her experience of fires was confined to burning wood in open grates—and wood in open grates had to be poked to make it red and glowing. With confident alacrity now, therefore, Billy caught up the poker, thrust it into the mass of coals and gave them a fine stirring up. Then she set back the lid of the stove and went to hunt up the ingredients ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... to the fireplace by this time and had picked up the poker, as if to punch the fire, but I really intended to strike him if he advanced too close or tried to help himself to any of my things. He never took the slightest notice of my movements, or waited for any answer to his outburst—just kept ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... adds that when he met With the said Spanish Ship he Ordered the aforesaid Jeremiah Hariman to Fire a Gun, he haveing a Hot Poker in his hand, who Refus'd to do it But Instead of that he let go the Main Halliards and lowered the Mainsail, And After the said Briganteen was taken by the Spanish Ship the said Harriman desired to enter ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... much courage in allowing of that visit, and especially at dinner, amongst all the knives and forks. I believe, if I had been there, I should have hemmed in all the children with the chairs, as a chevaux de frise, and placed myself before them with the poker in ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... holes in the ceiling with the poker, and put pails, baths and tubs under, and now there was not so much water on the floor. But we had to keep on working like niggers, and Mrs Pettigrew and Alice worked ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... eyeglasses. He holds them with the air of a gentleman, comfortable and at ease in all respects, mentally and bodily. Augustus Theodore swings on a chair before the fire, which he keeps at work for his own especial consolation. His feet stretch along the fender—his amusement is the poker. He has grown insufferably vain, is dressed many degrees above the highest fashionable point, and looks a dissipated, hopeless blackguard. Planner, very subdued, very pale, and therefore very unlike himself, stands ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... had been picturesque to a degree rarely found outside the pages of a Nick Carter novel. She had possessed an adventurous father, who drifted from mining-camp to mining-camp, making fortunes and losing them. She had cut her teeth on a poker chip, and drunk her milk from a champagne glass. Her father had died—quite opportunely—while his latest fortune was at its height, and had left his little daughter to the guardianship of an English friend who lived in Texas. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... said Ashton-Kirk, "is so infrequent an occurrence that I seldom consider it. The presence of the lime upon the cellar grating had no value, of course; but, as you know, a poker player will sometimes retain cards in his hand which are worth nothing in themselves, on the chance that he may draw certain others. And, once these are drawn, the heretofore valueless cards become ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... steps and voices already in the hall. She heard her master run hastily into the hall, crying out, "Lord Jesus!—Mary, Mary, save me!" The servant resolved to give what aid she could, seized a large poker, and was hurrying to his assistance, when she found that they had nailed up the door of communication at the head of the stairs. What passed after this she could not tell; for, when the impulse of intrepid fidelity had been balked, and she found that her own safety was provided ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Saul Jacobi, turning on his heel—"not easy to get any information out of him; looks as though he had swallowed the poker first, and then the tongs as a sort of relish afterwards, and neither of them agreed with him. I wonder what young Templeton saw in him. He lays it on pretty thick too: it is Herrick this and Herrick ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Well, I offered to cauterize it with the poker in the office stove. But he was afraid. ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... his ideas on detergents, suggested we make black plastic discs, like poker chips but thinner and as cheap as possible, to scatter on a snowy sidewalk where they would pick up extra heat from the sun and melt the snow more rapidly. Afterward one would sweep up and collect ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... says that he who provideth not for those of his own household is worse than a heathen. That's perfectly true. And he would like to know what Brother Peck does with his money, anyway. He would like to insinuate that he loses it at poker, I guess; at any rate, he can't find out whom he gives it to, and he certainly doesn't ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... off the heavy iron cover of the pot and the odour of Romany duck stew, than which there is nothing in the world more appetizing, mingled with the sweet fragrance of the drying hay. Aunty thrust a fork as long as a poker into the bubbling mass and then gave the call that brings the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... poetic and romantic. He has discovered something. He has done something both new and good. Within the space of some fifty pages, he has painted a series of pictures which will last as long as anything in the fifty thousand pages of Dickens. Taking "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" as perhaps the most nearly perfect of the tales, as well as the most truly representative of the writer's powers, let us try to guess its secret. In the first place, it is very short,—a single episode, succinctly and eloquently told. The descriptions of scenery ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... father's early days he was a member of a very jovial club, called the Poker Club. It was so-called because the first chairman, immediately on his election, in a spirit of drollery, laid hold of the poker at the fireplace, and adopted it as his insignia of office. He made a humorous address from the chair, or "the throne," as he called ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... threw in a Dash of Marital Solicitude, and made an awful Try at imitating one who has been soaked by a Great Sorrow. As the Missus looked at him through her Tears and held his Salary-Hook in hers, little did she suspect that he had framed up a Poker Festival for that Night and already the Wet Goods were spread out on ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... Moxon was apparently intent upon the coals in the grate, touching them deftly here and there with the fire-poker till they signified a sense of his attention by a brighter glow. For several weeks I had been observing in him a growing habit of delay in answering even the most trivial of commonplace questions. His air, however, was that of preoccupation rather than deliberation: one might have said ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... there, I would go through with it. I knocked with a trembling hand at Mr. Skimpole's door— literally with a hand, for the knocker was gone—and after a long parley gained admission from an Irishwoman, who was in the area when I knocked, breaking up the lid of a water-butt with a poker to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... is) to Johnson. Croker's Boswell, p. 270. It is said that he was the original of Mr. Counsellor Pleydell in Scott's novel of Guy Mannering. Dr. A. Carlyle (Autobiography, p. 420) says of 'the famous club called the Poker,' which was founded in Edinburgh in 1762:—'In a laughing humour, Andrew Crosbie was chosen Assassin, in case any officer of that sort should be needed; but David Hume was added as his Assessor, without whose assent ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Tom's debts. They got talking, and Taigdh said he would like to see the statue, and he persuaded Pat to follow him, and they climbed along the wall and dropped into the mews, and got the hasp off the door with the kitchen poker." ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... not blindfolded, and he had seen that, though the Crows had waved a red-hot poker before History's nose, they had quickly substituted a very cold rod to thrust down his back. The effect on the nerves of the blindfolded boy, however, was the same as if it had been red-hot, and he had dropped to ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... was needed to wish her good night, she sat on for a time, reviewing what he had said. If love is a devastating fire which melts the whole being into one mountain torrent, Mary was no more in love with Denham than she was in love with her poker or her tongs. But probably these extreme passions are very rare, and the state of mind thus depicted belongs to the very last stages of love, when the power to resist has been eaten away, week by week or day by day. Like ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... iron poker which he found in the cabin, Rosenblatt had battered off the sash and the frame of the window, enlarging the hole till he could get his head and one arm free; but there he stuck fast, watching the creeping flames, shrieking prayers, entreaties, curses, ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... suggested a game to pass the time until mail arrived, and the well-worn deck was produced. Billy was sitting on my right hand and held cards that ought to have cleaned up, but he seemed to have lost the first instinct of a poker player, and I couldn't refrain from telling him he ought to confine himself to checkers. He whispered to me, "Reg, I can't get that out of my head." "What's ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... April, a couple of weeks before the Derby. We were playing poker, which is a game of skill that has nothing to do with the velocity of ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... Ellen, "is young Watlin. Call him up instantly; and he shall guard the door while I dress. Explain the situation very briefly to him. It would be well to arm him with a poker, in case the old man becomes violent. David, go to Bishop Torrance and tell him that I hope he will call on me at once, if possible. Put on your clothes, but you may leave your hair in disorder, just as it is. It will serve to show the Bishop into what a state ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... throwing himself on the ground with fury, rolled over, crying out something about, "I won't," and "very cross;" and David lay flat on his face, puffing at his own particular oven, like a little Wind in an old picture. Sam waited, leaning on the ashen stick that served him as a poker. It was the most audacious thing he had ever heard. Rob them of their bonfire! Would that old traitor of ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... do you mean? [Jumps up and looks round for something to hit her with] Mind, or I'll give you one with the poker. ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... that I told you of the night Andrew Sevier's father killed himself; yes, that he had sat the night through at the poker table with Peters Brown? Brown offered some restoration compromise to the widow but she refused—you know the struggle that she made and that it killed her. We both know the grit it took for Andrew to chisel himself into what he is. The first afternoon he met the girl in here, ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a great game, as a game," agreed Haines. "So is bridge, and stud poker, and three-card monte, and flim-flam generally. Take this new man Langdon, for instance. Chosen by Stevens, he'll probably be perfectly obedient, perfectly easy going, perfectly blind and—perfectly useless. What's wanted now is to get the work ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... hostel mistress, was genial and warm-hearted, and kept well in touch with her girls. She talked to them about their various hobbies, and was herself interested in so many different things that she could give valuable hints on photography, bookbinding, raffia-plaiting, poker-work, chip-carving, stencilling, pen-painting, or any other of the handicrafts in which the Juniors dabbled. She was artistic, and had done quite a nice pastel portrait of Belle Miller, whose Burne-Jones ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... In my business you got to learn to watch faces, Bill. Suppose you sit in at a five-handed game of poker. One gent says everything with his face, while he's picking up his cards. Another gent don't say a thing, but he shows what he's got by the way he moves in his chair, or the way he opens and shuts his hands. When you said something about our wad I seen the taxi driver blink. Right after ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... baseball games together, and we might be able to pick up a little easy money by betting on them—if we ever found anybody who had the nerve to bet with us. I kept myself supplied with pocket money in that fashion last year. Occasionally made a little something playing poker, but the games were always so small a fellow couldn't ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... the last flaming fragment with the poker. When it had expired she turned to the guilty circle. "Who took my papers from ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... down, please! I never could bear a man standing over me, as if he had swallowed a poker. Why did she go off and leave Phil? Where did she go to? I told you I went off on my own hook to that horrid place where they lived, and knocked up the old clergyman and the woman who wanted me to put on a shawl over one of the prettiest gowns ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... of rage on the mother's part, stubborn mockery on the other, followed up once by a poker flung with almost fatal precision at the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... there are men who have come there to escape restraint. Cutter was one of the "fast set" of Black Hawk business men. He was an inveterate gambler, though a poor loser. When we saw a light burning in his office late at night, we knew that a game of poker was going on. Cutter boasted that he never drank anything stronger than sherry, and he said he got his start in life by saving the money that other young men spent for cigars. He was full of moral maxims for boys. When he came to our house on business, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather |
