"Skim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... birds in July nesting high in a mango-tree, the nest suspended like an Oriole's to several leaves; now I find it in low bushes, at heights of from 3 to 5 feet from the ground. The eggs, as before, skim-milk blue, ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... hoop of braided walrus hide would be thrown over the front of one of the komatik runners, but even then the dogs would have to run their hardest to preserve a safe distance between them and us, and out on the smooth ice of the bays we would shoot, to skim along with exhilarating swiftness. As we proceeded south we were interested in observing signs of spring. Towards the end of our journey we encountered much soft snow and ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... was, out of the three hundred guests that crowded the handsome rooms in the Rue Saint-Lazare, he alone comprehended the unpublished romance revealed by a garrulous quadrille. People certainly noticed Isaure d'Aldrigger's dancing; but in this present century the cry is 'Skim lightly over the surface, do not lean your weight on it;' so one said (he was a notary's clerk), 'There is a girl that dances uncommonly well;' another (a lady in a turban), 'There is a young lady that ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... Mr. Sponge, who, having watched them till they began to skim in their flight, saw them stop, flap their wings, and drop among some straggling gorse on the hill before them. 'Let's break the covey; we ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... up at him, catching his attention. He started to skim the story, and then read it thoroughly. Things weren't going at all as he'd expected in the Outer Worlds, if the account were true; and usually, such battle reports weren't ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... quarter-deck. But this is a gun-deck now, aint it?" he added, stamping his foot upon it to see how solid it was. "If we only had aboard the howitzer that belongs here so that we could salute Plymouth as we skim by—You aint listening to me at all. What ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... out When they to spoil did fall; Rude Robin Goodfellow, the lout, Would skim the ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Skim, her small son, helped her as far as he was able, and between them they managed things so frugally that at the end of eight years the widow still had her five hundred dollars capital, and the little store had paid her ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... said she, 'to live amidst the coral bowers and crystal caverns of the ocean, with my sister nymphs, and listen to the sounding waters above, and to the soft shells of the tritons! and then, after sun-set, to skim on the surface of the waves round wild rocks and along sequestered shores, where, perhaps, some pensive wanderer comes to weep! Then would I soothe his sorrows with my sweet music, and offer ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... very pleasing songs. Such wealth of aesthetic characteristics are unusual in any one species, the wide-spread law of compensation decreeing otherwise. More sombre hued seed-eaters which live their lives in the Park are towhees, swamp, song, field, and chipping sparrows. The bank and barn swallows skim over field and pond all through the summer, gleaning their insect harvest from the air, and building their nests in the places from which they have taken their names. The rare rough-winged swallow deigns to linger and nest in the Park as well as do ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... we mean us working men; and by Capital we mean those that derive benefit from us, take the cream off us and leave us the skim. ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... devised a new form of periscope, designed to make the device invisible to the lookout of approaching boats. This device consists of two mirrors, put together like a "Y" lying on its side, the wide part in front. These skim through the waves and converge the image upon the low periscope's lens, which shoots the light down the tube to the receiving apparatus below. When looked at from a distance the mirrors reflect the surface of the sea, so that a lookout sees nothing ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... of a few short tales of people who have been members of the divorce colony. Whilst the comedy part describes characters who find life is all froth, who skim its surface, so to speak, those portrayed in this chapter are people who take existence seriously; who want to drain the cup of life to its last dregs! If one listens as one reads one can almost hear the ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... farther away. I watched the nearer one till it faded from sight, soaring and swooping by turns,—its long, scissors-shaped tail all the while fully spread,—but never coming down, as its habit is said to be, to skim over the surface of the water. There is nothing more beautiful on wings, I believe: a large hawk, with a swallow's grace of form, color, and motion. I saw it once more (four birds) over the St. Mark's River, and counted ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... basis of lime, mixed in certain proportions with organic matter. The reader must be familiar with cements of this kind long known among the people, and much used in the repairing of broken pottery, such as a cement compounded of quicklime made of oyster shells, mixed up with a glue made of skim-milk cheese, and another cement made also of quicklime mixed up with the whites of eggs. In Mrs. Marshall's cements, the organic matter is variously compounded of both animal and vegetable substances, while the earth ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... coursers that strain, on the track, neck and neck, on the home-stretch, With nostrils distended, and mane froth-flecked, and the neck and the shoulders, Each urged to his best by the cry and the whip and the rein of his rider, Now they skim o'er the waters and fly, side by side, neck and neck, through the meadows. The blue heron flaps from the reeds, and away wings her course up the river; Straight and swift is her flight o'er the meads, but she hardly outstrips the canoemen. ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... are to be feared! If I feel too hot, I can ascend; if too cold, I can come down. Should there be a mountain, I can pass over it; a precipice, I can sweep across it; a river, I can sail beyond it; a storm, I can rise away above it; a torrent, I can skim it like a bird! I can advance without fatigue, I can halt without need of repose! I can soar above the nascent cities! I can speed onward with the rapidity of a tornado, sometimes at the loftiest heights, sometimes only a hundred ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... I will also skim but lightly over the days devoted to getting settled. I sent word to the office that I was ill—a fact which I could have sworn to if necessary, though for a sick man my activity was quite remarkable. The Little Woman was active, too, while the ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... do with your skim milk, Bob?" asked Mrs. White. "We feed that to the calves, and what's left over to the pigs, and some of it ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... smooth and sparkling sea, is excessively difficult to navigate; its surf looks no more than champagne foam, but a thousand quicksands and shoals lie beneath: there are breakers ahead for more than half the dainty pleasure-boats that skim their hour upon it; and the foundered lie by millions, forgotten, five fathoms deep below. The only safe ballast upon it is gold dust; and if stress of weather come on you, it will swallow you without remorse. Trevenna had none of this ballast; he had come out to sea in as ticklish a cockle-shell ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... vaulting over the sea; while close off our starboard bow, there appeared advancing toward us a fairy like fleet, with low, rakish hulls, taut rig, and sails made whiter by the moonbeams playing upon them. The whole fleet seemed to skim over the sea, though the "Two Marys" scarce moved. One, more tiny than the rest, and which appeared to have made an offing, bore down for us, and seemed intent upon crossing our bows. The major, whose attention had been directed to them for some minutes, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... and goat-suckers dart from their lonely retreat and skim along the trees on the river's bank. The different kinds of frogs almost stun the ear with their hoarse and hollow-sounding croaking, while the owls and goat-suckers lament and mourn all ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... thus employed, he unconsciously fell asleep. Wassamo had scarcely noticed it in his care to watch the kettle, and, when the fish were done, he took the kettle off. He spoke to his cousin, but received no answer. He took the wooden ladle to skim off the oil, for the fish were very fat. He had a flambeau of twisted bark in one hand to give light; but, when he came to take out the fish, he did not know how to manage to hold the light, so he took off his garters, and tied them tight ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... is confused. Are not you he, says the fairy, that fright the country girls. that skim milk, work in the hand-mill, and make the tired dairy-woman churn without effect? The mention of the mill seem out of place, for she is not now telling the good but the evil that he does. I ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... not used as much as the river for skating; but this winter the ice was as smooth and solid as if it had been frozen artificially, so the High School boys and girls could not resist the temptation to skim ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... and bubbled, and the Mouse King stood close beside the kettle—there was almost danger in it—and he put forth his tail, as the mice do in the dairy, when they skim the cream from a pan of milk, afterwards licking their creamy tails; but his tail only penetrated into the hot steam, and then he sprang hastily down ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... when he meets me with a patronizing grin, and shows me the nicest vats of candy, and peels cane for me. Oh! very cruel! And so does Jules, when he wipes the handle of his paddle on his apron, to give "Mamselle" a chance to skim the kettles and learn how to work! Yes! and so do all the rest who meet us with a courtesy and "Howd'y, young Missus!" Last night we girls sat on the wood just in front of the furnace—rather Miriam and Anna did, while I sat in their laps—and with some twenty of all ages crowded around, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... I saw at the lake and elsewhere, during two separate visits, can be easily explained on their hypothesis, and that no other possible cause suggests itself as yet. The same cause, it may be, has produced the submarine spring of petroleum, off the shore near Point Rouge, where men can at times skim the floating oil off the surface of the sea; the petroleum and asphalt of the Windward Islands and of Cuba, especially the well-known Barbadoes tar; and the petroleum springs of the mainland, described by Humboldt, at Truxillo, in the Gulf of Cumana; and 'the inexhaustible ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... selfish man would rader dan put out his hand to work, Let women toil, an' sweat and moil—as wicked as de Turk. De cream ob eberyt'ing he wants, let oders hab de skim; In fact de wurld and all it holds was only made for him. Chorus—Oh when ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... brow, and when, an hour afterward, the physician entered, he found his patient calmly sleeping, with one hand clasped in that of Mary, who with the other fanned the sick boy with the same blue gingham sun-bonnet, of which he had once made fun, saying it looked like its owner, "rather skim-milky." ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... ultimately understood and applauded. In all countries the middle class presents the public which, fighting the world, and with a good footing in the fight, knows the world best. It may be the most selfish, but that is a question leading us into sophistries. Cultivated men and women, who do not skim the cream of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute and balanced observers. Moliere is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to get a living without being a house-cat. I hate houses and the people who live in them, and I do them all the mischief I can. I eat up their chickens and I suck their eggs. I climb in at the pantry window and skim their milk. Once when the cook left the kitchen door open I snatched the beefsteak from the gridiron and made off with the family dinner. They hate me—they do. They've tried to kill me a dozen times; but I'm Robber Grim, ha! ha! and I've ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another moment would plunge us into the abyss—down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we were borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at all, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... risk of deciding on the last; and so well did he play his game, that, in two months from that date, after sending sundry presents on his part to the family, of smeaked hams and salt tongues—acknowledged on theirs, by return of carrier, in the shape of sucking pigs, jargonelle pears, skim-milk cheeses, and such like—matters were soldered; and Miss Jeanie Learig, made into Mrs Whitteraick by the blessing of Dr Blether, rode away into Edinburgh in a post-chaise, with a brown and a black horse, one blind ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... more lightly skim the air, than Marmion's steed flew along the drawbridge. The man drew rein when he had reached the train, turned, clenched his fists, shouted defiance, and shook his gauntlet at the towers where so lately he had ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... convenient Utensils. But then the private Brewer is not without his Benefits; for he can have his Malt ground at pleasure, his Tubs and moveable Coolers sweeter and better clean'd than the great fixed Tuns and Backs, he can skim off his top Yeast and leave his bottom Lees behind, which is what the great Brewer can't so well do; he can at discretion make additions of cold wort to his too forward Ales and Beers, which the great Brewer can't so conveniently do; he can Brew how and when he pleases, which the ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... man's advice, and "let off steam" by the vigour and determination with which she hurled pebbles into the lake, making them skim along the surface in professional manner for an ever longer and longer space ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... this point, followed by Levina, who carried a plate of manchet-bread and a bowl of milk. And though Belasez did not know it, she owed thanks to Doucebelle that it was not skim milk. The young Jewess ate as if she were very faint as well ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... how I miss the lovely autumn landscapes! The weather was so bright on the day of my departure that, to enjoy it to the full, I bicycled to the railway-town. After leaving the village, I took the road through the wood and it was delightful to skim along through the dead leaves, the softly-streaming tears of autumn. Sometimes, when a gust of wind blew, I went faster; and little yellow waves seemed to rise and fall and chase one another all around me. Some of the trees, not yet bare, but only thinned, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... physician warned me I would never survive the birth of another child. I bought each day several beef bones and boiled them for three hours. I also bought chicken feet, scalded them and scraped them until the outside skin peeled off, then boiled the chicken feet with the bones. Skim surface from time to time. I would then heat up a raw egg in a glass and fill glass with this broth and drink it warm." This lady would take a glass whenever thirsty or six or seven times a day. She increased in strength immediately, within a year was the mother of a healthy baby girl now nineteen ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... costume she required should have been corrugated steel. But all three knew what was being worn, and they wore it—or fairly faithful copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a needle knack. She could skim the State Street windows and come away with a mental photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads of departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went home and reproduced them with the aid of a seamstress by the day. Stell, the youngest, was the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... read the very first poem that I open,' said Mrs. Hunt Mortimer remorselessly. 'I am afraid that it is almost time that I started, but we may still be able to skim over a few pages. Now then! There! Setebos! What a ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... bldarkas the 'Cossacks of the sea,'" said Mr. Strong. "They skim along like swallows, and are as perfectly built as ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... his mind to its study, and who feels the unspeakable comfort it is capable of affording, will agree with me that no other book, ancient or modern, can in the remotest degree be compared to it. Too many people read it merely as a matter of conscience. They skim over a chapter at a time with very little thought or reflection. Even that way may be better than neglecting it altogether, but surely that is not the way a book with consequences so immeasurably important depending on the truths it promulgates ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... said Mrs. Brookenham, "what do YOU know about 'trouble'—either poor Nanda's or mine or anybody's else? You've never had to take any in your life, you're the spoiled child of fortune and you skim over the surface of things in a way that seems often to represent you as supposing everybody else has wings. Most other people are sticking fast ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... sugar would make one's mouth water as he passed, and the same assistants, never weary in well-doing, might be seen setting saucers of black jam upon the window-sill to "jeel," and receiving, as a kind of blackmail, another saucerful of "skim," which, I am informed, is really the refuse of the sugar, but, for all that, wonderfully toothsome. Bear with a countryman's petty foolishness, ye mighty people who live in cities, and whose dainties come from huge manufactories. Some man reading these pages will remember that red-letter ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... off. Two or three hours later his wife got wearily up and was going away to bed without a good-night—custom now—but she stopped near the letter and eyed it awhile with a dead interest, then broke it open, and began to skim it over. Richards, sitting there with his chair tilted back against the wall and his chin between his knees, heard something fall. It was his wife. He sprang to her ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... which his children need. The regular demand of the great towns forestalls the claims of the labouring hind. Tea and slops and beer take the place of milk, and the bone and sinew of the next generation are sapped from the cradle. But the country child, if he has nothing but skim milk, and only a little of that, has at least plenty of exercise in the fresh air. He has healthy human relations with his neighbours. He is looked after, and in some sort of fashion brought into contact with the life of the hall, the vicarage, and the farm. He lives ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... living thing, whate'er its kind, Some lot, some part, some station is assigned The feathered race with pinions skim the air; Not so the mackerel, and still less the bear.... Ah! who has seen the mailed lobster rise, Clap her broad wings, and soaring claim the skies? When did the owl, descending from her bower, Crop, midst the fleecy flocks the tender flower; Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb, In the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... used, put in two-thirds of a tea cup. A pound or two of salt pork, boiled with the turkey, improves it. If you wish to make a soup of the liquor in which the turkey is boiled, let it remain until the next day, then skim off the fat. ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... addition of a cheese large as the moon at full. There was always plenty of cheese of various kinds in the house: whole milk cheese carefully aged until its flavour was like that of English Stilton or Italian Gorgonzola; skim milk cheese stuffed with cloves and cardamom seeds; and dark brown goat milk cheese of a cloying sweetness that ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... sail and you will skim along the ice as lightly as a bird on the wing. With a little practice you will learn to tack and guide ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the snow was partly packed by the rabbits. After perhaps an hour of this, he had wearied and sought to save himself by abandoning the lynx's territory, so had struck across the open lake. But here the snow was too soft to bear him at all, and the lynx could still skim over. So it proved a fatal error. He was strong and brave. He fought at least another hour here before the much stronger, heavier lynx had done him to death. There was no justification. It was a clear case of tyrannical murder, but in this ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of a Yale boat crew. He made the "Water Witch" skim through the waters, and at the same time he kept a sharp lookout for a small boat. There were a number of skiffs filled with young girls and men. But Mr. Brown was looking for a boat with the single figure of a ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... they would say something that would offend the old woman, and advised them to turn their discourse. 'Oh! let the dear rogues alone,' says the old woman; 'I like their prattle;' and, taking Miss Polly by the hand, said, 'Come, my dear, we will go into the dairy, and skim the milk pans.' At which words they all run into the dairy, and some of them dipped their fingers in the cream; which when Mrs. Nelly perceived (who was the eldest daughter of the old woman, and who managed ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... there will come a messenger, to bid him to the King, so he will lay my flesh in a cauldron of brass and set it upon a brasier before going to the presence and he will say to thee, 'Keep up the fire under the cauldron till the scum rise; then skim it off and pour it into a phial to cool. Wait till it cool and then drink it, so shall naught of malady or pain be left in all thy body. When the second scum riseth, skim it off and pour it into a phial against my return from the King, that I may drink it for an ailment I have in my ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... can get on their trail?" thought Larry, as he watched the houses skim by, and held himself in his seat, beside Grace, to avoid the jouncing and swaying ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... Imogene, rushing down to the brink. "I don't want to throw stones into it, but to get near it—to get near to any bit of nature. They do pen you up so from it in Europe!" She stood and watched Colville skim stones over the current. "When you stand by the shore of a swift river like this, or near a railroad train when it comes whirling by, don't you ever have a morbid impulse ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... white pointed drift is found on the breakfast-table. They laugh at it, and call it ice-cream, but they almost feel more like crying, with cold blue fingers, and toes that even the warm knit stockings can't keep comfortable. Never mind, the swift snowshoes will make them skim over the snow-crust like birds flying, and the merry sled-rides that brother Christian will give them will make up for all the trouble. They will soon love the winter ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... light the 53rd Field Battery, the one which had already done so admirably at Lombard's Kop, again deserved well of its country. It was impossible to get behind the Boers and fire straight at their position, so every shell fired had to skim over the heads of our own men upon the ridge and so pitch upon the reverse slope. Yet so accurate was the fire, carried on under an incessant rain of shells from the big Dutch gun on Bulwana, that ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... roar not unakin to it. Still the promptness to laugh is an excellent progenitorial foundation for the wit to come in a people; and undoubtedly the diarial record of an imputed piece of wit is witness to the spouting of laughter. This should comfort us while we skim the sparkling passages of the 'Leaves.' When a nation has acknowledged that it is as yet but in the fisticuff stage of the art of condensing our purest sense to golden sentences, a readier appreciation will be extended to the gift: which is to strike not the dazzled eyes, the unanticipating ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Pearlie, I think ye'd better not be puttin' notions inter their heads. Yer father wouldn't like it. Well Danny, me man, how goes it?" went on Mrs. Watson, as her latest born was eating his rather scanty supper. "It's not skim milk and dhry bread ye'd be havin', if you were her child this night, but taffy candy filled wid nuts and chunks o' cake as big as yer head." Whereupon Danny wailed dismally, and had to be taken from his chair and have the "Little Boy Blue" sung to him, before ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... The edges of your pages are uneven. You look in the index and find an interesting story is on, for example, page 56. You skim the pages to find it, and from page 43 you find yourself suddenly at page 79. Make the paper ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... take it thou hast got By instinct wise much sense about thy lot, And hast small care Whether an Eden or a desert be Thy home, so thou remain'st alive, and free To skim the air. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... long illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness, but too weak to contain it. The tears well and fall as the dog barks in the hollow, the children skim after hoops, the country darkens and brightens. Beyond a veil it seems. Ah, but draw the veil thicker lest I faint with sweetness, Fanny Elmer sighed, as she sat on a bench in Judges Walk looking at Hampstead ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... cleaned the fish and handed them to the forest woman who already had the cook fire going. And such a breakfast as the Overland party had that morning! Following the meal they made Willy take them for a ride in his canoe, two at a time; then Hippy and the bull pup took a skim up and down the river with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... the veins of the mare are thus filled, being blown out, and so the udder is let down. When they had drawn the milk they pour it into wooden vessels hollowed out, and they set the blind slaves in order about 6 the vessels and agitate the milk. Then that which comes to the top they skim off, considering it the more valuable part, whereas they esteem that which settles down to be less good than the other. For this reason 7 the Scythians put out the eyes of all whom they catch; for they are not tillers of the soil ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... They bought a cow for his sole use and benefit, and guarded it like a sacred animal but to no purpose. He drank of its milk and grew thinner than ever. Strange furrows began to appear on his tiny face, with shadows and a transparent tinge like the blue of skim-milk. As the pure air of Drayton did so little for him, Mrs. Nevill Tyson wondered how he would bear ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... honour to think of me any more; that the old b——h might look out for another cully; that he would not be fooled so by ever a country mock modesty in England; that he supposed I had left my maidenhead with some hobnail in the country, and was come to dispose of my skim-milk in town" with a volley of the like abuse; which I listened to with more pleasure than ever fond woman did to protestations of love from her darling minion: for, incapable as I was of receiving any addition to my perfect hatred ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... before a following wind, Seeming to skim the myriad-surging sea, And crashed the dark wave either side the prow: Swiftly across the abyss unplumbed she sped. Night's darkness fell about her, but the breeze Held, and the steersman's hand was sure. O'er gulfs Of brine she ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... shadow with their solemn forms, their costly fronts rich with the spoils of kingdoms, and softened with the magic of the midnight beam. The whole city too is poured forth for festival. The people lounge on the quays and cluster on the bridges; the light barks skim along in crowds, just touching the surface of the water, while their bright prows of polished iron gleam in the moonshine, and glitter in the rippling wave. Not a sound that is not graceful: the tinkle of guitars, the sighs ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... can," quoth he. "She will skim like a bird over the snow; so get into the sleigh, and we will go straight off ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... patent cultivator, drawn by an elephant; a skim, drawn by another elephant, and a long wood plough, drawn by ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... drawbridge flies, Just as it trembled on the rise; Not lighter does the swallow skim Along the smooth lake's level brim: And when Lord Marmion reached his band, He halts, and turns with clenched hand, A shout of loud defiance pours, And shakes his gauntlet at the towers! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... same as ord'nary folks. They need speshul food. You'll need to give 'em boiled milk plain or with pap, you kin git fancy crackers an' soak 'em. Then ther's beef-tea. Not jest ord'nary beef-tea. You want to take a boilin' o' bones, an' boil for three hours, an' then skim well. After that you might let it cool some, an' then you add flavorin'. Not too much, an' not too little, jest so's to make it elegant tastin'. Then you cook toasties to go with it, or give 'em crackers. Serve ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... of skim sky-blue milk-and-water, and a couple of slices of bread-and-butter for each pupil, comprised the bill of fare; but it might have been a banquet of Lucullus from the way I did justice to it after my prolonged fast. Noticing my voracity, the old woman, who, as on the evening before, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... silent. It always annoyed her to have Miss Boyd called her double. The figure and manner was so different. Zay was so light and airy, she seemed rather to skim over space than to walk, and every motion was replete with grace, while Miss Boyd was stately, and when critical eyes were upon ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... with quotations, sometimes of two or three words only, sometimes translated and sometimes not, an almost inextricable network of facts, of fancies, and of phrases. He says: "As those old Romans rob'd all the cities of the world, to set out their bad-sited Rome, we skim off the cream of other men's wits, pick the choice flowers of their till'd gardens to set out our own ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the kitchen now! How Faith's fingers went about. But Mr. Linden could make nothing of the form his breakfast was taking—nothing of Faith's mysterious bowl, in which the cream he had seen her skim went into compound with the potatoes he had seen boiling and with also certain butter and eggs. The mixture went into the oven, and then Faith went off to set the table in the parlour. As they were alone to-day the fire in the dining-room was not to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... o'er the level how the skaiters slide, And skim the glitt'ring surface as they go: Thus o'er life's specious pleasures lightly glide, But pause not, press not on ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... were thus conversing, the Cree chief was arranging the smaller of the canoes for the use of the young hunters—that is, he took out all the lading, making it so light that it would skim over the water like an egg-shell with the slightest impulse ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... how the skaters slide, And skim the glitt'ring surface as they go: Thus o'er life's specious pleasures lightly glide, But pause not, press not on the ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... brown it and then skim; pour it carefully into a clean saucepan, add the vinegar, catsup and stock, boil a minute, and it is ...
— Many Ways for Cooking Eggs • Mrs. S.T. Rorer
... off my boat in the morning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself under the boat in the night. Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teeter" along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fish hawk sitting on a white pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... is the toiling hand of Care; The panting herds repose: Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air The busy murmur glows! The insect youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring And float amid the liquid noon: Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some show their gaily-gilded trim Quick-glancing to ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... a little in low tones, and I looked at Margarita and thought of the odd chances of life, and how we are hurried past this and that and stranded on the other, and skim the rapids sometimes, to be wrecked later ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... almost always inaccessible; to know how to look at them with laboriously-acquired indifference and to practise to take no notice of them, saying to yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred, since merely to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose the unanimous anger of all the gods of ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... who crosses the heath at night bend clown until his face comes on a level with the tufts of grass, and he will see a strange spectacle outline itself against the western sky. Owls with great, round wings skim over the ground, invisible to any one standing upright. Snakes glide about there, lithe, quick, with narrow heads uplifted on swanlike necks. Great turtles crawl slowly forward, hares and water-rats ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... bring all to a right bearing. On the whole, as the Atlantic is so broad and deep, ought we not rather to esteem it a beneficent miracle that messages can arrive at all; that a little slip of paper will skim over all these weltering floods, and other inextricable confusions, and come at last, in the hand of the Twopenny Postman, safe to your lurking-place, like green leaf in the bill of Noah's Dove? Let us be grateful ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... this would do for little Pete;" and the dear old lady drew a large, pressed-tin pan off the top shelf in the pantry. A long, smooth butter-tray was found for Jimmy. Grandma shook her cap-border with laughter to see them skim over the hard crust in their queer sleds. And the boys shouted and swung their hands as they flew ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various
... beef, one pound salt pork, and one pound mutton; cut into pieces about three inches by two, let it boil, and skim. Take two or three carrots, one large turnip, one large head of celery, three or four leeks, a good green cabbage, cut in four, the other vegetables cut into pieces of moderate size, not too small; ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... the light, when it is so much easier to seize him by the pompadour and pantelettes and drag him bodily from the abyss? Some may complain that our Christian charity carries a razor edge, that we skim the cream off our milk of human kindness then put the can under an alkali pump before serving it to our customers as a prime article; but bless God! they can scarce ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... brine strong enough to float an egg; add two pounds of brown sugar or a quart of molasses, and four ounces of saltpetre; boil and skim clean, and pour cold on your meat. Meat intended for smoking should remain in pickle about four weeks. This pickle can be boiled over, and with a fresh cup of sugar and salt used all summer. Some persons use as much soda as saltpetre. It will ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... reached the heart of the torrid zone that he sees the flying-fish in perfection. I have hardly ever observed a person so dull or unimaginative that his eye did not glisten as he watched a shoal of flying-fish rise from the sea, and skim along for several hundred yards. There is something in it so totally dissimilar to everything else in other parts of the world, that our wonder goes on increasing every time we see even a single one take its flight. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... into the fire and that will burn all the blackness out of it. Get the love of God into your hearts, and the fire of His Divine Spirit into your spirits to melt you down, as it were, and then the scum and the dross will come to the top, and you can skim them off. Two powers conquer my sin: the one is the blood of Jesus Christ, which washes me from all the guilt of the past; the other is the fiery influence of that Divine Spirit which makes me pure and clean for all the time to come. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... in scores, who omit No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,— Who go carefully o'er the sky-blue of his brain, And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again; If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is Because their shoals mirror his mists and obscurities, As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for a minute, While a cloud that floats o'er ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... get going, get underway. peg on, jog on, wag on, shuffle on; stir one's stumps; bend one's steps, bend one's course; make one's way, find one's way, wend one's way, pick one's way, pick one's way, thread one's way, plow one's way; slide, glide, coast, skim, skate; march in procession, file on, defile. go to, repair to, resort to, hie to, betake oneself to. Adj. traveling &c. v.; ambulatory, itinerant, peripatetic, roving, rambling, gadding, discursive, vagrant, migratory, monadic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... there was always one little sentence in his which seemed to say more than the words, and to tell me that he cared a great deal. If a stranger had read it, he would not have understood, but I knew what he meant, and I used to skim over the pages until I came to those few words, and they were ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and not as much as by a tremor of the eye-lid did either show how delighted she would have been to sit beside the handsome young man and skim along the road to ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... him, But grim death now shakes his dart; Breathing fails me, eyes grow dim, Spectres 'fore my vision skim, And with terrors fill ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... To skim fresh water off the sea, as practised at the mouths of the Rhone, the Nile, &c. The word is derived from the Dutch vlieten, to skim milk; it also ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth |
