"Sleight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their arms, fell upon one another with smiting, till the most part was slaughtered. And when the day broke, they looked and found no Moslem slain, but saw them all on horseback, armed and armoured; wherefore they knew that this was a sleight which had been played upon them, and Kurajan cried out to the remnant of his folk, "O sons of whores, what we had a mind to do with them, that have they done with us and their craft hath gotten the better of our cunning." And they were about to charge ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Soldier spoke; "By sleight of sword we may not win, But scuffle 'mid uncleanly smoke Of arquebus and culverin. Honour is lost, and none may tell Who paid good ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... sleight would reach An aim, consumes the worth in speech, And sets a crimson rose ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... interest was not with him. The Manchester men detested him. The church in all its denominations was on terms of cool and reciprocated indifference with one who was above all else the man of this world. The press he knew how to manage. In every art of parliamentary sleight of hand he was an expert, and he suited the temper of the times, while old maxims of government and policy were tardily expiring, and the forces of a new era were in their season ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... pulled out of his desk expecting an upset, and prepared for the worst. A note was dashed off in two minutes,—signed, sealed, addressed, in half a minute, and Mr Sudberry leaped off his stool. His hat was thrown on his head by a species of sleight of hand, and he appeared in the outer office suddenly, like a ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... her if she would care to talk to a manager about going on an "eleven weeks' circuit," as assistant to a sleight-of-hand performer. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... his chief, doing sleight-of-hand tricks with a bundle of letters which lay on his desk. 'Get on with your work, Psmith. We have ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Master of Sleight: "The deed is the righting of wrong, And the quelling a bale and a sorrow that the world hath endured o'erlong, And the winning a treasure untold, that shall make thee more than the kings; Thereof is the Helm of Aweing, the wonder of earthly things, And thereof ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely and you will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying about on the ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he may find her out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg, leaving only the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him. The birds, especially the ground-builders, suffer in like manner ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... noble sir," replied Vidal, lowering with all submission the point of his weapon—"I have already given you a proof of sleight which has alarmed even your experience—I ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... used them, many things to have helped us against such sins, and to have kept us clean and upright. "There is also a sin unto death," (I John 5:16), and he can tell how to labour, by argument and sleight of speech, to make our transgressions, not only to border upon, but to appear in the hue, shape, and figure of that, and thereto make his objection against our salvation. He often argueth thus with us, and fasteneth the weight ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Bodb suspected his daughter of lying he cast her into a "Druidic sleep," in which she revealed her wickedness.[1117] In other cases spells are cast upon persons so that they are hallucinated, or are rendered motionless, or, "by the sleight of hand of soothsayers," maidens lose their chastity without knowing it.[1118] These point to knowledge of hypnotic methods of suggestion. Or, again, a spectral army is opposed to an enemy's force ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... law, to forbid his entrance into their territories, or to turn him out after he had entered,—the right of expelling undesirable emigrants being constantly exercised, even by the United States. This amazed him. He had absolutely persuaded himself that I could, by some sleight of hand, transform him into an American citizen; that he could then at once begin attempts to reestablish the fine old Polish anarchy in Austria, Russia, and Germany; and that no one of these nations would ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... I said. "The members of the Gutenberg Club are men of brains—not children. Card tricks are hackneyed, and sleight-of-hand shows pall." ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... said the bass voice of Doctor Brown, "and until you show me the source of this 'occult' energy, I shall so contend. Animal magnetism and sleight-of-hand! What do you think, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Andromeda and Arcturus and their bright neighbours wheeling for half a summer night around a pole-star in the waters. One star or two—delicate visitants of streams—we are used to see, somewhat by a sleight of the eyes, so fine and so fleeting is that apparition. Or the southern waves may show the light—not the image—of the evening or the morning planet. But this, in a pool of the country Thames at night, is no ripple-lengthened light; it is the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... vows, Who led in either hand a Syrian spouse; And youthful Joseph, famed for self-command, Was seen, conspicuous midst his kindred band. Then stretching far my sight amid the train That hid, in countless crowds, the shaded plain, Good Hezekiah met my raptured sight, And Manoah's son, a prey to female sleight; And he, whose eye foresaw the coming flood, With mighty Nimrod nigh, a man of blood; Whose pride the heaven-defying tower design'd, But sin the rising fabric undermined. Great Maccabeus next my notice claim'd, By Love to Zion's broken laws ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... were reciters, singers and dancers; and the lower orders were tumblers, sleight-of-hand men and general entertainers. What may have been the origin of our hornpipe is illustrated in fig. 30, where the figures dance to the sound of the horn in much the same attitudes as in the modern hornpipe, with a curious resemblance to the ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... to attain to "general notions." Concentrating all his attention on the individual, the contingent, the particular, he ascends, by induction, from the particular to the general; and then, by a strange paralogism, "the universal" is confounded with "the general" or, by a species of logical sleight-of-hand, the general is transmuted into the universal. Thus "induction is the pathway from particulars to universals."[678] But how universal and necessary principles can be obtained by a generalization of limited experiences is not explained by Aristotle. The ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... trifling ceremonies (as some men count them), they are but labouring to hold our thoughts so bent and intent upon those smaller quarrels, that we may forget to distinguish betwixt evils immanent and evils imminent, and that we be not too much awake to espy their secret sleight in compassing ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... that unfamiliar place, he stayed in the bath-room, with window wide open, for half an hour before he was found. He became so expert in flying out of the door that it was a difficult matter to pass through without his company; we had to train ourselves in sleight-of-hand to outwit him. There were two ways of getting the better of him; mere suddenness was of no use,—he was much quicker than we were. One way was to go to the room on the other side of the passage, where he was sure to follow, and before ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... point I am as orthodox as yourself. But where you begin to draw general conclusions from your own private experience, I must beg pointedly and finally to differ. You will not have forgotten, I believe, my daring and single-handed butchery of the five secret witnesses? Nor the sleight of mind and dexterity of language with which I separated Lelio from the merchant's family? These were not virtuous actions; and yet, how am I to tell you? I was conscious of a troubled joy, a glee, a hellish gusto in my author's bosom, which seemed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are three methods of cheating: the first by hidden cards, the second by marked cards, the third simply by sleight of hand, this being generally used in connection with marked cards. These tricks require great skill and extreme delicacy of touch, for the marks, which are generally at the edge of the cards, are so slight as to be altogether imperceptible save to a ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... very busy with her progeny and her paraphernalia and impedimenta of various sorts—it was marvelous how she managed to gather them all together with only two hands—and she was ready also. But even in the midst of this sleight of hand performance, she did not forget her self-constituted ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... the said knife, and then a slight turn of the wrist, and presto—it disappeared. As the performer's mouth was nowhere near, what had become of the greasy mass at first puzzled me, but watching closely, for the sleight-of-hand was marvellous and the passage between knife and mouth instantaneous, I ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... beauty as well as utility, to save rather than display. In short, let us subordinate mere knowledge to the work of invigorating the will, energizing productive effort and clarifying moral vision. Let us make safe men rather than vociferous mountebanks; let us put deftness in daily labor above sleight-of-hand tricks, and common sense, well trained, above classical smatterings, which awe the multitude but butter ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... a silent judge, one whose right it is to entrap the plotters and whose glory to deceive them. Your occupation is a nightly hunting, most feared when it is not seen. You rob the robbers, and strive to circumvent the men who make a mock at all other citizens. It is only by a sort of sleight of hand that you can throw your nets around robbers; for it is easier to guess the riddles of the Sphinx than to detect the whereabouts of a flying thief. He looks round him on all sides, ready to start off at the sound of an advancing footstep, trembling at the thought of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... quoted to justify the tradition which Lincoln left behind him at the bar of Illinois. His weak as well as his strong qualities have been indicated. He never learned the technicalities, what some would call the tricks, of the profession. The sleight of plea and demurrer, the legerdemain by which justice is balked and a weak case is made to gain an unfair advantage, was too subtle and shifty for his strong and straightforward intelligence. He met these manoeuvres sufficiently well, when practiced by others, but he never could ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... periodically tinkle with musical clangor on the anvil, ringing forth a tintinnabulation that chimed melodiously on the ear—a sort of anvil- chorus accompaniment to his mechanical skill. He was a real sleight-of- hand man, and the anvil was ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... this time only be seal'd up With a Feather through his nose, that he may only see Heaven, and think whither he's going, Nay beyond-Sea Sir, we will proclaim you, you would be King Thou tender Heir apparent to a Church-Ale, Thou sleight Prince of single Sarcenet; Thou Royal Ring-tail, fit to fly at nothing But poor mens Poultry, and have every Boy Beat thee from that too with his Bread ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... when well played; *Game of Fortune*, for ladies and gentlemen. Amuses old and young; *The Album Writer's Friend*, 275 select Autograph Album Verses, in prose and verse, (new); *50 Choice Conundrums or Riddles*, with answers, (new); *13 Magical Experiments*, astonishing, including Mind Reading, Sleight of Hand Tricks, &c., Chemical Processes, Optical Illusions; *11 Parlor Games*; *Magic Music*; Order of the *Whistle and Game of* Letters. We guarantee package is worth ten times the amount we ask for it. It is the best collection of Games, etc., ever offered by any ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... Ulysses was approaching the abode of Circe he was met by Hermes, who said: "Come then, I will redeem thee from thy distress, and bring deliverance. Lo, take this herb of virtue, and go to the dwelling of Circe, that it may keep from thy head the evil day. And I will tell thee all the magic sleight of Circe. She will mix thee a potion and cast drugs into the mess; but not even so shall she be able to enchant thee; so helpful is this charmed herb that I shall give thee ... Therewith the slayer of Argos gave me the plant ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... to account for spiritual manifestations by attributing them wholly to fraud and sleight of hand on the part of the medium. But while it is true that the results of trickery have often been palmed off as genuine manifestations, there have been, also, marked exhibitions of supernatural power. The mysterious rapping ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... actions. With all the seeming of cutting a slice from the loaf for him, she put loaf and slice back in the bread box and conveyed to him one of her own two slices. She believed she had deceived him, but he had noted her sleight-of-hand. Nevertheless, he took the bread shamelessly. He had a philosophy that his mother, because of her chronic sickliness, was not much ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... hide it, but I can possess it any moment I choose. You don't know my skill in sleight of hand; I might practise as a conjuror if I liked. Mamma says sometimes, too, that I have a harmonizing property of tongue and eye; but you never saw that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... lusty for to play; And merely for their mirth and revelry, Out to the Warden eagerly they cry, That be should let them, for a merry round, Go to the mill and see their own corn ground, And each would fair and boldly lay his neck The Miller should not steal them half a peck Of corn by sleight, nor ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... detective play!" were the first words that sprang to her lips. "Well?" As she faced around her eyes glittered in the lantern's rays. "Well, have you any other little tricks to show me? Are you a sleight-of-hand artist, too, Lanny? Are you going to take a machine gun out ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... have several, in case of emergencies. For one thing, we could easily be street showmen. You can do fancy shooting and I can do sleight-of-hand tricks ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... A scholar loveth a widow lady, who, being enamoured of another, causeth him spend one winter's night in the snow awaiting her, and he after contriveth, by his sleight, to have her abide naked, all one mid-July day, on the summit of a tower, exposed to flies and gads and ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to bet, sometimes independently, sometimes in partnership with, the gentlemanly Smith. He was borne on by the excitement of varying fortune, a varying fortune absolutely under control of the dealer, whose sleight-of-hand was perfect. And the varying fortune had an unvarying tendency in the long run—to put three stakes out Of five into the pockets of the gamblers, who found the little game very interesting ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... he answered her. "It's a confounded fine professional job. It takes more than sleight of hand—it takes genius, ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... maws. But here and there, like white rocks in a dark sea, several little piles were left untouched. To the owners of these a number of silver pieces were tossed—tossed so deftly that we might almost say it rained silver on those regions of the table. No wizard of legerdemain ever equalled the sleight of hand with which these men pitched, reckoned, manipulated, and ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... that Mr Quilp's attention was restricted, as several other matters required his constant vigilance. Among his various eccentric habits he had a humorous one of always cheating at cards, which rendered necessary on his part, not only a close observance of the game, and a sleight-of-hand in counting and scoring, but also involved the constant correction, by looks, and frowns, and kicks under the table, of Richard Swiveller, who being bewildered by the rapidity with which ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... agreed on, the king acquainted his royal consort and the whole court that the great sleight-of-hand genius had discovered himself, and soon, in a full assembly, his majesty proceeded to question him, and lay on him ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... with impunity," the Scotch lords, in a body, demanded an audience of the queen, and solicited reparation. A proclamation was issued, in which three hundred pounds were offered for the discovery of the author. From this storm he was, as he relates, "secured by a sleight;" of what kind, or by whose prudence, is not known; and such was the increase of his reputation, that the Scottish "nation applied again that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... was twelve yards away. Ranse took one of Curly's ankles and dragged him like a sack of potatoes to the brink. Then with the strength and sleight of a hammer-throw he hurled the offending member of society ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... "Excuse me, there is no thoroughfare this way." Turning abruptly to the left, Mr Jones found himself confronted by another grave gentleman of powerful frame and resolute aspect, who, by a species of magic or sleight of hand known only to the initiated, slipped a pair of steel bracelets on Mr Jones's wrists, and finally, almost before he knew where he was, Mr Jones found himself seated in a cab with the strong gentleman ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... to begin, let us begin right. I have not much sympathy with finical, fussy gardening. One of the chief fascinations of gardening is the endless field it affords for skilful sleight of hand, short-cuts, unconventional methods, and experiments. The true gardener soon ceases to be a man of rules, and becomes one of strategy, of expedients. He is prompt to act at the right moment. Like the artist, he is ever seeking and acting ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... was one of those four fountains rare, Of those in France produced by Merlin's sleight, Encompassed round about with marble fair, Shining and polished, and than milk more white. There in the stones choice figures chiseled were, By that magician's god-like labour dight; Some voice was wanting, these you might have thought ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... suthin' to tell ye. The fact is Sleight wants to buy the Pontiac out and out just ez she stands with the two fifty ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... gentleman whom you have so graciously permitted me to bring to your house. This is Phadrig the Adept, as he is known in his own ancient land of Egypt, a worker of wonders which really are wonders, and not mere sleight-of-hand conjuring tricks. He has been good enough to accompany me in order to convince the learned of the West that the Immemorial East could still teach ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... they fought, he and she, a sore fight, yet sorer than the first. Bartus right soon found himself unable to cope with her might and would have sought safety in flight, but of the greatness of her prowess could not avail unto this sleight; for, as often as he turned to flee, she drave after him and still clave to him and pressed him hard, till presently she smote him with the sword in his throat, that it issued gleaming from his nape, and sent him after his brother. Then she wheeled about in the mid-field and plain where cut ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... believe that his religious vows did not allow him to handle animals—openly—and so he would beckon Roy into the darkness of the temple with a most mysterious air, and would extract all sorts of things from his sleeves just like a sleight-of-hand performer. He was a rich man when ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... of sliced bread at intervals up the table, and saucers containing butter and jam. The stewards came to each person with an enormous pair of pots and, murmuring "tea or coffee?" poured something by sleight-of-hand ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the water in bewilderment, as if her senses were the victim of some sleight of hand. Not a speck or spot resembling a man's head or face showed anywhere. By this time she was alarmed, and her alarm intensified when she perceived a little beyond the scene of her husband's bathing a small area of water, the quality of whose surface ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... transgression and injury, under one procedure, which is—summary; as, from the character of the judges and executioners, into whose hands the sinner has fallen, you would expect; sufficiently prankish too. With one sleight of their magical hand they turn the impoverished heiress of ill-possessed acres forth upon the highway, doomed to earn, with strenuous manual industry, her livelihood; until, from the winnings of her handicraft, she is moreover able to make good, as far as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... sit all day with their heads out at the orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them with food from morning to night. For a time the young are fed on the wing by their parents; but the feat is done by so quick and almost imperceptible a sleight, that a person must have attended very exactly to their motions before he would be able to perceive it. As soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, the dams immediately turn their thoughts to the business of a second brood: while the first flight, shaken off and rejected by ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... into an old wound or between the skin and the flesh. It was to counteract the influence of the fire-eating marabouts that the French government sent over Robert Houdin, the ingenious mechanician, but though he eclipsed their wonders by tricks of electricity and sleight, he has left but a lame explanation of the "juggleries" of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the smile, and in bowing to an acquaintance nearly lost a bun. He saved it by sheer sleight of hand, and noting that his companion was still intent on the shops, wondered darkly what further burdens were in store for him. He tried to quicken the pace, but Miss Hartley was ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... out for Rome. The biographies are in agreement as to their number; they were twelve, including Francis; but the moment they undertake to give a name to each one of them difficulties begin to arise, and it is only by some exegetical sleight of hand that they can claim to have reconciled the various documents. The table given below[4] briefly shows these difficulties. The question took on some importance when in the fourteenth century ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... ascendant Virgo, his descendant Pisces, and his sinister aspect Taurus. Mars' house is Aries-Scorpio, his ascendant Capricorn, his descendant Cancer and his sinister aspect Libra." Now when the astronomer saw her acuteness and comprehensive learning and heard her fair answers, he bethought him for a sleight to confound her before the Commander of the Faithful, and said to her, "O damsel, tell me, will rain fall this month?" At this she bowed her head and pondered so long, that the Caliph thought her at a loss for an answer and the astronomer said to her, "Why dost thou ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... was the admiration of the whole mill staff. If a man but held up his plate as a slight indication that he was ready for more, the host could flip him a slice of beef or pork with the dexterity of a sleight-of-hand magician. At his signals, "Here, Bob, mon!" "Hi, Peter, lad!" "Look oot, Sam!" away flew each man's portion, hitting his plate with unerring precision. He had never been known to miss anybody in his life, not even Miss Euphemia, away at the ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... during the coming night her couch might be carried away, the millet in going and returning might be shed upon the path. "Allah bless thee, Ho thou the Wazir!" cried the Caliph: "this device of thine is passing good and fair fall it for a sleight than which naught can be slyer and good luck to it for a proof than which naught can be better proven." Now as soon as it was even-tide, the couch was carried off as had happened every night and the grain was strown broad cast upon the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... smiling right into his blue eyes. "The Tom Dorgan I mentioned is a sleight-of-hand performer at the ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... subsequent nights, there would rarely be a score of people in the house who did not know the secret. The great majority might know nothing else about the play, but that they knew. Similarly, in the case of any mechanical truc, as the French call it, or feat of theatrical sleight-of-hand, it is futile to trust to its taking unawares any audience after the first. Nine-tenths of all subsequent audiences are sure to be on the look-out for it, and to know, or think they know, "how it's done."[4] These are the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... again from this "sleight of hand with Fancy's golden apples," to the novel, in the 'O.T.' (1836), which marks no advance on the 'Improvisatore'; and in the next year he published his best romance, 'Only a Fiddler,' which is still charming for its autobiographical ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... fills, And thence into the royal ear instils. The queen incensed, his services forgot, Leaves him a victim to the vengeful Scot.[9] Now through the realm a proclamation spread, To fix a price on his devoted head.[10] While innocent, he scorns ignoble flight; His watchful friends preserve him by a sleight. By Harley's favour once again he shines; Is now caress'd by candidate divines, Who change opinions with the changing scene: Lord! how were they mistaken in the dean! Now Delawar[11] again familiar grows; And in Swift's ear thrusts ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... I would call attention to the following facts. The fastening of Miss Fay's neck to the back of the cabinet at first is utterly gratuitous. It offers no additional difficulty to any manifestations, and appears only intended to prevent the scrutineers seeing behind her. A very simple exercise of sleight of hand would enable the gallant Colonel to cut the one ligature that binds the two wrists, when, for instance, he goes into the cabinet with scissors to trim off the ends of the piece of calico in the opening trick. The hands being once free all else is ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Wherever he was, he never passed by an opportunity to obtain possession of his neighbor's valuables. If the monied man would accept a hand at euchre or poker, why, he was so much the easier cleaned out; if not, false keys, pick-locks, or sleight-of-hand, soon relieved the unfortunate victim ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... showed him openly his bare head and the bare left side; and when he weened to have smitten him upon the bare head, then lightly he avoided the left leg and the left side, and put his right hand and his sword to that stroke, and so put it on side with great sleight; and then with great force Sir Launcelot smote him on the helmet such a buffet that the stroke carved the head in two parts. Then there was no more to do, but he was drawn out of the field. And at the great instance of the knights of the Table Round, the king suffered ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... and thrown into the river. Slight rain began to fall, and the scene was brought to a dramatic conclusion by the exhausted chief being ignominiously carried away on the back of a strong young man. At the house another stone was produced by the same sleight-of-hand, but more strenuous measures had to be adopted in order ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... it is open, and newspapers and letters in rich profusion meet our gaze; with a quick sleight the captain distributes them, sends a half dozen to their owners in the forecastle by the steward, and then ensues a silence broken only by the snapping of seals, and the rattling of paper. Suddenly Mr. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... of these magical representations; he wrote the pieces. He had a diversity of talents; he was clever at sleight of hand. Besides the voices he imitated, he produced all sorts of unexpected things—shocks of light and darkness; spontaneous formations of figures or words, as he willed, on the partition; vanishing figures in chiaroscuro; strange things, amidst which he seemed to meditate, unmindful of the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... supposed to dwell in Igorot or Kalinga land, she speaks in a dialect unfamiliar to her hearers, orders them to dance in Igorot fashion, and then instructs them in dances, which she or her townspeople could never have seen. [124] At times she carries on sleight-of-hand tricks, as when she places beads in a dish of oil, and dances with it high above her head, until the beads vanish. A day or two later she will recover them from the hair of some participant in the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... fast to eight-strand twine, we had to bring the ship to, to bring them in, and it was then as much as eight or ten men could do; so that one would expect, when an Indian had struck one of these fish, from his light float, it would easily run away with the man and the bark-log; but they have some sleight in their way of management, by which the strength and struggling of these fish are all in vain. There are hardly any birds to be seen in this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... said Orme, politely, "in offering so simple a test as this; but now, if you still think I had the kris in my clothing—how that could be, I don't know, I'm sure—and if you still wish to call my little performance sleight of hand, then I'll do something to prove what I have said, and make it quite plain that all my friend here has said is true and more than true. Watch now, and you will see blood drip from the point of this blade—every drop of blood it ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... obscuring the brightness in the west. Then came a cloud-like haze, scudding on the very surface of the stream, wherein the plash of horses' feet announced their entrance. They rode slowly on, but the channel was deep, and it seemed as though some sleight and witchery was about them, for the mist became so dense that the clouds seemed to have dropped down to encompass and enfold them. The stream gradually became deeper, until the foremost horse was wading to the belly, labouring and snorting from the chillness ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... all the rest amaz'd stood still, Expecting which should take or kill. This HUDIBRAS observ'd; and fretting Conquest should be so long a getting, He drew up all his force into 820 One body, and that into one blow. But TALGOL wisely avoided it By cunning sleight; for had it hit, The upper part of him the blow Had slit as sure as ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... trick about appearing to know so much and that those reading chaps were awful humbugs. How the trick was performed he did not venture to explain, but he was as firmly persuaded that it was managed by some species of conjuring as that Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook performed their wonders by sleight of hand. That one human brain should actually contain the amount of knowledge John Short appeared to possess was not credible to the Honourable Cornelius, and the latter spent more of his time in trying to discover how John "did it" than in trying to "do it" himself. ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... for deception, though many of the tricks performed by Indian jugglers are really the result of clever sleight-of-hand." ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... simplicity, of truth. The playful but searching satire which the author has ever at command just touches the declamation of his opponent, and it falls like a house of cards. He sums up with a judgment as fair and as calm as if he had been speaking of a writer of some distant period. Astonished at the sleight of hand which had disarmed, and at the generosity which had spared him, M. de Pontmartin, in the first moment of his defeat,—before he had had time to recover his (bad) temper, to arm himself for more fiery assaults ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... gave the box back to the conductor, then took the letter from between his knees, holding it in his right hand, when Jennie, as if swayed by the motion of the car, lurched against him, and, with a sleight of hand that would have made her reputation on a necromantic stage, she jerked the letter from the amazed and frightened man; at the same moment allowing the bogus document to drop on the floor of the car from her ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... to sell or mortgage government land, but who could wait six months or a year for the government to issue a patent (deed) to the land? Many of the settlers must borrow money to make proof. So the homestead loan business became a sleight-of-hand performance. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Canito is pleased to be merry at the doors of his betters;" and she flung a copper saucepan full of not over-clean water so deftly past Juan's head, that not a drop touched him, and yet he had the appearance of having been ducked. At which bit of sleight-of-hand the whole court-yard, young and old, babies, cocks, hens, and turkeys, all set up a shout and a cackle, and dispersed to the four corners of the yard as if scattered by a volley of bird-shot. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... hand of perfect friendship. You've been reaching out for a long time, pasha, and it didn't save the steamer or the cotton-mills; and it didn't save us when we were down by Sobat a while ago, and you sent Halim Bey to teach us to be patient. We got out of that nasty corner by sleight of hand, but not your sleight of hand, pasha. Your hand is a quick hand, but a sharp eye can see the trick, and then it's no ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... omens threat the brightest fair That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care; Some dire disaster, or by force, or sleight; But what, or where, the fates have wrapped in night. Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, Or some frail china jar receive a flaw; Or stain her honour, or her new brocade; Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade; Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball; Or whether ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... his skill at sleight-of-hand tricks," said the man in spectacles, seriously. "And we wouldn't hold his croquet habits agin him. Some men drink, some gamble, some do worse; every man has his weakness, and croquet may be his. What we want to know is this: can ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... dark cloud of unmeaning words? Is it so difficult for a man to cant some one or more of the good old English cants which his father and grandfather canted before him, that he must learn, in the schools of the Utilitarians, a new sleight of tongue, to make fools clap and wise men sneer? Let our countrymen keep their eyes on the neophytes of this sect, and see whether we turn out to be mistaken in the prediction which we now hazard. It will before long be found, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to such timing as belongs to sleight-of-hand, but the split-second quickness of the left-hander was as conclusively victorious as if the matter had been deliberate, and now he had margin to realize that he need not ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... club entertainment, I am told that, despite my absence, it was a wonderful success, redeemed from failure, the treasurer of the club said, by the voluntary services of a guest, who secured admittance on one of my cards, and who executed some sleight-of-hand tricks that made the members tremble, and whose mind-reading feats performed on the club's butler not only made it necessary for him to resign his office, but disclosed to the House Committee the whereabouts of ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... not deny that Danny must have been a liberal education in that sort of sleight of hand, but the letter saved her the painful confession. While Elinor took Marty to her room and Judith explained the uses of the various conveniences, push buttons and the like, Patricia devoured ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... dream—a false thing—a lie—a nightmare; that the journey along the Path is but an illusion; that everything is "nothing"; that there is no soul; that You are God in disguise, and that He is fooling Himself in making believe that He is You; that Life is but a Divine masquerade or sleight-of-hand performance; that You are God, but that You (God) are fooling Yourself (God) in order to amuse Yourself (God). Is not this horrible? And yet it shows to what lengths the human mind will go before it will part with some pet ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... win a little one," the gambler announced as he politely returned the bill-case to its owner. He lifted another shell, and by some sleight-of-hand managed to replace the pellet upon the table, then gravely flipped a five-dollar gold piece to one ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... with, and an absence of the crushing burden of interest money. No fruits yield any returns before the second or third year; and there are often Unfavorable seasons and glutted markets. Nature's prizes are won by patient, persistent industry, and not by Wall Street sleight ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... Christ; (13)till we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; (14)that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, by cunning craftiness after the wily manner of error; (15)but holding the truth, may in love grow up into him in all things, who is the head, Christ; (16)from whom all the body, fitly framed together ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... feats of Magic and Sleight of Hand in the Town Hall this evening, commencing at 8 o'clock. In the course of the entertainment he will amuse the audience by his wonderful exhibition of Ventriloquism, in which he ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... tells me," said Yerkes, "that the Congo government is the rottenest aggregate of cutthroats, horse-thieves, thugs, yeggs, common-or-ordinary hold-ups, and sleight-of-hand professors that the world ever saw in one God-forsaken country. He says they're of every nationality, but without squeam of any kind—hang or shoot you as soon as look at you! He says if there's any ivory buried in those parts they've either got ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... examples of skill in sleight of hand is more than I know. I can only say that I never was more completely mystified by any professor of legerdemain on the public platform. After the performance of each trick, he asked leave to time himself by looking at his watch; being anxious to discover ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... hint than Halbert Glendinning. He said he himself had a desire to go westward. The pedlar looked at him with a very doubtful air, when the old dame, who perhaps thought her young guest resembled the umquhile Saunders, not only in his looks, but in a certain pretty turn to sleight-of-hand, which the defunct was supposed to have possessed, tipped him the wink, and assured the pedlar he need have no doubt that her young cousin was a ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... have been in a grievous error: we thought that we had been at war with rebels against the lawful government, but that we were friends and allies of what is properly France, friends and allies to the legal body politic of France. But by sleight of hand the Jacobins are clean vanished, and it is France we have got under our cup. "Blessings on his soul that first invented sleep!" said Don Sancho Panza the Wise. All those blessings, and ten thousand times more, on him who found ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... play mine, and use every advantage to save my money; and there was one I possessed which his reverence did not. The cards being my own, I had put some delicate little marks on the trump cards, just at the edges, so that when I dealt, by means of a little sleight of hand, I could deal myself any trump card I pleased. But I wished, as I said before, to have no dealings for money with his reverence, knowing that he was master in the house, and that he could lead me a dog of a life if I offended him, either by winning his money, or not letting him win mine. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... but the matter's simply this: I've been fool enough to play cards with him for rather high stakes lately, and I fancy that I've detected my man peeping over my cards, and using a little sleight of hand in his ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... far: Hood is a central figure in the group and the period, and the tendency of the time may be almost as much due to him as he to the tendency. Mainly, we have to fall back upon his own idiosyncrasy: he was born with a boundlessly whimsical perception, which he trained into an inimitable sleight-of-hand in the twisting of notions and of words; circumstances favored his writing for fugitive publications and skimming readers, rather than under conditions of greater permanency; and the result is as we find it in ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... special request, with the song of "Mr. Dooley," in the chorus of which the audience joined with vigor. The song is not new, but Smith's particular version, as well as his vocal rendition, was. The dwarf, who posed somewhat as a magician and sleight-of-hand man, undertook for some reason or other to attempt the great Indian box trick. Two gentlemen from the audience were invited to come on the stage to tie the performer with a rope. This was a most unfortunate move. Two well-known yachtsmen, ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... show of studying the card and succeeded in pocketing the bill with the same effortless sleight-of-hand that the other had used in ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... and he wisely observed their doings. My Lord Mayor, my Lord Willbewill, and Mr. Recorder were also all taken with the words of this tattling Diabolonian gentleman, forgetting that their Prince had given them warning before to take heed that they were not beguiled with any Diabolonian sleight; he had further told them that the security of the now flourishing town of Mansoul did not so much lie in her present fortifications and force, as in her so using of what she had, as might oblige her Emmanuel to abide within her castle. For the right doctrine of Emmanuel was, that the town of Mansoul ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... tradesmen, and all the bad money they had was tendered in payment among the good, that by ignorance or oversight some might possibly be made to pass; and as these took it, so they were not wanting again in all the artifice and sleight of hand they were masters of, to put it off again; so that, in short, people were made bites and cheats to one another in all their business; and if you went but to buy a pair of gloves, or stockings, or any trifle, at a shop, you went with bad money in one hand, and good money in the other, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... Ishi as a brother, and he looked upon me as one of his people. He called me Ku wi, or Medicine Man; more, perhaps, because I could perform little sleight of hand tricks, than because ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... had not read a book. Often, when I tried to catch him, he confounded me by quoting the identical words of a passage in some work which I could have sworn he had never set eyes on. I daresay it was due only to some juggling, like the conjuror's sleight of hand that apparently lets you choose a card, but in fact forces one on you; and he brought the conversation round cleverly to a point when it was obvious I should mention a definite book. He talked very well, with an entertaining flow of ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three-in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities by which he lives. Athelred, on the other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... "I am clever at sleight-of-hand," said he, "or I could never have worked it. I just flashed it before your eyes, uncle, and made you think that you saw the clasp. Forgive me; I thought it ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... blind caprice of will, Not in cunning sleight of skill, Not for show of power, was wrought ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... By almost sleight-of-hand Irene suited the deed to the word, for a cold frog of enormous size suddenly began to crawl along Rosamund's neck. Rosamund suppressed a shudder, for she would not for the world show the girl that ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security's sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... exclamation as he drew his hand from the straw behind him, and produced an egg. The Mexicans glanced up. Pete dug in the straw and fetched up another egg—and another. Brevoort leaned forward as though deeply interested in some sleight-of-hand trick. Egg after egg came from the abandoned nest. The Mexicans laughed. The supply of ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Batavia. They left me senseless because I would not say "enough." I was getting a good deal of reputation as a wrestler. I liked wrestling better than fighting; and though a smallish man always, like my fellow Iowan Farmer Burns, I have seldom found my master at this game. It is much more a matter of sleight than strength. A man must be cautious, wary, cool, his muscles always ready, as quick as a flash to meet any strain; but the main source of my success seemed to be my ability to use all the strength ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... which distinguished the Wondersmith and Madame Filomel. True gypsies they seemed, who would not have been out of place telling fortunes, or stealing chickens in the green lanes of England, or wandering with their wild music and their sleight-of-hand tricks through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... cuffs and stuck out his elbows. Then he opened the packet and inserted his thumb and fore-finger, slowly, gingerly, like a conjurer performing a sleight-of-hand trick before a puzzled audience, and, beaming all over his face, extracted from the tobacco a glittering object which he held out before ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... that's about all thou canst do. Dost think that a man's greatness hangs on so little a thing as his sleight of hand at cutting his name on ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... she by sleight, (Follow, my love, come over the strand) And all to help this forlorn knight, And she the fair flower ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... imposing subject for a speech. If it should ever be printed on a programme, it would prove awe-inspiring. Next to making a good speech, I'd like to be skilled in sleight-of-hand affairs. I'd like to fish up a rabbit from the depths of an old gentleman's silk tile, or extract a dozen eggs from a lady's hand-bag, or transmute a canary into a goldfish. I'd like to ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... for the once famous sleight of hand performer Patler. His house is a cozy, pretty affair, freshly painted and nestled under great embowering trees. Close by is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... "Tom Sleight," answered Henry, "the chap I'm telling you about. He belonged to a good family, his father being a Magistrate for Monmouthshire; but there had been no doing anything with young Tom from the very first. At fifteen he ran away from ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... own up to it, an' there's no use beatin' about the bush. The guilty party wot stole the locket an' transferred it by sleight-of-'and to poor Sue is no less a person than yer own ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... digging on the farm that his spade is not adapted to. To mark out a drain in the turf by a line, he mounts his spade with one foot, and hops backward on the other, with a celerity surprising to behold. Then he cuts the sod in squares, and, with a sleight of hand, which does not come by nature, as Dogberry says reading and writing come, throws out the first spit. When he comes on to the gravel or hard clay, where another man would use a pick-axe, his heavy boot comes down upon the treader, and ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... works shone in answer to fitful moonlight, and they presented to his imagination a strange and unfamiliar appearance. Under the sleight of the hour they were changed and towered majestically above him. The Mill slept and in the creepy stillness, the river's voice, which he had hardly heard till now, was magnified to a considerable murmur. From far away down the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... in the case of the Welsh Giant) with an excess of the hospitable politeness of a landlord, ripping themselves open, rather than hint at the possibility of their guests being versed in the vagabond arts of sleight-of-hand ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... indeed, a certain sleight whereby he slung it across his shoulder, but no reason in the world for tossing it upon the hearse with a slam. They covered its nakedness with velvet, and the cocher, having taken a cigar from his pocket, and looking much as if he would like ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... by the same fire, munching his hard tack as he read. Murphy, watching him, saw his lips quiver and work over one bearing half a dozen postmarks—a letter from his mother, conveyed across the lines by some sleight-of-hand of influence or pay, and mailed and remailed from place to place, till weeks had grown into months since it was written. Noncommittal as it had need to be—filled with home items to the last page—there his heart stood still, to bound again furiously back, and his breath came sharp and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... legerdemain he had seen. Nor was he a mean authority as to this, being himself, with his tools at hand, a capital conjuror;[193] but the Frenchman scorned help, stood among the company without any sort of apparatus, and, by the mere force of sleight of hand and an astonishing memory, performed feats having no likeness to anything Dickens had ever seen done, and totally inexplicable to his most vigilant reflection. "So far as I know, a perfectly original genius, and that puts any sort of knowledge ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... forgotten the pain, though, in ten minutes, and the first hint we had thereof was a squeal and feat of sleight of heel, in which, to all appearances, Juan stood perpendicularly upon his nose and fore-feet for half a minute, like a fleshly tripod, while his rider, or rather his late rider, rolled over and over, the centre of a cloud of impalpable ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... your kindred, you must deceive society, you must deceive all but God, and Him you cannot deceive. Deception does not injure others so much as it injures ourselves. Marriage is too important a crisis in one's life to be decided by sleight of hand, or a sort of jugglery which says: "Presto, change! Now you see ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... composition of a Jean Glover, a girl who was not only a whore, but also a thief; and in one or other character has visited most of the Correction Houses in the West. She was born I believe in Kilmarnock,—I took the song down from her singing, as she was strolling through the country, with a sleight-of-hand blackguard. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... money; and there was one I possessed which his reverence did not. The cards being my own, I had put some delicate little marks on the trump cards, just at the edges, so that when I dealt, by means of a little sleight of hand I could deal myself any trump card I pleased. But I wished, as I said before, to have no dealings for money with his reverence, knowing that he was master in the house, and that he could lead me a dog of a life ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... transported, upward soare, The flowry Meddowes, and the pastures o're; Where the greene Grove its coole shade yeilds To th'stately grasse plotts, and ripe swelling fields: Straight, 'mid'st the river Swans, up hyer A winged fowle above the cloudes I'aspire; The lively Lakes below, I sleight, And with sweet straines a bird ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... time they cease to be members of the parent tree? In the case of cuttings from plants it is easy to elude the difficulty by making a parade of the sharp and sudden act of separation from the parent stock, but this is only a piece of mental sleight of hand; the cutting remains as much part of its parent plant as though it had never been severed from it; it goes on profiting by the experience which it had before it was cut off, as much as though it had never been cut off at all. This will be more readily ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... you think so," the boy asserted modestly. "It seemed to me afterward that I had been very stupid. It all was so quick! Almost like sleight-of-hand." ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... lance Guided so well, that I obtain'd the prize, Both by the judgment of the English eyes, And of some sent from that sweet enemy France; Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance; Townfolks my strength; a daintier judge applies His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise; Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; Others, because of both sides I do take My blood from them who did excel in this, Think nature me a man of arms did make. How far they shot awry! the true cause is, Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face Sent ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... guard Make sure of them, and lead to camp. That done, we're free for a dark-room fight If so you say." The other laughed; "Trust me, Major, nor throw a damp. But first to try a little sleight— Sure news of ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... quarters and to try anther place, where odd jobs were found for the man, and where the woman made friends in private families, for whom she did a little sewing. But it was too late for the man; his privations had destroyed his sleight of hand, though he knew it not; the fine workman was gone. He took painters' paralysis, and very often when work was offered his hand would drop before he could begin it; then the long years of tramping about ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... music-hall singer when her husband was a sleight-of-hand artist, "The Great Malino, the Wizard of Milan." Her voice had long since left her; she had nothing of her beauty but its yellow ruins; and her life was made up of the consideration of two great grievances: first, that her husband was always ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... being afeard to see it, for they would have had him to have bore a part in saying the words, in the roome of one of the little girles that was so young that they could hardly make her learn to repeat the words, did, for feare there might be some sleight used in it by the boy, or that the boy might be light, call the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as Sir G. Carteret's cook, who is very big, and they did raise him in just the same manner. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... ride into the branding pen, a rope within their hands, They will catch them by each forefoot and bring them to the sands; It's altogether in practice with a little bit of sleight, A-roping Texas cattle, it ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... had diminished to the sensitive uneasy murmur which responded like a delicate instrument to the fluctuations of the game. Each feat and manoeuvre of Knype drew generous applause in proportion to its intention or its success, and each sleight of the Manchester Rovers, successful or not, provoked a holy disgust. The attitude of the host had passed beyond morality ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... profit by the credulity of others, and who even invent tricks in order to fasten their authority upon the people in an illegitimate manner. These tricks themselves are not performed in the majority of cases as conscious sleight of hand. They may have been such at their inception, but their origin has been forgotten by subsequent generations, and nothing has remained but the bare wonderful, inexplicable fact of their performance. Thus they have become in course of time hallowed; and the shaman ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier |
