"Thumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as she rose from her seat with an affected yawn and stretch. In speaking she looked at her mother, and not at the painter to whom she had been sitting for nearly two hours. The young man in question stood embarrassed and silent, his palette on his thumb, brush and mahlstick suspended. His eyes were cast down: a flush had risen in his cheek. Miss Bella's manner was not sweet; she wished evidently to slight somebody, and the painter could not flatter himself that the somebody was Mrs. Morrison, the only other person in the room ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... drawing my right hand, with the forefinger and thumb pressed together, nimbly from my right haunch to my left shoulder, "you have condescended to resume the paternal arts to which you were first bred—long stitches, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... bean, I'll take your place—I want to die!' The brother, with overwhelming anguish, replied, 'No, I will keep my own place; I am stronger, and better able to die than you.' Major Cocke, when he drew the fatal bean, held it up between his finger and thumb, and, with a smile of contempt, said, 'Boys! I told you so: I never failed in my life to draw a prize!' He then coolly added, 'They only rob me of forty years.' Henry Whaling, one of Cameron's best fighters, as he drew his black bean, said, in a joyous tone, 'Well, they ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... cakes I 've a nimble wrist And I tosses 'em 'igh on a spoon. And the Duke and Patch yer can hardly match Fer their breakfast they stretch till noon. And I heaps the fire and I greases the iron, And the Duke, he kisses me thumb. Me Darlin', me dear, it 's perfectly clear I 've lovin' yer ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... thicket, had just crossed the brook on the half-decayed log that spanned it, when, as he emerged from the water-willows on the other side, he started with a sudden shock. For there was Hannah, with a white, white face, holding out a little note folded like an old-fashioned thumb-paper. ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... circle of white foam ascended higher and higher, and then gradually contracted itself into a spinning black tube, which wavered about for all the world like a gigantic loch-leech held by the tail between the finger and thumb, while it was poking its vast snout about in the clouds in search of ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... is it?" he asked, with a jerk of his thumb toward a cloud of blue-and-yellow butterflies drifting over a shining puddle—"five miles as the crow flies, and through ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... substance like damp sawdust. He seemed puzzled for a moment what to do with it. Finally he took it out and scattered it along the grass-grown slope of a railway cutting. Then he returned to his tool chest, took out a chisel and grimly felt its edge with his thumb. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... said Peggy. She bent forward and picked with finger and thumb at the fluff of the blanket. Then she said, intent on the fluff: "If a man had done a thing like that for me, I should have crawled after him to the ends of the earth." Presently she looked up with a flash of the eyes. "Why isn't this ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... precise hair, which are always associated with widowhood in low life. It is only in higher circles that women can lose their husbands and yet remain bewitching. The late Mr. Drabdump had scratched the base of his thumb with a rusty nail, and Mrs. Drabdump's foreboding that he would die of lockjaw had not prevented her wrestling day and night with the shadow of Death, as she had wrestled with it vainly twice before, ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... pointed with his thumb to the woman standing by his side. She was twenty-seven perhaps, plump, and in a coarse fashion pretty. She wore a white dress and a large white hat. Her fat calves in white cotton stockings bulged over the tops of long white boots ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... is the correct size?" Tresco held an old-fashioned ring between his forefinger and thumb, and tested with the point of a burnisher the setting ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... and leave a cheery tavern like this?" All at once the crinkle of a chill ran across the Chevalier's shoulders. The thumb, the forefinger and the second of the priest's left hand ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... year Ten Hundred Seven. Emerson has written, "Nothing is of less importance on account of its being small." And so I maintain that, in the year Ten Hundred Seven, Rhode Island was just where it is now, and the Cosmos quite as important. Let Pawtucket protest and Providence bite the thumb—no ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... these were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intellect; and that any man of sound head, and practised in wielding logic with a scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fungus-heads to powder with a lady's fan. At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book; and recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... at all concentrated upon her. He felt, on this afternoon, a new, a fresh interest in things. The carpet before him was a vast country and he did not propose to explore it, but sucking his thumb, stroking the bear's coat, feeling the firelight upon his face, he felt that now something would occur. He had realised that there was much to explore and that, after all, perhaps there might be more in this ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... where some man's finger-tips had rested. Nothing but the pressure of fingertips could have caused just the appearance presented by these spots. By scrutinizing them closely I could even tell where the thumb had rested, and at once foresaw the possibility of determining by means of these marks both the size and shape of the hand which had left behind it so neat ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... married a month or more When underneath her thumb went Jim, It can't be right for the likes of her To put upon the likes of him. It's a great big shame, and if she belonged to me I'd let her know who's who; Putting on a fellow six foot three And her ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... brush into his mouth and held it between his teeth as a poodle carries a stick, while he used his thumb on the canvas. The modern painter paints with everything, not excepting his fingers. He glanced at his model and then at his work, and got ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... he put one foot on the keg. He made no other move; but if ever a man's back was eloquent of determination, his was. From where I lay I could see the fingers of his left hand shut tight over his thumb, pressing till the knuckles were white and the cords in the back of his hand stood out in little ridges. I'd seen that before, and I recalled with a start when and where I'd heard that soft, drawly voice. I knew I ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... let everybody know that he never cared two flips of his thumb for anybody. If anybody wanted him, they must come and seek him, and be thankful if he could find time to hear their nonsense. For he understood not the system only, but also the nature of mankind. The people at the Thornwick did not want ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... with a willow wand about six feet in length, perfectly straight, and rather thicker than a man's thumb. He began to peel this, observing that to ask a good woodman to shoot at a target so broad as had hitherto been used, was to put shame upon his skill. "For my own part," he said, "and in the land where I was bred, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... room looked harder too, and disenchanting. The figures of its occupants began filing through the door. The little man was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes smouldering upon the backs of the retreating members, his thumb and finger raised to the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of water. Four of these were given for the ordinary, and eight for the extraordinary. The executioner inserted a horn into the patient's mouth, and if he shut his teeth, forced him to open them by pinching his nose with the finger and thumb.] ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Jackson Crick. My Mistress name was Mary Ann, though she wasn't his fust wife—jest a second wife, and a widow when she captivated him. You know widows is like dat anyhow, 'cause day done had 'sperience wid mens and wraps dem 'round their little finger and git dem under their thumb 'fore the mens knows what gwine on. Young gals have a poor chance against a young widow like Miss Mary Ann was. Her had her troubles with Marse Tom after her git him, I tell you, but maybe best not to ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... off! They do not wear socks nor stockings, for it is not very cold in Japan. One little tot has on a pair of straw sandals, and the girl and old man wear clogs, held on by a strap passing between the "thumb of the foot," as the Japs call the big toe, ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... we should expect to be guilty of misinterpreting Nature, yet he does so at times. He does so in this passage: "If Nature wants a thumb, she makes it at the cost of the arms and legs." As if the arm were weaker or less efficient because of the thumb. What would man's power be as a tool-using animal without his strong, opposable thumb? His ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... possibilities of pleasurable sensations which may be repeated by the proper stimulation. Besides the hunger-satisfaction that it brings, the act of sucking is pleasurable in itself, and so the baby begins to suck his thumb or his quilts or his rattle. Later, this impulse to stimulate the nerves about the mouth finds its satisfaction in kissing, and still later it plays a definite part in the wooing process; but at first the child is self-sufficient and finds his pleasure entirely within ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... the table to interpose between them. But the mother had caught hold of her; the handkerchief had fallen from her neck; and the youth saw five blue bruises on her lovely throat—the marks of the four fingers and the thumb of a left hand. With a cry of horror he darted from the house, but as he reached the door he turned. His hostess was lying motionless on the floor, and a huge gray wolf came ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... my pock'," he growled, hitting her arm away fiercely, his teeth clenched. "Aft' my money, eh? Think you're winning, don't you? In league with the Pater against me. Think you'll always have me under your thumb, nev' giv' free hand. There's not a man on God's earth would stand it, damned if there is—tied to wom' apron strings ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... office half an hour earlier than usual, I was aware of a small figure in the dining-room—a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... spread abroad, they are white; so that these trees in their season appear extraordinarily pleasant, and yield a very fragrant smell. When the fruit is ripe it is round, and about the bigness of a man's thumb; of a dark brown colour, inclining to red, and about 2 foot or 2 foot and a half long. We found many of them under the trees, but they had no pulp in them. The partitions in the middle are much at the same distance with those brought to England, of the same substance, ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... a needle of granite! Begorra, the sight of it sthrikes me quite dumb! An' look at the quare sort of figures upon it; I wondher can these be the thracks of her thumb! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... seemed to tell Jane at once that this was to be a confidential matter. She jerked with a dirty thumb in the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Artillery practice, designed for belligerent Christians. Finally down from its shelf he dragged the ponderous Roman, Seated himself at the window, and opened the book, and in silence Turned o'er the well-worn leaves, where thumb-marks thick on the margin, Like the trample of feet proclaimed the battle was hottest. 80 Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying pen of the stripling, Busily writing epistles important, to go by the Mayflower,[17] Ready to sail on the morrow, or next day at latest, God willing! ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... this, it is hardly necessary to say that Ossaroo did his best in the manufacture of that rope—every strand of it being twisted between his index finger and his thumb, as smoothly and evenly as if he had been ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... thrashed. But he was warm, and he did sleep for hours at a time. At what must have been dawn he heard the farmer at the stalls in the stable below. He felt refreshed, cozily drowsy, and he did a shameless thing, a trick of vagrants and road-wallopers: he put his thumb to his nose, aimed his hand toward the supposititious location of the farmer below, and twirled his outspread fingers in a flickering manner. It is believed that he intended to convey spirited defiance, or possibly insult, by this amazing ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... many things; among the rest, about the Latriggs. There was more than one pretty girl at Up-Hill then, and the young men all knew it. Tom and his mother were always finger and thumb. He was her youngest boy, and she fretted after him all ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with the missing eye covered by a black patch, worked demoniacally in the gathering darkness with each leaping flame of the ignited torches. The hand that clutched the knife was a thing of horror; two fingers and half the thumb remained from some drunken brawl to serve the Spaniard in future play for work or debauch; and the man, crouching low over his stone, made a picture of incarnate hate that had no humor ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Mr Allen's house. It's a bit of a surprise to find an English gentleman.—Yes, gentleman, Mr Roberts: he is evidently quite a gentleman, although he is completely under that Yankee scoundrel's thumb. But what was I saying? Oh, it's rather a surprise to find an English gentleman living like this in an out-of-the-way West ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... laugh at the memory of this tragic evening, as she laughed at George's stern ultimatums, and at Junior's decision to be an engineer, and at Jinny's tiny cut thumb. But she had no sense of humor now. As she ran to the corner, and poured the whole distressful story into her husband's ears, she felt the walls of her castle in Spain ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... most dexterous manner. She had a firm idea that Berwin had, in her own emphatic phrase, "done something" for which he was wanted by the police, and was always on the look out to learn the secret of his isolated life, in order to betray him, or blackmail him, or get him in some way under her thumb. As yet she ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... the noble sculptures of the facade which the carpenters had just nailed up, freshly painted and newly repaired. This poet was stretched upon his back, eating, in that convenient posture, his dinner out of an earthen pot, plucking the viand from it, whatever it was, with his thumb and fore-finger, and dropping it piecemeal into his mouth. When the passer asked him "Where are you from?" he held a morsel in air long enough to answer "Da Lucca, signore," and then let it fall into his throat, and sank deeper into a reverie in which that crude ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... had most at heart, seemed by his calmness to dominate time and circumstances. It was as though the murderer were running away at one end of an unbreakable thread of which Don Luis held the other, and as though Don Luis could stop his flight at any time by a mere movement of his finger and thumb. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... with a profound obeisance, proffering the tart at the same time between his thumb and forefinger, "will you so far honour an entire stranger? I can answer for the quality of the pastry, having eaten two dozen and three of them ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will be the bearer of his letter to the signorina. I must see her reply. She is a good patriot; so am I; so are you. Good patriots must be prudent. I tell you, I must see her reply to this Lieutenant Pierson." Barto stuck his thumb and finger astride Luigi's shoulder and began rocking him gently, with a horrible meditative expression. "You will have to accomplish this, my Luigi. All fair excuses will be made, if you fail generally. This you must do. Keep upright while I am speaking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... zone, this," he thought. "The sooner I'm through it the better," but as his thumb sought a lever there was a blinding flash very close to him, and following on the heels of the explosion he felt his machine quiver and the front tyre burst with a report like ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... route four times a day, and there are eighty of you to be dosed each time," Smoke informed Laura Sibley. "So we've no time to fool. Will you take it or must I hold your nose?" His thumb and forefinger hovered eloquently above her. "It's vegetable, so you needn't ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... the Psalter of our Lady, in French, exhorts the devout Christian who pronounces these words in the introduction, Holy Lady, open thou my lips, &c. "to make two signs of the cross when he repeats them, one upon his lips with his thumb, and the other upon himself with his hand, as the priests do when they begin their canonical hours." This method, he assures us, will procure the devotee the honour and happiness of being canon or canoness of heaven; and our lady, to reward so conspicuous and instructive ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... and various layers and wrappers of outer garments; and having given a twitch here, and a pull there, and variously adjusted and arranged him, and kissed him heartily, she set him on the floor to collect his thoughts. Baby seemed quite used to this mode of proceeding, for he put his thumb in his mouth (as if it were quite a thing of course), and seemed soon absorbed in his own reflections, while the mother seated herself, and taking out a long stocking of mixed blue and white yarn, began to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ground his teeth, "never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!" (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) "I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage—with a stern ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... elbows with bows. The wide collar and cuffs are edged with beautiful Flemish lace points. The feather fan and the strings of pearls about the throat and wrists might form a part of any modern costume. It strikes us, however, as a very singular fashion for a lady to wear a large seal ring on the thumb. ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... been at it, but not to its detriment. S. Christopher, S. Jerome, and S. Augustine are sweetly together in a delectable country; S. Christopher (as the photograph on the opposite page shows) bearing perhaps the most charming Christ Child of all, with his thumb in his mouth. The Piombo—another company of saints—over the high altar, is a fine mellow thing with a very Giorgionesque figure of the Baptist dominating it, and a lovely Giorgionesque landscape ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the never tiresome recital, how Phronsie fell down the stairs leading from the kitchen to the "provision room" in the little brown house, with the bread-knife in her hand; and how, because she cut her thumb so that it bled dreadfully, mother decided that she could at last have a pair of shoes bought especially for her very own self; and how Deacon Brown's old horse and wagon were procured, and they all set forth, except mother, ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... back—that's him there, talkin' to the guy with the fur on his jaw," informed the barkeeper, making a gesture with his thumb. "What's your poison?" ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... past the ticket-puncher she made a vicious lunge at my out-stretched hand with an enormous pair of pincers, missing the ticket and partially amputating my thumb. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... as one who is athirst, and gluing her lips to the body of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil and began to give extreme unction. First, upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous odours; then upon the mouth that had uttered ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort and tore the glove from the base of the thumb into the palm of the hand—and tried to hide the rent. She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the fiber, is sorted into four classes—first, Binani; second, Totogna; third, Sogotan; and fourth, Cadaclan. A bundle of these is then taken up in the left hand, and, while with the right the first three sorts are inserted between the fingers, the fourth is held between the thumb and forefinger. This last description is no longer used in fine weaving, and is therefore sold with bandala. After the fine sorts have been pounded in a rice-mortar, in order to render the fiber soft and pliable, they are ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the suddenest and wildest enthusiasm; one, of solitary and anxious consideration. . . . By the way, as I was unpacking the big box I took hold of a book, and said to 'Them,'—'Now, whatever passage my thumb rests on, I shall take as having reference to my work.' It was TRISTRAM SHANDY, and opened at these words, 'What a work it is likely to turn out! Let us ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... "I hope you've forgot nothink? Miss 'Melia's gownds—have you got them—as the lady's maid was to have 'ad? I hope they'll fit you. Shut the door, Jim, you'll get no good out of 'ER," continued John, pointing with his thumb towards Miss Sharp: "a bad lot, I tell you, a bad lot," and so saying, Mr. Sedley's groom drove away. The truth is, he was attached to the lady's maid in question, and indignant that she should have been ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cases upwards for water and downwards for minerals. The motion varies according to individual temperaments: in some hands the turning is slow and but slightly felt, or scarcely perceptible by lookers-on; with others it rotates rapidly, and when held tightly by the thumb, the bark of the branch or twig often peels off; and, with very susceptible operators. I have seen the rod fly, out of the hands, or, if very tightly ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... to him. He took it, turned it over, looked at the policeman half frightened, and pointed with his fat thumb at Mackaye. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... finger breadths, finger lengths, and hand breadths as did the ancient folks who called an arm length a cubit. Nor has the span been forgotten, especially by boys in their games with marbles; the space from the end of the thumb to the end of the little finger when the hand is extended must have been an important measurement from ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... about bother, my missus says, 'I'd sooner have Catharine here, and me have tea up there with her, notwithstanding there must be a fire upstairs and I've had to send Lucy to the infirmary with a whitlow on her thumb—yes, I would, than be at a many tea-parties ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... coffin floatin' in de air in dat room—" she shivered, "and I heard a heap o' knockings. I dunno what it bees—but de sounds come in de house. I runs ev'y squeech owl away what comes close, too." Nancy clasped her hands, right thumb over left thumb, "does dat—and it goes on away—dey quits hollerin', you chokin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... then sauntered downstairs, his hands in his pockets, his heart as light as air. Unconsciously he jingled the coins. A broad smile came over his face as he drew forth a certain piece. Holding it between his thumb and ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the room and the rest clap hands and then dodge, and he fires his revolver at the point the sound seems to come from, and the object is not to get shot. You may have noticed Sasha Basmanoff has no left thumb? He lost it last year on ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... eyed him suspiciously for a long while. At last he dropped the rifle in the hollow of his arm, keeping a ready thumb ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... me—with Sedley, that I would write her funeral sermon; that it should be every word in praise of her life and conversation, that it should be all true, and yet that the diocesan should be unable to lay his thumb on Quodling, my little ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... right-hand glove—the kid gave with a little shriek, the thumb splitting out. She was in a state of acute indecision. Could she retire from this contest without endangering her authority, without loss of prestige, or must she insist? She had no real wish to hasten to her ex-pupil's bedside. She would be glad to put off doing so, glad to wait. She was ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... really an artist. Some men would have smirked with triumph, but he merely jerked a thumb ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... convicted felons to plead, as it was called, the benefit of clergy, Jonson might have been hanged for this deed. The circumstance that the poet could read and write saved him; and he received only a brand of the letter "T," for Tyburn, on his left thumb. While in jail Jonson became a Roman Catholic; but he returned to the faith of the Church of England a ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... now—an American naval vessel would turn up, with scientists and chemists on board. It was to be doubted whether anything like an overt act would be risked by that vessel. If all the governments of South America were under The Master's thumb, then cabled orders from his deputies would race three navies to the spot. And the government of the United States does not like to start war, anywhere. Certainly it would not willingly enter into a conflict with the whole southern continent for the solution ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Society; dreamed dreams of the ascending spiral whose law others had groped at, but he would be the first to formulate; caught and fondled the secret of the whole great Design; reduced it to a rule-of-thumb to do his bidding; bestrode the whole world like a ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... freshly flavorful, cool as springwater. Doak rubbed the beaded moisture with a thumb. "Pretty town," he said. "Pretty country ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... feet, no legs beneath him, he scarcely still felt young Frau Nettenmair swimming along beside him, hanging to his right fin, the most beautiful among the beautiful, just as he was the most jovial among the jovial, the thumb on the hand ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... rush; but they were still drunk from the Revolution, and their ardour soon passed. Your own people, the people of Germany, are a peaceable, home-loving people. You have always had to keep them under your thumb by forced service, by conscription, by the most rigorous laws; you have always had ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... he regards: No; 'tis mere spleen and spite to living bards. Had Greece but been as carping and as cold To new productions, what would now be old? What standard works would there have been, to come Beneath the public eye, the public thumb? ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... large kettle or saucepan, and into the water put the lye. Allow the water to come to the boiling point, and then add the corn and let it boil until the skins will slip off the grains when they are pressed between the thumb and the finger. Take from the stove, stir sufficiently to loosen the skins, and then remove them by washing the grains of corn in a coarse colander. Cover the grains with cold water and return to the fire. When the water boils, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... Cleek, jerking his thumb in the direction where Borkins had stood the night before. "I've what you calls an appointment wiv 'im, yer know. And.... 'Ere the blighter is! Good evenin', sir. Pleased ter see yer again, though lookin' a bit pale abaht the gills, if yer ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... indicating the fleeing musicians with his thumb. "Allee samee muchee flaid noisee," and then his round face ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... mysel'; it were his doing,' jerking his thumb toward Philip: 'a'm ready to stand by what a've done. Yo've getten a warrant a'll be bound, for them justices is grand at writin' when t' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... all the scores; if there is something wrong in a department the output score shows it at once, the superintendent makes inquiries and the foreman looks alive. A considerable part of the incentive to better methods is directly traceable to this simple rule-of-thumb method of rating production. The foreman need not be a cost accountant—he is no better a foreman for being one. His charges are the machines and the human beings in his department. When they are working at their best he has performed ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... better. He threatened the right flank—Captain Perry hastened men to strengthen it and then White Bird turned the left flank. The volunteers ran away, Chief Joseph grabbed the best position; now he had the soldiers under his thumb, and ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... called it. It did not follow because he was a butcher that he was to have butchering ideas for ever, or that he was to know nothing of 'literature,' as she termed it—that is, novels. Mr. Mumbles had read 'Puss in Boots,' 'Jack the Giant Killer,' 'Tom Thumb,' 'Jack and the Bean Stalk,' 'Whittington and his Cat,' and 'Mother Goose' in his childhood. In his boyhood he had gone through 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' and 'The Seven Champions of Christendom,' and therefore knew there was ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... He tossed over a package of papers that he produced from an inside pocket. "Look those over at your leisure. I think we better sue the sons of guns. Let me know what you think." He fished about in a tight-drawn waistcoat pocket with a chubby thumb and forefinger, pulled out a strip of paper, and flipped it to Keith as casually as though it were a cigarette paper. "There's a little something as a retainer," said ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... small wood faggots; and when all the wood is burnt, sweep out the oven clean and free from all ashes. Divide your dough into four-pound loaves, knead them into round shapes, making a hole at the top with your thumb, and immediately put them out of hand into the oven to bake, closing the oven-door upon them. In about two hours' time they will be thoroughly baked, and are then to be taken out of the oven, and allowed to become quite cold before they are put away ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... had read a letter addressed to Swann, he might have found words in it of another, a far more tender kind! He took a firm hold of the card, which was sliding to and fro, the envelope being too large for it and then, by moving it with his finger and thumb, brought one line after another beneath the part of the envelope where the paper was not doubled, through which alone it ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... sometimes started on a hot-bed, in thumb-pots, or on inverted turf, or sods, cut in convenient pieces; and about the last of May, if the weather is warm and pleasant, transplanted to hills in ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... therefore to give it a place. About 6 feet of the lower extremity of the large gut of the Buffaloe is the first mosel that the cook makes love to, this he holds fast at one end with the right hand, while with the forefinger and thumb of the left he gently compresses it, and discharges what he says is not good to eat, but of which in the squel we get a moderate portion; the mustle lying underneath the shoulder blade next to the back, and fillets are next saught, these are needed up very fine with a good portion of kidney ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... on the origin of the Roman numerals. Originally men counted by their fingers; thus, to mark the first four numbers they used an I, which naturally represents them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... greasy rascal," the Captain snapped at him, to add: "What do you say? A Deputy? Where?" The fellow pointed with his thumb in the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... Patricia. "You've got to! I won't let you do anything else! Now say yes right away—there's a dear!" she coaxed, pinching Polly's mouth with a thumb and forefinger, her ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... with the palm upward; the index finger pointing north. The thumb is the Mountain road; the index-finger the Telegraph road; where the thumb joins the hand is the Yellow Tavern in open fields; and ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the indication of his thumb, and noted the lighted window to which he pointed. A moment later he was gone, and as I joined Michelot, I chuckled softly ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... follies are often more calamitous than the ambition of kings; and that intolerance and bigotry have been infinitely greater curses to mankind than ignorance and error. Better any error than persecution! Better any opinion than the thumb-screw, the rack, and the stake! And he knows also how unspeakably absurd it is, for a creature to whom himself and everything around him are mysteries, to torture and slay others, because they cannot think as he does in regard to the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... took out a large pair of scissors, and, kneeling down by my father, commenced severing his long pigtail from his head. My father was too sound asleep to be roused: in a minute the tail was off, and my mother rose up, holding it, with an expression of the utmost contempt, between her finger and thumb. She then very softly laid it down by his side, and replaced the scissors in the cupboard; as I expected that she would go upstairs again, I concealed myself in the back kitchen. I was correct in my supposition. A moment afterwards I heard her ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... show the right way," said Mr. Winston, as he spoke he placed his thumb on a brass nail and the gauze door rose, instead of opening, and without any noise displayed the contents ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... the well threw the leg across the cellar, and turned swiftly to go down into the well; but the officers were too quick for him, and had him out in a twinkling. Whilst they held him, dripping upon the floor, the inspector jerked his thumb in the direction of the offending leg, and the landlord, having harpooned it with one of the pitchforks, ran with it upstairs and so into the ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... cases, that it fails to reach the ground. And in almost all the footprints of the primeval birds of the Connecticut there are only three toes exhibited. Peculiar, ill understood laws regulate the phalangal divisions of the various animals. It is a law of the human kind, for instance, that the thumb should consist of but three phalanges; while the fingers, even the smallest, consist of four. And, in the same way, it is a law generally exemplified among birds, that of the three toes which correspond to the fingers, the inner toe should be composed of three phalanges, the middle ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Gracefully she removes, without taking her eyes off the altar, the glove from her right hand, and with her thumb turns the ring of Ste-Genevieve that serves her as a rosary, moving her lips the while. Then, with downcast eyes and set lips, she loosens the fleur-de-lys-engraved clasp of her Book of Hours, and seeks out the prayers appropriate ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and adventures, most interesting of which, to Janet, was a short account of the fight of a sheriff's posse with the train-robbers intrenched near the Post Oaks, a most determined encounter in which the sheriff was among those killed while Steve Brown received only a blunted thumb, for the clumsy appearance of which his story was ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... convention. Both comments point Mr Wells' expression of what he calls in this book "the essential antagonism ... in all human affairs ... between ideas and the established method—that is to say, between ideas and the rule of thumb." And he adds: "The world I hate is the rule-of-thumb world; the thing I and my kind exist for primarily is battle with that, to annoy it, disarrange it, reconstruct it." This confession is so lucid and characteristic that I cannot ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... her buskins. We moderns, owing to our horrible system of footgear, which is hardly less absurd than the Chinese shoe, no longer know what a foot is. That of Nyssia was of a perfection rare even in Greece and antique Asia. The great toe, a little apart like the thumb of a bird, the other toes, slightly long, and all ranged in charming symmetry, the nails well shaped and brilliant as agates, the ankles well rounded and supple, the heel slightly tinted with a rosy hue—nothing was wanting to the perfection of the little member. ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... few circumstances in life that can be properly treated by rule of thumb. Good judgment is called for at every turn; and the habit of considering relative values in regard to all affairs is one that the student should constantly cultivate, no matter what ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... taken up the bag that he had invented for the noiseless filing of keys. Now he handled it as though it were a tobacco-pouch, putting in finger and thumb, and shrugging over the puzzle with a delicious face; nevertheless, he showed me a few grains of steel filing as the result of his investigations, and murmured in my ear, "These sweet police! I, for my part, could not but examine the life-preserver with which I had once smitten Raffles himself ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... sight over the line of the wood he suddenly wheeled round, and, holding his immense wings extended, dived as a rook will downwards through the air. He twisted from side to side like a coin partly spun round by the finger and thumb, as he came down, rushing through the air head first. The sound of his great vanes pressing and dividing the air was plainly audible. He looked unable to manage his descent; but at the right moment he recovered his balance, and rose a little ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... this to them," put in the cowboy who appeared to know him, and suiting act to word he placed his thumb to his nose and twiddled his finger. "Do that, Pan. That'll shore shut ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... learning. His voice was low and his manner modest—a great man who in the game of human affairs played below the limit of his abilities. McGlenn roused himself. When emphatic, he had a way of turning out his thumb and slowly hammering his knee with his fist. In his sky there was a cloud of pessimism, but the brightness of his speech threw a rainbow across it. He was a poet in the garb of a Diogenes. Many of his theories were wrong, but all were striking. Sometimes ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... leaned across the bed and lifted slightly the arm that lay there, taking the wrist between his thumb and finger. "I think we had better let Mr. Peck rest a while," he said to the company generally, "We're doing him ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... honey, if we would eat it, in a good book; and the family must be poor indeed, which, once in their lives, cannot, for, such multipliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's books out of ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... call him, in the choicest societies, by his Christian name of Maxime. I would say, 'Bon jour, Maxime; comment vas-TU?' in the Princess's hearing, and could see him bite his lips for fury and vexation. But I had him under my thumb, and her Highness too—I, poor private of Bulow's regiment. And this is a proof of what genius and perseverance can do, and should act as a warning to great people never to have ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... back blankly into the Doctor's smiling eyes for a moment, then looked long at the penknife on the floor, and finally stooped and cautiously took it between his forefinger and thumb, eyeing it doubtfully the while. Then he suddenly sat down, pulled out his pocket handkerchief, and mopped off the perspiration that freely bedewed ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Harker, "and when the scoundrel has been unmasked, you need have no fear of any future danger. In my master's chain of villainy there was a single flaw; but that flaw has broken the whole chain. The poor tool, whom he had had so long beneath his thumb, whom he had trodden under his foot remorselessly, suddenly regained his freedom—which he had bartered for the safety of ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... thumb doubtfully. She crooked it; it waggled. A pleased, interested look appeared in her tear-stained face. She sniffled ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of happy voices, spelling aloud life's first lessons, prophesied the future glory of the State. The curriculum of the old field school was the same everywhere—one Webster's blue backed, elementary spelling book, one thumb-paper, one stone-bruise, one sore toe, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... some of them most elaborate. In making them, the ground within the ceremonial hogan is evenly covered with fine brown earth, upon which the figures are drawn with fine sands and earths of many colors allowed to flow between the thumb and the first two fingers. The Navaho become so skilled in this work that they can draw a line as fine as a broad pencil mark. Many of the paintings are comparatively small, perhaps not more than four feet in diameter; ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... fellow stopped, before answering, to stuff a pipe with tobacco, punching it in with a fat thumb. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... he said in a mellifluous voice. "Ye know I was tucked up in yonder"—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder—"tendin' to the countin' of the votes, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... melted lead, took a small portion of it out, placed it in his mouth, and then gave it in a solid state to some of the company. This performance, according to his account, was also very easy; for he seized only a very small particle, which, by a tight compression between the forefinger and the thumb, became cool before it reached the mouth. At this time Mr. Smith made his appearance, and M. Chabert forthwith prepared himself for mightier undertakings. A cruse of oil was brought forward and ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... he wouldn't, I know; but he is under the thumb of that doctor; and you know how HE hates me—If you don't ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... but, said he, I do not need to ask you what your name is,—I know that you are Asa-Thor. But what have you done with my glove? He stretched out his hand and picked up his glove. Then Thor saw that the glove was the hall in which he had spent the night, and that the adjoining room was the thumb of the glove. Skrymer asked whether they would accept of his company. Thor said yes. Skrymer took and loosed his provision-sack and began to eat his breakfast; but Thor and his fellows did the same in another place. Skrymer proposed that they should lay their store of provisions together, ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... after I wrote my last letter to you, as I was whetting my scythe for the last swath of the season, my hat half fell off, and suddenly raising my hand to catch it, I thrust it against the scythe and cut my thumb just upon the joint. It has healed, but I shall never find it quite as agile as formerly. I could not use the hand—my right hand—for more than a fortnight. It was like losing a sense to lose its use. After a week of inaction in Concord, I went ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... year ago the people of Panama lived in fear under the thumb of a dictator. Today democracy is restored. Panama ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George H.W. Bush • George H.W. Bush
... and renewed the fly-catching. Dad tried to spit, and was going to say something when Mother, half-way between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass paddock was all on fire. "So it is, Dad!" said Joe, slowly but surely dragging the head off a fly with finger and thumb. ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... I been," said he to himself; "Mowgli the Wolf have I said that I am. Now Mowgli the Ape must I be before I am Mowgli the Buck. At the end I shall be Mowgli the Man. Ho!" and he slid his thumb along the eighteen-inch blade of ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... rings and their bracelets and their thumb-rings and their golden treasures were fetched to them, and their apparel, both purple and blue and black and green, yellow, vari-coloured and ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown |
