"Deftly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a grey hair from my head, To-day, as you stood near me: There's plenty more, that are deftly hid By wavy crimps,—I fear me. 'Tis many years since last I wrote, With fun, and spirits plenty; But now my fourth son has a vote, And my babe's not far from twenty. Ah! so it goes; old time strides on, Nor cares for years, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... was down once, but up again in a second. As he rose, he caught sight of Kilshaw's scornful smile, and, swearing savagely, with a sudden rush he burst the ring round him and made for the arch-enemy. Kilshaw raised his arm to shield himself, Captain Heseltine stepped forward and deftly put out his foot. Big Todd, tripped in the manner of the old football, fell heavily to the ground, striking his bullet poll ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... plyers and battledoor, elongated and shaped the neck, leaving a queer, ragged lip at the top. The decanter was then passed to Miselle's confidant, who struck off this lip with the edge of his plyers. An attendant then presented to him a lump of melted glass on the end of his pontil, and the workman, deftly twisting it round the neck of his decanter, clipped it off with a pair of scissors, and proceeded to smooth and shape it by means ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... flat on his stomach among the grasses, one hand clutching his black curls, with his dream book on a small, round stone before him—for only so can Peter compose at all, and even then he finds it hard work. He can handle a hoe more deftly than a pencil, and his spelling, even with all his frequent appeals to Cecily, is a fearful and wonderful thing. As for punctuation, he never attempts it, beyond an occasion period, jotted down whenever he happens to think of it, whether in the right ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... her little sister who had mouthed the word so deftly. "I never, Dot! What is that? It—it ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... She sat fanning him till a feeble daylight through an uncurtained window warned her to switch off the electricity. Coming back to her place, she continued to fan him, quietly and deftly, with no more than a motion of the wrist. She had the nurse's wrist, slender, flexible; the nurse's hand, strong, shapely, with practical spatulated finger-tips. After all, he was in some degree the drowning unconscious prince, and she ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Wilson had manipulated the Government of the United States with a skill that was almost uncanny. He had turned himself from a minority President into a majority President. He had so deftly outmanoeuvred all his opponents in Congress and out of Congress that they had nothing with which to console themselves except their intensive hatred of the man and all that pertained to him. Then at the very summit of his career he made ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... his right hand. It was trembling a little, as though, in fact, that hand were filled with electric currents. He closed his fingers about the butt of the gun. At once the hand became steady as a rock. He toyed with the weapon in loosely opened fingers again, and it slid deftly. It seemed impossible for it to ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... but preoccupied. She fetched the egg for Rachel, and Rachel, having deposited it in a cooking-spoon, held it over the small black saucepan of incontestably boiling water until the hand of the clock precisely covered a minute mark, whereupon she deftly slipped the egg into the saucepan; the water ceased to boil for a few seconds and then bubbled up again. And amid the heavenly frizzling of bacon and the odour of her own special coffee Rachel stood sternly watching the clock while Mrs. Tams rattled plates and did the last ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... the guest an appetite, and the host as well; and these appetites had to be appeased by something less transcendental than a feast of reason. Scarcely interrupting his engaging monologue, Mr. Burroughs went about his preparations for dinner, doing things deftly and quietly, all unconscious that there was anything peculiar in this sight to the spectator. Potatoes and onions were brought in with the earth still on them, their bed was made under the ashes, and we sat down to more talk. After a while ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... speaking softly to Mary, and then all was quiet, and the girl came out and closed the door. She deftly prepared food for Dannie, and he ate all she would allow him, and begged for more; but she firmly told him her hands were full now, and she had no one to depend on but him to watch after the turn of the night. So Dannie lay down on the cot. He had barely ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of dismay, rather deftly obscured, in all of the newspaper accounts, however. Not one of them appeared to have recovered from the surprise that had thrown all of their plans out of order. They had counted on James Marraville's death and had prepared ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... himself, sat on at the piano, his great fingers rambling deftly over the keys. He was playing Brahms now and doing it magnificently. He was fifteen stone, all bone and muscle, and looked thirty pounds heavier, because you imagined, mistakenly, that he carried a little fat. He was the richest man in the club, at least so far as prospects ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... surrendered her slender, booted foot to the Baron's palm, and was tossed deftly into the saddle. She had no realization of the thrill that went through him at the touch; he had no notion of the admiration that his dexterity roused ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... sober, even stately. But soon, either from the steep, insecure nature of the ground or from less obvious and material cause, her pace quickened until it became a run. She ran neatly, deftly, all of a piece as a boy runs, no trace of disarray or feminine floundering in her action. More than ever, indeed, did she appear a fine nymph-like creature; so that, watching her flight Tom Verity was touched alike with self-reproach and admiration. For he had succeeded in asserting himself ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... car whilst we got out. No one answered a word, and none stirred a step, except when the balloon gave a lurch, and then they got ready for a start towards the protecting hedges. At last Burnaby volunteered to drop out. This he did, deftly holding on to the car, and by degrees the intelligent bystanders approached and cautiously lent a hand. Finding that the balloon neither bit nor burned them, they swung on with hearty goodwill, and so we all got out, and Barker commenced the operation ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... the bleeding member outstretched. Now was the Irishman's time—by all his former resolutions, by the need he had for that money reward—to deftly handcuff the outlaw. What he did was to draw the other toward the daylight, examine the hand, which was torn and lacerated on the gun-hammer, and with sundry exclamations of sympathy proceed to bind it up with strips ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... so bad as that. He sat on a little low stool, and his plate was put on the floor in front of him. He would pick up his knife and fork, cut up his meat, and feed himself as deftly as possible. It ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... horizontal window. She folded her hands on her knee and looked up at Morena. She had transferred her attention completely to him. Yarnall watched them. He was an Englishman of much experience and this picture of the skillful, cultivated, handsome Jew angling deftly for the gaunt, young savage diverted him hugely. He screwed up his eyes to get a picture ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Their pretty toilet. Some had gathered flowers In fragrant wreaths, and others brought the grave Work of the morning. Yet because the wine— Sun of the South—gilds even toil, it seemed A poet's pastime. Scarlet beans they threaded Later to lie about some golden throat. Deftly they wove fine mats, and deftly twisted Bright witchery to adorn themselves, and snare Men's eyes. With little songs they pearled the air. Hush! ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... moments they talked on together, then she rose to clear the table. His eyes followed her in all her movements, for, in spite of her bruised stiffness, all that she did was done so deftly, and every movement of her beautiful form was full of the ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... Four-fifths of the poem consist of episodes, some of them very beautiful, as the tale of Nala and his wife Damayanti. These have no primary connection with the original, though they are worked in so deftly as to make the whole appear a splendid unity. For pathos, sublimity, and matchless language, no poem in the world exceeds ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the lace fell from her shoulder, disclosing her too-low cut bodice, and Cedric's quick eye saw why the screen of lace was used, and with trembling fingers caught up the lace and drew from his steenkirk a rare jewel and pinned it safe as deftly as her maid. He touched her hand with his warm red lips, saying in a voice resonant as music: "God bless thee, Kate, for thy sweet modesty!" He thought if the modish beauties in yonder rooms could boast of such perfect charm, 'twould not be hid by a fall of lace and a shoulder ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... don't try to talk while it's in your mouth. I've had patients who've bitten it in two. There—that's enough. (Extracts it deftly from patient's mouth and examines it.) Hum, hum, yes. A point below normal. Nothing violently wrong there. (He now performs the usual rites and mysteries.) I'll make you out a little prescription which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... country I caught cold and fell ill. Fortunately the fever attacked me in the district town at the inn; I sent for the doctor. In half-an-hour the district doctor appeared, a thin, dark-haired man of middle height. He prescribed me the usual sudorific, ordered a mustard-plaster to be put on, very deftly slid a five-ruble note up his sleeve, coughing drily and looking away as he did so, and then was getting up to go home, but somehow fell into talk and remained. I was exhausted with feverishness; I ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... line of Latin for them in his beloved Horace: Tibi splendet focus (For you the hearth-fire shines). Olive had painted the motto on a long narrow panel of canvas, and, giving it to Mr. Popham, stood by the fireside while he deftly fitted it into the place prepared for it. The family had feared that he would tell a good story when he found himself the centre of attraction, but he was as dumb as Peter, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... one boy or girl having so inferior a look that it does not seem possible they could have been filled from the same vines with certain others. But neither blunt fingers nor blunt eyes are hard to find; and as there are those who can see nothing clearly, so there are those who can touch nothing deftly or gently. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... his broadsword With both hands to the height, He rushed against Horatius, And smote with all his might. With shield and blade Horatius Right deftly turned the blow. The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh; It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh: The Tuscans raised a joyful cry To see the red ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... whirling up his broadsword With both hands to the height, 365 He rushed against Horatius, And smote with all his might. With shield and blade Horatius, Right deftly turned the blow. The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh: 370 It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh: The Tuscans raised a joyful cry To see the red ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... on again, and when well under way there was a rap at her door. When she opened it, the conductor said that he would make up her berth now, if it so pleased her. She stood out in the corridor while this was deftly and swiftly done. She could not restrain her curiosity regarding the mysterious occupant of Room A, and to satisfy it she walked slowly up and down the corridor, her hands behind her, passing and repassing the open door of her room, and noticing that ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... of bacon from a hook on a rafter, and with his big pocket-knife deftly cut some thin slices into a frying-pan on the smoky stove, and into the hot grease he broke some fresh eggs which he had purloined from a hen's nest in the stable-loft. He had a loaf of baker's bread, and he made some coffee of exactly the strength he liked. These ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... which obeyed orders in a mass, and went out and did deeds of which none of them taken separately would have been capable, even in their dreams. Here was a bunch of average nice Leesville boys, employees of the shops near-by, "soda-jerkers" and "counter-jumpers", clerks who had deftly fitted shoes on to the feet of pretty ladies. Now they were submitting themselves to this deforming discipline, undergoing ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... Ruthven squirmed under the light but steadily inflexible pressure of the curb which Neergard had slipped on him so deftly; he had viewed with indifference Gerald's boyish devotion to his wife, which was even too open and naive to be of interest to those who witnessed it. But he had not counted on Neergard's sudden hatred of Gerald; and the first token of that hatred fell upon ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Brahmans, whose duty it is to take care of the clothes of the people as they bathe, to put a mark on their forehead to show they have bathed, and who receive a small offering from them as they retire. All bring with them their bathing-dress, and they most deftly take off and put on their scanty clothing. When the bathing is over they wring out the clothes in which they have bathed, fill with Ganges water a small brazen vessel, which each person carries with him, and make their way into the city to pay their homage to their favourite gods before ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... seeds upon a strawberry could be stitched in afterwards in this way, for to insert them while the work is going on would be very tedious. This kind of thing must not be overdone, however, for the stitches are apt, unless very deftly treated, to have a laid-on look, and care must be taken not to mar the evenly ribbed effect, which is one of ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... more of the former than of the latter counsel. So each of them eagerly drew his wealth, whatever he had, from his pouch; they unloaded their ponies of the various goods they were carrying; and having thus cleared their money-bags, girded on their arms more deftly. They went on, and the Britons came up, but broke away after the plunder which lay spread out before them. Their king, when he beheld them too greedily busied with scrambling for the treasure, bade them "take heed not to weary with a load of riches those hands which were meant for battle, since ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... proud of your countrymen. On wild nights, when the black waves galloped down on our vessel and crashed along our decks, I have felt my heart glow as I watched the cool seamen picking up their ropes and working deftly on amid the roaring darkness. The fishers are sober, splendid men, who face death with never a tremor, and toil on usefully day after day. Come away from their broad, sane simplicity and courage, and look upon the infamous hounds who ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... He had deftly taken off his flowing cloak, his long, silvery beard and hair, and flung them together in a corner, and now he stood in the center of the room, a stalwart young fellow of thirty or thereabouts, with great Spanish eyes and profuse curling hair ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... was occasionally itself surrounded by a high wooden stockade. The inhabitants were extravagantly fond of music and dancing;[32] marriages and christenings were seasons of merriment, when the fiddles were scraped all night long, while the moccasined feet danced deftly in time ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... attempt to catch the mischievous girl, but she deftly eluded him, and laughed so heartily that the others awoke and looked wonderingly to learn ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... coal from the fire and deftly flipped it atop his pipe bowl. After a dozen deep puffs, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... that are not used in prose, or are used but seldom; as, oft, haply, inly, blithely, cheerily, deftly, felly, rifely, starkly. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Oh, no, don't you be getting it into your head that your father doesn't care for you." Mrs. Hunt made decided plunges at the yellow dough at each attack leaving behind a scalloped circle. "How I talk," she said as she deftly lifted the cookies into a pan, "but my tongue runs away with me sometimes. When do you think you'll be smart enough ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... the sofa. Was not the burlesque well conceived and deftly fashioned? True, I did not seem to myself much like Struboff. There was no comfort in that; Struboff did not seem to himself much like what he was. "Am I repulsive, am I loathsome?" he cried indignantly, and ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Flattered and deftly lulled to sleep by British influence, public opinion in the United States will not wake up until the 'yellow New England' of the Orient, nurtured and deflected from Australia by England herself, knocks at ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... virtue of necessity, Captain Jack lay down as directed, passing his hands behind his back. These were deftly secured, after which his ankles were treated in the same fashion. Immediately the mulatto, who was strong and wiry, lifted the boy and the lantern together. The dogs remaining behind, Jack was carried out into the yard, where he discovered that daylight was coming on in the ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... way by deftly folding a scrap of paper; then with a single clip of her scissors she displayed a ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... and the hook from above deftly caught the band of the feathered hat of the taller man, slowly and steadily drawing it up, entirely unperceived by the owner, on whose wig it had rested, and who was bending over the dust-traced diagram in absorbed attention. Peregrine deferred his hobgoblin laughter, for success ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sea, not far from the coast, he received a warning from a trawler that a mine exposed at low water was just ahead of him. Not in his time had he seen a steamer go astern quicker. Afterwards, they deftly fished around for the mine, snapped its mooring rope, and brought it to the surface. When the mine was at a safe distance from all vessels, a couple of men then aimed their rifles at it until there was a loud explosion ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... deftly recovering his glasses, emptied the pockets. They yielded up nothing of the slightest consequence to either of us, and in a moment Dr. De Breen hesitated and frowned ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... had accompanied them from the fields approached with the harness and collar that had been taken from the dead body that the head had formerly topped. The new body now appropriated these and the hands deftly adjusted them. The creature was now as good as before Tara of Helium had struck down its former body with her slim blade. But there was a difference. Before it had been male—now it was female. ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... directly I wake I remember it is my day for being with you. I can hardly be patient with breakfast, and the time it takes to get done with those thick cups of coffee that are so thick that, however deftly I drink, drops always trickle down what would be my beard if I had one. And I choke over the rolls, and I spill things in my hurry to run away and talk to you. I got another letter from you yesterday, ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... the charming "Emma" had a winsome habit of doing, we are told that "she would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart, she would sometimes forget them." At a creole watering place, which is admirably and deftly sketched by Miss Chopin, "Edna" met "Robert Lebrun," son of the landlady, who dreamed of a fortune awaiting him in Mexico while he occupied a petty clerical position in New Orleans. "Robert" made it his business to be ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Indian women are the sole laborers employed in these cleaning houses. First, the coffee beans are separated from the dry empty husks by tossing the whole into the air from bamboo trays, the workers deftly permitting the husks to fly off while the beans are caught again in the tray. The beans are then surface-cleaned by passing them gently between two very primitive grindstones worked by men. A third process is the complete clearing of the bean from the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... poured out upon the metal top of the table, where it spread itself like a small, irregular pond. At once the workman in charge took up a steel bar not unlike a metal yardstick and began pressing down the mass to a uniform thickness. This done he ran the bar deftly beneath and turned the vast piece over just as one would flop over some gigantic griddle-cake. He continued to change it from side to side, pressing it down in any spot where it was too thick, but never once touching it with his hands. He then cut off a long narrow strip ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... swayed the savagery of hot blood Raying from her whole body beautiful, She held the eyes and wills of all the crowd. Then from the numbed hand of him that cut, The knife dropped down, and the quick fool stole in And snatched and deftly severed all the withes Unseen, and Jacques burst forth into the crowd, And then the mass completed the long breath They had forgot to draw, and surged upon The centre where the maiden stood with sound Of multitudes of blessings, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... said a voice, "if you'll give me a rope." In a moment more a deftly thrown lasso quivered in the air, and falling over Paul encircled his waist; then, by the aid of planks thrown across the margin, long, strong arms soon dragged him into safety, and he lay trembling, but safe, on solid ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... left out of the day, and winter out of the year. Americans have fretted a little because their "Grand Army" could not advance through mud that came up to the horses' shoulders, and in which even the seven-league boots would have stuck, though they had been worn as deftly as Ariel could have worn them. They talked as if no such thing had ever before been known to stay the march of armies; whereas all military operations have, to a greater or a lesser extent, depended for their issue upon the softening or the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... sloth her strength despoil: Her peaceful farmers till, With patient thrift, th' outlying soil, Her trained mechanics deftly toil, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... only that now it tickled the public in the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to give a little shiver of pleasure. Nana still smiled her smile: it lit up her little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were of the clearest blue. When she came to certain rather lively verses a delicate sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... represent a single dollar of honest toil or one trace of benefit to mankind. "The sugar trust," declared the senator, "has its 'long, felonious fingers' at this moment in every man's pocket in the United States, deftly extracting with the same audacity the pennies from the pockets of the poor and the dollars from the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... direction; for Desiree, though she was still a mere girl, was endowed with exquisite taste, with a fairy-like power of invention, and no one could, insert two pearl eyes in those tiny heads or spread their lifeless wings so deftly as she. Happy or unhappy, Desiree always worked with the same energy. From dawn until well into the night the table was covered with work. At the last ray of daylight, when the factory bells were ringing in all the neighboring ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... their mouths and with dexterity blow water over their hands in spray and wash their faces and lave their long shining heads of hair; and the women dress one another's locks. With bowls of water they make suds of the yucca plant, and wash and comb and deftly roll their hair, the elder women in great coils at the back of the head, the younger women in flat coils on their cheeks. And so the days are passed and the weeks go by, and we study the language of the people and record many hundreds ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... the window of a railway train, the February fields and woods seem dead and dreary. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Every twig is lined with living buds, carefully covered with scales. Inside those scales are leaves and blossoms deftly packed, as only Mother Nature could pack them. Split one down the middle and examine it with your lens. You will see the little tender leaves, and often the blossoms, ready to break out in beauty when the warm days ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... limousine coming around McPherson Square. Not waiting to see what had become of her companion, Barbara started up the sidewalk intent on catching their chauffeur's attention. As she stood by the curb, a figure brushed by her and a paper was deftly ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... here," declared Hippy with emphasis. "I should like to have her tell that bronco what my opinion of him is and hear what he says in reply," added Lieutenant Wingate, flipping a biscuit, which Hindenburg deftly caught and gulped down at a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... of the Dhah whom we had first seen, one of the others deftly threw upwards a long coil of the climbing plant, which, on reaching a part of the trunk of one of the palm trees some distance above his head, twined round the stem. The rope-like plant was then fastened ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... truth of himself; at any rate, to tell no untruth against himself. We think that Cicero of all men may be left to do so—Cicero, who so well understood the use of words, and could use them in his own defence so deftly. I maintain that it has been that very deftness which has done him all the harm. Not one of those letters of the last years would have been written as it is now had Cicero thought, when writing it, that from it would his conduct have been judged after two thousand years. "No," will ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... house, new fittings for his store, an increased advertising appropriation, a new insurance policy, a trip to California and return, and goodness only knows how many other objects of desire. It is no wonder he hesitates and that he must be very skilfully and deftly brought ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... please—remember that I didn't come with you because I wanted to, but because I had to! Please!" For Pachuca's arm had slid itself deftly around her and was drawing her toward him, gently, but with an exceeding firmness, while the dancing dark eyes continued to laugh into hers. ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... deftly sought the little balls they had received from the Wosakidi, slipped them into their mouths, and began puffing. When the first pipefuls were finished they laid the pipes on the floor and picked up the other two, showing no sign ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... Pan?"—which is yet "a harmless necessary and I will add a comforting article of domestic furniture." Observe necessary, as though every family had it as an article of their "domestic furniture." It is odd to think of Mary going round all the beds in the house, and deftly introducing this "article" between the sheets. Or was it only for the old people: or in chilly weather merely? On these points we must be unsatisfied. The practice, however, points to a certain effeminacy—the average person of ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... Audrey had deftly changed the subject after Mrs. Blake's remonstrance; but as she talked she still held Mollie's hand. She felt very happy to be sitting in that pretty shady drawing-room again, watching the pigeons fluttering among the old arches. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... presence of strangers. But both reflected that Alora's life and environments were unenviable and that she had lacked, in these later years at least, the careful training due one in her station in society. So they deftly changed the subject and led the girl to speak of Italy and its delightful scenery and romantic history. Alora knew little of the country outside of the Sorrento peninsula, but her appreciation of nature was artistic and innately ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... approximates the idiom of the Russian folk-song, or communicates certain qualities—an Oriental sweetness, a barbaric lassitude and abandon—admittedly racial. His music is full of elements—wild and headlong rhythms, exotic modes—abstracted from the popular and liturgical chants or deftly molded upon them. For there was always within him the idea of creating an art, particularly an operatic art, that would be as Russian as Wagner's, for instance, is German. The texts of his operas are adopted from Russian history and folklore, and he continually attempted to find ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... hiding, so thank your stars for it. Let the Kaffir see to it that he insults no more English ladies, or he shall pay for every word with an inch of skin. Now put up your leg." Saxham whipped out the splinter with a little pair of tweezers, deftly cleansed and dressed the wound, bandaged it, and, dismissing Rasu the Sweeper with a caution, was coming across to the Reverend Mother when a chorus of cries and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... meddlesome notes, but truly explanatory ones, genuine aids to enjoyment. Lamb needs notes, and yet the task of adding them to a structure so fine and of such nicely studied proportions is a difficult one; it is like building a tool-house against La Sainte Chapelle. Deftly has Mr. Ainger inserted his notes, and capital reading do they make; they tell us all we ought to want to know. He is no true lover of Elia who does not care to know who the 'Distant Correspondent' was. And Barbara S—-. 'It was not much that Barbara had to claim.' No, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... my own age came from somewhere, as if by magic, and was told by the good mother to prepare a chicken, that she might make broth for the sick young man, pointing to where I lay. For two hours that good mother worked over me, now and then giving me draughts of hot herb tea, while the daughter deftly prepared nature's wild bird of the prairie, occasionally shooting darts of sympathy from her jet black eyes. When the bird had been cooked, the meat and bones were removed leaving only the broth which was seasoned to a nicety and given me in small quantities and at short intervals until early ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... all over with the hands, deftly patting it with a small piece of smooth flat board to reduce any lumps, and to get the putty to work evenly over the surface. Get some short wires and set the head, with the mouth open as much as you require. One wire may be pushed through the nostril, another may go under the tongue, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... only long enough to fix the blanket upon which Smithy had been lying, so that it would look like a human form reclining there. This he did by causing the middle to remain poked up a foot or so in the air, by deftly crunching the folds ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... La Fosseuse deftly stirred the fire of dry branches and turfs of peat, then sat down in an armchair and took up one of the shirts that she had begun. She sat there under the officer's eyes, half bashful, afraid to ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... shoulder for Miss Stafford to pass the stem through the lapel of his coat. Isabel had not intended to pin it in for him, but she was generally willing to do what was expected of her. She took a pin from her own dress (there were plenty in it), and fastened the flower deftly on the breast ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... think of these yer herrings?"—three in his hand, while the remaining stock are deftly balanced in the basket on his head. "Don't you think they're good?" and he offered me the opportunity of testing them by scent, which I courteously but firmly declined, "and don't you ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... waited until the ship was on an even keel, then walked to the top of the companion-way, and, deftly catching up the train of her dress with as much composure as if she were in a ballroom, stepped lightly down the stairway. Looking smilingly over her shoulder at the astonished baseball catcher, ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance,—advance and retire, turn your partner, bow and courtesy, cockscrew, thread the needle, and back again to your place,—Fezziwig "cut,"—cut so deftly, that he appeared to ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... and glanced involuntarily at Arthur who was steering the launch. For a moment she hesitated about going on, and glanced again at Arthur. The look seemed to inspire her, for she said nothing, and presently he brought the boat deftly alongside the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... lady has no taste for you," the tormentor cried. "Pig of a Gascon!" And deftly sheathing his dagger, he seized the big coward by the ear, and turning him round, gave him a heavy kick which sent him spinning over a bucket, and down against the wall. There the bully remained, swearing and rubbing himself by turns; while the victor cried boastfully, ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... expectations. As soon as the ship was clear of the Channel and fairly at sea, her father began the course of instruction he intended to pursue during the voyage. Mr Jacob Shobbrok the mate, and Nub, delighted to impart such feminine accomplishments as they possessed; and it amused her to see how deftly their strong hands plied ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... would come when the carcass was dressed and lights and other portions thrown to the dogs; then the carancho would swoop down like a kite, and snatching up the meat with his beak would rise to a height of twenty or thirty yards in the air, and dropping his prize would deftly catch it again in his claws and soar away to feed on it at leisure. I was never tired of admiring this feat of the carancho, which is, I believe, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Mademoiselle was deftly opening the girl's dressing case, but she paused now and turned. It was to Grace that she ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... deftly, clinging like a squirrel to the pendant wistaria, he let himself down into the ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... bewitching guardian of an ill-humoured, nervous, thankless patient. How lovingly she tucked me up on the couch by the fireside; how unweariedly she sought to amuse me with her sprightly wit; how nimbly her feet went and came; how deftly and readily her hands ministered; I could never tell you half of it, my dears! If her face fell into anxious lines while my eyes were closed, no sooner did I seem to wake to consciousness again than the sunshine and the archness beamed out. Once or twice ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... The operation was deftly though breathlessly performed, and all it brought from Raymond was a sleepy: "Aw—lemme sleep," and then he ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... less of a cowboy by Jack's straw hat, Harold went forth on a trail whose course was not well-defined in his mind, though now that Jack had arranged details so deftly that Mary was not in danger of being put to shame, his native courage and resolution came back to him. In the full springtide of his powerful manhood Mary's name and face had come at last to stand for everything worth having in the world, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... truth in what the old man said, and his bark was worse than his bite. If his own boy, Pat, took it into his head to go off on some scatter-brain prank when he came of age, it would be a big trouble, or if later on he came a cropper in business— Jack waited for a convenient pause, and then deftly turned the conversation to politics, and by the time that cheese was on the table, he and his father-in-law were discussing the mysteries of the last Education Bill with the satisfaction of men who hold similar views on the inanities of the ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to sideboard, from sideboard to china closet, flitted Pocahontas Mason setting the table for breakfast. Deftly she laid out the pretty mats on the shining mahogany, arranged the old-fashioned blue cups and saucers, and placed the plates and napkins. She sang at her work in a low, clear voice, more sweet than powerful, and all that her hands found ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... books we have ever received from our old friend A. L. O. E.... The pen-portraits in the book are deftly drawn."—Christian Leader. ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... not likely to realize on your first introduction to a potato joust the amount of skill and practice required to really become expert in handling the fork. A slight turn of the wrist, a quick push and the practised knight will defeat the novice so deftly, so easily ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... Star I beheld the packing-cases brought up from the hold, and my new purchase with all its parts and appurtenances loaded in a ship's boat, with the iron box that held my gold. So I arrived in Atuona for the second time, high astride the sewed-up mattress on top of the metal parts, and so deftly did the Tahitians handle the oars that, though we rode the surf right up to the creeping jungle flowers that met the tide on Atuona beach, I was not ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and the stock of water so singularly obtained and so deftly stored away, might, if properly kept and carefully used, last them for many days; and to the preservation of these stores the thoughts of the sailor and his young ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid |
