"Delicately" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... programs having a pretty, clever, or exceptionally well-designed interface. "Have you seen the spiffy {X} version of {empire} yet?" 2. Said sarcastically of a program that is perceived to have little more than a flashy interface going for it. Which meaning should be drawn depends delicately on tone of voice and context. This word was common mainstream slang during the 1940s, in a ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... on a winter's morning, when a little snow had fallen—I chanced to glance over into the court on which the mysterious window looked, and saw the beautiful foot-mark of a lady's slipper. It was scarce longer than my hand—too narrow and delicately formed for a child's foot, least of all the foot of such children as belonged to the Rue de Seine. I could not but associate the foot-track—so small, so beautiful, and so unlocked for in such scene—with the veil I had seen ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... converted into a brew-house. The oak is now of a very dark brown hue, and, being highly polished, it produces a sombre but rich effect. It is supposed to be of the era of Henry the Seventh, and when I examined it the next morning, I found it very delicately and curiously wrought. There are carved profiles of persons in the costume of the times, done with great skill; also foliage, intricate puzzles of intersecting lines, sacred devices, anagrams, and, among others, the device of a bar ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of her, and I am sure he wished she were at the very bottom of the Tiber. But on the morning after the serenade he received a note from her, which was so full of protestations of friendship and so delicately couched that he looked grave, and reflected that it was his duty to be courteous, and to answer such a call as that. She begged him earnestly to come at one o'clock; she was suffering from headache, she said, and was very weak. Had Nino loved Hedwig a whit the less ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... and came down a step and gave him her hand. He took it, nor was he the first to relinquish the hold; and a colour rose delicately in her face as she drew ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... might! But now—now that the day had come, she found no pride or pleasure in it, only a sort of shrinking. It seemed to her to be taking advantage of granny's helplessness—that she had no right. She was haunted by the sight of granny's fragile, delicate hand clasping that handle, and delicately turning over the lumps of sugar to find one ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... seen most often in the eyes of animals. A close beard concealed the mouth without disguising the grim determination of lips and jaw, and the face somehow conveyed an impression of transparency, almost of light, so delicately were the features refined away. On the fine forehead was that indefinable touch of peace that comes from identifying the mind with what is permanent in the soul, and letting the impermanent slip by without power to wound or distress; while, from his manner,—so gentle, quiet, sympathetic,—few ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... hung a receiver. To the right and left of him were two loud-speakers. Before him ranged three others. Each one of these was tuned to a certain wave length, 200, 350, 500, 600, 1200 meters. Each was modulated down until sounds came to Curlie's delicately tuned ear drums as little more than whispers. A concert was being broadcast on 350. The booming tones of a baritone had been coming in as softly and sweetly as a mother's lullaby. But now Curlie's ear ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... wrought with considerable skill in gold and silver, which they were carrying for purposes of traffic to the different places along the coast. But what most attracted his attention was the woollen cloth of which some of their dresses were made. It was of a fine texture, delicately embroidered with figures of birds and flowers, and dyed in brilliant colors. He also observed in the boat a pair of balances made to weigh the precious metals.14 His astonishment at these proofs of ingenuity and civilization, so ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... lode-stone whose delicate suspension is affected by the current magnetism, metallic veins being usually a magnetic centre. Any mass of soft iron in the position of the dipping-needle is sensibly magnetic, and a solution of continuity is thus indicated by the vibrations of the delicately poised instrument. Flaws in iron are detected with absolute certainty by this method. More probably, however, the whole procedure is pure, unadulterated humbug. In all such cases the failures are unrecorded, while the successes are noted, wondered at and published. By shooting arrows all day, even ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... the lonely strand And seeing a human footprint on the sand, Have I this day been startled, finding here, Set in brown mould and delicately clear, Spring's footprint—the first crocus of the year! O sweet invasion! Farewell solitude! Soon shall wild creatures of the field and wood Flock from all sides with much ado and stir, And make of me most ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of Butterflies and Moths: and those small parts are not onely shap'd very much like the feathers of Birds, but like those variegated with all the variety of curious bright and vivid colours imaginable; and those feathers are likewise so admirably and delicately rang'd, as to compose very fine flourishings and ornamental paintings, like Turkie and Persian Carpets, but of far more surpassing beauty, as is evident enough to the naked eye, in the painted wings of Butterflies, but much ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... seemed like a friend from Kentucky. He staid with her but three days, and when he left he bore a sadder heart than he had ever felt before. Fanny had refused him; not exultingly, as if a fresh laurel had been won only to be boasted of, but so kindly, so delicately, that Frank felt almost willing to act it all over again for the sake of once more hearing Fanny's voice, as she told him how utterly impossible it was for her ever again to love as a husband ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... that's the stuff all right, Ben," he said, "bear a hand and we'll drag it out. Only be very careful of it. It is probably a high explosive if not handled delicately." ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... valuable acquisition than all the laughter in the world amounts to, the recovery of my intercourse with you, which is to me inestimable. My benevolent and generous Cousin, when I was once asked if I wanted anything, and given delicately to understand that the inquirer was ready to supply all my occasions, I thankfully and civilly, but positively, declined the favour. I neither suffer, nor have suffered, any such inconveniences as I had not much rather endure than come ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... of that," said Arthur, when the other paused delicately. "You are quite right. He should not expose himself. As no other has done me the honor to ask my help, I am free ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... just go quietly, and send her a line when I've started. I want you to get that portmanteau off, so that I may pick it up at the station to-morrow morning. I did think I might count on you," said Bertie with heartrending pathos: delicately-shaded acting would have been wasted on Miss Bryant. "You've always been as true as steel. But it seems I was mistaken. Well, no matter. If my sister makes a scene about my going away, it can't be helped. Perhaps I was wrong to keep my little secrets from her and trust them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... of a dark and sullen sire! Whose modest form, so delicately fine, Was nursed in whirling storms, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... own recent steps in my favour, I must charge you in all friendliness with having acted too delicately towards me by not letting me know the motives of the refusal you have met with. Even now you do not state those motives plainly, for the reason apparently that you fear to wound me unnecessarily by their communication. On the ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... read, Alicia and I sitting head to head on the hall stairs. In came Schmetz the gardener, raving, gesticulating, and after him old Uncle Adam, stepping delicately, and with a placating ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Johnny, who has knocked down his ten-pins. The law of compensation and the existence of evil and consequent suffering are actual entities to him. And yet these men do not belong to the same school. The resemblance is on the surface. Emerson dabbles delicately, yet, let it be conceded, energetically, with theories: his hands are not the nervy, sinewy hands of the Viking of English literature; he lacks his keen discernment of life, his quick comprehension of the mutual relations of men and their times; ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... three hours' work had only produced some forty bodies. I looked at these relics of the new order; they were of both sexes and belonged to every condition of life, from the gruff, horny-handed worker to the delicately-nurtured young girl. A miscellaneous assortment of the goods, among other things, ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... would naturally result from differences in topography? The law is written, but in unfamiliar characters that render our reading slow and uncertain. Yet it is conspicuously noticeable that those caves showing the most delicately fragile and wonderfully varied forms of decoration are those traversed by the most sweeping and changeable, or even reversible, currents of air; which might lead to the conclusion that the moisture is sprayed or converted into a light, misty vapor, and then deposited in exactly the same manner ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... of the huge knob of his cane and the spring cover flew open. Ira took a pinch of snuff, inhaled it, closed the cover of the box, delicately brushed a few flecks of the pungent powder from his coat lapel and shirt front, and then, burying his nose in a large silk handkerchief, ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... and separable into thin, delicately colored, paper-like layers, impenetrable by water, outlasting the wood it covers. Bark of trunk and large branches chalky-white when fully exposed to the sun, lustreless, smooth or ragged-frayed, in very old forest trees ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... the arabesque would be wanting," said she, trailing a long branch of the wild grape-vine, with its pale and delicately fragrant blooms, along the snowy board. "Are the cheese-cakes a success, Mrs. McLean? I didn't dine, and am famished.—I see that you have at last heard from your cousin," she added, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... delicately brilliant old lady and the radiant young lady lived together delightfully enough, spending their winters in Paris in a pretty apartment in the rue de Rennes—shared with one Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, whose friendship with ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... cleared away, the basket of fat fuel was brought in; and one or two splinters being delicately insinuated between the sticks on the fire, a very brilliant illumination sprang out. Fleda sent a congratulatory look over to Hugh on the other side of the fireplace, as she cosily established herself on her little bench at ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... number of falsehoods were uttered, with the quietest deliberation, although, to say truth, the greater number of the men said nothing, but contented themselves with taking the infant in their big rough hands as delicately as if they thought it was a bubble, and feared that it might burst and leave nothing to be handed back to Thora, who acted the part of nurse. Others merely ventured to look at it silently with their hairy lips parted and their huge eyes gazing in ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... to remember more quickly than his mind. The shape which winged through the fog came straight to his waiting hold, tore at long-walled-away hurt with its once familiar beauty. It flew with a list; one of the delicately tinted wings was injured, had never healed straight. But the seraph nestled into the hollow of Shann's two palms and looked up at him with all ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... pale streaming fires across the waves, where the islands—a hundred, surely, rather than fifty—floated like the fairy barques of some enchanted fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crests fingered most delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards as the light faded—about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of the heavens instead of the currents of their ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... with which these two devoted themselves to the training of honeysuckle and jessamine over a trellis-work porch in that preposterously small garden, in which there was such a wealth of sweet peas, and roses, and marigolds, and mignonette, and scarlet geraniums, and delicately-coloured heliotropes, that it seemed as though they were making love in the midst of a glowing furnace. Gertie was there too, like a small female ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... natural for an Eastern woman would, in a European, have been deemed too full of coquettish straining after effect. Her dress, which was that of the women of Epirus, consisted of a pair of white satin trousers, embroidered with pink roses, displaying feet so exquisitely formed and so delicately fair, that they might well have been taken for Parian marble, had not the eye been undeceived by their movements as they constantly shifted in and out of a pair of little slippers with upturned toes, beautifully ornamented with ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... what you are going to say. 'Tain't put delicate. Can't help that. I'm a City man of business; but if it ain't put delicately it's put honest. We don't put things delicately in ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... do so. Sylvia was a born coquette, and most dangerous in that her power of attraction was natural, and as a rule she appealed to the better and more chivalrous feelings of her victims. Fragile, and delicately pretty, she looked as if she needed some one to shelter and defend her from all troubles. Bland decided that, although she rarely said anything brilliant, and he had seen more beautiful women, he had not met one who, taken all ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... ingredients. We may lay it down as a general rule, however, that our native grapes, with their strong and peculiar flavors, and their superabundance of tannin and coloring matter, will admit of much more gallizing, than the more delicately ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... a firm belief in my integrity. I was the only friend he had left in the world, and will therefore never prove myself unworthy of his confidence. At the same time he hinted that the avowals they wished him to make would not tend to the honor of the deceased. Was not that acting nobly and delicately? You may easily imagine that the prince did not renew his endeavors to shake so praiseworthy a determination. The extraordinary fidelity which he has shown towards his deceased master has procured him the unlimited confidence of his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... water, and firmly bedded on a foundation of earth and stones. So still in general was the shining sheltered round, that the branches of the mountain ash which leant against the crumbling wall, the tufts of hard fern growing among the stones, the clouds which sailed overhead, were all delicately mirrored in it. That pan was David Grieve's dearest possession, and those reflections, so magical, and so alive, had contrived for him many a half-hour of almost breathless pleasure. He had carried it off from the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reputation may well rest upon its genuine merit. Only, justice compels us to say that writing of almost equal merit, sometimes of superior, is now poured out every year, nay, every month, by adventurers of the "other sex." A female traveller has ceased to be a rara avis; delicately-nurtured women now climb Mont Blanc or penetrate into the Norwegian forests, or cross the Pacific, or traverse sandy deserts, or visit remote isles, in company with their husbands and brothers, or "unprotected." This great ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... baroness rose and walked away without any explanation at all. After a few minutes, which passed slowly in silence, Denise turned and came slowly towards Lory. The chair had never been occupied. She sat down and looked away from him. Her face, still delicately sunburnt, was flushed. Then she turned, and her eyes as they met his ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Thus delicately he sought to put aside the submission of the merchant, and, in place of the relation of master and servant, substitute one higher ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... stepped delicately to the verge of the mud, her hand firmly closed on the butt, her mouth and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... first day of our pilgrimage in Europe, we came to the headquarters of the American Red Cross in the Place de la Concorde. The five floors of a building once used for a man's club are now filled with bustling, hustling Americans. Those delicately tinted souls in Europe who are homesick for Broadway may find it in the office of the American Red Cross; but they will find lower Broadway, not the place of the bright lights. The click and clatter of typewriters punctuate ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... seeing, she laid the gilt on much thicker. Charlotte used to sit and stare, and then laugh in a way that I thought very rude; but Cecilia did not appear to mind it. When Father came into the parlour, she did so change. Oh, then she was so sweet and amiable!—so delicately attentive!—so anxious that he should be made comfortable, and have everything just as he liked it! I did think, considering that he had four daughters, she might have left that to us. To Ephraim Hebblethwaite ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... Tinker was listening to it now, as Canby discovered, after a lisping Japanese had announced him at the doorway of a cream-coloured Louis Sixteenth salon: an exquisite apartment, delicately personalized here and there by luxurious fragilities which would have done charmingly, on the stage, for a marquise's boudoir. Old Tinker, in evening dress, sat uncomfortably, sideways, upon the edge of a wicker and brocade "chaise lounge," finishing ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... Natalie's delicately-sensitive soul was to experience this rough contact of reality, and, with an internal shudder, must she bend under the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... not be easy to describe her feelings when she saw the young lady, whom she had brought delicately blue and white, like a speedwell flower, nearly as black ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... followed by such delighted exclamations when the cake came out, done to a turn, so high, so delicately brown, and with a light golden fissure breaking through the warm swell, like the furrow in a hill-side, betraying the perfect lightness and spongy perfection at the centre—altogether, the whole thing was quite a household picture, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... talked about roast chicken, and presently the little sisters were sitting up in their beds, each in her wrapper, being fed by turns with delicately-buttered slices, Mary standing between like a mother-bird feeding her young, and pleased to find the eyes grow brighter and less hollow, the cheeks less wan, the voices less thin and pipy, and a little laugh breaking out when she ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stone and scrambled to his feet. He glanced furtively at the one small window which lighted the room, then moved noiselessly to the centre of the floor and put up his right hand to the whitewashed beam that crossed the low ceiling. His fingers searched delicately for a full minute; and then he lowered his hand, holding a small square of dry wood. The beam had been skilfully hollowed at this point. From the cavity he took a small box bound in red leather—the same small box that he had found among the sheets and ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... less delicately organized than Aminta, and less impressionable, would have had no suspicion of the elegant abandon which was the foundation of this compliment. By means of her instinct, however, she had guessed that there was a kind of contempt of bon ton ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Above them were level, delicately penciled brows of bronze. The lips were coral crimson and—asleep. Sweet were those lips as ever master painter, dreaming his dream of the very soul of woman's sweetness, saw in vision and limned upon his canvas—and ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... all dispersed, Placida taking her slave with her, and on reaching her palace she said: 'You ought by rights to be scullion, but as you have been delicately brought up the change might be too great for you. I shall therefore only order you to sweep my rooms carefully, and to wash ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... steep end of the range among trees and grapevines, the wooded summit is gained, at an elevation of nearly 150 feet. Passing along the top, the woods soon disappear, and the visitor emerges on a wild waste of delicately tinted saffron, rising from the slate-colored beach in gentle undulation, and sleepily falling on the other side down to green pastures and into the cedar woods. The whole surface of this gradually undulating mountain desert is ribbed by little wavelets a few inches apart, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... came in they sat beside the fire in the oak drawing-room, and Darrow noticed how delicately her head stood out against the sombre panelling, and mused on the enjoyment there would always be in the mere fact of watching her hands as they moved about among ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... one point, nevertheless, which we may as well speak of here, and shortly; for spoken of it must be as delicately as is possible. The laugh raised at Zeal-for-the-land Busy's expense, in 'Bartholomew Fair,' turns on the Puritan dislike of seeing women's parts acted by boys. Jonson shirks the question by making poor Busy fall foul of puppets ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... which seems to have escaped the eyes of the general public, but which you suggest so delicately in your letter, Uncle Peter, will be found in the beautiful words of the ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... John's Wood, and stopped before a large mansion. A young lady sprang out; ran up the steps, and rang the bell impatiently. She was of the olive complexion, with a sharp profile: dark eyes with long lashes; narrow mouth with delicately sensuous lips; small head, feet, and hands, with long taper fingers; lithe and very slender figure moving with serpent-like grace. Oriental taste was displayed in the colors of her costume, which consisted of a white dress, close-fitting, and printed with an elaborate ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... to like a pal when they were by themselves. The ridge gave him a wide outlook to the four corners of the earth. Far to the north the Sawtooth range showed blue, the nearer mountains pansy purple where the pine trees stood, the foothills shaded delicately where canyons swept down to the gray plain. To the south was the sagebrush, a soft, gray-green carpet under the sun. The sky was blue, the clouds were handfuls of clean cotton floating lazily. Of the night's storm remained no trace save ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... he was a captain in the Militia. He was always neatly dressed; his large moustache looked as if it shared with his boots the attention of the blacking brush. No cavalry sergeant in Ballincollig had a more delicately bowed leg, nor any creature, except, perhaps, a fox-terrier interviewing a rival, a more consummate swagger. He knew every horse and groom in all the leading livery stables, and, in moments of expansion, would volunteer to name the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... to decide with which Power the bargain should be made. Policy, it might have been held, should have some influence in determining the choice, at a moment when international relations were so delicately poised. But Clarendon tells us that, strangely enough, the only question was, Who would give the highest price? Both Spain and France were eager to have the sea-port. Of the two Spain was by far the most popular in England; but she was not likely to be so ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... already there, consisted of fish, delicately baked, and coffee. The young doctor felt exceedingly odd, sitting in the cart-track of a barn and devouring these viands from a breakfast-table that was tolerably well set out with the usual number of dishes and condiments. The big double door was closed to keep out the cold wind, but ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... feet, throat, gizzard, and liver of your chickens; scald the feet by pouring boiling water over them; leave them just a minute, and pull off the outer skin and nails; they come away very readily, leaving the feet delicately white; put these with the other giblets, properly cleansed, into a small saucepan with an onion, a slice of carrot, a sprig of parsley, and a pint of water (if you have the giblets of one chicken), if of two, put a quart; ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... to be regretted you are of the weaker sex. So delicately veiled a compliment would not have ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... she exclaimed, with a waft of her jewelled riding switch towards Diana and myself, "O Sir Jervas, is it with such dreadful creatures as these that you have doomed my poor, delicately nurtured Peregrine to consort? Aye, well may you grow purple, George, and you turn your back in shame, Jervas, to behold thus the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Englishwoman of the kind you used to know at home, for example. Could she live on rancid pork, molasses, and damaged flour? You know the stuff the storekeepers supply their debtors. Would you expect a delicately brought-up girl to cook for you, and mend and wash your clothes, besides making hers? To struggle with chores that never end, and be content, ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... to support a large flat bowl not unlike the holy-water basins of modern churches. Several specimens have been found in situ, in the cemeteries of Saturninus, Alexander, Agnes, and Callixtus. They are of the same make, cut in marble so delicately as to be translucent, flat-bottomed, and very low. For what were they used? We cannot think of "holy water" in the modern sense, because in those days the faithful were wont to purify their hands, not in receptacles of stagnant ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... reassured. One angle of light fell upon the gallery. In passing, she caught a fly on the wing, and presented it delicately to a spider established in a corner of the roof. This spider was so bloated that, notwithstanding the distance, I saw it descend from round to round, then glide along a fine web, like a drop of venom, seize its prey from the hands of the old shrew, and remount rapidly. Fledermausse looked at it ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... elated by the joy of a great deliverance, wantoned in a thousand forms. Art, taste, luxury, revived. Female beauty regained its empire,—an empire strengthened by the remembrance of all the tender and all the sublime virtues which women delicately bred and reputed frivolous had displayed during the evil days. Refined manners, chivalrous sentiments, followed in the train of love. The dawn of the Arctic summer day after the Arctic winter night, the great unsealing of the waters, the awakening ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and the squalor of the city are lost, so delicately tender is the mass of buildings painted against the background ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... accepted him instantly. He took the cigar from his mouth, and delicately shook off the ash, while he considered. "The name sounds strange to me," he said. "I doubt if ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... small and deformed, she stowed herself into her trunk every night, where she slept on a canvas stretched hammock-wise from the four corners and her food was of the meagerest; nevertheless if a visitor left an offering upon her table, it was largely spent for apparatus or delicately colored silk floss, with which to pursue the fascinating experiment. Another sadly crippled old woman, the widow of a sea captain, although living almost exclusively upon malted milk tablets as affording ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... order for battle, and then sank to the earth. Light waves of air registered delicately but clearly on those wonderful eardrums of Tayoga's. Faint though the sound was, he understood it. It was the careful tread of men. Tandakora and his warriors were on the way, called by the crow. He knew when they came within a hundred yards of where he and his companions lay, and ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at breakfast when Calvin brought the boxes up to her. It was a sunshiny morning, and the Judge had gone a-fishing with Mr. Flippin. Becky, in a lace cap and a robe that was delicately blue, sat in a big chair with a low table in front ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... If a delicately made magnet is suspended as in Figure 223, and is allowed to swing freely, it will always assume a definite north and south position. The pole which points north when the needle is suspended is called the north pole and is marked N, while the ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... injuring its fragile texture, and produce a delightful murmuring sound, well adapted for lulling the insects to repose. Then is the moment for the Humming-Bird to secure them. Its long delicate bill enters the cup of the flower, and the protruded double-tubed tongue, delicately sensible, and imbued with a glutinous saliva, touches each insect in succession, and draws it from its lurking place, to be instantly swallowed. All this is done in a moment, and the bird, as it leaves the flower, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... this, what abuse had been made of a bank, established as a resource always ready, but which could not exist as such without being always delicately adjusted; and above all, kept in a state to meet the obligations it had contracted. I obtained information on this point from Law, when he came to me on Tuesday mornings; for a long time he played with me before admitting his embarrassments, and complained modestly and timidly, that the Regent ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... delicately alluded to the supposed business on which she had wished to see him, though in a tone that showed him to be rather doubtful whether ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and the envoy returned key in hand. Mrs. Stuart and Forbes undertook the guidance of Miss Bretherton, while the others started to prepare the boats. It was a hot June day, and the gray buildings, with their cool shadows, stood out delicately against a pale blue sky dappled with white cloud. Her two guides led Miss Bretherton through the quadrangle of the schools, which, fresh as it was from the hands of the restorer, rose into the air like some dainty white ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stated that in speech Barbarossa was facile. He was not only so, but he possessed a power of addressing such a man as Soliman in terms which, while delicately flattering that mighty monarch, gave him also a lead which he might follow in the future disposition of such power as ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... it. He drank, and felt better. A baby woke in a cradle on the other side of the fire, and began to cry. The girl went and took him up; and then Robert saw what she was like. Light-brown hair clustered about a delicately-coloured face and hazel eyes. Later in the harvest her cheeks would be ruddy—now they were peach-coloured. A white neck rose above a pink print jacket, called a wrapper; and the rest of her visible dress was a blue petticoat. She ended ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Alban's lips. The investigation so carefully and so delicately conducted had failed to serve any useful purpose. He had now ascertained the manner of Mr. Brown's death and the place of Mr. Brown's death—and he was as far from confirming his suspicions of ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... communication may be made most delicately, and most successfully, in writing. The more delicately you touch the feelings of your pupils, the more tender these feelings will become. Many a teacher hardens and stupefies the moral sense of his pupils, by the harsh and ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... could bring to her an unsullied past, she was, delicately, in finest woman-fashion, laying her heart open to him. She knew that he had little to offer and yet—and yet—she was—willing! Truedale knew this to be true. And then he decided he must, even at this late day, tell Lynda of the ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... themselves. Patches of snow still lingered in the hollows, but the earth was rapidly discarding its brown winter mantle, replacing it with one of living green. The gracefully drooping branches of a group of birch trees standing beside the stream were delicately filmed with green; the air was sweet with the breath of arbutus; and from a tree close beside the swollen brook drifted the six plaintive notes ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... on the flat, graveled roof, round which all the glory of the city was blazing, and hand in hand, in a confidence delicately happy now, stood worshiping ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... polished chips from the stars were ready, and men began placing them delicately on the shell. They sank into it at once and began twinkling. The planets had also been prepared, and they also went into the shell, while a mate to each was attached to the tracking mechanism. The tiny sun came last. Hanson fretted as he saw it sink into the shell, sure it would begin to melt the ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... stooping shoulders and long neck supported a splendid head for Thornton Rush. This was indeed his crowning attraction. Short silken curls of raven black clustered around it, shading a wide white forehead and delicately fashioned ear. He had a beautifully arched brow, heavily pencilled, within which a glittering black eye, too deep set, gleamed forth with unaccountable attraction. His nose was straight, small, but full of nerve. You would never guess from that handsome, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... we, as we were Russians and could not possibly dislike pleasant agreeable people whatever there might be against them, speedily did. She was charming to us. I can see her now, leaning her chin on her hands; looking at us, the colour, shell-pink, coming and going delicately in her cheek, like flame behind china. Her delicacy, her height, her slender figure, her wide childish eyes, her charmingly ugly large mouth and short nose, her black hair, the appeal of her ignorance and strength and credulity—ah! she won our hearts simply whenever she pleased! Of course we ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... to give an abstract of the contents of these fascinating volumes, for everybody is reading them. Most are probably wishing for more personal details, especially of the American life; but the editorial work is so deftly and delicately done, and "the story of an intellectual life marked by rare coherence and unity" is so well arranged to tell itself and make its impression, that we may thankfully accept what has been given us, though the desired "fulness of personal narrative" ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... of the hamlet, having arrived in (p. 316) the night, after Smith had arranged with Cadwallader and Riley the plan of attack for the morning, delicately waived interference; but reserved to himself the double task of holding the hamlet with his two regiments (South Carolina and New York Volunteers) against ten times his numbers on the side of the city, including the slopes to ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... inherited power, an inborn instinct towards the right way of making his effects, which mark him as a great master. He produced stories because it was in him to do so, as naturally and as perfectly as an apple tree produces apples. What a fine, sensitive, artistic touch it is! How easily and delicately the points are made! How clear and nervous is his style, and how free from that redundancy which disfigures so much of our English work! He pares it down to ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whole of the anterior part of the house was occupied by a vast hall, called the Ancestral Hall, because it was decorated by numberless souvenirs of his illustrious family. The walls, for a certain distance were sculptured in oak wood, so artistically designed, and so delicately wrought, that at the first glance it looked like embroidery in various colors. To produce this effect, the natural brown of the oak had been left in some places. All the rest shone with gold and silver, ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... soon to have ripened into such sincere friendship, that the aged poet selected Southerne to finish "Cleomenes," and addressed to him an epistle of condolence on the failure of "The Wives' Excuse," which, as he delicately expresses it, "was with a kind civility dismissed" from the scene. This was indeed an occasion in which even Dryden could tell, from experience, how much the sympathy of friends was necessary to soothe the injured feelings of an author. But Congreve seems ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the educated classes, the thinkers, who are pushing forward the dumb masses are doing so with their eyes open. There will be no Maribeau, no Danton to be appalled at a people's ingratitude. The men who are to-day working for revolution in Russia number among their ranks statesmen, soldiers, delicately-nurtured women, rich landowners, prosperous tradesmen, students familiar with the lessons of history. They have no misconceptions concerning the blind Monster into which they are breathing life. He will crush them, they ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... the Revolution, in which his own prowess and daring were always the conspicuous features. His pension papers were in the possession of Keeler & Whitlock, but it was three months before the money was due, and they grew very weary of having him for a customer. They tried delicately suggesting a visit to his relatives in Guilford, but Uncle Bibbins steadily refused to take the hint. Finally young Barnum enlisted the services of a journeyman hatter named Benton, and together they hit on a ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... gravity of his friend's situation, and this is why he urged the money upon him, wishing to keep up his courage, and delicately refraining from touching upon ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... austerities of forest life, Prince Matrugna tore himself from his newly-married bride to accompany Karmos. But the hardest was to be the latter's wrench from his devoted Naya. The change from a most exuberant girlish gaiety to quivering grief, and the offer of the delicately-nurtured wife to share with her lord the severities of an exile's life are often told by every wise man in Mo. Fourteen long years Karmos spent in exile with his beautiful wife as companion, until at last ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... a shocking headache. Then he knew that one or two men were roughly helping him to dress. He himself mechanically aided this work, and by-and-by found himself watching a new encounter, aware by this time that the headache was his own. He handled nose, and upper-lip, and eye delicately, and came to the conclusion that he presented a picture to the gaze of man. Then, gradually pulling himself together, he watched the business of the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... altogether approve of the damsel in her care, she had become very fond of her; but she failed to see why Jennie was so much sought after, when other girls, almost as pretty and much more eligible, were neglected. She hinted delicately to the young woman one day that perhaps her visit to England would not be, after all, ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... Stornaway, and Lake Megantic, envied Donald that easy swaggering air, that frank, perhaps defiant outlook, which the girls secretly adored. Is it the village maiden alone who confesses to a secret charm in dare-devilism? Let the social life of every garrison city answer. The delicately nurtured lady's heart throbs beneath lace and silk, and that of the village girl beneath cotton, but the character of ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... above masterpiece was made. With the Arabs outside the walls, however, and the freshly arriving country people, this politeness was not so much exhibited. There was a certain tattooed girl, with black eyes and huge silver earrings, and a chin delicately picked out with blue, who formed one of a group of women outside the great convent, whose likeness I longed to carry off;— there was a woman with a little child, with wondering eyes, drawing water at the Pool of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at Lancilly since the dinner-party, she had ceased to have any immediate fear of him. And all the brilliancy of that evening, the triumphant swing of the music, the consciousness of her own beauty, delicately heightened by her first partner's looks and words, and last, not least, the comfort he had given her about Angelot, had raised her drooping spirits so that she found it not impossible to smile and speak graciously, even ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... boy, going up to his mother, and giving her what he styled a "roystering" kiss, which she appeared to like, although she was scarcely able to bear it, being thin and delicately formed, and ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... which the pure and symmetrical lines are harmonised with admirable feeling. Every feature is made to correspond, interrelated by some secret necessary to the art of portraiture. The broad brow and the calm eyes looking upwards are in relation with the delicately chiselled nose and mouth, while the right hand, which is outstretched in giving the blessing, is rendered with infinite sentiment and grace. St. Louis, in short, deserves high commendation, as, in spite of errors, it achieves something to which Donatello seldom aspired; and it has the further interest ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... with his eyes fixed on the ground, and the tip of every finger of his right hand delicately poised against the tip of every finger of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... sweetest and most delicately flavored of our native nuts is the little, triangular beechnut. The tree is common and widely distributed, but few people know anything about the nut. In Kentucky the nuts used to be plentiful, but I have seen none in New York. It is said that a beech-tree must be fully ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... aunt was any way concerned in it was matter of more uncertain conjecture. Miss Wilmot knew that Olivia had informed her aunt of the visits she was before accustomed to make; and, as her ideas concerning sincerity were delicately strict, it was more than probable that she had disdained to conceal any of the circumstances with which she herself was acquainted. I therefore thought it almost indubitable that she had been no less frank on the present occasion than was habitual to her on others; and time afterward discovered ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... which are planned and completed in the most elegant fashion. The furniture in them is in the best taste, nothing like which is to be seen with us, and besides so clean and neat, that altogether it surpasses every description. The female sex is universally beautiful and delicately reared, and is finely dressed in the latest European fashion, particularly in India laces, white cotton and silk gauzes; not one of these women but would consider driving a double team the easiest of work. They drive ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... girl was the daintiest thing these premises, within or without, could offer for contemplation: delicately chiseled features, of Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbor of the garden; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; an expression ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Popinot delicately suggested that if I leave you here, to be reunited to your alleged parent—if I'll trust to his word of honour, that is, and walk out of the house alone, he'll give me twenty-four hours in which to ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... born with the first warm breath of the spring. All the winter they lie hidden in the crevices of the stone, in the carving of little names, and with the first spring day they stand delicately and dry their yellow wings on the little graves. There are the honeycombs of friendly bees, and the shelters of many a timid earth-born speck of life no bigger than a dewdrop, mysteriously small. Radiant pin-points of existence have their palaces ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... conversation in the most natural and easy way, by giving her the message from a former school-mate to which he had referred, coloring it so delicately, as he delivered it, that it became an innocent-looking flattery. Myrtle found herself in a rose-colored atmosphere, not from Murray Bradshaw's admiration, as it seemed, but only reflected by his mind from another ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and moulded as that of a woman. His cavalry overalls were strapped and topped with leather, and had rows of large bright buttons down the sides; double-rowelled spurs were fixed to his boots, and on a chair beside him lay a foraging-cap and a light sabre. Although his features were small and delicately chiselled, there was great daring and decision in the thin compressed lips, slightly expanded nostril, and keen grey eye; and when he smiled, which was but rarely, certain lines around his mouth gave a cruel, almost a savage expression to his otherwise agreeable physiognomy. A Navarrese by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... talking about?" said Pen, as they marched along the mountain-slope like some one of old who "went delicately," for the way was stony, and Nature had not had time to commence the promised soleing ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... assuming the majority of this associated body to be composed of reporters, because reporters, of one kind or other, compose the majority of the literary staff of almost every newspaper that is not a compilation, I would venture to remind you, if I delicately may, in the august presence of members of Parliament, how much we, the public, owe to the reporters if it were only for their skill in the two great sciences of condensation and rejection. Conceive what our sufferings, under an Imperial Parliament, however ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... while, on his side, Saint-Aignan regarded them with feelings of envy. The painter sketched rapidly; and very soon, beneath the earliest touches of the brush, there started into life, out of the gray background, the gentle, poetry-breathing face, with its soft calm eyes and delicately-tinted cheeks, enframed in the masses of hair which fell about her neck. The lovers, however, spoke but little, and looked at each other a good deal; sometimes their eyes became so languishing ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... delicately refusing the piece, but which Clara, less scrupulous, transferred to his pocket. "Thank you, cavallero! May I ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... he scanned his lighted chart once more, and cast up reckonings from the dials of his delicately ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... rest, he was very well pleased with himself: he thought himself irresistible, as indeed he was. The little German Jew, clod as he was, had made himself the chronicler and arbiter of Parisian fashion and smartness. He wrote insipid society paragraphs and articles in a delicately involved manner. He was the champion of French style, French smartness, French gallantry, French wit—Regency, red heels, Lauzun. People laughed at him: but that did not prevent his success. Those who say that in Paris ridicule kills do not know Paris: so far from dying of it, there ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... pocket a handkerchief of sheerest linen, delicately hemstitched. In one corner was embroidered a rose, in palest shades of pink and green. The delicate, elusive scent filled the room ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Goldsmith. "Were angels to write books," he remarks, "they never would write folios." But Germany gets credit for the money spent by her potentates on learned institutions; and it is perhaps England that is delicately hinted at in these words: "Had the fourth part of the immense sum above-mentioned been given in proper rewards to genius, in some neighbouring countries, it would have rendered the name of the donor immortal, and ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... accessories. My father was proud of the excellence of his table, and took all his meals in the splendid manner. His appreciation of food and wine was unsurpassed in my experience, and it had always been the greatest of pleasures for me to watch him at table, stalking across the damask and dipping delicately into the silver dishes prepared for him. He pretended to be too busy with his dinner preparations to engage me ...
— My Father, the Cat • Henry Slesar
... seventeenth century. Ne quid nimis ("Nothing superfluous") is the artist's motto. Instead of amalgamating the timbres to get a massive effect, he disengages their separate personalities, as it were, and delicately blends them without changing their individual nature. Like the impressionist painters of to-day, he paints with primary colours, but with a delicate moderation that rejects anything harsh as if it were ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... inspiring sensation to swing through Hammersmith thus aristocratically repudiating the dowdy Sunday crowd that stared in ingenuous curiosity. And there was a wonderful quality in the spectacle of the great, formidable car being actuated and controlled by the little gloved hands and delicately shod feet of ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... to fall in love with a lady, whom we will call Myrtilla, who had charms enough to engage any heart; she had all the advantages of youth and nature; a shape excellent; a most agreeable stature, not too tall, and far from low, delicately proportioned; her face a little inclined round, soft, smooth and white; her eyes were blue, a little languishing, and full of love and wit; a mouth curiously made, dimpled, and full of sweetness; ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... an opera with a play, and had chosen a box close to the stage, with the idea that one's chief object at a musical performance is to see the faces of the singers as plainly as possible! Fortunately for our ears, Bellini's lovely melodies are, for the most part, tenderly and delicately accompanied—or the orchestra ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... paper had its paragraph devoted to the one grand sensation of the day—the flight of the beautiful Duchess of Hereward with the young Russian count; and very few dealt with the deplorable case as delicately as the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... priest. She was dressed in a severely simple suit of grey, which set off to advantage her slim, graceful figure. There seemed no reason why she should have been called the little widow of Jansen, for she was not small, but she was very finely and delicately made, and the name had been but an expression of Jansen's paternal feeling for her. She had always had a good deal of fresh colour, but to-day she seemed pale, though her eyes had a strange disturbing light. It was not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with cynicism, cankered with hypocrisy recognizing no standard apart from success in action and beauty in form, so conscious of its own corruption that it produced no satirist among the many who laughed lightly at its vices, wore the external aspect of exquisite refinement, and was delicately sensitive to every discord. Those who understood the contradictions of the age most deeply were the least capable of rising above them Consequently we obtain in Machiavelli's works the ideal picture of personal character, moving to calculated ends by scientifically ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... is another wonder abroad, as I do hear tell," remarked Mistress Winter, "and 'tis certain matter the which, being taken—Agnes, thou dolt! what hast done wi' the salad?—being taken hendily [gently, delicately] off the top of ale when 'tis a-making, shall raise bread all-to [almost] as well as sour dough. I know not what folk call it.—Thou idle, gaping dizzard [fool]! and I have to ask thee yet again what is come of aught, it shall be with mine hand ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... delicately-molded head and studied the passport. The Messenger, still blushing, drew her hat firmly over her forehead and fastened a loosened braid. Presently she ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... an anecdote of Lieutenant Flixton. He is very easily roused, but soon calms again. On this hint I spoke; and in the evening of the day of the river business, as he and I were sitting together, I delicately hinted to him the amusement he had afforded to Miss Vernon in the morning. I wish you had seen him: his face grew red as scarlet, and he exclaimed, "Put a side-saddle on 'Units,' and put 'tens of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... pronounced his concluding words. The Hon. Bunning-Ford looked, thought, and looked again. He began to think that Lablache was meditating a more rascally proceeding than he had given him credit for. His words were so specious. His pie was so delicately crusted with such a tempting exterior. What was the object of this magnanimous offer? He felt he must ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... I haven't earned this," said Oakes, puffing away. He let the ash of his cigar fall delicately to the floor—another action which seemed significant to his employer. As a rule, his assistants, unless particularly pleased ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... once that she really believed it was not likely she should meet with any person, whose character and merits were equal to those of Count Altenberg, and any one inferior to him she was determined never to marry. She added a few words, as delicately as she could, upon the dread she felt of being presented in society as a young ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... caresses and Beau-Minon patted her hand delicately. After the first few happy moments had passed, Blondine cast down her eyes ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... of the privileges and distinctions of its elders is often a delicately flattering attention and the reverse of unwelcome, but sometimes the envy is not placed where the beneficiary is expecting it to be placed. Once, when Susy was seven, she sat breathlessly absorbed in watching a guest of ours adorn herself ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... to do my hair like this—instead of all the cheap rats and pompadours every other kid in town was wearing," she asserted, quite irrelevantly; then stopped with a quick, furtive glance of suspicion towards both her listeners and mouthed her way delicately back to the beginning of her sentence again. "It was he that taught me to do my hair like this," she repeated with the faintest possible suggestion ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the poor. But experience requires for its being effectually put to the best advantage, that it should be wielded by one whose judgment is sober and careful. Now, St. Antonino was known in his own day as Antonino the Counsellor; and his justly-balanced decision, his delicately-poised advice, the straightness of his insight, are noticeable in the masterly way in which he sums up all the best that earlier and contemporary writers had devised in the domain ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... up and there was appeal in her face. Again he saw how young she was, how pure the light of her eyes, how delicately moulded each feature, and surprise came, as a third emotion, to mingle with the triumph and pity, and not in ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... English girl can. She was steering for the Red Cross over the tents, and, I daresay, was nursing there. Off again, over the same country, but looking more inhabited; passed several ostrich farms, with groups of the big, graceful birds walking delicately about; also some herds of cattle, and a distant farm or two, white against the blue hill-shadows. Soon came the first visible signs of war—graves, and long lines of trenches here and there. At a stop at a shanty (can't call it a station) a man described ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... country squire's son. The grounds were exquisitely kept. Mr. Andrewes was a first-rate gardener and a fair farmer. That neatness, without which the brightest flowers will not "show themselves" (as gardeners say), did full justice to every luxuriant shrub, and set off the pale, delicately-beautiful border of snowdrops and crocuses which edged the road, and the clumps of daffodil, polyanthus, and primrose flowers dotted hither and thither. I was not surprised to hear the chorus of birds above my head, for it was one of the parson's "oddities" that he ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... colour, his plume crimson, and one fall of blew in it; the furniture to his horse being of those colours, and his device onely a cipher, which was made of all the letters of his misstrisses name, delicately composed within the compasse of one." Here is now a description of the costume women wore in Lady Mary's Greek land: "She was partly in greene too; as her upper garment, white buskins she had, the short sleeves which she wore upon her armes and came in sight from her shoulders were also white, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... he; "upon my honor." Then he was so soft and persuasive, and alluded so delicately to her plighted faith, that she felt like a poor bird caught in a ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... admitted Mr. Carlyle; "but at the risk of seeming obtuse"—his manner had become delicately chastened—"I must say that I fail to trace the inevitable connexion between Nina Brun and this particular forgery—assuming that ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... is which forms one of its chief and pleasantest features, and has, no doubt, mainly contributed to its reputation as a terrestrial paradise. To the abundance of these streams the inhabitants are indebted for the crops of waving rice which spread their delicately-green carpetting over the entire valley; the purity of the waters give to the silks the brightness of their dyes and to their shawls their fame; and from its virtues also the love-lighted eyes are supposed to derive their ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... smile in spite of himself, "I vish I vos, Spriggs; for I 've got a terrible rent here!" delicately indicating the position of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... the steel skeleton of a twenty-story office building in process of construction stood out black and bizarre. It flung up its beams and girders like stern and yet airy music, orderly, miraculously strong, and delicately powerful. From the lower stories, where masons made their music of trowel and hammer, to the top, where steam-riveters rapped out their chorus like giant locusts in a summer field, the great building lived and breathed as if all those human energies ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... eighteenth century with its coarseness, artificiality, shallowness, because it produced such men as the rather brutish Duclos, we ought to remember that this was also the century of Vauvenargues, one of the most tender, lofty, cheerful, and delicately sober of all moralists. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... a long dark iron knife, almost a short sword, from his belt, and after breathing on it, handed it hilt-first to Puck, who took it with his head on one side, as you should when you look at the works of a watch, squinted down the dark blade, and very delicately rubbed his forefinger from the point ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... ceremonious Spaniards found a remarkable dignity in his air and gestures. After the repast, one of his servants brought a handsome belt, elegantly wrought, which he presented to Columbus, with two small pieces of gold, also delicately wrought. ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... good-humour, he fenced and feinted. Almost roguishly he would laugh us off and launch the conversation into other channels, holding us—after the first few vexatiously outwitted seconds—at once enthralled and delicately rebuked. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... She was very loth indeed to acknowledge defeat. Once more her voice was deliciously soft, her forehead delicately wrinkled, her blue eyes ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to be done that night, of course, for mackerel must be delicately worked; but long before the sun arose, all Flamborough, able to put leg in front of leg, and some who could not yet do that, gathered together where the land-hold was, above the incline for the launching of the boats. Here was a medley, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... thoughtful. His whole scheme was complete, and he reviewed every point of it to make certain there was no flaw in it. He became suddenly conscious of a man walking in front of him, one of many in the street yet distinct from them all. He was slight, so slight that he seemed tall, walked delicately, something feminine about him, a weak man, perhaps, whom strong men would despise; yet heads were turned to look after him, and a second glance found something definite and determined in the delicate walk, something feline. He went forward noticing none, straight forward, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... cunning workman, in Pekin, Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase, An emperor's gift—at early morn he paints, And all day long, and, when night comes, the lamp Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands— So delicately prick'd the sign appear'd On Sohrab's arm, the sign of Rustum's seal. It was that griffin, which of old rear'd Zal, Rustum's great father, whom they left to die, A helpless babe, among the mountain-rocks; Him that kind creature ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... handy places for planting telegraph poles and for swinging wires along which thoughts travel between country and country with the velocity of lightning. We see that the world with its swarming populations is growing more and more like some great organism whereof the nerve-centres are subtly, delicately connected by sensitive nerve-tissues. Even now, using a lady's thimble, two pieces of metal, and a little acid, we can speak to a friend across the Atlantic gulf, and before ten years are over, a gentleman in London will doubtless be able to sit in his office and hear the actual ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... somewhat nervous, but Francisca might have been married every morning at eight o'clock. Behind them stood Don Roberto in a new suit of English broadcloth, and Dona Jacoba in heavy lilac silk, half covered with priceless lace. The six bridesmaids looked like a huge bouquet, in their wide delicately coloured skirts. Their dark eyes, mischievous, curious, thoughtful, flashed more brilliantly than the ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... stuff, with leaf-green belt and collar, that made her the living element of her background, and that her movements and attitudes were of the kind to display the exquisite lines of her body. She was picking delicately the pale little blossoms and letting them flutter to the ground. Her way was strewn with the frail yellow things already beginning to wither and shrivel, adding their portion of earth unto earth, to be transmuted to life unto life with the ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... and meticulous, delicately tuned the beam control. "Give me your fix, Joyce," he ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer |
