"Keen-eyed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their visitors were two keen-eyed men. The evidence of their calling lay in the stars that decorated their left breasts. Both looked as though they could hold their own against odds. And of course they were armed as became their ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... Society for Scientific Research. In a room of the biological department there, the precious fragment of golden quartz lies guarded. A microscope is over it, and there is never a moment of the day or night without an alert, keen-eyed watcher peering down. ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... on our ceaseless vigil, our * * * * * Remarks.—(7.30 P.M.).—Another day has passed, another day's duty has been done. Nothing apparently has happened outside the ordinary routine of the ship. One keen-eyed young officer has succeeded another on the bridge, with tired lines on a face grey beneath the great brown hood of his duffle—a face so youthful, yet with the knowledge of the command of men writ plain thereon. The propellers have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... Kollander's advice. But Amos could not abide the presence much less the counsel of the professional patriot, with his insistent blue uniform and brass buttons. Under an elaborate pretense of independence, John Kollander was a limber-kneed time-server, always keen-eyed for the crumbs of Dives' table; odd jobs in receiverships, odd jobs in lawsuits for Daniel Sands—as, for instance, furnishing unexpected witnesses to prove improbable contentions—odd jobs in his church, odd jobs in his party ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... English, and a scion of a somewhat distinguished family in the old country, but while he told nobody why he left it suddenly, nobody thought of asking him. He was known to be a bold rider and careful of his beast, and that was sufficient for his comrades and the keen-eyed Sergeant Stimson. He glanced at his companion thoughtfully as he said, "She was a pretty girl. ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... unvarying regularity. They remain in the smooth waters of lagoons for about two weeks, swimming about in incredible numbers, and apparently so terrified of their many enemies in their own element, and the savage, keen-eyed frigate birds which constantly assail them from above, that they sometimes crowd into small pools on the inner reef, and when the tide is low, seek to hide themselves by lying in thick masses under the overhanging ledges of coral rock. Simultaneously—or at least within a ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... could have been left safely to them. As it was, they had been given no alternative, and Miss Norris, who had proposed to catch an after-dinner train at the junction, in the obvious hope that she might have in this way a dramatic cross-examination at the hands of some keen-eyed detective, was encouraged tactfully, but quite firmly, to travel by the earlier train with the others. Antony had felt that Cayley, in the tragedy which had suddenly befallen the house, ought to have been equally indifferent to her presence or absence. But he was ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... watched with keen-eyed interest to see if her aunt would take any steps to have Aun' Jinkey's cabin searched. Her mind was soon relieved on this score, for she became convinced that her uncle was distracted by various anxieties; while Mrs. Baron, from force of habit and with the ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... a different proposition now; and these keen-eyed men were not apt to be hoodwinked so easily as ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... that Fitzgerald's trial for murder would cause a great sensation throughout Australia and New Zealand, he determined to take advantage of it as another step in the ladder which led to fame, wealth, and position. So this tall, keen-eyed man, with the clean shaven face and expressive mouth, advanced into the cell, and took Brian by ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... having little need for such treasure up there, he said, to buy them holy help against their ill. I figure this dim-eyed young mountaineer, sunburnt, gaunt, and anxious, hat brim clutched feverishly, a man all unused to the ways of the lower world, telling this story to some keen-eyed, attentive priest before the great convulsion; I can picture him presently seeking to return with pious and infallible remedies against that trouble, and the infinite dismay with which he must have faced the tumbled vastness where the gorge had once come out. But the rest of his story of mischances ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... all keen-eyed men, you are short-sighted. I have something more to tell you. The people at the Pack Horse say that Paul slept at their house last Wednesday night. Now I know that ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... THE WEAK among her sex. Her vanity led her to believe that she was strong; and the approaches of the sapper were conducted with too much caution, with a progress too stealthy and insensible, to startle the ear or attract the eye of the unobservant, yet keen-eyed guardian of her citadel. An eagle perched upon a rock, with wing outspread for flight, and an eye fixed upon the rolling clouds through which it means to dart, is thus heedless of the coiled serpent ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... friend is as keen-eyed, as level-headed as any woman I know—the last person in the world to be taken for a 'sensitive.' I had never suspected it in her; but one night she laughingly admitted having been 'in the work' at one time, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... the keen-eyed and keen-eared Red man said. There were the rancher and his party camped on the other side, in all innocence of the Indians who, unseen, were stringing over the plateau. There was no time to ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... not the ultimate fate of the friends he has been torn away from. The adventurous boy knows he will be missed at daybreak. The camp will be on the alert to meet the enemy. Their keen-eyed scouts can read the story of his being lassoed and carried away from the traces of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... from injury. Local archaeological societies should come and read papers in it. Clergymen, wishing to combine a little instruction with the pleasures of a school-feast, should arrive with van-loads of cheering boys and girls, a troop of ardent teachers, many calico flags and a brass band. Artists, keen-eyed and picturesque, each with his good-humored air of possessing the place so much more truly than any mere country gentleman ever could, should come to gaze and sketch. Meanwhile, Thorne should remark about twice a week that of course he could pull the whole thing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... to his "bears" and "monkeys." Where poverty ceases, avarice begins. From the day when Sechard first caught a glimpse of the possibility of making a fortune, a growing covetousness developed and sharpened in him a certain practical faculty for business—greedy, suspicious, and keen-eyed. He carried on his craft in disdain of theory. In course of time he had learned to estimate at a glance the cost of printing per page or per sheet in every kind of type. He proved to unlettered customers that large type costs more to move; or, if small type was under discussion, that it was more ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... dared not loose my eye-grip on the colonel, to glance aside at Falconnet, or Gilbert Stair, or at the woman close beside me. If I had flinched or wavered, or let an eyelid droop but by the thickness of a hair, this keen-eyed colonel would have been upon me to cut the ground beneath my feet and leave me dangling by ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Ethiopian and Egyptian kings; upon Greek, and Roman; upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors; upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern Empire; upon battle and pestilence; upon the ceaseless misery of the Egyptian race; upon keen-eyed travellers—Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton to-day: upon all and more, this unworldly Sphinx has watched, and watched like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishman, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... many more partridges were it not for the rooks and magpies. Hedges wherein the birds can hide their nests are few and far between in the wall country, so the keen-eyed rook spies out many a nest in the spring of the year. For this reason and because they eat the corn, the farmers hate them. We cannot share their feelings. We should be sorry to see the old rookery in the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... the men their "Star-Child:" "Peerless soldier, keen-eyed king! From the girl he weds shall heroes Worthy war-god's lineage spring. Know ye not how old enchantment Saw his storm-born sire appear, Armed, upon a peak dark-lifted O'er the snows and glaciers drear? His the darts divine, whose breaking Thrice hath some ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... was a keen-eyed, long-nosed old gentleman, with many times the spirit of his son. He had been accustomed all his life to getting his own way, except with his wife. Even at Castle Raincy he had known how to cow the gentle mother of Louis Raincy, though something dangerous in the boy's ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... rapidly along the trail to the mountain, keeping as much as possible within the great shadows cast by the towering peaks. Not a sound met her acute listening as she pressed on—not a living thing seemed to move anywhere in the whole great Gap, except this slender-footed, keen-eyed girl, whose heart beat with apprehension of wiles, stratagems, and ambush concerning the venture she ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... constantly together in those October days. I do not think it would have been so but for the fact that Mr. Floyd wrote daily concise and peremptory orders that Helen was to be out of doors from morning till night, and that Dr. Sharpe, a brisk, keen-eyed old gentleman, came every morning at breakfast-time to feel the little girl's pulse, order her meals and command Mr. Raymond to let her have all the play she could get before the cold ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... thing that had been drilled into them perhaps more than anything else was the necessity for "playing dead," as Tom expressed it. One of their exercises compelled them to lie on the ground absolutely motionless for an hour. Not even a muscle could twitch without bringing a reprimand from their keen-eyed instructor. Another part of the drill made them take half an hour merely to rise to their feet from a prostrate position, each move in the process being marked by the utmost caution. It was hard drill, but necessary, and in time the ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... erratic scrawl of fleurs-de-lis—on the easy sand. Halting on the verge of the water, it furtively picks up crabs as if it were a trespasser, conscious of a shameful or wicked deed and fearful of detection. It is not night nor yet quite day, but this keen-eyed, suspicious bird knows all the permanent features of the sand-spit. The crouching, unaccustomed shape bewilders it; it pipes inquiringly, stops, starts with quick, agitated steps, snatches a crab—a ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... of a very rich man's house—then he and his companions were ushered into a large room, half study, half library, wherein, at a massive, handsomely carved desk, littered with books and papers, sat a middle-aged, keen-eyed man, who looked quietly up from his ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... by a signal from the other vessel, and a keen-eyed sailor wig-wagged back an answer. It was all right, although at first I still remembered the timely warning regarding the slightly submerged mine. As a matter of fact, it was merely a desire of the ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... as could not bear arms lay prostrate in prayer, Anianus, hopeful to the last, sent his messenger to the ramparts to look for the banners of the Roman army. Far and wide, from his lofty outlook, the keen-eyed sentinel surveyed the surrounding country. In vain he looked. No moving object was visible, only the line of the forest and the far-off bordering horizon. He ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... wreck, or the object they saw lay, was the outer part of the Goodwin Sands towards the north, and was quite eight miles distant from the keen-eyed watchers ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... handsome morning's work of it put him into spirits, and he let me into some of the secrets of high life, with the air of a looker-on who sees the whole game, and intends to pocket the stakes of the fools on both sides. "Money, Mr Marston," said my hook-nosed and keen-eyed enlightener, "is the true business of man. It is philosophy, science, and patriotism in one; or, at least, without it the whole three are of but little service. Your philosopher dies in a garret, your man of science hawks telescopes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... mean betraying their position to the enemy, and it was their chief opportunity to succeed that they were not known to Willis and the others to be in the place at all. The strikers would be on the lookout for regular watchmen, not for keen-eyed boys. ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... long-anticipated holiday. Moved by a common impulse, they all went out on deck to witness the ruins under the effect of sunrise previous to their plunge into the matutinal bath; and it was whilst they were admiring the exquisite beauty of the scene that the keen-eyed colonel became conscious of the fact that they were beleaguered by a ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... land, and then receded to its channel, and poured its ancient flood still downward to the sea; worshipped, or desecrated; threaded by black Nubian boatmen, who mocked its sacred name with such savage mirth as satyrs might have spirted from their hairy lips; navigated by keen-eyed Arabs, lithe and dark and treacherous as the river beneath them; Coptic shepherds, lingering on the brink, drank the sweet waters, and led their flocks to drink at the shallows, when the shepherd's star cleft that deepest sky with its crest, and warned the simple ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... passport was examined, and I was invited into an office where sat the papal custom-house officer, a thin, subtle-looking, keen-eyed, sallow personage, of aspect very suitable to be the agent of a government of priests. I communicated to him my wish to pass the custom-house without giving the officers the trouble of examining my luggage. He inquired whether I had any dutiable articles, and wrote for my signature a declaration ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hen was weighed in the fraudulent scales and beat Mr. Quarles' by a half pound, the clergyman's being really a pound and a half the heavier. The plot would have been a success but for the keen-eyed Quincy who examined the scales and ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... why he did so, he crept down the slope, feeling his way among the stumps, and stooping low, lest his white shirt, wet and clinging limply to his body, might betray him to some keen-eyed marksman. Presently one of the old root-hedges, common to the countryside, barred his path—a queer, twisted line of long, gray tentacles that had once sucked sustenance from the soil, but now reached up idly into a barren element, where the wild grape was covering ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... campstool inside the tent where the boys slept, Dave found a keen-eyed, hatchet-faced man. He sat stiff as a poker, and seemed to pierce Dave through and through with his glance as he looked him ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... Pretty gals leaning forward eager-eyed, lips parted, with an air of piquing rendezvous to the parasols clutched in their dainty hands. Plump, heavy-jowled dandies reclining like tailored paladins in the leather cushions. Keen-eyed youths surrounded with heaps of bags and cases on a carefully linened quest. Nervous old women, mysteriously ragged creatures, rakish silk hats, bundles of children with staring fingers, strangely ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... member of the fraternity as The Hopper—begins to mistrust himself. For the greater part of his life, when not in durance vile, The Hopper had been in hiding, and the state or condition of being a fugitive, hunted by keen-eyed agents of justice, is not, from all accounts, an enviable one. His latest experience of involuntary servitude had been under the auspices of the State of Oregon, for a trifling indiscretion in the way ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... than usual Paul closed his stand, and walked across the City Hall Park and up Chatham street to a store he had frequently seen. Like most of its class, it had a large portion of its stock displayed outside, where the proprietor stood, keen-eyed and watchful, on ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... that a prowling wolf should dare so near. He drew his knife and pressed on, more hastily, more keen-eyed. Oh that Tyr ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... off; he couldn't. The cause for his staying on was revealed when Mittie May took the first of those mental hazards of hers. As she rose grandly into space to clear the imagined top-rail of the imagined panel and with hind heels drawn well in under her, descended and continued on her circling way, a keen-eyed spectator, all bent double though he was, alongside the ring, and beating himself in the short ribs, caught a flashing glimpse of a strong but narrow strap which bound the rider's ankles to the saddle-girth and which, through the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... keen-eyed little Italian; his movements were quick, decisive, and all to the point of action. The first thing he did was to scatter the little group of servants right and left, and send them about their business. The next, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... while she was dancing the second extra with the first comer at four o'clock the next morning, Guy Oscard was racing out of Plymouth Sound into the teeth of a fine, driving rain. On the bridge of the trembling tug-boat, by Oscard's side, stood a keen-eyed Channel pilot, who knew the tracks of the steamers up and down Channel as a gamekeeper knows the hare-tracks across a stubble-field. Moreover, the tug-boat caught the big steamer pounding down into the grey of the Atlantic Ocean, and in due time Guy Oscard landed on ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Sidney could no longer take Clara upon his knee and stroke her brown hair and joke with her about her fits of good and ill humour. Sidney knew well enough what was in his friend's mind, and, though with no sense of constraint, he felt that this handsome, keen-eyed, capricious girl was destined to be his wife. He liked Clara; she always attracted him and interested him; but her faults were too obvious to escape any eye, and the older she grew, the more was he ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... to a big farm. He knew it must be big, because of the bigness of the house and the size and number of the barns and outbuildings. On the porch, in shirt sleeves, smoking a cigar, keen-eyed and middle-aged, ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... the glasses. "I could almost believe that he remembers the Time- travellers," she said to herself. But if he did he gave no further sign of it, nor could the children see much trace of the boy Hugh in this keen-eyed, white-haired, ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... against a battleship or cruiser was to lurk along some lane which the big surface craft was known to be following, and strike her quickly in the dark. Within effective torpedo range a periscope, day or night, is visible to keen-eyed watchers, and all told not a dozen British and American sea fighters, of whatever class, were sunk as ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... that half of these had been turned adrift when the Peace of Amiens laid their ships up in the Hamoaze or Portsdown creek, you will understand that London, as well as the dockyard towns, was full of seafarers. You could not walk the streets without catching sight of the gipsy-faced, keen-eyed men whose plain clothes told of their thin purses as plainly as their listless air showed their weariness of a life of forced and unaccustomed inaction. Amid the dark streets and brick houses there was something out of place in their ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the door, and there stood the keen-eyed, angry-visaged Zaphnath! How long had he been listening outside there? How much had he stealthily overheard before he began knocking? All the Kemish had need to speak doubly loud to us from Earth, for our ears were not made for thin air and its weak sounds. Moreover, Hotep had spoken throughout with ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... all safe! Come forth, my pretty sparklers— Come forth, and feast my eyes! Be not afraid! No keen-eyed agent of the government Can see you here. They wanted me, forsooth, To lend you, at the lawful rate of usance, For the state's needs. Ha, ha! my shining pets, My yellow darlings, my sweet golden circlets! Too well I loved you to do that—and ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... from an orator, whose eloquence enables Englishmen to repeat the name of Demosthenes and Cicero, without humiliation; from a statesman, who has left to our language a bequest of glory unrivalled and all our own, in the keen-eyed, yet far-sighted genius, with which he has made the profoundest general principles of political wisdom, and even the recondite laws of human passions, bear upon particular measures and passing events. While of the harangues of Pitt, Fox, and their ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... justice. Whiskey and debauch and high-sounding inanities about fraternity and equality can not regenerate an Empire. The Turk must go: he will go. But out in those deserts is a race which is always young, a race that never withers; a strong, healthy, keen-eyed, quick-witted race; a fighting, fanatical race; a race that gave Europe a civilisation, that gave the world a religion; a race with a past as glorious as Rome's; and with a future, too, if we had an Ali or a Saladin. But He who made those heroes will ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... noon when the first batch of laborers, some American and some Mexican, returned to camp. These men started to go by the checker's hut at a distance, but keen-eyed Superintendent Hawkins saw them and ordered them around to ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... corps men became unconsciously gentler, juster; with a finer sense of right and wrong, and less bestial modes of pleasure, of speech, and of habit, because he was among them. Moreover, the keen-eyed desperadoes who made up the chief sum of his comrades saw that he gave unquestioning respect to a chief who made his life a hell; and rendered unquestioning submission under affronts, tyrannies, and insults which, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... semi-respectable larceny. It was a day of reckless operation; much of the commerce that came to New Orleans was simply, as one might say, beached in Carondelet street. The sight used to keep the long, thin, keen-eyed ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... keen-eyed Irish-American, descended to consult with his confrere, Munson; and Forsythe appeared, swinging a book. Laying this on the bridge stairs, he passed Jenkins and ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... penalty for the possession of these books in Manila was that of the author executed by shooting in the back in the presence of a crowd of spectators. The cost of the carriers was thirty cents in silver—fifteen cents in United States money—and the men were as keen-eyed as they were sure-footed, and the strength of their tawny limbs called for admiration. They were not burdened with clothes, and the play of the muscles of their legs was like a mechanism of steel, oiled, precise, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... seemed paradise to purgatory, the sudden contrast was so great. There were but few persons in the little street; where the mission was situated at that early hour, and most of these were children—poor, half-clothed, dirty, wan-faced, keen-eyed and alert bits of humanity, older by far than their natural years, few of them possessing any higher sense of right and wrong than young savages. The night's late orgies or crimes had left most of their elders in a heavy morning sleep, ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... had never given Adam any steady encouragement. She liked to feel that this strong, keen-eyed man was in her power; but as to marrying Adam, that was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... course, no fashion plates in that day, nor were there any "living models" to strut back and forth before keen-eyed customers; but fully dressed dolls were imported from France and England, and sent from town to town as examples of properly attired ladies. Eliza Southgate Bowne, after seeing the dolls in her shopping expeditions, wrote to a friend: "Caroline and I went a-shopping ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... more closely, and with an involuntary feeling of apprehension; if the man was not mad, he was in a state of mind akin to madness, and quite as dangerous. The sheriff felt that he must speak the prisoner fair, and watch for a chance to turn the tables on him. The keen-eyed, desperate man before him was a different being altogether from the groveling wretch who had begged so piteously for life a few ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... the keen-eyed Scot. "I houp Sir Henry trusts me as a faithfu' servant. I've been on Glencardine estate noo, miss, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... of the sweating stevedores, washed and smartly dressed, left his back-hall room in a Hoboken boarding house, crossed to New York and entered a telephone booth in a large hotel; thereupon calling an uptown number and telling a keen-eyed man who listened gratefully that his wife was out of danger and the doctor had left at two o'clock. Later that morning one of the commercial messages which loaded the telegraph wires sped to a merchant in Buenos Ayres asking quotations on 8,000 feet of 2-A grade ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... bridge, the tender cast off, the bell in the engine-room gave four strokes, the signal for full-speed ahead, and ere long we were steaming past that clanging beacon the Bell Buoy, and heading for the open sea. The breeze began to whistle around us, the keen-eyed old pilot tightened his scarf around his throat, and carefully we sped along past the Skerries until we slowed off Holyhead, where he shook hands with the captain, and with a hearty "good-bye" swung himself over the bulwarks into the heavy old boat that had ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... was rendered expedient to avoid discovery. We sent the large trunks to 609 Broadway, packed the smaller ones, paid our bills at the hotel, and one morning hastily departed for the country, where we remained three days. The movement was successful. The keen-eyed reporters for the daily papers were thrown off the scent, and when we returned to the city we took rooms at the Brandreth House, where Mrs. Lincoln registered as "Mrs. Morris." I had desired her to go to the Metropolitan Hotel, and confide in the proprietors, as the Messrs. Leland had ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... We stand supreme in a continent, in a hemisphere. East and west we look across the two great oceans toward the larger world life in which, whether we will or not, we must take an ever-increasing share. And as, keen-eyed, we gaze into the coming years, duties, new and old, rise thick and fast to confront us from within and from without. There is every reason why we should face these duties with a sober appreciation alike of their importance and of their difficulty. But there is also every reason ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... past, I grew uneasy. Would she come out at all? Could she win past those trained, keen-eyed men? The more I thought of it, the more desperate seemed the game she was playing. This little Alpine town, high among the peaks, surrounded by pines and snow, had been a setting for tragedies since the war began. These territorials with their muskets ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... an one, So far beyond all dwellers 'neath the sun; Great was he, yet so fair of face and limb That all folk wondered much, beholding him, How such a man could be; no fear he knew, And all in manly deeds he could outdo; Fleet-foot, a swimmer strong, an archer good, Keen-eyed to know the dark waves' changing mood; Sure on the crag, and with the sword so skilled, That when he played therewith the air seemed filled With light of gleaming blades; therewith was he Of noble speech, though says not ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... jaws, biting each other with the utmost rage; but notwithstanding this appearance of mutual courage and fury, the water snake still seemed desirous of retreating toward the ditch, its natural element. This was no sooner perceived by the keen-eyed black one, than twisting its tail twice round a stalk of hemp, and seizing its adversary by the throat, not by means of its jaws, but by twisting its own neck twice round that of the water snake, pulled it ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... reasons for believing that this polished hull of ours, perfectly reflecting, as it does, every hue and tint of the surrounding atmosphere, renders it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the ship when she is afloat among the clouds. Nevertheless, you have reminded us that some keen-eyed individual may by chance discover our presence, so, as we are really anxious not to attract attention, we may as well get above the clouds again, when you have ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... my loss; which I found to be the very alarming one of my baggage-checks; my whole property being thereby placed at this vagabond's disposal, for I knew perfectly well, that if I claimed my trunks without my checks, the acute baggage-master would have set me down as a bold swindler. The keen-eyed conductor was not in the car, and, had he been there, the necessity for habitual suspicion, incidental to his position, would so far have removed his original sentiments of generosity as to make him turn a deaf ear to my request, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... seen ramping restlessly, Geared as a general, keen-eyed as a kite, Mid this mad current of close-filed confusion; High-ordering, smartening progress in the slow, And goading those by their own thoughts o'er-goaded; Whose emissaries knock at every door In rhythmal rote, and groan the great events The hour ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... aloud. "I'm thankful for that." He drew the window shades down to shut out the light, as it was all important that Phil should be kept quiet for a time. But the surgeon did not sleep. He sat keen-eyed by the side of the bed, now and then noting the pulse of his patient, touching the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... oblivious of the busy London life around him, Paul Harley walked slowly along the Strand. Outwardly he was still the keen-eyed investigator who could pry more deeply into a mystery than any other in England; but to-day his mood was introspective. He was in ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... it was doubly welcome, since the meanest seaman amongst them had long thought that his unknown commander had been heedlessly trifling with the safety of the vessel, by the hardy manner in which he disregarded the wild symptoms of the weather. But they undervalued the keen-eyed vigilance of Wilder. He had certainly driven the Bristol trader through the water at a rate she had never been known to go before; but, thus far, the facts themselves gave evidence in his favour, since no injury was the consequence of what they deemed ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... ancient race—enough to show us that its peculiar type lingers to this day in a few remote islands on the Galway and Kerry coast, mingled with many later races. This type we find described in old Gaelic records as the Firbolgs, a race weak and furtive, dusky and keen-eyed, subjected by later races of greater force. Yet from this race, as if to show the inherent and equal power of the soul, came holy saints and mighty warriors; to the old race of the Firbolgs belong Saint Mansuy, apostle of Belgium, ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... from the keen-eyed Bushman produced a joyful effect. He saw grass in front. He saw some bushes with leaves! They were still a mile off, but the oxen, as if the announcement had been understood by them, moved ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... field; and not only had they been sheltered from the barbarians, but also from the birds. Long ago the field was sown in wheat, which went to seed unharvested each year, and in the cool depths of which the poppy seeds were hidden from the keen-eyed songsters. And further, climbing after the sun through the wheat stalks, the poppies grew taller and taller and more royal even than the primordial ones of ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... of the war the gallant Blackburn, scouting with six comrades in thick bush, found himself in the presence of a considerable commando. The British concealed themselves by the path, but Blackburn's foot was seen by a keen-eyed Kaffir, who pointed it out to his masters. A sudden volley riddled Blackburn with bullets; but his men stayed by him and drove off the enemy. Blackburn dictated an official report of the action, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... black gowns and white ties, gained added dignity from the marine note behind them. The bluish pallor of the walls made the accused and the group about him pathetically sombre. Each one of this little group was in black. The accused himself, a sharp, shrewd, too keen-eyed man of thirty or so, might have been following a corpse—so black was his raiment. Even the youth beside him, a dull, sodden-eyed lad, with an air of being here not on his own account, but because he had been forced to come, was clad in deepest mourning. By the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... returning from Albion, an isle beyond the pillars of Heracles and the gates of the great sea, where much store of tin is found; and she had rich merchandise on board. On the half-deck beside the steersman was the captain, a thin, keen-eyed sailor, who looked shoreward and saw the sun blaze on the golden armour of the Wanderer. They were so far off that he could not see clearly what it was that glittered yellow, but all that glittered yellow was a lure for him, and gold drew him on as ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... suddenly, and checked, sensitive to a possible charge of jealousy before this keen-eyed mother of a girl whose beauty had been the talk of the settlement now for more than ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... together, under a monumental mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed, wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the house—"Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper"; and they ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... about the same resemblance to each other that a three months dead jay nailed to a keeper's lodge bears to the bright-plumaged bird when flying about. On horseback, Tom was a cockey, wiry-looking, keen-eyed, grim-visaged, hard-bitten little fellow, sitting as though he and his horse were all one, while on foot he was the most shambling, scambling, crooked-going crab that ever was seen. He was a complete mash of a man. He had been ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... parts of Europe, to the East and West Indies, to Africa. The splendid tapestries, silks, linens, as well as the more homely and useful manufactures of the Netherlands, are prized throughout the world. Most ingenious, as they had already been described by the keen-eyed Caesar, in imitating the arts of other nations, the skillful artificers of the country at Louvain, Ghent, and other places, reproduce the shawls and silks ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the milliner notices these things as a part of business, and very likely has other interests in life for her spare time). If the girl wishes to prove herself of different family, she needs to put to sleep the side of her that belongs to the keen-eyed young lady behind the counter, by feeding other sides of her mind, and turning her powers of observation on ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... a secret agent, as an ingenious plotter in the interests of his country, he was a genius. He was a discovery of the late Lord Salisbury in the last days of the Victorian Era. At that time he had been a Foreign Office clerk, a keen-eyed young man with a lock of black hair hanging loosely across his brow. Lord Salisbury recognised in him a man of genius as a diplomat, and with his usual bluntness called him one day to Hatfield and gave him ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... oak and heath, and a species of sundew, with here and there yellow broom, gum cistus, and an unfamiliar plant with blue flowers. Trees and shrubs fight for light and air, the fittest survive and thrive, sheltering little birds from the keen-eyed, quivering hawks above them. The road makes me think of what the French Mediterranean littoral must have been before it was dotted over with countless vulgar villas, covered with trees and shrubs that are not indigenous to the soil, and tortured into trim gardens that ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... last, in which she announced that her Thomas was the best of husbands, and signed herself "Eliza Slogger;" all Mary Farmer's letters, all Emily Delamere's; all that poor foolish old Miss MacWhirter's, whom I would as soon marry as ——: in a word, I know that you, you hawk-beaked, keen-eyed, sleepless, indefatigable old Mrs. Cammysole, have read all my papers for these ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... glass untouched. A cold conviction was growing within me that I had been mistaken; that, villain as Carson Wildred was, he had not, after all, been guilty of the one great crime which I had attributed to him. It seemed almost impossible that this keen-eyed man, accustomed to Farnham's comings and goings for several years, could have mistaken another ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... about these troubles, despite the fact that she loved Ruth and was much with the girl of the Red Mill. But Ruth was keen-eyed. She knew that Rebecca suffered for articles of clothing. She saw that her raiment ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... returned the woodsman; "should it be keen-eyed Reuben Ring, I shall feel none the less certain that good aid is at my back. The whole of that family are quick of wit and ready of invention, unless it may be the wight who hath got the form without the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the last person on earth one would have connected with boxes of strings and wires hidden away beneath beds. He was a graduate of a Massachusetts agricultural college; a keen-eyed, quick, impatient creature toward whom people in general stood somewhat in awe. He had the reputation of being a top-notch farmer and those who knew him declared with zest that there was nothing he did not know about soils, fertilizers, and crops. ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... beginning to force the enemy back; but at length a huge savage loomed up before me with his war-club raised to strike. My only chance seemed to be to get in a cut or a thrust before the blow could fall, and I accordingly lunged out at his great brawny chest. But the fellow was keen-eyed and active as a cat; he sprang to one side, avoiding my thrust, and at the same instant brought down his club upon my blade with a force that shattered the latter like glass and made my arm tingle to such an extent that for the moment at least I was powerless in the right arm. Then, quick ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... 'Furthermore,' said another stalwart, keen-eyed, fresh-faced young farmer, who might have passed as a Yorkshire yeoman, 'furthermore, I don't trust this Republican cock till he's dead! I believe he's shamming, but he shan't catch us asleep. This Prefect at Caen ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Then the keen-eyed Yaqui reached up to a little projecting shelf of rock and took from it a small object. He showed no curiosity and ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... chair, at the bar, in the universities, in the counting-house and in the banking office; while the proudest of monarchs will undertake no enterprise requiring large expenditure until he is assured of the support of the keen-eyed, swarthy-visaged men who control the sinews of war. Generations of exclusion from agriculture and the mechanical arts and of devotion to commerce, have developed and inbred in the Jew a marvellous facility ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... blue eyes of the president had opened a little at the sound, then he calmly resumed the conversation. Mr. Grimm impulsively started toward the little group, but already a cordon was being drawn there—a cordon of quiet-faced, keen-eyed men, unobstrusively forcing their way through the crowd. There was Johnson, and Hastings, and Blair, and half a ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... form when standing among the dead and broken trees that so often occur on the outskirts of the thickets where it feeds. The large blotch-like spots on the skin and the strange shape of the head and horns, like broken branches, so tend to its concealment that even the keen-eyed natives have been known to mistake trees for giraffes or ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... walls covered with books, most of them rather forbidding in their musty, leather bindings. A peaceful, restful room on the Jewish rest day; but, boy as he was, David would have seen at a glance that Rabbi Seixas was not at peace with himself. A keen-eyed, quick-moving young man of about thirty, he paced restlessly up and down between the bookshelves, his hands clasped behind his back, his brows knit in thought. Several times he glanced at the tall clock his father had brought from Lisbon; it would soon be time for him to go to the synagogue; ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... waggon as they skirted the edge of the forest—the waggons keeping in the open—kept on making incursions towards where the huge trees spread their boughs, and the country was park-like and grand. And now, to bring forth the driver's exclamation, the keen-eyed black fellow, who had evidently caught sight of something which had excited his interest, was running swiftly in and out of the bushes more and more towards the great trees, in full chase, throwing up his spear now and then as if to ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... as strange that the keen-eyed King of the Street had failed to discover that he was not talking to Henry Wilton, but to some one else who resembled him. There were enough differences in features and voice to distinguish us among intimate friends, though there were not enough to be seen by casual acquaintances. I had the key ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... habitant, ascending from vale to hill-top in the county of Deux Montagnes, bends to the sign he sees across the forest leagues away. Far off on the brown Ottawa, beyond the Cascades of Carillon and the Chute a Blondeau, the keen-eyed voyageur catches its gleam, and, for gladness to be nearing the familiar mountain, more cheerily raises the chanson he loves. Near St. Placide the early ploughman—while yet mist wreathes the fields and before the ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... keen-eyed English there is one small party which seems to be as joyous as a lot of school-boys. Five men are playing at bowls, and one of them is stout, and well knit, and swarthy visaged with long exposure to the elements. He is laughing uproariously, when a lean fellow comes running ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... were heard crossing the polished oak floor of the great hall, and directly after a keen-eyed, vigorous-looking man of about six-and-thirty entered the room in ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... which denies us the gift to see ourselves as others see us I never had reckoned myself to be in his class, avoir-dupoisefully speaking. But as we lined up two abreast alongside the station, with our camp duffel piled about us, the keen-eyed guide, standing slightly to one side, considered our abdominal profiles, and the look he cast at my companion said as plainly as words, "Well, I see you've brought a spare set along with you in ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb |
