"Knack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... truly. He protested that it was a faithfully recorded incident: but though the events were then fresh, he did not produce a single witness to prove that any Malay had been near Grasmere at the time. And so elsewhere. As I have remarked about Borrow, there are some people who have a knack of recounting truth so that it looks as if it never had been true. I have been informed by Mr. James Runciman that he himself once made considerable inquiries on the track of Lavengro, and found that that ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... voice also did not sound quite natural. However, he dismissed the idea at once as mere fancy, and watched proudly the admiring glances bestowed upon her in the Fairbridge station, while they were waiting for the train. Margaret had a peculiar knack in designing costumes which were at once plain and striking. This morning she wore a black China silk, through the thin bodice of which was visible an under silk strewn with gold disks. Her girdle was clasped with a ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tore up many sheets, showed bits to admiring friends, and felt themselves budding authoresses. Public opinion, surging round the school, had already fixed the laurel wreath on the head of Hilary. Hilary exhibited decided literary ability; she had quite a clever knack of writing, and had composed several short stories. When she read these aloud—in bed—her thrilled listeners decided that they were worthy ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... that, once quit of the primitive maternal responsibility, she gave no more thought to them than a thrush gives to its fledglings when she has educated them to their first flights, and to the useful knack of cracking ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... progress from this room in the manner you know. Practise your magic alone, or you will lose the knack. And now good night. Oh yes—Becky Boozer has been crying into her apron all day. Partly for Ned Cilley but I fancy—" Chris heard a chuckle from a well-remembered room—"but I fancy, largely for two boys! Good night, Christopher. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... missed Aunt Olivia greatly; she had been so merry and companionable, and had possessed such a knack of understanding small fry. But youth quickly adapts itself to changed conditions; in a few weeks it seemed as if the Story Girl had always been living at Uncle Alec's, and as if Uncle Roger had always had a fat, jolly housekeeper with a double chin ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... blameless model; but his middle style, that in which the typical plays of his second period are written, would be, if it were possible to imitate, the most absolute pattern that could be set before man. I do not speak of mere copyist's work, the parasitic knack of retailing cast phrases, tricks and turns of accent, cadences and catchwords proper only to the natural manner of the man who first came by instinct upon them, and by instinct put them to use; I speak of that faithful and fruitful discipleship of love with ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... pass them and proceed. You have heard of the sins of his youth, of his apprenticeship, and how he set up, and married, and what a life he hath led his wife; and now I will tell you some more of his pranks. He had the very knack for knavery; had he, as I said before, been bound to serve an apprenticeship to all these things, he could not have been more cunning, he could not have ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... me at the time, and I did not like then to have it known; but now it may as well come out at once. Speck, as everybody knows, lives in the market-place, opposite his grand work of art, the town pump, or fountain. I bought a large sheet of paper, and having a knack at drawing, sat down, with the greatest gravity, before the pump, and sketched it for several hours. I knew it would bring out old Speck to see. At first he contented himself by flattening his nose against the window-glasses ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from twenty-one years of age to fifty. I know no husbandry-work (mowing hardly excepted) that is not equally within the power of all persons within those ages, the more advanced fully compensating by knack and habit what they lose in activity. Unquestionably, there is a good deal of difference between the value of one man's labour and that of another, from strength, dexterity, and honest application. But I am quite sure, from my best observation, that any given five men will, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... it presently, some of it bursting into fluffy pods, for cotton growing is one of the most extensive and profitable of Egyptian industries. The twigs and branches are used as fuel by the people, who have a happy knack ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... elements of disquiet. Lady Bridget noticed with surprise that Ninnis seemed to defer to Maule, which was not his usual attitude towards strangers. She attributed this to a community of experiences in South America, and also to Maule's undoubted knack ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... cook and have a natural knack for it. Others hate it. If you are one of the former, select a propitious moment to suggest that you will cook, if the rest will wash the dishes and supply the wood and water. Thus you will get first crack at the fire in the chill of morning; and at night you can squat on your heels doing light ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... the knack of making friends with any one, but I am more reserved and ideal in nature, so I simply cannot accommodate myself to such ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a knack, Haul away, yo ho, boys, Of hauling down a Frenchman's jack 'Gainst any odds, you ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... say the most of it—the substance—is English. The Irish are hard workers, but generally spendthrifts, though there are some excellent exceptions. The Irish hold together in religion, politics, and drink. The Scotch are not so numerous as the Irish, but somehow they have a knack of getting on. They are not clannish like the Irish. Each hangs by his own hook. Then there are the Germans, who are pretty numerous, a very respectable body of men, with a sprinkling of Italians and Swiss. The Germans keep up their old country ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... new and hitherto unheard of in the kite line. Rigidity and strength, without too much weight, are the prime essentials of the Hargrave. It may be made by a boy with a knack for mechanics in the following way: Take eight stiff, slender pieces of bamboo, eighteen and three-quarter inches in length, such as are sometimes used for fishing poles. These pieces must be of uniform weight ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... songs, interspersed with the maddest, most whimsical patter, step-dances, ventriloquism, recitations. He kept us in roars for a long time. Blended with the simplicity of a baby, he has the wisdom of the serpent, and has the knack of getting hold of odd delicacies, with which he regales the ward. He is perfectly well, by the way, but when the doctor comes round he assumes a convincing air of semi-convalescence, and refers darkly to his old wound. The doctor is not in the least taken in, but is indulgent, and not too curious. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... amidships, but my father, who had a happy knack of turning almost everything to a good account, unless irredeemably hopeless, was struck with a capital idea in this instance. Instead of selling her as a worthless hulk, he had her cut in two, the damaged timbers removed, a new length of keel laid down, and had her lengthened about ten feet; after ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... Moral-Plays had vigour enough, it appears, to propagate themselves into the drama of comedy and tragedy after the main body of them had been withdrawn. An apt instance of this is furnished in A Knack to know a Knave, entered at the Stationers' in 1593, but written several years before. It was printed in 1594, the title-page stating that it had been "acted sundry times by Edward Alleyn and his company," and that it contained ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... dine on Henry's wine and L. F. Austin's wit. This dear, brilliant man, now dead, acted for many years as Henry's secretary, and one of his gifts was the happy knack of hitting off people's peculiarities in rhyme. This dreadful Christmas dinner at Pittsburg was enlivened by a collection of such rhymes, which Austin called a "Lyceum ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... and the three of them set forth into the golden October day. It was Philip's first experience in evaluating an entire village, but he had a knack for estimating the worth of property, and by the time noon came around, he had the job half done. "If you people had made even half an effort to keep your places up," he told Judith over cold-cut sandwiches and ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... used to form a most important item in every set of Oriental writing implements. Even long after adhesive envelopes had become common in European Turkey, their use was considered over familiar, if not actually disrespectful, for formal letters, and there was a particular traditional knack in cutting and folding the special envelope for each missive, which was included in the instruction given by every competent Khoja as the present writer well remembers in the quiet years that ended with the disasters ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and to my chamber to set some papers in order, and then, to church, where my old acquaintance, that dull fellow, Meriton, made a good sermon, and hath a strange knack of a grave, serious delivery, which is very agreeable. After church to White Hall, and there find Sir G. Carteret just set down to dinner, and I dined with them, as I intended, and good company, the best people and family in the world I think. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... him! God reigns and the government at Washington still lives!" Years after, some one referring to that, said that it was a beautiful sentence, that the reference to "clouds and darkness" was a beautiful symbolism, but that Garfield had a great knack in the building-up of fine phrases! He lacked utterly the background of the great Psalm which was in Garfield's mind, and which gives that phrase double meaning. If we go back to Tennyson again, some one has proposed the inquiry why he should have called one of ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... yet known, is, I Believe, a meer PLINYISM; How far it may be obtained by a Magical Sacrament, is best known to the Dangerous Knaves that have try'd it. But our Witches do seem to have got the knack: and this is one of the Things, that make me think, Witchcraft will not be fully understood, until the day when there shall not be one ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... insufflation should be taught to every interne in every hospital. The emergency or accident ward of every hospital should have the necessary equipment and an interne familiar with its use. The method is simple, once the knack is acquired. The patient being limp and recumbent on a table, the larynx is exposed with the laryngoscope, and the bronchoscope is inserted as hereinafter described. The oxygen is turned on at the tank and the flow regulated before the rubber tube ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... parents were of rank and fame; Our JUDGE herein had little wisdom shown, And sneering friends around were often known To say, his children ne'er could fathers lack: At giving counsel some have got a knack, Who, were they but at home to turn their eyes, Might find, perhaps, they're ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... is a sly fellow, and he had a knack of turning up whenever one wanted to do a civil thing by that poor ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bound to be a failure," I pointed out. "Rather let him fail at us, who are known to be beautiful, than at the garden, which has its reputation yet to make. Afterwards, when he has got the knack, he will be able to do justice to ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... and love of luxury, this seems as hellish a place and existence as even you deserve. When I saw you last night"—and here Ledyard laughed—"it was all I could do to control myself. You play your part well; but you always had a knack for theatricals. I know I'm a hard, unforgiving man, but there is just one phase of human nature that I will not stand for, and that is the refusal to take the medicine prescribed for the disease. What incentive have people for better ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... distance from the other, making the whole number of strings, in the middle of the bow sometimes amount to sixty. These being put on with the bow somewhat bent the contrary way, produce a spring so strong as to require considerable force as well as knack in stringing it and giving the requisite velocity to the arrow. The bow is completed by a woolding round the middle and a wedge or two, here and there, driven in to tighten it. A bow in one piece is, however, very rare; they generally consist of from two ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... camaraderie of Edith herself checked any adventure of that kind. She checked it in two ways; by her own frank acceptance of him much as she would have accepted a brother in the household, and by her uncanny and unconscious knack of reminding him in almost every word and gesture of Reenie Hardy. She was of about the same figure as Reenie Hardy; a little slighter, perhaps; and about the same age; and she had the same quick, frank eyes. And she sang wonderfully. He had never heard Reenie sing, but in some ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... question before him, which had been entertained by another set of tutors—those of Christchurch—where Selwyn had many friends, and where, probably enough, he indulged in many collegian's freaks. This knack of bringing up a mere suspicion, is truly characteristic of the Oxford Don, and since the same Head of this House—Dr. Newton—acknowledged that Selwyn was, during his Oxford career, neither intemperate, dissolute, nor a gamester, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... wonder some men wish to be pilots," he had said. "It's great to have a big steamer do just as you want her to." Then he had run the vessel around in the form of the figure 8, just to "get the knack of ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... fine,—a word that has crept into general use among the lower classes in London, without ever gaining promotion. The fate of new words in this respect is curious. Often, if they are convenient, or have knack of lodging easily in the memory, they work slowly upward. The Scotch word flunky is a case in point. Our first knowledge of it in print is from Fergusson's Poems. Burns advertised it more widely, and Carlyle seems fairly to have transplanted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... like her, but of course it is considered by her friends in society that since she went in for business she can't refuse to meet anyone. Dick sat next to her, and had on the other side of him Mrs. ——, who likes celebrities without the knack of selection, and whose invitations nowadays I believe are never accepted at once, but are kept open as long as possible to see if something better won't turn up. Then came Mrs. Romedek and Mr. Westington; he looking bored ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... school for a would-be dramatist. And my first accepted play had been written in collaboration with him. It had not been a great success, but I had gained invaluable experience, and, after that, success had come to me rapidly and easily. I found that I had the knack of writing pleasant little artificial comedies. None of them had run for longer than eight months, and I had only written five in all, but they had made me comparatively rich. At that time my investments alone were bringing me in nearly two ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... comradeship which extends to the officers' wives. Frequent removal from one part of the country to another prevents anything like vegetating. The ladies, I am told, do not become overmuch engrossed in housekeeping, and acquire something of a soldier's knack of doing without many things which would naturally occupy their time and thought if they looked forward to a settled life. Thus they have more time for reading and society. Those that I have met have certainly been very ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... his friends would have run after him and fetched him back. You have no idea how full of fun he was. Poor Peter! with all his faults I could not help liking him, for he was charming at times. He could set you off into a fit of laughter with a word. He had a knack of his own for springing a joke upon you in the most unexpected way. I shall never forget the evening when they came to tell me that he had been found dead on the road to Langoat. I went and had him properly laid out. He was buried, and the priest spoke in consoling terms about ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... I can scarce promise you one adventure, as my account is rather of what I saw than what I did. The first misfortune of my life, which you all know, was great; but tho' it distrest, it could not sink me. No person ever had a better knack at hoping than I. The less kind I found fortune at one time, the more I expected from her another, and being now at the bottom of her wheel, every new revolution might lift, but could not depress me. I proceeded, therefore, towards London in a fine ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... that of Alexander Weyer, who, either by superior strength or by a peculiar knack, could hold a nail between the middle fingers of his right hand with the head against the palm, and drive it through a one-inch board. But since this act did not get him very far either on the road to fame, ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... imagination also has its products and the themes of a symphony may certainly be considered its children. The public often seems to have slight idea of the sanctity and mystery of a musical idea. Composers are considered people with a kind of "knack" in writing down notes. In reality, a musical idea is as wonderful a thing as we can conceive—a miracle of life and yet intangible, ethereal. The composer apparently creates something out of nothing, pure fancy being wrought into terms of communication. ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of this county, sir," the old gentleman said, smiling at the man's knack of mimicry. "My home, Arden, is but a few ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... first night of it in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle say, "It will do—it must do! I see it in the eyes of them!" This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon: for that duke has a more particular knack than any one now living in discovering the taste of the publick. He was quite right in this, as usual: the good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause.' Spence's Anec. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... a wary mind to his work. For though the old master of Lennon House has not lain twenty years in his grave, he is already swollen into a legendary character. Anecdotes have grown upon his memory like barnacles, and any man in those parts with a knack of invention has only to foist his stories upon Dermod to ensure a ready credence. There are, however, definite facts. He practised an ancient and tyrannous hospitality, keeping open house upon the road to Letterkenny, and forcing bed and ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... gave his leisure to his grandchildren. He carved for us with his knife, with an especial knack for willow whistles. He showed us the colors that lay upon the world when we looked at it through one of the glass pendants of the parlor chandelier. He sat by us when we played duck-on-the-rock. He helped us with our kites and gave a superintendence ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... autumn trip to an unhackneyed land is much better worth reading than many more pretentious volumes.... The authoress has an eye for what is worth seeing, a happy knack of graphic description, and a literary style which is ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... comic talent. The poet, accustomed to stilts, moves awkwardly in a species of the drama the first requisites of which are ease and sweetness. Scarron, who only understood burlesque, has displayed this talent or knack in several comedies taken from the Spanish, of which two, Jodelle, or the Servant turned Master, and Don Japhet of Armenia, have till within these few years been occasionally acted as carnival farces, and have always been very successful. The plot of the Jodelle, which belongs to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... to rear up children (to be just); They know a simple, merry, tender knack Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, And stringing pretty words that make no sense, And kissing full sense into empty words; Which things are corals to cut ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... ease in that position; and at length, having made friends with a travelling company of actors, come to London to earn a living in any tolerable way by means of his moderate education, his "small Latin and less Greek," his knack of fluent rhyming, and his turn for play-acting. To know him as he began we must measure him narrowly by his first performances. These are not to be looked for in even the earliest of his plays, not one of which ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... to avoid the ludicrous; another to shun the pathetic; a third assured him that he was tolerable at description, but cautioned him to leave narrative alone; while a fourth declared that he had a very pretty knack at turning a story, and was really entertaining when in a pensive mood, but was grievously mistaken if he imagined himself to possess a ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... was by nature deep, and he had a knack of deepening it when he wished to be impressive. His articulation was extremely deliberate, so that every word told; and his habitual manner was calm, but not stolid. I say "habitual," because it had variations. When Gladstone, just the other side of the Table, was thundering his ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Tadamichi and his younger brother, Yorinaga, who held the post of sa-daijin, there existed acute rivalry. The kwampaku had the knack of composing a deft couplet and tracing a graceful ideograph. The sa-daijin, a profound scholar and an able economist, ridiculed penmanship and poetry as mere ornament. Their father's sympathies were wholly with Yorinaga, and he ultimately went so far as to depose Tadamichi ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... choice of articles, apart from their usefulness, is an appetising occupation, and to exchange bald, uniform shillings for a fine big, figurative knick-knack, such as a windmill, a gross of green spectacles, or a cocked hat, gives us a direct and emphatic sense of gain. We have had many shillings before, as good as these; but this is the first time we have possessed a windmill. Upon these principles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Next morning I accompanied Mr Waugh to Kildwick, whither we walked on the canal bank. On the way, the Lancashire poet proved himself an intensely interesting and instructive companion. He had a large stock of funny stories, and possessed quite a knack of imparting his sensible advice to one in an inoffensive and almost unnoticeable manner. During the journey I said little, but thought much. At Kildwick we inspected the "Lang Kirk," and other places of note in the locality, and then parted. It was soon after this visit ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... give their chief interest to the English newspapers. They are allowed to gossip about everything, and the writers have the knack of making the merest trifles seem amusing. Happy is the nation where anything may be written ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... She had a knack of monopolising Hubert, and since his return from London, her desire to do so had become almost a determination. Hubert showed no disinclination, and after breakfast they were to be seen together in the gardens. Hubert was a great ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... their mischievous, or, as the early English eighteenth century would have put it, "unlucky" childhood, to their most undeserved reward with a good and pretty wife (whom one sincerely pities), and more or less of a fortune. There is, however, more vigour in Jerome than in most, and, if one has the knack of "combing out" the silly and stale Voltairianism, and paying little attention to the far from exciting sculduddery, the book may be read. It contains, in particular, one of the most finished of its author's sketches, of a type which he really did something ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... poor. Pictures like these, dear madam, to design, Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line; Some wandering touches, some reflected light, Some flying stroke alone can hit 'em right: For how should equal colours do the knack? Chameleons who can paint in white and black? "Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot"— Nature in her then erred not, but forgot. "With every pleasing, every prudent part, Say, what can Chloe want?"—She wants a heart. She speaks, behaves, and acts ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... any of his knack for surprises," muttered Danny. "And if we, who know his old tricks, can't fathom him at all, what are the other seven of us going ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... "You've got a knack," he said, almost graciously, "of putting a fellow in a good humour ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... came to himself, Wamba and the lieutenant of his lances were leaning over him with a bottle of the hermit's elixir. "We arrived here the day after the battle," said the fool; "marry, I have a knack of that." ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... know what is doing in the art world, who is painting what, and why, then get yourself invited to tea—China tea only. The gathering is picturesque, for the model has, of course, the knack of the effective pose, not only professionally but socially. It is a beautiful club, and it is one more answer to the eternal question Why Girls Don't Marry. With a Models' Club, the Four Arts Club, the Mary Curzon Hotel, and the Lyceum Club, why ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... question of knack," Jimphy continued. "You get into the way of it and you can't stop. Sometimes a tune gets into my head and I have to keep on humming it or whistling it. I'm not what you'd call a sentimental fellow at all, but that song ... you know, about the honeysuckle and the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... style, over the altar of which hangs a picture by West. I never could look at it long enough to make out its design; for this artist (though it pains me to say it of so respectable a countryman) had a gift of frigidity, a knack of grinding ice into his paint, a power of stupefying the spectator's perceptions and quelling his sympathy, beyond any other limner that ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of conscience, I seize this opportunity to wreak ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the longer because some of the characters are supposed to represent schoolboys, and a girl of thirteen. The adapter is Mr. BUCHANAN—a poet and a playwright. This gentleman, I believe, has made many other pieces (more or less) his own, with (more or less) success. He seems to have a knack of turning old plays into new ones. I live in hope that when I next visit this great Metropolis I shall find that he has re-written the School for Scandal, and brought ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... the boys at Montreal, Shag a little shy at first amidst all the grandeur and wealth of Hal's home, but covering that shyness with a quiet dignity that sat very well on his young shoulders. With a wonderful knack of delicacy, Hal would smooth out any threatened difficulty for the Indian boy—little table entanglements, such as new dishes or unaccustomed foods. But Shag was at times surprisingly outspoken, and the first night at dinner seemingly won Sir George's heart by remarking when ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... He was one of the old school, rode with longer stirrups than the modern jockeys, although he had in a measure conformed to the crouching seat. Alan's friends wondered why he stuck to Tommy, some of them considered he was getting past it, but Alan had a knack of keeping to old hands who had done him good service. In business this caused many a split with the ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... hadn't I been overwhelmed and choked with sentiment all day long? Sentiment? Of all the bosh—but, never mind. Louie at least didn't bother me in that way. Yes, it's a fact, Macrorie, she's got an awful knack of giving comfort to ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... that is temporary. A lot of us are unfaithful for the moment—it's a symptom of our illness. You said something a little while ago about trying to regain one's lost years by violence—that's what he's doing. He's mislaid the knack of happiness with Phyllis; he's trying to recover it with some ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... for this reason, really very much distressed. Feng Tzu-ying then explained that he knew a young doctor who had made a study of his profession, Chang by surname, and Yu-shih by name, whose learning was profound to a degree; who was besides most proficient in the principles of medicine, and had the knack of discriminating whether a patient would live or die; that this year he had come to the capital to purchase an official rank for his son, and that he was now living with him in his house. In view of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... under-study. She was not so clever, so daring, or so altogether reckless, but she came in a very good second-best in most of the harum-scarum escapades. She could always be relied upon for support, could keep a secret, and had a peculiarly convenient knack of baffling awkward questions by putting on an attitude of utter stolidity. When her eyes were half-closed under their heavy lids, and her mouth wore what the girls called its "John Bull" expression, not even Miss Beasley herself ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... that!" said Grace, absent-mindedly. "There has to be a knack, or something, and you have it. I haven't. I couldn't do it, even if I wanted to, and I don't think ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... the day before, enemy guns, trained with lesser accuracy, did their best to inflict an equal punishment. The effect was a combination of the solemnity and the littleness of man which defies every knack of human ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... did not think all mischief fair, Although he had a knack of joking; He did not make himself a bear, Although he had a taste for smoking: And when religious sects ran mad, He held, in spite of all his learning, That if a man's belief is bad, It will not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... Her cooking knack Would conquer fifty Catos— The Queen of tarts, and tuck, and tack, And ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... experts. Meanwhile his imagination enabled him to understand the exact extent of a novice's ignorance, the precise details which I did not know and must know, the essential apparatus I had to be shown the knack of, before he ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... students through kindergarten methods. Likewise he can guard against being oracular and pedantic by letting out his superior stores of information through free discussion in the Socratic fashion. Nothing is more important to good teaching than the knack of apt illustration. While to a certain extent it can be taught, just as the art of telling a humorous story or making a presentation speech can be communicated by teachers of oral English, yet in the long run it is rather a matter of spontaneous upwellings ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... a merit quite unique, His gift of mixing Latin up with Greek," Unique, you lags in learning? what? a knack Caught by Pitholeon with his hybrid clack? "Nay, but the mixture gives the style more grace, As Chian, plus Falernian, has more race." Come, tell me truly: is this rule applied To verse-making by you, and ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... have more love of it and knack for it than any one of her sex I've seen yet. It really looks like a case of art for art's sake, at times. But you can't tell. They're liable to get married at any moment, you know. Look here, Beaton, when your natural-gas ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... several times in private theatricals; you know we Jews have a knack for the stage; you'd be surprised to know how many pros are Jews. There's heaps of money to be made now-a-days on the boards. I'm in with lots of 'em, and ought to know. It's the only profession where you don't want any training, and these law books are as dry as ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... years ago, and Shep is an old man now and Shooshan older, and many mouths have bit with the teeth of Shep (for he has a knack of getting them back whenever his customers die), and they have written again to Ali away in the country of Persia with ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... honest judgment upon the great king! In thirty years more—1. The invincible had been beaten a vast number of times. 2. The sage was the puppet of an artful old woman, who was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had quite forgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his enemies (for 4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose term, that may apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in turn. 6. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... knack kneel knot knap sack knob knave knife knock knowledge knucks knead knight knoll knuckle knarl ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... general Lee was extremely splenetic, other than which, such a miserable old bachelor and infidel could hardly be, yet he certainly had a knack of telling people's fortunes. By virtue of this faculty he presently discovered that general Gates was no Fabius; but on the contrary, too much inclined to the fatal ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... eye of the man that measures only visible things, will seem sheer insanity—is sobriety for a Christian. The world is perfectly right when it says: 'If you believe you can do a thing, you have gone a long way towards doing it.' The expectation of success has often the knack of fulfilling itself. But the world does not know our secret, and our secret is that our humble faith brings into the field the reserves with the Captain of our salvation at their head. Therefore a self-distrusting Christian can say, and say without exaggeration ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... casually acknowledged that the motive for one or two of the minor songs in the famous operas was not entirely of Arthur's own unaided invention. And so, from one subject to another, they passed on so quickly, and hit it off with one another so exactly (for Hilda had a wonderful knack of leading up to everybody's strong points), that long before lunch was ready, the Progenitor had been quite won over by the fascinations of the brazen hussey, and was prepared to admit that she was really a very nice, kind, tender-hearted, intelligent, appreciative, and discriminating ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... assured him that there was nothing the matter with him. The doctor dresses well, and has an air; he has the use of an automobile, and sometimes escorts good looking young nurses, or other young ladies, about the prison grounds. He has a knack at surgical operations, and urges prisoners to be operated upon; they sometimes recover, and sometimes do not. His use of drugs in his practise seems to have been mainly restricted to prescribing salts, and the hole, both effective in their ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... the knack o' meeting in puris naturalibus, as I've so often said." Mr. Pyecroft wrung my hand. "Yes, I'm on leaf. So's Hinch. We're visiting friends among ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... have a more wonderful knack of getting into scrapes, and out of them again, than any man I ever met with," ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... rather, as public appointments chanced to be scarce, and his genius, during his earlier manhood, was of that exclusively agricultural character which applies itself to the cultivation of wild oats. At last he had declared that he would become a Painter; partly because he had always had an idle knack that way, and partly to grieve the souls of the Barnacles-in-chief who had not provided for him. So it had come to pass successively, first, that several distinguished ladies had been frightfully shocked; then, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers (who, as King of Prussia, brought into being a military and skeptical genius—and therewith, in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged type of German), the problematic, crazy father of Frederick the Great, had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knew what was then lacking in Germany, the want of which was a hundred times more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form—his ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of a profound instinct. MEN WERE ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... his knowledge in the household and the courts, there was little else for any one to do than engage in farming, fishing, and trading with the Indians, or turn carpenter and cobbler according to demand. The artisan became a farmer, though still preserving his knack as a craftsman, and expended his skill and his muscle in subduing a ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... Tiny ones are best, because with them you can make the flowers go farther. Strawberry baskets—the old-fashioned ones with a handle—are nice, especially if you paint or gild them. Burr baskets are pretty too; and those made of fir cones. Joe has a knack of putting such things together. He made some elegant ones for ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... Chesterton is one of the best conversationalists of the day. Conversation is a queer thing; so many people talk without having anything to say; others have a great deal to say and never say it. Chesterton can undoubtedly talk well; he has a knack of finding subjects suitable to the company; though he does not talk very much of things of the day; he is naturally mostly interested in books. Given a kindred soul the two will talk and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... doubtful whether la reggeva diritta should not rather be rendered "kept it upright." Boccaccio has a knack, very trying to the translator, of constantly using words in an ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... dear, free your mind, and then we'll fix things up right smart. Nothin' I like better, and Lisha says I have considerable of a knack that way," replied Mrs. Wilkins, with a smile, a nod, and an ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... different laws; he makes his will in other terms, is otherwise divorced and married; his eyes are not at home in an English landscape or with English houses; his ear continues to remark the English speech; and even though his tongue acquire the Southern knack, he will still have a strong Scots accent ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as though he thought me a mind-reader, but I fancy the knack of divining when people need a confidant is preternaturally developed ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... with the cold face of the missionary, who suddenly appeared to me as a great bird of prey. I hated him instinctively, for he was like a schoolmaster; and yet his words had weight, for I was young to judge, and schoolmasters, though hateful, have a knack of being in ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... says Johnson, "and knowing himself in no great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence. 'He has,' said Curll, 'a knack at versifying; but in prose I think myself a match for him.' When the Orders of the House were examined, none of them appeared to have been infringed: Curll went away triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy." The fact, not mentioned by Johnson, is, that though Curll's ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Whose ordures neither plague nor fire can purge? Nor sharp experience can to duty bring, Nor angry Heaven, nor a forgiving king! 190 In gospel-phrase, their chapmen they betray; Their shops are dens, the buyer is their prey. The knack of trades is living on the spoil; They boast even when each other they beguile. Customs to steal is such a trivial thing, That 'tis their charter to defraud their king. All hands unite of every jarring sect; They ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... sir," began Sanny, not knowing how else to open up the subject. "But I'm gaun to tell you the hale story just in my ain way, so I want you to sit quate and no' interrupt me; for I hinna jist the knack of puttin' things maybe as they should be put. But I'll tell you the hale story an' then leave you to do as you like, an' ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Imperial troops. It was a day of rest, our first for weeks, but Raffles and I spent no small part of it in seeking high and low for a worthy means of quenching the kind of thirst which used to beset Yeomen and others who had left good cellars for the veldt. The old knack came back to us both, though I believe that I alone was conscious of it at the time; and we were leaving the house, splendidly supplied, when we almost ran into the arms of an infantry officer, with a scowl upon his red-hot face, ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... it is about the strength of the bows we use at home," Roger said. "The stringing them is a matter of knack, as well ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... child; that is, in the "one-two-three" style with accelerated motion. Neither did I depend upon mere brilliancy of technique, a trick by which children often surprise their listeners; but I always tried to interpret a piece of music; I always played with feeling. Very early I acquired that knack of using the pedals, which makes the piano a sympathetic, singing instrument, quite a different thing from the source of hard or blurred sounds it so generally is. I think this was due not entirely to natural artistic temperament, ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... so we'll knack'n, and try the higher mine to-morrow." Having come to this conclusion Uncle David threw down the mass of rock which he held in his brawny hands, and, picking up his implements, said, "Get the tools, booy, and lev us go ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... he was not quite awake to some of the finer sensibilities. But he was a kindly man and doing well. He was the sort you could depend on. Business was cruel. You had to overlook certain things, for instance—Maida. But Joe! Well, it was too bad. He just didn't have the knack. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... question asked by a good many. He was one of the best-known figures in society, a general favourite in sporting circles, and universally looked upon with approval if not admiration wherever he went. He had the knack of popularity. He came of an old family, and his rumoured engagement to Lady Violet Calcott had surprised no one. Lord Culverleigh, her brother, was known to be his intimate friend, and the rumour had come already to be regarded as an accomplished fact when, like a thunder-bolt, ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... It's more the knack of it than anything else. Come, let us hurry!" and Dan set off at a gallop. He was thinking altogether of the mustang, and never dreamed of the other odd adventure in store for him,—an adventure which was to make a soldier of him ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... sickness which I have so often seen shown by strong men. The skipper said: "We'll heave her to again. You'd better get below. Your pluck's all right, but an unlucky one might catch you, and you ain't got the knack of watching for an extra drop o' water ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... treatment Ravenscroft has met with at the hands of the critics it may be worth while emphasizing Genest's opinion that his 'merit as a dramatic writer has been vastly underrated'. Ravenscroft has a facility in writing, an ease of dialogue, a knack of evoking laughter and picturing the ludicrous, above all a vitality which many a greater name entirely lacks. As a writer of farce, and farce very nearly akin ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... think that she could catch the knack of educating children, as she had surreptitiously learnt, from a fashionable hairdresser, the art of dressing hair. Ever since Mrs. Harcourt had spoken in such a decided manner respecting Mad. de Rosier, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... dancer. Conceding the necessity of his extinction, I am yet indisposed to attach much weight to the Davidian precedent, for it does not appear that he was acting under divine command, directly or indirectly imparted, and whenever he followed the hest of his own sweet will David had a notable knack at going wrong. Perhaps the best value of the incident consists in the evidence it supplies that dancing was not forbidden—save possibly by divine injunction—to the higher classes of Jews, for unless we are to suppose the dancing of David to have been the mere clumsy capering ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... that!" she said, with gay imperiousness. "You pale-eyed folk have a horrible knack of making one feel as if one is under a microscope. Your worthy uncle is just the same. If I weren't so deeply in love with him, I might resent it. But Nick is a privileged person, isn't he, wherever he goes? Didn't someone once say of him that ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... tackler, but relied too much on his feet while defending goal, instead of using the breast and head. His individuality consisted in meeting the charge of an opponent with bended knees, and he had the knack of taking the ball away and making a brilliant return in a style that roused the cheers of the spectators. He was a very hard worker to the last, and only retired from football to go abroad some years ago. He has, however, returned to Glasgow, and ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... scape-grace nephew and me to know you and your daughter. I have had my nose at the grindstone of business for so many years that I feared it had grown out of my power to make new friends; but I begin to see that I have not lost the knack. Perhaps my somber presence is tolerated because of my gay, jolly boy," and Mr. Kinsella gazed rather wistfully after Pierce, who had crossed the deck to meet Elise O'Brien, just ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... call a knack! How well she looks at her work, and with that cheerful, friendly face! Everything that she touches is well done;—everything improves and flourishes under her eye. If she were only not so violent and passionate!—but it is not in her heart, there never was a better ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... it the business of his benevolent ministry to guide others into it. Though not the truth, an illustration is a stepping-stone towards it; an indentation in the rock which makes it easier to climb. No man had a happier knack in hewing out these notches in the cliff, and no one knew better where to place them, than this pilgrim's pioneer. Besides, he rightly judged that the value of these suggestive similes—these illustrative stepping-stones—depends very much on their breadth and frequency. ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... In the drawing-room." She watched the servant carry the discarded containers around the house, then turned to Rand. "You know, not the least of your capabilities is your knack of finding servant-replacements on short ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... French painter knew the art of modulation, while his transitions are bold; he enveloped his objects in atmosphere and gave his shadows a due share of luminosity. He placed his colours so that at times his work resembles mosaic or tapestry. He knew a century before the modern impressionists the knack of juxtaposition, of opposition, of tonal division; his science was profound. He must have studied Watteau and the Dutchmen closely. Diderot was amazed to find that his surpassing whites were neither black nor white, but a neuter—but by a subtle transposition of tones looked white. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... is at Felpham, and his epitaph by Mrs. Opie may be read by the industrious on the wall of the church. Among the many epitaphs on his neighbours by Hayley himself, who had a special knack of mortuary verse, is ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas |
