"Thumbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sure to be; when people pall Of reading you, they'll crush and fold you small. If my prophetic soul be not at fault From indignation at your rude revolt, Your doom, methinks, is easy to foretell: While you've your gloss on, Rome will like you well: Then, when you're thumbed and soiled by vulgar hands, You'll feed the moths, or go to distant lands. Ah, then you'll mind your monitor too late, While he looks on and chuckles at your fate, Like him who, pestered by his donkey's vice, Got off and pushed it down the precipice; ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... several hours jotting painful notes into a well-thumbed pocket-book, staring in the intervals through his telescope. Then the tree shook. Something ponderous from below felt its way up the creaking ladder. A red face, like the face of the sun, peered ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... me, through certain works which need not be here mentioned: but it would be the height of affectation not to avow the satisfaction I felt in witnessing a thoroughly cut-open, and tolerably well-thumbed copy, of the Bibl. Spenceriana lying upon his table. I instantly commenced the examination of the library, while the Professor as readily offered his services of assistance. "Where are your Aldine Greek Hours of 1497?" observed I. "Alas, Sir, that book exists no longer here!"—replied ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... patient, and the good women of the household lauded the comforting effect of his visits. In the meantime, the wonderful divining rod, that great key to nature's secrets, was duly prepared. The doctor had thumbed over all his books of knowledge for the occasion; and Mud Sam was engaged to take them in his skiff to the scene of enterprise; to work with spade and pick-axe in unearthing the treasure; and to freight ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... young lady, laying aside the well-thumbed volume and taking a step forward, "the quantities are correct. I am sure this will be excellent toffy, but—Dick, you shocking boy! whatever are you doing? Licking the spoon, I declare. How very vulgar!" and Winnie opened her eyes in horrified amazement ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... amusements. With boxing, broadsword, and single-stick play, drill and skylarking, the hours of daylight were whiled away; and by night the men off duty would gather about the forecastle lantern to play with greasy, well-thumbed cards, or warble tender ditties to black-eyed Susans far across the Atlantic. Patriotic melodies formed no small part of Jack's musical repertoire. Of these, this one, written by a landsman, was for a long time popular ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... furniture nor display nor setting forth of useless things. Every article you see has its use. The little shelf of books, well-thumbed, displays no "Trilby" nor "Quest of the Golden Girl"—not an anachronism any where. Curtains, chairs, tables, and the one or two pictures—all ring true. In the kitchen are washtubs and butter-ladles and bowls; and the lantern ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... cut the string of it with his sheath-knife, opened it, and examined the contents with a finely critical air. Having satisfied himself he set it down again and smiled on his twelve pupils, all ranging from ten to twelve years of age, sitting round him. He produced a well-thumbed volume from his pocket, and, opening it, laid it upon his knee. It was there in case he should stumble, for Seth was not a natural born teacher. He did it for the sake of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... badge hung back. He stood still, by the break in the table, watching Garnon of Roxor walk away from him. Then Dirzed the Assassin drew the pistol he had lately received as a gift, hefted it in his hand, thumbed off the safety, and aimed at the ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... and overwhelmed, opened and closed drawers, collected papers, hastily read letters, tore up some, kept others, took down books and thumbed through some of them. Elias did the same, if indeed with less confusion, with equal zeal. But he stopped, with eyes wide open, turned over a paper which he had in his hand and asked ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... was a rag carpet on the floor; a pine bureau neatly varnished; a half dozen plain but whole chairs; a bedstead, upon which the bedding was scrupulously neat; a pine table, upon which lay a much-thumbed leather-bound family Bible and a few religious books; and between the windows, over the bureau, hung a common engraving of Christ upon the Cross. The windows themselves looked upon the back of the stores on South Street. Upon the floor was a large basket full of work, with which the occupant of ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the old mossy vicarage where Coleridge spent his dreamy childhood lay a well-thumbed copy of that volume of Oriental fancy, the "Arabian Nights," and he has told us with what mingled desire and apprehension he was wont to look at the precious book, until the morning sunshine had touched ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... lifted his rifle. "Halt, there! I'll have to call Mr. Bancroft first." The sentry went inside and thumbed ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... for he could prove of no service to the police. On the night previous to his departure he went through his brother's scanty library and found nothing in it of any interest to a collector. The ancient and well-thumbed copy of "Moby Dick" he took for sentiment, and he also directed Jenny to pack for him Bendigo's "Log"—a diary in eight or ten volumes. This he proposed to read at his leisure when home again. To the end of his visit he never ceased to lament the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... with a couple of hundred feet of line out. Occasionally he would make a solid, thumping splash. He worked offshore some two hundred yards, where be led me in water half to my hips. I had to try to stop him here, and with fear and trepidation I thumbed the reel. The first pressure brought a savage rush, but it was short. He turned, and I wound him back and ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... a foaming tankard, which already surmounted his doorway. "Why, the painter man has not made an ill job," said the landlord, "but I would fain have something more connected with the book that has brought me so much good custom." He produced a well-thumbed copy, and handing it to the author, begged he would at least suggest a motto from the Tale of Flodden Field. Scott opened the book at the death-scene of the hero, and his eye was immediately caught by ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... to the family, that had ticked the solemn requiem of the dead, and had kept company with the watcher at the bedside. There were the big, restful beds and the old, open fireplace, and the old family Bible, thumbed with the fingers of hands long since still, and wet with the tears of eyes long since closed, holding the simple annals of the family and the heart and the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... saw a gentleman get up to speak in a public assembly, provided with a paper of notes written in pencil: during the exordium of his speech, he thumbed his notes with incessant agitation; when he looked at the paper, he found that the words were totally obliterated; he was obliged to apologize to his audience; and, after much hesitation, sat down abashed. A father would be sorry to see his ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... after his first hunting trip to Kentucky, Boone began to colonize it and that in flat defiance of the British government. He thumbed his nose too at a menacing proclamation of ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the strenuous tourist who sets out in the morning with his well-thumbed Baedeker to examine the curiosities of a foreign town, but I do not follow in his steps; his eagerness after knowledge, his devotion to duty, compel my respect, but excite me to no imitation. I prefer to wander in old ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... frankly admit, to imagine her the once "arch Miss Lucretia Barry;" looking at her, to remember there had been an evening when she had been "the cynosure of every eye." One found it necessary to fortify oneself with perusal of underlined extracts from ancient journals, much thumbed and creased, thoughtfully lent to one for the purpose. Since those days Fate had woven round her a mantle of depression. She was now a faded, watery-eyed little woman, prone on the slightest provocation to sit down suddenly On the nearest chair and at once commence a history of her ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... come and sit with you. They aren't brilliant old ladies, you understand. I know some whose secular library consists of the Complete Works of John Esten Cooke, Gilmore Simms's War Poems of the South, and a thumbed copy of Father Ryan. But add to these the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Imitation of Christ, and it doesn't make such a bad showing. It's astonishing how soothing the companionship of ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... (and froze) while he illustrated a point by reference to the much-thumbed pages. He was very keen, and not very articulate. I knew just enough to be an intelligent listener, and, though hungry, was ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... typical, I suppose, of the dreams that most of us cultivate about old age. I, too, look forward to a cottage under the high beech woods, to a well-thumbed Boswell, and to a garden where I shall mulch my rose-trees and watch the buds coming with as rich a satisfaction as any that the hot battle of the day has given me. But there is another thing I shall ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... wrote, except "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac"—was written in a room to which many a box stall is palatial, and his sole library was a dilapidated edition of Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," Cruden's "Concordance of the Bible," and a well-thumbed copy of the King James version of the Bible. He detested the revised version. The genius of this man at this time did not depend on scholarship or surroundings, but on the companionship of his fellows and the unconventionality of his ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... also much crumbled by time. The schoolhouse was still used. Every day one of the daughters assembles her smaller brothers and sisters there and school keeps. The district library contained nearly one hundred readable books which were well thumbed. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and that the lady, her condescending friend, was a grocer's daughter! Niobe, at this precise point of the conversation, bestowed a ghastly grin upon the new allies, and producing from her reticule a well-soiled and much be-thumbed volume (whether of plays, or a novel, I could not discern), commenced perusing it with an avidity apparently unchecked by its disgusting odour, the which powerfully assailed me. I, too, was allowed by my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... experience, she ran up-stairs to Lloyd's room, where in a low bookcase were all the juvenile stories that her childhood had held dear. A set of Miss Alcott's books stood first, and, taking out the well-thumbed copy of "Little Men," she shook it gently, fluttering the leaves, and turning it upside down. But the volume held nothing except a four-leaf clover, which Lloyd had left there to mark the place one summer day. ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hardly say, is unskilled in the arts of authorship: this is her first book, and I doubt whether she will ever write another. She hardly realized, I think, how much her story owes to your own delightful writings. There used to be a well-thumbed copy of "Adventures in Contentment" on her table at the Sabine Farm, and I have seen her pick it up, after a long day in the kitchen, read it with chuckles, and say that the story of you and Harriet reminded her of herself and Andrew. She used to mutter something about "Adventures ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... of a busy, laborious life, was a keen student and admirer of the ancient classical literature of his honourable profession. When an old man, it was no uncommon sight to see him whiling away a leisure hour with a well-thumbed Greek copy of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates for his sofa companion. In a home so graced by all the amenities of lettered and scientific tastes, the subject of these remarks could not but enjoy, when a youth, many and great educational advantages. The tutorial ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... by the first chance comer. The Japanese cannot pocket it any more than he can thrill to short Saxon words or we can thrill to Chinese hieroglyphics. The leopard cannot change its spots, nor can the Japanese, nor can we. We are thumbed by the ages into what we are, and by no conscious inward effort can we in a day rethumb ourselves. Nor can the Japanese in a day, or a generation, rethumb himself ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... remain scattered up and down the country side, existing probably in the recollection of many a sun-browned shepherd, or the weather-beaten brains of ancient hinds, or 'eldern' women: or in the well-thumbed and nearly illegible leaves of some old book or pamphlet of songs, snugly resting on the 'pot-head,' or sharing their rest with the 'Great Ha' Bible,' Scott's Worthies, or Blind Harry's lines. The parish dominie or pastor of some ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... to prize them very highly; and there is a passage in "Dilemmas" which I have always thought very characteristic of his own tastes, as it refers to an "infinitesimal library, a few French novels, an Horace, and some well-thumbed volumes of the modern English poets in the familiar edition of Tauchnitz." He was Latin by all his affinities, and that very quality of slightness, of parsimony almost in his dealings with life and the substance of art, connects ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... inclined desk at one end, and the table was strewn with papers, on which were roughly drawn a variety of mathematical figures, margined all around with odd-looking equations and algebraically-expressed formulae. Well-thumbed volumes of mathematical works in English, German, and French, lay about, opened in various places, and there was a cracked old plate, half full of tobacco ashes and the ends of cigarettes. The remaining furniture of the room was simple ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... at the desk snatched up his own weapon and thumbed off the safety, but before he could lift and aim it, the intruder stumbled and passed outside the force-field which ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... dinginess, perhaps, there is nothing to equal a London office, with its floors strewed with newspapers from all parts of the world, parliamentary reports, and its shelves creaking under books of all sorts, thumbed to the last extremity. Notwithstanding these appearances, however, there is discipline—there is real order in the apparent disorder of things. Those newspapers that are lying in heaps have to be accurately filed; those books of reference can be pounced upon when wanted, on the instant; and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... complicated subject, however easily it may be settled by the "ridiculous nonsense" school of critics. I look at the row of books upon the left of my desk as I write—ninety-six solid volumes, many of them annotated and well thumbed, and yet I know that I am like a child wading ankle deep in the margin of an illimitable ocean. But this, at least, I have very clearly realised, that the ocean is there and that the margin is part of it, and that down that shelving shore the human race is destined to move slowly to deeper ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for long enough. We sat together at Mr. Davies's feet—I am speaking metaphorically, for in reality we sat opposite to him—and we thumbed our Cordery and our Nepos together, and made such progress as our natures and our application permitted. Mine, to be honest, was little enough, for I hated ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I thumbed well and skipped nowise till I learned Who was who, what was what, from Homer's tongue, And there an end of learning. Had you asked The all-accomplished scholar, twelve years old, "Who was it wrote the Iliad?"—what ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... down this doctrine,—a very old and much-thumbed doctrine, but none the less true for all its dog-ears:—No man lives for himself alone. He is related not only to the silent stars and the singing-birds and the sunny landscape, but to every other human soul. You say, This should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... his hands; for, in addition to having caught the art of introduction, the honest mariner had taken it into his head he had become an adept in the principles of Vattel, of whom he possessed a well-thumbed copy, and for whose dogmas he entertained the deference that they who begin to learn late usually feel for the particular master into whose hands they have accidentally fallen. "Under what circumstances, or in what category, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... distinction, little tales of a dozen and fifteen pages as they are, of being the only successful attempts at historical fiction that have been made in the United States. Hawthorne was at home in the early New England history; he had thumbed its records and he had breathed its air, in whatever odd receptacles this somewhat pungent compound still lurked. He was fond of it, and he was proud of it, as any New Englander must be, measuring the part ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... and soothed me with unbounded praises and visions of future success. He was then confined to the house with his last illness. He asked me that day if I would like to have, when he was gone, the old lexicon, Testament, and grammar that we had so often thumbed together. "Yes, but I would rather have you stay," I replied, "for what can I do when you are gone?" "Oh," said he tenderly, "I shall not be gone; my spirit will still be with you, watching you in all life's ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Cadurcis. 'I made out a list the other day of all the persons and things I have been compared to. It begins well, with Alcibiades, but it ends with the Swiss giantess or the Polish dwarf, I forget which. Here is your book. You see it has been well thumbed. In fact, to tell the truth, it was my cribbing book, and I always kept it by me when I was writing at Athens, like a gradus, a gradus ad Parnassum, you know. But although I crib, I am candid, and you see I fairly own it ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... They could read, and write, and cypher. They were little farmers, and gardeners, and seamstresses, and housewives. Nor had their religious and moral training been neglected. The good Book lay well thumbed and dogeared on the kitchen shelf. The sound of the "church-going bell" had never been heard by those children, but every Sunday the mother gathered them about her, and they read together from the New Testament. "It is ten years," said the matron, "since ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... from the remote corner an unmistakably sophisticated brier and a package of Yale Mixture, and proceeded to light up. He grinned again as his teeth clamped on the stem, and jerked it into the corner of his mouth with a practiced twist of his tongue. Then he picked up a small and well-thumbed book lying half hidden among his law books and papers, and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the fine old ballad of 'St. George for England' and a loyal ditty, then much in vogue, called 'True Protestant Gratitude, or, Britain's Thanksgiving for the First of August, Being the Day of His Majesty's Happy Accession to the Throne.' Jack Sheppard's library consisted of a few ragged and well-thumbed volumes abstracted from the tremendous chronicles bequeathed to the world by those Froissarts and Holinsheds of crime—the Ordinaries of Newgate. His vocal collection comprised a couple of flash songs pasted against ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... her mind, and though she had since re-read the passage that had then attracted her attention a hundred times, it had never before presented itself to her in its full significance. Hurriedly turning the well-thumbed leaves, she read aloud the passage ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... been pretty much occupied, too," observed the captain, "for a better thumbed pack I never yet found in the forecastle of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... the flat, cardboard chessmen turned upside down, and the corner of a table, on which a few well-thumbed newspapers lay, utilized for the game. The players were so interested in making moves and getting kings that, at first, they did not notice the talk of the card players which was directed against them; for Matt, being called away to his bar, was replaced by a third loafer. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... was with honor indeed that, instead of dreaming off into the radiant past through the well thumbed book of magic, he was digging between dull sheepskin covers after the key to the bar of the State, on which his will ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... she is to bring out in Havana, but the creaking of the Norma is sadly at variance with harmony. A pale German youth, in dressing-gown and slippers, is studying Schiller. An ingenious youngster is carefully conning a well-thumbed note, which looks like a milliner's girl's last billet-doux. The little possede is burning brown paper within an inch of the curtains of a state-room, while the steward is dragging it from him. Others are gradually dropping into their berths, like ripe nuts ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... well thumbed letter from his pocket and read it to himself, though he knew every ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... romantic name was dark with new significance. He was terribly logical. In his cabin—a comfortable room with a fine big stove—he had a picture of his wife and daughters, all very rigid and uncomfortable. He also had three books. They included neither Burns nor Scott. One was the Bible, thumbed by his grandfather and his father till the paper had worn yellow and thin at the sides. The second, I am sorry to say, was called The Beautiful White Devil. The third was an odd volume of Froude in the Everyman edition. It dealt ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Thumbed are the pages, And the print is small; Mocking the winds That from the darkness call; Feeble the fire that lends ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... Saints, Graevius and Gronovius, and heavy books of that order, are in their old original morocco, without a scratch or abrasure, gilt-edged, vellum-jointed, with their backs blazing in tooled gold. Your own dingy well-thumbed Bayle or Moreri possibly cost you two or three pounds; his cost forty or fifty. Further, in these affluent shelves may be found those great costly works which cross the border of "three figures," and of which only one or two ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... body is sensitive to light, and is as conscious of the ray as the pupil of your own eye. Here is great and good work like that of those classics, the manuscripts of which were the first to be copied by the early printers, and books like this would be well thumbed of the country reader. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... dispelled my last, lingering doubts. Evidently I had bought it before the personalities had forked so sharply apart and separated, Jason from Jay. I was beginning to believe. Not to accept. Just to believe it had happened. The book looked well-thumbed, and had been handled so much I had to baby it into ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... bulky, greasy, black note-book from the bureau, and handed it to him. He opened it, thumbed the pages, and then read ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... taken recently by the first photographer in Guernsey. There were book-cases containing a number of the best medical works; behind which lay, out of sight, a numerous selection of French novels, more thumbed than the ponderous volumes in front. He sank down into an easy-chair, shivering as if we were ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... closed mysteriously. Officials and subofficials passed hurriedly to and fro. Whispered conversations were heard. The book on rules and regulations was hopefully thumbed. Hours passed. Finally the two prisoners were pompously told that they had "obstructed the traffic" on Pennsylvania Avenue, were dismissed on their own recognizance, and never brought ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... what they can see and no more, and there are others, the baffled, fighting and disordered others, for whom nothing that they can see with their mortal eyes is enough, and who'll be restless all their days with their queer little maps and their mysterious, thumbed directions to some island or other that they'll never reach and never even ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... probably. What is this? Eighth and ninth book of Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read and read. Who has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands. Recipe for white wine vinegar. How to win a woman's love. For me this. Say the following talisman ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... cunning shrewdness of the Marten and Weasels, the hoyden visages of the Kittens, and the cool, slippery demeanour of the Frogs, are all capitally given. The book may lie on the drawing-room table, or be thumbed in the nursery; and in the latter case we have little doubt that many an urchin still in petticoats will in future years associate his most vivid recollection of the Great Exhibition of 1851 with Mr. Bogue's perpetuation of the ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... That fate he watched, and waited for, from the secure retreat of the Portuguese Governor's veranda close by the Eastern Sea, where he sat and mused as aforetime on his stoep at Pretoria; his well-thumbed Bible still by his side, his well-used pipe still between his lips. Surely Napoleon the Third at Chislehurst, broken in health, broken in heart, was a scarcely more pathetic spectacle! Six or seven days ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... out and said it. In all the years they'd worked together at the Instituto Argentino de Ciencia Fisica, that had been unmentioned between them. The families of hanged cutthroats avoid mention of ropes and knives. He thumbed the old-fashioned American lighter and held it to his pipe. Across the veranda, in the darkness, he knew that Pitov was ...
— The Answer • Henry Beam Piper
... his pocket his school report and ran his eye down the column of figures written upon the white card. He did not read because the reading gave him pleasure. Neither was the bit of pasteboard white any more. Instead it was thumbed and worn at the corners until it had gradually assumed a dismal grayish hue—a color quite in harmony ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... Morgan, as he thumbed over the typewritten sheets in his hands, "you say there has been a murder committed here. With this tenant, Marsh, and a patrolman, getting into action so soon after the shot, a body couldn't possibly be moved out of the ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... of the old time in New England that did not contain a well-thumbed volume of the Pilgrim's Progress; and there were few children who did not become acquainted with its contents, either through its text or its pictures. I am sure that all the children felt as I did—very tired with sympathy for the poor pilgrim who was obliged to ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... get ready, as he intended to go a considerable distance that day, and he wished to reach a particular spot before the heat of noon. So Martin and Barney despatched breakfast in as short a time as possible, and the hermit read them a chapter out of his large and well-thumbed Bible, after which they equipped ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature, Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing From the green hills, immortal in his lays. And for myself, obedient to her wish, I searched our landlord's proffered library,— A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them; Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology's Last home, a musty pile of almanacs, And an old chronicle of border wars And ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... awe. One of these was the pulpit of the "classical" usher; one, of the "English and mathematical." Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity, were innumerable benches and desks, black, ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with much-be-thumbed books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form might have been their portion in days long departed. A huge bucket with ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... clammy like that of a drowned man; his limbs trembled, so desperate was his passion. He stumbled into the house and into the dining-room, where he kept a little black-bound Bible once belonging to his great- grandfather. He had thumbed it well in past years, searching it for passages of violence and denunciation. Now holy superstition seized him in the midst of the work of the devil, surrounding him with an almost medieval instinct. He seized the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... raisin makers to produce the Dehesa brand. They know that their best raisins are equal in size and quality to the best Spanish raisins, but heretofore they have found the cost of preparing the top layer in the Spanish style very costly, as the raisins had to be flattened out (or thumbed, as it is technically called) by hand. In Spain, where women work for 20 cents a day, this hand labor cuts no figure in the cost of production, but here, with the cheapest labor at $1.50 a day, it has proved a bar to competition. American ingenuity, however, is likely to overcome ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... music and a little aesthetic culture, and gradually extending into higher forms of human enjoyment. The simplest religious craving is for economic assurance of supply. "The Lord is my Shepherd: I shall not want," is on the most thumbed page of the Bible. The play of these economic aspirations among poor people results in all the simpler and most general religious feelings. With the rise of the aspirations of the individual, and the ideals of the ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... must recollect that these were rag-tag and bob-tail, the flotsam of a hundred herds, forty per cent cripples, walking on crutches. Think of it! Two per cent loss, under herd, a sleet over the range for six weeks, against your ten per cent kill on an open range. You must have a slatterly, sore-thumbed lot of men on ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... were no tragedies or other horrors in the newspapers sufficiently piquant to tempt the cook's intellectual palate; and in the absence of these, if it happened also to be Jane's "evening out," Mary would occasionally produce a well-thumbed copy of the Arabian Nights, or some old volume of fairy tales, from ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... the flat-topped mahogany desk in the center of the room with several well-thumbed account-books open before him. Bladen, in riding ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... in obedience to nature's wise compensations, homesickness was blotted out by sea-sickness, and both at last resolved into a chaotic and distempered dream, whose details we now recognize. The steamer chair that we used to drag out upon the narrow strip of deck and doze in, over the pages of a well-thumbed novel; the deck itself, of afternoons, redolent with the skins of oranges and bananas, of mornings, damp with salt-water and mopping; the netted bulwark, smelling of tar in the tropics, and fretted ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... Mdlle. Perier with a look of lofty contempt, but she received the well-thumbed lesson-book ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... saw the inside of it, and nobody could say where the key was, therefore what flowery pleasaunce of knowledge it contained nobody perhaps knows to this day. I also remember how greedily any entertaining book was borrowed, begged, and circulated; and thumbed and dog's-eared to admiration. Rasselas and Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, or Sandford and Merton, poor things! they became at last what might be supposed a public arsenal of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... Chipewyan wife, a tall handsome woman whom he addresses as "Josette." Their three girls are being educated in the convent at Fort Chipewyan. The room in which we sit reflects the grafting of red life on white. A rough bookcase of birchwood, with thumbed copies of schoolboy classics, Carlyle, the Areopagitica, and the latest Tractate on Radium, gives one a glimpse of the long, long winter nights when all race and latitude limitations fade away and the mind of the Master of Fond du Lac jumps the barrier of ice and snow to mix ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... earnestness. And then for a while they talked of the soldier son who had been killed. With a proud lift to his tired, bent shoulders old John brought out the letter written by his platoon officer, and showed it to the man who had penned a score of similar documents. It was well thumbed and tattered, and if ever Vane had experienced a sense of irritation at the exertion of writing to some dead boy's parents or wife he was amply repaid now. Such a little trouble really; such a wonderful return of gratitude even though it be unknown and unacknowledged. . . . "You'll ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... was empty. The remains of a frugal meal lay upon the rough wooden table. Also an open breviary, much thumbed and worn. At the further end of the table, a little pile of medicinal herbs heaped as if shaken hastily from the wallet which lay beside them. Probably the holy man, even while at an early hour he broke his fast, had been called ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... seeing the first verse, though I turned away my eyes as quickly as possible; that verse, to the best of my memory, ran thus: "Say, lovely Lesbia, when thy swain." Upon the ground lay a box of patches, a periwig, and two or three well thumbed books of songs. Such was the reception-room of Beau Fielding, one indifferently well calculated to exhibit the propensities of a man, half bully, half fribble; a poet, a fop, a fighter, a beauty, a walking museum of all odd humours, and a living shadow of a past renown. "There are changes ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... carving-knife and poised himself for a blow at President Hutchinson's back. I simply pressed the little silver stud on my belt, the Krupp-Tatta popped obediently out of the holster into my open hand. I thumbed off the safety and swung up; when my sights closed on the rising hand that ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... everything worth doing to have been done. Suddenly, in that silence, Bardon caught sight of Evander where he stood apart, disdainful, between his guards, and the sight pricked his wits. Turning to his mates, he thumbed at the prisoner ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... lines, written by some unknown poetaster, indicate that it is the book we read over and over again that has the greatest potency in our education. I quite agree with the author, and I love to behold the well-thumbed pocket-edition that speaks to the eye of much handling and frequent perusal. There are very few books worth reading once that are not worth reading oftener. Hobbes used to say that if he had read as much literature as the majority of men, he would have been ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Half a dozen times he thumbed the letters in the packages over before he would admit that the one for which he was seeking ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... make the same!) that they should both begin together with a duet, is loudly applauded;—the music-book is thumbed over, and the leaf, carefully folded down, is at length found, and away we go with ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... troop of dear acquaintances; THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS in the front rank, THE BIBLE IN SPAIN not far behind. There are besides a certain number that look at me with reproach as I pass them by on my shelves: books that I once thumbed and studied: houses which were once like home to me, but where I now rarely visit. I am on these sad terms (and blush to confess it) with Wordsworth, Horace, Burns and Hazlitt. Last of all, there is the class of book that has its hour of brilliancy - glows, sings, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was pretty well absorbed by keeping his hard-mouthed troop-horse in hand, under pain of execration by his neighbors in the melde. By-and-by, when the newspapers came out, if he could get a look at one before it was thumbed to bits, he would learn that the enemy had appeared from ambush in overwhelming numbers, and that orders had been given to fall back, which was done slowly and in good order, the men fighting as ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... ecstatic pity of both children. He played quiet games with them, and told them stories—conversed on Telemaque with Estelle, or read to her from his one book, which was Robinson Crusoe—a little black copy in pale print, with the margins almost thumbed away, which he had carried in his pocket when he ran away from school, and nearly ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... many—perhaps ten or a dozen. There was a volume of Shakespeare's plays, an "Ivanhoe," a much-thumbed "Lady of the Lake," a book of miscellaneous poems, a coverless "Tennyson," a dilapidated "Little Lord Fauntleroy," and two or three books of ancient and medieval history. But, though Mrs. Carew looked carefully through every one, she found nowhere any written word. With a despairing ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... usual was poring over his well-thumbed chart. Every day he marked the new ground they had covered, and very seldom had he found cause to doubt the correctness of the two guides. And whenever this had happened it turned out that they were ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... I've thumbed it out in the Bible, and I know it now by heart, And it's put the steam in my boiler, and made me ready to start. I ain't not afraid to die now; I've been a bit bad in my day, But I know when I knock at them portals there's one as won't say me nay. And it's thinkin' ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... man took from the wallet he had on his back a thick book with a red cover. Then he sat at the foot of the chestnut-tree and turned the well-thumbed leaves until he found the place he was hunting for. He closed the book, but kept his forefinger between the leaves, and took the ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... meet and tell me all he could remember. He was very willing, and added that somewhere or other he had a diary which he had written: perhaps it might be of use? I asked him to send it me, and was sent some dirty thumbed sheets of paper. And this is what ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... though he said little in return, she made the most of it, and was sure anyway that he was glad to see her come in, and must some time read the labour newspapers and Venturist leaflets she brought him, for they were always well thumbed before they came back ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him, in a dense pocket of poplar and spruce, a warbler suddenly brought its song to a jerky end. He heard the excited Pe-wee—Pe-wee—Pe-wee of a startled little gray-back giving warning of an unwelcome intruder near its nest. And he rose to his feet, laughing softly as he thumbed down the tobacco in his pipe. Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain might believe in him, but Bateese and her wary henchmen had ways of their own of ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... the very time when Johann Schmidt's oldest child was lying ill with diphtheria. As for clothing, he had nothing to offer. The secrets of his outward appearance were known to him alone, but they were of a nature to discourage the hope of raising money on coat or trousers. A few well-thumbed volumes of Russian authors could not be expected to find a brilliant sale in Munich at a moment's notice. He looked about, and he saw that there was nothing, and he ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... reports, my dear fellow, and very well thumbed, I assure you. I made excellent arrangements, and they are only delayed one day upon their way. I must compliment you exceedingly upon the zeal and the intelligence which you have shown over an ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... Crusoe," and the celebrated "Swiss Family" of the same name; "The Desert Home," of Mayne Reid; Marryat's "Peter Simple"; "The Leather Stocking Tales"; "Rob Roy"; and "The Three Guardsmen" were well thumbed and well liked; but they were not The Boy's first love in fiction, and they never usurped, in his affections, the place of the true account of David Copperfield. It was a queer book to have absorbed the time and attention of a boy ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... remarks that he 'has met in the course of a lengthened career with treasures which would make a small library, and has beheld no duplicates.' Probably many of these incognita and rarissima perished in the great fire of London; others again met their fate solely through their own popularity, being 'thumbed' to pieces. In 1494 Pynson thought well enough to reprint Caxton's 'Book of Good Manners'; but of this once popular book one copy only—that which was formerly ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... ordinary run of business; but if one has any thing special on hand, he will point to a door opening into a rear office. This apartment is of moderate size and of simple furniture. On the table are a few books, and on opening one of them, which appears well thumbed, it will be found to contain maps of plots of city property, carefully and elegantly executed, and embracing the boundaries of an enormous estate. Seated by the table may generally be seen a stout-built man with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of his favorite books was Plutarch's "Lives of Illustrious Men." He devoured the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" whole. "With my sword by my side, and Homer in my pocket, I hope to carve my way through the world," he wrote to his mother. Another well-thumbed volume was ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... know all that. I was just ribbing the bat-snatcher here." He thumbed a cigarette out of his tunic, touched his lighter to it. He frowned, stared at the lighter, tried it again. "It doesn't work. Damn it!" he barked explosively, "I don't like things ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... pocket a much-thumbed, crudely drawn map and spread it out on the table. How he obtained it, the boys never learned exactly, but they heard later that a treacherous attendant of the ivory dealer had sold it to him for a ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... has not yet procured himself a busy, important countenance, nor learned that profound part of wisdom, to be difficult of access. Besides, he has clearly mistaken the true use of books, which he has thumbed and spoiled with reading, when he ought to have multiplied them on his shelves:[27] not like a great man of my acquaintance, who knew a book by the back, better than a friend by the face, though he had never conversed with the former, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... sensibly felt. Hour after hour, and day after day, passed with Angelina, in anxious expectation of her Araminta's return home. Her time hung heavy upon her hands, for she had no companion with whom she could converse; and one odd volume of Rousseau's Eloise, and a few well-thumbed German plays, were the only books which she could find in the house. There was, according to Betty Williams's report, "a vast sight of books in a press, along with some table-cloths," but Miss Hodges had the key of this press in her pocket. Deprived ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... nineteen days just mentioned, no unique incidents distinguished our voyage. I saw little of the captain. He was at work. In the library I often found books he had left open, especially books on natural history. He had thumbed through my work on the great ocean depths, and the margins were covered with his notes, which sometimes contradicted my theories and formulations. But the captain remained content with this method ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... ceased speaking and looked retrospectively into the fire. Then, without speaking, he rose, shuffled to a small table in one corner of the room, and opening the drawer took from it a well-thumbed envelope. Returning to the group he handed it to Grace, saying proudly: "This is the letter my frien' write. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... spread neatly on the fire-bars. Next, journey by journey, passing Miss Fowler's white face at the morning-room window each time, she brought down in the towel-covered clothes-basket, on the wheel-barrow, thumbed and used Hentys, Marryats, Levers, Stevensons, Baroness Orczys, Garvices, schoolbooks, and atlases, unrelated piles of the Motor Cyclist, the Light Car, and catalogues of Olympia Exhibitions; the remnants of a fleet of sailing-ships from ninepenny cutters to a three-guinea ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... unredeemed pledges made to the electors of Westminster, and originally taken in by them—a compliment very handsomely returned by the honourable Baronet, who kindly took his constituents in in return. Very curious, though much dogs-eared, thumbed, and as far as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... so long ago, when he took his abilities for granted. Now he was getting old enough to have to verify them. He thumbed on the safety and holstered the pistol, then picked up the glove and ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... lad. I couldn't speak. I opened my mouth and closed it again. Never in my life before had I asked any one for food. My embarrassment was painful, extreme. I was ashamed. I, who looked upon begging as a delightful whimsicality, thumbed myself over into a true son of Mrs. Grundy, burdened with all her bourgeois morality. Only the harsh pangs of the belly-need could compel me to do so degraded and ignoble a thing as beg for food. And into my face I strove to throw all the wan wistfulness of famished and ingenuous ...
— The Road • Jack London
... later Ben came in again, bringing actual manuscript for eight or ten stories. He was haggard but very happy. It was clear that he had sat up nights with those stories. He thumbed them over as though he hated to let them go. They were the first fruits of his Big Idea—the idea that just under the edge of the news as commonly understood, the news often flatly and unimaginatively told, lay life; that in this urban life there dwelt the stuff of literature, not hidden in remote ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... pines singing, snowstorm coming on. That leaf was pretty well weather-stained; I carried it off with me and had it framed—hangs in my house now. Another time I was doing California on horseback, and in an abandoned shack in the Sierras I found Emerson's 'Poems'—an old copy that somebody had thumbed a good deal. I poked it out of some rubbish and came near making a fire of it. Left it, though, for the next fellow. I've noticed that if one thing like that happens to you there's bound to be another. Is that superstition, Thatcher? I'm not superstitious,—not particularly,—but we've all ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Sheridan, for another scornful time, was rereading the well-thumbed copy of the Sentinel, her fine back arched like a prize cat's, George Remington in his small mahogany office adjoining, neck low and heels high, was codifying, over and over again, the small planks of his platform, stuffing the knot ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... carriage, with ladies for companions, at their command? The coach had come down the hill on purpose to conduct Messieurs les voyageurs; how did these gentlemen suppose a pere de famille was to make his living if the fashion of walking came in? And the rusty red vest was thumbed by the gnarled hand of the father, who was also an orator; and a high-peaked hat swept the ground before the hard-hearted gentlemen. All the tragedy of the situation had come about from the fact that the tourists, also, had gotten themselves up in costume. When two fine youths have risen ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... not help thinking that there was a good deal of quiet satire in the gossip of this negro prince. According to the custom of his country, we "exchanged names" at parting; and, while he put in my pocket the gift of a well-thumbed Koran, I slung over his shoulder a double-barrelled gun. We walked side by side for some miles into the forest, as he went forth from Bangalang; and as we "cracked fingers" for farewell, I promised, with my hand on my heart, that ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... home-made chair or two, though usually chests in which clothing and furs are stored are utilized also as seats. A closet built at one side holds the meager supply of dishes. On a mantelshelf the clock ticks, if the cabin boasts one, and by its side rests a well-thumbed Bible. ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... ingenuity, in saying their say without bringing themselves within the grasp of the censors; here, rough contributors, whose hands, more accustomed to the tar-brush than the pen, turned flowing sentences by the aid of old miscellanies and well-thumbed dictionaries. There, on wooden stools, leaning over long tables, were a row of serious and anxious faces, which put one in mind of the days of cane and birch,—an Arctic school. Tough old marines curving "pot-hooks and hangers," as if their very lives ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... me see—" He thumbed the book for a while, murmuring words which I could not catch; then thrust it behind his back with a finger between its pages, straightened himself up, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... painter, instead of replying, rose, searched out from among drawings and sketches a much-thumbed manuscript, and returning ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... was Straws' little bedstead cupboard! As Phazma said of it, it contained everything it should not, and nothing it should contain. But that was why it was a poet's box. If it had held a Harpagon's Interest Computer, instead of a well-thumbed Virgil, or Oldcodger's Commercial Statistics for 184—, instead of an antique, leather-covered Montaigne, Straws would have had no use for the cupboard. It was at once his library—a scanty one, for the poet held tenaciously to but a few ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... to the old bailiff and his Betty, was evidently the show scholar. "She be in her Testament, ma'am," explained Lizzie; and accordingly a terribly thumbed and dilapidated New Testament was put into the child's hand, from which she proceeded to bawl out, with long pauses between the words, and spelling the longest, a piece of the Sermon on the Mount, selected because there were no names in it. It was a painful performance to reverent ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Asmodeus, that well-gloved right hand would have been revealed as resting upon the handle of a heavy revolver, and the contents of the tourist-looking portmanteau been known as some thirty-eight thousand dollars in well-thumbed currency and greasy checks ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... kitchen for an ax or hatchet; but failing to find either rummaged through a table drawer until he came upon a large carving knife. This would do the job nicely. He thumbed the edge as he carried it back into the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... informed. In the big library at the Circle L were various volumes relating to economics that had been well thumbed by him. He had been privately educated, by his mother. And among the books that lined the shelves of the library were the philosophers, ancient and modern; the masters of art, science, and letters, and a miscellany ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... good-night, and the sleepy little handmaid stumped off to her bed; and white old Tamar, who had not spoken so much for a month before, put on her solemn round spectacles, and by her dipt candle read her chapter in the ponderous Bible she had thumbed so well, and her white lips told over the words as she read them ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... had tightened at Porter's tone when he began, but he had relaxed by the time the millionaire had finished, and was even managing to look smugly tolerant. Elshawe had thumbed the button on his minirecorder when the conversation had begun, and he was chuckling mentally at the thought of what was going down on the thin, magnetite-impregnated, plastic thread that was hissing ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to the saddle pack without taking his eyes from the moving speck and took out the radiophone. He held it to his ear and thumbed the call ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Congregational Church of Catawba. He was back in the Sunday School of his boyhood. He smelled again that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors; he recalled the case of drab Sunday School books: "Hetty, a Humble Heroine" and "Josephus, a Lad of Palestine;" he thumbed once more the high-colored text-cards which no boy wanted but no boy liked to throw away, because they were somehow sacred; he was tortured by the stumbling rote of thirty-five years ago, as in the vast Zenith church he ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... warm these sultry September evenings, and the Doctor's mental strides much too long for her to keep pace, she nevertheless looked eagerly forward to the hours spent there. If at times she failed to follow his elucidations, or grew sleepy reading aloud from some well-thumbed classic, it was not because her admiration and respect for her husband were lessening. In fact, he was always at his best at this time, surrounded by the books he knew and loved, and expanding under the approbation of his one appreciative listener. Here he reigned, a ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... my dear boy," Mr. Worden cried, "that you did not forget to purchase a few packs of cards; which I plainly see, will be a great resource for us, in this woody region. These cards of Jason's are so thumbed and handled, that they are not fit to be touched by a gentleman, as I will show you.—Why, what has become of the pack, Master Newcome?—It was on the log but ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... had lived there not very long ago. There remained a rude table—a plank on two posts; a heap of rubbish reposed in a dark corner, and by the door I picked up a book. It had lost its covers, and the pages had been thumbed into a state of extremely dirty softness; but the back had been lovingly stitched afresh with white cotton thread, which looked clean yet. It was an extraordinary find. Its title was, An Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship, by a man Towser, Towson—some such name—Master in his Majesty's ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... away, but he could not resist the fascination of Mr. Daggett's printing office. One day he came from it bearing an inky and much-thumbed catalogue. He fairly learned it by heart—not only the machines, from the tiny card press to the beautiful fifty-dollar self-inker beyond which his ambition did not stray, but also all the little accessories of the trade—the mallet, the patent quoins, the sticks, the type-cases, ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... various printings of 1601 is almost legendary. In the days of the "jour." printer, so I am told, well-thumbed copies were carried from print shop to print shop. For more than a quarter century now it has been one of the chief sources of enjoyment for printers' devils; and many a young rascal has learned about life from this Fireside Conversation. It has ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... half-crown whist; and, indeed, had he been disposed to card-playing, he could not have indulged himself at Trimmerstone, for Mr. Sprout had banished almost all card-playing from the place, so that there was not a pack of cards in the parish, except two or three mutilated well-thumbed packs of quadrille-cards, which were still used by a knot of antiquated spinsters worthy of the good old days of Sacheverel and High Church. Quadrille-cards will not do for whist, for all the eights, nines, and tens are thrown out. Formerly, Lord Trimmerstone used ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... thumbed the bank-notes. The dark brown corduroy was simply, if mannishly cut, and in a way it became her. Her small feet and rounded ankles would have appeared to better advantage in high-heeled shoes and silk stockings than those blunt-nosed boots and canvas leggings. And why in the name of common sense ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... his inkpots got critically tested, pencils got twisted in and out till they refused to twist again, desks got ransacked, and their contents mixed in glorious and hopeless confusion, photographs got thumbed, books got dog- eared; and the sole profit to the honest merchant was the healthy exercise of putting everything tidy after his visitors had left, and the satisfaction of expressing his feelings in language strictly selected from ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed |
