E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • More 'Knuckles' Quotes from Famous Books

... straight right. The Nipe moved his head aside, and Stanton's knuckles merely grazed the side of his head, below the lower right eye. One of the Nipe's hands came in in a chopping right hook that took Stanton just below the ribs. Stanton leaped back with a ...

— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Fitzpatrick the Bad Hand nudged me gently with his knuckles, and I nudged Jed Smith, and Jed passed it on, and it went around from one to the other, so we all knew. Somebody was coming! We could hear a stick snap, and a little laugh, off in the timber; it sounded as though ...

— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... her food. Her father was engaged in a long explanation of the misdeeds of a man who had sold him inferior pork, as she folded her napkin, slipped it into her ring, and went back into the store. Here she sat on her stool again, tapping the counter with closed knuckles. Her eyes chanced to fall upon the paper she had thrown down on the floor, and she picked it up and began to read. Pete Coogan, when he had brought it into the store, unknowingly had set big things in motion. He would have been amazed at the ...

— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... only his sudden abstraction and the whitened knuckles of his left hand. She also realised, with a faint prick of anxiety, that he had simply not heard her remark. Was it possible—could Roy be at the back of Aruna's waverings? Would his coming mean fresh complications? Too distracting to be responsible ...

— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... not realize how pugnacious was his pose, but he was leaning toward her with his face quite close, and his eyes were blue points of intensity. His hands, doubled and pressing hard on the table, showed white at the knuckles. ...

— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... into the depths of a buttercup. Hugh John scratched the freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a "pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret, her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking upward in rapt attention. For her there was no joy like that of a story. Only, she was too young to mind letting the tale-teller know it. ...

— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... stood back while she stepped boldly up on the rude stone slab and rapped sharply against the warped and sagging door. A moment they stood thus waiting with no response from within. Once she glanced suspiciously around at him, only to wheel back instantly and once more apply her knuckles to the wood. Before he had conjured up something worth saying the door was partially opened, and a rounded dumpling of a woman, having rosy cheeks, her hair iron-gray, her blue eyes half smiling in uncertain welcome, looked out ...

— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... "Did you give Clewer Head-knuckles?" McTurk echoed. At the twentieth repetition—no boy can stand the torture of one unvarying query, which is the essence ...

— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... still standing at his side. Without changing his attitude he rapped with his knuckles gently twice upon the boards of the stair. She turned towards him with a gasp of the breath. He rapped again twice, fearful lest she should speak to him. She understood that he had given her the signal to go. She turned on her heel and slipped ...

— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... another time-table, threatening again to lose himself completely; and was thrown into the utmost confusion by the touch of the girl's hand, in appeal placed lightly on his own. And had she been observant, she might have seen a second time his knuckles whiten beneath the skin as he asserted his self-control—though this time not over ...

— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... Hallowell, Mrs. Marsh, Gaylor, Rainey, Professor Strombergk entered the cabinet. With their knuckles they beat upon its sides. They moved it to and fro. They dropped to their knees, and with their fingers tugged at the carpet upon ...

— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis

... did not know. The other he recognised at once. It seemed to be the same familiarly shabby black coat which he wore, the same many-stained waistcoat, the identical silk hat, ruffled and rain-spotted. The same pads of flesh hung flaccid from his jaws; the red, cracked knuckles of his hands, well remembered, were enormous still. Only the furrows on the face seemed to be ploughed deeper and wider, and a few more stiff hairs curled over the general ...

— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... intercostals were somewhat sore for a time, on account of a contact with priestly knuckles, doubtless there soon set in a corresponding uneasiness in the region of your conscience. Such shocks are often vigorously alterative ...

— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... arrival and with the advent of tea, he had accomplished what she had fervently wished for the night she had met him—he succeeded, by several easy moves, in isolating her from her aunt, and, notwithstanding her admiration, her desire to tap with her knuckles the metal of her idol and listen for a ring of hollowness, she was alarmed. Yet, perversely, she knew that he would not exhibit his paces before his wife—naturally a disinterested spectator—or before her aunt, who was hardly "intimate" enough. ...

— Visionaries • James Huneker

... concern during the first few years of his life except at such times as his mother grows officious and fussy and insists that they ought to be washed up as far as the regular place for washing a boy's hands, to wit, about midway between the knuckles and the wrist. The fact that one finger is usually in a state of mashedness is no drawback, but a benefit. The presence of a soiled rag around a finger gives to a boy's hand a touch of distinctiveness—singles it out from ordinary unmaimed hands. Its presence has been known ...

— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... discovered from the style of his address, it was none other than the subject of my late reverie with whom I had come in collision. "I don't know whether I have scratched your varnish, as you call it, but I have knocked the skin off my own knuckles against the tree ...

— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... the bewildered Max sighed, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, as though hardly knowing whether ...

— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie

... Cut-glass bottles for wines and brandies, Sticks once flourished by bucks and dandies; Deep old glasses they drank enough in, And golden boxes they took their snuff in; Rings that flashed on a gallant's knuckles, Seals and lockets and shining buckles; Watches sadly in need of menders, Blackened firedogs and dinted fenders; Prints and pictures and quaint knick-knackery, Rare old silver and mere gimcrackery— Such was ...

— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... heavily, it turns and jars the brain, and the man who is struck feels as though the man who struck him had opened the top of his skull and taken his brains in his hand and wrenched them as a brakeman wrenches a brake. If you shut your teeth hard, and rap the tip of your chin sharply with your knuckles, you can get an idea of how effective this is when multiplied by an arm and all the muscles of ...

— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis

... bolt, but with infinite slowness and caution. In so doing they crept into the moonlight. The actual motion was imperceptible, but slowly, slowly, the fingers came out whiter and whiter; but the hand between the main knuckles and ...

— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... received the blow just beside the point of his chin; and his eyes seemed to Cashel roll up and fall back into his head with the shock. He drooped forward for a moment, and fell in a heap face downward. Cashel recoiled, wringing his hand to relieve the tingling of his knuckles, and terrified by the thought that he had committed murder. But Wilson presently moved and dispelled that misgiving. Some of Cashel's fury returned as he shook his fist at his prostrate adversary, and, exclaiming, "YOU won't brag much of having seen me ...

— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... trip no brass knuckles. Glove That heavy mailed hand; Your mission now is one of Love And ...

— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor

... his great bone-rimmed spectacles, and she could see the knuckles of his bony hands, just above the top of the table, fidgeting, fidgeting, fidgeting, till she wondered if there existed another set of fingers in the world which could undo the knots his lean ones made in that tiresome piece ...

— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... me out of the saddle, no doubt in the hope of seeing me trampled to death by the cohort behind me. As I leaned my body forward so as to maintain my seat, and with my arms pulled violently backwards by the rope, the flesh was rubbed off my hands and knuckles by the chain of the handcuffs. In places the bone was exposed; and, of course, every tug brought me into forcible contact with the spikes and inflicted deeper wounds. The cord, though strong, eventually and unexpectedly gave way. The soldier who was pulling at the other end was clumsily ...

— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... hedge on the side of the road opposite the wall, and ran on, sheltered by the hedge, until, to his delight, he plunged headfirst into a stream of water. The fall knocked him out for a moment, but the cold water revived him, and he did not mind the scraped knee and the barked knuckles he owed to the sharp stones in the bed of the little brook. He changed his course at once, following the brook, since in that no telltale ...

— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske

... Surprised to find the hours so swiftly fly. With hasty knock, or twang of pendent cord. Alarm the drowsy youth from slumb'ring nod; Startled he flies, and stumbles o'er the stairs Erroneous, and with busy knuckles plies His yet clung eyelids, and with stagg'ring reel Enters confused, and muttering asks our wills; When we with liberal hand the score discharge, And homeward each his course with steady step Unerring steers, of ...

— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... a going over. When it took that awful shoot, I lost control of it. Maybe I'm to be discharged for losing control of it, but not"—Freckles sniffled pathetically—-"but not for anything like what he says I done. Why Governor," he went on, ramming his knuckles into his eyes, "I ain't got nothing against him! What'd I take ...

— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... violently that, for a few seconds, he was unable to move. Becoming calmer, he tried the door, and finding it locked, rapped with his knuckles against it. The grocer's wife demanded who was there. But Wyvil, instead of returning an answer, repeated his application. The same demand followed, and in a louder key. Still no answer. A third summons, however, so alarmed Mrs. Bloundel, that, forgetful of her husband's injunctions, she opened ...

— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... boy with the hateful grin, and how Curly Davis had sneered and spat and struck. Suddenly he found himself tingling all over, and pressing a burning forehead against the cool glass, and digging his knuckles into the corner of the sash till they ached. Then he went into the library, and lay down on father's big leather couch, and thought ...

— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... afternoon I opened the outer door of the dining-room in response to the rap of strenuously applied knuckles. ...

— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... still decorated with a bruise that young Mosher had planted there. The boxing of Dick & Co., this summer, was real work. It was done with bare knuckles, though, of course, without anger or the desire to do injury. Boxing with bare knuckles was Prescott's own idea for hardening himself and his chums for the rough ...

— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... forward. She saw Raymond's knuckles grow white and hard as his hands gripped the back of his chair. His eyes dilated, and for a moment he could not speak. Finally ...

— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... was raised with the palm of the hand on the chest, the other hung down, a truly fearful weapon, reaching to the crooked knee, and ending in great flattened fingers, that were bent inwards. After the roar the fierce creature lowered itself on to the knuckles of its arms, and seemed as if in another instant it would spring on its foes, still scrambling for a footing, when a piece of mould struck it on the cheek. It made a side-spring at the sooty guide, who nimbly jumped out of reach, and, when it turned, Mr. Hume was on his feet swinging ...

— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... sheet, and her face burned. She could understand now why Jack Barrow had hung up his receiver with a slam. She could picture him reading that suggestive article and gritting his teeth. Her hands clenched till the knuckles stood white under the smooth skin, and then quite abruptly she got up and left the restaurant even while a waiter hurried to take her order. If she had been a man, and versed in profanity, she could have cursed Andrew Bush till his soul shuddered ...

— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... more than fifty; but he had the same, or an exactly similar uniform suit of light-brown clothes,—the same pearl-grey silk stockings,—the same stock, with its silver buckle,—the same plaited cambric ruffles, drawn down over his knuckles in the parlour, but in the counting-house carefully folded back under the sleeves, that they might remain unstained by the ink which he daily consumed;—in a word, the same grave, formal, yet benevolent cast of features, which continued ...

— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... when they buried him the second time. They were letting the coffin down in the grave when they buried him the first time, and he knocked at it on the inside, knock, knock. (Here the old lady rapped on the doorsill with her knuckles—ed.) They drew that coffin up and opened it. How do I know? I was there. I heard it and seen it. They took him out of the coffin and carried him back to his home in the ambulance. He lived about three or ...

— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... voce to my cousin; then we laughed on for at least half an hour. The Pater said to me, "If we only could be longer together, we could discuss the art of musical composition." "In that case," said I, "our discussion would soon come to an end." A famous rap on the knuckles for ...

— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... drive a tenpenny nail square through a lead pipe, pull it out, and say nothing about it. You want to be on hand, too, when the trimmings are put on, and see that they are not too high or low, or fixed so you will bruise your knuckles every time you pull out the drawers or open the cupboard doors. Speaking of cupboards, there's no end to the bother if you don't just camp down in the pantry and stay there till the top shelf is up and the bottom drawer slides in ...

— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... see," he began, speaking rapidly, his hands twisting and untwisting till the knuckles cracked. "Now, let's see. You leave it to me. I know Carter. He's going to be at a stag dinner where I am invited to-morrow ...

— Blix • Frank Norris

... tears splashing down upon his rough knuckles. "I really think J. B. misjudged me ... and I haven't any way of making up to him ... except through you.... It's our chance, ...

— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman

... after he had been taken up in the atmosphere in his airship, Uncle Ezra said nothing. He just sat there in the padded seat, clutching with his hands the rails in so tight a grip that his knuckles showed white. ...

— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... presume, of not disturbing our movements by breathing; and I noticed the same action in a young Orang. The poor little creature was sick, and was amusing itself by trying to kill the flies on the window-panes with its knuckles; this was difficult as the flies buzzed about, and at each attempt the lips were firmly compressed, and at ...

— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... charge of falsehood against Milton, the author has grossly mis-translated a passage in the Defensio pro Pop. Anglicano: and, if that bishop were not dead, I would here take the liberty of rapping his knuckles—were it only for breaking Priscian's head. To return over to the clerical feud against the Long Parliament,—it was a passage in a very pleasing work of this day (Ecclesiastical Biography) which suggested to ...

— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... Hillard, but fortunately Merrihew heard the slithering sound of the saber as it left its scabbard. Kitty screamed and O'Mally shouted. Merrihew, with a desperate lunge, stopped the blow. He received a rough cut over the knuckles, but he was not aware of this till the excitement was past. He flung ...

— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... are first cut roughly to size with the mill-board shears, screwed up in the "lying" press. The straight arm of the shears is the one to fix in the press, for if the bent arm be undermost, the knuckles are apt to be severely bruised against the end. A better way of fixing the shears is shown at fig. 45. Any blacksmith will bend the arm of the shears and make the necessary clips. This method saves trouble and considerable wear and tear to the "lying" press. Where a great many ...

— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... approached the great master-lever, protected by its bell of glass. (At least it looked like glass, for it was crystal clear and reflected gleamingly the blue light from the nearby coils). He tapped it experimentally with his knuckles.... ...

— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst

... pressing his knuckles to his lips, raised out of himself by the accord of voices and the lingering note of melancholy that was in the hour, the note of the ...

— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... the party over in her dream; and as the visionary custard-cups crashed down through one lobe of her brain into another, she gave a start as if an inch of lightning from a quart Leyden jar had jumped into one of her knuckles with ...

— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... swept over the crowd. Bobby gripped his hands so tightly that the knuckles turned white. He resented the intervention of a half-dozen other contestants before Mr. Kincaid should be called; and rolled about in an agony of impatience until his friend stepped ...

— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... The Jam-wagon was bleeding about the knuckles. Several of Locasto's teeth had been loosened, and he spat blood frequently. Otherwise he looked as fit as ever. He pursued his man with savage determination, and seemed resolved to get in a deadly body-blow that would end ...

— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... that moment on a stool. I rapped his knuckles gently with the butt of the revolver to let him ...

— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... staring with wide-open eyes, now at their plates, now at aunt with her fat cheeks and her diamond cross that hung glittering at the end of a gold chain on her enormous breast; they counted the rings that were spitted on her fingers right up to the knuckles; they gazed at her earrings.... As the soup went down, the faces began to shine and mother pulled at her jacket and complained of the dreadful heat. Father pushed up the window and opened the back-door. ...

— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... the table top lightly with his knuckles. Mrs. Folsom looked unabashed. She had produced another ...

— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz

... clenched itself so tightly that the knuckles whitened. 'About Jentham!' he muttered in a low voice, and not looking at the chaplain; ...

— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... and by one means or other laid so about him, after the old fashion of fencing, that to some he beat out their brains, to others he crushed their arms, battered their legs, and bethwacked their sides till their ribs cracked with it. To others again he unjointed the spondyles or knuckles of the neck, disfigured their chaps, gashed their faces, made their cheeks hang flapping on their chin, and so swinged and balammed them that they fell down before him like hay before a mower. To some others he spoiled the ...

— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... do you think of it?" demanded Sharpe indignantly, and spread the paper out on the desk before the Boss, thumping it violently with his knuckles. ...

— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... rubbed her eyes with her dimpled knuckles, nodded her tangled curls towards her aunt, and, sweetly smiling, murmured, "Mornin'!" to which cheery greeting her ...

— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... his arm under hers, and caressed his hand, and kissed his knuckles, and led him down the bay. "Bubble-bubble-bubble!" says she, imitating him like a baby, though she was none so young. "Bubble-bubble, and a silly old man! We must bury the troll wife, and here is trouble enough, and a vengeance! Horses will sweat for it before she comes to Skalaholt; ...

— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson

... tongue, little plague," cried Elizabeth, rapping her knuckles with her stick, "and behave thyself, or theaw shanna go out to ...

— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... who had knocked,—showing that the knock was of more importance than it would have been had it been struck by the knuckles of the footman in livery. "If you please, sir, the Duke of St ...

— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... country's honour. There is a strong popular feeling against any encroachments by the Russian Bear. Our young officers are ever eager for a chance to distinguish themselves, and our men," she added gaily, "have fists all knuckles, always doubled ...

— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... a happy looking set of boys, and many of their cheeks were stained with tears and begrimed with dirt from the knuckles which had been used to wipe them away; for there was in the year 1807 but one known method of instilling instruction into the youthful mind, namely, the cane, and one of the chief qualifications of a schoolmaster was to be able to hit hard ...

— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... leader of a party that he had as general of an army, for nobody would have forced him to fight the battle of Salamanca or Vittoria if he had not fancied it himself. The effect, however, has been this: the House of Lords has had a rap on the knuckles from the King, their legislative functions are practically in abeyance, and his Majesty is more tied than ever to his Ministers. The House of Lords is paralysed; it exists upon sufferance, and cannot venture to throw out or materially alter any Bill ...

— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... Brett, R.A., now in the National Gallery at Millbank, made a stir when first exhibited at the Academy. It shows the sea. Whistler walked into a wave of adulation one day during the exhibition, and, affecting to "knock" with his knuckles, said sardonically: "Ha! Ha! Tin! If you threw a stone on to this it would ...

— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz

... row of French windows stood open; but flexible green sun-blinds hid the rooms from view. The front door was a French window, too, differing from the rest only in its size. There was neither bell nor knocker. While he was rapping with the knuckles on the panel, one of the blinds was pushed aside ...

— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... He put his knuckles close to the key, and sparks of fire came flying to his hand. He was wild with delight. The sparks of fire were electricity; he had drawn ...

— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin

... first," said Grant doggedly. His knuckles were bleeding and his forearms were sore from the treatment he had received from Sam's boots. The pain made him angry and more determined than ever to accomplish ...

— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay

... handkerchief into Mrs. Carroll's lap, with a look of relief that repaid him fourfold for the trials he was about to undergo. They went merrily away together, leaving Aunt Pen to wish that it was according to the laws of etiquette to rap officious gentlemen over the knuckles, when they introduce their fingers into private pies without permission from the chief cook. How the dance went Debby hardly knew, for the conversation fell upon books, and in the interest of her favorite ...

— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... people are accustomed to repeat a rhyme: the Icelander has a different mode of calculation. He closes his fist, calls his first knuckle January, the depression before the next knuckle February, when he arrives at the end, beginning again; thus the months that fall upon the knuckles, are those containing thirty-one days, a somewhat ingenious mode of assisting ...

— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... come and stood moodily at the front gate. The hot and resentful blood still tinged in his cheek. He looked at his knuckles—they were cut and swollen where he had struck the boy who had jeered him. It hurt him, but he only ...

— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... her slender fingers with their dimpled knuckles, daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the cracked blue-and-white china teacup which did service for a sugar-basin, unhesitatingly agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester seemed to ...

— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... Josh, thrusting his tousled head out from the curtains of the big launch, and digging his knuckles into his eyes. "Say, have you been awake all night? Don't ...

— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... full on the nose of the nearer assailant and knocked him backwards over a sprawling chair. Then turning attention to the other, he was barely in time to duck an uppercut—and out of the corners of his eyes caught the glint of brass-knuckles on the ...

— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... of his box. His suit looked like blue skin. He walked with grandeur down the alley between the rows of coops. Stopping in front of his friend's door, he rapped on it with passionate knuckles. ...

— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... confounded with another eccentric Bohemian, James Allen, brother to the Sheriff of Suffolk, who wrote under the inspiration of the West Indian muses—sugar, rum and lemon-juice—who "wore ruffles—and they hung in tatters about his knuckles." ...

— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... and quick between her parted lips to the rapid heaving of her bosom. The Louchoux girl's eyes seemed fairly to blaze with hate. The fingers of her hand dug into the wooden back of her chair until the knuckles whitened. She leaned far forward and, pointing directly into the face of the man, opened her lips to speak. It was then Lapierre's gaze wavered, for in that moment he realized that for him the ...

— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... do the spirits of evil snatch their prey Almost out of the very hand of God; And day by day their power is more and more, And men and women leave old paths, for pride Comes knocking with thin knuckles on the heart. ...

— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... your compositor has "misused the queen's press most damnably" in the quotation from Coriolanus prefixed to the second canto, where he converts the "Great Toe of the Assembly" into its "Great Foe." Rap his knuckles with your crutch, old Gentleman; and tell him, too, that the "Shawstone's party" he speaks of was a very jolly symposium, given by a very hearty fellow of the name of "Rawstorne," whose cognomen stands sic ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... places, and well did every youngster know that did he not conduct himself in the sanctuary with becoming propriety, the cane the elder carried would likely come rapping down smartly on his unrighteous knuckles. J. P. Thornton's welcome was kindly but stately. He had grown stout and slightly pompous-looking during the passing years, and his fine, well-dressed figure lent quite an air of dignity to the whole church. But Lawyer Ed, ushering a stranger into the church, was a heart-warming sight. He seemed ...

— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... cussed Aleck for repeating the epithet in the bunk house, and he had tried to lick Bud Norris, and had failed. He blamed Mary V for his skinned knuckles and the cut on his lip, and for all his other troubles. Johnny did not know about the coat, though he had it on; and if he had known, I doubt whether it would have softened his mood. He was a terribly ...

— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... later I learned that the late foreman had left town nursing a black eye and a cut on one cheek such as might have been made by a set of red knuckles backed by an arm the size of a ...

— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... pallor. Literally, it's a magnificent yellow. His skin is of just the hue and apparent texture of some old crumpled Oriental scroll. I know a dozen painters who would give more than they have to arrive at the exact "tone" of his thick-veined, bloodless hands, his polished ivory knuckles. His eyes are circled with red, but in the battered little setting of their orbits they have the lustre of old sapphires. His nose, owing to the falling away of other portions of his face, has assumed a grotesque, unnatural prominence; it describes ...

— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... the gang waylay the unwary traveller, enter into conversation with him, and have him suddenly seized, when the superior throws his own linen girdle round the victim's neck and strangles him, pressing the knuckles against the spine. Taking off his own, he passed it round my arm, and showed me the turn as coolly as a sailor once taught me the hangman's knot. The Thug is of any caste, and from any part of India. The profession have particular ...

— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... jumped down off the knob of the andiron, and skipping briskly across the room to the big Dutch clock, rapped sharply on the front of the case with his knuckles, when, to Davy's amazement, the great thing fell over on its face upon the floor as softly as if it had been a feather-bed. Davy now saw that, instead of being full of weights and brass wheels and curious works, as he had always supposed, the clock was really a sort ...

— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl

... around her shoulder. His face twitched. Emma said in a low voice: "I help Miss Maria wean 'im, en he bit me on de knuckles wid 'is fust toofs. Nevuh had no trouble wid 'im, 'cept to dust 'is britches wunst in a w'ile. Ah, Lawd! I sho did love dat chile! Use to rake chips for de wash-pot fire, en sit roun' en wait for ole ...

— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... said his superior, sternly. "Don't you see I'm quiet?" and he twisted his knuckles viciously into Leander's throat. "If you call out ...

— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... of cards they were; and so many dirt-spots on them, that it required a fellow with sharp eyes to make out the dirt from the Clubs and Spades. However, we got on somehow. When one was ready to play, he knocked the table with his knuckles, as a signal to the other; and for hours and hours we shuffled and dealt and knocked until it was late in the night, which I ought to have told you was Saturday night. At last, just as we ended a game, and when we were listening if a boat was coming, before ...

— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... a daughter!' There was silence for so long that the Doctor began to be anxious. Squire Norman sat quite still; his right hand resting on the writing-table before him became clenched so hard that the knuckles looked white and the veins red. After a long slow breath ...

— The Man • Bram Stoker

... quantity of jingling golden ornaments hanging from a chatelaine at her waist, a gold crown on the handle of her lorgnette, and so many rings on her long pink fingers that they bulge over her knuckles. Her nails are manicured to appear almost crimson, her teeth are shining white under her curved lips, that look capable of bitter sayings ...

— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... gintlemen an' their frind—the old schamer!' Here a tremendous blow was lodged (in pantomime) under the captain's ribs. 'Sure, of coorse, they can't be up to his thricks, an' he an ould sojer!' And here Andy let fly vivaciously beneath his unconscious adversary's left ear, restraining the knuckles within about half an inch of ...

— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... "I don't want to break such a butterfly as you upon the wheel, but—how do you like that?" He drew a cane from behind his back, and brought it down sharply on Elgood's knuckles, who, turning very white, sat down and scrawled his name hastily on the paper; but no sooner had he done it than, looking up, he caught Charlie's pitying glance upon him, and running the pencil through his signature, said no more, ...

— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... fear seized him. Taking his hands from before his face he wrung them so hard that the knuckles fairly cracked. "Up to this we've managed to scratch along pretty well, because Katrina, has been free to go out and work, the same as myself, but now she'll have to sit at home and take care ...

— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... ivory; out of the shinbones and other big bones they cut knife and toothbrush handles, and mouthpieces for pipes; out of the hoofs they cut hairpins and buttons, before they made the rest into glue. From such things as feet, knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews came such strange and unlikely products as gelatin, isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking, and bone oil. They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a "wool pullery" for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs of the ...

— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... dreamed he was dead, and on his way to heaven. When he got there, he knocked loudly at the door. "I wonder," said he to himself, "that they have no knocker on the door,—-one knocks one's knuckles sore." The apostle Peter opened the door, and wanted to see who demanded admission so noisily. "Ah, it's you, Master Pfriem;" said he, "well, I'll let you in, but I warn you that you must give up that habit of yours, and find fault with nothing you see ...

— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... the work was completed; and, flushed and tired, with her fingers bruised from frequent miscalculated blows from the hammer, and her knuckles rubbed and tingling, she paused to admire the result of her toil. The carpeting was a curious piece of patchwork certainly, but the children were delighted ...

— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... burned like acid down his throat into his middle, there to mix uncomfortably with the viands he had eaten. Weeks' thin face looked very white, and Dane noticed with malicious enjoyment, that Ali had an unobtrusive grip on the table which made his knuckles stand out in polished knobs—proving that there were things which could upset the ...

— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... footfall without; rap, rap, rap, on the door; no timid, faltering knock, but a firm application of somebody's knuckles! ...

— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... when the red-nosed man having finished, pulled his worn gloves on, thereby thrusting his fingers through the broken tops till the knuckles were disclosed ...

— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... book's been all round the trade. I've had it before. The man will never come to the front. He'll take to inn-keeping, and that will finish him off." That's what he said, and he seemed to be speaking of me. Some one was knocking at the door of the room—tentative knocks of rather flabby knuckles. It was one of those sounds that one does not notice immediately. The man might have been knocking for ten minutes. It happened to be Lea's employer, the publisher of my first book. He opened the door at last, and came in ...

— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... lieutenant's cutlass broke short off at the hilt. Then Blackbeard would have finished him off handsomely, only up steps one of the lieutenant's men and fetches him a great slash over the neck, so that the lieutenant came off with no more hurt than a cut across the knuckles. ...

— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... way! Give him knuckles, and break his back, my boy!' cried the soldiers; 'none of their steel ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... treatment to capture unoffending aboriginals, we did not do so without a certain amount of risk to ourselves; personally I would far sooner lie down all night chained by the ankle to a tree, than have my head and knuckles laid bare by blows from ...

— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... beating of its wings, So my soul... emptied of the known you... utterly... Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song You might have been.... 'Twas a great night... With never a waste look over a shoulder Curved to the crook of the wind... And a great word we threw For memory to play knuckles with... A word the waters of the world have washed, Leaving it stark and without smell... A world that rattles well in ...

— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... hitherto untouched string within her heart, and with resistless power twanged it so that the vibration of it shook her entire being, and left her quivering and breathless, the tears in her eyes, her hands clasped till the knuckles whitened. ...

— The Pit • Frank Norris

... the railing was very gorgeously attired with chains, jewellery, and waistcoats, which the illumination from the house lighted up to great advantage; his boots were shiny; he had brass buttons to his coat, and large white wristbands over his knuckles; and indeed looked so grand, that X imagined he beheld a member of parliament, or a person of consideration before him. Whatever his rank, however, the M.P., or person of consideration, was considerably excited by wine; for he lurched ...

— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... through the red haze that was blinding him. He only knew he was fighting desperately, viciously, and against impossible odds. The satisfying crunch of his left fist against a leering green-bronze face was followed by an excruciating pain as one of his knuckles was driven back. Hardly knowing he had pressed the release of the ray, he was mildly astonished to see that two of the guards were enveloped in the blue vapor. Scintillant tiny sunbursts within the blue. Two less of those devils! His pistol was empty and he flung it into a grinning face; ...

— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... mood, then he reached the door, and knocked. The sound echoed through the house, for Fred had laid his knuckles rather heavily on the upper panel of the double ...

— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... for combat. Joe instinctively tried to batter his enemy with his own pistol, instead of pushing the muzzle against the man's body and pulling the trigger. He struck a flailing blow, and his hand and the weapon struck a metal brace. The blow cut his knuckles and paralyzed his fingers. Despairingly he felt the pistol slipping from his grasp. Then his assailant brought up his knee viciously, but it hit Joe's thigh instead of his groin, and Joe flung his weight furiously forward and they toppled to the ...

— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... down from his chair. Melchior roughly put him back, and knocked his knuckles against the ...

— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... tattooed only on the arms. This tattoo begins close back of the knuckles on the back of the hands, and, as soon as it reaches the wrist, entirely encircles the arms to above the elbows. Still above this there is frequently a separate design on the outside of the arm; it is often the figure of a man with ...

— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... spread In threatening guise above your head. Ah! why did you not start before She reached the porch and closed the door? Simpleton! will you never learn That girls and time will not return; Of each you should have made the most; Once gone, they are forever lost. In vain your knuckles knock your brow, In vain will you remember how Like a slim brook the gamesome maid Sparkled, ...

— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... knotted together, were about twenty feet long, so I had to reckon on a clear drop of something over thirty feet. The poker and shutter held splendidly firm, and I found little difficulty in lowering myself, though I barked my knuckles most unpleasantly on the rough stucco of the wall. As I reached the extremity of my rope I glanced downward. The red splash of the eiderdown, just visible in the light from the adjoining window, seemed to be a ...

— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... young gentleman had read them down town, for he shoved them aside. Then he dropped an elbow on the table, rested his chin against his knuckles, and gazed fiercely at the inoffensive ...

— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... Knuckles quavered at the door. She straightened herself, turned, and called out definitely, "Come in." Mrs. Benson stood before her, vast, massive, black-gowned, ...

— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... was opposite to me, when, as I approached, I heard a sweet but tremulous voice singing a melancholy air, which I have never since heard anywhere; the same voice repeated the romance to which I was listening several times. When it had entirely ceased I profited by the silence to tap with my knuckles against the door, but so feeble was the signal, that even Henriette, who was close behind me, could not hear it. She begged I would permit her to ring a bell which hung near us; and, having done so, a step was ...

— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... that she was being flattered, and she was immensely enjoying it. She became more animated, and the peculiar sparkle of her face more spirited. "Oh, that's old Reinhardt, my music teacher. He would take all the skin off my knuckles if I played a Bach gigue the least bit like that Arlesienne Minuet. He doesn't approve of Bizet very much, anyhow. He's ...

— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... they who will miss him most, but rather the far greater number who never "made a hit," but set off like the rest to do it and fell by the way. He was of so sympathetic a nature, he understood so well the dismalness to them of being "failures," that he saw them as children with their knuckles to their eyes, and then he sat back cross-legged on his chair with his knuckles, as it were, to his eyes, and life had lost its flavor for him until he invented a scheme ...

— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... not however, that the full-grown man is not liable to be checked, reprimanded and rebuked, even as the schoolboy is. He has his wife to read him lectures, and rap his knuckles; he has his master, his landlord, or the mayor of his village, to tell him of his duty in an imperious style, and in measured sentences; if he is a member of a legislature, even there he receives his lessons, and is ...

— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... translates "Talus," a hucklebone, a bone to play with like a dye, a play called cockal. (So also in Rider.) Hucklebones and knucklebones are syn.: but the latter is modern and liable to give a false idea, besides being tautological. It has nothing to do with the knuckles and derives from the German "Knochel" (dialectically Knochelein) ...

— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... noticed nothing, I resumed my meal, but out of the corner of my eye I watched his left hand on the table near the flask. It was most interesting, all the veins stood out like ropes, and his knuckles almost ...

— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... had cussed Aleck for repeating the epithet in the bunk house, and he had tried to lick Bud Norris, and had failed. He blamed Mary V for his skinned knuckles and the cut on his lip, and for all his other troubles. Johnny did not know about the coat, though he had it on; and if he had known, I doubt whether it would have softened his mood. He was a ...

— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... side. The sun sank to a mere blot of red fire behind the elms, and crowds of shrilly-cheering gnats rose out of the dry edges and swooped upon the passive victim, Billy, who sat on the steps of the living van with his knuckles ...

— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... every time his week tree told him a month had passed. But he must be careful, for the months were not of equal length. But he remembered that his teacher had once said in school that the months could be counted on the knuckles and hollows of the hand, in such a way that the long and short months could be found easily and he could tell in this way the number ...

— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison

... knuckles fell like lead against Mrs. Whately's door, and mechanically I gave the low signal whistle I had been wont to give to Marjie. Like a mockery came the clear trill from within. But there was no mockery ...

— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... that, Ben? That's the thanks I get. You know the way I've tried to make this little home one a child could be proud of. Take the time that fine young Bryant fellow came to call. Why, that little parlor of ours was fit for a princess. His knuckles didn't suit her! They cracked, she said. I've heard of lots of excuses for not taking to boys, but that beats all. Three girls out of the sewing club already married and Flora engaged to that well-to-do Bankhead boy, and mine ...

— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... lounged in the sunshine on Hobbett's corner as Peter came up. They were amusing themselves after the fashion of blacks, with mock fights, feints, sudden wrestlings. They would seize one another by the head and grind their knuckles into one another's wool. Occasionally, one would leap up and fall into one of those grotesque shuffles called "breakdowns." It all held a certain rawness, an ...

— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... their last stand against the encroaching multitudes of men that had steadily spread themselves over the surface of the earth, wresting the hunting grounds from the lower orders, from the moment that the first ape shed his hair and ceased to walk upon his knuckles. Even the species with which Tarzan was familiar showed here either the results of a divergent line of evolution or an unaltered form that had been transmitted without variation ...

— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... hour he worked on undisturbed. Presently he heard the front gate creak, and looking up beheld a bicycle, a lady's bicycle, propped against the garden wall. Someone rapped loudly at the front door, and whoever it was had hard knuckles, for there was ...

— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... the boy and seize the box!" His hand was outstretched to take the box from the table, when the same stick which had extinguished the lights gave his knuckles such a rap that he uttered a yell of pain. Though the lights were extinguished, through the windows the faint starlight dimly illuminated the scene. Charles Stevens saw the outline of his uncle, who seized the box and hurried ...

— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... after her till she came to a fair mansion fronted by a spacious court, a tall, fine place to which columns gave strength and grace: and the gate thereof had two leaves of ebony inlaid with plates of red gold. The lady stopped at the door and, turning her face veil sideways, knocked softly with her knuckles whilst the Porter stood behind her, thinking of naught save her beauty and loveliness. Presently the door swung back and both leaves were opened, whereupon he looked to see who had opened it; and ...

— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... shelf. He gave the glass cylinder of his electrical machine a turn or two, and was for the moment gratified to elicit a faint spark, a feeble snap of blue fire, which clicked from the "receiver" to his knuckles. His eye dwelt fondly for a few seconds on the air-pump, but wandered from that to the telescope, and finally took cognizance of an apparatus for weighing heavy articles. This was provided with a small platform, upon which the recluse philosopher stepped, to ...

— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... him with the back of his hand, using all his strength, skinning his knuckles so that the blood dripped from them, unnoticed. He waved both arms continually, bending his body almost double and straightening up again, in crucial efforts for emphasis. All the old jingo platitudes that he had learned from campaign speakers throughout his life, the nonsense and brag and ...

— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and ...

— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... a high collar is not the one that knuckles down to hard work. Perspiration and high collars do not go well together. The dude employe does not like perspiration, so he sees to it that he does not exert ...

— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... sat on the divan. Her mouth was pulled into a straight line. Her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that the knuckles showed white. Diana stood beside her mother. Her fists were clenched at her sides. She shivered with fury. Her gaze remained fixed, glaring ...

— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert

... has rather more viciousness than I gave him credit for, has Master Joseph. He flew at me with his knife, and I had to grasp him twice, and got a cut over the knuckles, before I had the upper hand of him. He looked murder out of the only eye he could see with when we had finished, but he listened to reason and gave up the papers. Having got them I let my man go, but I wired full particulars to Forbes this morning. If he is quick enough to catch his bird, well ...

— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... Birkdale among them, were sitting about when Billy, sniffing and rubbing his knuckles in his eyes to such an extent that of necessity notice must be ...

— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... marsh. The soft whagh of the drake, which is not in this species blessed with the loud quack of the female bird, sufficiently established the identity of the duck. Then muskrats, and the oyster-eating coon, came round, no doubt scenting my provisions. Brisk raps from my knuckles on the inside shell of the canoe astonished these animals and aroused their curiosity, for they annoyed ...

— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... any more," he answered. "I hurt my hands on his nose," he added, thoughtfully, as he glanced at his bruised knuckles. ...

— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... delicately featured. Her dark blue eyes, veiled by lashes, smiled on him lazily as he approached; and lazily, too, her left arm stretched out, the palm of the hand downward, and she did not move. He kissed her knuckles, in orthodox fashion. ...

— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... Yet I have something." He had been playing listlessly with a large signet-ring on his left hand, which he now tried to draw off. "I leave you this"—working it round and round vainly—"if you can get it off. What enormous knuckles! There must be such knuckles in the mummies of the Pharaohs. Well, when I'm gone—! No, I leave you something more precious than gold—the sense of a great kindness. But I've a little gold left. Bring me those trinkets." I placed on the bed before ...

— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James

... his life except at such times as his mother grows officious and fussy and insists that they ought to be washed up as far as the regular place for washing a boy's hands, to wit, about midway between the knuckles and the wrist. The fact that one finger is usually in a state of mashedness is no drawback, but a benefit. The presence of a soiled rag around a finger gives to a boy's hand a touch of distinctiveness—singles it out from ordinary unmaimed hands. ...

— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... Joseph laughed. The open hostility that was growing between Lord Henry and the baronet's secretary enabled them to get many a thrust at the former without so much as grazing their knuckles. ...

— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... folded his arms, and his strong fingers grasped his tensed biceps until the knuckles stood ...

— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... the knuckles of one of his hands into the hard palm of the other. "I asked you to come to the farm, didn't I? You were not thinking kindly of Judge Trent then; you were wasting your time thinking wrong about his wrong doings. If I'd said come and be your uncle's guest at the Mill Farm instead of at the Young ...

— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... She cured me of it by rapping my knuckles with the handle of a silver-plated knife. My, how it hurt! I feel it yet! I wonder that they were not enlarged by ...

— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... brain. He stopped, and with the knuckles of a hand that was torn and blistered and trembling, he knocked on Lightener's broad chest as he would have knocked on a door that refused to open. "Damn your axles," he said, thickly. "I can get them there—another—and another—and another—and ...

— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... leap to the door, open it, and escape. A sound arrested her, a chuckle, grim and sinister, in a man's voice. She flashed swiftly around, to see Slade sitting in a chair near the foot of the bed. He was bending forward, his elbows on his knees, his knuckles supporting his chin, watching her ...

— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... His brows gathered. He crouched a little in his seat, staring abstractedly at the black tunnel walls without. Station after station was passed. Jimmie Dale's hand, resting on the window sill, was so tightly clenched that it seemed the skin must crack across the knuckles. ...

— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... back to Harvey. "He looks ill," he said, which is true. His honestly-painted knuckles make diagnosis easy. My friend thought that this great man would probably have dosed him well, and, as he added, would not have bothered him about too much sugar, nor forbidden champagne. I had to reply that whatever ills were in the England of that day,—and there was much dyspepsia ...

— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... Jake's) was a free-and-easy democratic resort. No three knocks and a password before you turn the key here. Almost before your knuckles hit the panel you heard Mr. Botcher's hearty voice shouting "Come in," in spite of the closed transom. The Honourable Jake, being a tee-totaller, had no bathroom, and none but his intimate friends ever looked in the third ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... accounts, there is an end of confidence; but I must say his last letter appears to me a sort of exuberance of anger, which spends itself on many subjects rather than the one which first caused it, and therefore I suspect he has received some rap on the knuckles at home, which he resents here, or on the first person who is not of the same opinion as himself; but it is a curious anomaly that he should quarrel with Normanby in support of arbitrary and absolute Government. All is quiet here now, and will, I hope, continue so till the ...

— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... boat that is being tossed up and down on a rolling sea, if your precipice has a way of varying from a strict perpendicular to an overhanging cliff, and then in an instant thrusting out its base so that the climber's knees and knuckles come with a sharp bang against it, while the next moment he is dropped to his shoulders in icy sea-water, the difficulties of the task are naturally increased. The instant the pilot puts his feet on ...

— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... you?" came the big voice of Captain Devlin, of the detective staff. "Osborne was just talking about you. Said you'd got kind of a rap across the knuckles ...

— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... ugly "bum," well up to trap, creeps like a rascal from the sheriff's-office, and with his capias armed, ere you are half-dressed, gives you the chase, and, as you "leg" away for the bare life, his knuckles dig into the seat of your unmentionables, gripping you like a tiger—that indeed is une autre chose, ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various

... was his as well as another's. On that long night march, when the men were behind the sheep, driving them, contrary to the usual custom, he told Sims of his interview with Beef Bissell, and the herder cracked his knuckles with rage at the position ...

— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... one of her little hands furtively under the board and pressed Priscilla's rough knuckles tenderly, but she said nothing. The silence was broken by one of the oldest men present, who rose, ...

— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... of inky knuckles inside with a ruler, and so disengage the captive foot, was the work of a minute. Oliver stood for a moment facing the door and trembling with anger, but Wraysford, taking him gently by the arm, ...

— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... visited Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to Thrushcross Grange. On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. As I knocked for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar- faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn, and shouted ...

— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... Ministry of Graustark sat agape. With his concluding words, Mr. Blithers deposited his clenched fist upon the table with a heavy thud, and, as if fascinated, every eye shifted from his face to the white knuckles of ...

— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... one—one that was a source of misery and shame to his doting mother." Old Nanny pressed her eyeballs with her knuckles as if in agony. ...

— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... from ivory; Cut-glass bottles for wines and brandies, Sticks once flourished by bucks and dandies; Deep old glasses they drank enough in, And golden boxes they took their snuff in; Rings that flashed on a gallant's knuckles, Seals and lockets and shining buckles; Watches sadly in need of menders, Blackened firedogs and dinted fenders; Prints and pictures and quaint knick-knackery, Rare old silver and mere gimcrackery— Such was the shop, and in its middle ...

— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... in the history of mathematics are the calculations published by the weather-prophet of the Express. Arithmetic turns pale when she glances at them, and, striking her multiplication table with her algebraic knuckles, demands to know why the Express does not add a Cube-it ...

— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various

... treasure-chamber, and saw such profusion of plate stacked up, right and left, with the wantonness of old barrels in a brewer's yard, the needy fellow felt a twinge of misgiving, of want of confidence, as to the genuineness of an opulence so profuse. He went about rapping the shining vases with his knuckles. But it was all gold, pure gold, good gold, sterling gold, which how cheerfully would have been stamped such at Goldsmiths' Hall. And just so those needy minds, which, through their own insincerity, having no confidence in mankind, doubt lest the liberal geniality ...

— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... couple of good cigars, threw away his cigarette and lighted one, set the knuckles of his left hand upon his hip, and sauntered over to the pool table where the two men he wanted to meet were languidly playing out their third string. He watched them for a few minutes, smiled sympathetically ...

— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... had accomplished what she had fervently wished for the night she had met him—he succeeded, by several easy moves, in isolating her from her aunt, and, notwithstanding her admiration, her desire to tap with her knuckles the metal of her idol and listen for a ring of hollowness, she was alarmed. Yet, perversely, she knew that he would not exhibit his paces before his wife—naturally a disinterested spectator—or before her aunt, who was hardly "intimate" enough. The long-desired ...

— Visionaries • James Huneker

... asked Woot, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his knuckles and giving three wide yawns to prove he ...

— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... will learn in no other, as Poor Richard says, and scarce in that; for, it is true, we may give advice, but we can not give conduct. However, remember this: They that will not be counseled can not be helped; and further, that, If you will not hear Reason, she will surely rap your knuckles, as Poor Richard says." ...

— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... scarcely a couple of feet from the glass through which he was looking, a man's hand appeared and gripped the window-sill. He stared at it, fascinated. It was so close to him that he could see the thin, yellow fingers, on one of which was a signet ring with a blood-red stone; the misshapen knuckles, the broken nails. He was on the point of throwing up the window when a man's face shot up from underneath and peered into the room. There was only the thickness of the glass between them, and the light from the gas lamp which stood at the corner of the drive ...

— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... clenched, as if he feared that his decision might be wrung out of his hands, he repeated that 'Nothing, I assure you, nothing' would alter his determination. He struck the hard wood angrily with his big knuckles, as he said, 'Ah, gentlemen, I have waited, for reasons like these, too long already! I tell you, my "Galileo" is a bone in my throat! I am not rich enough to buy it up, and I see it in the shop windows, advertising me as the ...

— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... surely erroneous, of this custom to the Chinese [see supra, H.C.], suggests that there may have been a misunderstanding by which this method of trade was confused with that other curious system of dumb higgling, by the pressure of the knuckles under a shawl, a masonic system in use from Peking to ...

— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... beside one of these windows sat Mrs. Meyerburg with her hands idle and laid out along the chair sides. They were ringless hands and full of years, with a great network of veins across their backs and the aging fingers large at the knuckles. But where the hands betrayed the eyes belied. Deep in Mrs. Meyerburg's soft and scarcely flabby face her gaze was straight ...

— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... over. When it took that awful shoot, I lost control of it. Maybe I'm to be discharged for losing control of it, but not"—Freckles sniffled pathetically—-"but not for anything like what he says I done. Why Governor," he went on, ramming his knuckles into his eyes, "I ain't got nothing against him! What'd I take him ...

— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... over half an hour he climbed out of the slip again, dripping sweat, minus the skin of all his knuckles, and blistered as to palms and knees, but with a cheerful grin that spoke of a satisfied soul. He confidently depended upon the darkness, now absolute, and native unthoroughness, for his work to remain undetected until the sea ...

— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... for hot water—bullying Jeames because the boots are not varnished enough, or ordering him to go to the stables, and ask Jenkins why the deuce Tomkins hasn't brought his pony round—or what you will. There is mamma rapping the knuckles of Pincot the lady's-maid, and little Miss scolding Martha, who waits up five pair of stairs in the nursery. Little Miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all expect from Martha, from Pincot, from Jenkins, from Jeames, obsequious civility ...

— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Mr. McPherson shook hands warmly with the old folk, but kept the young people in their places, and well did every youngster know that did he not conduct himself in the sanctuary with becoming propriety, the cane the elder carried would likely come rapping down smartly on his unrighteous knuckles. J. P. Thornton's welcome was kindly but stately. He had grown stout and slightly pompous-looking during the passing years, and his fine, well-dressed figure lent quite an air of dignity to the whole church. But Lawyer Ed, ushering a stranger into ...

— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... glancing at Madame Beavor, said, "And yet, madame, your charming gaiety consoles me amidst all my suffering;" upon which Madame Beavor called him "flatterer," and rapped his knuckles with her fan; the latter proceeding the brave Pole did not seem to like, for he immediately buried his hands in his ...

— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... some instances he has a very small beard, in form resembling a peg. The hands and feet, like the rest of the figure, have general forms only, without particular detail; the fingers and toes are flat, of equal thickness, little separated, and without distinction of the knuckles; yet, altogether, their simplicity of idea, breadths of parts, and occasional beauty of form, strike the skilful beholder, and have been highly praised by the best judges, ancient and modern. In their basso-relievos and paintings, ...

— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... colour ceases to exist if I shut my eyes, the sensation of hardness ceases to exist if I remove my arm from contact with the table, the sound ceases to exist if I cease to rap the table with my knuckles. But I do not believe that when all these things cease the table ceases. On the contrary, I believe that it is because the table exists continuously that all these sense-data will reappear when I open my eyes, replace my arm, and begin ...

— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... is to place hostages upon the trains. A truckload of Boers behind every engine would have stopped the practice for ever. Again and again in this war the British have fought with the gloves when their opponents used their knuckles. ...

— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... he began, speaking rapidly, his hands twisting and untwisting till the knuckles cracked. "Now, let's see. You leave it to me. I know Carter. He's going to be at a stag dinner where I am invited to-morrow ...

— Blix • Frank Norris

... them! and so intent were the thieves on fleecing each other, that they took no manner of notice of us, but continued their scoundrel work, eagerly stretched over the table, thwacking down their cards with filthy knuckles, and at every stroke bawling out, "there's ...

— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... the baker's they formed a string as in times of dearth. The wine shop keepers got rid of the produce of three vintages, and a clever statistician would have found it difficult to reckon up the number of knuckles of ham and of sausages which were sold at the famous shop of Borel, in the Rue Dauphine. In this one evening Daddy Cretaine, nicknamed Petit-Pain, exhausted eighteen editions of his cakes. All night long sounds of rejoicing broke out from the lodging houses, the ...

— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... the shapeless crouching and malevolent winking lights, and he felt himself going to pieces inside with a sudden shaking crumble; he hated himself for it but he couldn't stop it; his hands clenched until the knuckles showed white. ...

— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse

... you do run on," said the iron-grey giant, rubbing his knuckles together sheepishly. "You don't know Sis ef you go on that away. Many's the time that chile 'ud foller me up an' say, 'Pap, ef you see my shawl a-haugin' out on the fence, Puss'll be asleep, an' don't you come a-lumberin' in an' wake her up, nuther.' An' many's the ...

— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... it came again. Martin rapped against the wall with his own knuckles, paused, rapped again. Instantly came the response from the other side, the same number of raps. ...

— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... and contrasted it with her appearance when he saw her in the "loanie" with her child. In a few years, he thought, she would be like any village woman, worn out, misshapen, tired, with gnarled knuckles and thickened hands. Already she had ...

— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... maty," said Jack, coolly, neither angry nor mortified, so far as appearances went, at these expressions of dissatisfaction; "my back is used to it. If I did n't know what it is to get hard raps on the knuckles, I should be but a young steward. But, as for this business, a little reflection will tell you I ...

— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... the parchment squares left over. El—El Chaparrito has no more thoughts for the Republic. He thinks," and Murguia ground his knuckles into the desk top, "he thinks of no one, of no one—except Maximilian! And he has never thought of aught else. The Republic? Bah, the Republic was only his tool, Senor Presidente. Only his tool, but the tool needed ...

— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... this kind were of continual occurrence, in which men were so badly beaten as to die from the effects. The weapons used were fists, clubs, axes, tent-poles, etc. The Raiders were plentifully provided with the usual weapons of their class—slung-shots and brass-knuckles. Several of them had succeeded ...

— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... to sleep. I told her you were coming, and I did all I could, short of pinching, to keep her awake,—sang, and repeated verses, and danced her up and down, but it was all of no use. She would put her knuckles in her eyes, and whimper and fret, and at last I had to give in. Babies are perfectly unmanageable ...

— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... razor-like tips began to look somewhat scarred and battered, as if they might perhaps retire from active service in ten years' time, or so. But the tan shoes were not Jerry's only concession to the social amenities. An unwonted attention was given to grimy knuckles and finger-nails. More than once he made his appearance with his usually frowsy hair as sleek as the coat of a water rat, and dripping, in further likeness to the animal mentioned. Peggy, whose original ...

— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... don't you?" says his Riv'rence; "very well, I'll soon show you whether or no." And he put his knuckles in his mouth, and gev a whistle that made the Pope stop his fingers in his ears. The aycho, my dear, was hardly done playing wid the cobwebs in the cornish, when the door flies open, and in jumps Spring. ...

— Stories of Comedy • Various

... he answered, scarcely even glancing down at her. "They'll make it this time, though," he added, and she could see his knuckles whiten with the strain as he gripped a rough limb of the tree with ...

— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... of an acquaintance. You know the man whose demeanour is "always calm," but whose passions are strong. How do you know that his passions are strong? Because he "gives them away" by some small, but important, part of his demeanour, such as the twitching of a lip or the whitening of the knuckles caused by clenching the hand. In other words, his demeanour, fundamentally, is not calm. You know the man who is always "smoothly polite and agreeable," but who affects you unpleasantly. Why does he affect you unpleasantly? Because he is tedious, and therefore ...

— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT

... with you there. That's the thing for me. I want no other doctor. If I don't get to sea to-morrow I'll have an illness. There are no two ways about it." He drank off a tumbler of lime juice, and clapped his two hands with his knuckles doubled up into the small ...

— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the morning, before they give you your breakfast: it's the doctor's orders. This used to be a school-house, but it's in better business now. They got a kitchen under here, that beats the Parker House; you'll smell it pretty soon. No whacking on the knuckles here any more. All serene, I tell you. You'll see. I don't know how I should got along without this institution, and I tell the manager so, every time I see him. That's him, hollering 'Next,' out of that room there. It's a name he gives all of us; he knows it's a name we'll answer ...

— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... apparition of remote antiquity. My uncle, usually so garrulous, was struck dumb likewise. We raised the body. We stood it up against a rock. It seemed to stare at us out of its empty orbits. We sounded with our knuckles his hollow frame. ...

— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... a last effort to control himself. His knuckles tightened on the edge of the vat. "I don't know what you've been talking about," he grated wildly. "But I want to get out of here! I want to go back where I came from! Do you understand—whoever, or ...

— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... out of his box. His suit looked like blue skin. He walked with grandeur down the alley between the rows of coops. Stopping in front of his friend's door, he rapped on it with passionate knuckles. ...

— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... All among the table-cloths and blankets. Carlyle. He's reading aloud. Doing the High Froth. Spuming! Windmilling! Waw, waw! It's a sight worth seeing. He'll bark his blessed knuckles one of these days on ...

— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... proceed, had laid down his pen, taken his hat, and gone to see the unlucky apothecary. Now he took up the broken thread. To come to a decision; that was the task which forced from him his look of distress. He drew his face slowly through his palms, set his lips, cast up his eyes, knit his knuckles, and then opened and struck his palms together, as if to say: "Now, come; let me make ...

— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... on which I sat gazing at that magnificent, almost awe-inspiring, spectacle. Night came on swiftly, as it always does in those latitudes, and I scrambled down the hill, among the sharp, cutting, slippery, shiny rocks, arriving in camp minus a good many patches of skin upon my shins and knuckles. ...

— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... hold of the gunwale, and as reward for his chivalry had his knuckles rapped sharply by the oar-blade. Then he forgot himself, and Miss Welse also, and ...

— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... sight were disclosed objects that struck me as strangely familiar. There is something about fingers, a marked individuality, I never forget. No two persons' hands are alike. And in these fingers, in their excessive whiteness, round knuckles, and blue veins, in their tapering formation and perfect filbert nails, I read a likeness whose prototype, struggle how I would, I could not recall. Gradually the hand moved upwards, and, reaching the throat, the fingers set to work, at once, to remove the wrappings. My terror was now sublime! I ...

— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... partly toward her, striking backward with his open hand. His great knuckles struck her across the eyes, a cruel, heavy blow that would have felled a man. She staggered back a pace, then sank limply forward on her knees, her hands outreaching on the floor, her hair falling wildly, her posture that of a suppliant at ...

— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... sanctified by intensest sympathy. One nervous-faced boy leaped on the slant of the bulkhead to peer in a window of the sitting-room, and when his mother pulled him back forcibly, rubbed his grimy little knuckles across his eyes, and a dark smooch appeared on his nose and cheeks. He was a young boy, very small and thin for his age. He whispered to his mother and she nodded, and he darted off in the direction ...

— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... husband married her for their sake, which I can quite believe. I am glad they are on her and not on Minora, for if Minora had had them I should have been annoyed. Minora's are bony, with chilly-looking knuckles, ignored nails, and too much wrist. I feel very well disposed towards her when my eye falls on them. She put one forward now, evidently thinking it ...

— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... also that it would be above the wash of the heaviest storms. At the end of half an hour, at a point close to the angle of the wall my spade struck a hard surface. It lay, I should judge, under about two feet of sand. Soon I had laid bare a patch of dark wood which rang under my knuckles almost like iron. A little more, and I had cleared away the sand from the top of a large chest with a convex lid, heavily bound ...

— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... its folds, Verman sat up, corkscrewing his knuckles into the corners of his eyes. Slowly he became aware of two important vacuums—one in time and one in his stomach. Hours had vanished strangely into nowhere; the game of bonded prisoner was something cloudy ...

— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... blow on my knuckles yet— He feels it more on his brow. In a thousand years we shall all forget The things ...

— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... on top of him. Chase smashed the butt of his gun across Harry's knuckles. The receiver fell to the floor. Harry let out a pained groan as Boles' gun butt struck him on the temple. Thompson replaced the receiver. Harry was on the floor. He put his hands to his head for protection as Chase ...

— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg

... put a stop to your fun?" demanded Hugh. "What if you have got a bloody nose, and a lump on your forehead. See here how my knuckles are badly skinned, will you; and I fancy I've something of a scratch on my right cheek, where he got to me. We'll wash up back of the farmhouse, you and I, Owen. Of course all the folks will have to know what's ...

— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... had passed, and he sat up, weak and fainting, too weak to rise, his forehead dripping, his lips flecked with a foam made yellow by the mustard in which he had rolled. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, and groans that were like ...

— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... when he woke up, and he slipped off his chair and staggered blindly across the room to his mother, with his knuckles in his eyes like a little, little boy. He climbed into her lap and settled himself down with a grunt of contentment. There was a mutter of thunder in his ears, and he felt great warm drops of rain falling on his face. And into his dreams he carried ...

— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... was a man infirm so that he was a cripple and went on knees and knuckles. On a day he was abroad on the way and was asleep there. That dreamed he that a man came to him glorious of aspect and asked whither he was bound and the man named some town or other. So the glorious man spoke to him: Fare then ...

— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... other steadily for perhaps a minute. Then Oxenford rapped his antagonist smartly across the knuckles and sprang back out of reach. The colossus, with a growl, swung his mace to right and left, striking at random, for Oxenford had cunningly contrived to turn Dom Gillian so that the light was at his back. Quinton Edge must have noticed the ruse, for he beckoned to an attendant and ordered that ...

— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... diversion. Then he dressed himself in a short gown and nightcap, and made the pillow into a baby, and played the nurse with it to such perfection, that Charlie felt obliged to applaud by knocking with the knuckles of his best hand upon the head-board of his bedstead. On the whole, he was so overjoyed as to be led to commit all manner of eccentricities, and conducted himself generally in such a ridiculous manner, that Charlie laughed himself ...

— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... sufficiently apparent to be esteemed an adequate set-off against the inveterate odium that attached to their opinions; that the Tadpole philosophy was the favoured tenet in high places; and Taper had had his knuckles well rapped more than once for manoeuvring too actively against the New Poor-law, and for hiring several link-boys to bawl a much-wronged lady's name in the Park ...

— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... well-bred slowness, that would have been beyond his endurance to bear, had Mars been thundering with his iron fist at the gates of his fortress. But as it was Cupid, only tapping with his rosy knuckles at the casement of his heart, that dinner seemed no longer to him than, no, not half so long indeed as, the shortest snack he had ever eaten on horseback in the hurry of a forced march. The dinner over, Washington seemed ...

— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... smartly with his knuckles, and passed on, the smile still wrinkling his pale eyes and the forehead above them from which the hair was steadily receding towards the top of ...

— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... much as to tell him that he don't know how to run his world and that you'll be much obliged if he'll stand out of the way and give you a chance. Thinking about God doesn't keep me sitting up nights, so I've got another way of looking at it. Ain't it funny, to go around with brass knuckles and a big club breaking folks' heads and taking their money away from them until I've got a pile, and then, repenting of my ways, going around and bandaging up the heads the other robbers are breaking? I leave it to you. That's what doing good with money amounts to. Every once in a while ...

— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... remember seeing a father furiously spanking a son of about five years old, who was pitifully crying so as to break one's heart, and as if that were not punishment enough, he shook him violently by his little pig-tail, and pounded him on the head with his knuckles, a performance that would have killed, or, at all events, rendered insensible nine children out of ten of other nationalities; but no, to my utter astonishment, the moment the father, tired of beating, retired into the house, the little mite, wiping his streaming tears with the ...

— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... Executive Committee and a number of cells for the prisoners. The police-office displayed many handcuffs, tools of captured criminals, relics, clothing with bullet holes, ropes used for hanging, bowie-knives, burglar's tools, brass knuckles, and all the other curiosities peculiar to criminal activities. The third story of the building had become the armorer's shop, and the hospital. Eight or ten workmen were employed in the former and six to twenty cots ...

— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... from beside the chair where he had flung himself on his knees when Walden had entered his mother's cottage,—and rubbed his knuckles hard into his eyes with a long and ...

— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... orders; but my heart smote me for my selfishness, when I witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play with him any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should sometimes come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes come and see me on a Wednesday, he ...

— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... the door, and it appeared to him that his knuckles had hardly fallen upon the panel before the valve was flung suddenly open. An indescribable and heavy odor fell upon him and for the moment overpowered his senses, and he found himself standing face to face with a figure prodigiously ...

— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... and hoped for the best as it burned like acid down his throat into his middle, there to mix uncomfortably with the viands he had eaten. Weeks' thin face looked very white, and Dane noticed with malicious enjoyment, that Ali had an unobtrusive grip on the table which made his knuckles stand out in polished knobs—proving that there were things which could ...

— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... more, and even as Mademoiselle spoke Count Hannibal's knuckles tapped the door. She cast a last look at her lover. He had turned his back on the window; the light no longer fell on his face. It was possible that he might pass unrecognized, if Tavannes' stay was brief; at any rate, the risk must be run. In a half ...

— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... scholars, familiarly slapping first one and then another on the shoulder, saying "Nice ('ic) nice old boy!" and smiling a smile of elaborate content. Arrived at a good position for speaking, he put his left arm akimbo with his knuckles planted in his hip just under the edge of his cut-away coat, bent his right leg, placing his toe on the ground and resting his heel with easy grace against his left shin, puffed out his aldermanic stomach, opened his lips, leaned his right elbow ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... at last, I jumped out of the bunk I occupied next Hiram, who was still fast asleep, with a lot of the other sailors round him snoring in the fo'c's'le; and rubbing my eyes with both knuckles, to further convince myself of being wide awake, I crawled out from the fore-hatchway on to ...

— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... the quick. With a small gasp—as if he had struck her—she sank upon the arm of his big chair; her hands clasped, so that the knuckles stood out sharp and white; two spots of fire ...

— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... to find it; - This little speck the British Isles? 'Tis but a freckle,—never mind it! - He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till they crack their iron knuckles! ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... it does—stuffing your knuckles into it and rubbing like that. There, focus the glass ...

— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... bell-ropes, knotted together, were about twenty feet long, so I had to reckon on a clear drop of something over thirty feet. The poker and shutter held splendidly firm, and I found little difficulty in lowering myself, though I barked my knuckles most unpleasantly on the rough stucco of the wall. As I reached the extremity of my rope I glanced downward. The red splash of the eiderdown, just visible in the light from the adjoining window, seemed to be a horrible distance below me. My spirit failed me. My determination ...

— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... watched her slender fingers with their dimpled knuckles, daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the cracked blue-and-white china teacup which did service for a sugar-basin, unhesitatingly agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester seemed to think her argument that sugar-tongs ...

— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... and scared, something brushed very lightly,-even coquettishly,—against his knuckles. He started in nervous fright. An instant later, the same thing brushed his knuckles again, this time more insistently. The man, in a spurt of fear-driven rage, grabbed at the invisible object. His fingers slipped along ...

— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... the chiefs reassured me, all the more when their spokesman began and made a long speech in a low tone of voice, sometimes waving his hand towards Case, sometimes toward me, and sometimes knocking with his knuckles on the mat. One thing was clear: there was no sign of ...

— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fourteen times a week, and never miss Trinity Church[1] on Thursday evenings. The next day he asks the porter of his college where the tutor lives; the key-bearing Peter laughs in his face, and tells him where he keeps; he reaches the tutor's rooms, finds the door sported, and knocks till his knuckles bleed. He talks of Newton to his tutor, and his tutor thinks him a fool. He sallies forth from Law's (the tailor's) for the first time in the academical toga and trencher, marches most majestically across ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various

... changing into a hand, like a human hand." The disc changed into a human hand, the fingers slightly bent, the soft, white fingers of a woman with the pink of the flesh and the wrinkles at the knuckles visible. The wrist seemed to fade gradually into nothingness, the end of the hand was as indeterminate as are things in a dream, ...

— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... face of Hodulf became ashy grey beneath the tan of wind and sea, and I saw that his hand clutched the hilt of his sword so that the knuckles of his fingers grew white. He had never thought to hear of that deed again, and he knew that he had to deal with the one whom he had thought dead. Some of the young chiefs in the hall laughed at that token, but he flashed a glance at them which stayed ...

— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler

... away. Hank, he runs in on me, and he swings his strap. I throwed up my arm, and it cut me acrost the knuckles. I run in on him, and he dropped the strap and fetched me an openhanded smack plumb on the mouth that jarred my head back and like to of busted it loose. Then I got right mad, and I run in on him agin, and this time I got to him, and wrastled ...

— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... stung him, his blood quickened. The boy in front of him had spoiled so much scouting. If he could only give him the thrashing he deserved! If he only could! He set his teeth. He would thrash him. He swung, and felt a sharp pain in his knuckles. ...

— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger

... telling him to run high into a tall tree. Evidently Teeka was not favorably impressed by her new suitor. Toog realized this and altered his methods accordingly. He swelled his giant chest, beat upon it with his calloused knuckles and swaggered to ...

— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... wanted. And what Opata thought, the rest of the tribe thought also. So they rose up by clans and villages and followed after the Sign. That was how we came to the Squidgy Islands. There were willows there and young alders and bare knuckles of rock holding ...

— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... unseasonably, through night and storm, to the door of the lonely farmhouse,—so it happened that nobody, for an instant or two, arose to answer the summons. Pretty soon there came another knock. The first had been moderately loud; the second was smitten so forcibly that the knuckles of the applicant must have left their mark in the ...

— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and the moon was shining brightly in the sky overhead when Bumpus, being awakened by some sort of dream, suddenly sat upright, digging his knuckles into his eyes, as if hardly able to believe that he was not safe and sound in his ...

— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... of science, and reduced it to the level of a problem in harmonic construction. Some who were learned enough took upon themselves to show a thing or two to past musicians. They found fault with Beethoven, and rapped Wagner over the knuckles. They laughed openly at Berlioz and Gluck. Nothing existed for them just then but Johann Sebastian Bach, and Claude Debussy. And Bach, who had lately been roundly abused, was beginning to seem pedantic, a periwig, and in fine, a hack. Quite distinguished men extolled Rameau in mysterious terms—Rameau ...

— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... half the night. An' then we went out on the street. Well, a gentleman came along, y'understan'? Well, when I told him that I had some little business o' my own to transact with the lady an' pulled my brass-knuckles outa my breeches, o' course he took to his heels.—Then I says to her, says I: Don't you be scared. If you're peaceable an' don' make no outcry an' don' come no more to my sister axin' after the child—well, ...

— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... by his enemy, and the man who had been his father's enemy, all that he had kept away from Stampede's sharp eyes blazed in a sudden fury in his face. He dropped the paper as if it had been a thing unclean, and his hands clenched until his knuckles snapped in the stillness of the room, as he slowly faced the window through which a few moments ago he had looked in the direction ...

— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... under a tree with a newspaper and several books. Her polished cheekbones and knuckles glimmered yellow in the shade. By her side was a long cane chair, in which lay a white silk wrap and a bit of needlework, tumbled together as the Countess had left them when she went in to receive her visitors. Miss Skeat rose as the party approached. The Countess introduced the ...

— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford