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More "Poker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wanted. Anthony, you were the biggest poker-winner last week, and you've defrauded ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... dozing in sun and dust and silence, like a place enchanted. My mission was after hay for bedding, and that I was readily promised. But when I mentioned that we were waiting for Rufe, the people shook their heads. Rufe was not a regular man anyway, it seemed; and if he got playing poker——Well, poker was too many for Rufe. I had not yet heard them bracketed together; but it seemed a natural conjunction, and commended itself swiftly to my fears; and as soon as I returned to Silverado and had told my story, we practically gave ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wife;—my wife! In the presence of God she and I have been made one, and even man's ordinances have not dared to separate us. Mr. Finn, as the husband of Lady Laura Kennedy, I desire that you abstain from seeking her presence." As he said this he rose from his chair, and took the poker in his hand. The chair in which he was sitting was placed upon the rug, and it might be that the fire required his attention. As he stood bending down, with the poker in his right hand, with his eye still fixed on his guest's face, his purpose was doubtful. The motion might be a threat, or simply ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... be," allowed the Cap'n, "but I shall be almighty glad when this centennial is over and I can get Pote Tate out of that corner, and put the broom and poker back there, and have something ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... made a rush for the jar and slipped the metal cover over the mouth of the neck, which was so hot that it blistered his fingers, and, seizing the poker, he hammered down the secret catch until the lid fitted as closely as Suleyman himself ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... and it was early the next morning when the regiment to which the preacher belonged was entrained. During the early part of the night the men were gathered in groups, some playing "shuffle the brogan," others busy at "nosey poker," while the greater part of them were smoking their pipes and telling yarns, or stretching their weary limbs on rolls of canvas, or on the ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... it seems to me it must have been burned on my memory as though you'd take a red hot poker and make marks on the clean kitchen floor. When I shut my eyes nights and try to go to sleep it keeps dancing in front of me. Before I know what I'm doing I find myself grabbing out for it, and then I want to ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... remarked, "Your sentence, judge, is most ungentlemanly; but the law is imperative and I will have to stand it; so here is half a dollar, and the four dollars and a half you owed me when we stopped playing poker this morning ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... the hunters' quarters, where they messed apart, and helped Tamada, the cook, in the galley with his pots and dishes. But now there was no work in prospect for the hunters, and they lounged on deck or in the 'midship quarters, spinning yarns or playing poker. They were after gold this ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... such rays. There is no body in nature absolutely cold, and every body not absolutely cold emits rays of heat. But to render radiant heat fit to affect the optic nerve a certain temperature is necessary. A cool poker thrust into a fire remains dark for a time, but when its temperature has become equal to that of the surrounding coals, it glows like them. In like manner, if a current of electricity, of gradually increasing ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... You'll have to wait for Milly. Yes, we've got a boy, too. The youngest. He's at home with his grandma. You must come over to see mother and hear Milly play. She's the musician of the family. She does pyrography, too. That's burnt wood, you know. You wouldn't believe what she can do with her poker. Yes, she goes to school in town, and she is the youngest in ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... the room, and before proceeding further I cauterised that prick with the end of a red-hot poker. Then I made my adieux to Mrs. Holmes and went immediately to a chemist ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Potato Face Blind Man Any Ice Today Pick Ups Lizzie Lazarus Poker Face the Baboon Hot Dog the Tiger Whitson Whimble A Man Shoveling Money A Watermelon Moon White Gold Boys Blue Silver Girls Big White Moon Spiders ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... Adolphus out of that chair and sit down," she said, sinking into her accustomed seat. Adolphus was the Chow dog before mentioned, an accomplished animal who could mount guard with the poker and stand on his head, and had been pleased to favour me ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... than to do, miss," replied Sam, exerting his Herculean strength in vain. With the aid of a hammer and the kitchen-poker, however, he at last succeeded in forcing it open. We all pressed forward eagerly to peer inside. There was something in it certainly, but we none of us could determine what, until Sam, who was the boldest of us all, thrust ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... It was pitch dark and I could not tell what had happened, so I screamed—screamed as if I was being murdered. Imagine our feelings when the door opened, and in walked Mr. and Mrs. McDonald, carrying a candle and a poker. Oh! I thought I should die with shame. They thought that robbers had broken into the house and were carrying us off, so they ran with the poker to our rescue. It took them some time to comprehend the true state of ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... if we go wrong here, it's all off. I don't dare leave. Anyhow, down deep in your subconsciousness, you know that in diplomacy you really have us all beaten to a pulp: and this is a matter as purely diplomatic as draw-poker. You'll do ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... custom, Arthur did not accompany her downstairs, so that he returned from the door in time to hear the explosion of indignation which followed her departure. Mellicent stamped up and down the floor, breathless and tearful; Eunice stared at the floor; and Peggy sat erect as a poker, with a bright spots of colour on either cheek, and lips screwed into a tight ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... reason fer it. I reckon it's a killin'. But he's a chump ter stop off here. If anything has been pulled off at Rodeo, ther whole country will be out after him, fer Fancy, so called fer his passion fer good clothes an' high-colored poker chips, they don't like none too well, he's too almighty quick an' slick with his six-shooter, hez got a list o' killin's ter his credit ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... is a clever fellow, and we get on first rate together. He is going to California for gold—like the rest of us. But I think he has had his share—and spent it. At any rate he has not much now. I have been teaching him poker, and I am afraid he won't have any soon. I have an idea he has been going pretty fast—and mostly down hill. But he has his good points. He is a gentleman all through, as you can see. Yes, friend Squibob, even you could see right through him. We are all going to California together, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... back to bygone times, while I, not wishing to interrupt her, had taken the poker in my hand and with it was tracing geometrical figures in the peat-ash on the hearthstone. So absorbed was I in my circles and pentagons that I did not notice that Grannie had stopped short in her story, and was taking a lively interest in what I was ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... think so. He lingered, charmed, until quarter past eleven o'clock, at which hour Mrs. Weyland, in the room above, began to let the tongs and poker fall about with unmistakable significance; and went out into the starlit night radiant with the certainty that his heart, after long wandering, had found ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... late, but he was willing to talk to us about that wonderful 25th of May, for he had no objection to talking about his enemy-chasing; on the contrary, he would tell us details with the same amusement as if he related lucky plays at poker, and with the same knowing ways. There was not the least shade of affectation or of posing in his narrative, but he talked with the simplicity of a child. He told us that his third encounter had been the most enjoyable. He ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... who was a courageous woman, seized the basket in both hands and rushed with it to the fireplace, thereby fanning the flame into a blaze and endangering her dress and curls. She succeeded, however, in cramming the basket and its contents into the grate; then the two, with the aid of poker, tongs, and shovel, crushed ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Wedding Roistering Dirck Van Dara The Party from Gibbet Island Miss Britton's Poker The Devil's Stepping-Stones The Springs of Blood and Water The Crumbling Silver The Cortelyou Elopement Van Wempel's Goose The Weary Watcher The Rival Fiddlers Wyandank Mark of the Spirit ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Uncle Chris, "taught me poker, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. Also an exotic pastime styled Craps,—or, alternatively, 'rolling the bones'—which in those days was a very present help in time of trouble. At Craps, I fear, my hand in late years had ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... quoted from the book, Seth planted himself before Tilly, with the long poker in his hand, saying, as he flourished ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and we might be able to pick up a little easy money by betting on them—if we ever found anybody who had the nerve to bet with us. I kept myself supplied with pocket money in that fashion last year. Occasionally made a little something playing poker, but the games were always so small a fellow couldn't ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... corners, Wind snatches the sparks, Tongs and poker jangle together Like the iron bones Of a ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... Cranch, who on coming in had ignored the card tacked to his door, and who was found fast asleep in his chair, was given the coal-scuttle; and little Tomlins grasped his own wash-basin in one hand and Fred's poker in the other. Oliver was to sing the air, and Fred was to beat a tattoo on Waller's door with the butt end of a cane. The gas had been turned up and every kerosene lamp had been lighted and ranged about the hall. McFudd threw off his coat and vest, cocked a Scotch smoking- cap over one eye, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... disciples of Bacchus, while from an inner room the clicking of ivory chips and half suppressed expressions of "I'll see you an' go you tenner better." "A full house pat, what 'er ye got," designated the altar at which the worshipers of "draw poker" were ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... string and the red-hot poker," suggested Ruby Brand. "Tie the one end o' the string to a post and t'other end to the tooth, an' stick a red-hot poker to your nose. Away ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... her and, nervously lifting the poker, divided the smouldering log. A red flame shot up, illuminating the gathered faces that stood out against the dusk. The glare lent a grotesque irony to the flabby, awe-stricken features of the general, brightened the boyish ill-humour in Bernard's eyes, and played peaceably over Miss Chris's ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Army in Georgia regarded the removal of Johnston as equivalent to a victory for us. Three months of sharp work had convinced us that a change from Johnston's methods to those which Hood was likely to employ, was, in homely phrase, to have our enemy grasp the hot end of the poker. We knew that we should be kept on the alert and must be watchful; but we were confident that a system of aggression and a succession of attacks would soon destroy the Confederate army. Of course Hood did not mean to assault solidly built intrenchments; but we knew that ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... still and sultry. At one of the many camp-fires on the edge of the road I saw the Arkansas colonel sitting cross-legged on the ground, in trousers, socks and undershirt, playing poker. ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... annoying when one has, after infinite labour, succeeded in converting a clown, to see him come to chapel with a red-hot poker and his pockets full of stolen sausages; but even that shock is nothing to ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... seem a question impossible to answer. Of course it is impossible to answer it in terms of ships and guns; but an approximate estimate may be reached by considering the case of a man playing poker who holds a royal straight flush. Such a man would be a fool if he did not back his hand to the limit and get all the benefit possible from it. So will the United States, if she fails to back her hand to the limit, recognizing the fact that in the grand game now ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... the rail of the steamer, on the way up, and see you standing as I left you beside the car with its mule and the Indian driver, and behind you a million miles of soul-destroying pampa. Never mind, Jack; I sent yesterday by mail steamer the cigarettes, pipes and tobacco, canned goods and poker chips. Put in some magazines, too, and the collars. Don't know about the ties—guess ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Dunham. "Read a good deal. Play some poker or bridge. Walk. But sleep is the chief amusement. Eight hours used to be enough for me. Now I can ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... cost a thousand roubles! 'Balls and gaiety, balls and gaiety' is the constant cry. Yet what folly balls are! They do not consort with the Russian spirit and genius, and the devil only knows why we have them. A grown, middle-aged man—a man dressed in black, and looking as stiff as a poker—suddenly takes the floor and begins shuffling his feet about, while another man, even though conversing with a companion on important business, will, the while, keep capering to right and left like a billy-goat! Mimicry, sheer mimicry! The fact that the Frenchman is at forty ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... we went back to the saloon, where the gentlemen sat down to poker, which Lord Ralles had just learned, and liked. They did not ask me to take a hand, for which I was grateful, as the salary of a railroad superintendent would hardly stand the game they probably played; and I had my compensation ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... bitter platter stopper hopping diner shiny tiny doted dinner shinny tinny dotted cuter hater poker offer cutter hated paper wider holy hatter taper spider holly riding favor diver bony ridding fever gallon bonny biting clover racer bogy bitting over cider boggy caning halo label Mary canning solo yellow marry planer polo jolly mate planner flabby jelly ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... party, gentle reader, is your humble servant, Thomas Poker, Esquire, a native of Nova Scotia, and a retired member of the Provincial bar. My name will seldom appear in these pages, as I am uniformly addressed by both my companions as "Squire," nor shall I have to perform the disagreeable task of "reporting my own ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... then; I had grown up over in the sage-brush country, and I never had heard of a highball. To start with I had two, then I got interested in a game of roulette, and the last I remember I was learning to play poker. But I must have had more high-balls; the boys said afterwards they left me early in the evening with a new acquaintance; they couldn't get me to go home. I never knew how I got back to the dorm, and the next day, when I woke, the stubs of my checkbook showed I had signed practically all ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... does his skin. Once wanting some womanly attentions, the stage-driver assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile House from the lady barkeeper. The phrase tickled all my after-dinner-coffee sense of humor into an anticipation of Poker Flat. The stage-driver proved himself really right, though you are not to suppose from this that Jimville had no conventions and no caste. They work out these things in the personal equation largely. Almost every latitude of behavior is allowed a good fellow, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... table, keeping himself between the girl and whatever her object was. Noticing this, a real terror seized upon Priscilla and she darted in the opposite direction, reached the hearth, and was bending toward a heavy poker which lay there, before she herself could have explained her motive. Jerry-Jo was alert. Tossing his food upon the table as he strode forward, he ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... sword into a pruning hook is a matter for a skilled smith, but to change a bayonet into a poker is within the capacity of the least mechanical. All that is needed is to cause the bayonet to forsake the murderous rifle barrel and cleave to a short wooden handle. Henceforth its function is not to thrust itself into the vitals of men, but to encourage combustion ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Hogan-Yale. The Second-in-Command led the Colonel away to the little curtained alcove wherein the subalterns of the white Hussars were accustomed to play poker of nights; and there, after many oaths on the Colonel's part, they talked together in low tones. I fancy that the Second-in- Command must have represented the scare as the work of some trooper whom it would be hopeless to detect; and I know ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Lamson sat by the open fire, at a point where she could easily reach the tongs for the adjusting of any vagabond stick, and Cap'n Oliver Drown, in the opposite angle, held dominion over the poker. No one else would Miss Letitia have admitted to partnership in the managing of her fire; but Cap'n Oliver wielded an undisputed privilege. The poker suited him because he had a way, in the heat of friendly dissension, of smashing a stick much before it was ready to drop apart ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... which he substituted in the room of the real persons in the drama. One night, as he was repeating the part of Alexander, with his wooden representative of Clitus, (an elbow chair), and coming to the speech where the old general is to be killed, this young mock Alexander snatched a poker, instead of a javelin, and threw it with such strength, against poor Clitus, that the chair was killed upon the spot, and lay mangled on the floor. The death of Clitus made a monstrous noise, which disturbed the master in the parlour, who called out to ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... until he found a table where four men were playing stud poker. Here he stood, watching the game, but concentrating on the mind of the man opposite him, checking his mental impressions against the man's ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... some land—a ranch. It isn't worth much, I'm afraid, but I came by it honestly, for me. I won it at poker from a man named Jack Haslett. He was a devil for cards, but it didn't matter. He was rich; and he had a better ranch that he lived on. He's dead now—was near dead then, of consumption. He liked me. Said he was glad I'd won the ranch. It was only a ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... drew it out with shaking fingers. There was a great splash of blood upon it, her hand was all wet and sticky. A deadly sickness came over her, the room seemed spinning round. She staggered to the fireplace and thrust it into the heart of the dying flames. She held it down with the poker, looking nervously over her shoulder. Then she put more coal on, piled it over the ashes, and stood ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... here, Laura, and I'll go into the next room and listen at the passage door.' She spoke so decidedly that I obeyed in trembling. Mary armed herself with the poker, and, unlocking our door, went into the tapestry room, first lighting the second candle, which she left with me. She crossed the room to the door as she had said. I thought it was to listen; in reality her object was to ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... poker! This knocks me out! The next time I'll marry a man, and have somebody around that can appreciate a joke. The Irishman said himself it would ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... rage! She burnt yer book, yer Jane Eyre as yer wor reading—lor, it were fine—the bit as you read to the Gen'ral and me, but she said as it wor a hell-fire book, and she burnt it—I seed her, and so did the Gen'ral—she pushed it between the bars with the poker. She got up in her night-things to do it, and then she got back to bed again, and she panted for nearly ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... a place in Byrnes's book. If Julius Caysar was alive to-day he'd be doin' a lockstep down in Joliet. He was a corner loafer in his youth an' a robber in his old age. He busted into churches, fooled ar-round with other men's wives, curled his hair with a poker an' smelled iv perfumery like a Saturday night car. An' his wife was a suspicyous charackter an' ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... won't rob my benefactor. You shall kill me first." And with that he darted to the fireplace, and in a moment the poker was high in air, and the way he squared his shoulders and stood ready to hit to the on, or cut to the off, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Fisher assured the porter that it was a mistake to consider him a medical expert; that he professed no science save that of draw poker; that if a false impression prevailed in the hotel it was through a blunder for which he was in no way responsible; and that, much as he regretted the unfortunate condition of the highborn the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... simple matter. It is quite obvious that a heated body tends to grow cold. I am not now speaking of fires or of actual combustion whereby heat is produced; I am speaking merely of such heat as would be possessed by a red-hot poker after being taken from the fire, or by an iron casting after the metal has been run into the mould. In such cases as this the general law holds good, that the heated body tends to grow cold. The cooling may be retarded no doubt if the passage of heat from the body is impeded. We ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... play the Game of Life today is similar to playing poker. We keep a straight face and play the cards tight to our chest. But what would happen if everyone could see everyone else's cards? It would cease to be a game of strategy, and become ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... pile to Jack Hamlin at draw-poker, over at Wingdam last night," returned the other, pensively, "but I don't calkilate to ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... owing to the gale carrying the sound to leeward. A rocket followed, and at the same moment we observed the light of the vessel in distress just on the southern tail of the Sands. By this time our gun was charged, and the rocket in position. "Look alive, Jack! get the poker," cried the mate, as he primed the gun. Jack dived down the companion hatch, and in another moment returned with a red-hot poker, which the mate had thrust into the cabin fire at the first alarm. Jack applied it in quick succession to the ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... effectually dispelled the clouds which had been fast clearing off from Essper's intellect. Giving one wide stare, and then rubbing his eyes, the truth lighted upon him, and so he sent the Bohemian's lantern at his landlord's head. The postmaster seized the poker and the postmistress a faggot, and as the Bohemian, who had now recovered himself, had entered in the rear, Essper George stood a fair chance of receiving a thorough drubbing, had not his master, roused by the suspicious noises and angry sounds which had reached his ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... I often read what they say about other people. There are about a dozen phrases that all come tumbling along together, like the tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows. If you get one, you get ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... said Yetive. "You forgot your promise to teach him how to play that awful game called poker. He has waited for you at the castle since six o'clock. It is now eight. Is it any wonder that he led the searching party? He has been on nettles for an ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the depths of the cellar, and gave no sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me vis-a-vis with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried off the attack with a poker ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... hope yo may be able to deliver me. Yo mun knoa, that somehow ey wor unlucky enough last Yule to offend Mother Chattox, an ever sin then aw's gone wrang wi' me. Th' good-wife con never may butter come without stickin' a redhot poker into t' churn; and last week, when our brindlt sow farrowed, and had fifteen to t' litter, an' fine uns os ever yo seed, seign on um deed. Sad wark! sad wark, mesters. The week efore that t' keaw deed; an th' week efore her th' owd mare, so that aw my stock be gone. Waes me! waes ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Brigadier—four times, to be exact. Five men off duty were sitting in a dug-out playing poker. A gentleman named 'Erb had just gone to the limit on his hand, when a rifle-grenade came into the dug-out from somewhere and did him in. While they were waiting for the stretcher-bearers, one of the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... replace. You can heat the sides and bottom very hot, and it will not hurt it, but not the top edges. So, in putting on coal you must never let it quite fill the box, and after you set the scuttle down on the floor you must take the long poker and feel all around on top of the ovens and see if any bit has rolled there, and bring it back where it belongs. If it should roll down the sides you could not get it out, and it would spoil the draft and injure the stove. Now if you understand all ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... is a specimen of house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midlands I have visited. In the room downstairs there were a broken-down old squab, two rickety old chairs, and a three-legged table that had to be propped against the wall, and a rusty old poker, with a smoking fire-place. The Gipsy father was a strong man, not over fond of work; he had been in prison once; the mother, a strong Gipsy woman of the old type, marked with small-pox, and plenty of tongue—by the way, I may say ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... at him in wonder. His apple-blossom cheeks wore a rosier glow than usual. He seized a log from the box, threw it on the blaze that illumined their faces, grasped the poker, and leaning forward in his chair let it grow hot as he held it to the flames. His glasses fell off, dangling from the cord; and as he adjusted them, he caught the curious, half-amused smile on Ruth's ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... outside activities were no hindrances to either pulpit or pastoral work; and, like that famous English preacher who felt that he could not have too many irons in the fire, I thrust in tongs, shovel, poker and all. The contact with busy life and benevolent labors among the poor supplied material for sermons; for the pastor of a city church must touch life at a great many points. Our domestic experiences in ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... cautioned. "Mrs. Blarcum is in her room, but she has good hearing in spite of her age, and I think she is somehow mixed up with the mystery. Now we'll go to the top floor," and he took up a big poker, which was on a chair in the ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... hemlock rank—growing on the weedy bank," quoted Macey. "I wish you wouldn't begin nursery rhymes. You've started me off now. I should like some of those bulrushes," and he pointed to a cluster of the brown poker-like growth rising from the water, well out of ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... pass on, and you were free. I did so, and found myself in the dark with my friend Mary and the other "devils" she had told me would be there. They were all armed, some with logs, others with tongs. I had nothing, but was bold enough to go to the school-room, get a poker, and return to ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... woman, and some others; but I had no more idea, until the ceremony was all over, that it was a baptism, or that the curious little stiff instrument, that was passed from one to another, in the course of the ceremony, by the handle—like a short poker—was a child, than I had that it was my own christening. I borrowed the child afterwards, for a minute or two (it was lying across the font then), and found it very red in the face but perfectly quiet, and not to be bent on any terms. The number ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... dropped her cloak, and, not even glancing at G.J., went to the fire and teased it with the poker. Bending down, with one hand on the graphic and didactic mantelpiece, and staring into ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... be more abject than the union of elaborate and recherche arrangements with an old and obvious point? The clown with the red-hot poker and the string of sausages is all very well in his way. But think of a string of pate de foie gras sausages at a guinea a piece! Think of a red-hot poker cut out of a single ruby! Imagine such fantasticalities of expense with such a ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... I did," answered the professor sharply. " I often find myself liking that kind of a boy in college. Don't I know them-those lads with their beer and their poker games in the dead of the night with a towel hung over the keyhole. Their habits are often vicious enough, but something remains in them through it all and they may go away and do great things. This happens. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... hot water for the house. There should be a shelf near the range for such articles as the pepper-box and salt-box which are in constant use in cooking, and hooks should be near at hand for hanging up the poker, lid-lifter, and a coarse towel for use in taking pans from the oven. Other shelves and hooks, of course, should be put in for the various ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... respectfully to suggest to the millionaires the advisability of laying in quarts of it for their dinner-parties. This sparkling beverage—essence of oxygen, mark you—would not need to be iced, for the North Pole is as a red-hot poker compared with it. Such a beverage would make a sensation and provide paragraphs for the society journals and the "Times" obituary. It is true the guests would not like it, but they would be anxious to quaff it. Have you never noticed the innocent joy which the pop and froth of cheap champagne gives ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... first sight as if the young man had been the victim of a homicidal maniac, so brutal had been the way in which he had been assassinated. The head and body were battered and bruised by some heavy stick or poker, almost past human shape, as if the murderer had wished to wreak some awful vengeance upon the body of his victim. In fact, it would be impossible to recount the gruesome aspect of that room and of the murdered man's body ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... brawling and fighting, so long as the money and credit of the trappers last. Seated Indian fashion around the fires, with a blanket spread before them, groups are seen with their 'decks' of cards playing at 'euchre,' 'poker,' and 'seven-up,' the regular mountain games. The stakes are beaver, which is here current coin; and when the fur is gone, their horses, mules, rifles and shirts, hunting packs and breeches are staked. Daring gamblers make the rounds of the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... herself)—"And yet despite so many fears." (Spoken.) Here is the poker. (Humming.) ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... pounds weight of sugar, then add the sugar, light the fire, and keep it stirring until it boils, regulating the fire so as not to suffer it to boil over; as it begins to lessen in quantity, dip the end of the poker into it, to see if it candies as it cools, and grows proportionably bitter to its consistence; mark the height of the sugar in the boiler when it is all melted, to assist in judging of its decrease; when the specimen taken out candies, or sets hard pretty ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... on a game in a gambling house, then, I suppose"—he was so evidently squirming that Kate meanly enjoyed his discomfort—"you might call me that. It would all depend on whether the one telling it liked me or didn't like me. I haven't been in Tenison's rooms for months, nor played but one game of poker." ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... cattle you duffed, And your luck at the Sandy Creek rush, And the poker you played, and the bluffs that you bluffed, And your habits of ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... regular poker-face," mused Jimmy; "never batted an eye," and paying for his ad he pocketed the ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... leisurely among games of infinite variety: keno, rondo coolo, poker, faro, roulette, monte, chuck-a-luck, wheels of fortune—advertised, some, by their barkers, but the better class (if there is such a distinction) presided over by remarkably quiet, white-faced, nimble-fingered, steady-eyed gentry in irreproachable ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... not so big as the Avalanche," she began the moment she had shut the door behind her and faced the questioning eyes that commanded her to stand and deliver. "He's straight, too, but not so poker-stiff as Mrs. Ramrod. He's got a big haw-haw voice, and scrubs every word he says with a tooth-brush before he says it. His hands are as white—as white; and they're cleaner than Crosby Pemberton's. He's got a tan shirt on, plaited in front, and every time Aunt Anne moves he's up like a jumping-jack ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... there couldn't be a better one. And she insisted on naming the child 'Fidelity.' But if anybody had told me that my little Mary—would take things into her own hands like that—why, Judge, before she went away to teach school, she leaned on me and her mother—and now she's as stiff as a poker when we try to ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... thief continued. "Many of us protected the victims during this pogrom. Our friend, called Sesoi the Great—you have just seen him, gentlemen—was then lodging with a Jewish braid-maker on the Moldavanka. With a poker in his hands he defended his landlord from a great horde of assassins. It is true, Sesoi the Great is a man of enormous physical strength, and this is well known to many of the inhabitants of the Moldavanka. But you must agree, gentlemen, that in these moments Sesoi ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... there, gran, and not to dare to move to do one single thing. I'm going to talk to that fire, and you'll see how I'll coax him up in no time, and if that kettle doesn't sing in five minutes I'll take the poker to him." And, whether it was because of her coaxing or not, the fire soon flamed cheerfully, and the kettle, being already warm, began to sing almost as soon as Mona had got ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... quite the modern view of the subject," said the doctor. "I shall be understood in talking with a representative of the century which invented poker if I say that when the revolutionists attacked the fundamental justice of the old property system, its defenders were able on account of its antiquity to meet them with a tremendous bluff—one which it is no wonder should have been for a time almost paralyzing. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... when you are sitting in your friend's parlour, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you may draw any thing that is there, for practice; even the fire-irons or the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it is for practice, and not because it is a beloved carpet, nor a friendly poker and tongs, nor because you wish to please your friend ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of the many thirst parlors that line Market Street. The bosun and I had stepped in to wet our whistles, and, looking out of the open door, I was astounded to perceive our truant cookie pass by. The bosun was occupied at the moment with a nickel poker machine. I did not disturb him—he is a hasty, straightforward person and unfitted for a subtle pursuit. I slipped through the door and fell into the wake of the Jap. But what a metamorphosed sea-cook I trailed! Resplendent in fine feathers, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... heard the low thunder of ninepin balls, and the crash of tumbling pins from those precincts? The little ghost said, Never! It cannot be. But it was. "Have they a billiard-room in the upper story?" I asked myself. "Do the theological professors take a hand at all-fours or poker on weekdays, now and then, and read the secular columns of the 'Boston Recorder' on Sundays?" I was demoralized for the moment, it is plain; but now that I have recovered from the shock, I must say that the fact mentioned seems to show a great advance in common sense from the notions ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the bar-room, to go upstairs. On the second floor there were two large rooms. From the hall I looked into the one on the front. There was a large, round table in the center, at which five or six men were seated playing poker. The air and conduct here were greatly in contrast to what I had just seen in the pool-room; these men were evidently the aristocrats of the place; they were well, perhaps a bit flashily, dressed and spoke in low modulated ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... the noble animal to a spit in his kitchen before the fire, and notwithstanding the screams of the sufferer and the indignant cries of the beholders, whose interference he wildly resisted with the poker, actually persisted in keeping it there burning, till he fell down in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... need much hinting. "Tell the bulls we're gonna clean up the District," he started, waving his hands around. "No more poker. No more dice. No more Sneaky Pete." I'd never heard ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... Saul Jacobi, turning on his heel—"not easy to get any information out of him; looks as though he had swallowed the poker first, and then the tongs as a sort of relish afterwards, and neither of them agreed with him. I wonder what young Templeton saw in him. He lays it on pretty thick too: it is Herrick this and Herrick that, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Lucinda's voice suddenly proclaimed behind him" Aunt Mary and Her Escorts "The carriage stopped three hundred feet below the level of a roof-garden" "And now the fun's all over and the work begins" "'Yesterday I played poker until I didn't know a blue chip from a white one'" "Aunt Mary had also had her ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... the Registry Clerk, he actually borrowed from me! I knew him already to be unprincipled; but never until that moment had it flashed upon me that he was a fortune-hunter! However, as he had the drawing-room poker with him—he kept it concealed up his back during the ceremony at the Registry Office—I did not at that time say anything, but handed him the coin. I do not know if I should have left him at once, had he not aggravated the baseness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... the poker from the hearth ran at it to kill it. Before, however, he could strike it, the rat, with a squeak that sounded like the concentration of hate, jumped upon the floor, and, running up the rope of the alarm bell, disappeared in the darkness ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... plump myself down on a seat beside her: goodness knows what she'd think I wanted. That's one of the delights of having women in the club: when they come in here they all want to sit at the fire and adore that bust. I sometimes feel that I should like to take the poker and fetch it a wipe ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... doing nothing. I have elaborate instruments, sir—I don't read any more books—the world's literature is here" (tapping his forehead). "I've thought too much to care for other men's ideas. Like old women, I was saying, sir. 'Give me a poker,' I yelled—' give me anything.' I sent for my trephine. Great God, how the blood flew, and the bone creaked! I raised the depressed bone. The man lives. I've done everything, in my life. And now a cursed quack comes to town—. Where's his wife? I say—where's his suffering children?—Don't ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... and Boatswain; and whenever he latter came into the room while the former was there, they instantly seized each other; and then, Byron, myself, Frank, and all the waiters that could be found, were vigorously engaged in parting them,—which was in general only effected by thrusting poker and tongs into the mouths of each. But, one day, Nelson unfortunately escaped out of the room without his muzzle, and going into the stable-yard fastened upon the throat of a horse from which he could ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... robe of peach-red flowered satin, a short pelisse of slate-blue stiff silk, lined with squirrel, and a jupe of deep red foreign crepe, lined with ermine. Resplendent with pearl-powder and with cosmetics, she sat in there, stately and majestic, with a small brass poker in her hands, with which she was stirring the ashes of the hand-stove. P'ing Erh stood by the side of the couch, holding a very small lacquered tea-tray. In this tray was a small tea-cup with a cover. Lady Feng neither took any tea, nor did she raise her ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... subterraneous establishment threw aside an old wire that served as a poker, and demanded payment in advance. The child handed him the three cents, received his rum ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... best to stamp it out. Though I do not play for money myself, I never could see any great harm in those poor boys out there getting a little relaxation from their terrible nervous strain by a game of bridge or poker for a few francs. But a game which was founded wholly on dishonesty was something which I felt was unworthy of our men. Whenever I saw them crowding round a little spot on the grass I knew there was a game of crown and anchor going on, and I would shout, "Look out, boys, I am going to put the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... from the book, Seth planted himself before Tilly, with the long poker in his hand, saying, as ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and went out to watch a couple of telepaths playing chess until lunch time and then gave up. Telepathic chess was too much like playing perceptive poker. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... "devil's horn." Of further plants related to his Satanic majesty is the clematis, termed "devil's thread," the toad-flax is his ribbon, the indigo his dye, while the scandix forms his darning-needles. The tritoma, with its brilliant red blossom, is familiar in most localities as the "devil's poker," and the ground ivy has been nicknamed the "devil's candlestick," the mandrake supplying his candle. The puff-balls of the lycoperdon form the devil's snuff-box, and in Ireland the nettle is his apron, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... this time some fresh rumors in regard to Radnor; one—and it came pretty straight—that he'd just lost a hundred dollars at poker. A hundred dollars may not sound like a very big loss in these days of bridge, but it was large for that place, and it represented to Radnor exactly two months' pay. As overseer of the plantation, the Colonel paid ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... should be without poker and tongs. The poker is a beech stick four feet long by two inches thick, flattened at one end, with a notch cut in it for lifting kettles, etc. To make the tongs, take a tough beech or hickory stick, one ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... pack on my back. The third day out I fell and bruised my thigh severely, and could not make my little mountain town till moonlight. And I tell you I was mighty glad when I limped across the bridge over the rushing river and dropped on the hotel sofa. Next morning I was stiff as a poker, but I struggled up the four rickety flights to the local physician, and being assured I only wanted rest, I resolved to take it with book and pipe and mug in a shady beer-garden on the river. I had been reading for about an hour when five or six Tyrolese, old men and young, in ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... woman, his wife, stood still, poker in hand, waiting to be told who it was that her husband had brought home so unceremoniously; but, as she looked in amazement, the girl's cheek flushed, and then blanched to a dead whiteness; a film came over her eyes, and catching ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... connected with the range. This should be large enough to assure a sufficient supply of hot water for the house. There should be a shelf near the range for such articles as the pepper-box and salt-box which are in constant use in cooking, and hooks should be near at hand for hanging up the poker, lid-lifter, and a coarse towel for use in taking pans from the oven. Other shelves and hooks, of course, should be put in for the various utensils necessary in ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... first thing," he added, taking up the poker and tapping the bright little stove with it; "I told myself she would be marryin' one of the boys most likely; I kep' that in mind steady, as you may say. I thought I was so used to the idee that it wouldn't jar me much of any when it come to the fact. But it did; yes siree, it did, ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... gruntled. "A sweat is in my whiskers. Inhabitants, why isn't his tongue a red-hot poker?... Well, boys Palace, grand this is. Say who you are?" he asked one whose face shone like a mirror. ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... He seized the poker from the fireplace and delivered two rapid blows on the closet door. The wood was splintered. A third blow smashed the flimsy lock. The closet, with any skeletons it might contain, was open for all ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... about with a knife and battered it with a poker till it might have been the table of a shaggy and unrecognised genius, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... maintained that he never meddled with the fire that he didn't put it out—in short, that he was a perfect fire damper; and, as he was always anxious to stir up things in the varous fireplaces, she made a practice of hiding the poker just before it was time for him to come into the house. One night there was an alarm of fire in the village and Budger flew for ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... dice are the real weapons of the "sportsman," but particularly the former. Besides the English games of whist and cribbage, and the French games of "vingt-un", "rouge-et-noir," etcetera, the American gambler plays "poker", "euchre", "seven-up," and a variety of others. In New Orleans there is a favourite of the Creoles called "craps," a dice game, and "keno," and "loto," and "roulette," played with balls and a revolving wheel. Farther to the South, among the Spano-Mexicans, you ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... matter what he works at—whether at doctoring people, or trying law suits, or running for office—to have a real good time on Sunday. He, of course, must be careful not to interfere with the rights of others. He ought not to play draw-poker on the steps of a church; neither should he stone a Chinese funeral, nor go to any excesses; but all the week long he should have it in his mind: Next Sunday I am going to have a good time. My wife and I and the children are going to have a happy time. I am going out ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... it has not escaped my aunt that the Venus de Medicis and Apollo Belvidere are both missing together: I make no remarks. I hate scandal—at least I am not so fond of it as the lady of whom it was said she could not see the poker and tongs standing together without suspecting something wrong! I wonder where our ideas, especially those of a playful sort, go at some times? and how it is that they all come junketing back faster than there is room for them ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... first bespoke her, [Kept a dandling the kitchen poker;] Mary spoke her words like Venus, But said, 'There's something I fear ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... are not far distant from Wall Street. The farmers of Ohio, the cowboys of Texas, the miners of Nevada, owe allegiance to the same Government, and shape the same speech to their own purpose. Every State is a separate country, and cultivates a separate dialect. Then come baseball, poker, and the racecourse, each with its own metaphors to swell the hoard. And the result is a language of the street and camp, brilliant in colour, multiform in character, which has not a rival in ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... than usual, both mother and son are said to have gone to the neighbouring apothecary, each to request him not to supply the other with poison. On a later occasion, when he had been meeting her bursts of rage with stubborn mockery, she flung a poker at his head, and narrowly missed her aim. Upon this he took flight to London, and his Hydra or Alecto, as ho calls her, followed: on their meeting a truce was patched, and they withdrew in opposite directions, she back to ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... gone to his room at a late hour of the night, and found him sitting before the smouldering grate, so absorbed in thought that, as he balanced the probabilities of contending theories, he unwittingly accompanied the mental effort by balancing the poker on the bar. I have seen, on such an occasion, a greasy stream oozing from the pocket of his fustian coat, and supplied by the roll of butter which at morning market he had purchased for home use. On the table lay his MSS., so marred with interlinings ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... as if he had touched a red hot poker. "The Professor doesn't want me to touch the cutout," ...
— The 4-D Doodler • Graph Waldeyer
... sons above the social rank of their fathers. In the great American universities men are ranked as follows: 1. Seducers; 2. Fullbacks; 3. Booze-fighters; 4. Pitchers and Catchers; 5. Poker players; 6. ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... who have come there to escape restraint. Cutter was one of the "fast set" of Black Hawk business men. He was an inveterate gambler, though a poor loser. When we saw a light burning in his office late at night, we knew that a game of poker was going on. Cutter boasted that he never drank anything stronger than sherry, and he said he got his start in life by saving the money that other young men spent for cigars. He was full of moral maxims for boys. When he came to our house on business, he quoted "Poor Richard's Almanack" to me, and ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... for the theorising of science, she then stuck the poker up in front of the bars to keep the ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... take a nap, but failed. Hansen found a soiled deck of cards behind a pile of books on the mantelpiece, and we all cheered up, thinking of poker; but it was a Belgian deck of thirty-two cards, all the pips below the seven-spot being eliminated. Poker with that deck would be a ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the holy poker! This knocks me out! The next time I'll marry a man, and have somebody around that can appreciate a joke. The Irishman said himself it would make ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... sabbath in best clothes and chastened behaviour. Jim Dunn was watching a large consignment of goods for the Company store being unloaded. He was telling Earl Henderson, the manager's nephew, how much it would cost him to get in with the poker crowd. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with a soft lump, and poked it unskilfully, all but stabbing the life out of it. Canning, standing and staring half-absently into the soft glow, did not offer to relieve her of the poker. They knew each other ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... our house. First, there were four people came, and Ma asked Pa to stay to make up a quorum, and Pa said seeing he had two pair, he guessed he would stay in, and if Ma would deal him a queen he would have a full hand. I don't know what Pa meant, but he plays draw poker sometimes. Anyway there was eleven people came including the minister, and after they had talked about the neighbors a spell, and Ma had showed the women a new tidy she had worked for the heathen, with a motto on ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... army presented a formidable force. The steward had a rusty blunderbuss; the coachman a loaded whip; the footman a pair of horse pistols; the cook a huge chopping knife, and the butler a bottle in each hand. My aunt led the van with a red-hot poker; and, in my opinion, she was the most formidable of the party. The waiting maid brought up the rear, dreading to stay alone in the servants' hall, smelling to a broken bottle of volatile salts, and expressing her terror of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... double rage, and intercepted Mr. Chainmail's pursuit of the Captain, placing himself in the doorway, in a pugilistic attitude. Mr. Chainmail, not being disposed for this mode of combat, stepped back into the parlour, took the poker in his right hand, and displacing the loose bottom of a large elbow chair, threw it over his left arm as a shield. Harry, not liking the aspect of the enemy in this imposing attitude, retreated with backward steps ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... which Billy and Bridge found themselves was a small one in the center of which was a large round table at which were gathered a half-dozen men at poker. Above the table swung a single arc lamp, casting a garish light upon ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony," said Farmer Bawtree. "I knowed a man and wife—faith, I don't mind owning, as there's no strangers here, that the pair were my own relations—they'd be at it that hot one hour that you'd hear the poker and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house with the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you'd hear 'em singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as peaceable as two holy ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the great impressionists who, unlike the majority of their surviving brothers and sisters, instead of swallowing the impressionist doctrine whole, just as official painters do the academic, have modified it charmingly to suit their peculiar temperaments. Not having swallowed the poker, they have none of those stiff and static habits which characterize the later generations of their family. They are free and various; and Bonnard is one of the greatest painters alive. Mistakenly, he is supposed ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... nobody else would ever know his guilt, the thought of the burglar going off quite unmolested with his property was intolerable. Even if he could not summon up enough courage to get downstairs with his life and a poker in his hand, he must at least give them a good fright. They had frightened him, and so he would frighten them. They should not have it all their own way, and if he decided not to attack them (or him) single-handed, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... the wine he finished in somber mood like an unbroken and defiant man who chews the straw that litters his prison house. During his dinner he was continually sending out messenger boys. He was arranging a poker party. Through a window he watched the beautiful moving life of upper Broadway at night, with its crowds and clanging cable cars and its electric signs, mammoth and glittering like ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Lord Chelsford was reading that letter. When he had finished his hands were shaking and his face was grey. He moved over to the fireplace, and, without a moment's hesitation, he thrust the letter into the flames. Not content with that, he stood over it, poker in hand, and beat the ashes into powder. Then he turned to ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not see H. J. Owens anywhere in town—nor did he see either of the two men who had stood behind him. But there was a poker game running in Rusty Brown's back room, and Irish immediately sat in without further investigation. Bert Rogers was standing behind one of the players, and gave Irish a nod and a wink which may have had many meanings. Irish interpreted it as encouragement to sail ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... of whist, domino, or poker are often given by bachelors at their apartments or residences. In apartments this class of entertainment is only for men. Women should not go to bachelors' apartments except for luncheon, dinner, or supper. In a bachelor's house, however, any entertainment can ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... Janet and Tim returned about the time the dishwashing process was complete. Janet proposed a hand of bridge; Tim suggested poker, James voted for pinochle, and Martha wanted to toss a coin between canasta or gin rummy. They settled it by dealing a shuffled deck face upward until the ace of hearts landed in front of Janet, whereupon they played bridge until about eleven o'clock. It was interesting bridge; James and Martha ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... growing on large trees are truly beautiful, as every breath of air changes the colour as the leaves move. The wood of all the species of poplar is useful for boards, or any other purposes if kept dry. It is much in demand for floor-boards for rooms, it not readily taking fire; a red-hot poker falling on a board, would burn its way through it, without causing more combustion than the hole through ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... alive, but they say there's a whale of a hoard of it! Hundreds o' tons of ivory, all waiting to be found, and fossicked out, an' took! Say—if I was some o' those Greeks for instance, tell you what I'd do: I'd off to Zanzibar, an' kidnap Tippoo Tib. The old card's still living. I'd apply a red-hot poker to his silver-side an' the under-parts o' his tripe-casings. He'd tell me where the stuff is quicker'n winking! Supposin' I was a Greek without morals or no compunctions or nothin', that's what I'd do! I don't hold with allowin' any man to play dog in ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... with a dinner engagement at the club and a place bespoken in a quiet poker game afterward, squirmed in his chair and cursed Wyat Carp silently. Finally, with a last rhetorical flourish, Mr. Carp quite suddenly ended. He sat down amid a ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... a man of convivial habits, and used to poke considerable fun at me because I would not drink or play poker. At the time when the select committee was to meet in Memphis, the home of Senator Harris, the prominent business men of that place waited on him and told him they understood a very eminent committee was coming there in a few days, and they would like to show them some courtesies. Harris replied ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... and the ceremony had been fixed for the following day. But, though bride and wedding-party turned up at the appointed hour, the bridegroom never materialized. He had gone straight from the supper-party at the Savoy to the Green Room Club and fallen into a game of poker that lasted throughout the night and all the next day, with the result that all memory of the proposed wedding had faded from his mind. The lady, very much injured in her tenderest feeling (professional and personal vanity), had sued ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... in a poker game, and it sure is queer how things will turn out. I've sot hour after hour in them games, without ever takin' a pot. And then, 'long about four o'clock in the mornin', the luck'd turn—it'd take ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... from England—a mere lad. California was still the land of gold and romance; the glamour with which Bret Harte surrounded both, that bids fair to be immortal, held me enthralled. Angel's, Rough and Ready, Sandy Bar, Poker Flat, Placerville, Tuolumne and old Sonora represented to me enchanted ground. Fate and life's vicissitudes prevented, except in imagination, a knowledge of the Sierra foot-hill counties; but in the back of my head all these years had persisted a determination to, at some time, visit ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Smith—your John Smith—everybody's John Smith—again entered the arm-chair of our affections, the fire of our love stirred, like a self-acting poker, the embers of cooling good fellowship, and the strong blaze of resuscitated friendship burst forth with all its pristine warmth. John Smith wore Bluchers but he wore them like an honest man; and he was the only specimen of the genus ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... for the jar and slipped the metal cover over the mouth of the neck, which was so hot that it blistered his fingers, and, seizing the poker, he hammered down the secret catch until the lid fitted as closely as ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... caught Artis's right hand with the stout cane, numbing his nerves, so that the poker fell. With a second blow, he seemed to hamstring his adversary, who staggered, and would have fallen, but for Capel's hand grasping him by the collar; and then, for two or three minutes, there was a ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... wooden hut. It was once, in fact, an armourer's shop, and has since been converted to a kitchen. The floor is rudely laid, and the bricks gape here and there. A barrack fender guards the fire-place, and a barrack poker reposes in the fender. It is a very ponderous poker of unusual size and the commonest appearance, but with a massive knob at the upper end which was wont to project far and high above the hearth. It ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... stated Camille. "He owes Bill Stark a pile, and he can't pay a cent of it; and Jack's sense of honor about a poker debt is about the biggest thing in his character. Jack has got to pay. And Bill has a little circus, going to travel all summer, and he's offered big money for you. Jack can pay Bill what he owes him, and we'll have enough to live on, and have lots of fun ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of my father," the man gasped, "I am telling you the truth. God strike me if I am not!" and he looked at the reddening poker with frightened eyes. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... changed his tools. Going to the stove, he returned with the poker, and the end of this he set firmly against the last bar to the right. A quick, mighty effort, and the sawed iron snapped noiselessly, and bent outward and upward. One after another, he gave the remaining four the same treatment. Eventually, ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Eastern spices and fragrant teas, into the little parlor beyond. The early winter night had now fallen, and the room, having only an outlet into a small court, would have been dark also but for the red glow of the "covered" fire. David took the poker and struck the great block of coal, and instantly the cheerful blaze threw an air of cosey and almost picturesque comfort ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... occasions—when he had assumed at a moment's notice the role of the "Baffled Despot", in an argument with Kennedy in his study on the subject of the house football team—that he broke what Mr Blackburn considered a valuable door with a poker. Since then ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... ought to be going," said the kidnapper, hesitating. "We'll make it poker, and the boy may take ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... he came with his grey hair streaming over his forehead, and his eyes aflame. I knew in a moment that repose in his presence was out of the question, though I still sat on, hoping against hope. First, the Doctor bounded to the fire-place, seized the poker, and began to rummage the fire. It was a good fire, and had done nothing to deserve this punishment. I shifted on my seat; the two other philosophers opened their eyes and frowned, and still Dr. FUSSELL continued to rummage. Now I knew, not only that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... it no enough that you consort with that scarlet limmer, who has just yescaped thorough the winday, but ye maun smoors my firstborn, puir Conscience, atween ye? Whare hae ye stowed him, mantell me that?" And the ancient damosel gives me a shrewd clip on the skull with the poker. "That's right, mother," quoth Conscience, from beneath the straw mattrass—"Give it to him—he'll no hear me another devel, mother." And I found that my own weight, deserted as I was by that—ahem—Prosperity, was no longer sufficient ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... whitewashed room Gray and Flint were playing cut-throat poker; Gary was at the telephone, but the messages received or transmitted appeared to be of no importance. There had never been any message of importance from the Falcon Peak or to it. There was ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... "Let the poker be heated" were the fearful words which greeted Mr. Verdant Green on his initiation into a spoof Lodge of Freemasonry at Oxford. This was one of the many "rags" of which he was the butt during ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... friends they probably present you with a few from time to time. I have never noticed any pictures in a German kitchen, but there are nearly always Sprueche both in the kitchen, and the dining-room and sometimes in the hall: rhyming maxims that are done in poker work or painted on wood and ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... had long since drifted into the smoking-room where the men were christening the voyage with brandy-and-soda and dropping into tentative groups, regardful of future poker games. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... comparisons between her record and his own. He had found fault with her—so he mused—HE! And what could he say for himself? When she built her first church what was he doing? Gathering other blase multimillionaires into a Poker Club; defiling his own palace with it; losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of the admiring notoriety it made for him. When she was building her first university, what was he doing? Polluting himself ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... undeniable malice aforethought, he kicked the nearest bunch of sea grass several feet in the air. His violence carried his leg high in the air and he partially lost his equilibrium. Simultaneously a white streak shot from beneath the porch and something like a red-hot poker thrust itself savagely into an extremely tender ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... five punchers gathered around the table playing draw-poker under the light of a flaring oil lamp. McCabe extended a breezy invitation to Buck to join them, which he accepted promptly, drawing up an empty box to a space made for him between Slim and Butch Siegrist. With scarcely a glance at the group, Jessup selected a tattered ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... who will not play poker at home, and are shocked at the mention of faro and roulette, which any old-timer will tell you are easier to beat than the stock market, think they are using business judgment when they try to make money ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler
... educated gentleman and the pleasure of life was his purpose; crime and intrigue were his recreations. Andy Johnson was a good business man and wealth producer; murder was the direction in which his private understanding of personal disagreements was exercised and vented. Some men turn to poker playing, which is as wasteful as murder and not half as dignified. Count Fosco is the villain par excellence of novels. I do not remember what he did, because "The Woman in White" is the best novel in the world ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... reading they got at the academy. "What could you expect," he said in his sweeping way, "of men who have had to spend their lives at a two-company post, where there was nothing to do when off duty but play draw-poker and drink whiskey at the sutler's shop?" This was, of course, meant to be picturesquely extravagant, but it hit the nail on the head, after all. Some of the officers of the old regime did not conceal their contempt for books. It was a stock story in the army that when the Utah expedition ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Addle House:—brave boy, thou art clever, but semi-civilized! More "pretty things" are being redeemed—fans, gloves, lockets, handkerchiefs, and chatelaines,—all their owners being appropriately "done to:"—the Boa condemned to "bite a yard off the poker;" and the Visite to "salute the one he likes best"—which Garters fancies will be her; so, she embraces the table-pillar, and he the Berthe, instead—kissing her, sadly to the mortification of Garters, who ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... baize- lined chest in the pantry, the key of which I retained, and which chest was supposed until now to be proof against burglars; the lock had been burnt all round with some instrument, most likely a poker heated in the gas, and then forced inwards from ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... up courage to enter the smoking-room where the tacit, matter-of-course welcome of his own sex seemed to him like extraordinary affability. An occasional word from a neighbor, or an invitation to "take a hand at poker," or to "have a cocktail," was like an assurance to a man who fancies himself dead that he really is alive. He joined in no conversations and met no advances, but from the possibilities of doing so he would go back to ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... with the eyebrows," he went on with a quite pathetic enthusiasm. "We're to play their American game of poker—drawing poker as they call it. I've watched them play for near a fortnight. It's beastly simple. One has only to ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a hole in the window, a person could, by the aid of some instrument, let us say a poker with a hook at the end, grip the ring, pull down, and open ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... waist, Polly," she cried. "Jenny, take the poker, and that string, and tie his hand to it while we hold on. Quick! quick! Are ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the room but a moment before. Wade's face grew grave and tender as he looked about him. On the sewing machine a shallow basket held sewing materials and a few pairs of coarse woollen stockings, neatly rolled. The poker was laid straight along the ledge of the big "base-burner" in the corner. A table with a green cloth stood in front of a window and bore a few magazines dated almost ten years before. A set of walnut book-shelves ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... had extinguished the mantelpiece, Barry had also done good work by knocking the fire into the grate with the poker. M'Todd, who had been standing up till now in the far corner of the room, gaping vaguely at things in general, now came into action. Probably it was force of habit that suggested to him that the time had come to upset the kettle. ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... for its sake had nearly had his throat cut some two years ago: ever since then he carried his head thus. Over his eyes hung grayish eyebrows, and, looked at in profile, only his crooked nose was to be seen. His shadow reminded one of a poker. He denied that he had money, and said that they "only tried to cut his throat out of malice," and from that day he took to collecting rags, and that is why his head was always bent as if incessantly looking on the ground. When he ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... parlour, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you may draw any thing that is there, for practice; even the fire-irons or the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it is for practice, and not because it is a beloved carpet, nor a friendly poker and tongs, nor because you wish to please your ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... keep to the point,—you're shufflin' the question. I want to argue this out on logical grounds. I know as well as you do that, if only I 'ave 'armony and a round table in my family, I can make that table dance the poker—but what I'm puttin' to you is (triumphantly), 'ow does that prove to me as I'm in communication with the Bogie Man? That's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... to their prowess. Their place was like all other dens, and consisted of the usual bar and lunch counter in one room, while in the adjoining one was the hall of gaming. Faro, roulette, hazard, monte, and the great national game, poker, held high carnival there nightly. Next to the "Goose" was a long narrow room used as a shooting gallery. The place was only a few doors around the corner from my office, and many a night on my ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... saying she'd go downtown to buy some candy,' and Yetta says: 'You know, Miss Margery, your mother never 'ets you have candy.' And Margery says: 'Well, she might change her mind any minute—you can't tell; and it's best to have some on hand in case she does.' And she'd got some poker chips out of the box to buy the candy with—five blue chips she had, knowing ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Here the ladies had collected, with the two boys, while the five gentlemen passengers, Jack Handspike, Timbo, and I, busied ourselves in getting up the muskets and ammunition for them and the guns. "We are going to fire," I heard Stanley say, and soon afterwards Timbo appeared with a hot poker from the galley fire, and our guns were discharged in succession. "Dat keep de niggers away," he observed, returning to the galley. I was surprised that Kydd made no inquiry when the guns were fired. As ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... dour face. For a moment she was glad; then she lifted the poker, and struck a block of coal into a score of pieces, and with the blow scattered the unkind, selfish thoughts which had sprung ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... the drawing-room filled with the blind rage that makes a man curse God and wish that he could die. The fire was black, and I mechanically took up the poker to stir it. A tempest of impotent anger shook my soul. I saw things red before my eyes. I had an execrable lust to kill. I was alone amid a multitude of gibbering fiends. As I stooped before the grate I felt something ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... sister's husband bought 3,000 acres of land near Paris, at $1.25 per acre, and the same land is now worth $300 per acre. During my trip up the river I formed the acquaintance of Sam Burges, who was a great circus man. Captain Riddle and Burges got to paying poker, and the Captain "bested" him for about $200. I told Burges that I could make him win if he could get me into the game. So, after supper, they sat down to play, and I was a looker-on. Burges asked me to take a hand, which I did, and on my deal I ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... quarters at Tupelo. Our principal occupation at this place was playing poker, chuck-a-luck and cracking graybacks (lice). Every soldier had a brigade of lice on him, and I have seen fellows so busily engaged in cracking them that it reminded me of an old woman knitting. At first the boys would go off in the woods and hide to louse ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... in brazen confusion on the red-brick hearth. When my Uncle Peter has mounted his favourite metaphysical theory, I know that nothing can make him dismount but physical violence. I apologized for the poker and the shovel and the tongs (practising a Stevensonian omission in regard to my own share in the catastrophe), arranged the offending members in their proper station on the left of the fire-place, and took the bellows to encourage the dull fire ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... a sudden flash of courage born of anger and desperation seized a small brass poker from the fire-place, and taking the candle in his other hand went out on to the landing again. Brother Burge was closing his door softly, and his face when he turned it upon the jeweller was terrible in its wrath. His small eyes snapped with fury, ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... to the fireplace. The shovel and tongs were just laughing at him; and though they composed their countenances immediately, he had caught the expression, and was excessively annoyed. Philosophy at length came to his aid, especially as the poker expressed only profound deference, preserving a martial attitude and immovable features. After all, why should he care for a pair of tongs? One must cultivate phlegm, if one is a philosopher; and a shovel, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... my mind. "You can't have the monster. He's kept baby happy all day. But I'll tell you what I'll do. Tell me what he eats and what to do for him and I'll keep him. I've got twenty-five dollars in poker ...
— Sorry: Wrong Dimension • Ross Rocklynne
... rollicking strains of a Virginia reel, played by a piano and a fiddle. The drawing of Chinese lottery had just taken place, and the luckiest player, having cashed at the scales, was drinking up his winnings with half a dozen cronies. The faro- and roulette-tables were busy and quiet. The draw-poker and stud-poker tables, each with its circle of onlookers, were equally quiet. At another table, a serious, concentrated game of Black Jack was on. Only from the craps-table came noise, as the man who played ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... ordered a case of Pabst beer, which sells, by the way, at four dollars and sixty cents a bottle in American gold, and several boxes of our National Biscuit Company's products, and then began on a game, which resembles our poker. They played till midnight, when they took a recess of half an hour, during which large quantities of the warm beer and many crackers were consumed. Then, properly nourished, they resumed the game, which lasted until six o'clock the next morning. ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... to crawl up that coast and make Oban, for we seemed to be a floating general store for every hamlet in those parts. Gresson made himself very pleasant, as if he wanted to atone for nearly doing me in. We played some poker, and I read the little books I had got in Colonsay, and then rigged up a fishing-line, and caught saithe and lythe and an occasional big haddock. But I found the time pass slowly, and I was glad that about noon one day we came into a bay blocked with islands and saw a clean ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... troublesome thought had obtruded itself—presently the crinkle deepened and widened into a frown, and she walked impatiently to the fireplace, where a black, uninviting fire smouldered in a cheerless sort of way, and took up the poker in rather an aggressive manner, then shook her head, as she glanced at the ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a tawny sweep of unoccupied water. We were already well above the region of white settlements, in a land beautiful, but uncultivated. The upper deck remained practically deserted, and I was encouraged to observe, by glancing through the skylight, that a stubborn game of poker was being indulged in at the cabin table below. The amount of stakes visible, as well as some of the language reaching me, accounted for the absence of passengers outside, even those not playing circling the table in interest. ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... you have against him," cried McGinty with a laugh, "you can save yourself a deal of trouble by dropping it right now. This man was with me in my saloon playing poker up to midnight, and I can bring a ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my punch, and the morale of the garrison was consequently excellent. I jumped out of bed, clutched the poker as I passed the expiring fire, and in a moment was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased by this time—the dark and chill were discouraging; and, guess my horror, when I saw, or thought I saw, a black monster, whether in the shape of a man or a bear ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... might presume upon my long-standing in the service, Captain —-," said a pompous general officer,—whose back appeared to have been fished with the kitchen poker—"If I might venture to offer you advice," continued he, leading me paternally by the arm a little on one side, "it would be, not again to attempt a defence of smuggling: I consider, sir, that as an officer in his Majesty's service, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the shakin' and the joltin', which tells o' sovereigns and silver," Mrs. Sumfit was observing to Rhoda, "you might carry the box—and who would have guessed how stout it was, and me to hit it with a poker and not break it, I couldn't, nor get a single one through the slit;—the sight I was, with a poker in my hand! I do declare I felt azactly like a housebreaker;—and no soul to notice what you carries. Where you hear the gold, my dear, go so"—Mrs. Sumfit performed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the grain business," Leach continued. "I was young then, and I thought I owned the market. My old daddy cautioned me to go slow, but I paid no attention to him. Folks called me a hustler, and I was proud of it. I got into fast ways. I played poker; I had a pair of fast horses, and I was guilty of other habits that I sometimes mention at my 'men-only' meetings. After awhile I slid into the hole that is at the foot of every ungodly slope on earth. I was facing ruin. I had only one chance to save myself, and that ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... la chasse, the chase; the papegaie, or, as he called it, pad-go—the shooting-match; la galloche, pitch-farthing; the cock-fight; the five-arpent pony-race; and too often, also, chin-chin, twenty-five-cent poker, and the gossip and glass of the roadside "store." But for Madame 'Thanase there was only a seat against the wall at the Saturday-night dance, and mass a la chapelle once in two or three weeks; these, and infant baptisms. These showed ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the fire. He had a long back like the long back of a tramhorse. He shook the poker gravely and nodded his head at the fellow out of ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... what you say about our name being both Jack and I was thinking to myself that lots of times in a poker game a pair of jacks is enough to win and maybe it will be the same way in the war game and any way I guess the 2 of us could put up a good bluff and bet them just as if ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... Vice-master's, so that I was not near him; and he then and there appeared sober in his demeanour, nor did I ever hear of excess or outrage on his part in public,—commons, college, or chapel; but I have seen him in a private party of under-graduates, many of them freshmen and strangers, take up a poker to one of them, and heard him use language as blackguard as his action. I have seen Sheridan drunk, too, with all the world; but his intoxication was that of Bacchus, and Porson's that of Silenus. Of all the disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive, and intolerable, Porson was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... off the heavy iron cover of the pot and the odour of Romany duck stew, than which there is nothing in the world more appetizing, mingled with the sweet fragrance of the drying hay. Aunty thrust a fork as long as a poker into the bubbling mass and then gave the call that brings the tribe ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... a sword into a pruning hook is a matter for a skilled smith, but to change a bayonet into a poker is within the capacity of the least mechanical. All that is needed is to cause the bayonet to forsake the murderous rifle barrel and cleave to a short wooden handle. Henceforth its function is not to thrust itself into the vitals ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... little Irish girl. He says that he who provideth not for those of his own household is worse than a heathen. That's perfectly true. And he would like to know what Brother Peck does with his money, anyway. He would like to insinuate that he loses it at poker, I guess; at any rate, he can't find out whom he gives it to, and he certainly doesn't ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... grave and sly character, and Poker was a wag—an incorrigible wag—in every sense of the term. Moreover, although they had an occasional fight, Dumps and Poker were excellent friends, and great ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... young fellow. He took the poker, rested the end on the floor, and then twisted himself underneath his right arm. I expected to see him come up inside out, but he looked much the same after it. However, no doubt his organs are all on ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... land of the setting sun greets you! You, Beneficent Polecat—you, Devourer of Mountains—you, Roaring Thundergust —you, Bully Boy with a Glass eye—the paleface from beyond the great waters greets you all! War and pestilence have thinned your ranks and destroyed your once proud nation. Poker and seven-up, and a vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have depleted your purses. Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of others has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in your simple innocence, has damaged your reputation ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... company. Now her fire-spirit was very good natured, and had borne very patiently with his mistress' ill-temper. One day, however, she came in looking and feeling particularly savage. She sat down before the fire and took up the poker. 'Ugh!' she said. 'What a miserable attempt at a fire! why don't you burn, you stupid, sulky thing?' and she gave ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... Sims, the "old crowd," or more simply and affectionately "the boys." In the recollection of my good friend this "old gang" were of a devilishness since lost off the earth. Work they wouldn't. Sleep they despised. While indoors they played poker in a blue haze of tobacco smoke with beer in jugs and mugs all round them. All night they were out of doors on the sidewalk with linked arms, singing songs in chorus and ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... stands leaning on his shovel watching the steam gauge, and he finds that the steam don't run up very fast, and about the time the coal gets hot enough to consume the smoke, we will see him drop his shovel, pick up a poker, throw open the fire door and commence a vigorous punching and digging at the fire. This starts the black smoke again, and about this time we will see him down on his knees with his poker, punching at the underside of the grate bars, about the time he ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... shouldn't do if it wasn't that Edith always wants a fourth and would be certain to ask that detestable Jenkinham woman if she couldn't get me. I would much rather sit and talk any day than play bridge; cards are such a waste of time, I think. But as to Ronnie, bridge and baccarat and poker- patience are positively all that he thinks about. Of course I've done my best to stop it; I've asked the Norridrums not to let him play cards when he's over there, but you might as well ask the Atlantic Ocean to keep quiet for a ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... Cal Davidson; "every fellow plays his own system. There's something in what you say about women having a good poker face so far as tellin' what they think about a man is concerned—yes. Frinstance, how much did Helena know I knew, or know you knew or thought you knew—well, you get me? But the trouble with you is, you ain't romantic in your temperament like me.... But if I was you, I wouldn't be scared to tell ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... intermitting; so that, for instance, in the present case, upon a severe call arising for his pocketing the fee of ten guineas, he astonished his whole household by suddenly standing bolt upright as stiff as a poker; his sister remarking to the young gentleman that he (the visitor) was in luck that evening: it wasn't everybody that could get that length in dealing with Mr. X. O. However, it is distressing to relate that the fits immediately returned; and, with that degree of exasperation which made it dangerous ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... had to spend. He was the Beau Brummel of that coterie which laid the foundation of prosperity on the Rand; and his house was a marvel of order and crude elegance—save when he had his roulette and poker parties, and then it was the shambles of murdered niceties. Once or twice a week his friends met here; and it was not mendaciously said that small fortunes were lost and won ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... so I just had to stand there and take it until something distracted his attention, and I went off home to get my gun and kill him, but I wanted to do it perfectly lawful; so I went up to the mayor (he was playin' poker with one of the judges), and says I to him, 'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I am goin' to shoot Fowler.' And the mayor he riz out of his chair and he took me by the hand, and says he, 'Mr. Simpson, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... you are perpetually reminded of the favorite national game of "Poker." In this, a player holding a very bad hand against a good one, may possibly "bluff" his adversary down, and win the stakes, if he only has confidence enough to go on piling up the money, so as to make his own weakness appear strength. That audacity answers often happily enough, especially ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... the best of them, no matter what it was. One time there was to be a convention of the managers of Edison illuminating companies at Chicago. There were a lot of representatives from the East, and a private car was hired. At Jersey City a poker game was started by one of the delegates. Bergmann was induced to enter the game. This was played right through to Chicago without any sleep, but the boys didn't mind that. I had gotten them immune to it. Bergmann had ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... that one of his feet remained insensible. Mr. Ewart pricked him with a pin in five or six places, and the patient declared he did not feel it in the least, nor was he sensible of a very smart pinch. I then held a red-hot poker at some distance, and brought it gradually nearer till it came within three inches, when he asserted that he felt it quite distinctly. I suppose some violent irritation on the nerves of touch had caused ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Interior View of the House of God, in the first volume of "The Scourge." The pulpit is occupied by two fanatics, one of whom rants, while the other snuffs the candles; the devil, in the gallery above, ridicules the proceedings by rasping, a la fiddle, the bars of a gridiron with a poker; among the numerous congregation present we notice some attentive and interested listeners, whilst others evidently attend from mere motives of curiosity. Above the composition appears the quotation, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... semicircular stone recess. Many a boar's head had revolved there, and many a venison pasty had sent forth its fragrance to greet the tired hunters returning from the chase. The fire glowed in its deep recess like the eye of an old-world monster in a cavern, till one of the boys seized the poker and made it flame up, throwing its blaze out as far as it could for its walls, and making the kitchen and the group standing in it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the Devil do you know that? If he was beaten, the cause Is the green geese in his army, led by traitors. Oh, I say no names, Monsieur Charles, You needn't hammer so loud. If there are any spies lurking behind the bellows, I beg they come out. Dirty fellows!" The old Sergeant seizes a red-hot poker And advances, brandishing it, into the shadows. The rows of horses flick Placid tails. Victorine gives a savage kick As the nails Go in. Tap! Tap! Jules draws a horseshoe from the fire And beats it ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... attitude of the prisoners. As a French officer approached the German soldier, true to his years of iron discipline, leaped to his feet and stood rigid as a poker through the talk, but never the raising of a hand to cap, never ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... muttering, he took notice that they had his grandson's hide to hang over the door. "Oh dogs!" said he; "the evil dogs!" He sat down near the door, and commenced sobbing like an aged woman. One observed, "Why don't you attend the sick, and not set there making such a noise?" He took up the poker and laid it on them, mimicking the voice of the old woman. "Dogs that you are! why do you laugh at me? You know very well that I am so sorry that I am nearly out of my head." With that he approached the prince, singing the songs of the old woman, without exciting any suspicion. He saw that ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... experiment that, in order to turn 1 lb. of water into vapour, as much heat must be used as is required to melt 5 lbs. of iron; and if you consider for a moment how difficult iron is to melt, and how we can keep an iron poker in a hot fire and yet it remains solid, this will help you to realize how much heat the sun must pour down in order to carry off such a constant supply of vapour ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... because the "Baby Mine," the name of the little tender, had struck a piece of ice before reaching the town and sprung a leak, wetting all the fireworks. The landlord, however, thought he could touch off one of the rockets anyway, so he seized a large detonator and with a red hot poker tried to see how it would work. Finding the fuse, as he thought, too wet, he threw the rocket on the floor and left the room. Directly after, Paul heard a hissing noise and realized that the landlord had succeeded in leaving a live spark in the fuse. He simply drew the bedclothes ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... me and Solly sat down to dinner. Spread! There's nothing been seen like it since the Cambon snack. It was all served at once. The chef called it /dinnay a la poker/. It's a famous thing among the gormands of the West. The dinner comes in threes of a kind. There was guinea-fowls, guinea-pigs, and Guinness's stout; roast veal, mock turtle soup, and chicken pate; ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Confide in us. If the books won't balance, what matter? Don't let that disturb your peace of mind. Come and have a drink.... Take a hand at poker.... First tent over the bridge, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... make an ordinary, unsophisticated Chinaman stare. Chinese parents are, if anything, over-indulgent to their children. The father is, indeed, popularly known as the "Severe One," and it is a Confucian tradition that he should not spare the rod and so spoil the child, but he draws the line at a poker; and although as a father he possesses the power of life and death over his offspring, such punishments as are inflicted are usually of the mildest description. The mother, the "Gentle One," is, speaking broadly, a soft-hearted, sweet-natured ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... you to know that I'm just as glad as anybody if you can get a better price out of him than I could." Dunmore smiled ruefully. "I guess he's just a better poker player than ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... Their numbers, their squealing, their ferocity, their attempts to escape, and the bounds they gave from side to side struck the whole parsonage house community with a panic. The women screamed; the rector foamed; the squire hallooed; and the men seized bellows, poker, tongs, and every other weapon or missile that was at hand. The uproar was universal, and the Squire never before or after felt himself so great a hero! The death of the fox ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Cummins. He succeeded in showing the due amount of interest and no more, and was diplomatic enough not to suggest that the murderers were now on their way to San Francisco. He took the train going East according to schedule, and found Darcy playing poker in the smoking car. Collins betook himself to his pipe at the other end of the car, glad that night had come, and that he would soon bid farewell to the Sierras. He felt the train swing round the horse-shoe curve through Blue Canon, and shortly afterward he noticed ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... games of infinite variety: keno, rondo coolo, poker, faro, roulette, monte, chuck-a-luck, wheels of fortune—advertised, some, by their barkers, but the better class (if there is such a distinction) presided over by remarkably quiet, white-faced, nimble-fingered, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... beginning is much admired, after the fashion of the clown's entry through the chemist's window. Then whack at your reader at once, hit him over the head with the sausages, brisk him up with the poker, bundle him into the wheelbarrow, and so carry him away with you before he knows where you are. You can do what you like with a reader then, if you only keep him nicely on the move. So long as you are happy ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... eyes were on mine with that queer stare of the cross-eyed. I could make nothing of the facial expressions of this man. He would have been disturbing to play poker against. I would have said he was afraid of that little figure! Afraid, yet very much attached to it. I set it down and he wrapped it ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... 'Me own business! Poker o' Moses! and ain't it me own business? Haven't ye spilte my tenderest hopes? And good luck to ye in that same, for ye're as pretty a rider as ever kicked coping-stones out of a wall; and poor Paddy loves a sportsman by nature. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... profit and pleasure in the city by the Golden Gate and he explored any that offered entertainment—those that led to tables green as grass under the blaze of electric lights, those that led to the poker game behind Soledad Lanza's pink-fronted restaurant, those that led up alleys to dark, secretive doors, and that which led to Pancha's ugly ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... at the huge poker that graced the fireplace, in whose rusty grate a cheerful fire had not been kindled for many years. Anthony's quick eye detected the movement, and he took possession of the dangerous weapon with the same cool ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... automobiles, and another began talking about the drill regulations, but you know I never even bought the book. The whole train was one big smoking car, and some fellows near me were very noisy over a game of poker. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... be at home and had resolved to press. Alarmed by the forcing of the door, and only too well aware of what it portended, Trim made for the stairs, where, turning upon his pursuers, he struck repeatedly and savagely at the midshipman, who headed them, with a red-hot poker which he had snatched out of the fire at the moment of his flight. He was, however, quickly overpowered, disarmed and dragged back into the lower room, where his captors threw him violently to the floor and with their hangers took effective ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... When he had finished his hands were shaking and his face was grey. He moved over to the fireplace, and, without a moment's hesitation, he thrust the letter into the flames. Not content with that, he stood over it, poker in hand, and beat the ashes into powder. Then he turned ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stealthy strides, his great eyes roving over the curious faces in front of him. Some one poked a stick at him—an attention which met an instant roar and spring on the tiger's part, and a quick, and stinging rebuke from an attendant, before which the poker of the stick fled precipitately. The crowd, which had jumped back as one man, pressed nearer to the cage, and the tiger resumed his quick, silent prowl. But his eyes no longer roved over the faces. They remained fixed upon the man who had ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... into a pruning hook is a matter for a skilled smith, but to change a bayonet into a poker is within the capacity of the least mechanical. All that is needed is to cause the bayonet to forsake the murderous rifle barrel and cleave to a short wooden handle. Henceforth its function is not to thrust itself into the ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... you see, about one little harmless mouse. Some women are so afraid of mice. Maria is. I got the poker and set myself to poke that mouse, and my wife jumped down, and ran off into another room. I found the mouse in a corner under the sink. The first time I hit it I didn't poke it any on account of getting the poker all tangled up in a lot of dishes in the sink; ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... in the ceiling with the poker, and put pails, baths and tubs under, and now there was not so much water on the floor. But we had to keep on working like niggers, and Mrs Pettigrew and ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... proceeded to patch up a compromise. This, in view of the Amazonian reinforcements, who were standing by in readiness for a second onset, we were more than pleased to accept. From this inglorious combat we came off without serious injury; but with those gentle poker taps were knocked out forever all the sweet delusions of the "Light ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... out your brains if you do not," he replied, lifting from the grate a short, thick poker which lay there. "Do as I bid you at once. You also would be like a tiger if you had fasted for two days, ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... to smash and spilled the cream all over creation, and there I was—four pounds o' butter and a fifty-cent jar gone, and my spring-house in such a mess that I ain't through cleanin' it yet, and my right arm as stiff as a poker ever since.' ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... he had before his eyes a literary gold mine such as no other modern romancer had discovered. Thereupon he wrote "The Luck of Roaring Camp" (first published in The Overland Monthly, 1868), and followed it with "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... and as I had no means of housing it, there it had stood, bristling alike at fair weather and foul all the voyage. I took care to grease its mouth well, and before leaving the fore part of the ship, thrust the poker into the fire. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... time—was alone worth the price of admission. And as for blocking, he was a stone wall, and that's all there is to it. Never once did the Elis get through him. He held the line on his side as stiff as a poker until quarter had got the ball away, and then he mixed things up with the redoubtable Jordan, and you could almost see the fur fly! Play? O my! He was simply great! And the rest of us, watching when we had a chance, just felt our eyes popping ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... to stir faintly in Sammy's breast. If they were going away together, it should be his "treat." He marched into the house, smashed his bank with the kitchen poker, and came out with a pocket full of silver and nickels that looked as if they amounted to much more than they ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... the Germans think of us as a land of dollars, trusts and corruption; and other nations think of us as devotees of the cocktail and of poker. Their school boys dream of fighting Indians in Pittsburg and hunting buffalo in the deserts of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... they clustered about the cheerful open fireplace in the library. Mabel, who was seated on a stool at one side of the fire, reached forward for the poker and prodded the half-burnt log energetically. The others watched her in silence until she laid down the poker with a suddenness that caused them all to start, and turning about said almost brusquely: "I ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... little bank where her father had opened an account before she was born, and Lite was made to writhe inwardly with her boasting. Lite, if you please, had long ago started a savings account at that same bank, and had lately cut out poker, and even pool, from among his joys, that his account might fatten the faster. He had the same object which Jean had lately adopted so zealously, but he did not tell her these things. He listened instead while Jean read gloatingly her ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... say you are surprised," he suggested, "but I have been much exasperated, Mr. Belden, and a long experience has taught me that nothing so quickly clears the mind as throwing a few hands of poker. Miss Strong—an invaluable person—is kindly assisting me. Did I say three? Yes, of course. Thank you. We are playing for ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... sir!" Mrs. Green's tone was full of shrill amazement. "Kill Binks? I'd like to see anyone try." . . . Vane had a momentary vision of his stalwart old landlady armed with a poker and a carving knife, but ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... to six silent, overdressed, genial male friends, known as "the crowd." These he frequently asked to dinner on Sunday nights, a hard game of poker always following. Martie did not play, but she liked to watch her husband's hands, and during this winter he attributed his phenomenal good luck to her. He never lost, and he always parted generously with such sums as he ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... by Boswell on one occasion when Beauclerc and Langton having supped together at a tavern determined to give Johnson a rouse at three o'clock in the morning. They accordingly rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple. The indignant sage sallied forth in his shirt, poker in hand, and a little black wig on the top of his head, instead of helmet; prepared to wreak vengeance on the assailants of his castle; but when his two young friends, Lankey and Beau, as he used to call them, presented themselves, summoning him forth to a ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... of his who worked for Computer Corporation of Earth had built a robot once, using just such a stack. The robot was designed to play poker. He had fed in all the rules of play and added all the data from Oesterveldt's On Poker. It took Mike the Angel exactly one hour to figure ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and small transactions of a ranching nature, and a resort where every sort of card game could be freely indulged in, without regard for the limit of the stakes, and had thus gained for itself the subsidiary title amongst its clientele of "Ju's Poker Joint." ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... sounds like the beginning of a quarrel; and a quarrel should never come into life between you and me. I taught you draw-poker; you ought to be grateful for that, and to accept my word ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... were poor; not an honest poverty, but a sham and artificial poverty—the inability to dress as others did, and to lose money at "bridge" and "poker", and to pay the costs of their self-indulgences. As for Thyrsis and his parents, they always paid what they owed; but they were not always able to pay it when they owed it, and they suffered all the agonies and humiliations of those ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... of Jo Sharp, when he was cleaned out at poker by his own partners in his own cabin, comin' up here and bedevilin' US about it! What was it ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in England. She crawled about the floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. She rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls. She let down a tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet, without so much as a ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... man, tall, of commanding presence and smart clothes. His white mustache was the epitome of close-cropped neatness. When he lost money at poker his brown eyes held exactly the same twinkle as when he won, and it was current among the young men that he had played greatly in his day—great games for great stakes. Sometimes he had made heavy winnings, sometimes he ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... a good deal. Play some poker or bridge. Walk. But sleep is the chief amusement. Eight hours used to be enough for me. Now I can do ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... like a longer shot than it is—something in the way of a genteel graft that isn't worked enough for the correspondence schools to be teaching it by mail. I take the long end; but I like to have at least as good a chance to win as a man learning to play poker on an ocean steamer, or running for governor of Texas on the Republican ticket. And when I cash in my winnings, I don't want to find any widows' and orphans' chips ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... man, "an ey hope yo may be able to deliver me. Yo mun knoa, that somehow ey wor unlucky enough last Yule to offend Mother Chattox, an ever sin then aw's gone wrang wi' me. Th' good-wife con never may butter come without stickin' a redhot poker into t' churn; and last week, when our brindlt sow farrowed, and had fifteen to t' litter, an' fine uns os ever yo seed, seign on um deed. Sad wark! sad wark, mesters. The week efore that t' keaw deed; an th' week efore her th' ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... smoking-room he puffed at his cigarette and watched the poker players as he drummed absently upon the square of green cork inlaid in the corner table. The vermilion glow of the skylight dimmed and died. Lights came on. A clanging cymbal in the energetic hands of a deck steward boomed at the doorway, withdrew and gave up ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... in South Carolina to a good plantation and thirty likely "niggers." At the age of twenty-five he sold out the former and emigrated to Florida with the latter. The price of the plantation rapidly disappeared at horse-races, poker-parties, cock-fights, and rum-shops. If Mossa Cutter speculated, he was always unsuccessful, because he was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... it is impossible. The girl has had a passion, and has spent some money left in her hands, which she is now called upon to pay. By the poker!—a queer thing is a heart of ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... beard of my father," the man gasped, "I am telling you the truth. God strike me if I am not!" and he looked at the reddening poker with frightened eyes. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... his head and listened then, before stooping to take up the poker and scatter the grey patch of ashes that still showed letters and words; for he appeared to have suddenly awakened to the fact that the thundering of the knocker was still going on and ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... his herd. We indulged in many hunts, and I found him the true gentleman and sportsman in every sense of the word. As I recall him now, he was a lovable vagabond, and for years afterward stories were told around Fort Sumner of his wonderful nerve as a poker player. ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... eyes just blazin', and says she, grabbin' me by the shoulders, 'I don't—believe—it,' just as slow as that, and then she begged me to forgive her, the pore lamb, and straightened right up as stiff as a poker, but all white and twitchy, and from that day to this she has never let on to a livin' soul about him drinkin', but she's just as nice to him as if he was a good man ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... merely some special work tonight, what you would call trick photography. I need a photographer, some lights, a little space, a microscopic lens and the complete developing during the night. And, I'll pay cash, as I have done with some suspicious poker losses in this temple of the muses on bygone evenings. Which, I may urge with gentle sarcasm is more than I have frequently received ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... to the verge of human endurance, and upsetting tongs, poker, and fire-shovel.—"What nonsense you are talking, all of you! For heaven's sake, consider what an important matter we are called upon to decide. It is not now the titles of those very respectable works which issued from the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... orders for the fire, and went herself to see that it burned. Soon I was sitting before it, my feet on a stool, and a poker in my hand with which I smashed the smoky lumps of coal which smoldered in ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... porter that it was a mistake to consider him a medical expert; that he professed no science save that of draw poker; that if a false impression prevailed in the hotel it was through a blunder for which he was in no way responsible; and that, much as he regretted the unfortunate condition of the highborn the Baron out of Moscow, he did not feel that his presence in the chamber of sickness ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... a poker game, and it sure is queer how things will turn out. I've sot hour after hour in them games, without ever takin' a pot. And then, 'long about four o'clock in the mornin', the luck'd turn—it'd take a turn ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... I shall not like Mr. Learning," cried Matty; "for I have seen him two or three times, and I did not fancy his looks at all. He is as solemn and as grave as an owl; he wears spectacles, and has a very long nose, and his back is as stiff as a poker." Matty was a pretty little girl, with blue eyes, and golden curls hanging down her neck, but she had a conceited air, which spoiled her ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... doors were closed, and there was no smoke, and the anxious watchers on board ship seemed to contemplate a village of the dead. It was thought possible to launch a boat and tow the Regent from her place of danger; and with this view a signal of distress was made and a gun fired with a red-hot poker from the galley. Its detonation awoke the sleepers. Door after door was opened, and in the grey light of the morning fisher after fisher was seen to come forth, yawning and stretching himself, nightcap on head. Fisher after fisher, I wrote, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out then that I was right as to the way to play that supposititious poker hand. Grim had doped him out too, and answered promptly without changing a muscle of ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... were on mine with that queer stare of the cross-eyed. I could make nothing of the facial expressions of this man. He would have been disturbing to play poker against. I would have said he was afraid of that little figure! Afraid, yet very much attached to it. I set it down and he wrapped ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... midnight the night before, a Friday, found us still busy with our work. My cot-mate was in difficulties with his rifle—the cloth of the pull-through stuck in the barrel, and he could not move it, although he broke a bamboo cane and bent a poker in the attempt. "It's a case for the armoury," he remarked gloomily. "What a nuisance that ramrods are done away with! We've been at it since eight o'clock, and getting along A1. ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... their brutality; he drew vivid word pictures of various burnings, mentioning one where a white woman struck the match and ignited the pile of wood that was to consume the trembling negro. He told of the Texas horror, when a colored man named Smith was tortured with a red hot poker, and his eyes gouged out; after which he was slowly roasted to death. He then had Mrs. Cook arise and gather her children about her, and tell her sorrowful story. As she proceeded the entire assembly broke down in tears, and men fell on each other's necks ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... hearthrug, grasping the poker firmly in one hand. Now and again she gave the fire a truculent prod with it as though to emphasise ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... sitting by the fire—it was a cold evening—and stretched out his hand that way, and just then the fire-irons, or at least the poker, fell over towards him with a great clatter, and I did not hear what else he said. But I told him that I could not easily conceive of an arrangement, as he called it, of such a kind that would not include as one of its conditions a heavier ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... now the hideous truth is hid: The man is nothing but a Pacifist; And, what is worse, he draws four hundred quid For representing views which don't exist, Although in Parliament, without his poker, I'm glad to see they would not hear the croaker, But when he talked they only ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... great lump in my bed; so I thought it was my clothes. 'What do you put them there for?' says I. 'Sir,' says he, 'it looks as if there was a drunken man in the bed.' 'A drunken man?' says I; 'Take the poker, then, and knock him on the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... weary; her spirits had fallen again during her journey from the telegraph office. As she approached her room, hoping to find a good fire, she heard a flapping noise, which was suddenly interrupted by the rattle of a falling poker, followed by the exclamation, in a woman's voice, "Och, musha, I wouldnt doubt you." Marian, entering, saw a robust young woman kneeling before the grate, trying to improve a dull fire that burnt there. She had taken up the poker and placed ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... if carefully used, is cheaper and quite as economical as more expensive grades. The poor often prefer expensive, free-burning coals because they are little trouble. A practical engineer says that, in burning pea coal, the fire must be {69} kept clean, not by violent shaking, but by a straight poker used on the bottom of the fire only. Remove clinkers through the top. Add coal in small quantities, and, when not using the fire, give it a good cleaning at the bottom, spread enough coal to make about three ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... could find dates and pomegranates on the quickset hedges, as soon as a cherry in swaddling-clothes on my walls. The very leaves on the horse-chestnuts are little snotty-nosed things, that cry and are afraid of the north-wind, and cling to the bough as if old poker was coming to take them away. For my part, I have seen nothing like spring but a chimney-sweeper's garland; and yet I have been three days in the country-and the consequence was, that I was glad to come back ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... collar like a palisade. He had a sharp little face, which was not disagreeable; he smoked enormous cigars and began his drinking early in the day: but his appearance gave no sign of these excesses. As regards euchre and poker and the other distractions of the place he was guilty of none. He evidently understood such games in perfection, for he used to watch the players, and even at moments impartially advise them; but Vogelstein ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... will had had time to compose themselves. It took them merely the briefest of periods, but it served to increase visibly the long ash at the end of Rance's cigar. At length he shot a hawk-like glance at Sonora and proposed a little game of poker. ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... suddenly stopped. They had collected fruits and seed-vessels, had studied animalculae through the microscope, and modelled fungi in plasticine. Stencilling, illuminating, painting, and marqueterie each had a brief turn, and were superseded by raffia-plaiting and poker-work. Miss Beasley suggested tentatively that it might be better to concentrate on a single subject, but Miss Gibbs, who loved arguments about education, was well prepared to defend her ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... many a chair, which he substituted in the room of the real persons in the drama. One night, as he was repeating the part of Alexander, with his wooden representative of Clitus, (an elbow chair), and coming to the speech where the old general is to be killed, this young mock Alexander snatched a poker, instead of a javelin, and threw it with such strength, against poor Clitus, that the chair was killed upon the spot, and lay mangled on the floor. The death of Clitus made a monstrous noise, which disturbed ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... out, and at one o'clock only a few inveterate poker-players and one or two young fellows who were still "bucking" the roulette wheel remained and, calling one of his men to take charge, Haney nodded to Williams and they went ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... was conveying a lighted match into a poor little stove. Then he propped the stove door to its place by leaning the poker against it, for the hinges had retired from business. This door framed a small square of isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow. Mrs. Sellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal of the gloom, and then everybody gathered into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... House," which stood upon the plateau at the foot of the Rocky mountains. Our stage coaches were frequently water bound at Maxwell's, and our passengers were treated like old and valued friends of the host, who, by the way, was fond of cards. Poker and seven-up were his favorite. However, he seldom ever played cards with other than personal friends. He often loaned money to his friends to "stake" with $500 or $1000 if needed. Some of the rooms in ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... the note in her hand—she was down before her mother and sister, that morning—and took it into the kitchen where Emily was making the breakfast toast, and rammed it, with the poker, and a good will, into the heart of the ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... appreciative smile. Even the sharp eyes of little Wegstetten could look quite good-humoured on occasion. But Senior-lieutenant Brettschneider always remained stand-offish, looking as if he had swallowed a poker. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... is a maid's heart no matter?—is a maid's life no matter? Why, woman! thou lackest stirring up with a poker! I marvel if I were sent hither to ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... only under great pressure, and at a colossal cost. I beg respectfully to suggest to the millionaires the advisability of laying in quarts of it for their dinner-parties. This sparkling beverage—essence of oxygen, mark you—would not need to be iced, for the North Pole is as a red-hot poker compared with it. Such a beverage would make a sensation and provide paragraphs for the society journals and the "Times" obituary. It is true the guests would not like it, but they would be anxious to quaff it. Have you never noticed ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... are going to be successful, we have got to take our stand for God, and let the world and everyone know we are on the Lord's side. I have great respect for the woman that started out during the war with a poker. She heard the enemy were coming and went to resist them. When some one asked her what she could do with the poker, she said she would at least let them know what side she was on. And that is what ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... make you the nicest clam bouillon," she told Dorothy, "and besides cooking, that little alcohol lamp is just the thing for hair crimping. I will crimp mine if I can find anything to make a hot poker of ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... I were sitting in a corner at Bowler's when we heard a Greaser—a Mexican, you know—that Parker had refused to play poker with the night before ask who the senorita was that had taken the spirit out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... other's faces," observed Sir Harry, cheerfully. "Will you allow me to take the liberty, though I have not known you for seven years—and hardly for seven minutes!" And then he seized the poker, and broke up ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... fastened his horse to one of the outside posts of the wicket-gate, the servant brought them into a large, square hall, in which a lamp, covered with a shade, gave a moderate light. She placed two chairs before the fire, which she drew together with the poker. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... about it than he had in years. The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the first Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he had committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the Everards' to ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... J. Owens anywhere in town—nor did he see either of the two men who had stood behind him. But there was a poker game running in Rusty Brown's back room, and Irish immediately sat in without further investigation. Bert Rogers was standing behind one of the players, and gave Irish a nod and a wink which may have had many meanings. Irish interpreted it as encouragement ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... suffices to report that there was much killing and misery everywhere, and that in June, upon Corpus Christi day, the Conde de Tohil Vaca was taken, and murdered, with rather horrible jocosity which used unusually a heated poker, and Manuel's forces ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... Cleggett also learned later that two men had been concerned in the explosion which had broken the big rocks on the plain. One of them had won the Claiborne signet ring at poker after Reginald Maltravers had been stripped of his valuables, and had worn it. They had been dispatched with a bomb each, which they were to introduce into the hold of the Jasper B., retiring through the tunnel after they had started the clockwork mechanism ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... look at you dreamily, and a rather Jewish face. Not a bad-looking chap by any means, but oh, such a particularly verdant sort of greenhorn. The only one point on which he showed a single grain of sense was in refusing to play poker with me. He didn't want to offend me; he hoped most sincerely that I should take no offence, but a friend had extracted a promise from him before he left home to play no card games with strangers. The fact was, he was really so unskilful ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... parents are, if anything, over-indulgent to their children. The father is, indeed, popularly known as the "Severe One," and it is a Confucian tradition that he should not spare the rod and so spoil the child, but he draws the line at a poker; and although as a father he possesses the power of life and death over his offspring, such punishments as are inflicted are usually of the mildest description. The mother, the "Gentle One," is, speaking broadly, a soft-hearted, sweet-natured specimen of humanity; ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... out with a light step and a lighter heart. His table was covered with letters. The first one that caught his eye was a missive from Lady Monteagle. Cadurcis seized it like a wild animal darting on its prey, tore it in half without opening it, and, grasping the poker, crammed it with great energy into the fire. This exploit being achieved, Cadurcis began walking up and down the room; and indeed he paced it for nearly a couple of hours in a deep reverie, and evidently under a considerable ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... iii, 4a3b4c3b, 6: An account of Hardy's shooting a man in a poker game, of his arrest, trial, conviction, conversion and baptism, and of his execution and burial on the ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... everybody's hand by this time, Biffton having moved back a foot or two, and the circle had widened so that the poker party could reach their cocktails. Garry extended his arm till his ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... John Smith—everybody's John Smith—again entered the arm-chair of our affections, the fire of our love stirred, like a self-acting poker, the embers of cooling good fellowship, and the strong blaze of resuscitated friendship burst forth with all its pristine warmth. John Smith wore Bluchers but he wore them like an honest man; and he was the only ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... flask and put it to his lips. I ran back to the dining-room, and seized a heavy poker from the fireplace. In my terror and excitement I rained blows on the lock of the door, and I fired a cartridge into it. It gave way, and the ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... horse-racin', save a few thousand which he had invested for her, and she felt wuz safe, but he took that to run away with a bally girl, and squandered it all on her and died on the town. My eldest sister's husband beat her with a poker, and throwed her out of a three-story front in San Francisco, and she landin' on a syringea tree wuz saved to git a divorce from him and also from her second and third husbands for cruelty, after which she gave up matrimony and opened a boarding-house, bitter in spirit, but a good ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... weakly as she fled. He was halfway to the edge of the forest when Baree dragged himself over the threshold. His jaws were bleeding where McTaggart had kicked him again and again before his fangs gave way. Halfway between his ears was a seared spot, as if a red-hot poker had been laid there for an instant. This was where McTaggart's bullet had gone. A quarter of an inch deeper, and it would have meant death. As it was, it had been like the blow of a heavy club, paralyzing his senses and sending him limp and unconscious against the wall. He could move on his feet ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... I have said my say. Don't you dare to meddle with my affairs. I know that Miss Stoner has been here. I traced her! I am a dangerous man to fall foul of! See here." He stepped swiftly forward, seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with his huge ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the manuscript, and threw it into the fire. 'Let this rubbish be of some use,' he said, holding the pages down with the poker. 'The room is getting chilly—the Countess's play will set some of these charred logs flaming again.' He waited a little at the fire-place, and returned to his brother. 'Now, Henry, I have a last word to say, and then I have done. I am ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... the new chapters he gave to Bret Harte for the Overland Monthly, then recently established. Harte himself was becoming a celebrity about this time. His "Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," published in early numbers of the Overland, were making a great stir in the East, arousing there a good deal more enthusiasm than in the magazine office or the city of their publication. That these two friends, each supreme in his own field, should have entered into their heritage ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... frankly disapproving looks or challenging insolence of glances such as he received from Mr. Rhodes's bold eyes. He smiled often in keen enjoyment of his shady reputation and kept adding to his unpopularity by steadfastly refusing to be drawn into poker games which bore evidence of having ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... depending on Swann for this evening," people would say; "don't you remember, it's his American's night at the Opera?" He would secure invitations for her to the most exclusive drawing-rooms, to those houses where he himself went regularly, for weekly dinners or for poker; every evening, after a slight 'wave' imparted to his stiffly brushed red locks had tempered with a certain softness the ardour of his bold green eyes, he would select a flower for his buttonhole and set out to meet his mistress at the house of one or other of the women of his circle; ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... a herd of cattle lawfully purchased and branded. An occasional maverick came across their range and they branded it. A brand was faint and not legible, and they put their own iron over it. They learned that pyrography with a hot poker was very profitable. The rest was easy. The first step was the one that counted; but who could tell where that first ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... to be less sensitive to moderate radiant heat than to a bright light. I judge of this from having held at different times a poker heated to dull redness near some worms, at a distance which caused a very sensible degree of warmth in my hand. One of them took no notice; a second withdrew into its burrow, but not quickly; the third and fourth much more quickly, and the fifth as quickly as possible. ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... rough days. We had all our band instruments smashed and the windows of our Garrison as well, and one man, madly infuriated against us, heated a poker red hot and threw it into the hall amongst the congregation. We lived in danger to limb and life, but had the overshadowing presence of God ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... had never before had the inner, unknown elements of his nature so stirred; had never felt this blind, raging protest. It was a muddle of impressions: the picture of the poor soul with his clamor for a job; the satisfied, brutal egotism of Brome Porter, who lived as if life were a huge poker game; the overfed, red-cheeked Caspar, whom he remembered to have seen only once before, when the young polo captain was stupid drunk; the silly young cub of a Hitchcock. Even the girl was one of them. If it weren't for the women, the men would ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... tables with layouts for games of chance. Faro, "klondike," roulette, stud-poker, almost anything possibly to be desired was there. All were in full blast. Three deep the men were gathered about the wheel and the "tiger." Gold money in stacks stood at every dealer's hand. Bostwick had never seen so much metal currency in ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the great big hunter-man took a small brass-handled shovel and poker from the brass stand by the open ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Day, when the family is assembled at table, they expect the arrival of the special Christmas visiter (called polazenik), the only person who is allowed to enter the house that day. When he comes, he goes to the hearth, stirs the fire with the poker and says, "Christ is born. May the family enjoy all good luck and happiness in this year! May the cattle increase in number like the sparks I have struck!" As he says these words, the mistress of the house pours corn over him ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... she said, and, grasping the poker, was about to stir up the fire, when he hastily took it from her, with an expression of positive ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... a copper poker, and, while beating on the hand-stove, she laughingly said: "I shall go on tattooing. Now mind if when the drumming ceases, you haven't accomplished your task, you'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to his common sense, foresight, and business ability that the present city owes much of its success; and it is interesting to hear him tell of exciting adventures in "Poker Flat," and other places which Bret Harte ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... absences. Here he had set up the battered figurehead of a wrecked ship and, imagining that its face resembled that of Kit whom he so fiendishly hated, he used to amuse himself by screwing gimlets into its breast, sticking forks into its eyes and beating it with a poker. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... of the place, exchanging nods of recognition with two hang-dog poker-players, and I was pleased to note that our advent had apparently failed to attract the slightest attention. Through an opening on the right-hand side of the room, near the top, I looked into a smaller ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... it was early the next morning when the regiment to which the preacher belonged was entrained. During the early part of the night the men were gathered in groups, some playing "shuffle the brogan," others busy at "nosey poker," while the greater part of them were smoking their pipes and telling yarns, or stretching their weary limbs on rolls of canvas, or on the bare ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... certificate of its being landed here, the tribute is, by agreement, to be paid in London. The landing, therefore, is the point in view, and every nerve will be strained to obtain it." It was asked in New York, "are the Americans such blockheads as to care whether it be a hot red poker, or a red hot poker which they are to swallow, provided Lord North forces them to swallow ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... stringent, severe, and magical in character, in proportion to the lack of civilisation in those who practise them. The less the civilisation, the more mysterious and the more cruel are the rites. The more cruel the rites, the less is the civilisation. The red-hot poker with which Mr. Bouncer terrified Mr. Verdant Green at the sham masonic rites would have been quite in place, a natural instrument of probationary torture, in the Freemasonry of Australians, Mandans, or Hottentots. In the mysteries of Demeter or Bacchus, in the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... the wall, stood still, waiting for other voices, for Galloway's, for Vidal Nunez's. But after Kid Rickard's jarring mirth it was strangely still in the Casa Blanca; no noise of clicking chips bespeaking a poker game, no loud-voiced babble, no sound of a man ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... and the little visitors were assembled, Richard, who had seen some of the sports at a country fair, would show his dexterity to amuse his young party. He took up the poker, and, supposing it to be a pole, performed some imitations. But, unable long to preserve it upright from its weight, the sooty end fell on Master Snapper's book, who was reading a little work upon "Affability." The blow fairly knocked it out of his hand, and made a great ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... that was almost flat, three old blankets and cotton sheets, of coarse description, three rush-bottom chairs, an old claw table, a chest of draws, with a few battered band-boxes on the top of it, a miserable bit of carpet before the fire-place, a wooden box for coals, a little tin fender, and an old poker. What there was, however, was kept clean, the floor and yellow paint was clean, and the washing tub which sat in one ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... last thing he designed to become evident. Like most good business men he nursed a pet superstition or two, and of the number of these the first was that he must in all his dealings present an inscrutable front, like a poker-player's: captains of industry were uniformly like that, Spaulding understood; if they entertained emotions it was strictly in private. Accordingly he armoured himself with a magnificent imperturbability which at times almost ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... He could not think the flame was really smoky, but to make sure he tried, first a Bunsen gas flame and then a hydrogen flame. They all showed the same effect, and smoke was out of the question. He then used a red-hot poker, a platinum wire ignited by an electric current, and ultimately a flask of hot water, and he found that from all warm bodies examined in dusty air by a beam of light the upstreaming convection currents were dark. Now, of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... the most extraordinary notions of the use, or rather the abuse, of the various kitchen implements: for instance, she will poke the fire with the toasting fork, and disregards my gentle hints about the poker; but at all events she can both roast mutton and bake bread. "Meary" has been induced to wash her face and braid up her beautiful hair, and now shines forth as a very pretty good-humoured girl. She is as clever and quick as possible, and will in time be a capital ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... sat by the open fire, at a point where she could easily reach the tongs for the adjusting of any vagabond stick, and Cap'n Oliver Drown, in the opposite angle, held dominion over the poker. No one else would Miss Letitia have admitted to partnership in the managing of her fire; but Cap'n Oliver wielded an undisputed privilege. The poker suited him because he had a way, in the heat of friendly dissension, of smashing a stick much before it was ready to drop apart of its ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... "Draw poker," replied the leader, giving his black mustache a satisfied twist. He jerked his head in the direction of the chips. "Win all, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... upon the poker; the right hand takes the poker and lifts it; turns it slowly round, and then, very accurately, replaces it. The left hand, which lies on the knee, plays some stately but intermittent piece of march music. A deep breath is taken; but allowed to evaporate unused. The cat ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... awaited the arrival of our second outfit. A brisk rivalry existed between the solicitors for Ellsworth and Wichita, every man working faithfully for his railroad or town, and at night they generally met in social session over a poker game. I never played a card for money now, not that my morals were any too good, but I was married and had partners, and business generally absorbed me to such an extent that ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... convivial habits, and used to poke considerable fun at me because I would not drink or play poker. At the time when the select committee was to meet in Memphis, the home of Senator Harris, the prominent business men of that place waited on him and told him they understood a very eminent committee was coming there in a few days, and they would like to show ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... took as his confidante Edith Longworth, who also betrayed the greatest interest in the problem. Miss Longworth was left all the more alone because her cousin had taken permanently to the smoking-room. Someone had introduced him to the fascinating game of poker, and in the practice of this particular amusement Mr. William Longworth was now spending a good deal of his surplus cash, as well ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... to get at it? Annie came in from the kitchen armed with a poker. We took out the damper and poked out all the soot and ashes. We brought to the front—what do you think? Why, a little bird, a chimney swallow, chirping and fluttering, poor ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... came back, and he felt the stroke again as if it had just been given, and the two white scars began to sting as they did after the old Doctor had burned them with that stick of gray caustic, which looked so like a slate pencil, and felt so much like the end of a red-hot poker. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... so was Steve—the latter never talked; in place of words he used the poker—not in any fiendish way; heaven forbid! but in a mild, unobtrusive manner, intelligible only to himself and Randolph. In this system of fireworks stenography, so to speak, a series of slow, deliberate pokes under the fire implied contemplation; poking down ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... passes the collection plate up the aisle on Sunday and plays poker all Saturday night till Sunday morning down at the Last Chance, in a room in front of the one in which poor Pat Burns, who carries a hod for his money, loses his all. Mary Burns sews all day and half the night to feed him and the children, but she puts her pittance into Billy's plate every ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... make sure they would hold, and was so absorbed in watching his movements that he even forgot to curse, which was the only thing left him. Gibbie looked round again for a moment, as if in doubt, then darted upon the tongs—there was no poker—and thrust them into the fire, caught up the asthmatic old bellows, and began to blow the peats. Angus saw the first action, heard the second, and a hideous dismay clutched his very heart: the savage fool was about to take his revenge in pinches with ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the thrumming fingers of his superior officer. Some commanders would have raged and sent the daring youngster right about in arrest. Major Webb knew just what Field referred to,—knew that the fascinations of pool, "pitch" and poker held just about half his commissioned force at all "off duty" hours of the day or night hanging about the officers' club room at the post trader's; knew, moreover, that while the adjutant never ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... which rang clearly and mellowly on your ear, leaving behind it an expression of candor, light-heartedness, and good nature, that could not be mistaken. "It's idle talk to speak about going such a day as this," observed the beetle-browed man, who stirred up the fire with something that passed for a poker, in reply; "and to tell you the truth, upon my credit, Mr. M'Loughlin, I'm not sorry that we happened to meet. You're a man I've a sincere regard for, and always had—and on that account—well have something ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the timber-merchant, and rose to go. David's voice changed to passion; memories of things he had seen came over him as in a red mist: an old man scalped with a sharp ladle; a white-hot poker driven through a woman's eye; a baby's skull ground under a True Russian's heel. 'Bourgeois!' he thundered, 'I will save you despite yourselves.' The landlord signalled in a frenzy, but David continued recklessly, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... he gave each stoker A silver shovel and a golden poker. He'd button holw flowers for the ticket sorters And rich Bath-buns for the outside porters. He'd moun the clerks on his first-class hunters, And he build little villas for the road-side shunters, And if any were fond of pigeon shooting, He'd ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... for each of the four messes in the squad. When it came to dividing among the men, the beans had to be counted. Nobody received enough to pay for cooking, and we were at a loss what to do until somebody suggested that we play poker for them. This met general acceptance, and after that, as long as beans were drawn, a large portion of the day was spent in absorbing games of "bluff" and "draw," at a bean "ante," and ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... just the way he had several years before when he had bluffed his way into a gigantic pot during a Washington poker game, with only a pair of fours to work with. At the last moment, his bluff ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... beef for the shipping season, Billy thought he had solved the problem—philosophically, if not satisfactorily. "I guess maybe it's just one uh the laws uh nature that you're always bumping into," he decided. "It's a lot like draw-poker. Yah can't get dealt out to yuh the cards yuh want, without getting some along with 'em that yuh don't want. What gets me is, I don't see how in thunder I'm going to ditch m' discard. If I could just turn 'em face down on the table and count 'em out uh the game—old Brown ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... in every other apartment, everything looked as though the occupant had passed out of the room but a moment before. Wade's face grew grave and tender as he looked about him. On the sewing machine a shallow basket held sewing materials and a few pairs of coarse woollen stockings, neatly rolled. The poker was laid straight along the ledge of the big "base-burner" in the corner. A table with a green cloth stood in front of a window and bore a few magazines dated almost ten years before. A set of walnut book-shelves held a few sober-clad volumes, Bulfinch's "Age of Fable," ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... great exertion, and with the assistance of Wild Bill and the poker, the cover of the box was wrenched off, and the contents ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... explain whether Mr. Jenkins raised cotton, bought it, sold it, ginned it, or merely thought about it. The office was so located that in a morally crusading town, where caution was necessary, it would have suggested nocturnal poker. But as it was not necessary for a poker game in Calexico to be so modestly retiring, Reedy's choice of an office must be attributed solely to his ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... Remove Putty.—To remove putty, rub a red hot poker over it, and cut off the putty with ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the ground and snapshots the affairs. Gee! I'm glad I haven't got a kink for digging up relics and dodging about places that went to smash thousands of years ago. A vice like that is more expensive than the poker habit." ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... held them in the blaze of the fire, waiting patiently until the blackness of the outside should give promise of corresponding warmth within. Its slayer held the body of the bird over the fire in a similar manner, the poker having been thrust into the abdomen. They all sat, or rather stood in a squatting position with ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... the character of Henley gave the Irishman some relief. By the holy poker, said Mac Fane, but I always thought he was a ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Vegas, I followed the road to Albuquerque and Socorro, had some deals there and spent my evenings playing poker, faro and monte with the best and "toughest" of them. Santa Fe, the capital, was then as much a "hell" as ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... hotel for two days, and the recipient of many drinks. Time, the cater of things, never digested this falsehood, and months after the youth had left, I learned that he had lost all his jewelry and money at—twenty-deck poker. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... old-fashioned church too, where the sides of the pews are so high that one can with difficulty look over them, and where the affluent man can have a real fire-place all to himself, with a real poker and tongs and shovel to incite it to a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... levied army presented a formidable force. The steward had a rusty blunderbuss; the coachman a loaded whip; the footman a pair of horse pistols; the cook a huge chopping knife, and the butler a bottle in each hand. My aunt led the van with a red-hot poker; and, in my opinion, she was the most formidable of the party. The waiting maid brought up the rear, dreading to stay alone in the servants' hall, smelling to a broken bottle of volatile salts, and expressing her terror ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... had experience with bar whisky and talkin' to their cards at poker, but aside from bein' pretty much drunks and crookin' the cards, they ain't anything uncommon. But when I got 'em they was wild, they was. Why, if I'd talked like this in front of 'em they'd of been guns pulled. But look at 'em now. I ask you: Look at 'em now! Ain't ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... my long-standing in the service, Captain —-," said a pompous general officer,—whose back appeared to have been fished with the kitchen poker—"If I might venture to offer you advice," continued he, leading me paternally by the arm a little on one side, "it would be, not again to attempt a defence of smuggling: I consider, sir, that as an officer in his Majesty's service, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... about forty, a widow with no children. She had a face of which it was impossible to recollect, when it had been seen even a dozen times, any feature except the eyes, which were steel-blue, a little bluer than the faceted head of the steel poker in her parlour, but just as hard. She lived in the basement with a maid, much like herself but a little more human. Although the front underground room was furnished Mrs Cork never used it, except on the rarest occasions, and a kind of apron of coloured paper hung over the fireplace nearly all the ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... Poker played for penny stakes was a favorite after-dinner pastime. A group including Mrs. Eli, the Kembles, and Mr. Hazzard would gather in the Becker back parlor, Mrs. Becker, relieved of corsets and in a dark-blue foulard teagown shotted all over with tiny pink rosebuds, presiding over a folding table ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... said Johnny ungratefully. "Oh, my gosh, I am stiff as a poker. What do you say, Barry, to our doping this out around that fire—or have you got some other little thing in there you are keeping incog as ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... "I'm old-fashioned, I daresay. I'm no longer in the movement. I might have been amused once by the story of a clandestine tea-party and an outraged parent with a poker; I don't know. All I do know is, that I find it rather dreary at present. We'll drop in at just one or two more places, Sir, and then go quietly home to bed, eh?" They entered a few more Music Halls, ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... do, miss," replied Sam, exerting his Herculean strength in vain. With the aid of a hammer and the kitchen-poker, however, he at last succeeded in forcing it open. We all pressed forward eagerly to peer inside. There was something in it certainly, but we none of us could determine what, until Sam, who was the boldest of us all, thrust in his hand and brought forth—something ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and there was little mercy shown for JOANNA's freak. Her husband had slain her. That was all. She with her flashes, her gaiety, her laughter, was consigned to dust. But in Sir JOHN's note-book it was written that, "The hob-nailed boot is but a bungling weapon. The drawing-room poker is better." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... law against race-track gambling and add to the profits from faro. We raid the faro joints, and drive gambling into the home, where poker and bridge whist are taught to children who follow their parents' example. We deprive anarchists of free speech by the heavy hand of a police magistrate, and furnish them with a practical instead of a theoretical argument against government. We ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... be asked, be obliged to fulfil his contract with B? He has sent his withdrawal, which if delivered in time would have been received by B before the letter containing the offer. B, however, is away from his place of business, and perhaps is where he ought not to be—perhaps he is playing poker or doing something worse—ought A under such circumstances to be held by his offer? This is a closer question and one that we will leave our readers to think over. Surely A would have a strong reason for claiming that he ought not to ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... and the Shovel, the Poker and Tongs, They all took a drive in the Park; And they each sang a song, ding-a-dong, ding-a-dong! Before they went back in the dark. Mr. Poker he sate quite upright in the coach; Mr. Tongs made a clatter and clash; Miss Shovel was dressed all in black (with a brooch); Mrs. ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... 'ard to bear, once you've myde up your mind as they're to be borne." He put up the tongs, to busy himself with the poker. "Madam'll find that humiliation is a good deal like that there quinine; bitter to the tyste, but strengthenin'. I've swallered lots of it; and ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... the concussion will knock him down, or turn him; this power is greater in the round ball than in the conical, as a larger surface is suddenly struck. The effect is similar to a man being run through the arm with a rapier or thrust at with a poker—the rapier will pass through him almost without his knowledge, but the poker will knock him down. Thus the pointed conical ball will, perhaps, pass through an elephant's forehead and penetrate as far as his shoulders, but it will produce no immediate effect. For ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... an Old Man with a poker, Who painted his face with red ochre. When they said, "You 're a Guy!" he made no reply, But knocked them all ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... Justo Valdos's gambling house. There was a poker game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There was a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the smoke had cleared away it was found that the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... woolly dog that thought of it," she added, and she would have stooped down to pat the toy dog, with its red morocco collar, but she was so high up that she found it a difficult matter to bend down. "I am as stiff as a poker," said she. ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... him, because he lost the fun which they found in shooting or rowing while he was working away on these grand letters to his grand friend. They could not understand why Nolan kept by himself while they were playing high-low-jack. Poker was not yet invented. But before long the young fellow had his revenge. For this time His Excellency, Honourable Aaron Burr, appeared again under a very different aspect. There were rumours that he had an army behind him and everybody ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... us!) For the rest, he lived in Sta. Malua, to which tropical port came Molly Hatherall, intending to be married to a handsome scamp who spent all his salary as a mining engineer and all the money he could borrow from friends in losing games of poker to a man who made a profession of winning them. Why he should have wanted to do this (for it seemed to be his solitary serious vice) in a place like Sta. Malua I cannot imagine. But there it is. For one reason or another ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... late day remember a detail of how I was ditched at Rawlins. I remember watching the train as it was immediately swallowed up in the snow-storm, and of heading for a saloon to warm up. Here was light and warmth. Everything was in full blast and wide open. Faro, roulette, craps, and poker tables were running, and some mad cow-punchers were making the night merry. I had just succeeded in fraternizing with them and was downing my first drink at their expense, when a heavy hand descended on my shoulder. I looked around and sighed. It ...
— The Road • Jack London
... bazaar, the ducal party stayed for another fortnight in Cairo, during which time Damaris saw as much of the place and its surroundings as she could in fourteen days and a few hours out of each of the fourteen nights; whilst her godmother played bridge or poker, paid and received visits, took her to dances and parties, and busied her fingers in the tangled threads Fate had tossed into ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... a little while and then a regular game of poker was proposed. The latter was a game that all hands could play in for a trick; even the senator's son was permitted to enter the game, and winking in a knowing manner to our hero he did get in the game, and ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)
... smiled, and laid a gentle hand on the girl's cheek. For one moment her dignified airs seemed to vanish, and nothing but motherly tenderness shone in her eyes, but the next she drew herself up again, stiff as a little poker, and said lightly— ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... clustered about the cheerful open fireplace in the library. Mabel, who was seated on a stool at one side of the fire, reached forward for the poker and prodded the half-burnt log energetically. The others watched her in silence until she laid down the poker with a suddenness that caused them all to start, and turning about said almost brusquely: ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... heat!" repeated Mr Bagges, scratching his head. "Eh? Now, that latent heat always puzzles me. Latent, lying hid. But how can you hide heat? When the zany in the pantomime hides the red-hot poker in his pocket, he cauterizes his person. How—eh?—how can heat ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... in, took a seat before the fire, placed her bag and an old hat-box on the floor by her side and for a moment looked around the room, noticing everything. Then she took up the poker, commenced poking the fire, as if she wanted more heat to enable her to explain the chief object of her visit. The heat is now up to the degree required, the poker is laid aside, the old hat-box is in her lap, and aunt Mary is ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889 • Various
... eagle's a chicken with steel spurs. That air sweet singer of Israel that is so hifalugeon he has to anchor hisself to his boots, knows all the tricks, and is intimately acquainted with the kyards, whether it's faro, poker, euchre, or French monte. But blamed ef Providence a'n't dealed you a better hand'n you think. Never desperandum, as the Congressmen say, fer while the lamp holds out to burn you may beat the blackleg all to flinders and sing and ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... the fireplace by this time and had picked up the poker, as if to punch the fire, but I really intended to strike him if he advanced too close or tried to help himself to any of my things. He never took the slightest notice of my movements, or waited for any answer to his outburst—just kept ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... clubs—athletic, mostly—and trained regularly, and was called a fair boxer among the amateurs. I could tell to a glass—after a lot of practise—just how much of 'steen different brands I could take without getting foolish, and I could play poker and win once in awhile. I had a steam-yacht and a motor of my own, and it was generally stripped to racing trim. And I wasn't tangled up with any women; actress-worship had never appealed to me. My tastes all went to the sporting side of life and left women ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... of pained incomprehension concerning them. Later he was informed that Ace had been so named on account of having once been caught slipping a playing card of that character into his bootleg during a game of poker. Incidentally—Hollis was told—gun-play had resulted. That Ace was still active proved that the other man might have profited by keeping his knowledge to himself. Obviously, Lanky deserved his appellation—he was a trifle over six feet tall and proportioned ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... now and then; and his tire expense was such as to keep him up nights playing poker for money to support his Ford. You simply can't whirl into town at a thirty-mile gait—I am speaking now of Pinnacle, whose street was a gravelly creek bed quite dry and ridgy between rains—and stop in twice the car's length without ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Mary Ellen, "is young Watlin. Call him up instantly; and he shall guard the door while I dress. Explain the situation very briefly to him. It would be well to arm him with a poker, in case the old man becomes violent. David, go to Bishop Torrance and tell him that I hope he will call on me at once, if possible. Put on your clothes, but you may leave your hair in disorder, just as it is. It will serve to show the Bishop into what a state ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... holy poker! This knocks me out! The next time I'll marry a man, and have somebody around that can appreciate a joke. The Irishman said himself it ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... comforter. He was with him in the cell most of the time before the hanging, and two days before the aforesaid he paid Brislane $50 for a story to be printed exclusively in his paper. Then this newspaper man, which I consider unethical under the circumstances, played Brislane poker, and what with the doomed man's lack of concentration and his inability to take advantage of the turns of the game, therefore, this newspaper man won back his $50 and some ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... to you, Fleda, my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, breaking the lumps of coal with the poker, in a very leisurely satisfied kind of a way "Did it ever occur to you to rejoice that you were not born a business man? ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... worked for Computer Corporation of Earth had built a robot once, using just such a stack. The robot was designed to play poker. He had fed in all the rules of play and added all the data from Oesterveldt's On Poker. It took Mike the Angel exactly one hour to figure out how ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... there, and the old poker with which he is said to have tended the fire. On the walls hang the pictures of a number of actors and actresses who have played Shakespearean parts. Except for these, the room differs very little from the rest of the inn. About nine-thirty, the children ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... up the pipe. As I expected, it opened funnel-wise into a room where the poor King was playing poker with Black Michael. It took me but a moment to dash through the window into the room, push the King aside, gag and bind Black Michael, and lower him by a stout rope into the pipe he had destined for another. Having him in my power, I lowered him until I heard his body splash ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... it, I read his correspondence, while he absently twirled the poker in his hands, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... observers had doubtless noted the ability he displayed in his debates with Douglas, but in the main he seems to have been recommended to the Chicago Convention, as afterwards to the country, mainly on the strength of his humble origin, his skill as a rail-splitter, and his alleged ability to bend a poker ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... room, Jaggers wails over his discharge. His pocket is his only fear. Otherwise, he is in Heaven. His life now, is all "Cocktails and poker!" "Poker and cocktails!" It leaves him little time for business. Woods knows ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... gambling. The Police Magistrate, the Surveyor, the Solicitor, the Receiver of Revenue, the Police Inspector, and the Clerk of Courts, together with one or two settlers, formed a little society for the promotion of poker, euchre, and other little games, interspersed with whiskies. It is sad to recall to mind the untimely end at which most of them arrived. Mr. D. was found dead on the main road; Mr. E. shot himself through the head; Mr. F. fell asleep in the bush and never woke; and Mr. G. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... detached themselves from the group and occupied themselves with writing. Several started a game of stud poker at one of the many tables. Harris wrote a few letters before joining in the play, and as he looked up from time to time he caught many curious glances leveled upon him. Morrow had been busily spreading the tidings that a ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... a huge clattering at the poker and tongs, puffing and blowing the while, and turning as red as his yellow face would allow him. "I can't make you such handsome presents, Joseph," continued his sister, "but while I was at school, I have embroidered for you a ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "I've stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire, and flood—in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies, and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnaped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You won't leave me long ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... with a little suspicious moisture in eyes as blue as her own; "it will be harder for you to stay and think of absent friends than for them to go. I foresee how it will turn out. You will be imagining high tragedy on stormy nights when we shall be having a jolly game of poker. Good-night. I shall be absent for a time,—going to West Point to be coached a little by my friend ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... answer, but picked up the poker and struck several times a large pewter platter on ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... the same manner that the jargon of certain boys is peculiar to certain schools. But I concluded later that it might have a remote and roundabout origin in the old army slang, "a spruce hand" at "brag"—the latter being a variant of the game of poker, and a spruce hand, apparently, one which, held by a bluffer, contained cards of no ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... talk with him on the wide verandas. At times he went alone to his room at the top of the house and buried himself in books. On Saturday evenings he had a debauch and with a group of friends from town sat at a card table in the long parlour playing poker and drinking highballs. ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... him down with the poker next time he comes. I'll throw a kettle of boiling water on him as sure as eggs are eggs. Fancy the reptile leering around me: I felt nearly poisoned as it was, but I didn't know he was a murderer as well! Oh, the hide of ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... of fun; I should think the boys would call after him if they saw him in the street. As for his walk, he walked off just like the first young man had done, he strutted along with his shoulders back, and his head in the air, and that stiff and straight that my kitchen poker would have ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... took the old musket and headed the procession. His wife slipped downstairs and returned with the kitchen broom and a poker. The last she put in the hands of ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... Taking a poker from the corner of the fireplace, Black Donald went around among the sleeping robbers and stirred them up, with vigorous punches in ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... detail of how I was ditched at Rawlins. I remember watching the train as it was immediately swallowed up in the snow-storm, and of heading for a saloon to warm up. Here was light and warmth. Everything was in full blast and wide open. Faro, roulette, craps, and poker tables were running, and some mad cow-punchers were making the night merry. I had just succeeded in fraternizing with them and was downing my first drink at their expense, when a heavy hand descended on my shoulder. I looked around and sighed. It ...
— The Road • Jack London
... Here was a young man of a species with whom he had not come into contact in many years: a boy who did not know the first thing about poker, or bridge, or pinochle, who played outrageous billiards and who did not know who the latest reigning theatrical beauty was, and moreover, did not care a rap; who could understand a joke within reasonable time if he couldn't tell one; who was neither ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... heir in South Carolina to a good plantation and thirty likely "niggers." At the age of twenty-five he sold out the former and emigrated to Florida with the latter. The price of the plantation rapidly disappeared at horse-races, poker-parties, cock-fights, and rum-shops. If Mossa Cutter speculated, he was always unsuccessful, because he was always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... least, of the old customs of the town survived until very recent memory. Now it has died out with the rest. From Mr. J.S. Bright's History of Dorking I learn that the office of constable has lapsed; the places of the 'Beggar-poker' and the 'Ale Taster' have been taken by the local police. Parish funds are no longer dispensed at the close of church service. The poor on St. Thomas's Day used to go out 'Gooding'; to-day they plead ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... mean that either you or I will never leave this place alive. For I tell you plainly, as sure as there is a poker game above us, I mean to ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... easily turned down by the Colonel who represented that district for three or more terms at the National Capitol. But there came a time when the Colonel's influence began to wane; whisperings were current that he was indulging too freely in the Southern gentleman's besetting sin—poker and mint julips, and that the business of the people whose interests he had been sent to look after was being neglected. Still Wilmingtonians' confidence in the Colonel did not slacken, and when the time for Congressional nominations came, we went to Fayetteville with ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... chair, sit up straight, head back, chin in. If you are walking or standing, the same rule should apply. The more nearly you can assume the position which is sometimes criticized by the sarcastic statement that "He looks as though he had swallowed a poker," the more nearly you ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... and had resolved to press. Alarmed by the forcing of the door, and only too well aware of what it portended, Trim made for the stairs, where, turning upon his pursuers, he struck repeatedly and savagely at the midshipman, who headed them, with a red-hot poker which he had snatched out of the fire at the moment of his flight. He was, however, quickly overpowered, disarmed and dragged back into the lower room, where his captors threw him violently to the floor and ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... myself first thing," he added, taking up the poker and tapping the bright little stove with it; "I told myself she would be marryin' one of the boys most likely; I kep' that in mind steady, as you may say. I thought I was so used to the idee that it wouldn't jar me much of any when it come to the fact. But it did; yes siree, it did, ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... Where is the poker, Johnny? Can't you push back that for'ard log a little? Dear, dear! Well, it doesn't make much difference, does it? Something always seems to ail your Massachusetts fires; your hickory is green, and your maple is gnarly, and the worms eat out your oak like a sponge. I haven't ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... curious faces in front of him. Some one poked a stick at him—an attention which met an instant roar and spring on the tiger's part, and a quick, and stinging rebuke from an attendant, before which the poker of the stick fled precipitately. The crowd, which had jumped back as one man, pressed nearer to the cage, and the tiger resumed his quick, silent prowl. But his eyes no longer roved over the faces. They remained fixed upon the man who ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... foreigner brought with her from beneath the glowing skies of a sunny clime was (on Polly's authority) Miss Melluka, and the costly nature of her outfit as a housekeeper, from the Barbox coffers, may be inferred from the two facts that her silver tea-spoons were as large as her kitchen poker, and that the proportions of her watch exceeded those of her frying-pan. Miss Melluka was graciously pleased to express her entire approbation of the Circus, and so was Polly; for the ponies were speckled, and brought down nobody when they fired, and the savagery of the wild beasts appeared to be ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... Dr. Drake, a man of a good deal of science, theory, and reputed skill, but a sort of general mark for the opposition of all the medical cloth of the city. He is a tall, rectangular, perpendicular sort of a body, as stiff as a poker, and enunciates his prescriptions very much as though he were delivering a discourse on the doctrine of election. The other evening he was detained from visiting Kate, and he sent a very polite, ceremonious note ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... you hadn't had that poker-party with you I'd have knocked you out and gone to China with the Ward-Smythe jewels. Sherlock Holmes stock was 'way below ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... old Justo Valdos's gambling house. There was a poker game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There was a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the smoke ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... so big as the Avalanche," she began the moment she had shut the door behind her and faced the questioning eyes that commanded her to stand and deliver. "He's straight, too, but not so poker-stiff as Mrs. Ramrod. He's got a big haw-haw voice, and scrubs every word he says with a tooth-brush before he says it. His hands are as white—as white; and they're cleaner than Crosby Pemberton's. He's got a tan shirt on, plaited in front, and every time Aunt Anne moves he's up ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Jason. He stopped hammering. He stopped thumping. He stopped boiling poor Ezra's hoof with a red hot poker. "Eh?" he said all over again. "Well, that's a new one on me! What's the ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... out a draw with no blood shed, although I think Buddy and I could have made 'em sorry they came if they hadn't made a break and got past us. And when we gets back to where Vee is waitin' with the fire-poker in her hand Buddy still waves in his teeth a five-inch strip ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... heavy iron poker which he found in the cabin, Rosenblatt had battered off the sash and the frame of the window, enlarging the hole till he could get his head and one arm free; but there he stuck fast, watching the creeping flames, shrieking prayers, ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... and at one o'clock only a few inveterate poker-players and one or two young fellows who were still "bucking" the roulette wheel remained and, calling one of his men to take charge, Haney nodded to Williams and they went ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... during forty years. His prayers would have made us all feel. I saw a Baptist sister of about the same age, her children had been torn from her, her head was covered with fresh wounds, while her upper lip had scarcely ceased to bleed, in consequence of a blow with the poker, which knocked out her teeth; she too, was going to a land of freedom. Only a very few days since, I saw a girl of about eighteen, with a child as white as myself, aged ten months; a Christian master was raising her ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... his ideas on detergents, suggested we make black plastic discs, like poker chips but thinner and as cheap as possible, to scatter on a snowy sidewalk where they would pick up extra heat from the sun and melt the snow more rapidly. Afterward one would sweep up ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... Bulgars crowding down upon him General Sarrail wasted no lives, either French or English, but again withdrew. He was outnumbered, some say five to one. In any event, he was outnumbered as inevitably as three of a kind beat two pair. A good poker player does not waste chips backing two pair. Neither should a good general, when his chips are human lives. As it was, in the retreat seven hundred French were killed or wounded, and of the British, who were more directly in the path ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... me so nervous that I did not get the right words, and I made him look more like a poker then ever. "Thanks, most awfully," I began, and it was a bad beginning, "for all your advice. But I want to tell you that I do the most stupid things without meaning to do them. I mean that they only strike me as being stupid after I have ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... out of the cook-house with an iron poker, and heated it in the coals. All the men around the fire waited, understanding what he was about to do, but my own breath drew with a hiss through my teeth as he laid the red hot iron first on one long cut and then another in his travel-worn feet. Having cauterized himself effectually, ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... suggestion and simply proved how little the man knew about the subject. In the first place, a stammerer cannot forget his difficulty—who can say that he would be cured if he did? You might as well say to a man holding a hot poker, "If you will only forget that the poker is hot, it will be cool." It takes something more than forgetfulness to ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... the Deuce was an undersized, scrawny specimen of the genus which is popularly known as "tinhorn," a sort of free-lance gambler, usually to be found sitting in at a poker-game. The engineer was ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... replied the wife of the former member, 'that is curious. But I suppose my husband is much more economical than yours, for he brought home $1.500, that he'd saved out of his salary.' As the salary is only $456, and the gentleman in question did not play poker, much hilarity was indulged in, and there were conjectures that the economy referred to concerned his vote upon a certain bill before the last session, anent which the lobby pushing it were far from economical. Uncle Billy Rollinson, the Gentleman from Wixinockee, ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... ever occur to you, Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, breaking the lumps of coal with the poker in a very leisurely satisfied kind of a way,—"Did it ever occur to you to rejoice that you were not born a business ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the following procedures as having been in use, according to legend, to determine the justice of the suspicion: Flinging the child on a dung-heap; putting in the oven; holding a red-hot shovel before the child's face; heating a poker red-hot to mark a cross on its forehead; heating the tongs red-hot to seize it by the nose; throwing on, or into, the fire; suspending over the fire in a pot; throwing the child naked on the glowing embers at midnight; throwing into lake, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... before me—standing around like old women, doing nothing. I have elaborate instruments, sir—I don't read any more books—the world's literature is here" (tapping his forehead). "I've thought too much to care for other men's ideas. Like old women, I was saying, sir. 'Give me a poker,' I yelled—' give me anything.' I sent for my trephine. Great God, how the blood flew, and the bone creaked! I raised the depressed bone. The man lives. I've done everything, in my life. And now a cursed quack comes to ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... homes and held a 'Horn Fair.' Some erring barmaid at the inn, accused of too lavish a use of smiles, too much kindness—most likely a jealous tale only—aroused their righteous ire. With shawm and timbrel and ram's-horn trumpet—i.e. with cow's horns, poker and tongs, and tea-trays—the indignant and high-toned population collected night after night by the tavern, and made such fearful uproar that the poor girl, really quite innocent, had to leave her ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... or reformatory enterprise. These outside activities were no hindrances to either pulpit or pastoral work; and, like that famous English preacher who felt that he could not have too many irons in the fire, I thrust in tongs, shovel, poker and all. The contact with busy life and benevolent labors among the poor supplied material for sermons; for the pastor of a city church must touch life at a great many points. Our domestic experiences in ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... their revolvers testified mutely as to their prowess. Their place was like all other dens, and consisted of the usual bar and lunch counter in one room, while in the adjoining one was the hall of gaming. Faro, roulette, hazard, monte, and the great national game, poker, held high carnival there nightly. Next to the "Goose" was a long narrow room used as a shooting gallery. The place was only a few doors around the corner from my office, and many a night on my way home I would stop at the lunch counter and have a sandwich ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... the Plaintiff (March, 1901, Harper's), although his work as a whole of course belongs to an earlier period of our literature. It is now well-thumbed literary history that The Luck of Roaring Camp (August, 1868, Overland) and The Outcasts of Poker Flat (January, 1869, Overland) brought him a popularity that, in its suddenness and extent, had no precedent in American literature save in the case of Mrs. Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin. According ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... professional soldiers against whom they were pitted. He had the misfortune of meeting almost the only British leader then in South Africa capable of instinctively assessing him on the spot at his true valuation; and like a timid poker-player with a good hand, he allowed himself to be bluffed by the flourishes of his opponent. He held good cards, but he feebly threw them down. At Magersfontein he played his hand with skill, but lost the deciding ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... wake! the crafts are out; Wake!" said the knight, "be quick! For high street, bye street, over the town They fight with poker and stick." Said the squire, "A fight so fell was ne'er In all my bailliewick." What said the old clock in ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... out. Go 'long there with you!" cried Captain Ben, waving the dish-cloth and the poker. "I declare for 't! I most hadn't ought to have left that bread out on the table. They've made a pretty mess of it, and it is every spec there is in the house too. Well, I must make a do of potatoes for supper, with a bit of pie and ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... embroidered rumour from men making long trips across the country. He had gone to work for a cattle outfit, taking a dollar a day and doing an ordinary cowboy's work. Even before he was twenty-one, men called him Red Reckless. He had learned to gamble, and to gamble for big stakes. He played poker; he took his chance with the "bank"; but he loved the dice. They were quicker; a man could "make or break" at one throw. It was his way to hazard everything on a throw, to laugh if he won, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... another course. The first warning that she had of the murderers' presence was from their steps and voices already in the hall. She heard her master run hastily into the hall, crying out, "Lord Jesus!—Mary, Mary, save me!" The servant resolved to give what aid she could, seized a large poker, and was hurrying to his assistance, when she found that they had nailed up the door of communication at the head of the stairs. What passed after this she could not tell; for, when the impulse of intrepid fidelity had been balked, and she found that her own safety was provided for by means which ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... a cupboard an old, small, battered portmanteau which, by the initials on it, I recognised as my own property. The lock appeared to have been forced. I dimly remembered having forced it myself, with a poker, in my hot youth, after some journey in which I had lost the key; and this act of violence was probably the reason why the trunk had so long ago ceased to travel. I unstrapped it, not without dust; it exhaled the faint scent of its long closure; ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... suitable gestures. It was on one of these occasions—when he had assumed at a moment's notice the role of the "Baffled Despot", in an argument with Kennedy in his study on the subject of the house football team—that he broke what Mr Blackburn considered a valuable door with a poker. Since then he had moderated ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Machree have been scrubbed until they shine. They're sitting in the window drying in the sun. Mary Ann is cleaning Peter Pan in the lard bucket, and Patsy is washing Teddy Magee in the rain-barrel. Nora is curling Clarissa's hair with the poker, and somebody's ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... his whole frame from top to toe. 'I have felt this strange feeling before,' said he. 'I can't help thinking there's something wrong about that closet.' He made a strong effort, plucked up his courage, shivered the lock with a blow or two of the poker, opened the door, and there, sure enough, standing bolt upright in the corner, was the last tenant, with a little bottle clasped firmly in his hand, and his face—well!" As the little old man concluded he looked round on the attentive faces of his wondering auditory with ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... The poker stopped rattling between the grate-bars; the husband looked at the wife. Her eyes, though turned partly away, betrayed their mischief. There was a deadly pause; then a rush to the assault, a shower of Cupid's arrows, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Gabriella, I believe he has gone deranged!" Miss Polly cried out sharply, dropping the poker and starting to her feet in ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... investments, a fellow who was reputed to have stock in a dozen mines and kindred enterprises, a knowing hand who drove fast horses and owned quite a stable, a sharp hand who played a thriving game of poker, and had no compunctions as to winning. Officers at Emory were fighting shy of him. He played too big a game for their small pay and pockets, and the men with whom he took his pleasure were big contractors or well-known "sports" ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... that peace be made with the crabs; and thus they induced the king of the monkeys to enter their hole unattended, and seated him on the hearth. The Monkey, not suspecting any plot, took the hibashi, or poker, to stir up the slumbering fire, when bang! went the egg, which was lying hidden in the ashes, and burned the Monkey's arm. Surprised and alarmed, he plunged his arm into the pickle-tub in the kitchen to relieve the pain of ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... be ensconced so near the blaze, quickly addressed himself to the task of improving it by a dexterous use of a huge faggot by way of poker. He had thrown off his upper clothing; and the grim walls soon reddened with the rising glow. So intent was he on an occupation which he evidently enjoyed, that he was not aware when Oliver departed, the latter slipping off unobserved ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... establishes himself firmly in the land with great joy and plenty; and he gathers round him all that makes life full-toned and harmonious, from the grand timbre of draught-ale and the organ-thunder of hunting, to the piccolo and tintinnabulum of Poker and maraschino. His life is a fresco-painting, on which some Cyclopaean Raphaelite has poured his rainbows from a fire-engine ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... shanty, when he heard voices—loud, coarse voices—coming from his shanty. He crawled up close. The door was open. There in his dear cabin were three tramps playing cards and drinking out of a bottle. On the ground beside them were his shell necklaces broken up to furnish poker chips. In a smouldering fire outside were the remains of his bow ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... you want," said the one Herbert, who by an ill destiny chanced to be present, "'The red-hot poker held before the Cat's nose: When the poker advances the Cat ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... took up the poker and gave a good banging to the coals. There was plenty on the fire, but it had got black for want of stirring up. In a moment or two there was a cheery blaze. Clement pushed me into a seat and sat down near me on the table, his ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... gunpowder in the house, he insisted on commencing operations immediately. Accordingly, he bounded back to the house and speedily returned, accompanied by the little butler and half a dozen servants and labourers with pickaxes and gunpowder, a hanging stove, and a poker, together with a basket of cold meat and two ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... for the window opened on a back lane, dark and solitary at night, and, from the heat of the weather, the iron-cased shutter was not yet closed; the sound was repeated, and he heard a faint voice. He glanced at the poker, and then cautiously moved to the window, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... who wish to sleep there. And as these gentlemen turn the drawing-room into a dormitory, which resounds with their snoring, they in turn are bores to people who wish to read the papers. But if these students drop the poker with a clang, or dash down small tables in order to waken the sleepers, they, in their turn, give a good deal of annoyance. The man who talks about politics at great length, is only one of the common bores of the world transported ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... wedding had subsided, we had a visitation from forty Chinese peers. They came in a cavalcade of kuramas, gorgeously arrayed, and presenting an imposing appearance. I ran for the poker for I thought maybe they had come to finish "Us Missionaries." But, bless you, they had heard of our school and our kindergarten and had come for the Chinese Government to investigate ways and means. They made a tour of the ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... "I wonder what I ever saw in you anyway. You're infernally shallow and alcoholic and your notions of poker are as distorted as your morals. I'm not sure but I think you'd cheat." He shrugged wearily. "Get out," he said collectively. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Berlin: surely his Negotiation is now OUT in all manner of senses! Long ago (to use our former ignoble figure) he had "laid down the bellows, though there was still smoke traceable:" but now, by this Grumkow Letter, he has, as it were, struck the POKER through the business; and that dangerous manoeuvre, not proving successful, has been fatal and final! Queen Sophie and certain others may still flatter themselves; but it is evident the Negotiation is at last complete. What may lie in ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... them was terribly enraged when they failed to find even a dollar for their pains, and I assured him I did not have such a thing to my name," the aged man said, almost pathetically, Fred thought. "He would have struck me with the poker, as he threatened to do, only his companions held his arm. I have been in mortal ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... night, as he was repeating the part of Alexander, with his wooden representative of Clitus, (an elbow chair), and coming to the speech where the old general is to be killed, this young mock Alexander snatched a poker, instead of a javelin, and threw it with such strength, against poor Clitus, that the chair was killed upon the spot, and lay mangled on the floor. The death of Clitus made a monstrous noise, which disturbed the master in the ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... red-hot poker in B'er Wolf t'roat, un 'e hu't um so bad, 'tiss-a bin long tam befo' B'er Wolf kin tekky da long walk by da cocoanut tree. Bumbye 'e git so 'e kin come by, un wun 'e git dey-dey, ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... I handled, too, the poker used to such good purpose by Geoffrey Crayon. The muse had fled, the fire was out, and the poker rusty, yet a pleasant influence lingered even in that cold little room, and seemed to lend a transient glow to the poker under ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... hoard of it! Hundreds o' tons of ivory, all waiting to be found, and fossicked out, an' took! Say—if I was some o' those Greeks for instance, tell you what I'd do: I'd off to Zanzibar, an' kidnap Tippoo Tib. The old card's still living. I'd apply a red-hot poker to his silver-side an' the under-parts o' his tripe-casings. He'd tell me where the stuff is quicker'n winking! Supposin' I was a Greek without morals or no compunctions or nothin', that's what I'd ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... answered, and she opened it. He was stooping over his fire, poker in hand. She paused on the threshold, and, after breaking a hard lump of coal, he looked over his shoulder: "Miss Lisle! I beg your pardon. I thought they had come ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... far distant from Wall Street. The farmers of Ohio, the cowboys of Texas, the miners of Nevada, owe allegiance to the same Government, and shape the same speech to their own purpose. Every State is a separate country, and cultivates a separate dialect. Then come baseball, poker, and the racecourse, each with its own metaphors to swell the hoard. And the result is a language of the street and camp, brilliant in colour, multiform in character, which has not a rival in the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... me," said the good Mrs. Goodall once to a sympathetic circle, "that they dinna play poker at the taivern—an' in the daytime too—for I passed by this verra day, an' they were pokin' away, wi' their coats off, wi' lang sticks in their hands, pokin' at the wee white balls," and her listeners needed ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... "Private poker-room," Mr. Ryder announced with pride. "Enough coin's changed hands here to buy the greatest gold-mine in Nevada! Make yourself comfortable, Ma'am. Now, who was it ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... parlor, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you may draw anything that is there, for practice; even the fire-irons or the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it is for practice, and not because it is a beloved carpet, or a friendly poker and tongs, nor because you wish to please your ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... weight of sugar, then add the sugar, light the fire, and keep it stirring until it boils, regulating the fire so as not to suffer it to boil over; as it begins to lessen in quantity, dip the end of the poker into it, to see if it candies as it cools, and grows proportionably bitter to its consistence; mark the height of the sugar in the boiler when it is all melted, to assist in judging of its decrease; when the specimen taken out candies, or sets hard pretty ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... of you to want to save my old desk, Maurice," jeered his companion; "but I had the misfortune to put the poker through the bottom of it before I called you, so that I'm afraid it really isn't ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... to go under. So I let my head fall on my breast, and I pulled the wool hat over my eyes, and thought for the last of the beaver I had trapped, and the buffalo as had taken my lead pills in their livers, and the poker and euchre I'd played at the Rendezvous at Bent's Fort. I felt comfortable as eating fat cow to think ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... and reduced to captivity,—at once intimidated by blows and enervated by taming. He punished for sensibility; he rewarded meanness; he encouraged vice; he made the child wait on him at table, sometimes striking him on the face with a knotted towel, sometimes raising the poker and threatening to strike ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to the time when nature has been resolutely expelled by a knowledge of dynamics and statics, and when Lucy, with children of her own, will be directing their attention away from childish fancies, to the fact that the poker is a lever, and that curly hair is ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... consulting what was to be done, and could come to no agreement. The tailor said, "We must bear whatever is done to us, and not resist." Chouev replied that if they decided on that course they would, all of them, be beaten to death. In consequence, he seized a poker and went out of the house. "Come!" he shouted, "let us follow the law of Moses!" And, falling upon the peasants, he knocked out one man's eye, and in the meanwhile all those who had been in his house contrived to get out ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... fact ruled as first favorite. It was known all over the barracks by breakfast time that Case, the bookkeeper, had bluffed out the young swell from the Columbia who had come down to teach them how to play poker and fight Apaches. "Willett stock" among the rank and file had not been too high at the start, had been sinking fast since the affair at Bennett's Ranch, and was a drug in the market when the command, as was then the custom of the little army, turned out for inspection ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... some that I had lost, at poker, and lost most of what I had raised. I suppose I'd have lost all of it if Rawdon hadn't caught me ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... scene of drunkenness, gambling, brawling and fighting, so long as the money and credit of the trappers last. Seated Indian fashion around the fires, with a blanket spread before them, groups are seen with their 'decks' of cards playing at 'euchre,' 'poker,' and 'seven-up,' the regular mountain games. The stakes are beaver, which is here current coin; and when the fur is gone, their horses, mules, rifles and shirts, hunting packs and breeches are staked. Daring gamblers make the rounds of the camp, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... teaches, and what he's going up there this time of night for?" was the mental comment of the chauffeur. "Maybe they have evening classes, but this guy looks as though he could give em a post-graduate course in poker." ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... Maximilian Harden said, the Germans think of us as a land of dollars, trusts and corruption; and other nations think of us as devotees of the cocktail and of poker. Their school boys dream of fighting Indians in Pittsburg and hunting buffalo in the deserts ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... the store, he made his toilet for this little hand at poker. It was a simple preparation. He took his pistol from its holster, examined it, then shoved it between his overalls and his shirt in front, and pulled his waistcoat over it. He might have been combing his hair for all the attention any one paid to this, except myself. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... to stop 'em talking nonsense. Look at all that smoke going up our chimney." So it was, and a jolly blaze there was going to be when the three shovelfuls Sally had enthusiastically heaped on had incubated, and the time was ripe for the poker. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... to hang over the door. "Oh dogs!" said he; "the evil dogs!" He sat down near the door, and commenced sobbing like an aged woman. One observed, "Why don't you attend the sick, and not set there making such a noise?" He took up the poker and laid it on them, mimicking the voice of the old woman. "Dogs that you are! why do you laugh at me? You know very well that I am so sorry that I am nearly out of my head." With that he approached ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... into summer quarters at Tupelo. Our principal occupation at this place was playing poker, chuck-a-luck and cracking graybacks (lice). Every soldier had a brigade of lice on him, and I have seen fellows so busily engaged in cracking them that it reminded me of an old woman knitting. At first ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... teacher, noting that no one was obeying his order, and not daring to go forward unarmed, ran back at the top of his speed for the stick. But he was too late; for, by the time he had gained the school-room and grabbed both the pointer and the stove poker, the little girl had scrambled upon her pinto and ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... had a great deal of money hidden somewhere, and for its sake had nearly had his throat cut some two years ago: ever since then he carried his head thus. Over his eyes hung grayish eyebrows, and, looked at in profile, only his crooked nose was to be seen. His shadow reminded one of a poker. He denied that he had money, and said that they "only tried to cut his throat out of malice," and from that day he took to collecting rags, and that is why his head was always bent as if incessantly looking on the ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... you abstract the necessary enlightenment from the questioner himself (while appearing to be perfectly conversant with what he is talking about), and, if possible, get him to suggest the answer to his own conundrum. In other words, bluff as in poker (which I trust ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... game of single-handed poker with one of the Trekkers, and beat him hollow. Not at first, of course, out of politeness; but at game No. 3 he was nowhere. Bless him, I knew a "trek" worth any three of his. He wanted to go about with me after this, but he became such a Boer (that's the origin of our word at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... automatically. After a moment he laid down the poker, and drew the chair with her in it close to the fender. Then he picked up the cloak and put it about her shoulders, and finally ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... shingle hatchet to a Scotch trader dying of malaria, and in turn had been traded from hand to hand, for four shillings to a blackbirder, for a turtle-shell comb made by an English coal-passer after an old Spanish design, for the appraised value of six shillings and sixpence in a poker game in the firemen's forecastle, for a second-hand accordion worth at least twenty shillings, and on for eighteen shillings cash to a little old withered Chinaman—so did pass Cocky, as mortal or as immortal as any brave sparkle of life on the planet, from the possession of one, Ah Moy, a sea-cock ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... stand all night. A spoonful or more of N.E. rum makes pancakes light. Flip makes very nice pancakes. In this case, nothing is done but to sweeten your mug of beer with molasses; put in one glass of N.E. rum; heat it till it foams, by putting in a hot poker; and stir it up with flour as ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... Jefferson, who had the rare virtue of being an admirable listener to any controversy or discussion. "Suppose, my dear, we have a game of poker." ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... everything here had gone to sleep for a hundred years," she said, gazing in astonishment at the little hall, with its old clock, its two or three stiff hunting-pictures, its drab-painted walls, its poker-work chest. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... warship," replied the man, "an ey hope yo may be able to deliver me. Yo mun knoa, that somehow ey wor unlucky enough last Yule to offend Mother Chattox, an ever sin then aw's gone wrang wi' me. Th' good-wife con never may butter come without stickin' a redhot poker into t' churn; and last week, when our brindlt sow farrowed, and had fifteen to t' litter, an' fine uns os ever yo seed, seign on um deed. Sad wark! sad wark, mesters. The week efore that t' keaw deed; an th' week efore her th' owd mare, so that aw ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "siesta" make a "rough-and-ready" hammock, by taking apart a flour barrel or sugar barrel, and in the end of each stave bore a three-quarter inch hole with a heated poker, or bit and auger. Then lace thin rope (clothes line is good) through the holes. This can be accomplished easily by noting method of lacing in figure "A." The stay-blocks "B" should be 12 inches long. Figure "C" ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... ruled by the real markets outside, so that we might experience the course and vicissitude of prices. We must keep books, and our ledgers were overhauled at the month's end by the principal or his assistants. To add a spice of verisimilitude, "college paper" (like poker chips) had an actual marketable value. It was bought for each pupil by anxious parents and guardians at the rate of one cent for the dollar. The same pupil, when his education was complete, resold, at the same figure, so much as was left him to the college; and even in the midst of his curriculum, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Captain Herbert seized the poker and attacked the fire again. He seemed waiting for Monteith to proceed, but as he did not, he answered rather shortly, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... individual of certain tastes other diversions existed beyond attendance at concerts and athletic competitions. Card games were played—"bridge" being the first favourite, but "poker" also having a large following. Gambling was forbidden by the regulations. Nevertheless, the usual veteran of other wars was found on board who was prepared to initiate all who were tempted into some of the mysteries of "banker" or "crown and anchor." ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... that appeal to the average which in England is sentimentality. Compare, for instance, the admirable story "Boule de Suif," perhaps the best story which Maupassant ever wrote, with a story of somewhat similar motive—Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." Both stories are pathetic; but the pathos of the American (who had formed himself upon Dickens, and in the English tradition) becomes sentimental, and gets its success by being sentimental; while the pathos of the Frenchman ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... it may have been I cannot tell,' Sir George said, 'but I imagine the one the household usually attended. The other detail that a fire burned in our pew, did impress itself definitely upon my mind. I was at least big enough to lift a poker, and what must I do but seize that instrument, and set to scraping the fire, to the confusion of those with me. Perhaps the idea of a fire in a church pew may be deemed curious at this date, so much later. But why not? It was really a ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... Governor in another and Archie, left to his own devices, fumed at this desertion. The two would meet somewhere and plan the next strategic move, Archie surmised, and he was irritated to find himself denied a place in their councils. He refused an invitation to sit in at a poker game that was being organized in the farm hands' house and wandered idly about the premises. The residence was a two-story farmhouse, with a broad veranda evidently quite recently added. As Archie passed the windows he noted that the rooms were handsomely furnished. This was not an establishment ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... in the drawing-room of the worldling, or in common dress around the fireside of the unchristian Church member. Like the professional gambler his instrument is "cards," and he can shake the "dice." His games are whist, progressive euchre, and sometimes poker. The stakes now are not money, but the gratification of excitement and the indulgence of passion. One, two, four hours go by almost unnoticed. Prizes are offered for the best player. As a Catholic priest told ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... seen at its worst than on a steamer calling at foreign ports: once it gets a foothold it supplants almost all other vices and becomes a veritable Frankenstein. It is harder to break away from this habit than from poker, gossiping, strong drink, tobacco, or even eating peas with your knife if you have been brought up that way. The majority of the "Corks" when landing at a port would not have stopped to say "Good morning" to Adam, to take a peep at Bwana ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... he would throw a waiter out of the window, and bid him to be put into the reckoning, toss a beggar in a blanket, play at chuck with china plates, run his head against a wall, hop upon one leg for an hour together, carry a red-hot poker round the room between his teeth, and ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... were all strangers. The first lieutenant, Mr Horrocks, a red-faced man, with curly whiskers, and as stiff as a poker, had not much the cut of a naval officer; while the second lieutenant, Mr Lascelles, who was delicate, refined, young, and good-looking, offered a great contrast ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... America, when she deeply regretted that I had not called on her in Munich. I must have had a great moral influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend whom she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, chair, or other deadly weapon. We were both born at the same time in the same year, and I find by the rules of sorcery that she is the first person who will meet me when I go to heaven. I always had a great and strange respect for her singular talents; ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... my mother's money on horse-racin', save a few thousand which he had invested for her, and she felt wuz safe, but he took that to run away with a bally girl, and squandered it all on her and died on the town. My eldest sister's husband beat her with a poker, and throwed her out of a three-story front in San Francisco, and she landin' on a syringea tree wuz saved to git a divorce from him and also from her second and third husbands for cruelty, after which she gave up matrimony and opened a boarding-house, bitter in ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... direct, and downright, as his style of studied composition was involved and circuitous. As when Topham Beauclere and Langton knocked him up at his chambers, at three in the morning, and he came to the door with the poker in his hand, but seeing them, exclaimed, "What, is it you, my lads? then I'll have a frisk with you!" and he afterwards reproaches Langton, who was a literary milksop, for leaving them to go to an engagement ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... passing along the upper hall when she saw Frida's pink cotton skirt disappear in an adjacent room, and heard her light laugh as the door closed. But the room happened to be a card-room reserved exclusively for gentlemen's poker or euchre parties, and the chambermaids had no business there. Miss Trotter had no doubt that Mr. Calton was there, and that Frida knew it; but as this was an indiscretion so open, flagrant, and likely to ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... home. There she had always played in well-furnished rooms with plenty of toys, and good fires in winter. The attic had no carpet and no fire, and the only things in it were one broken old chair, a poker, some rolls of dusty wall-paper, and some large black boxes. Its single attraction was its lone-ness; there was no one here who could say "don't," and no need for lowered voices and quietness. This Susan soon found to be a ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... were so sworn to do the Storm King's bidding that no power other than his rough sway could compel your presence. Come you on your own account or on his? Be it either, you are free to partake of our bounty. Ho, there, Merrythought! heave on more logs and heat the poker, that we may thrust it fizzing into our tankards: 'tis always bitter ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... and having the most extraordinary notions of the use, or rather the abuse, of the various kitchen implements: for instance, she will poke the fire with the toasting fork, and disregards my gentle hints about the poker; but at all events she can both roast mutton and bake bread. "Meary" has been induced to wash her face and braid up her beautiful hair, and now shines forth as a very pretty good-humoured girl. ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... see each other's faces," observed Sir Harry, cheerfully. "Will you allow me to take the liberty, though I have not known you for seven years—and hardly for seven minutes!" And then he seized the poker, and broke up ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... the goody sort! By the poker! they sell their sermons dearer than we sell the rarest and realest thing on earth—pleasure.—And they can spin a yarn! There, I know them. I have seen plenty in my mother's house. They think everything is allowable for the Church and for—Really, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... I daresay. I'm no longer in the movement. I might have been amused once by the story of a clandestine tea-party and an outraged parent with a poker; I don't know. All I do know is, that I find it rather dreary at present. We'll drop in at just one or two more places, Sir, and then go quietly home to bed, eh?" They entered a few more Music Halls, and found the entertainment at each pretty much alike; now and then, instead of songs about ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... human beings which they are unable to bear. One afternoon in the city of Emporia ten tramps were arrested and thrown into the county jail. During the succeeding night one of these persons thrust a poker into the stove, and heating it red hot, made an effort to push the hot iron through the door, thus burning a large hole in the door-casing. The next morning the sheriff, entering the jail, perceiving what this vagrant had ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... the house-maid, Biddy McNair, With face so red and arms so bare, Who took the poker without a care, And slew the prince of noble air, Who killed the great and terrible bear, That ate the peaches so sweet and rare, That grew in the garden fresh and fair, And married the girl with the golden hair, That lived in the house that ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... our college days, I had had a peep at this gambling tempter of Bob's. Once in a poker game in our rooms, when a crowd of New York classmates tried to run him out of a hand by the sheer weight of coin. And again at the Pequot House at New London on the eve of a varsity boat-race, when a Yale crowd shook a big wad of ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... heat-waves to shake the water-particles asunder. It has been found by experiment that, in order to turn 1 lb. of water into vapour, as much heat must be used as is required to melt 5 lbs. of iron; and if you consider for a moment how difficult iron is to melt, and how we can keep an iron poker in a hot fire and yet it remains solid, this will help you to realize how much heat the sun must pour down in order to carry off such a constant supply of vapour from the ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... had been altered and that he would have to wait forty-five minutes for the next train to London with the resignation of a man already chastened by misfortune and fatigue. He went into the waiting-room and after a vain search for the poker—the new stationmaster evidently kept it in a different place—sat down in front of an irritatingly dull fire banked up with slack, and nursed his damaged hand and ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Katherine Trent is coming here as a trained nurse?" she said, and she put down the poker, and, folding her arms, began ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... of coal red-hot. Billy, however, did not know this. Her experience of fires was confined to burning wood in open grates—and wood in open grates had to be poked to make it red and glowing. With confident alacrity now, therefore, Billy caught up the poker, thrust it into the mass of coals and gave them a fine stirring up. Then she set back the lid of the stove and went to hunt up the ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... place was utterly foul. The stench of tobacco smoke blending with the fumes of liquor left it nauseating. In the farthest corner of the room, just beside one of the windows, a group of four men were playing draw poker, and with these were Kate's two hired men, Nick Devereux, with his vulture head and long lean neck, and Pete Clancy, the half-breed, whose cadaverous cheeks and furtive eye marked him out as ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
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