"Fingered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... collie, and he has been in treaty for one ever so long. Is he not a dear old boy?" cried Dick, rapturously. But he did not tell his friends of the crisp bundle of bank-notes with which Mr. Mayne had enriched his son; only as Dick fingered them lovingly, he wondered what pretty foreign thing he could buy for Nan, and whether her mother would ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... He fingered controls lightly, depressed a few more keys, and set one vernier, already at a ratio of a million to one, down to ten million. He then stepped up his velocity, and found that the guides worked well up to a speed much greater than any ever reached by Fenachrone ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... of the goddesses are raised, and the rosy-fingered hands tear the silvery veils from their heads and cast them triumphantly behind them, and triumphantly the gods greet the beaming countenances of the goddesses, their sparkling eyes and rosy lips, the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... were young Eckart vom Hof, and the barely much older, though already famous Gregorius Bandelmeyer, a noted mathematician, a savage Republican, lean-faced, spectacled, and long, soft-fingered; a cat to look at, a tiger to touch. Both of them were animated by detestation of the Imperial uniform. They distrusted my skill in the management of the weapon I had chosen; for reasons of their own ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been coached before he came. With slender, long-fingered hands, which trembled at first, he selected certain tools with nice precision, made some rapid measurements of the weapon and of the cleared space around it, and began to adjust the parts of a queer little machine. Arnold ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... through you like a thin knife—(or more like a long, slender hatpin jabbing your head), and having waited an instant before returning their greeting, slowly answered; "Very well, thank you. Yes, I am going home rather early. I'm due at Newport as soon as possible"; then fingered her open book (which she hadn't peeped into before) and made a little, just noticeable ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... valuable, and in cases where the home shanty is left unguarded. The value of prime otter or mink pelt is a matter of no small importance, and a good trapping ground furnishes a rare field for light fingered prowlers who are well posted on the market price of raw furs, and who are constantly on the lookout for such prizes, either in the shape of the prepared skin, or on the back of the live animal. These "trap ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... drilled, such a body of picked troops would form a nucleus for further development, and might become a dependable support in any emergency. This corps was commanded by an excellent officer, my aide-de-camp, Lieut.-Colonel Abd-el-Kader, but owing to the peculiar light-fingered character of the men, I gave it the name of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... lessons began, it might almost be said it was only when a spectator was present that he was not sobbing. For Rosie, who was an awkward, ungraceful young person, proved to be the dullest and most butter-fingered pupil ever invented for the torture of teachers; at least, so Lancelot thought, but then he had never had any other pupils, and was not patient. It must be admitted, though, that Rosie giggled perpetually, apparently ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... he sat down and began quietly to remodel his life. He would not be an explorer, after all, nor an engine-driver nor chimney-sweep. He would be a man of mystery, a murderer, fighter, forger. He fingered his ears tentatively. They seemed fixed on jolly fast. He glanced with utter contempt at his father who had just come in. His father's life of blameless respectability seemed to him at that ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... fingered his watch-chain. He had never had precisely this experience before—to try to push a man and have him beg that you give his good luck to somebody else. Surely this Peter Strong was an extraordinary person! Mr. Tyler could now understand how even the president of the company, under the spell of ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... (though the date was 1723), but his own gray hair, brushed smoothly back from a sufficiently handsome forehead and tied behind with a fresh black ribbon. In his right hand he held a straw hat, broad-brimmed like a Quaker's, and a white umbrella with a green lining. His left fingered his clean-shaven chin as ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... blunt questions, and offer homely advice—plainly thought she was going astray. It amused Polly to encourage this misconception, and to take offence on every opportunity. As she went down into the kitchen she fingered a gold watch-chain that hung from her blouse to a little pocket at her waist. Mrs. Bubb would spy it at once, and in course of the quarrel about this morning's hot water would be sure ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... abruptly from the window. His pale face was even paler under the excitement burning in his dark eyes. He thrust out a hand, a delicate, long-fingered hand pointing at his friend ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... slowly passed. Maskull made some convulsive movements, and opened his eyes. He sat up, blinking. All was night-like and silent in the forest. The strange light had gone, the music had ceased, Dreamsinter had vanished. He fingered his beard, clotted with Tydomin's blood, and fell ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... and with one of his long-fingered hands he made a gesture toward the opposite side of the room and spoke my name ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... and she had been sent for, some days in advance of the great occasion, in order (being past her youth) to recover from the fatigue of the journey. None of the young girls had ever seen her, and exclaiming with joy they fingered ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... the oddness and difference of other races was particularly acute. He knew that to Tiger and Jack he himself seemed odd, both anatomically and in other ways. His fine gray fur and his four-fingered hands set him apart from them—he would never be mistaken for an Earthman, even in the densest fog. But these were comprehensible differences. His close attachment to Fuzzy was something else, and still seemed ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... quelling silence followed the lighting of my cigarette. Feeling rather at a loose end, I thought out a few stage directions—"here business with handkerchief, etc."—and adjusted the buckles on my shoes. I looked at some photographs and fingered a paper-knife and odds and ends on the table near me. The oppressive silence continued. I strolled to the book-shelves and, under cover of a copy of "Country Conversations," peeped at the Master. He appeared to be ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... his beard-point with his broad-fingered right hand. His small, observant hazel eyes rebuked Craven mildly, and he slightly shook his head, covered with thick, crinkly and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... but the world could afford him a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. Nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly-devised article, even as an Engine? Good Heavens! A white European Man, standing on his two Legs, with his two five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth, I should say, from ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... fumbled and tried to stop the quern, but however much he twisted and fingered it, the quern went on grinding, and in a little while the broth reached so high that the man was very near drowning. He then pulled open the parlor door, but it was not very long before the quern had filled the parlor also, and it was ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... you." She fingered the stem of the glass, not lifting her eyes. "But you have belittled me, too. I read it in books, and here on the threshold, as I step outside of books, you meet me with it. We women are always, it seems, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and he gazed upon two pairs of handcuffs, one of which was clasped around his wrists, while the other held his ankles in their steel embrace, while above him, watching his every movement, was a man dressed in the uniform of a captain of police who in a most menacing manner fingered the trigger of a revolver, which Jim recognized as the same weapon that he had attempted to steal off the ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... partly, distrust my own feelings. And I am aware that I have been soured by prison indignities. But still the conviction remains with me that parliamentary interests are not those battles of gods and giants which I used to regard them. Our Gyas with the hundred hands is but a Three-fingered Jack, and I sometimes think that we share our great Jove with the Strand Theatre. Nevertheless I shall go back,—and if they will make me a joint lord to-morrow I ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the unwrapping. They were simple gifts, but Miss Lily fingered them lovingly, even to the ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... members of that family on the other. They laid sundry misfortunes, and particularly the loss of male heirs which at that time befell them, to my parent's not having done the hereditary homage to the bloody-fingered Bahr-geist." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... uneasily. He fingered the badge on his breast for a moment, and then he put an arm around the old woman and drew her close to him. She smiled the unchanging mother smile of three-score years, and patted his big brown hand with her crooked, mittened fingers ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Magpies swooped from the blue spruce at the edge of the corral, black and white against pale blue. The cattle, all Herefords, red and white, milled about and lowed and tossed worried heads. The riders, sheepskin chaps flapping, bright neckerchiefs fluttering, shouted and cursed and fingered their lariats. Dogs, yellow dogs, black dogs, gray dogs, spotted dogs, continuously encroached from without the fence and were ordered or ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... waiting-room smelt strongly of antiseptics. That was Patricia's predominating thought as she wandered aimlessly about the apartment. She fingered its dusty furniture. She remembered afterward the steel-engraving of Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, with General Lee explaining some evidently important matter to those attentive and unhumanly stiff politicians; and she remembered, too, how in depicting one statesman, who unavoidably sat with ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... If they had any distrust or fear of us at first, they now appeared to have laid it aside; for they came on board the ships, and mixed with our people with the greatest freedom. We soon discovered, by this nearer intercourse, that they were as light-fingered as any of our friends in the islands we had visited in the course of the voyage. And they were far more dangerous thieves; for, possessing sharp iron-instruments, they could cut a hook from a tackle, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... was a small, brown, square-built, black-haired, homely-featured old woman, in a big, round starched white cap and a flowing black silk gown. She sat in an uncushioned oaken armchair by the window, with some white knitting in her bony, blunt-fingered brown hands, and tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on her nose. But the spectacles couldn't hide the goodness or the soundness or the sweetness that looked forth from her motherly old honest ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... into the street, she felt an intense longing to get out under the blue sky once more. Mr. and Mrs. Graham and Antoinette sat round the hearth, discussing the tableaux for the evening, while, with her cheek upon her hand, Cornelia listlessly fingered a diamond necklace which her father had just given her. The blazing jewels slipped through her pale fingers all unnoticed, and she looked up abstractedly when Mr. Graham touched her, and repeated his question for the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... admiration; muttered remark, "By George, but he's deep!") He fingered his clues. "And now let us ask these mute witnesses to speak ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... grunted. "The way I hear it, your whole department has given up, so I'm assigned to help you out of your usual fumble-fingered confusion." ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Admiral, in H. M. S. Agincourt, towed by the Spitfire steamer. As soon as he was joined by the rest of the squadron, it was the intention of Sir T. Cochrane to make sail for Bruni, and punish the six-fingered sultan ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... trusted either the Lord or us, or thought there was anything between us and heaven that might make us good because we wanted to be. You couldn't keep your eyes from the big gad and ruler on her desk; she often fingered them as she prayed, and you knew from her stiff, little, sawed-out petition that her faith was in implements, and she'd hit you a crack the minute she was the least angry, same as she had me the day before. I didn't feel any too good toward her, but ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... in which any one who has ever loved a donkey recognizes scathing criticism. Daphne fingered one of ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... Soon rosy-fingered Dawn, shaking the purple reins, was guiding her steeds across the path of heaven; and, snatched from my untroubled rest, night gave me back to day. Dismay seized my soul at the recollection of my deeds of the past evening. I sat there, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... a minute by the discovery that Meeker had been lurking in the passage while I was listening to Captain Riggs and Harris in the storeroom, I leaned against the companionway and fingered the shell crucifix, wondering how near Meeker had come to making an end of me. Of course, the finding of the crucifix down there, and the man who ran up the ladder when surprised by Riggs, meant nothing else but that Meeker had been below either ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... with the boys into the orchard, where they had rigged up a parallel bar. They did feats of strength. He was more agile than strong, but it served. He fingered a piece of apple-blossom that hung ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... section of bamboo, but not detaching them at the ends. They are raised and tuned by inserting small wedges of wood at the ends. Small sections of thin bamboo are sometimes fitted over two strings, and are beaten with sticks, or the strings can be fingered ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... guard the other two stooped and moved around the base of the tree, narrowly examining the ground. Beyond it they paused at one spot, fingered the soil lightly, and lit a ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... unspeakably, Neat-footed, weak-fingered, in his face,— Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race, Bold-lipped, rich tinted, mutable as the sea, The brown eyes radiant with vivacity,— There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, A spirit intense and rare, with trace on ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... a stout, fat-fingered, immovable kind of person. He said nothing till he had penciled down the car's official number. Tabs gave his name and address. "Lord Taborley, etc." The policeman lifted his slow eyes to judge for himself whether the Lord part of his information looked probable. The lean aristocratic ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... dumb, stupid desires, to be dimly illumined by his stinted inspirations, to share his foolish prejudices, to practice his obtuse selfishness. Yes, it is a very amusing world, if you do not refuse to be amused; and our friends were very willing to be entertained. They delighted in the precise, thick-fingered old ladies who bought sweet apples of the boys come aboard with baskets, and who were so long in finding the right change, that our travellers, leaping in thought with the boys from the moving train, felt that they did so at the peril of their lives. Then they were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... offering sympathy that would be scorned. It was exactly the right thing at the moment, and Dora saw the wisdom of it and respected him. It lessened her fear; but she cried quietly for a little while; then, drying her tears, she fingered the music on the top of the grand ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... thousand dollars. Bud's eyes lightened with satisfaction when he looked at it. There would be pleasure as well as profit in driving this old girl to Los Angeles, he told himself. It fairly made his mouth water to look at her standing there. He got in and slid behind the wheel and fingered the gear lever, and tested the clutch and the foot brake—not because he doubted them, but because he had a hankering to feel their smoothness of operation. Bud loved a good car just as he had loved a good horse in the years behind ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... and crouched, his big frame ready to be released like a coiled spring. Miles backed up and fingered the trigger on the ray gun. "Come on, stupid," he snarled. "Come on, I'll give it to you again, ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... double-bass viol gripped his bow with his stubby twelve-year-old fingers, and hardly breathed as he strove to keep his notes subdued. The 'cello murmured a gentle undertone; the first violin sang as sweetly and delicately as a bird, her legato perfect. The second violin fingered her notes through, but the voice of her instrument was ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... to breakfast. Here again, as he seated himself, the Colonel was conscious of an agreeable flood of astonishment. There was quite an air about this Christmas breakfast. Fixing his keen eyes on the tablecloth and napkins, he stealthily fingered them with a searching look at the waiting negro. Fortunately his interest was speedily diverted. He caught sight of the orchids and the tear-stained face of his wife bending over them. With a wrench of his chair ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... after voice repeated, "It is nearer," and the clicking telegraph took that up, and it trembled along telephone wires, and in a thousand cities grimy compositors fingered the type. "It is nearer." Men writing in offices, struck with a strange realisation, flung down their pens, men talking in a thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility in those words, "It is nearer." It hurried along awakening streets, it was shouted down the ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... held their own thought, and never answered yours; but on the mouth there was a forlorn depression sometimes, like that of a man who, in spite of his fame, felt himself alone and neglected. It rested there now, as he idly fingered the chessmen. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Festus Clasby fingered his money in his pocket, and the touch of it made him struggle. "The can may be this man's for all I know. You have no brother, and I believe you ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... Bridgeman and a thickset, red-faced lady, without a waist and plainly clad in untrimmed linsey-wolsey, who was speaking authoritatively to a hysterical-looking young girl, upon whose narrow shoulder she rested a heavy, fat-fingered hand ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... in their close friendship did the Queen command him to make a song for her. This had been at Dover, about vespers, in the starved and tiny garden overlooking the English Channel, upon which her apartments faced; and the priest had fingered his lute for an appreciable while before he sang, more harshly than was ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... happened that on a certain day two vessels passed in the Strait of Gibraltar. The smaller, a trim white yacht, was speeding toward the east, and on her deck sat a young woman who gazed with sad eyes upon a diamond-studded locket which she idly fingered. Her thoughts were far away, in the dim, leafy fastness of a tropical jungle—and her heart was with ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... incongruity of it the instant your eye fell upon Chet Ball. Chet's shoulders alone would have loomed large in contrast with any wooden toy ever devised, including the Trojan horse. Everything about him, from the big, blunt-fingered hands that held the ridiculous chick to the great muscular pillar of his neck, was in direct opposition to his task, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... apart, two low-seated rush-bottomed high-backed prie-dieu had been placed. Upon the one on the left a little nun knelt, her loose black habit concealing all the outline of her figure. The white linen pall was turned back, across the chest of the corpse, to where the shapely long-fingered hands were folded upon an ebony and silver crucifix. By some harsh irony of imagination Lionel Gordon's voice rang in Poppy's ears: "My good girl, pull yourself together. Gehenna! you're the luckiest woman living. You're made, great heavens, you're made!"—while, blank despair in her heart, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... did not, it was sometimes remarked, resent this particular comparison. The likeness was carried further by Lady Coryston's tall and gaunt frame; by her formidable carriage and step; and by the energy of the long-fingered hands. In dress also there was some parallel between her and the Queen of many gowns. Lady Coryston seldom wore colors, but the richest of black silks and satins and the finest of laces were pressed night and day into the service of her masterful good looks. She made ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he stooped and turned over the trinkets. When he straightened himself he had in hand a string of great beads, rose and blue and green. He fingered these, seemed about to put the necklet on, then refrained as too daring. Laying it gently back upon the scarlet he next took up a hawk bell. These bells, as is known, ring very clear and sweet. I was afterwards told that the Portuguese had ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... I spoke, and gazed full into my eyes. Her hand fingered her parasol handle. "I meant what I said," she answered, with emphasis. "Within one year, Mr. Le Geyt will have murdered his wife. You may ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... desk, is every paper that I have in the world. You can look if you suspect me. But I shall not easily forgive you for looking." Then she threw down the key of her desk upon the table. He took it up and fingered it, but did not move towards the desk. "The greatest treasure there," she said, "are scraps of your own, which I have been a fool to value, as they have come from a man ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... accordingly he thought he could talk of affairs of state, and put his spoke in the wheel in the council. And he knew one thing more: he could embroider braces with roses and other flowers, and with arabesques, for he was a tasty, light-fingered fellow. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... loudly and turned to counting his notches. "Know-alls! That's wot they is—ruddy know-alls! Told me I didn't know wot a fair win' wos!" he muttered as he fingered his 'log.' ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... appearance was calculated to provoke—and did provoke—roars of laughter, though TIME only gazed the more sadly at him. He had coarse black hair falling about his ears, a white face, and a crimson nose; he wore a suit of dingy plaid, a battered hat, and long-fingered thread gloves. And he sang, very slowly and dolefully, ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... You might manage her. The money comes from the Eustace property, and I'd sooner it should go to you than a half-hearted, numb-fingered, cold-blooded Whig, like Fawn." ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... his hand into his pocket to close it over another hand already there, a hand which beyond a first little start to escape, lay passive and unresisting, a hand soft and delicate, yet well-muscled withal, long-fingered and finely formed. At the same time, a well-modulated ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... among green fields; but the fields are there, for those who can see them, behind the veil of smoke, and through them a wayfarer may still travel with the Knight who loved freedom and courtesy, the Monk shaking his belled bridle, the Ploughman on his mare, and the dainty fingered Prioress with her eyes as grey as glass, riding to join other pilgrims travelling east to ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... This was new and strange for him. To pay twenty-five dollars that he was not obliged by any self-interest to pay, would have been an act contrary to all his habits and to all the business maxims in which he had schooled himself. Nevertheless, he fingered his papers a minute in an undecided way, and then he said that he couldn't do it. If he began to pay creditors in that way "it would derange ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... silly," remarked Fom, superbly. "If the ground's sticky enough, and you're not butter-fingered,"—with an insulting glance at ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... occasion, across a Sunday-noon, lace-spread breakfast table, when she was slim and cool fingered in orchid-colored draperies, and his newest gift of a six-carat, pear-shaped diamond blazing away on her right hand. "Say, aren't ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... and awkward as she fingered an ornament on a small table, seemed singularly a part of her background. Her evening dress, slipping off her thin shoulders, was as faded and out of date as her carpet. It had once been delicately blue and gauzy, but its gauziness hung in crushed folds and its ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... African plan, because of the difficulty of getting skilful natives to tend young plants, and prepare the products. Tea he regarded as quite hopeless from this difficulty, and he said he did not think you would ever get Africans at as cheap a rate, or so deftly fingered to roll tea, as you can get Asiatics. No one knows until they have tried it the trouble it is to get an African to do things carefully; but it is a trouble, not an impossibility. If you don't go off with fever from sheer worry and vexation the thing can be done, but in the meantime he is maddening. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... deuce is she writing that skunk before she's well out of town?" he thought, scanning the envelope with jealous eyes. Then he held it up to the light, but the thick paper told nothing of what was within. Frowning, he laid the letter down, fingered it, withdrew his itching hand, hesitated, and finally put it ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... the boys rose in a curious way, making a highly pitched jeering snarl, while a number of unpleasant missiles that were held ready were fingered and held behind backs, but from a disinclination to become the victim of the sailor's marking, no lad was venturesome enough to start the shower intended to greet the newcomer. It was held in abeyance for the moment, and then became ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... seventy sailors from the four Russian men-of-war lying in the harbour had been let out for the evening, their blue serge blouses and lighter linen collars with white stripes having a familiar air, still it seemed strange that such smart ladies, in dainty gowns, hats flowered in Paris, and laces fingered in Belgium, should be dancing with ordinary able-bodied seamen. Ere long we discovered these sailors were cadets, or midshipmen, as we should call them, among the number being two Russian princes and many of the nobility. Then there were officers ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... which is common; but its rupture was of no consequence because the escaped contents were in the abscess cavity that finally emptied into the cecum, the natural outlet in all these cases if they are left to nature and not officiously fingered—thumbed ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... the prince. He had helped himself to a glass of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke. "You expect the world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and heavy, remember that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks. You would never make a diplomatist. I have heard of negotiations going ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... came a sound in the wind blowing from far Egypt, where at night Aurora mourns by the Nile for her slain son Memnon. To the feet of the Thunderer flew the rosy-fingered Goddess, and kneeling, cried, "Master, it is time I unlocked the gates of the East." And Phoebus, handing his lyre to Calliope, his bride among the Muses, prepared to depart for the jewelled and column-raised Palace of the Sun, where fretted the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... of which appeared in October, 1873, and the last in March, 1876, at Moscow (P. Jurgenson), in six volumes, is described on the title-page as "Complete works of Fr. Chopin critically revised after the original French, German, and Polish editions, carefully corrected and minutely fingered for pupils." [FOOTNOTE: This edition has been reprinted by Augener & Co., of London.] The work done by Klindworth is one of the greatest merit, and has received the highest commendations of such men as Liszt and Hans von Bulow. Objections that can be made to it are, that the fingering, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Wells and his woe drops out of sight. He's managed to keep hold of a little property that brings him in just enough to scrub along on, and he joins that hungry-eyed, trembly-fingered fringe of margin pikers that hangs around every hotel broker's branch in town, takin' a timid flier now and then, but tappin' the free lunch hard and reg'lar. You know the kind,—seedy hasbeens, with their futures all ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... riot through sky and clouds—pearly grey, jet black, dark dun, pale lavender, deep mauve, rich carmine, and brightest gold. These colours fade away into the darkness of the night; the stars then peep forth and twinkle brightly. At the approach of "rosy-fingered" dawn their lights go out, one by one. Then blue tints appear in the firmament which deepen into azure. The glory of the ultramarine sky does not remain long without alloy: clouds soon appear. So the scene ever changes, hour by hour and day by day. Had the human being ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... away with desire for some. So when the ogress went out she could not restrain herself any longer, but plucked a handful of it. The ogress came home and was going to cook her pottage when she found that some one had been stealing the parsley, and said, "Ill luck to me, but I'll catch this long-fingered rogue and make him repent it; I'll teach him to his cost that every one should eat off his own platter and not ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... in the house by that familiar substitute for his more pretentious name—turned up the gas-jet and then held out a slender, long-fingered hand. "Let's look at the watch," he said curtly, in a soft, lisping voice. "I know more than ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... murmured the baptismal words with motionless lips, and snatched another soul from the fangs of the "Infernal Wolf." [ 1 ] Thus, with the patience of saints, the courage of heroes, and an intent truly charitable, did the Fathers put forth a nimble-fingered adroitness that would have done credit to the profession of which the function is less to dispense the treasures of another world than to grasp ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... seated himself in the darkness to watch the stars slowly seeming to pass from east to west, and as he said half-aloud those words about being alone he slowly fingered the revolver-holster on one side of his belt and the hunting-knife in its sheath, which done, he pulled at the strap which slung his rifle, and getting it round to the front he rested it upon his knees, and began mechanically to examine the breech as if to make sure that he had cartridges ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... The light-fingered gentry, however, were not as chary of her. The sweet, motherly face, and wistful, pleading, timid eyes, did not deter them in the least. On the contrary, they saw in the bombazine and Stella shawl a fine field for their operations; and twice, on returning to her boarding ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... furrows between the sturdy hybrid tubers. "It ain't possible, kid. Not even for 'Duke' Gray, the 'light-fingered genius who held the Interstellar Police at a standstill for five years'." He laughed. "I read ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... the passing figures, and pointing ferociously to the gangway. He got very tired of his task towards the end, and showed his fatigue to the latest comers, shoving their rugs into their arms with brusque violence. And when at length the wharf was bare he spat on it, rubbed his short-fingered, sunburnt hands down the sides of his blue jacket, and swaggered on board with the air of a dutiful but injured man who longed to do harm in the world. By this time the ship was about to cast off, and the recruits, ranged in line ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... was a kind soul. She always put the pretty ones to housework—"it gives us a chance at the windows. I have Fernando, who works at the sand-carting in the river. He never fails to look up this way. Some day he will ask for me." She peered at herself in a pail of water, and fingered her cap daintily. "How does my skirt hang now, Manuela? Too short, I fancy. Did you ever see such shoes as they give you here! Lucky that nobody ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... troopers filed out. Umballa fingered the empty bags, his brow wrinkled. Cut off a cobra's head and it could only wriggle until sunset. Umballa gave the vanishing captain two weeks. Then he should ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... under the onslaught. Then, losing her head, Marthe, stiff-fingered, clawed her with her nails on the forehead, on the cheeks, on the lips, those moist, red lips which Philippe had kissed. Her hatred gained new life with every movement. Blood flowed and mingled with Suzanne's tears. Marthe vilified her ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... regretfully at the piano and the old, neatly bound folios of music with 'M. A.' upon the covers, and she wondered how it was that no one cared to hear her 'pieces' now. She went over to the music-stand and fingered them in a contemplative way. How industriously she used to practise 'Woodland Warblings,' 'My Pretty Bird,' 'La Sympathie, Valse Sentimentale pour le Piano,' and 'Quant' e piu bella,' fingered and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... themselves, took care, as an influence, of the general manner, and made people bland without making them solemn. They were only people, as Mrs. Stringham had said, staying for the week or two at the inns, people who during the day had fingered their Baedekers, gaped at their frescoes and differed, over fractions of francs, with their gondoliers. But Milly, let loose among them in a wonderful white dress, brought them somehow into relation with something that made them more finely genial; so that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... personages occupy this room Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn Perched on a view-commanding eminence; —Inn which may be a veritable house Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste Till tourists found his coign of vantage out, And fingered blunt the individual mark And vulgarized things comfortably smooth. On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag; His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds; They face ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... distant door closed behind them. Then the newcomer did a strange thing. He cast a swift glance over the sleeping faces, to assure himself that he was not watched, and with the light-fingered stealth of the born thief, he slipped his thin hand into Zaidos' breast pocket. Withdrawing it, he smiled wickedly at the sight of what he held. He rose to his feet, hastily pocketed his find, and for a moment stood looking down at Zaidos. With a noiseless ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... mustn't be," exclaimed his father angrily; "it's perfectly preposterous. We shall be the talk and the jest of the whole county. It will do harm, too, to the working-classes. Why, you'll have all the idle vagabonds there. Some light-fingered and light-heeled poacher will win your sovereign—you'll be the laughing-stock of all the country round, and so shall I too. And such a thing, instead of encouraging patient industry and sobriety, will be just the means ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... own apartments, she was attended multitudinously. Ladies-in-waiting bent at her elbow; soft-fingered daughters of nobility habited her in purple-edged robes; flitting apparitions, in a distant chamber, glimpsed through a vista, laid a table of viands for her, to which she was led with many soft flatteries; her every wish was anticipated; all her trepidation conspicuously overlooked; her ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... of newly aroused murder-lust. Once, as he saw them halt at the edge of the grass plot, and he observed Masten draw Hagar close to him and kiss her, his right hand dropped to the butt of his pistol at his right hip, and he fingered it uncertainly. He drew the hand away at last, though, with ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... sat up wearily and his eyes fell on the letters lying unopened on the table beside him. He fingered them listlessly and then threw them down again while he searched his pockets absently for the missing cigarette case. Remembering, he jerked himself to his feet with an exclamation of pain. Was all life henceforward to be a series of torturing recollections? He swore, and flung ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... whistle. "I see what you mean, pal. With all our eggs in one basket, we sure can't afford to get butter-fingered with the ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... babbled on a minute or two longer, requiring no answer, and every now and then having his roving eye caught by some new marvel. He fingered a sprig of yew that was twisted into a crucifix hung over the bed. ("Expect it's one of those old relics," he said, "some lie or other.") He humorously dressed up the statue of the saint in a pocket-handkerchief, and said: "Let us pray," in a loud whisper, with one eye on the door. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... a hand in this chapter. He lacks the idealistic tinge. He could never have written about red mullets as Perrelli writes when he compares their skin to the fiery waves of Phelgethon, to the mantle of rosy-fingered dawn, to the blush of a maiden surprised in her bath, and then goes on to tell you how to cook the b east in thirty different ways and how to spit out the bones in the most noiseless, genteel fashion. That is Perrelli—so original, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... an unceasing physical growth, and countless symptoms of forthcoming mental development. She delighted to pull the strings of Jan's violin, which was an unmistakable token of her musical genius. She went into ecstasies over the gaudy plates in the fashion paper. She fingered them in suggestive and inquiring silence, or with still more suggestive grunts, and made futile efforts to eat them, which was ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... be so sweet as thy sweet words? The harbour of his rest to the storm-tossed mariner—surely that is sweet! The dream of Heaven's bliss which cheers the poor ascetic priest on his path of sacrifice—surely that is sweet! The sight of Dawn, the rosy-fingered, coming in his promise to glad the watching Earth—surely that is sweet! But, ah! not one of these, nor all dear delightful things that are, can match the honey-sweetness of thy words to me, O Antony! For thou knowest not—never ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... some of our friends heard that the author was going to interview the fine-fingered editor of the 'Westminster Gazette' by appointment, and they strongly advised us against doing so. "Why not?" we asked. "Oh," said our friends, "he edits the leading Government organ, and he is going to pump you of all information in order to use it against your cause and in ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... with his arm bent before him on the table in a way we had, as though it was jointed throughout its length like a lobster's antenna, his plump, short-fingered hand crushing up a walnut shell into smaller and smaller fragments. "Remington," he said, "has given us the data for a movement, a really possible movement. It's not only possible, but necessary—urgently necessary, I think, if the Empire ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... father fingered the three seal-impressions, discussing them with her in the language of a savant. She herself examined them minutely and expressed opinions. Now and then she glanced apprehensively to that open window. He pointed out to her where ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Five petals longer than the 5 acute calyx lobes with 5 linear bracts between them; about 20 stamens; pistils numerous, forming a head. Stem: Spreading over ground by slender runners or ascending. Leaves: 5-fingered, the digitate, saw-edged leaflets (rarely 3 or 4) spreading from a common point, petioled; some in ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Contenson, "he fingered the three hundred thousand francs the day when Esther was arrested; he was in the cab. I remember those eyes, that brow, and those marks ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... in her pocket and fingered a silver coin, but poverty is a grim, tyrannous stepmother to tender aestheticism, and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... At least twenty men expressed a wish to be god-father to the baby and the proud mother accepted all offers. When the christening was over, William Duncan lurched to his feet, his high-bred face full of tenderness, his long-fingered, fine grained hands poised over the rosy ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... "The man was a walking air-cushion!" He gingerly fingered two strange rubber appliances. "For distending the cheeks," he muttered, dropping them disgustedly on the floor. "His hands and wrists betrayed him, Petrie. He wore his cuff unusually long but he could not entirely hide his bony wrists. To have watched him, whilst remaining ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... wall-pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be hung. No satin slippers. No scented notes. Two plain-backed military brushes on the chiffonier (and he so nearly hairless!). A little orderly stack of books on the table near the bed. Eva fingered their titles and gave a little gasp. One of ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the idea, and though not quite so nimble-fingered as Delight, she soon showed an inventive originality that ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... young lady to the Coliseum, and then accented the affront by cramming her with ice cream between the acts, or by approaching the cage and stirring up the martyrs with his whalebone cane for her edification. The Roman swell was in his true element only when he stood up against a pillar and fingered his moustache unconscious of the ladies; when he viewed the bloody combats through an opera-glass two inches long; when he excited the envy of provincials by criticisms which showed that he had been to the Coliseum many and many a time and was long ago over the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beside her and laid her strong, young arm around the bent and shaking little shoulders. Uncle Tucker rested on his spade and looked away across the garden wall, where the little yard of graves was hid in the shadow of tall pine trees, and his big eyes grew very tender. Miss Lavinia fingered a shoot of the vine that had fallen across her thin old knees with a softened expression in her prophet-woman face, while something new and sweet stirred in Everett's breast and woke in his tired eyes, as across half a century was wafted the perfume ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Allah." It also means a rosary (Egypt. Sebhah for Subhah) a string of 99 beads divided by a longer item into sets of three and much fingered by the would- appear pious. The professional devotee carries a string of wooden balls ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... rat-hole, where the trusty, plundered Beck alone could find it, and went boldly downstairs; passing successively the doors within which still stormed the resurrection-man, still wailed the child, still shrieked the Irish shrew, he paused at the ground-floor occupied by Bill the cracksman and his long-fingered, slender, quick-eyed imps, trained already to pass through broken window-panes, on their ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... However this may be now, it was unquestionably true of old Newgate. It was the grand nursery of vice.—"A famous university," observes Ned Ward, in the London Spy, "where, if a man has a mind to educate a hopeful child in the daring science of padding; the light-fingered subtlety of shoplifting: the excellent use of jack and crow; for the silently drawing bolts, and forcing barricades; with the knack of sweetening; or the most ingenious dexterity of picking pockets; let him but enter in this college on the Common Side, and confine him close to his ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fond of Aunt Katharine, but she admired Aunt Trevor's appearance immensely, and always gazed at her as though she were a picture hanging on the wall. Dennis did not share in this. He fidgeted about in his chair, fingered the things in his pockets, hoped it would soon be time for luncheon, and wondered whether he and Maisie would be allowed ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... obeyed. He leaned forward with sudden interest. The prosecutor blinked and abruptly overcame the habitual inclination to appear bored. Such ravishing beauty had never before found its way into that little court-room. Adjacent moustaches were fingered somewhat convulsively by several ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... leave the premises. If the fellow refuses to obey, he is arrested and locked up in the station house for the night. By this means respectable persons, at public resorts, are saved heavy losses at the hands of the "light-fingered gentry." ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... three or four clay pots filled with dry earth. There was a railed porch on the east side of the house, with vines climbing on strings about it, and here the old woman, clean with the wonderful, cool-fingered cleanness of frail yet energetic seventy-five, would sit reading in the afternoon shade that fell from the great ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... silks and laces Have come at times to my insignificant shop, For pieces of jade, or banners, or curious cuttings of ivory. And I look with insufferable emotion Upon their roseleaf skin, And breathe the soft scents that flow from their garments, And long to soothe their lily-fingered hands. In their presence I am seized with longings unutterable, And am filled with a sickness of ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... the edge of the bed, regarding her reflection in the mirror with extreme disfavor. Bill fingered his thick stubble of a beard for a thoughtful minute. Then he sat down ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... until a faint humming of the internal gravity mechanism came to their ears. These were a highly developed people of scientific attainment; civilized beings. But Mado kept firm hold of his torpedo tube, and Carr fingered the ray pistol ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent |
