|
|
|
More "Knack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bodies of the scallop—a commercial waste—were difficult to hang upon the short, blunt hooks; but Lawford seemed to have just the knack of it. He showed Louise how to lower the line to the proper ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... an autumn trip to an unhackneyed land is much better worth reading than many more pretentious volumes.... The authoress has an eye for what is worth seeing, a happy knack of graphic description, and a literary style which is ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... was grain-fed and ready to go. When Dobe trotted—an easy, swinging trot that ate into the miles—Bartley tried to post, English style. But Dobe did not understand that style of riding a trot. Each time Bartley raised in the stirrups, Dobe took it for a signal to lope. Finally Bartley caught the knack of leaning forward and riding a trot with a straight leg, and to his surprise he found it was a mighty satisfactory method and ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... visited him at Newgate, wrote his life, and had the highwayman, standing under the gallows, send for a copy and deliver it as his "last speech and dying confession." There is a certain breadth and originality in this stroke, hardly to be paralleled in modern journalism. Defoe had the knack of singling out from the mass of passing events whatever would be likely to interest the public. He brought out an account in some newspaper, and if successful, made the occurrence the subject of a longer article in pamphlet or book form. He was always on the lookout for ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... thy mistress show thy pack. Master, for you I have a pretty knack, From far I brought, please you see to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Aristotle, and of him eager youth said, in the words of Omar Khayyam, "He knows! he knows!" What was it that Mr. Green knew? Where was the secret? To a mind already sceptical about masters, it seemed that the secret (apart from the tutor's noble simplicity and rare elevation of character) was a knack of translating St. John and Aristotle alike into a terminology which we then believed to be Hegelian. Hegel we knew, not in the original German, but in lectures and in translations. Reasoning from these inadequate premises, it seemed to me that Hegel had invented evolution ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... unaccountable break in their beauty. In criticism, Poe initiated a fearless and agile movement; he had an acute instinct in questions of literary form, amounting to a passion, as all his instincts and perceptions did; he had also the knack of finding clever reasons, good or bad, for all his opinions. These things are essential to a critic's equipment, and it was good service in Poe to exemplify them. Yet here, too, the undermining processes of his thoroughly unsound mind ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... man lounged into the room. He was deemed handsome, with his clearly-cut features, his dark eyes, his raven hair, and his white teeth; but to a keen observer those features had not an attractive expression, and the dark eyes had a great knack of looking away while he spoke to you. It was ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... told the grazer about his work as a Ranger. He told him how he had seen the good that was going to be done, and that having put his hand to the plow, he couldn't let it go again. He didn't know much about it, and he'd never tried to talk about it before, but the natural knack of talking which his race always has came to help him out. Then he began to talk of the sheep and cattle war, and the shame that it was to have them killing each other's flocks and shooting each other because they could not agree about the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... opinion there wasn't a better horseman in Marut, and that it was more pleasure to ride with you than any one else. Now, are you keeping your promise?" She tapped him playfully on the arm. Stafford bowed, looking what he felt, hot and uncomfortable. There are some people who have the knack of making others ashamed of them and of themselves. Mrs. Cary ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... that I had a knack for drawing. I got prizes for it at school. My poor mother was very proud of my gift, and she gave me a box of water-colours as a present. She showed my sketches to the pastor and the doctor and the judge. And they sent me to Amsterdam to try for a scholarship, and I won it. ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... the Urquharts, aren't they?" he said; and Peter, who liked him, would have had to admit that the remark was perilously near to a bound. "Seem to have a sort of knack ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... is keenly developed, languages—or, in fact, anything else—can be learnt with amazing facility. The "knack" of learning languages is only due to observation; the greatest scientific discoveries have been due to mere observation; the greatest commercial enterprises are based on the practical results of observation. But it is astounding how few people do really observe, not ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... now, with a clear ripple of joyousness, at some passing quip between our host and sharp-tongued Lady Berenicia, both of whom employed pretty liberally their Irish knack of saying witty, biting things. The sound came strangely to my ears, as if it were some other ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... before a score of curious eyes, so for the next half-hour we stood side by side, selling tickets, explaining the rules of the Hunt, marshalling the seekers in readiness for the signal to start. He is capable enough, I will say that for him, and has a patent knack of silencing garrulous questioners. It was the funniest thing in the world to stand at the end of the lawn, and watch these rustic backs—young, old, and fat middle-aged—all poised on one leg, swaying to and fro, straining to be off! Excruciatingly funny to watch the stampede, after ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... caprices. Their complaints were more potent than the suggestions of ministers, or the remonstrances of judges. In idle frivolities his time was passed, neglectful of the great interests which were intrusted to him to guard; and the only attainment of which he was proud was a knack of making tarts and bon-bons, with which he frequently ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... occurences in life, yet the very same occurrences shall please them in a well-told story, where the disagreeable parts of the images are concealed, and those only which are pleasing exhibited to the fancy. Story-telling is therefore not an art, but what we call a "knack"; it doth not so much subsist upon wit as upon humor; and I will add, that it is not perfect without proper gesticulations of the body, which naturally attend such merry emotions of the mind. I know very well that a certain gravity of countenance sets ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... her old," he said, divining my thoughts (with his strange knack); "I knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the Bury ball. Did I not, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... her after a hair-waver father put on the market the week she was born—" and then to explain, as he remained struck and silent: "It's from UNdoolay, you know, the French for crimping; father always thought the name made it take. He was quite a scholar, and had the greatest knack for finding names. I remember the time he invented his Goliath Glue he sat up all night over the Bible to get the name... No, father didn't start IN as a druggist," she went on, expanding with the signs of Marvell's interest; "he was ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... class which it was necessary to reach. He knew the men who at the University had been the digs, and jays, and grinds, and who were now the prosperous farmers, the bankers, the school-trustees, the leading men in their communities; and his geniality, vivacity, and knack for informal public speaking made him eminently fitted to represent the University in the somewhat thankless task of coaxing and coercing backward communities to expend the necessary money and effort to bring their schools up to ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... however, of the Moral-Plays had vigour enough, it appears, to propagate themselves into the drama of comedy and tragedy after the main body of them had been withdrawn. An apt instance of this is furnished in A Knack to know a Knave, entered at the Stationers' in 1593, but written several years before. It was printed in 1594, the title-page stating that it had been "acted sundry times by Edward Alleyn and his company," and that it contained "Kempe's ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... character is made, as coral reefs are built up, by a multitude of tiny creatures whose united labours are strong enough to breast the ocean; looking to the mysterious way in which the greatest events in our lives have the knack of growing out of the smallest; looking to the power of habit to make any action of the mind almost instinctive: it is of far more importance that we should become accustomed to apply this precept of seeking guidance from God to the million trifles than to the two or three decisions ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in Amante's society was, that whereas I was afraid of everybody (I do not think I was half as much afraid of things as of persons), Amante feared no one. She would quietly beard Lefebvre, and he respected her all the more for it; she had a knack of putting questions to M. de la Tourelle, which respectfully informed him that she had detected the weak point, but forebore to press him too closely upon it out of deference to his position as her master. And with all her shrewdness to others, she had ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... and his genius, during his earlier manhood, was of that exclusively agricultural character which applies itself to the cultivation of wild oats. At last he had declared that he would become a Painter; partly because he had always had an idle knack that way, and partly to grieve the souls of the Barnacles-in-chief who had not provided for him. So it had come to pass successively, first, that several distinguished ladies had been frightfully shocked; then, that portfolios of his performances had been handed about o' nights, and declared ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... shooting, on account of the savage propensities of the animal; but I have found that, with very rare exceptions, the Anatolian wild boar always runs. It is true that they (she or he, the females are the most savage) have a nasty knack of giving a sort of jerk with their heads, when fighting or even passing an enemy, and that jerk means to a man the ripping up of his leg from his heel to his thigh, to a dog the ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... reflection, mutual sympathy, and a happy knack of always hoping for the best, completed their resignation, and prosperity and peace once more attended their efforts and desires. The farm was found quite ample in what was left, to employ them ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... this county, sir," the old gentleman said, smiling at the man's knack of mimicry. "My home, Arden, is but a few ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... times, and must not be trusted to make rules for General McLellan's boys. Of course no one would omit to take lucifers on a tramp; but steel, flint, and tinder are three warm friends that in an emergency will always come up to the strike. To find firewood is a knack, and it ought to be well cultivated. Don't despise bits of dry moss, fine grass, and slips of bark, if you come across them. Twenty fires are failures in the open air for one that succeeds, unless the operator knows his business. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... not originate this scheme himself, but discovered it in another concern's motor-truck organization; in fact, this is the advantage the salesman-adviser enjoys—acquaintance with a wide range of methods and the knack of carrying a good wrinkle from one business to another. He brings the outside point of view; and, because modern business runs toward narrow specialization, the outside point of view is pretty nearly always welcome, provided it ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... For lands enrich'd by crimson streams, For inquisitions taught by Spain, Of which the Christian world complain." Dick, we agree—all's true thou'st said, As that my Muse is yet a maid. But, if I may with freedom talk, All this is foreign to thy walk: Thy genius has perhaps a knack At trudging in a beaten track, But is for state affairs as fit As mine for politics and wit. Then let us both in time grow wise, Nor higher than our talents rise; To some snug cellar let's repair, From duns and debts, and drown our care; Now quaff of ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... to the Emperor. As a lad at Cassel he was fond of playing charades, and is reported to have had a knack of quickly sketching the scenario and dramatis personae of a play which he and his young companions would then and there proceed to act. One of these plays had Charlemagne for its subject, with a Saxon feudatory, whose lovely daughter, Brunhilde, scorns her father for his submission. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... them as wide a berth as formerly, for the wakes they turn are no longer savage—but wakes, even when sent out by stern-wheelers at full speed, now give us little trouble; it did not take long to learn the knack of "taking" them. Whether you meet them at right angles, or in the trough, there is the same delicious sensation of rising and falling on the long swells—there is no danger, so long as you are outside the line of foaming breakers; within those, you may ship water, which is ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... attractive with his long, light curls. Certainly, one can see that Madame Violette has a never-to-be-forgotten grief, but what a kind and grateful glance she gives her husband! Could anything be more touching than Louise Gerard, that excellent old maid, the life of the house, who has the knack of making pleasing order and elegant comfort reign in the house, while she surrounds her mother, the paralytic Grandmother Gerard, with every care? Truly, Amedee has arranged his life well. He loves and is loved: he has procured for mind and body valuable and ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... give such perfect little dinner-parties as Aunt Marjorie. She had a knack of finding out each of her guests' particular weaknesses with regard to the dinner-table. She was no diplomatist, and her conversation was considered prosy; but with Mr. Merton to act the perfect host and to lead the conversation into the newest intellectual channels, with ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... he went on, slowly, "the Williamses were old neighbours of ours. And Greta and my Olive were dear friends, but they left the neighbourhood long before we did. I never liked Mr. Williams; he had a knack of quarrelling with all his friends, and we soon came to loggerheads. He made himself obnoxious in many ways, and I declared I would never enter his house again. I am sorry to hear we ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Sharp, in a letter to Garrick, of the 29th of March in this year, says—"I met Mr. Gray at dinner last Sunday: he spoke handsomely of your happy knack of epilogues; but he calls the Stratford Jubilee, Vanity Fair." See Garrick Correspondence, vol. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... parencaro. Kinsman parenco. Kiss kisi. Kitchen kuirejo. Kitchen-garden legoma gxardeno. Kitchen-gardener legomgxardenisto. Kitchen-jack turnrostilo. Kitchen utensils kuirilaro. Kite (bird) milvo. Kite (toy) flugludilo. Knack lerteco. Knacker defelisto. Knapsack tornistro. Knave fripono. Knave (cards) lakeo. Knavery friponeco. Knead knedi. Kneading-trough knedujo. Knee genuo. Kneecap genuosto. Kneel genufleksi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Jack, and had left Tom far behind. The same talent which had induced him to mend his ragged clothes, made him do, with rapidity and neatness, everything else he undertook, while he showed a peculiar knack of being quick at understanding and ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... a man named Tregeagle truly lived and died something more than two centuries ago; but the Tregeagle or Tergagle of legend belongs to folk-lore rather than to modern social life. Very old ideas and superstitions have in some manner become attached to a recent name; tradition has a knack of bringing forward its dates; stories of immemorial antiquity are related as though they were the experience of the narrator's father or grandfather, and are modernised to suit that supposition. Legend never sticks at absurdity or anachronism. From some versions of the story it would appear that ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... is good to the old man," said Gottfried, himself almost regretting the lad's avocation. "My eyes are failing me, and he is aiding me with the graving of this border. He has the knack that no teaching will impart to any ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a crowd, was "moved on" by a policeman. A gentleman who recognised him proposed an adjournment to the beach, and there a sermon was preached, and has been repeated by Mr. Hall on several occasions, with a congregation of thousands. He has a peculiar knack of speaking in a tongue "understanded of the people," and his address to the Fairlop crowd on that Friday night "told" considerably. At its conclusion he quietly put on his hat, dropped into the crowd, and went his way; ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Chesterton is one of the best conversationalists of the day. Conversation is a queer thing; so many people talk without having anything to say; others have a great deal to say and never say it. Chesterton can undoubtedly talk well; he has a knack of finding subjects suitable to the company; though he does not talk very much of things of the day; he is naturally mostly interested in books. Given a kindred soul the two will talk and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... man. I do hear he's heating up th' old Squire Moyle's soul to knack an angel out of en. He'll find that a job and a half. You mark my words, there'll be Dover over in your parish one ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... has got a knack of hiding my matches all the same," said Lancelot somewhat shamefacedly. "Besides, I hate her for being called Mary Ann. It's the last terror of cheap apartments. If she only had another name like a human being, I'd gladly ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... who had red hair and a kind heart, but was continually falling out with her last young man and getting another. She told Hester all about it. Hester had a special knack of being told about the servants' young men, for she knew also all about those of Eliza ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... am not a fair judge. I dislike that sort of writing which is neither manlike nor womanlike, and in which young Rameau excels. He has the knack of finding very exaggerated phrases by which to express commonplace thoughts. He writes verses about love in words so stormy that you might fancy that Jove was descending upon Semele; but when you examine his words, as a sober ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cooked, cold rations. Many a meal was lost altogether, and once or twice a poor cook who could not swim was drowned by the boat filling and capsizing. The frail craft of this kind were of curious shape, and only a person who had the knack could row them. No more comical sport could be witnessed than the lurky race which was held every season. Many of the cooks never acquired the art of rowing straight, and whenever they put a spurt on the lurky would run amuck in consequence of being flat-bottomed and having no keel. Then the carnival ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... his action for years after. She married against his will. He never forgave her. My father did not seem to have the knack of getting along in the world, and he moved to America in the hope of bettering his condition. He did not better it. My father died ten years ago, a prematurely broken down man, and my mother and I struggled along as best we could until she died two years ago. My ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... and pinned a rosebud on the collar of her soft grey dress. It was a simple, straight-flowing dress, of the make which suits every woman best, tall or short, handsome or plain, depending for its beauty on shape and material alone, without any superfluous trimmings; for Lettice had a man's knack of getting her dressmaker to obey orders, and would have scorned to wear and pay for, as a matter of course, whatever trappings might be sent home to her in lieu of what ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... order, precedent, routine; red-tape, red-tapism^; pipe clay; rut, groove. cacoethes [Lat.]; bad habit, confirmed habit, inveterate habit, intrinsic habit &c; addiction, trick. training &c (education) 537; seasoning, second nature, acclimatization; knack &c V. be wont &c adj.. fall into a rut, fall into a custom &c (conform to) 82; tread the beaten track, follow the beaten track, tread the beaten path, follow the beaten; stare super antiquas vias [Lat.]; move in a rut, run on in a groove, go round like a horse ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Gyp—Sybille Gabrielle Marie Antoinette de Riquetti de Mirabeau, Comtesse de Martel de Janville—little credit for seriousness or morality, associating her with the average brilliant, flippant novelists, who write because they possess the knack of writing in a brilliant style. Her object is to show that man, in a civilized state in society, is vain, coarse, and ridiculous. She paints Parisian society to demonstrate that the apparently fortunate ones of the world are not to be envied, that they are miserable ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... and twenty-six years old, to take lessons like a school-boy! In the second place, Varvara Pavlovna took upon herself the labour of ordering and purchasing the trousseau, even of choosing the bridegroom's gifts. She had a great deal of practical sense, much taste, much love for comfort, and a great knack for securing for herself that comfort. This knack particularly astonished Lavretzky when, immediately after the wedding, he and his wife set out in a commodious carriage, which she had bought, for Lavriki. How everything which ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... general moralizing vein— (We know we have a happy knack that way. We have observed, moreover, that young men Are fond of good advice, and so are girls; Especially of that meandering kind, Which winding on so sweetly, treats of all They ought to be and do and think and ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... God, Luis, if you would only contrive to let me in a few nights to give you lessons, in less than a fortnight I would make you such a dabster at the guitar, that you need not be ashamed to play at any street corner; for I would have you to know that I have an extraordinary knack in teaching; moreover, I have heard tell that you have a very promising capacity, and from what I can judge from the tone of your voice, you must sing ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... are my young master, whom your mother durst not trust upon salt-water, but left you to be your own tutor at fourteen, to be very brisk and entreprenant, to endeavour to be debauched ere you have learned the knack of it, to value yourself upon a clap before you can get it, and to make it the height of your ambition to get a ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... knack, have you? You'll have to practise quite a spell longer before you can quilt your own house ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... in Paris have a mysterious knack of enlarging a hole in a man's purse. They cannot give the price of anything upon inquiry; and as the paroxysm of longing cannot abide delay, orders are given by the feeble light of an approximate estimate of cost. The same people never send in the bills at once, but ply the purchaser ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of his brother at the spiritual-mindedness of Don Luis having thus come to naught, and recognizing also that he would not play a very dignified role in the village, where every one would say he had a poor knack at turning out saints—declined to be present, giving his occupations as an excuse; although he sent his blessing, and a magnificent pair of ear-rings ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... of his books and go over them again. He wished he had read them more carefully at the time, for they doubtless contained much information and many hints which would have come in handy just now. He seemed, for example, to recall characters in them who had the knack of going through forests without letting a single twig crack beneath their feet. Probably the author had told how this was done. In his unenlightened state it was beyond Mr Pickering. The wood seemed carpeted with twigs. Whenever he stepped he trod on one, and whenever he ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... advertising campaign can do with a product's actual specifications. Compare {GIGO}; see also {SNAFU principle}. 2. James Parry , a Usenetter infamous for various surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for joining any thread in which his nom de ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of an intense partisanship, of a personal loyalty, of a passionate wish to spend his life, too, in fighting for Roman freedom. And so, when this wonderful man asked him, who was merely a boy with a taste for moral philosophy, and a knack at translating Alcaeus and Sappho, to become one of his tribunes, and to go with him to meet the forces of Caesar's arrogant young nephew in one final conflict, it was no wonder he turned his back upon the schools and the Muses, and with fierce pride ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... that sensation of sickness which I have so often seen shown by strong men. The skipper said: "We'll heave her to again. You'd better get below. Your pluck's all right, but an unlucky one might catch you, and you ain't got the knack of watching for an extra drop o' water same ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... peculiar knack of jerking the date-stone, which makes it strike with great force: I never saw this "Inwa" practised, but it reminds me of the water splashing with one hand ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... "'Tis a knack of mine," he apologised. "We'll suppose him safely out of it, an' what happens next? Why, he'll step across to the linen-cupboard here, wi' the hot pipes behind it, an' there's a clean shirt dried an' warmed ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... while qualities had been detected in the quiet, diligent workingman which brought him advancement. His military training and the self-sufficing determination which he had acquired in dealing with raw recruits had given him a knack of controlling his fellow-workers. Thus it came about that Schmitz was promoted to the position of overseer in the machine hall, the same in which he had so far toiled with the rest. His fellow-workers, of course, looked with envy upon this parvenu, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... still casual, continued his desultory harangue. "Always reminds one of a jack-in-the-box—that fellow. Has a knack of popping up when you least expect him. You never know what he will do next. You can only judge him by the things he doesn't do. For instance, there's been a rumour floating about lately that he has just gone into a Tibetan monastery. Heaven knows who started it and why. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... the drawing-room." She watched the servant carry the discarded containers around the house, then turned to Rand. "You know, not the least of your capabilities is your knack of finding servant-replacements on ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... vista of dripping branches and sodden muddied grass. The colonel busied himself with a captured German director and angle-of-sight instrument, juggling with the working parts to fit them for use with our guns—he had the knack of handling intricate mechanical appliances. The adjutant curled himself up among leave-rosters and ammunition and horse returns; I began writing the Brigade Diary for October, and kept looking over the sandbag that replaced ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... industrial fabric of Great Britain was geared up to his desk. It shook with unrest and was studded with strife. Much of this clash subsided when Lloyd George came into office because he had the peculiar knack of bringing groups of contending interests together. Men learned then, as they found out later, that when they went into conference with Lloyd George they might as well leave their convictions outside the door with their hats ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... cars and limousines, operated by liveried drivers. A solitary roadster at the head of the line tempted and was rejected; even though it had no guardian chauffeur, something of which he could not be sure, he would be overhauled before he could start the motor and get the knack of its gear-shift mechanism. Even now Au Printemps was in frantic eruption, its doors ejecting violently a man ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... danger. He was calm, quiet and very deliberate in all situations, and his reports were of the utmost value. He never appeared to want anything in the way of personal comfort, was quite indifferent in any weather as to whether he slept on a bed or on the ground, and had a happy knack of seeming delighted to start on any mission however difficult and dangerous, or for any place however distant, with nothing but the ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... was that of Alexander Weyer, who, either by superior strength or by a peculiar knack, could hold a nail between the middle fingers of his right hand with the head against the palm, and drive it through a one-inch board. But since this act did not get him very far either on the road to fame, or toward the big money—he turned to magic and finally became one of the leading Continental ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... reefs was an exact counterpart of the first, except that Colin found it much more difficult to work through the L glass. To look down at a picture which was reflected sidewise made the drawing of it quite tricky until he caught the knack. Also, shadows under the water did not behave the same way as above. But, as before, the entire day was given to it, and though the boy had a headache when evening came, he had turned out a very respectable piece of work. The fun came ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... tell you, or, what's better, show you. Come now, you devils. Look at the heels (Rasper's and Scrub's) of them ponies! Did ever you see anything like them!—look at the cutting there—Tony Dowlan never had the knack o' that tasty work in his dirty finger and thumb—and who done that? Why Mikey Brian—didn't I see him myself; and isn't he the boy that can 'bang Bannaker' at anything! Oh! he'll cut us elegant!—he'll do the squad for a fi'penny—and then, lads, there's them five others will be just one a-piece ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... other, and each in his own way was formidably effective—Palmer in virile and eloquent abuse, Forbes in courtly and elegant but scalding satire. I could always tell which of them was talking without looking for his name. Naylor had a polished style and a happy knack at felicitous metaphor; Norris's style was wholly without ornament, but enviably compact, lucid, and strong. But after all, Calder was the gem. He never spoke when sober, he spoke continuously when he wasn't. And certainly they were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... our spirits would keep up to the point to which, with much effort, we screw them, all would be well: unfortunately they often have a tiresome knack of descending with a run. When tea was finished and cleared away Mr. Saxon found the presence of his family a hindrance to reading, and at a hint from their mother the younger members of the party took themselves off into the little drawing-room. Here, round a black fire, which, despite Hereward's ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... with whom life, for twenty-five years, had dealt kindly. He had perfect health, an income more than sufficient for his needs, a profession which interested without monopolizing him, a thoroughly contented disposition, and the happy knack ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... happy, there is no doubt of that; he is the happiest person in the family, by all odds; but then I think he has a natural knack at being happy; it is impossible for anything to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of six years reach the top of a sixty-foot tree in a minute or so, and I have seen a man or woman stop on the way, fifty feet from the earth, and light a cigarette. Slim, fat, chiefs or commoners, all learn this knack in infancy. Men who puff along the road because of their bulk will attain the branches of a palm ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Chicago at this time sat a man named Walden H. Lucas. Aged thirty-eight, he was politically ambitious. He had the elements of popularity—the knack or luck of fixing public attention. A fine, upstanding, healthy young buck he was, subtle, vigorous, a cool, direct, practical thinker and speaker, an eager enigmatic dreamer of great political honors to come, anxious to play his cards just right, to make ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... it all now,' he said to those nearest him in the crowd. 'He is a French or Dutch sign-painter, one of ourselves, and he only wanted to have a joke against me. It is but fair to own that he has the real knack, and paints ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... joyously refutes a few anti-Christian arguments by means of his extraordinary knack of seeing the large and obvious, and therefore generally overlooked things. He believes in Christianity because he is a rationalist, and the evidence in its favour has convinced him. The arguments ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... service to the recipients. He lent money, but expected to be repaid even by his brother-in-law. And this prudence helped to retain the confidence, while his sympathetic temperament secured the liking, of most. Again, he had the valuable knack of constantly replenishing the number of his friends among men junior to himself. His character attracted the liking of Sulla, who was twenty-seven years his senior, and he remained the close friend of his ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Sometimes, after many discouraging attempts, the whole thing will flash into one's mind at once, and after that there will be little or no trouble. If you are able to witness the demonstrations of some good mind-reader, professional or amateurs it will help you to "catch the knack" at once. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... we know nothing of the circumstances that may have led to this presence of Greeks in the synagogue. Some modern setters of the Bible writers right would be all the better for remembering occasionally that improbable things have a strange knack of happening. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... you've got a knack of turning up unexpectedly everywhere!" he exclaimed, when his friend ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... of which time you know what it is to have an arm-ache—it may be many days, even many weeks, before you are able to do it—you succeed in lassoing your object two or three times in succession. Ha! ha! You have conquered. You have discovered the knack at last. And you hastily mount your horse to see if you can manage ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... way," I said, "while I think of it, if I leave any books or papers here behind me, send them on at once. I have a knack of doing that sort of thing. I suppose," I added, "your lodgers often do leave some of ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... this happen? The Major—so used was he to the phenomenon— accepted it as a matter of course. Hansombody (good soul!) had a wonderful knack of turning up when wanted. But what attracted him? Was it perchance that magnetic force of will which our Major, and all truly great men, unconsciously exert? No; the explanation was a simpler one, though the Major would have been inexpressibly ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sorry for her; but she had not time to think much of any single person just at present. The horse, the darling horse, the Arab, the treasure of her life, must be trained to the task which lay before him. Hollyhock had the knack of making all animals love her, and the pure-bred Arab is noted for being a most affectionate creature. He was sulky, and disinclined to obey big grooms or any one except Hollyhock. But for her he would have ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... the following morning. They had rooms in a quiet street in Fairtown. The landlady was accustomed to have strolling companies as lodgers, and evidently had the knack of making them comfortable. Quarles had a word or two with her before seeing her visitors, and learnt that they were the nicest and quietest people she had ever had. The poor gentleman who was dead was ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... said the old man, to whom Kavanagh had gone for his first watch when quite a little boy, and upon whom he had called whenever he was in town since; to get the second handsome gold hunter now in question; to have it cleaned; to buy some little knick-knack, or merely for a chat. "Dear me; I do hope all will come right; I am sure all will ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... to take his turn without much demur or complaint, and he had a knack of getting through with it quickly as a rule, especially in summer. None of us had much trouble during the warm season. It was in November, December and January, when cold cream did not properly "ripen" and the cows were long past their freshening, that those ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... fault—an occasional over-consciousness of effort, and calling on the reader to admire, as if the tour de force could not speak for itself. But Ingoldsby's rhymes will not give us a just idea of the Fable until we superadd Hook's puns; for the fabulist has a pleasant knack of making puns—outrageous and unhesitating ones—exactly of the kind to set off the general style of his verse. The sternest critic could hardly help relaxing over such a bundle of them as are contained in Apollo's lament over ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... "leave room for the imagination." Yes, and for nothing else; but this does not imply that it should be unfinished, but that, when the painter has set down what the imagination grasped in one view, he shall stop, no matter where, and not attempt to eke out the deficiency by formula or by knack of fingers. Wherever the inspiration leaves him, there is an end of the picture. Beyond that we get only his personalities; no skill, no earnestness of intention, etc., can avail him; he is only mystifying himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... them, and, in course of time, he comes to be known and accepted everywhere as a useful man. As might be supposed, he is never obtrusively manly. The rough pursuits of the merely athletic repel him, yet he has the knack of assuming an interest where he feels it not, and is able to prattle quite pleasantly about sports in which he takes little or no active part. At the same time it must be admitted that he holds a gun fairly straight, and does not disgrace himself when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... their petty ambitions and vanities he accepted as part of the heritage of a race of beings apart form his own, and he hid his timidity under a brusque manner which gave him credit for a keener penetration than he actually possessed. And, strangely enough, Fate, with sardonic humor, had given him a knack, which so few painters possess, of catching on canvas the elusive charm of his feminine sitters, of investing with grace those characteristics he professed so much to despise. He had told Hermia Challoner that he did not paint "pretty" portraits, but as Olga knew, it was upon his ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... protestations that Harry ought not to trouble the gentleman, the two lads were soon deep in their Caesar. Frank found, to his surprise, that the cripple boy had a wonderful knack of grasping the sense of passages, but that never having been regularly taught to construe, he was unable to apply the rules of grammar which he had learned. Frank taught him how to do this, how to take ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... installed herself at a table, getting up at five o'clock in the morning on the first few days to roll her sprigs of violets. But when she had delivered a few gross, she stretched her arms and yawned over her work, with her hands cramped, for she had lost her knack of stem-rolling, and suffocated, shut up like this at home after allowing herself so much open air freedom during the last six months. Then the glue dried, the petals and the green paper got stained with grease, and the flower-dealer came three times in person to make a row ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... painting or at journalism or letters, all knew it. Clerics, lawyers, painters, authors, men on 'Change, all married and settled and respected, admirable citizens by the dozen and the score, and where are Lorna, and Clara, and Kate, and Caroline, and Fanny? Heaven knows—possibly. The knack of prosperity, surely, is ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... quite overflowing with happiness, and his old worn-out body manifested its gratitude, for he began to put on flesh again; and his cheeks had soon grown quite full. He had a peculiar knack for looking after the children; Pelle and Ellen could feel quite easy as they went about their multitudinous affairs. There were a hundred things that had to be seen to before they could move into the new home. They thought of raising a loan of a few hundred kroner. "Father will ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the trick the first time he tried. Walter, however, made several attempts, instructed by Tad, before he finally caught the knack of it. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... a profile suggestive of the portraits seen on English postage stamps of the early Victorian period; but in the arranging of her hair any French shopgirl could give her lessons, and any smart American woman could teach her a lot about the knack of wearing clothes ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... something of what you are doing." He recited to me verses, tirades, of which I understood nothing, but I put on an air of interest, and here and there made some little remark, which by the way, inevitably had the knack of annoying him. In a year, working night and day, he could only make of all his rhymes, one single volume which never sold, I said to him: "Ah! you see," just in a reasoning spirit, to bring him to something more comprehensible, more remunerative, He got into a ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... inducing certain people to say that her books were good. She did work hard at what she wrote,—hard enough at any rate to cover her pages quickly; and was, by nature, a clever woman. She could write after a glib, commonplace, sprightly fashion, and had already acquired the knack of spreading all she knew very thin, so that it might cover a vast surface. She had no ambition to write a good book, but was painfully anxious to write a book that the critics should say was good. Had Mr Broune, in his closet, told her that her book was absolutely trash, but had ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... one point in connection with carving a loin of mutton which includes every other; that is, that the joint should be thoroughly well jointed by the butcher before it is cooked. This knack of jointing requires practice and the proper tools; and no one but the butcher is supposed to have these. If the bones be not well jointed, the carving of a loin of mutton is not a gracious business; whereas, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... genius—an original view of the world, which presupposes an absolutely exceptional individuality, which is the essence of genius. A man's intellectual character is the theme on which all his works are variations. In an essay which I wrote in Weimar I called it the knack by which every genius produces his works, however various. This intellectual character determines the physiognomy of men of genius—what I might call the theoretical physiognomy—and gives it that distinguished ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... insufflation should be taught to every interne in every hospital. The emergency or accident ward of every hospital should have the necessary equipment and an interne familiar with its use. The method is simple, once the knack is acquired. The patient being limp and recumbent on a table, the larynx is exposed with the laryngoscope, and the bronchoscope is inserted as hereinafter described. The oxygen is turned on at the tank and the flow regulated before the rubber tube from the wash-bottle of tank is attached to ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... sometimes do for a "lark," their antics are vastly amusing; they put on grave, philosophic faces, and mimic the savans to the life; if the noble president, thinking he is doing the polite thing, points out to them a poet, for example, or a professor, they have a knack of elevating the shoulders, looking at the man with a pitying air, and whispering the words "poor beast," with a tone and manner quite inimitable. Indeed this is one of the few clever things they do, and on or off the stage we have never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of wealth. Let me see, Hetty, I must have some employment aside from helping you to milk the cows and feed the pigs. Ah, I have it!" she cried, springing up and turning a pirouette—"listen—I will be a milliner! you know, aunt thinks I have a great knack at cap-making—O excellent idea—I will turn milliner for all the farmer's wives and daughters far and near." And catching up her embroidered mouchoir she began folding it into a turban, and then placing it gracefully ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... want to know what is doing in the art world, who is painting what, and why, then get yourself invited to tea—China tea only. The gathering is picturesque, for the model has, of course, the knack of the effective pose, not only professionally but socially. It is a beautiful club, and it is one more answer to the eternal question Why Girls Don't Marry. With a Models' Club, the Four Arts Club, the Mary Curzon Hotel, and the Lyceum Club, why on earth ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... took me into the country, and Tuck so far forgave my rudeness to him as to come with us to carry the basket.—Oh, yes, indeed, I am becoming thoroughly domesticated on Earth. And, my dear, these humans are docility itself when you once acquire the knack of making them do exactly as you wish, which is as easy as falling off a log.—A log is the external evidence of a pre-existent tree, cylindrical in form, and though often sticky, not ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... I've never been a good one at managing folk; one severe look turns me sick, and then I say just the wrong thing, I'm so fluttered. Now I should like nothing better than to take Nancy home with me, but Tom knows nothing but that his sister is dead, and I've not the knack of speaking rightly to Will. I dare not do it, and that's the truth. But you mun not think badly of Will. He's so good hissel, that he can't understand how any one can do wrong; and, above all, I'm ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... once, and, as she wished to carry off the child with her, she gave a hundred francs extra, as a present, while her husband drew up a paper. And the young woman, radiant, carried off the howling brat, as one carries away a wished-for knick-knack from a shop. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of Uyoweh, it seems, had for the last few years been in a state of chronic discontent with the policies of the neighbouring chiefs. Formerly a pagazi for an Arab, he had now assumed regal power, with the usual knack of unconscionable rascals who care not by what means they step into power. When the chief of Uyoweh died, Mirambo, who was head of a gang of robbers infesting the forests of Wilyankuru, suddenly entered Uyoweh, and constituted himself lord paramount ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... himself by painting Madelon more than once; and she made a famous little model, sitting still and patiently for hours to him and to her father, who had a knack of producing any number of little, affected, meretricious pictures, in the worst possible style and taste. Years afterwards, Madelon revisited the studio, where the black- bearded friendly American, grown a little bent and a little grey, was still stepping backwards and forwards ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... carriage, after the fashion of the country; but these new whizzing locomotives, with their time-tables, and their precision, and their inscrutable mysteries of shunts and junctions, were quite too much for his simple, childish, old- world habits. He had a knack of getting out too soon or too late, which often led him into great confusion. Once, when he wanted to go to Chichester, he found himself landed at Portsmouth, and only discovered his mistake when, on asking the way to the cathedral, he was told there was no cathedral in ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... a brother, for blood is blood, and I would have you make monies. Don't you put yourself against Trent. Be on his side, for his is the winning side. I don't know what you got in your head about that poor scarecrow Monty, but I tell you, Hiram, Trent is the man to back right through. He has the knack of success, and he is a genius. My! he's a great man, and he's a king out here. You be on his side, Hiram, and you're ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... appeared to give no little satisfaction to the crew, who raised a chorus whenever a rope had to be pulled or a brace taughtened, the fine weather and brighter surroundings making the sailors apparently forget, with that sort of happy knack for which seafaring folk are generally distinguished, all the rough time we had coming down Saint George's Channel, when off the Tuskar, and the terrible events of the ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Walter represents himself to have excelled in what may be termed the art, or, as Swift calls it, the "knack," of narrating a story, which, by the way, is as companionable an acquirement at school as elsewhere. His account is as follows:—"I must refer to a very early period of my life, were I to point out my first achievements as a tale-teller—but I believe some of my old school-fellows can still bear ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... for me, and delighted when he heard he might get the assignment. He was nervous lest he should not please me, and feared I might ask for another man. But when I ran over with him the songs I meant to sing I found he played the piano very well indeed, and had a knack for accompanying, too. There are good pianists, soloists, who are not good accompanists; it takes more than just the ability to play the piano to work with a singer, and especially with a singer like me. It is no straight ahead singing I ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... the hands to her looks? And I took my opera-glasses to watch her proceedings. Oh! they were very simple: first of all a glance, then a smile, then a slight sign with the head, which meant: 'Are you coming up?' But it was so slight, so vague, so discreet, that it required a great deal of knack to succeed as she did. And I asked myself: 'I wonder if I could do that little movement, from below upwards, which was at the same time bold and pretty, as well as she does,' for her gesture was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... here & there some touches which inclined me to hope that the whole piece might be worked up by the same hand. I am sorry to pronounce it has failed: but Ponere Totum is the great secret; and in our exhibitions a common Dauber, possest of that happy knack, will often be attended with tolerable success, and exult at the failure of a superior artist who has only ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... all means—for if the Searchers come, they'll never be so uncivil to ransack thy Lodgings; and we are bound in Christian Charity to do for one another—Some rich Commodities, I am sure—and some fine Knick-knack will fall to thy share, I'll warrant thee —Pox on him for a young Rogue, how punctual he ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... experience for one day. A man gets out of the habit of being shot over after two years of peace and the memory of the little chips of flying woodwork flicked from the bows of the dingy as he had pulled out into the river was distinctly discouraging. Whoever fired the shots had a pretty knack with a rifle. It was the whirr of a bullet just over his head persuaded him to put back to port. After that the firing ceased. As he dragged the almost foundering dingy on to the mud a fast motor launch went scurrying down stream ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... great king! In 30 years more: 1. The invincible had been beaten a vast number of times. 2. The sage was the puppet of an artful old woman, who was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had quite forgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his enemies (for 4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose term, that may apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in turn. 6. The love of his people was as heartily detested by them as scarcely any other monarch, not even his great-grandson, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... make the best foreman, won't he?" appealed Prescott. "Tom has a knack for just such jobs as this, and it's going to be a ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... Grace, absent-mindedly. "There has to be a knack, or something, and you have it. I haven't. I couldn't do it, even if I wanted to, and I don't think ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... left hand on the bow below the loop of the upper end of the string, the tip of the thumb and knuckle of forefinger pressing firmly on opposite edges of the bow. Draw the bow firmly to you with the right hand, while you push down and away from you with the left. A little practice will soon give the knack. No part of the body except the face must be turned towards the target. Stand with the feet at right angles to the direction of the target and have them a few inches apart. In handling the arrow avoid touching the feathers, and in the act ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... that the departing of that first Summer was a sad matter to him. He had done his best, you see, and a whole new world of trying had been thrown open to him. And really he was beginning to get the knack of that kind of weaving. And she was a fine big apple-cheeked ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... find with American women, if it can be so called, and that is their inquisitiveness; I know that this is a common fault with all women, but it is most conspicuous in the Americans. They have the knack of finding out things without your being aware of it, and if they should want to know your history they will learn all about it after a few minutes' conversation. They are good detectives, and I think they should be employed in that ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... said, divining my thoughts (with his strange knack); "I knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the Bury ball. Did I not, dear, dear ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... only visible things, will seem sheer insanity—is sobriety for a Christian. The world is perfectly right when it says: 'If you believe you can do a thing, you have gone a long way towards doing it.' The expectation of success has often the knack of fulfilling itself. But the world does not know our secret, and our secret is that our humble faith brings into the field the reserves with the Captain of our salvation at their head. Therefore a self-distrusting Christian can say, and say without exaggeration or presumption, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... perhaps, still is—haunted by the phantasm of a big white sow which had accidentally been run over and killed. It was occasionally heard grunting, and had the unpleasant knack of approaching one noiselessly from the rear, and of making the most unearthly noise just ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... said Joe. Major Holt's daughter Sally had a sort of understanding with Joe, but the major hadn't the knack of cordiality, and nobody felt too much at ease with him. Besides, Joe was wearing a uniform for the first time this morning. There were only eight such uniforms in the world, so far. It was black whipcord, with an Eisenhower jacket, narrow silver ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... advanced, Bowers, aided by Cherry-Garrard, sorted out the rations, which he weighed and packed in the most business-like manner. Bowers was always well served, for he had the happy knack of enlisting volunteers for whatever his particular ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... the pastry," says Mr. Laws, the judge, with a profound bow. "I wish, madam, we had such a happy knack of pastry at home as you have at Castlewood. I often say to my wife, 'My dear, I wish ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... though!" he exclaimed, swerving the plane in a long, ascending spiral. All the art, the knack of flight came back to him, at the touch of the wheel, as readily as swimming to an expert in the water. Fear? The thought no more occurred to him than to you, reading ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... repeating them; and yet in the whole narrative I can scarce promise you one adventure, as my account is rather of what I saw than what I did. The first misfortune of my life, which you all know, was great; but tho' it distrest, it could not sink me. No person ever had a better knack at hoping than I. The less kind I found fortune at one time, the more I expected from her another, and being now at the bottom of her wheel, every new revolution might lift, but could not depress me. I proceeded, therefore, ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... so much an act of strength to dart a harpoon into a soft thing like a white whale, but of practice and knack. The shaft of the harpoon is so long and heavy, that if it is directed well and with good aim it curves over and falls with ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... great work here, Sergeant Baber being in charge and the guiding spirit amongst them. Carberry from Western Australia proved his worth in another manner. The 4th Brigade were some distance up the gully and greatly in want of water. Carberry seems to have the knack of divining, for he selected a spot where water was obtained after sinking. General Monash drew my attention to this, and Carberry was recommended ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... yet have not the gift of expressing what they feel in any artistic medium. It is these, alas! who cumber the streets and porticoes of literature. They are attracted away from homely toil by the perilous sweetness of art, and when they attempt to express their raptures, they have no faculty or knack of hand. And these men and women fall with zealous dreariness or acrid contemptuousness, and radiate discomfort and uneasiness ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... had got herself in hand again. "It isn't a gift," she said, lightly. "It's just a little knack that amuses me. There's no money in it. Besides, it's too late now. One's got to do a thing superlatively, nowadays, to be recognized. I don't draw superlatively, but I do handle infants' wear better than any woman ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... don't mind very much. I am not the right man for this constituency. It has outgrown me. I have not the knack of handling a big crowd. What I want is a fine old crusted unprogressive seat, where I shan't constantly be compelled to drop my departmental work and rush down to propitiate my supporters with untruthful harangues. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... think that a house without a good roomy attic is like a man without brains. Possibly living in a brainless house has affected the mental outlook of my relatives, although their brains are well enough. Peggy is not exactly remarkable for hers, but she is charmingly pretty, and has a wonderful knack at putting on her clothes, which might be esteemed a purely feminine brain, in her fingers. Charles Edward really has brains, although he is a round peg in a square hole, and as for Alice, her brains ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... than Tusser's doggerel. It is something that, swimming in such a brave company, he should keep his head above water; and something more that in one other point Tusser can vie with the foremost. His knack of christening his personages with ad hoc names recalls Shakespeare's, which, with its Dick the Carter and Marian's nose, was of the same kind and degree. Here is an example, where he wishes to instil the value of hedge-mending. If you let your ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... a school-boy! In the second place, Varvara Pavlovna took upon herself the labour of ordering and purchasing the trousseau, even of choosing the bridegroom's gifts. She had a great deal of practical sense, much taste, much love for comfort, and a great knack for securing for herself that comfort. This knack particularly astonished Lavretzky when, immediately after the wedding, he and his wife set out in a commodious carriage, which she had bought, for Lavriki. How everything which surrounded him had been planned, foreseen, provided for ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... glittered large buckles set with precious stones. If to this we add that his gait was the elegant gait of a dancing master, that he had a certain cat-like suppleness of body, and that his little legs had a strange knack of knocking the heels together on fitting occasions,—for instance, when leaping across a gutter,—it could not fail but that the little decorator got himself singled out everywhere as an extraordinary creature. With other ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and the shooting began. The rabbits bolted well, and Howard experienced a lively satisfaction, quite out of proportion, he felt, to the circumstances, at finding that he could shoot a great deal better than his pupil. The old knack came back to him, and he toppled over his rabbits cleanly and in ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... giving a garden party in the spacious but somewhat urban grounds of her mansion in Kensington. Perhaps because it was the first affair of its sort of the season, and perhaps, also, because Cecilia Amesbury had the knack of making friends in every walk of life, it was remarkably well attended. Two stockbrokers, Roger Kendrick and his friend Maurice White, who had escaped from the City a little earlier than usual, and had shared a taxicab up west, congratulated themselves upon having ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his governing body, of which Aldous was one. The affair was difficult, personal, odious. To have wasted nearly three hours upon it was, to a man of Aldous's type, to have lost a day. Besides he had not his grandfather's knack in such things, and was abundantly conscious ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... trespasses on this side of purgatory. Nay more, if it rests with me to direct your future lucubrations, I shall certainly urge you to a repetition of the same conduct, on purpose to shew what an admirable knack you have at confession and reformation; and so without more hesitation, I shall venture to command the muse, not to be restrained by ill-grounded timidity, but to go on and prosper. You see, Madam, when once the woman has tempted us, and we have tasted the forbidden fruit, there ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... speak, the power of following two ideas simultaneously, and nothing is more favorable in conjuring than to be able to think at the same time both of what you are saying and of what you are doing. I eventually acquired such a knack in this that I frequently invented new tricks while going through my performances. One day, even, I made a bet I would solve a problem in mechanics while taking my part in conversation. We were talking of the pleasure of a country life, and I calculated during this time the quantity of wheels and ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... quite dry the seed may be put deeper. Proceeding in this way, covering first with one foot and then with the other, the planters get on quite rapidly, although the hills are so near together. The planting is not at all tedious after one gets the knack of it, and is light and pleasant work. Some planters put two kernels instead of one in each hill, to insure a stand, but this practice increases the cost considerably, and is by no means general. After the seeds are planted they are very slightly, if at all, above ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... the crowd without any hesitation on account of his age—angry as she was, Amaryllis feared several times lest the clumsy people should over-turn him, and tried her best to shield him. But he had a knack of keeping on his feet—the sort of knack you learn by skating—and did not totter much more ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the platform when any local movement was in progress—and could not understand why he was put up there to address the audience, unless it was for his infinite brass. The language he employed was rude, his sentences disjointed, his meaning incoherent; but he had a knack of an apropos jest, not always altogether savoury, but which made a mixed assembly laugh. As his public speeches did not seem very brilliant, they supposed he must have the gift of persuasion, in private. He did ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... replied, 'but I seemed to them as one that mocked.' Now, this of talking, and, especially, of talking about religious things to children, is one of the most difficult things in the world,—that is, to do it well. Some people have the happy knack of talking to their own and to other people's children so as always to interest and impress them. But such happy people are few. Most people talk at their children whenever they begin to talk to them, and thus, without ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... all the girls and boys. Her ready smile, a knack of getting a quick and appropriate answer back when they tried to tease her, made her a popular girl. In the class club she was appointed on committees and soon was taking an active part in the organization. And ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... admiring No. 1 for the confidence with which he disported himself among the Greek aorists, in the labyrinths of which I myself often went astray, and for the knack he had of solving mathematical problems. He was, moreover, very widely read in belles lettres, and had almost a grown-up man's taste with regard to books at a time when I still continued to admire P.P.'s [Footnote: P.P. was a writer whose real name was Rumohr. He wrote a number of historical ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral. Of all incumbents of that high office, Robert Southey had the most notable knack at drugging the Samson of public joy and cutting his hair to the quick; and he had an artistic color-sense which enabled him so to blacken a public grief as to give it the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... no little satisfaction to the crew, who raised a chorus whenever a rope had to be pulled or a brace taughtened, the fine weather and brighter surroundings making the sailors apparently forget, with that sort of happy knack for which seafaring folk are generally distinguished, all the rough time we had coming down Saint George's Channel, when off the Tuskar, and the terrible events of ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... would generally refer them to some young attorney, for whom he would speak a good word at the same time. He was ever kind and courteous to these young beginners when he was the opposing counsel. He had a happy knack of setting them at their ease and encouraging them. In consequence he was the favorite of all who came in contact with him. When his heart was in a case he was a powerful advocate. I have heard more than one attorney say that it was little use to expect ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... one requiring slightly more knack, is to grasp the animal's tail and throw it by a quick jerk across the pressure of the rope. This is productive of ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... recorded, with evident pride in the recollection, that while on board the "Worcester," notwithstanding his youth, his captain used to say, "He felt as easy when I was upon deck as any officer of the ship." It is doubtful, indeed, whether Nelson ever possessed in a high degree the delicate knack of handling a ship with the utmost dexterity and precision. He certainly had not the reputation for so doing. Codrington,—a thorough Nelsonian, to use his own somewhat factious expression—used to say in later years, "Lord Nelson was no seaman; even in the earlier stages of the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... not more'n six bits at any one time, suh. Seems like I've sorter got the knack of livin' ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dear, free your mind, and then we'll fix things up right smart. Nothin' I like better, and Lisha says I have considerable of a knack that way," replied Mrs. Wilkins, with a smile, a nod, and an air of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... command of the small army which was now operating from the north along the railway line with Mafeking for its objective. Plumer is an officer of considerable experience in African warfare, a small, quiet, resolute man, with a knack of gently enforcing discipline upon the very rough material with which he had to deal. With his weak force—which never exceeded a thousand men, and was usually from six to seven hundred—he had ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said Hilderman cheerily. "You scientist fellows have a knack of making your difficulties a little greater than they really are, in order to get more credit for surmounting them. I know your little ways. I'm an American, you know, professor; you can't get ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... while always boldly and continuously outlining the course of historical events, has the knack of seizing upon incidents which reveal the true character of historical personages. These histories are attractive as romance and possess a peculiar power of impressing the memory, being written ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... fortunate enough to possess the necessary knack will soon be in request as jockey at the forthcoming meeting, when, if he should happen to secure a win, the confidence it immediately gives him does more than any other thing to transform him ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... may call a knack! How well she looks at her work, and with that cheerful, friendly face! Everything that she touches is well done;—everything improves and flourishes under her eye. If she were only not so violent and passionate!—but it is not in her heart, there never was a better ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... he'd a made it foggier, and where's there's no understandin' he'd a made it less understandable. I daresay he'd a bin Prime Minister in no time- -he's just the sort. They likes a good old muddler for that work— someone as has the knack o' addlin' the people's brains an' makin' them see a straight line as though'twere crooked. It keeps things quiet an' yet worrity-like—first up, then down—this way, then that way, an' never nothin' ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... like that!" she said, with gay imperiousness. "You pale-eyed folk have a horrible knack of making one feel as if one is under a microscope. Your worthy uncle is just the same. If I weren't so deeply in love with him, I might resent it. But Nick is a privileged person, isn't he, wherever he goes? Didn't someone once say of him that he rushes in where ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... extremely harsh treatment Ravenscroft has met with at the hands of the critics it may be worth while emphasizing Genest's opinion that his 'merit as a dramatic writer has been vastly underrated'. Ravenscroft has a facility in writing, an ease of dialogue, a knack of evoking laughter and picturing the ludicrous, above all a vitality which many a greater name entirely lacks. As a writer of farce, and farce very nearly akin ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... sobbed against the girl's shoulder. "It seems as if I might have saved more," he said, pitifully, "but—I have had heavy expenses, and somehow I didn't seem to have the knack that some men have. I made one or two investments that didn't turn out well. I didn't say ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "picking-up" has to be done. This means that all the unburnt timber on the ground has to be rolled together and burnt. Tree-ferns should not be felled, as they do not burn well. The best way of killing them is to cut off the fronds just below where they spring from the stem. Some knack is required to cut in just the right place, but it is easily acquired. There are certain precautions to be observed in burning-off, which the settler should make himself acquainted with. Information on this point and in regard to any matters of ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs
... is short-lived; his contempt only is rooted, and his resentment lasting.—The above was only one instance of his building too much on practical data. He has an ill habit of prophesying, and goes on, though still decieved. The art of prophesying does not suit Mr. Cobbett's style. He has a knack of fixing names and times and places. According to him, the Reformed Parliament was to meet in March 1818—it did not, and we heard no more of the matter. When his predictions fail, he takes no further ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Hamilton "stands alone" and Gueulette does not. On the other hand, they charge Voltaire with actually "tracing" over Gueulette. ("Zadig est calque sur les Soirees Bretonnes.") This is again an exaggeration; but Gueulette had, undoubtedly, a pleasant and exceedingly fertile fancy, and a good knack of narrative. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... mighty good knack of catching his rainbows, anyhow," answered Hallam; "and you'd better not let the idea get away with you that he isn't a force to be reckoned with. He's young yet, and very new to business, but you remember ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... dixerat feceratque, arte quadam ostentator" (He had a knack of showing off and advertising whatever he said ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... artificial age make it not improbable that Philetas professed to teach the art of poetry. A French critic and poet of our own time, M. Baudelaire, was willing to do as much 'in thirty lessons.' Possibly Philetas may have imparted technical rules then in vogue, and the fashionable knack of introducing obscure mythological allusions. He was a logician as well as a poet, and is fabled to have died of vexation because he could not unriddle one of the metaphysical catches or puzzles of the sophists. His varied activity seems to have worn him ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... "we were at school together, and I generally had the knack of getting on better than you, ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... strongly at the hinge with earth-ingrained hands—to discourse on polities and religion, and to opine that our policy in China was "neither my eye nor my elber." "The little lady," as he called Hester, had a knack of drawing out Abel; but to-day, as he did not see her, she slipped past him, and, crossing the church-yard, sat down for a moment in the porch to regain her breath, under the card of printed texts offered for the consideration of his flock by their ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... was ready to take for granted that he should one day restore the balance. He was a canny and far-seeing youth, with appetites and aspirations, and he had not a scruple in his composition. His mother's theory of the happy knack he could pick up deprived him of the wholesome discipline required to prevent young idlers from becoming cads. He had, abroad, a casual tutor and a snatch or two of a Swiss school, but no consecutive study, no prospect of a university ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... Georgia. We took two-hourly spells at the tiller. The men who were not on watch crawled into the sodden sleeping- bags and tried to forget their troubles for a period; but there was no comfort in the boat. The bags and cases seemed to be alive in the unfailing knack of presenting their most uncomfortable angles to our rest-seeking bodies. A man might imagine for a moment that he had found a position of ease, but always discovered quickly that some unyielding point was impinging on muscle or bone. The first night aboard the boat was one ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... storks' nests on the chimneys; winking at the ya vrouws who showed their faces at the windows, and joking the women right and left in the street; all of whom laughed and took it in amazing good part; for though he did not know a word of their language, yet he always had a knack of making himself ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... a peculiar knack of jerking the date-stone, which makes it strike with great force: I never saw this "Inwa" practised, but it reminds me of the water splashing with one ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... cheerful wilderness, and it hasn't the knack of altering much," Dick thought, as he tramped from the Docks westward. "Now, what must ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... before I advise. Bring out every rag you 've got, and we 'll see what can be done," said Polly, looking as if she enjoyed the prospect, for she had a great deal of that feminine faculty which we call "knack," and much ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Pictures like these, dear madam, to design, Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line; Some wandering touches, some reflected light, Some flying stroke alone can hit 'em right: For how should equal colours do the knack? Chameleons who can paint in white and black? "Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot"— Nature in her then erred not, but forgot. "With every pleasing, every prudent part, Say, what can Chloe want?"—She wants a heart. She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought; But never, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... a lover of the play and all that belonged to it. Dramatic literature he knew fully. He was one of the not very numerous people who can read a play: a knack, the fruit of much knowledge and some imagination, comparable to that of reading score. Few men better understood the artificial principles on which a play is good or bad; few more unaffectedly enjoyed ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... put briefly on paper original ideas about something that they know at first hand. Mrs. Jones makes better sponge cake than any one in town; the fact is known to all her friends. If sponge cake is a desirable product, why should not the woman who has discovered the little knack that turns failure into success, and who is proud of her ability and special knowledge, tell her club of it, instead of laboriously copying from a book—or, let us say, from two or three books—some one else's compilation ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... inventions are compared with the simple and stately facts. Who could have imagined such a heart-break as that? Yet it went along with the fulfillment of everyday duty and made no more noise than a grave under foot. I doubt if fiction will ever get the knack of such things." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and flames, For lands enrich'd by crimson streams, For inquisitions taught by Spain, Of which the Christian world complain." Dick, we agree—all's true thou'st said, As that my Muse is yet a maid. But, if I may with freedom talk, All this is foreign to thy walk: Thy genius has perhaps a knack At trudging in a beaten track, But is for state affairs as fit As mine for politics and wit. Then let us both in time grow wise, Nor higher than our talents rise; To some snug cellar let's repair, From duns and debts, and drown our care; Now quaff of honest ale a quart, Now ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... myself up the trunk with my knees as before. In this way I got along very well, and after an awkward slip or two, in which my knees suffered somewhat and my breeches still more, soon acquired the knack of the thing, and speedily reached the lowermost branch, after which the rest of my ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... a frank intimacy in this little circle into which whim had led her. She spent most of her time with the children. She gave Elsie two hours' lessons a day, and, since she had a knack of making them interesting, Tinker often enjoyed the benefit of her teaching. After lessons she shared most of their amusements, and learned to be a pirate, a brigand, an English sailor, a Boer, and ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... woman,—so you may judge what Jesuits women are! They are so jesuitical that the cunningest Jesuit himself could never guess to what extent of jesuitism a woman may go, for there are a thousand ways of being jesuitical, and a woman is such an adroit Jesuit, that she has the knack of being a Jesuit without having a jesuitical look. You can rarely, though you can sometimes, prove to a Jesuit that he is one: but try once to demonstrate to a woman that she acts or talks like a Jesuit. She would be cut to pieces rather than ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... speculated how long her sister had been in the room. Their conversation had been innocent enough, but it was not one that she would wish Elizabeth to have overheard. And somehow Elizabeth had a knack of ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... you think of that? Our cook went away to her brother's wedding last week, and Mother was sick, and so I tried; and Pa (I tried saying Father, but he wouldn't let me!) said the things tasted good, and I had a knack for flavouring. That made me feel so happy, Margaret! Because I had just gone ahead till I thought a thing tasted right. I did not want to be bothering 'round with cook-books, and besides, ours was lost, for ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... that he could gather up almost as many coins as Benny had in his best day. Joe had acquired the knack of opening his mouth under water without swallowing any of the liquid. Then came an idea for varying ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... chance to delude himself with vain pretences: it was quite plain to everybody that the rhetorician Augustin was not a success. Now, why was this? Was it that he lacked the gift of teaching? Perhaps he had not the knack of keeping order, which is the most indispensable of all for a schoolmaster. What suited him best no doubt was a small and select audience which he charmed rather than ruled. Large and noisy classes he could not manage. At Carthage, these rhetoric classes were particularly difficult ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... restless soul. And every time he returned home he was more restless. So the Boones moved from place to place and each time others went along with them. Daniel had a knack of leadership, but no sooner would everyone be settled around him than he'd pack up and go to another place. Daniel couldn't be crowded. He had to have elbow room no matter where he had ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... us with its own peculiar gusts; and the 'Akabah Gulf, as usual, acted wind-sail. A long detour was necessary in order to spare the mules, which, however, are much less liable to injury, under such circumstances, than horses, having a knack of learning ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... from his kindly, forceful personality. Of all the officers on board "Jimmy the One" was, with perhaps the exception of the Captain, most beloved by the men. A seaman to the fingertips, slow to wrath and clean of speech, he had the knack of getting the last ounce out of tired men without driving or raising his voice. Working cables on the forecastle in the cold and snowy darkness, when men's faculties grow torpid with cold, and their safety among the grinding cables depends more ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... to speak. And it is just so with the quality of power at the piano. It certainly is not due to physique, nor to brute strength, else only the athlete would have sufficient power. No, it is the 'knack,' or rather it is the result of ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... you have," answered Mr. Hawkehurst, with supreme nonchalance; "you've heard of her often enough, only you've a happy knack of not listening to other people's affairs. But you must have been wrapped up in yourself with a vengeance if you don't remember to have heard me ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... patiently, as becomes a man and an officer, because no sailor is really good-tempered during the first few days of a voyage. There are regrets, memories, the instinctive longing for the departed idleness, the instinctive hate of all work. Besides, things have a knack of going wrong at the start, especially in the matter of irritating trifles. And there is the abiding thought of a whole year of more or less hard life before one, because there was hardly a southern-going voyage in the yesterday ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Uyoweh, it seems, had for the last few years been in a state of chronic discontent with the policies of the neighbouring chiefs. Formerly a pagazi for an Arab, he had now assumed regal power, with the usual knack of unconscionable rascals who care not by what means they step into power. When the chief of Uyoweh died, Mirambo, who was head of a gang of robbers infesting the forests of Wilyankuru, suddenly entered Uyoweh, and constituted ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... about her to console her, but she wept so that, for all my seventeen years and pride of manhood, it set me weeping also, and with such a hiccoughing noise, since I had not a woman's knack of quiet tears, that it finally turned her own grief ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a pilot in those days by the name of Jack Leonard who was a perfectly wonderful creature. I do not know that Jack knew anymore about the river than most of us and perhaps could not read the water any better, but he had a knack of steering away ahead of our ability, and I think he must have had an eye that could see farther ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... experts. Meanwhile his imagination enabled him to understand the exact extent of a novice's ignorance, the precise details which I did not know and must know, the essential apparatus I had to be shown the knack of, before he fled to ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... even the contempt, of his associates. But in the eyes of posterity, his happy-go-lucky life is amply redeemed by the work he has left behind him, for it is pure and good. His river of speech flows ever on shining like molten gold. No man of his time possessed the adroit knack of bright writing in a more eminent degree. The pawky humour of his side-hits, the blending of light and shade in the process of the narrative, the beauty and melody that can be noted even in the sound of the sentences, combine to delight the judgment, the ear, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the best months for sea-trout, and as they are dry months the angler often has to put up with indifferent sport. The fish will, however, rise in tidal water and in a few localities even in the sea itself, or in salt-water lochs into which streams run. Sea-trout have an irritating knack of "coming short," that is to say, they will pluck at the fly without really taking it. There are occasions, on the other hand, in loch-fishing where plenty of time must be given to the fish without tightening on it, especially ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... were out was Nick Lang. There was nothing really strange about that fact, because Nick would almost rather play ball than eat; and any boy about whom this can be said must be pretty fond of the National sport. Nick had always shown considerable knack in playing, though he was apt to make himself disagreeable, and want to run things. Possibly this trait might not show so prominently, now that his conceit had been so heavily bumped in his encounter with Hugh. Then again, Mr. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... more zeal than melody, until he got the erysipelas in his lower lip, and a hint of rustication from the tutors. Yet he was more ambitious than successful. His reputation on the road grew worse and worse every day. He had a knack of shaving turnpike gates, and cutting round corners on one wheel, and getting his horses into every possible figure but a straight line, which made every mile got over without an accident almost a miracle. At last, after taking a four-in-hand over a narrow bridge, at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... to dine on Henry's wine and L.F. Austin's wit. This dear, brilliant man, now dead, acted for many years as Henry's secretary, and one of his gifts was the happy knack of hitting off people's peculiarities in rhyme. This dreadful Christmas dinner at Pittsburg was enlivened by a collection of such rhymes, which Mr. Austin called a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... to insinuate that a really well-dressed Frenchwoman is not better dressed than most English women, or that the French have not a peculiar knack of putting on their clothes to the best advantage; for there is no doubt upon the matter. But, if we maybe allowed to judge from the examples brought over to us in the shape of bonnets and head-dresses, and other articles of a lady's toilette, we should say that there must be a considerable ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... elbows that she cannot throw a stone at a hen in the way in which a stone properly should be thrown at a hen, made suitable atonement for this articular oversight by endowing her joints with the facile knack of turning on exactly the right angle, with never danger of sprain or dislocation, for the subjugation of a back-latching frock. Moreover, years of practice have given her adeptness in accomplishing this achievement, so that to her ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... to hammer that 'ere into their noddles, full chisel, as hard as he can drive. I could larn him somethin', I guess, about hammerin' he ain't up to. It ain't every one that knows how to beat a thing into a man's head. How could I have sold so many thousand clocks, if I hadn't had that knack? Why, I wouldn't have sold half ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... d'Hubieres granted it at once, and as she wished to carry off the child with her, she gave a hundred francs as a present, while her husband drew up a writing. And the young woman, radiant, carried off the howling brat, as one carries away a wished-for knick-knack from a shop. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... to come back to the store Sadie left to marry, not one of her traveling-men victims, but a steady person, in the paper-hanging way, whose suit had long been considered hopeless. After that Fanny took her place. She developed a surprising knack at selling. Yet it was not so surprising, perhaps, when one considered her teacher. She learned as only a woman can learn who is brought into daily contact with the outside world. It was not only contact: it was the relation of buyer and seller. She learned to judge people because she had ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... hadn't I been overwhelmed and choked with sentiment all day long? Sentiment? Of all the bosh—but, never mind. Louie at least didn't bother me in that way. Yes, it's a fact, Macrorie, she's got an awful knack of giving comfort ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... they—it comes to to same thing—have the fiend's own knack of discovering a man's weak place. I confess I rather go out of my way to conciliate Number Five study. It may be soft, but so far, I believe, I am the only man here whom they haven't ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... committed was known to the man who wrote a letter and blotted it on the sheet which has been before the court. That man also, as it was clear to us an hour ago, directed a certain envelope which you have also seen. I may add that Mr. Taynton had, as I knew, an extraordinary knack of imitating handwritings; I have seen him write a signature that I could have sworn was mine. But he has used that gift for ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... separation had taught him to see how very silly he had been in regard to this woman,—and had also detracted much from those charms which had delighted him on board ship. She was pretty, she was clever, she had the knack of being a pleasant companion. But how much more than all these was wanted in a wife? And then he knew nothing about her. She might be, or have been, all that was disreputable. If he could not shake himself free from her, she would be a millstone round his neck. He was ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... would journey to Rome next Easter in order to present a collection of penny toys to the Pope. Society loves folly if it is sufficiently blatant. The folly of Eustace was just blatant enough to be more than tolerated—enjoyed. He had by practice acquired a knack of being silly in unexpected ways, and so a great many people honestly considered him one of the cleverest ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... schools, though from a different cause. It was not very often that he visited at the Rectory during Master Charley's holidays; but when he did, that young gentleman favoured him with such accounts of the peculiar knack the second master possessed of finding out all your tenderest places when he "licked a feller" for a false quantity, "that, by Jove! you couldn't sit down for a fortnight without squeaking;" and of the jolly mills they ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... amazing and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent speech ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... much at my rude tongue, A dish o' brath at me he vlung, Which so incensed me to wrath, That I up an' knack un instantly to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... herself and fixes up a drink to suit the occasion. She's all sorts of fancies about what's what for all kinds of times and conditions, and you bet she can just hit the spot! Ain't a clerk here can put up a drink to touch her. She's a sort of knack at it. Every once in a while, when the Boss sees her, he calls out to her to mix ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... help her. Then I recollected that ten years before, when I went up to Maine to visit my sister, I'd rented the place, just as it stood, to folks of the name of Marchant, a fine couple that didn't look beyond each other unless 'twas at their son. In past times my grandmother had an old-country knack of raising healing herbs and all sorts of sweet-smelling things, along with farm truck, so that folks came from all about to buy them and doctors too, for such things weren't sold so much in shops in those days ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... relieved the dumb anguish of serving maids by the penning of their love letters; he seemed to have a knack at this vicarious manner of love-making and when in the full maturity of fifty years, certain London publishers requested him to write for them a narrative which might stand as a model letter writer from which country readers should know the right tone, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... steamers pick their way carefully; we do not give them as wide a berth as formerly, for the wakes they turn are no longer savage—but wakes, even when sent out by stern-wheelers at full speed, now give us little trouble; it did not take long to learn the knack of "taking" them. Whether you meet them at right angles, or in the trough, there is the same delicious sensation of rising and falling on the long swells—there is no danger, so long as you are outside the line of foaming breakers; within ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... along with a superior officer in charge. The lieutenant had taken quite a sudden fancy for Rob and his two chums; but then that was not strange, Tubby told himself, since the patrol leader always had a knack of making friends wherever ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... I somehow suppose that they hadn't the knack, For in spite of it all they have never come back, And I own that the future looks dismally black ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... filled to the neck with humor, and was a past-master in the art of repartee, always in plain talk, remember. Explain it if you can. Bill was roundly hated by many because he had a way of talking straight truth. He had an uncanny knack of seeing behind the human scenery of the Bad Lands, and always told right out what he saw. That is why they were all afraid ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... unscrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers (who, as King of Prussia, brought into being a military and skeptical genius—and therewith, in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged type of German), the problematic, crazy father of Frederick the Great, had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knew what was then lacking in Germany, the want of which was a hundred times more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form—his ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of a profound instinct. MEN WERE LACKING; ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was a good fighter for what he believed was right, and as a warrior for his cause he had armed himself in every possible way. He had a passable knowledge of English and an amazing familiarity with the Scriptures. He also possessed a knack of interpreting any phase of it to strengthen the argument from his standpoint. But I, too, could fight for ideals; love of freedom and the divine right of the individual were themes as dear to me as they were hateful ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... to multiply the subjects of His Majesty. This hope of liberty was therefore vain; nor could I hope to purchase my discharge, unless any charitable soul would lend me a large sum of money; for, though I made a good deal, as I have said, yet I have always had through life an incorrigible knack of spending, and (such is my generosity of disposition) have been in debt ever ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... month or two; but I mean, never lose view of that great object; pursue it with discretion, but pursue it always. 'Pelotez en attendant partie'. You know I have always told you that speaking in public was but a knack, which those who apply to the most will succeed in the best. Two old members, very good judges, have sent me compliments upon this occasion; and have assured me that they plainly find it will do; though they perceived, from that natural confusion you were ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... stirrups than the modern jockeys, although he had in a measure conformed to the crouching seat. Alan's friends wondered why he stuck to Tommy, some of them considered he was getting past it, but Alan had a knack of keeping to old hands who had done him good service. In business this caused many a split ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... the hilt of that delicate blade, too, sticking out from his wristband. Ah! I've seen him throw that short blade from his coat-sleeve and strike a dollar at twenty yards! Wonderful skill with knives you have, Don Ignacio; but you never yet tried your knack with me! Oh no, my Tuerto—bird of ill omen that you are! We can't do without one another just yet, so let us wait and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... interest for me except as his vehicle, the vehicle in which he arrived; which brought him to his destination quicker perhaps than any other which he could have chosen. His talent was so adroit that he might have chosen almost any other; chance and a happy knack and a habit of observation determined his selection of the written word. Compared with the spectacle of his arrival, what he has written is neither here nor there. What I have written myself is neither here nor there. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... shop in vain. 'Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane: I sent them, with a load of books, Last Monday, to the pastry-cook's. To fancy they could live a year! I find you're but a stranger here. The Dean was famous in his time, And had a kind of knack at rhyme. His way of writing now is past: The town has got a better taste. I keep no antiquated stuff; But spick and span I have enough. Pray, do but give me leave to show 'em: Here's Colley Cibber's birthday poem. This ode you never yet have seen, By Stephen ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... laborers had Sutton's pride or Mamise's piety in the work. Just as she began to get the knack of catching and placing the rivets Pafflow began to register his protest against her sex. He took a low joy in pitching rivets wild, and grinned at her dancing ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... for that afternoon, which we were both awfully keen about; then mother and father were coming home in the evening, after having been away a fortnight, and, though on the whole I had got on quite nicely with the housekeeping, it would be a relief to be able to consult mother again. Things have a knack of not going so smoothly when mothers are away, as I daresay ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... adjectives she chose, with unerring deftness and rapidity, the one that taste and discrimination would most surely have rejected, fitting out her subject with a whole wardrobe of slop-shop epithets irrelevant in cut and size. To the invaluable knack of not disturbing the association of ideas in her audience, she added the gift of what may be called a confidential manner—so that her fluent generalizations about Goethe and his place in literature (the lecture was, of course, manufactured ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... my duty consists in speaking to the public, in turning a compliment, in making things pass off pleasantly, as the saying is; and, without boasting, I flatter myself that I have a certain knack—" ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Lady Blast, you must understand, has such a particular Malignity in her Whisper, that it blights like an Easterly Wind, and withers every Reputation that it breathes upon. She has a particular Knack at making private Weddings, and last Winter married above five Women of Quality to their Footmen. Her Whisper can make an innocent young Woman big with Child, or fill an healthful young Fellow with Distempers that are not to be named. She can turn a Visit into ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... have not between us Old Colonial's knack and activity, nor are we endowed with muscles of such steely fibre. We keep our clutch determinedly, desperately, and we are flung and bumped among the tree-roots and brushwood. The pig is screaming like a hundred railway engines; kicking, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... He was a powerful man physically and turned off his work with a ready knack which left him free to think. All day as he moved to and fro in the rustling corn rows, he thought, and with his thinking, his powers expanded. He had the ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... reading, however, she had been long used: her uncle read well, her cousins all, Edmund very well, but in Mr. Crawford's reading there was a variety of excellence beyond what she had ever met with. The King, the Queen, Buckingham, Wolsey, Cromwell, all were given in turn; for with the happiest knack, the happiest power of jumping and guessing, he could always alight at will on the best scene, or the best speeches of each; and whether it were dignity, or pride, or tenderness, or remorse, or whatever were to be expressed, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Coleridge was a dream. I shall not get away before the end (or middle) of June, and then you will be frog-hopping at Boulogne. And besides I think the Gilmans would scarce trust him with us, I have a malicious knack at cutting of apron strings. The Saints' days you speak of have long since fled to heaven, with Astraea, and the cold piety of the age lacks fervor to recall them—only Peter left his key—the iron one of the two, that shuts amain—and that's the reason I am lockd up. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Coppinger was not a great artist, but it had been conceded to him, even in the studio, that he had pretty colour (which was quite without reference to his own complexion) and a knack of catching a likeness. Added to these gifts he possessed a third, in being able to talk without hindering the activities of his brush. They talked a great deal to each other during those long, delightful mornings in the sunny corner ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... list we find already the adjective rum meaning good, fine,—a word that has crept into general use among the lower classes in London, without ever gaining promotion. The fate of new words in this respect is curious. Often, if they are convenient, or have knack of lodging easily in the memory, they work slowly upward. The Scotch word flunky is a case in point. Our first knowledge of it in print is from Fergusson's Poems. Burns advertised it more widely, and Carlyle seems fairly to have transplanted it into the English of the day. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the Adriatic. If you struck a Mecca pilgrimage the odds are you would meet a dozen of Sandy's friends in it. In shepherds' huts in the Caucasus you will find bits of his cast-off clothing, for he has a knack of shedding garments as he goes. In the caravanserais of Bokhara and Samarkand he is known, and there are shikaris in the Pamirs who still speak of him round their fires. If you were going to visit Petrograd or Rome or Cairo it would be no use asking him for introductions; ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... was redrawn for the book it was embellished with "blowing whales and sailing ships; and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and elaborately forged the signature of Captain Flint and the ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... lines in stanzas of ten, describing archery fights and heroic duels that are rather tedious by their similarity, and offensive from the smell of the shambles; and which any quick-witted stripling with the knack of rhyming might perhaps have done as well, and less coarsely, after reading Chapman's or Ogilby's Homer, or the fighting scenes in Spenser, the Border Ballads, &c. But even this composition is not unconscious of the true afflatus, such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... carefully; we do not give them as wide a berth as formerly, for the wakes they turn are no longer savage—but wakes, even when sent out by stern-wheelers at full speed, now give us little trouble; it did not take long to learn the knack of "taking" them. Whether you meet them at right angles, or in the trough, there is the same delicious sensation of rising and falling on the long swells—there is no danger, so long as you are outside the line of foaming breakers; ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... Heaven-directed, to the poor. Pictures like these, dear Madam, to design, Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line; Some wandering touches, some reflected light, Some flying stroke alone can hit them right: For how should equal colours do the knack? Chameleons who can paint in white and black? 'Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot'— Nature in her then erred not, but forgot. 'With every pleasing, every prudent part, Say, what can Chloe want?'—She wants a heart. She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought; But never, never, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... overhearing the Duke of Argyle say, "It will do—it must do! I see it in the eyes of them!" This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon: for that duke has a more particular knack than any one now living in discovering the taste of the publick. He was quite right in this, as usual: the good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause.' Spence's Anec. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... how long her sister had been in the room. Their conversation had been innocent enough, but it was not one that she would wish Elizabeth to have overheard. And somehow Elizabeth had a knack of overhearing things. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... quite unique, His gift of mixing Latin up with Greek," Unique, you lags in learning? what? a knack Caught by Pitholeon with his hybrid clack? "Nay, but the mixture gives the style more grace, As Chian, plus Falernian, has more race." Come, tell me truly: is this rule applied To verse-making by you, and nought beside, Or would you ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... of the less important branches of bow technic. There is a knack in doing it, and it is purely pyrotechnical. Staccato passages in quantity are only to be found in solos of the virtuoso type. One never meets with extended staccato passages in Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch or Lalo. And the Saint-Saens's violin concerto, ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... and humoring their caprices. Their complaints were more potent than the suggestions of ministers, or the remonstrances of judges. In idle frivolities his time was passed, neglectful of the great interests which were intrusted to him to guard; and the only attainment of which he was proud was a knack of making tarts and bon-bons, with which he frequently ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... and there, you know, the money's in the details; the more details, the more swag: bearers, mutes, candles, prayers —everything counts; and if the bereaved don't buy prayers enough you mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your bill shows up all right. And he had a good knack at getting in the complimentary thing here and there about a knight that was likely to advertise—no, I mean a knight that had influence; and he also had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept door for a pious hermit who lived in a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and vitality seemed to radiate from his kindly, forceful personality. Of all the officers on board "Jimmy the One" was, with perhaps the exception of the Captain, most beloved by the men. A seaman to the fingertips, slow to wrath and clean of speech, he had the knack of getting the last ounce out of tired men without driving or raising his voice. Working cables on the forecastle in the cold and snowy darkness, when men's faculties grow torpid with cold, and their safety among the grinding cables depends more upon the alert supervision ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Conciliator. The whole widespread labour and industrial fabric of Great Britain was geared up to his desk. It shook with unrest and was studded with strife. Much of this clash subsided when Lloyd George came into office because he had the peculiar knack of bringing groups of contending interests together. Men learned then, as they found out later, that when they went into conference with Lloyd George they might as well leave their convictions outside the door with their hats ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... is required to produce a nice frosting is only to be determined by practice. The way to obtain the knack is to frost a few scraps to "get your hand in." Nitric acid of full strength is used, dipping the piece into a shallow dish for a few seconds. A good-sized soup plate would answer very nicely for frosting the bottom ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... hands. I then commenced business as showman to the prince and this mass of people. At first his highness was timid, and would not look through the glasses of the peepshows, but when the people began he followed, and acquired the knack of looking through in a very short time. My compass and watch and keys were then all examined, and produced great amusement. What pleased him much was the screw by which the compass was stopped. I was dreadfully frightened lest the watch should be broken as well as the compass, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... one or two men occupy a hut, to accommodate so large a party many of them have to be constructed. It is amusing to see how some men, proud of their superior powers of inventiveness, and possessing the knack of making pleasant what would otherwise be uncomfortable, plume themselves before their brethren, and turn them to derision: and it appears the more ridiculous, as they all are as stark naked as an unclothed animal, and have really nothing to ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... nephew and me to know you and your daughter. I have had my nose at the grindstone of business for so many years that I feared it had grown out of my power to make new friends; but I begin to see that I have not lost the knack. Perhaps my somber presence is tolerated because of my gay, jolly boy," and Mr. Kinsella gazed rather wistfully after Pierce, who had crossed the deck to meet Elise O'Brien, ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... possible. A month's separation had taught him to see how very silly he had been in regard to this woman,—and had also detracted much from those charms which had delighted him on board ship. She was pretty, she was clever, she had the knack of being a pleasant companion. But how much more than all these was wanted in a wife? And then he knew nothing about her. She might be, or have been, all that was disreputable. If he could not shake himself free from her, she would be a ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... exceedingly clever with his hands. His penmanship was exquisite. He illustrated all his scientific papers, made his own woodcuts, and carved the reredos that is at present the chief feature of interest in the church at Borlsover Conyers. He had an exceedingly clever knack in cutting silhouettes for young ladies and paper pigs and cows for little children, and made more than one complicated wind instrument ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... methodically making mental notes of his friend's gestures and expressions for future use. "The old boy's in earnest for once," he thought; and congratulated himself anew that he himself was no genius, merely a person with a knack for imitation, and a habit of keeping his finger on the pulse of the public. It puzzled him that a man who knew his own weaknesses so thoroughly should make no effort to deny or conquer them. Channing seemed to observe his ego as casually ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... at the ya vrouws who showed their faces at the windows, and joking the women right and left in the street; all of whom laughed and took it in amazing good part; for though he did not know a word of their language, yet he always had a knack of making himself understood among ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... now an old man and may therefore perhaps venture to speak the simple truth without being suspected of boasting—I seem to have been endowed, from my earliest years, with the gift of straight shooting; it was just a knack, I suppose, but I seemed to be able to judge distances accurately by intuition, and to allow the correct elevation and windage under the most diversified conditions, so that I very rarely made use of the sights on my rifle. Nor did I ever need to aim consciously; ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... can be done by a person from twenty-one years of age to fifty. I know no husbandry work (mowing hardly excepted) that is not equally within the power of all persons within those ages, the more advanced fully compensating by knack and habit what they lose in activity. Unquestionably, there is a good deal of difference between the value of one man's labor and that of another, from strength, dexterity, and honest application. But I am quite ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the famous operas was not entirely of Arthur's own unaided invention. And so, from one subject to another, they passed on so quickly, and hit it off with one another so exactly (for Hilda had a wonderful knack of leading up to everybody's strong points), that long before lunch was ready, the Progenitor had been quite won over by the fascinations of the brazen hussey, and was prepared to admit that she was really a very nice, kind, tender-hearted, intelligent, appreciative, and discriminating ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... done anything useful in the whole course of his life. It is often very curious to trace the sources of greatness. With Mr. Chamberlaine, I think it came from the whiteness of his hands, and from a certain knack he had of looking as though he could say a great deal, though it suited him better to be silent, and say nothing. Of outside deportment, no doubt, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... couldn't make a bow, or strike two stones together, or rub two sticks together. It couldn't be done. Well, Cal had seen for himself what happened when it was tried. All the men were trying it, and for a little bit everybody thought it was only happening to him, that he must have lost the knack, or something. For a little bit there the men were more worried about how their wife would bring it up for weeks or months, how he had let the rest of the men show him up when it ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... all have been 'squeezed,'" said Dolphin, "and nothing's easier if you've got the knack—noiseless, bloodless, traceless, the only scientific way of doin' ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... what an advertising campaign can do with a product's actual specifications. Compare {GIGO}; see also {SNAFU principle}. 2. James Parry , a Usenetter infamous for various surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for joining any thread in which his nom de guerre ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... difficult to make descriptions of machinery and mechanism interesting, but Mr. Williams has the enviable knack of doing so, and it is hardly possible to open this book at any page without turning up something which you feel you must read; and then you cannot stop till you come to the end ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... I am sure he was devoted to her, in his way. But he could not do the sort of things she wanted him to do; she was so romantic. He did try. He used to go to all the poetical plays and study them. But he hadn't the knack of it and he was naturally clumsy. He would rush into the room and fling himself on his knees before her, never noticing the dog, so that, instead of pouring out his heart as he had intended, he would have to start off with, 'So awfully sorry! Hope I haven't hurt ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... perfect little dinner-parties as Aunt Marjorie. She had a knack of finding out each of her guests' particular weaknesses with regard to the dinner-table. She was no diplomatist, and her conversation was considered prosy; but with Mr. Merton to act the perfect host and to lead the conversation into the newest intellectual channels, ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... a great pity that he had not settled himself ashore in a good city practice," continued Dr. Ferris. "He had a great knack at pleasing people and making friends, and he was always spoiling for want of work. I was ready enough to shirk my part of that, you may be sure, but if you start with a reasonably healthy set of men, crew and officers, and keep good discipline, and have no accidents on the voyage, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... you know that it is one of my temptations? You wish to know something about him? Well, I will oblige you this once, and then farewell to such vanities—something about him. I will tell you—his—skin when he flung off his clothes—and he had a particular knack in doing so—his skin, when he bared his mighty chest and back for combat; and when he fought he stood, so—if I remember right—his skin, I say, was brown and dusky as that of a toad. Oh me! I wish my elder son ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the course and knows the pitfalls. She's learnt the value of compromise. She ought to have learnt how to be kind. I think kindness is the thing that matters most. Few people are born with it. You have to have been wretched to acquire the knack of it." ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... had been built, and there were several biggish mining settlements at the end of it. Deira itself was filled with offices of European firms, it had got a Stock Exchange of its own, and it was becoming the usual cosmopolitan playground. It had a knack, too, of getting the very worst breed of adventurer. I know something of your South African and Australian mining town, and with all their faults they are run by white men. If they haven't much morals, they have a kind of decency which keeps them fairly straight. But for our sins ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... artist in the kitchen, and made coffee to a nicety. She had a knack of tidiness, with which she had infected the Doctor; everything was in its place; everything capable of polish shone gloriously; and dust was a thing banished from her empire. Aline, their single servant, had no other business in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... near the house, the major being wheeled down in an easy-chair and superintending his riding. As these horses had little to do and were full of spirit, Vincent's powers were often taxed to the utmost, and he had many falls; but the soil was light, and he had learned the knack of falling easily, and from constant practice was able at the age of fourteen to stick on firmly even without a saddle, and was absolutely fearless as to ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... long resided in Kentucky, he and two companions discovered a camp of some forty new-comers actually starving, though buffalo were plenty. Clark and his friends speedily relieved their necessities by killing fourteen of the great beasts; for when once the hunters had found out the knack, the buffalo were easier slaughtered than any ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... such like, I agree with them; but this is a detail which can be left to the operator's own fancy, the class of work, etc.; but I would remind him that applying enamel with a brush requires much care and a certain amount of "knack". It is something like successful lacquering in brasswork—it looks very simple, but is not. Each succeeding coat of japan gives a more uniform and glossy surface, and for this reason it may, in some cases, be necessary to repeat the operation no fewer than half a dozen times, the final coat being ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... in an open rebellion against convention, and manifested this hostility in an exaggerated carelessness of dress and manner. It was perhaps his habit of thought as much as anything else that had made him a dramatic critic; but it was a knack for keen analysis and a natural, caustic wit that had raised him to eminence in his field. Outwardly he was a sloven and a misanthrope; inwardly he was simple and rather boyish, but years of experience in a box-office, then as advance man and publicity agent for a circus, and finally as a Metropolitan ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... ethics of Scripture, and with the hopes and powers that are treasured in Jesus Christ, so that our minds are made up upon a great many thorny questions as to what we ought to do, and that when crises or dangers come, as they have a knack of coming, very suddenly, and are sprung upon us unexpectedly, we shall be able, without much difficulty, or much time spent in perplexed searching, to fall back upon the principles that decide our conduct—that is essential to all successful ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... country town and had not been able, at first, to realize themselves and their abilities to the best advantage in the city. Assuredly his father knew how to drive horses and to care for them; and he had an intuitive knack for safeguarding his self-respect. And Johnny's mother was perfectly competent to cook and to keep house—even above a stable—most neatly. If Johnny's curtain was rumpled, that was Johnny's own incorrigible fault. The window-sill was a wide one, and Johnny, I found, used ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... of labor, for they can do so many things, usually have to do so many things, most of them, in the family, that some one sort of work, at least, is left to them for special old age. "Mother's pies" or grandmother's cakes or needlework or knack at dusting or baby-tending or what not keeps her young and makes her actually a helper even when old. Grandfather's loss of his job, of his specialty of effort, of his hold on the great industrial machine, leaves him ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... him were aware of one peculiarity which by its prominence cast others into the shade. He possessed a very useful gift rarely given to men—the gift of intuition. It was dangerous to think when the eyes of the Vicomte d'Audierne were upon one's face. He had a knack of knowing one's thoughts before they were even formulated. He looked grave—almost distressed—on this occasion, because he knew something of which Hilda herself was ignorant. He knew that she was engaged to be married to one man while ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... to look back upon it is really impossible for me to be much affected by the passing wave of dissatisfaction with Mr. Balfour. Men of first-rate ability and character are rare. Still rarer are men who, having those qualities, also have the knack of compelling the attention and respect even of a hostile House of Commons. When a party possesses a leader with all these gifts, it is not likely to change ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... very true, continu'd he, I have lately had the good Fortune to convert many; and besides the Candour of my own Disposition, I must tell you, that I have a peculiar knack at Conversion, which very few, if any, ever could resist. I am going upon the same work into Murcia; but your good Character is fix'd me in my Resolution of preferring your Salvation to ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... room, have you? Well, I dare say you won't be troubled. Some folks have a knack of seeing spirits, and ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... men were to engage in the business of pin-making, each making every part of every pin for himself, each man would probably complete but one pin in a day. But if each man makes one part, and nothing else but that, thus repeating incessantly a single series of motions, each will acquire the knack of working with such rapidity that the ten together will make daily, not ten pins, but some thousands. Here we have labour divided by its different applications, but not requiring different degrees of capacity. We have the average ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... and flowers of the poets," and the like. Epidius himself, a pedagogue of the progressive style, had doubtless proved an adept at this sort of thing. Claiming to be a descendant of an ancient hero who had one day transformed himself into a river-god, he must have had a knack for these tales. At any rate we are told that he wrote a book on metamorphosed trees.[4] When Octavius read the Culex, did he recognize in the quaint passage describing the shepherd's grove of metamorphosed trees (124-145) phrases from the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... rather only looked in them, than indeed said anything to them; but we will pass them and proceed. You have heard of the sins of his youth, of his apprenticeship, and how he set up, and married, and what a life he hath led his wife; and now I will tell you some more of his pranks. He had the very knack for knavery; had he, as I said before, been bound to serve an apprenticeship to all these things, he could not have been more cunning, he could not have ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was in the day's calendar—for San Francisco had no knack of rising with the sun—Benito found the town awake, intensely active when he picked his way along the edge of those dangerous bogs that passed for business streets. Several polling places had been established. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... took her almost two hours each way. She said the kind of costume she required should have been corrugated steel. But all three knew what was being worn, and they wore it—or fairly faithful copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a needle knack. She could skim the State Street windows and come away with a mental photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads of departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went home and reproduced them with the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... fat constantly simmering in lye of ashes (see preceding paragraphs) for some days; adding fresh lye as fast as the water boils away, or is sucked up by the fat. After one or two trials, the knack of soap-making is easily caught. The presence of salt makes the soap hard; its absence, soft; now many ashes contain a good deal of salt, and these may make the soap too hard, and will have to be mixed with other sorts of ashes before being used: experience must ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... sickness which I have so often seen shown by strong men. The skipper said: "We'll heave her to again. You'd better get below. Your pluck's all right, but an unlucky one might catch you, and you ain't got the knack of watching for an extra drop o' ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... contained something pregnant about the Temperance question, or was a marvellously subtle analysis of the romantic movement in Germany. But surely to most of us it is sufficiently apparent that Browning was simply fashioning a ridiculous knick-knack, exactly as if he were actually moulding one of these preposterous German jugs. Now before studying the real character of this Browningesque style, there is one general truth to be recognised about Browning's work. It is this—that it is absolutely ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... should be no fault of his if Titmouse easily forgot! He hardly knew why—but he disliked this particularly.—Whom had he, however, in the world, but Huckaback? In company with him alone, Titmouse felt that his pent-up feelings could discharge themselves. Huckaback had certainly a wonderful knack of keeping up Titmouse's spirits, whatever cause he fancied he might really have for depression. In short, he longed for the Sunday morning, ushering in a day of rest and sympathy. Titmouse would indeed then have to look back upon an agitating ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... out their little arms to come to me; when I was a girl, I was half my leisure time nursing in the neighbouring cottages; but I don't know how it was, when I grew sad and grave—which I did a year or two after this time—the little things drew back from me, and I am afraid I lost the knack, though I am just as fond of children as ever, and have a strange yearning at my heart whenever I see a mother with her baby in her arms. Nay, my dear" (and by a sudden blaze which sprang up from a fall of the unstirred coals, I saw that her eyes were full of tears—gazing intently on some vision ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... recipients. He lent money, but expected to be repaid even by his brother-in-law. And this prudence helped to retain the confidence, while his sympathetic temperament secured the liking, of most. Again, he had the valuable knack of constantly replenishing the number of his friends among men junior to himself. His character attracted the liking of Sulla, who was twenty-seven years his senior, and he remained the close friend of his contemporaries Hortensius and Cicero (the former five years ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... marriage is never improbable. You women have a knack of tripping up the most unlikely subjects! In this case, I had the details from an old friend of mine. She happened to be stopping at the same hotel as Lenox at Zermatt. Then one morning he disappeared; and, as she had taken rather a fancy ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... place, though by this time his "wind" had greatly failed. He would occasionally invite an old friend to take a quiet wrestle with him on the lawn, to keep up his skill, and perhaps to try some new "knack" of throwing. In the evening, he would sometimes indulge his visitors by reciting the old pastoral of "Damon and Phyllis," or singing his favourite song of "John Anderson my Joe." But his greatest glory amongst those with whom he was most intimate, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... worked hard at it. Naturally, one should never practice any technical difficulty too long at a stretch. Young players sometimes forget this. I know that staccato playing was not easy for me at one time. I believe a real staccato is inborn; a knack. I used to grumble about it to Joachim and he told me once that musically staccato did not have much value. His own, by the way, was very labored and heavy. He admitted that he had none. Wieniawski had such a wonderful staccato that one finds much ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... handicap ..." the therapist began. Then he grinned weakly and stopped. On the golf course, Stanton was impossibly good. It had taken him a little while to get the knack of it, but as soon as he got control of his club and knew the reactions of the ball, his score started plummeting. Now it was so low as to be almost ridiculous. One long drive to the green and one putt to the cup. An easy thirty-six strokes for eighteen holes! An occasional hole-in-one sometimes ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... been glad to continue to the crack of doom. To smoke and sprawl and read a little, and exchange chit-chat, was poetry enough for him. So contented was he that his joy was apt to find an outlet in ditties and whistling—he possessed a slightly tuneful, rollicking knack at both—a proceeding which commonly culminated in his causing Selma to sit beside him on the sofa and be made much of, to the detriment ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... more amazing and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Laurier had the infallible knack of adjusting his makeup, not always himself—to any occasion from which he could extract profitable publicity, or upon which he could do some charming thing for somebody else. He is reputed once to have worn overalls among a gang ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... a knack for decoration, Sherm. I never dreamed you were artistic. Why didn't you tell us? That spray against the curtain is exquisite. Have you ever taken drawing lessons?" Marian was both surprised and interested to discover this unexpected talent in the ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... suspicion anybody who indulges in it, whether he makes them the object of it or not. They bore with it, when turned against slavery, from one or two distinguished humorists, because its effectiveness was plain; but we doubt whether any man who had the knack of seeing the ludicrous side of things ever really won their confidence, partly owing to their own natural want of humor, and partly to their careful cultivation of a habit of solemnity of mind as the only ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... me attention only because I have been sometimes thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist upon it. For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so: until I was heavily punished for this pride, by finding that many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such pleasant language—if indeed it ever were mine—is passing away from ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... sailors have a knack, Haul away, yo ho, boys, Of hauling down a Frenchman's jack 'Gainst any odds, you ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Hoskins i' them days had charge o' the Sunday-school boys. He was a short-sighted man, the Deacon, tho' that were hes misfortun'; but he had faults as well, an' wan o' these was a powerful knack o' droppin' off to sleep durin' sarmon-time. Hows'ever, he managed very tidily, for he knawed he was bound to wake hissel' so soon as he began to snore, an' then he'd start up sudden an' fetch the nighest boy a rousin' whistcuff 'pon the side o' the head to cover the ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... music of 'Der Wildschuetz' is no less bright and unpretentious than that of 'Czar und Zimmermann'; in fact, these two works may be taken as good specimens of Lortzing's engaging talent. His strongest points are a clever knack of treating the voices contrapuntally in concerted pieces, and a humorous trick of orchestration, two features with which English audiences have become pleasantly familiar in Sir Arthur Sullivan's operettas, which works indeed owe not ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... faithful to Pepita and the grandmother. He had a body as big as an ox, and a heart as big as his body, but he was slow and dull in everything but one thing—that was his carpenter work. He was well enough at that, and more than well enough, for he had always had a fancy and a knack for it from the time when as a boy he had worked in his uncle's vineyards and tilled his fields and fed his beasts. His uncle had been counted a rich man among his neighbors, but when his sister and her husband died and left ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a vague feeling that he had some sort of an appointment which he must keep; but he was unable to think what it was. Meanwhile, he conducted tentative experiments with his breath. It was so long since he had last breathed that he had lost the knack ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... a woman could have done it easily," the Colonel declared, "only unfortunately there don't seem to have been any women about. Why, I've seen it done in Korea with a turn of the wrist. It's all knack." ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... madame has a knack of making herself comfortable. I have seldom seen a cosier retreat on a broiling summer's day, and in this dusty, dirty town. She has not breakfasted yet, nor, except for my cup of coffee, have I. I will do myself the pleasure of joining her. A cutlet ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... more than two centuries ago; but the Tregeagle or Tergagle of legend belongs to folk-lore rather than to modern social life. Very old ideas and superstitions have in some manner become attached to a recent name; tradition has a knack of bringing forward its dates; stories of immemorial antiquity are related as though they were the experience of the narrator's father or grandfather, and are modernised to suit that supposition. Legend never sticks at absurdity or anachronism. From some versions of the story it would appear that ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... of his cousin, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the reminiscences or family traditions of her grand-daughter, Lady Louisa Stuart. But Lady Mary, vivacious and agreeable as she is, had with all her talent a very considerable knack of writing for effect, of drawing strong contrasts and the like; and it is not quite certain that she saw very much of Fielding in the last and most interesting third of his life. Another witness, Horace ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... Invisibility, by any Natural Expedient, yet known, is, I Believe, a meer PLINYISM; How far it may be obtained by a Magical Sacrament, is best known to the Dangerous Knaves that have try'd it. But our Witches do seem to have got the knack: and this is one of the Things, that make me think, Witchcraft will not be fully understood, until the day when there shall not be ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... the Indians was very simple and the game was soon learned, but the knack of catching the disks in the pan proved quite difficult. John undertook it, with the result that he spilled every one of them out when they fell in the shallow bowl, much to ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... a slight chill on the company, but Mrs. Ballinger said with an air of indulgent irony: "Mrs. Roby always has the knack of making a little go a long way; still, we certainly owe her a debt for happening to remember that she'd heard of Xingu." And this was felt by the other members to be a graceful way of cancelling once for all the ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Co.'s Tea from the circumstance of it's never having either odor or flavor. We find, after ample experience, that the presence of either of these qualities directly injures the sale. Give it plenty of Astringency (an easy knack) and it will be sure to go down in this country. It is our experience (and that of many other Operators of our kind—or upon our kind, if you prefer the phrase,) that people like to be imposed upon, and can always ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... went on found occasion to apply his knowledge in the household and the courts, there was little else for any one to do than engage in farming, fishing, and trading with the Indians, or turn carpenter and cobbler according to demand. The artisan became a farmer, though still preserving his knack as a craftsman, and expended his skill and his muscle in subduing a ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... though he thought me a mind-reader, but I fancy the knack of divining when people need a confidant is preternaturally developed ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... The superintendent had a knack of putting seemingly irrelevant questions. Robinson had been disconcerted by it earlier in the day, but Grant seemed to treat the interruption ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyll, who sat in the next box to us, say, 'It will do—it must do! I see it in the eyes of them.' This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon; for that Duke (besides his own good taste) has a particular knack, as any one now living, in discovering the taste of the public. He was quite right in this, as usual; the good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... of all kind of things dat dey have dese days, but somehow it look like dey have a knack of gettin along better wid what dey have den. Didn' have no stoves to cook on in dem days. Cook in clay oven en on de fireplace. Make up fire en when it die down, dey put tatoes (potatoes) in de oven en let em stay dere all night. My God, won' nothin no ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... or light, or weight, or care; Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong; Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line; Then polish all with so much life and ease, You think 'tis nature, and a knack to please; But ease in writing flows from art, not chance, As those move easiest ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... draughtsman, now, I could do something much better for you. I intend to set up a shop for ornamental carving, and I want some one to draw patterns. If you had a knack at designing, if you could ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Auto-Comrade hates a flabby brain almost as much as he hates a flabby body. He soon makes it clear that he will not have much to do with any one who has not yet mastered the vigorous and highly complex art of not worrying. Also, he demands of his companion the knack of calm, consecutive thought. This is one reason why so many more Auto-Comrades are to be found in crow's-nests, gypsy-vans, and shirt-waist factories than on upper Fifth Avenue. For, watching the stars and the sea from a swaying masthead, taking light-heartedly to the open road, or even operating ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Lumbering and logging are the two great occupations of the Western Canadian winter, and what you see here is the fruit of that work. Terribly hard work it is too. Swinging an axe all day among the great giants of the forest requires knack as well as strength, and when a man first starts that game he quickly finds he is as weak as a baby till his muscles get hardened to it. When cut down the trunks are dragged to any stream, or creek, as they call them here, to be drifted ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... Gliding up gracefully on his own snowshoes to the struggling lad, he would reach down and, seizing him under the arms, would quickly lift him up and once more place him on his feet amidst the laughter of the others. Thus they practiced and fell, tried again and again, until the knack was accomplished and they could get ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... shooting began. The rabbits bolted well, and Howard experienced a lively satisfaction, quite out of proportion, he felt, to the circumstances, at finding that he could shoot a great deal better than his pupil. The old knack came back to him, and he toppled over his rabbits cleanly and in ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... matter of strength, but of knack. The power of the onrushing bull actually supplied all the strength which was necessary. Dan Collins twisted. The animal's wrinkled neck turned. It could not help turning, for the pain at its nostrils ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... Percivals. Her head had no mercy for such an utter want of ambition and energy, but the heart plays often a bigger part than the head in an estimate of a fellow-creature, and Darsie's heart had a way of making excuses for the handsome truant, who smiled with such beguiling eyes, had such a pretty knack of compliment, and was—generally!—ready to play knight-errant in her service. She felt herself lucky in possessing so charming a friend to act the part of gallant, and to be at her service when she chose to call. And then quite suddenly she drew a sharp ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Medicines for Dyspepsia," which was popular and profitable. But I was saying Madame Bill was a handsome woman, and valuable, and Flannagan himself hadn't a better eye for giving the public sensations. She expanded his ideas. Yet Flannagan had a knack. He was grand at speech-making, and sudden ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... of structure. He maintains that the turning-point of good or bad Latinity is, not idiom, as Mr. White says, but structure. Then Mr. Black, the father, is led on to speak of himself, and of his youthful studies; and he ends by giving Harry a history of his own search after the knack of writing Latin. I do not see quite how this is to the point of Mr. White's paper, which cannot be said to contradict Mr. Black's narrative; but for this very reason, I may consistently quote it, for from a different point of view it may ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... to me that it ought to be far less pessimistic than it is, also, about what we can do in the way of schools and social life in civilisation and about civilisation's way of doing business. Is our little knack of Christianity (I find myself wondering) quite worthy of all this attention it is getting from The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions? Why should it approve of civilisation with a rush? Does any one really suppose that it is really time to pat it on the ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... need—particularly if she be a woman who insists, as I do, upon her indefeasible right to sing bass. I know that it helps things along for a woman to look after a man's linen and buttons, and do his fine work generally, because she seems to have a kind of natural knack at the business. I am aware that it is exceedingly pleasant to hear a woman sing treble, if she sings it well, but I am talking, be it remembered, of woman's right to sing bass. Let us stick ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... things to do in the cultivation of Attention is to learn to think of, and do, one thing at a time. Acquiring the "knack" or habit of attending closely to the things before us, and then passing on to the next and treating it in the same way, is most conducive to success, and its practice is the best exercise for the cultivation of the faculty of Attention. And on the contrary, there is nothing more ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... Prefet, a certain knack which I had the opportunity of employing in Africa on more than one occasion. Hence my nickname of Arsene Lupin. It was soon after the death of the man himself, you know, and he was much spoken of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... of Chicago at this time sat a man named Walden H. Lucas. Aged thirty-eight, he was politically ambitious. He had the elements of popularity—the knack or luck of fixing public attention. A fine, upstanding, healthy young buck he was, subtle, vigorous, a cool, direct, practical thinker and speaker, an eager enigmatic dreamer of great political honors to come, anxious ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... seated herself on the fender-stool. She has an unconscious knack of getting into easy, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... office, I have had some of our ablest remaining scientific brains working on the problem of building a new ship. They have not been successful." He laid his gloved hands, palms upward, on the desk, added, "It appears that we have lost the knack for ...
— It's All Yours • Sam Merwin
... around the city are numerous exasperating sand islands, exposed to view at low tide. The amateur gondolier seeks this lagoon, to be safe from scoffers at his clumsy rowing, and often, right in the midst of his "getting the knack of it," the tide leaves him stuck fast on a sand island, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... thing happens. All of a sudden I get more interested in packing chocolates than anything else on earth. A little knack or twist comes to me—my fingers fly (for me). I forget Tessie. I forget the time. I forget my feet. How many boxes can I pack to-day? That is all I can think of. I don't want to hear the noon bell. I can't wait to get back after lunch. ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Mohammed, which obliged us with its own peculiar gusts; and the 'Akabah Gulf, as usual, acted wind-sail. A long dtour was necessary in order to spare the mules, which, however, are much less liable to injury, under such circumstances, than horses, having a knack of learning ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... fudge, too, which Nancy had the knack of making. The chums had a chafing dish hidden away, and this was brought forth and the ingredients made ready, while Nancy hovered over the dish ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... charge and the guiding spirit amongst them. Carberry from Western Australia proved his worth in another manner. The 4th Brigade were some distance up the gully and greatly in want of water. Carberry seems to have the knack of divining, for he selected a spot where water was obtained after sinking. General Monash drew my attention to this, and Carberry ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... fellow, and he had a knack of turning up whenever one wanted to do a civil thing by that poor girl. Where is ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "You've got a knack," he said, almost graciously, "of putting a fellow in a good humour with ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... knew of weapons which seemed to possess personal skill and ferocity. Later, workmen found that certain tools had a knack of fitting smoothly in the hand—seeming even to divine the grain of the wood they worked on. The individual characteristics of violins were notorious, so that a violin which sang joyously under the ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... not always pleasant. In heavy weather the stern of the ship has an unwholesome knack of jumping into the air and shaking itself like the tail of a dog. It is disconcerting, to say the least of it, particularly when the water sweeps its way aft along the upper deck in solid masses which no so-called watertight ventilator ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... agreeable stowage he has now grown to plumpness. When in the country Colum rises early in order to stretch the pleasures of the day, and he walks about before breakfast from tree to tree to view his feathered tenants. He has even acquired, after much practice, the knack of chirping—a hissing conjunction of the lips and teeth—which he is confident wins the friendly ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... education. From his youth up he had lived in Oxford, and from the time he was able to know anything, within the purlieus of a college, from whence he had gleaned up a few Latin sentences, scraps of poetry, and as the masterpiece of his improvements, had acquired a good knack of punning. All these mighty qualifications were bent to keep a good house, and drinking two or three quarts of strong ale, accompanied with a song, and two or three hours' scraping at night. The mother, again, was the last remnant of a decayed family, who charged its ruin on the Civil Wars. ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... and decide on what you wish the picture to be. And having decided this, work straight on, using nature to support your original impression, but don't be led off by a fresh scheme because others strike you as you go along. New schemes will do so, of course, and every new one has a knack of looking better than your original one. But it is not often that this is so; the fact that they are new makes them appear to greater advantage than the original scheme to which you have got accustomed. ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... inquiry at Doolittle, who was a shorter and stouter man, with a knack of getting over ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... however, he was not long suffered to enjoy. The curate happened that day to dine with him: his visits, indeed, were more properly to the aunt than the nephew; and many of the intelligent ladies in the parish, who, like some very great philosophers, have the happy knack at accounting for everything, gave out that there was a particular attachment between them, which wanted only to be matured by some more years of courtship to end in the tenderest connection. In this conclusion, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... person has a great knack at finding out feats of legerdemain, you may pronounce him a blockhead. I never knew a clever man who was worth a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
