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More "Pry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... already abroad in the woods, and were it not for the fear of the Wolf they would be thicker therein, and faring wider; for we have slain many of them, coming upon them unawares; and they know not where we dwell, nor who we be: so they fear to spread about over-much and pry into unknown places lest the Wolf howl on them. Yet beware! for they will gather in numbers that we may not meet, and then will they swarm into the Dale; and if ye would live your happy life that ye ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... no desire to pry into the methods of men in their dealings with each other. She rose from the table and passed ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... endeavour to explode all Divination; yet when the Prophecy comes to be fulfilled, they will confess their own Ignorance, and give an implicit Belief to such Revelations, as are delivered to the Publick by those wise Men, who by their Art pry into the Cabinet of Futurity, and make to themselves Spectacles of the Planets, by which they are enabled to read the darkest Page in the ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... parrying inquisitiveness, but there is a story extant of a "Londoner" on his travels in the provinces, who rather eclipses the cunning "Yankee Peddler." In traveling post, says the narrator, he was obliged to stop at a village to replace a shoe which his horse had lost; when the "Paul Pry" of the place bustled up to the carriage-window, and without waiting for the ceremony of ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... the smaller of the two Assassins pulled out a long knife from his pocket, and tried to pry Pinocchio's ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... what city people think. But it's all a mistake. There isn't half the sympathy in the country that there is in the city. Folks pry into each other's business more, but they don't really care so much. What I mean is that you could live cheaper, and the fight isn't so hard. You might have to use your hands more, but you wouldn't have to use your head hardly at all. There isn't ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... In vain Perris tugged at the reins. The lack of curb gave him no pry on the jaw of the chestnut and sheer strength against strength he was a child on a giant. The strips of leather burned through his fingers and the first great point of the battle was decided in favor of ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... wife's advice and did not attempt to pry into Jimmy's affairs. "He is quite old enough to look after himself," Mrs. Walter said, "and I don't see why you should be private detective for May and Ida. I believe they would try and manage you, too, if I would ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... you would," replied her aunt. "I'm a great believer in married women paying attention at home before they begin to pry into their neighbors' affairs. It's a ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... stronghold wherein a man fights his secret weakness should be sacred. Not even a clergyman nor a wife should invade its precincts uninvited. Enoch's inner sanctuary had been laid open to the idle view of all the world. The newspaper reporter had pried where no real man would pry. The Brown papers had published that from which a decent editor would turn away for very compassion. Only a very dirty man will with no excuse whatever wantonly and ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... our having foul weather, master," observed the younger of the two, in a half querulous, half positive tone, as standing on a huge bank of sea-weed, he regarded first the heavens, and then the earth, with the scrutinising gaze of one accustomed to pry into their mysteries. His companion made no answer, but commenced unrolling a rich silk scarf, that had enveloped his throat, and twisting it into loose folds, passed it several times around his waist—having previously withdrawn ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... to pry into the mystery, Freddie Firefly had no luck at all. For Kiddie Katydid made no reply to his inquiries. Kiddie merely smiled in a most annoying fashion and kept ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Polkimbra, still desolate, and, beyond, the purple line of cliffs towards Kynance; on my right the rock hid everything from view, except the open sea and the gulls returning after the tempest to inspect and pry into the fresh masses of weed and wreckage. I looked timidly at my companion. He was still gazing out towards the sea, apparently deep in thought. The cap was on his head, and his legs still dangled, while he muttered to himself as if unconscious of my presence. Presently, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cargo at the lighthouse itself, gives me as fair a chance of getting out of it as any plan I can think of. The cargo's not all my own and it's a valuable one, I daresay you have guessed as much; and it's not the kind we want revenue men to pry into. I could not unload elsewhere that I know of, without creating suspicion. As to storing it elsewhere, it's out of the question. Scarthey's the place, though it's a damned risky one just now! But we've run many a risk together in our ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... women who kept the boarding house were educated and considerate and had long ago ceased to be inquisitive. Such a variety of people met there that it would have been too much of an undertaking to pry into the secrets of each individual. Such things only interfered with business. Effi, who still remembered the cross-questionings to which the eyes of Mrs. Zwicker had subjected her, was very agreeably impressed with the reserve of the boarding house keepers. But ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... smiled slightly. "I swear to you, I will take any oath you like that there is no paper there concerned with politics. You will be sorry if you read them. I assure you that you will repent it afterwards. You will be doing a base action. You will pry into a woman's secrets. You will bring dishonour on the name of ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... hand. "I grieve to find you in such a position, but I am happily not called upon to act on your information, of which, indeed," he added with a smile, "I will choose to doubt the accuracy. It is not for me to pry into your family affairs, but if you desire to confide in me, I will assuredly counsel and help you to the ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... take Richard long to insert the iron bar under one end of the slat and thus pry it up. This done the man with the axe gave the side of the seat a couple of blows, and then the prisoner ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... at all. You just set the pick in here over the lock, and pry. I sha'n't leave a scratch." They stoop down together in front of the bureau, and Campbell shows him how. "But what are you going to do? You've got to have your clothes if you're going to the musicale. ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... knew little concerning his progenitors, and rested well content with the scantiness of his knowledge. The character and condition of his father, of whom alone upon that side of the house he had personal cognizance, did not encourage him to pry into the obscurity behind that luckless rover. He was sensitive on the subject; and when he was applied to for information, a brief paragraph conveyed all that he knew or desired to know. Without doubt he would have been best pleased to have the world take ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... too curious the future to pry, Presume on our own feeble strength to rely; But, taught by the past; for the future, depend Where the wise and the good ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... Kennedy exultingly, "I think we have stolen a march on them. I don't believe they were prepared for this, not at least at this stage in the game. Don't ask me any questions, Walter. Then you will have no secrets to keep if anyone should try to pry them loose. Only remember that this man Lawrence ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... a welcome guest at the house of Mere Malheur, who feasted her lavishly, and served her obsequiously, but did not press with undue curiosity to learn her business in the city. The two women understood one another well enough not to pry too closely ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... hist, hush! bowl, a vessel. hissed, did hiss. boll, a pod. paws, the feet of beasts. nose, part of the face. pause, a stop. knows, does know. faun, a sylvan god. mote, a particle. fawn, a young deer. moat, a ditch. pride, vanity. toled, allured. pried, did pry. told, did tell. wain, a wagon. tolled, did toll. wane, to decrease. rein, part of a bridle. see, to behold. rain, falling water. sea, a body of water. reign, to rule. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... pry into her religion; and on these Patsy smiled indulgently as one does sometimes on overcurious children. "Sure, I believe in every one—and as for a church, there's not a place that goes by the name—synagogue, meeting-house, or cathedral—that I can't be finding a wee bit of God waiting ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... that peer and spy, Sad eyes that heed not skies nor trees, In dismal nooks he loves to pry, Whose motto evermore is Spes! But ah! the fabled treasure flees; Grown rarer with the fleeting years, In rich men's shelves they take their ease, - Aldines, ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... which was indifferent, went to see "Paul Pry," a trotting-horse of Mr. M'Leod's, now in training to do a match of eighteen miles in the hour.[5] With the exception of a few scratches on one of his legs, he looked in slapping order; a powerful grey horse, just sixteen hands, with a fine ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... taken the pin, then she was a thief. If she had found it, but purposely failed to return it, she was still a thief. Marjorie opened her lips to pour forth a torrent of reproaches, but the words would not come. She had a wild desire to pry open the hand which held her precious butterfly and seize it, but her hands remained limply at her sides. It was her pin, her very own, yet she could not touch it unless Constance chose to ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... "Good," replied I; "but, pry'thee, dear Ibrahim, read me this riddle: if the devil gets into water and kills, why don't he kill ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... are," Simon admonished his sisters. "And curious. Scandalous you are to pry into the leavings of ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... the context of the foregoing quotation occurs an anecdote of Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah which is too racy to let pass, and too characteristic to need note or comment. One day Elisha ben Abuyah was privileged to pry into Paradise, where he saw the recording angel Metatron on a seat registering the merits of the holy of Israel. Struck with astonishment at the sight, he exclaimed, "Is it not laid down that there is no sitting in heaven, no shortsightedness or fatigue?" Then Metatron, thus ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Hagar' in the handwriting of my father, it shows that somebody is not telling the truth. I used to pore over the old farm records in my father's hand at Stone Ridge in the old account books stowed away in places where a boy loves to poke and pry. I know it as well as I know yours. Do you suppose she would not know it? When a man writes as few letters as he does, the handwriting does not change." Paul laid the letter upon the coals. "It is the only witness against her, ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... he added; "we listened only for our own good, and we shall show you how to insulate your thoughts. We do not pry." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... and Huxley agreed with him. He declared that the mind cannot "make any discoveries when it would pry into the nature and hidden cause of these ideas." We must, in fact, definitely reject what we know as matter as the absolute reality of the universe, for it becomes very plain that what we call ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... keeping them undiscovered, makes even the conversation of men of wit and learning tedious to you, what anxious hours must I spend, who am condemned by custom to the conversation of women, whose natural curiosity leads them to pry into all my thoughts, and whose envy can never suffer Horatio's heart to be possessed by any one, without forcing them into malicious designs against the person who is so happy as to possess it! But, indeed, if ever envy can possibly have any excuse, or ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... room for warning and company. The fleeting hours that the happy pair looked out from one of those magic windows are not to be recorded in detail. A lover's log-book is unknown. The fears and conspiracies that might have harassed them found no leverage of doubt to pry an entrance into Gabrielle's heart. Every wave of the higher air wafted from Trinity's steeple, brought them the joy of marriage bells. Even without a lame leg, Jim would never have thought of ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... moment. Perhaps he was wondering who had given this stranger a right to pry into his inner shrine. Perhaps he was wondering if Rose-Marie would like an outsider to know just what she had told him. When he ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... "What evil have I done to thee? I showed thee favours more than any man hath ever dealt to another. Thou wouldst not heed my rede, but didst harden thy heart and lustedst to obtain this wealth and to pry into the hidden treasures of the earth. Thou wouldst not be content with what thou hadst and thou didst misdoubt my words thinking that I would play thee false. Thy case is beyond all hope, for never more wilt thou regain thy sight; no, never. Then said I with tears and lamentations, "O Fakir, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... climb in at windows for a ball, can go the same way for money, and get it easy enough when they've only to pry open ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... necessarily diverted from all doubts or apprehensions of the occult purposes of him who had thus beguiled her over the long frequented paths. As the great secret of success with the mere worldling, is to pry into the secret of his neighbor while carefully concealing his own, so it is the great misfortune of enthusiasm to be soon blinded to a purpose which its own ardent nature neither allows it to suspect nor penetrate. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... with mighty little motion, Of danger they abandoned the wild notion, Finding it easy for a Frog to jog On with a kind King Log. But in the fulness of the time, there came A would-be monarch—Legion his fit name; A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated, Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated; A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature, A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature. This new King Stork, With a fierce, fussy appetite for work; Not satisfied with fixing like a vice Authority on Town and Country Mice, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... thus guilty of incest is to incite in the community at large a horror which, venting itself in what Bagehot calls a "wild spasm of wild justice," involves certain death for the offender. To interfere with a grave, to pry into forbidden mysteries, to eat forbidden meats, and so on, are further examples of transgressions liable to ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... had no wish to pry further into their bloody practices; but Bill seemed bent on it, so I turned and went. We passed rapidly through the bush, being guided in the right direction by the shouts of the savages. Suddenly there was a dead silence, which continued for some time, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... for now you may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have the roof unboarded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught a lesson in wariness which you will need if you ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... that rivulet lies from its source! My dear young sir, Mr. Darrell has known griefs on which it does not become you and me to talk. He never talks of them. The least I can do for my benefactor is not to pry into his secrets, nor babble them out. And he is so kind, so good, never gets into a passion; but it is so awful to wound him,—it gives him such pain; that's why he frightens me,—frightens me horribly; and so he will you when you come to know him. Prodigious mind!—granite,—overgrown ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... look for the awful gloom of the cavernous hall of Arimanes, Byron's "Prince of Earth and Air." The gray figure from most ancient myth is not less real to us than Mefistofeles in "Faust." At least we clearly feel the human daring that feared not to pry into forbidden mysteries and refused the solace of unthinking faith. And it becomes again a question whether the composer had in mind this subjective attitude of the hero or the actual figures and abode of the spirits ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... blessedness," he thought, "is well worth the bare existence of the other twenty-three." His friends felt the change, too. They all knew that something had happened, that something had entered the life of the old professor and changed it, but not one of them attempted to pry into his secret. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... "it does not befit so great and wondrous a power to pry and search and play the varlet even to the beautiful chatelaine of Villefranche. Ask a worthy question, and, with the blessing of God, you ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... books. Just as soon as I can find a nice comfortable house mother to put in charge, I am going to plot for the dismissal of Maggie McGurk, though I foresee that she will be even harder than Sterry to pry ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... forms related in a particular way?" The question is extremely interesting, but irrelevant to aesthetics. In pure aesthetics we have only to consider our emotion and its object: for the purposes of aesthetics we have no right, neither is there any necessity, to pry behind the object into the state of mind of him who made it. Later, I shall attempt to answer the question; for by so doing I may be able to develop my theory of the relation of art to life. I shall not, however, be under the delusion that I am rounding off my ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... other, as if to pry into the thoughts of their neighbors. There was a long silence, and it was in vain that Tony called for the opinions of the members; they did not seem to have any ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... moor. What had happened during those hours of suspense and danger? What barriers had been swept aside; what new vistas opened? Edith's own love was too sweet and sacred a thing to allow her to pry and question into the heart-secrets of another, as is the objectionable fashion of many so-called friends, but with her keen woman-senses she took in George Elgood's every word, look, and movement during ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... establishment of a church house at 52 Henry Street. Mr. Denison said: "It was not an institution—it was not even a settlement; it was simply a house where people lived. The time is gone by for men and women to come down as outsiders and pry into the homes of poverty and sin, and then return to their own life far away. One must live in a community, one must be ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... help. Now, you do your part, and I'll do mine. No one knows of this business but me. I didn't tell Everdean a word. He don't know why I hustled out there and back, nor why I asked so many questions. And he ain't the kind to pry into what don't concern him. So you're pretty safe, I cal'late. Now, if you don't mind, I wish you'd run along home. I'm—I'm used ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... five years old. One night after I had had supper and washed myself, I said to th' missus, 'There's a peep-show i' Tithebarn Street, and if you'll wash Bobby's face I'll tek him there; its nobbut a penny.' You know it was one o' them shows where they hev pictures behind a piece o' calico, Paul Pry with his umbrella, Daniel i' th' lions' den, ducks swimming across a river, a giantess who was a man shaved and dressed in women's clothes, a dog wi' five legs, and a stuffed mermaid—just what little lads would like. There was a man, besides, who played on ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... only one who seest my affliction and respectest it, seekest not to pry into it, but appearest silently and kindly to sympathize, come to me, Bendel, and be the nearest to my heart; I have not locked from thee the treasure of my gold, neither will I lock from thee ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Sauney Pry came from Loudon Co., Va. He had been one of the "well-cared for," on the farm of Nathan Clapton, who owned some sixty or seventy slaves. Upon inquiry as to the treatment and character of his master, Sauney unhesitatingly ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... impatience, and partly from a wish to pry—he opened the door of the parlour. "Oh, my God!" he screamed, leaping back, and with his bulky bag got stuck in the kitchen door, in his ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... Agrippa left his house at Louvain, and intending to be absent for some time, gave the key of his study to his wife, with strict orders that no one should enter it during his absence. The lady herself, strange as it may appear, had no curiosity to pry into her husband's secrets, and never once thought of entering the forbidden room; but a young student, who had been accommodated with an attic in the philosopher's house, burned with a fierce desire to examine the study; hoping, perchance, that he might purloin some book or implement ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... pale, then said hesitantly, "Well ... the sealed cases Mr. Maulbow brought out from the Hub with him had some very expensive instruments in them. That's all I know. He's always trusted me not to pry into his business any more than my secretarial duties required, and of course ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it may be doubted whether there was any real change, after all, in the sordid, worn-out, worthless and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow, but merely a spectral illusion and a cunning effect of ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... said Lewisham, with a sort of stiff civility, "if I seem to be forcing myself upon you. I don't want to pry into your affairs—if you don't wish me to. The sight of you has somehow brought back a lot of things.... I can't explain it. Perhaps—I had to come to find you—I kept on thinking of your face, of how you used to smile, ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... like a picture of misery in a balldress. In the adjoining room, long tables were laid out, on which servants were placing refreshments for the fete about to be given on this joyous occasion. I felt somewhat shocked, and inclined to say with Paul Pry, "Hope I don't intrude." But my apologies were instantly cut short, and I was welcomed with true Mexican hospitality; repeatedly thanked for my kindness in coming to see the nun, and hospitably pressed ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... coming through the woods we happened to stop a minute. Then we see this Frenchy sneaking through the woods. We wondered what was up. Then he vanished. We looked about, some quiet-like, and on tiptoe, and then we saw this shipmate o' your'n pry apart some bushes and head in this way. It ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... stretched out—my neck is too far from the ground," Abe answered. "I'm like a crowbar. If I can get my big toe or my fingers under anything I can pry some." ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... deceived me. She has not deceived me—she loves me! What do I care whether she has given me her true name or not! She has given me her true heart. What right had Julian to play upon her feelings and pry into her secrets? My poor, tempted, tortured child! I won't hear her confession. Not another word shall she say to any living creature. I am mistress—I will forbid it at once!" She snatched a sheet of notepaper from the case; hesitated, and threw it from her on ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... dreadful calamities which Antiochus, the wicked emperor of Greece, threatened to bring upon his subjects and city of Tyre, in revenge for a discovery which the prince had made of a shocking deed which the emperor had done in secret; as commonly it proves dangerous to pry into the hidden crimes of great ones. Leaving the government of his people in the hands of his able and honest minister, Helicanus, Pericles set sail from Tyre, thinking to absent himself till the wrath of Antiochus, who was mighty, should ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... provide for this contingency some Bhoyars give their children ten or twelve names at birth. If all the names fail, the Joshi invents new ones of his own, and in some way brings about the auspicious union to the satisfaction of both parties, who consider it no business of theirs to pry into the Joshi's calculations or to question his methods. After the marriage-shed is erected the family god must be invoked to be present at the ceremony. He is asked to come and take his seat in an earthen pot containing a lighted wick, the pot being supported on a toy chariot ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... natural to wish to pry into futurity. We are impatient to penetrate the clouds that envelope us, and to discern the distant course which Providence has prescribed for our feet. Curiosity combines with self-interest to urge this inquiry; but the reproof which Peter received is justly merited by ourselves: ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... is mistaken. Still, question her. Pry into this Babylonian's doings. He may be selling more things than carpets. If he has corrupted any here in Athens,—by Pluto the Implacable, I will make ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... expedition afforded. Yes: there was one other article, and, to my mind, more significant than the vest of the hidalgo. This was a short and stout crowbar of iron; not one of the long crowbars that farmers use to pry up stones, but a short handy one, such as you would use in digging silver-ore out of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... salvage of our ship was all that Captain Montbar looked for or expected, and we saw no reason why we should disclose our secret to any beyond those chosen from our own company, nor did Montbar seek to pry into our business, contenting himself with our promise, at the end of the week either to pay him salvage or surrender our ship and ourselves, to be disposed of in such manner ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... Licentiate, brought for sale, as it were haphazard, to some market-place in Seville or Valladolid in wine-skins. But the contents of the above-mentioned Bibliotheca were purely English. It was a small but choice assemblage of old poetry formed by Mr. Thomas Hill, otherwise Tommy Hill, otherwise Paul Pry, which he offered to Longmans on the plea of failing health, and for which the purchasers elected, looking prophetically at his moribund aspect, to grant him an annuity in preference to a round sum. Mr. Hill's apprehensions, however, were premature, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... mocking even at themselves, mocking at this 'change'—'Why, and yet without it, would you ever even have dreamed once a poor fool of a Frenchman went to his restless grave for me—for me? Need we understand? Were we told to pry? Who made us human must be human too. Why must we take such care, and make such a fret—this soul? I know it, I know it; it is all we have—"to save," they say, poor creatures. No, never to SPEND, and so they daren't for a solitary instant ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... moral interregnum which the Aufklaerung [Enlightenment] has brought will not end till these instincts are rightly interpreted by in intelligence. The richest streams of thought must flow about them, the best methods must peep and pry till their secrets are found and put into the idea-pictures ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... of them tried to reach it, one bracing the other and helping him pry his body up from the implacable pull of Jupiter's uninsulated mass. The top Rogan reached a little higher. The flesh sucker-disk that served as a hand almost grasped the lever, but failed by only ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... with an angry note, and flirts his wings in ill-bred suspicion. The Mavis, or Red Thrush, sneaks and skulks like a culprit, hiding in the densest Alders; the Cat-Bird is a coquette and a flirt, as well as a sort of female Paul Pry; and the Chewink shows his inhospitality by espying your movements like a Japanese. The Wood-Thrush has none of these under-bred traits. He regards me unsuspiciously, or avoids me with a noble reserve,—or, if I am quiet and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... be the child of ignorance, ignorance is also the child of fear; the two react on, and produce each other. The more men dread Nature, the less they wish to know about her. Why pry into her awful secrets? It is dangerous; perhaps impious. She says to them, as in the Egyptian temple of old—"I am Isis, and my veil no mortal yet hath lifted." And why should they try or wish to lift it? If she will leave them in peace, they will leave her ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... 'We cannot pry into hidden things,' Percy answered. 'Watch his wife, and you will see that she is satisfied. You may trust him to her, and to Him in whose hands he is. Of this I am sure, that there is a patient consideration for others, and readiness ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be of little use. If a fellow is sweep enough to pry into another man's secrets, he is equal to lying about it into the bargain, and in that case you have no chance in finding out the truth. You have been upstairs for five days. It is impossible to account for all that may have happened during ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... toober-chlosis bugs. I just made that up as a sort of detective disguise. Them chickens wasn't eat by no bugs at all—they was stole. See? A chicken thief come right into the coop and stole them. Do you think any kind of a bug could pry off ...
— The Thin Santa Claus - The Chicken Yard That Was a Christmas Stocking • Ellis Parker Butler
... enigmatical to the sick man, but he knew such people were sometimes eccentric in their mode of living, and this might possibly account for his surroundings. However, it was no affair of his, she had been an angel of goodness to him, and he had no right to pry into ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... Brother and Sister, or Reward of Benevolence. Little Emma and her Father, a lesson for proud children. The Deserted Boy, or the Cruel Parents. The Comic Adventures of old Dame Trudge & her Parrot. Continuation of ditto. Errors of Youth. Peter Prim's profitable present for good Boys and Girls. Peter Pry's Puppet Show, part 1st. Ditto, part 2d. Pug's Visit to Mr. Punch. Punch's Visit to Mr. Pug. Tragical Wanderings of Grimalkin. Juvenile Pastimes, or Sports for the four Seasons, part 1st. Ditto, ...
— The Entertaining History of Jobson & Nell • Anonymous
... we'll see. We might get some fool to buy him. Anyway, you'd better tell Sam to pry him round a bit somehow when the show's opening. He looks all right when he gets a move on him, but he ain't worth a hill o' beans lyin' curled up there in a corner. How'd it do to get a dingo, and put it in there ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... across, they would turn the sheet sideways, and write at right angles to the other lines, and then corner-wise, perhaps, with a different-colored ink. There were no envelopes in those days, and the sheets had to be ingeniously folded, so that no curious postmaster could pry into family secrets. There was always a portion of the last page left blank, to form the outside of the letter, which, after being folded and directed, was sealed with a big red wafer. It was then ready to be started off the next time the stage-coach came through the town, for there were no railroads ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... show you, my boy," he said. "It is the richest find that ever came my way. Ha, ha! not many collectors have ever been so fortunate. I know where to pry about on the Continent, and I have made good use of my holidays. I sent home a couple of boxes filled with rare bargains; but ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... the guarantee against misgovernment which such a Privy Council furnished, would confine themselves more than they had of late done to their strictly legislative functions, and would no longer think it necessary to pry into every part of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... edge the mules were unhitched, a long rope was attached to one end of the boat, stout shoulders were placed under the pry poles, and with a "Heave'o! and another! and still another!" it was finally slid into the water amid loud cheers from the assembled spectators. These cheers were answered from the other side of the river, ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... been studied with marked interest. Two of these moons have displayed definite signs of human life. It is promised also that the coming lens will unlock the doors of the several moons and permit the astronomers of Jupiter to pry into the secrets of their ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or whether it be bad." From these and a few kindred texts we might infer that the author, aware that he "knew but in part," simply held the belief without attempting to pry into special methods, details, and results that at the time of the judgment all should have exact justice. He may, however, have unfolded in his preaching minutia of faith ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... necessary for you to circumvent God?" Mike asked, wondering if he'd have to pry everything out of the ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... especial grace; And the tall Pinta, till the noon, had held her close in chase. Forthwith a guard at every gun was placed along the wall; The beacon blazed upon the roof of Edgecumbe's lofty hall; Many a light fishing-bark put out to pry along the coast, And with loose rein and bloody spur rode inland many a post. With his white hair unbonneted, the stout old sheriff comes; Behind him march the halberdiers; before him sound the drums; His yeomen, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... the ledge of the box when he was pleased with the singing.—To a morning concert and heard the real Paganini. To one of the lesser theatres and heard a monologue by the elder Mathews, who died a year or two after this time. To another theatre, where I saw Listen in Paul Pry. Is it not a relief that I am abstaining from description of what everybody has ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... world by people who have ventured just to peep over the paling. It is urged against inquiries into matters yet mysterious—mysterious as all things look under the light of the first dawn of knowledge—why should we pry into them, until we know that we shall be benefited by the information we desire? All information is a benefit. All knowledge is good. Is it for man to say, "What ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... a witch," he muttered. "Her spells are no jokes. But I will investigate her case like an old-time Salem inquisitor. With more than Yankee curiosity, which was at the bottom of their superstitious questionings, I will pry into her power. But she will find that she has a wary sceptic to convince. I have seen too many saints and sinners to be again deceived by ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... put the best construction upon all he may hear of his neighbor (if it be not notoriously evil), or at any rate to condone it over and against the poisonous tongues that are busy wherever they can pry out and discover something to blame in a neighbor, and that explain and pervert it in the worst way; as is done now especially with the precious Word of ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... every way, and so he told her his dream, and he told her something else; told her of all his manly love that neither absence nor the vicissitudes of war could ever banish from his heart. And much more, too, he told her that we need not pry into. Flora went on and on. Just once she glanced behind. Gerty was ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... Dick; but when we had laved her face with that, and with wine as well, without effect, we were well dismayed, I do assure you. For all our efforts she lay as one dead; and neither of us could be cold enough to pry her lips apart to play the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... I have no wish to pry into business transactions; all my present hope is to help the cause of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... had to be adjusted accordingly. That is no longer possible. When a woman assumes her own moral responsibility, in sexual as in other matters, it becomes not only intolerable but meaningless for the community to pry into her most intimate physiological or spiritual acts. She is herself directly responsible to society as soon as she performs a social act, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... said the Moolah, in answer to some argument of Fardet's, "I have myself studied at the University of El Azhar at Cairo, and I know that to which you allude. But the learning of the faithful is not as the learning of the unbeliever, and it is not fitting that we pry too deeply into the ways of Allah. Some stars have tails, oh my sweet lamb, and some have not; but what does it profit us to know which are which? For God made them all, and they are very safe in His hands. Therefore, my friend, be not puffed up by the foolish learning of ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... unfortunately, Curt, others will not leave her out of this. They will pry and pry—you know ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... I dare not pry into my heart, I prefer to temporise, to deceive myself; I have not the courage to face the battle, I am ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... into the Unknown," she wrote—"that Unknown in which she seemed to be forever trying to pry. We knew she was going, and we told her. She was quite brave, but she begged us to try some way to keep her till after Christmas. 'My presents are not finished yet,' she made moan. 'And I did so want to ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... Beniah, there's no need to yell so loud. You know I've got back my hearing. What want ye with me? I'm sure I have no wish to pry into the secrets of this young man or yourself. ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... pulpit, and I told her I must have all the messages she had. She said it was only a letter to one she loved. I told her I must have it, and she handed it over. I read, "My darling husband," and handed it back, saying I would not pry into her family secrets. She began to cry, and insisted on my reading it, which I did. It was to her husband, an officer in the Confederate army, and ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... stabbed with his knife into the earth that filled the tunnel and still he pulled great rocks back with his shovel. All his life he had fought for his own hand. He would not let himself believe fate had played so scurvy a trick as to lock him alive into a tomb closed so tightly that he could not pry ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... Jacob and the mate let out more of the anchor chain. But they couldn't go very far, for the wind was so strong and the waves were so high and the heavy anchor chain held them back near the ship. When they had got as far as they could, they managed to pry the anchor overboard. It went into the water with a tremendous splash, wetting all the men; but they didn't mind, for they were all wet through already with the rain and the splashing of the waves. And the boat turned around and went back to the shore. ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... time pry into his secrets; and keep close what is intrusted to you, though put to the torture, by wine or passion. Neither commend your own inclinations, nor find fault with those of others; nor, when he is disposed to hunt, do you make verses. For by such means the amity of the twins Zethus and Amphion, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... difficulties of his social life lay in the fact that all women of forty were exactly alike, and it was impossible to recall their individual label, to which archdeacon, or canon, or form of spinster good works, they belonged. It would be dangerous, irreverent, to pry further into the recesses of the episcopal, or even of the suffragan, mind. There are snowy peaks where we lay helpers should fear to tread. But it may be stated, without laying ourselves open to a suspicion of wishing to undermine the Church, that when the woman ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... records, and others. He put them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty. He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan lay bare its treasure—and he saw the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... immediately spent for liquor), he might have bought back his name, but the prisoners' artel, or guild, always insisted upon the strict fulfilment of such bargains in default of the money being refunded; and if the authorities suspected such exchanges, they did not pry into them, it being immaterial to the officials (in Siberia at least) what man served out the sentence, so long as they could make their accounts tally. Thus much in explanation abbreviated ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... is. And she listens to things." Here Bessie pushed the door behind her open, to reveal the culprit in her white nightgown on the other side of it. "I should be ashamed to be a Paul Pry!" Bessie said with ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... said, "it's not to pry into what doesn't concern me; but Julia's my sister, and I can't after all help taking some interest in her life. She tells me herself so little. She doesn't ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... she to prowl round among Ernest's things and pry into the state of his wardrobe? If I had not had my time so broken up with giving lessons, I should have found out that he needed new shirts and set to work on them. Though I must own I hate shirt-making. ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... slid a little bit, and then more and more, until finally it was rolling along quite rapidly. As the bank sloped down to the river like a little hill, Bunny hardly had to push or pry at all now, and a minute later the raft was floating in ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... own doorsteps, carried into the old Siward house by old Siward servants, drunk as his forefathers? It was none of Fleetwood's business. It was none of the servants' business. It was nobody's business except his own. Who the devil were all these people, to pry into his affairs and doctor him and dose him and form secret leagues to disobey him, and hide decanters from him? Why should anybody have the impertinence to meddle with him? Of what concern to them were his vices ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... assault upon the heel of her one pair of good shoes, of friendly recognition of the familiar voice, of blank surprise upon perceiving that this voice came from the lips of a total stranger. She looked searchingly upon the smoked glasses, obviously trying to pry into the secret of the hidden eyes. Jaune's blood rushed up into his face, and he realized that detection was imminent. Mercifully, at that moment the crowd opened, and with a bow that hid his face behind his hat he made good his retreat. During the remaining half hour of his walk, he thought ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... Johnson might achieve more by getting the services to prosecute their current policies vigorously. Although Chairman Reid promised that these suggestions would all be taken into consideration, he still hoped to use the Air Force response to pry further concessions out of ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... white kids. The reason is that we make children learn things they ain't curious about. I bet if you was to try an' keep it a secret about George Washington bein' made President because he wouldn't lie about choppin' down that cherry tree, the kids would stay awake nights to pry into it. Kids is only human, ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... a very puzzling aspect to her mind. She admitted that scientists, viewed as a genus, were objectionable; but insisted that Fern, to whose personal charms she was keenly alive, was an exception to the rule. She felt confident that so good a man as he could never have tried to pry into the secrets of God Almighty. Tharald yielded grumblingly, inch by inch, and thus saved his dignity, although his daughter, in the end, prevailed. She obtained his permission to request the guest to remain, and not interpret too literally the rather hasty words he had ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a wire at my sister and tell her not to move out to Jiggersville until day after to-morrow. In the mean time we'll have to get a crowbar and pry your family circle loose from my premises. Nothing doing in the ghost ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... knows any one save himself alone? Who, in showing his house to the closest and dearest, doesn't keep back the key of a closet or two? I think of a lovely reader laying down the page and looking over at her unconscious husband, asleep, perhaps, after dinner. Yes, madam, a closet he hath: and you, who pry into everything, shall never have the key of it. I think of some honest Othello pausing over this very sentence in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing at Desdemona opposite to him, innocently administering ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... field agents all over the United States, and, quietly but efficiently, the FBI went to work. Agents began to probe and pry and poke their noses into the files and data sheets of every mental institution in the fifty states—as far, at any rate, as ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... my attention upon her; and I began to pry into her record. Burgess, one of my men, went as far as New Orleans, looking her up. A number of things were found against her, a few rather startling. She seemed a woman given to criminal impulses, and just the sort who would perpetrate a thing ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... I left thy shores, O Naxos; The merry Flageolet; When young men come a sighing; Comin' thro' the Rye; Love was once a little Boy; I've been Roaming; My Heart and Lute; Draw the Sword, Scotland; Adventures of Paul Pry; I have Fruit and I have Flowers; The Washing Day; The Light Guitar, and Answer; Long Summers ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... wish to pry into your secrets, but hope that you will listen quietly to my confession and then give me ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... attempt to pry through the guarded curtain; but often eyed it. Every hour or so an ecclesiastic peeped in, eyed him, chilled him, and exit. All this was gloomy, and mechanical. But the next day a gentleman, richly armed, bounced in, and glared at him. "What is ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... thought a few moments, and muttered to himself, "What a cussed old fool I've been to think that rhubob and jallup could touch his case! He's got something on his mind," and with a commendable delicacy he forbore to question and pry. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... help but feel," she went on, and with a sincere desire to prove her gratitude, rather than to pry out any secret of his, "that you do not belong here—that you are in more trouble than I am. For what can a man of your rank have to do in a little town ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... for Wilbur, the latter being of a rougher spiritual texture. Also, Merle could be trusted to behave himself in the Penniman parlour, not touching the many bibelots there displayed, or disarranging the furniture, while the Wilbur twin would not only touch and disarrange, but pry into and handle and climb and altogether demoralize. In all the parlour there was but one object for which he had a seemly respect—the vast painting of a recumbent lion behind bars. It was not an ordinary picture, such as may be seen in galleries, for the bars guarding the fierce beast ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... us on a false charge, based on some slanderous or stupid information of some of your infernal spies," said the Senator. "What right have you to pry into the private affairs of an American traveller? We have nothing to do ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... out of sympathy to our readers' bones. Western travellers, who have beguiled the midnight hour in the interesting process of pulling down rail fences, to pry their carriages out of mud holes, will have a respectful and mournful sympathy with our unfortunate hero. We beg them to drop a silent tear, and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... injurious to a child to attempt to force a feeling before its normal time, as to a bud, to pry open its petals to hasten God's processes. Even the Divine Child "grew." "That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual," is God's law of ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... say that. How do you know? If you are not going to read her letter, you had better say so at once. I dont want to pry into it: I only want to know what is become ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... foam bubbled out of her blue lips. Her eyes were meaningless. I had frightened her into catalepsy, and I ground my teeth at my ill luck, for she could have told me something of the woman. I took my brandy flask and tried to pry ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... visitor brought bad news! Hum! Hum! Better to throw physic to the dogs in his case. Mind diseased: secret trouble: my punishment is greater than I can bear. Put this and that together; there is something serious the matter. Well! well! I'm no Paul Pry.' ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... but wan day a man come up to him, an' says he, 'Ye know that ordhnance Schwartz inthrajooced?' 'I do,' says Dochney, 'an I'm again it. 'Tis a swindle,' he says. "Well,' says th' la-ad, 'they'se five thousan' in it f'r ye,' he says. They had to pry Dochney off iv him. Th' nex' day a man he knowed well come to Dochney, an' says he, 'That's a fine ordhnance iv Schwartz.' 'It is, like hell,' says Dochney. ''Tis a plain swindle,' he says. ''Tis a good thing f'r ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... out a cure. Let me, (though great, grave brethren of the gown Preach all Faith up, and preach all Reason down, Making those jar whom Reason meant to join, And vesting in themselves a right divine), Let me, through Reason's glass, with searching eye, Into the depth of that religion pry 580 Which law hath sanction'd; let me find out there What's form, what's essence; what, like vagrant air, We well may change; and what, without a crime, Cannot be changed to the last hour of time. Nor let me suffer that outrageous zeal Which, without ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... tired, and I've been thinking too much. That never suits me.... Thanks, Pam. You've helped me to make up my mind. I like you, Pam," she added dispassionately, "because you're so gentlewomanly. You don't ask questions, or pry. Most people do." ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... last struck me, that if I were again to feign madness I might obtain greater liberty. On putting my idea into execution, I found that it had the desired effect; and I was allowed from that time forward to go about wherever I liked, and to pry into people's houses and gardens, and even into the temples. I soon found my way down to the sea-shore, and used to pretend to be busy in picking up shells, and in stringing them together into necklaces and bracelets for my own adornment. Then I made others, which I presented, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... was dashed on the instant by the sudden snorting and shying of two or three of the horses in passing, and we laid hold of our weapons, keying ourselves to the fighting pitch. But, curiously enough, the riders made no move to pry into the cause. So far from it, they flogged the shying ponies into line and rode on stolidly; and thus in a little time that danger was overpast and the evening silence of the mighty forest was ours to keep or ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... twisted his mouth cynically. "Huh! Then it's good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all hell can't pry her loose." ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the leaves, but the king's son was not there. They went back to the queen. She looked long in her magic crystal, but little could she see; for the king's son had hidden himself in a small cave beside the tarn-stones, and into the darkness the crystal could not pry. ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... tall Pinta, till the noon, had held her close in chase. Forthwith a guard, at every gun, was placed along the wall; The beacon blazed upon the roof of Edgecombe's lofty hall; Many a light fishing-bark put out, to pry along the coast; And with loose rein, and bloody spur, rode ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... her weight, and pry into her age, Count her old beach lines by their tidal swell; Her sunken mountains name, her craters gauge, Her ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... President Clap's measures had excited no inconsiderable ill-will, demanded to see the laws; and accordingly a bundle of the Latin laws—the only ones in existence—were sent over to the State-House. Not admiring legislation in a dead language, and being desirous to pry into the mysteries which it sealed up from some of the members, they ordered the code to be translated. From that time the numberless editions of the laws have all been in the English ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... likely was just about the right amount. Mr. Waters swung quite loose and free from his limb, and got down without much trouble, and it took him all the afternoon to go around from tree to tree and pry the rest of my ancestors loose, and unwind them, because those new-fangled tails would snap together like springs, and it took several days' steady practice and straightening before they were really useful at a moment's notice. By that time, another strange thing had happened: The fur on them ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... don't pry, dear old Ham," he said testily. "Great Heavens and Moses! Can't a fellow take a desirable flat, with all modern conveniences, in the most fashionable part of the West End, and all that sort of thing, without exciting the voice of scandal, dear old thing? I'm surprised at you, really I am, Ham. ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... in barracks, which she disliked, but put up with because she doted on a red coat; that William had always been meaning to tell his father, but feared to anger him, "because, my dear," she frankly explained, "I was once connected with the stage"—a form of speech behind which 'Lizabeth did not pry; that, a fortnight before Christmas, William had made up his mind at last, "'for,' as he said to me, 'the old man must be nearin' his end, and then the farm'll be mine by rights;'" that he had obtained his furlough two ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at the foot of the stairs wide enough to detect a half-clothed man trying to pry open with one arm a heavy door above. She hesitated for a moment, but when the man had shoved the door back a little farther, enough for her to see Mrs. Preston struggling with all ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... to Kan Pry in 1884. Two chillun was born. The girl is living and the boy might be, but I don't know. My daughter works ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... trusty Diabolonians, yet more pry into, and endeavour to spy out the weakness of the town of Mansoul. We also would that you yourselves do attempt to weaken them more and more. Send us word also by what means you think we had best to attempt the regaining thereof: namely, whether by persuasion to a vain and ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... (Grimly.) You have. Now, will you be good enough to go—if there is nothing more in my room that you are anxious to pry into? ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... and the delicately-nurtured merchant's son slept side by side on their leaf-strewn floor, and even La Salle, excited and surprised as he had been, at last fell into a broken slumber. But when all were asleep, and no human eye could pry into his secret sorrows, Regnar seated himself by the flaring lamp, and drawing from his breast a locket, took from it a small folded paper, and a closely-curled ringlet of yellow hair, such as St. Olave, the warrior ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... get the sweeps between the tree limbs and the houseboat," suggested Harold Bird. "Perhaps we can thus pry ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... stand in my room; he shall die, but I shall live." Having said this, the neck of the fowl was drawn and its throat cut; and either the dead fowl, or its value in money, was given to the poor. In the evening previous to the feast of expiation, a man wishing to pry into futurity carried a lighted candle to the synagogue, and from particular appearances of the flame he prognosticated whether good was to follow him and his, or whether he and his family were to be ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... contrary, no one was more apt to pry into mysteries which do not strictly belong to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... There was such a depth of yearning and misery in them that her greeting suddenly seemed to jar upon her own ears, and come back to her in bitter mockery. In a moment, however, understanding came. Intuitively she felt that her sister's grief was her own, into which she could never pry. She must ask no questions, she must offer no sympathy. For the moment her sister's mantle had fallen upon her shoulders. Hers had suddenly become the strength, and it was for her to use ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... story was brought to Harley; it was not in his nature to pry into the sacred mysteries of a young girl's heart, but the tale moved him all the more deeply when he saw young Lee, a man with a high, noble brow and clear, open eyes, through which his honest soul shone, that all might see. But upon ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the reason then?" asked Teddy curiously. "That is," he went on hastily, "if you care to tell us. We don't want to pry into your affairs." ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... see a man set out upon this journey [to Asia] not with an intent to consider rocks and rivers, but the manners, and the mechanic inventions, and the imperfect learning of the inhabitants; resolved to penetrate into countries as yet little known, and eager to pry into all their secrets, with an heart not terrified at trifling dangers; if there could be found a man who could unite this true courage with sound learning, from such a character we might hope much information.' Goldsmith's Works, ed. 1854, iv. 225. Johnson would have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... prospective plans, then did the little brown eyes assume a reddish tinge, their expression passing from suspicion and alarm to the most stubborn resolve. All this was somewhat ludicrous, because nobody really felt particular interest in her movements, or desired to pry into her actions; but on discovering what appeared to be the weak point in her character—because it was out of all proportion strong—idle people, in search of amusement, availed themselves of the knowledge to lead her a very uncomfortable life. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... He will not pry with suspicious curiosity into your affairs, and feel pleasure when he finds you in fault. This is one of our most serious disadvantages. As I have said, one of a child's first objects is to discover the weaknesses ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... 'I consider myself as indebted for my life to the mistresses of Fairladies; and it would be a vile requital on my part to pry into or make known what I may have seen or heard under this hospitable roof. If I were to meet the Pretender himself in such a situation, he should, even at the risk of a little stretch to my loyalty, be free from any danger ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... impartial arbitrators between the people of so many different creeds and sects who now inhabited the country; that they must be aware that they never had before been so impartially governed, and that they must continue to obey these their governors, without attempting to pry further into futurity or the will of the gods. Mahadeo performs a part in the great drama of the Ramayana, or the Rape of Sita, and he is the only figure there that is represented ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... his craft before and since, he was a vain, meddlesome vagabond, and must needs pry into a secret which certainly did not ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... speaking to Mr. Verner. It was a great point with Roy to find favour in the sight of Mr. Massingbird, his possible future master. Lionel partially saw through the man; he believed that he had some covert motive in seeking the interview with him, and that Roy was trying to pry into his affairs. But Roy found himself baffled also by Mr. Verner, as he had been by Matiss, in so far as that he could learn nothing certain of the existence ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... find out a cure. Let me, (though great, grave brethren of the gown Preach all Faith up, and preach all Reason down, Making those jar whom Reason meant to join, And vesting in themselves a right divine), Let me, through Reason's glass, with searching eye, Into the depth of that religion pry 580 Which law hath sanction'd; let me find out there What's form, what's essence; what, like vagrant air, We well may change; and what, without a crime, Cannot be changed to the last hour of time. Nor let me suffer ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... in long coils of Red Tape, She's the butt for each Jeremy Diddler's coarse jape, Every filthy Paul Pry's ghoulish giggle. JOHN BULL, my fine fellow, wake up, and determine To stamp out the lives of the venomous vermin Who round your home-hearth writhe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... eyes that peer and spy, Sad eyes that heed not skies nor trees, In dismal nooks he loves to pry, Whose motto evermore is Spes! But ah! the fabled treasure flees; Grown rarer with the fleeting years, In rich men's shelves they take their ease, - Aldines, ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... I'm respectable. I don't pry. I don't nose into other people's business. Why should I? Just let me ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... money than when I left. I started for home one morning in a schooner. At one the next morning our craft settled down and refused to go farther. The snow was three feet deep; it had been raining steadily for twelve hours, and when the men got out to pry out the runners, they went down, down, far over their knees. The driver and express agent were booted for such occasions, but the two Germans were not. Myself, "these four and no more," were down in the book of fate for a struggle with inertia. It was muscle and mind against matter. To the ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... intelligence, which makes us organs of its activity and receivers of its truth. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes—all metaphysics, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discerns between the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary perceptions. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the Jesuits entered heart and soul into the work of education, winning their pupils' hearts by kindness, watching their moods, directing their minds into congenial studies, and inspiring them with generous sentiments, they did not stop to pry into their motives; and universities, when they discovered the superior culture of educated Jesuits, outstripping all their associates in learning, and shedding a light by their genius and erudition, very naturally appointed them to the highest chairs; and even the people, when they saw that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... quality, indeed, in him that still continued to jar upon them was his phenomenal inquisitiveness. He appeared not to know the meaning of rudeness or impertinence; he sought to pry into everything, and seemed genuinely surprised and puzzled when Sir Reginald somewhat curtly yet courteously excused himself from complying with his request to be shown all over the ship, and have everything explained to him. Yet it was almost impossible to feel angry with him, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... he retorted. "She was a mighty badly broken-up woman the last time I saw her, but even so I judge she's still got spunk enough left in her to resent having an unauthorized and uninvited stranger coming about, seeking to pry into her own private sorrow. But it's your affair, not mine. Besides, judging by everything, you probably don't think my ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... his voice sort of shrill and quivery. "I have one of the logs loose. Now pry here with your picks, everybody. Together, now! It's coming! Once more! There! Now the next one above. Oh, put your weight on it, Mr. Ellins. Get a fresh hold. Try her now. It's giving! Again. Harder. Look out for your toes! And let's have that light here, Miss Verona. Flash it into ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... suppose you mean that she is dying of an incurable disease or has lost her mind. But do not imagine that I care to pry further into that. I never had the least idea that you had—— Oh, I don't know what to believe! . . . Won't ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... cap and bells, their favorite swords, their favorite doublet and hose—all of them sit around in the special Valhalla of the Great Actors reading their press notices to one another and listening to the hosannas of such critics as have managed to pry into the anterior heaven. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the willows as Sam had said. Awkwardly he pushed off, hoping that Lucy would pry the whole story out of her son and put Rupert on their ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... his old camp and saw Morano, sitting upon the ground by a small fire. Morano sprang up at once with joy in his eyes, his face wreathed with questions, which he did not put into words for he did not pry ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... Leicester, though exempt from the general control of superstition, was not in this respect superior to his time, but, on the contrary, was remarkable for the encouragement which he gave to the professors of this pretended science. Indeed, the wish to pry into futurity, so general among the human race, is peculiarly to be found amongst those who trade in state mysteries and the dangerous intrigues and cabals of courts. With heedful precaution to see that it had not been opened, or its locks tampered with, Leicester applied a key to the steel casket, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... before him and after repeatedly calling him "master," and "god" (terms that were already being applied to him by others), he said: "I have done nothing of the sort. And if I obtain a respite, I will pry into everything and both inform against and convict many persons for you." He was released on these conditions, but did not report any one; instead, by advancing different excuses at different times, he lived until ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... forest eaves, Shingled tight with greenest leaves, Sweep the scented meadow-sedge, Let us snoop along the edge; Let us pry in hidden nooks, Laden with our nature books, Scaring birds with happy cries, Chloroforming butterflies, Rooting up each woodland plant, Pinning beetle, fly, and ant, So we may identify ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... definiteness to particular impressions. The virtue of curiosity is, therefore, to direct attention to the novel until it is made familiar. There is a type of curiosity, however, which craves for mere astonishment and not for understanding. It is such curiosity that causes children to pry into other people's belongings, and men into ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... The sewing and the scissors slipped to the floor. His mother was down on her knees beside him, one arm about his shoulders, trying to pry his face from his hands, trying to look into his eyes. "You're my man, Davy! You're the only man, the only help I've got. You're my life, Davy. Poor ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... among their tricks and lies. Do you remember what I used to say in my lectures?—or were you asleep just then, or cutting your initials on the rail? (You see I can ask questions, my young friend.) Leverage is everything,—was what I used to say;—don't begin to pry till you have got the long ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... unknown. If God suffered the dead to speak to us, we should always be on the watch for some sign; we should be unfitted for the common, practical duties of life; we should be superstitious, visionary, fanatical, timorous. As it is, how eager we are to pry into the future, or into things purposely hidden from us! If it were certainly known that one had communication with the dead, or if we had good reason to expect such communications, labor would be neglected, faith, prayer, hope, confidence in God would decrease, the Bible would be undervalued ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... young lawyer chap; calls himself Royal Maillot. I can't pry out of either of 'em ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... accuse me of trying to pry into your affairs!" cries injured Mrs. Ellison, and settles herself in a ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... food—that is, solids—ever passed the woman's lips since her attack of paralysis, consequent upon her mishap. As for an occasional teaspoonful of water or milk, I sometimes force her to take it by using an instrument to pry open her mouth, but that is painful to her. As early as 1865 I endeavored to sustain life in this way, for I feared that, in obedience to the universal law of nature, she would die of gradual inanition or exhaustion, which I thought would sooner or later ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... continued. The Princess de Lieven, he said, was a dangerous woman; there was reason to think that she would make attempts to pry into what did not concern her, let Victoria beware. "A rule which I cannot sufficiently recommend is NEVER TO PERMIT people to speak on subjects concerning yourself or your affairs, without you having yourself desired ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... but one day he invented a trick that was a surprise to me. It occurred at a summer resort in northern Indiana, where I noticed a nuthatch hitching up and down and around the slender stem of a sapling, pausing at intervals to thrust something into the crevices of the bark. My curiosity led me to pry into the bird's affairs. Stepping smartly forward, I drove him away, not heeding his vigorous protest of "yank, yank," and examined the bark of the sapling. What did I discover? A colony of black ants were scuttling up and down the tree, apparently under stress of ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... closed," rasped Lander, "or I'll knock your block off! If you utter another peep during this game, I'll button up both your blinkers so tight it'll take a doctor to pry 'em open. ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... he say? My hand's wet. But it's victory. Shall it be go? or stay? [I should show them all I can, or they may pry closer than they ought.] Shall I have it out and be done with it? To see Mary at once [to carry bastion after bastion at the charge] - there were the true safety after all! Hurry - hurry's the road to silence now. Let them once get tattling ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... was another of Hook's more familiar associates. He is the Hull of "Gilbert Gurney," and is said to have been the original of Paul Pry, (which Poole, however, strenuously denied,)—a belief easily entertained by those who knew the man. A little, round man he was, with straight and well-made-up figure, and rosy cheeks that might have graced a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... that this skill Was counterfeit, and had some other end. For which discouery, as I did attend, Her wrinckled vizard being very thin, My piercing eye perceiu'd her cleerer skin 80 Through the thicke Riuels perfectly to shine; When I perceiu'd a beauty so diuine, As that so clouded, I began to pry A little nearer, when I chanc't to spye That pretty Mole vpon her Cheeke, which when I saw; suruaying euery part agen, Vpon her left hand, I perceiu'd the skarre Which she receiued in the Troian warre; Which when I found, I could not chuse but smile. She, who againe ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... say I had no wish to pry further into their bloody practices; but Bill seemed bent on it, so I turned and went. We passed rapidly through the bush, being guided in the right direction by the shouts of the savages. Suddenly there was a dead silence, ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... arranged the meals, paid the bills, and generally looked after the domestic economy of the college; she took much pride in the orderliness of her housekeeper's cupboard, into which Amelia never dared to pry. In the schoolroom, she received the parents, arranged the fees and extras, and inflicted the trifling punishment she awarded to delinquents, which latter, it must be admitted, gave ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... showed a desire to pry into foreign affairs; witness the following letter from Thomas Hardy to Dr. Adams, Secretary of the London Society ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... romance is romance, pain is a fact. So I fold my airy wings for the present, and look about me for a big stone to pound with. It is of no use. The old castle is deaf and dumb. It neither hears nor answers. I creep along the edge of a steep bank, pry round a corner of the building, gaze up at the high Gothic windows, but see nothing like a practicable approach, and turn back, discouraged. We take counsel together, I and my party, and at length condescend to the belief that our best hope of obtaining an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... various arts, whereby they thought to protect themselves from evil, and to pry into the secrets of futurity. Because of these things, ancient Babylon was suddenly overwhelmed,—"for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments." These could not save, as they supposed. Therefore God said to them: "Stand now with thine enchantments, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... go and skirmish about the place," Henri suggested. "If I happen to bump into someone, I speak German like a native and may easily be able to pass muster. On the other hand, if I don't happen to meet anyone, I can pry about the place, and I should say that I am just as likely to be able to rob a hen-roost as you or Jules. You stay here, and when I whistle, answer, for otherwise it will be a dickens of ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... she had seen these two draw their aprons over their girl's treasures, she had not guessed those possessions aright. What she had imagined in her girl's heart, knowing Primrose's condition, it is not for us to pry at; whatever it was, it was so swift, so born of instinct, as to be holy. But when she saw the crumpled finery, she was suddenly too much of a child again to rate it worth envy. The things that Primrose, all unthinking, stood for, the ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... sovereignty. How difficult it is to get even the renewed and regenerated mind to understand and realise Heavenly things, and to wean it from what is of the earth earthy! He checks their presumption—He tells them these are questions which they may not pry into. There is to be no present fulfilment of these visions of millennial glory. That day and that hour are to be wrapt in unrevealed and impenetrable secrecy. The Church may not attempt rashly and inquisitively ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... time to pry off a fresh chew of tobacco before he replied. "You mean Thunder Pass? That there crosses over into the Black Rim country. Yeah—There's a big wide range country over there, but we don't run any stock on it. Burroback Valley's big ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... to leave his guest alone in the tent for a short time while he looked after the preparations for luncheon; and he had little doubt that during his absence the man would without scruple peer and pry into the other compartments of the tent. But to this contingency he was quite indifferent, for he had foreseen and forestalled it, before going off to the barque, by carefully gathering up and stowing away ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... it is both pleasant and profitable for people who are not rich to compare notes on these matters with some frank and hearty friend whose means and outgoings are much the same as their own. I do not think of such a case,—but of the prying curiosity of persons who have no right to pry, and who, very generally, while diligently prying into your affairs, take special care not to take you into their confidence. Such people, too, while making a pretence of revealing to you all their secrets, will often tell a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... he, and twisted his mouth cynically. "Huh! Then it's good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all hell can't pry her loose." ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... take us long," the stranger said. "I want you to help me pry off the knocker, as I have no screw-driver to remove it. I ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... real sorry you are leaving us, I don't want to pry inter any man's business, and you know these islands as well as I do; but I guess I wouldn't stay here if I war you. Why, it won't pay a man to stay and trade on a bit of a place like this," and he cast ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... an admirable pendant to the "Pratt," who is inseparable, however, from her invisible nephew, Mr. Anthony Whyte. Miss Pratt is a sort of female Paul Pry, always turning up at the most unexpected moment at Lord Rossville's, and finally puts the finishing stroke to the pompous old peer by driving up to his castle door in the hearse of Mr. M'Vitie, the Radical distiller, being unable to procure any other mode of conveyance during a heavy snow-storm, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... hereafter believe anything. Those who wish to see Natural Science introduced into elementary schools frighten school-masters by the very name of Natural Science. But surely every school-master who is worth his salt should be able to teach children a love of Nature, a wondering at Nature, a curiosity to pry into the secrets of Nature, an acquisitiveness for some of the treasures of Nature, and all this acquired in the fresh air of the field and the forest, where, better than in frowzy lecture-rooms, the edge of the senses can ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... still sleeping. A sound of heavy breathing followed by a restless movement had deceived him and he knocked upon the door gently, quite expecting to be answered. When no reply came, he ventured in as one who would not willingly pry upon another but is compelled thereto by curiosity. The room itself should have been in darkness, but Alban had deliberately drawn the heavy curtains back from the windows before he slept, and the wan gray light of dawn struck down upon his tired face as though seeking out him alone of all that ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... nothing rash, only served to intensify his determination, and, losing his temper utterly, he told his father and mother that he would never set his foot in Appleton Park in their lifetime if they ever again ventured to pry into his private affairs; and, refusing to give any information regarding his intentions, he asked them to leave his lodgings. What he did after they never knew; years went by, and they sighed and wondered, but the matter was never alluded ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... bound to acknowledge. There was an element of jealousy of Anne Bullard. Both of us had tried to help Miss Emily. She had foiled my attempt in her own endeavor, a mistaken endeavor, I felt. But there was now to be no blemish on my efforts. I would no longer pry or question or ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... repeated. "At least it ought to concern only you. And I can't assure you too positively that I'm the last person in the world to want to pry; but—" ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... twigs, it is this Kinglet. When light snow is first powdering the spruces and bending the delicate hemlock branches, dusky shapes flit out of the green cover. Are they dry leaves blown about by the gust? No, leaves do not climb about in the face of the wind, or pry and peep into every cone crevice, crying 'twe-zee, twe-zee, twe-zee!' They are not leaves, but a flock of Kinglets forcing the bark crevices to yield them a breakfast of the insects which had put ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... heavy silence; gaunt weeds through windows pry, And down the streets of Liang old echoes, ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... stood in front of him. There was a spot of color on both her cheeks, and her hands were clasped together. "Gilbert, let's both go there. Let's get away from all these people for a time. I won't ask you any questions or try and pry into what's happened to you. I'll be very quiet and help ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... he had seen in the streets suggested that it was not going to be easy to pry most of the company out of Calhoun in a hurry, but that was Campbell's problem. "I'll need couriers," he said aloud. It was an advance scout's privilege to have riders to send back ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... Mr. Snivel have found it convenient to make a trip of pleasure into the country. And though the affair creates some little comment in fashionable society, it would be exceedingly unpopular to pry too deeply into the private affairs of men high in office. We are not encumbered with scrutinizing morality. Being an "unfortunate woman," the law cannot condescend to deal with her case. Indeed, were it brought before a judge, and the judge to find himself sitting in judgment upon ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... curious the future to pry, Presume on our own feeble strength to rely; But, taught by the past; for the future, depend Where the wise and the good ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... hold the light," said the captain. "Pry it open a bit more, Harris, and let me have a good, square look at it. I don't believe there's more than one box, at that—which wouldn't be no great ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... be like a can of sardines. You can't get a thing out of him unless you have a key," thought Jerry. And he wondered how he was going to pry the truth out ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... moon a great wind blew. The enemy's war-ships were all broken to pieces. Our troops energetically attacked and cut them up, the sea being covered with prostrate corpses. Of the Mongol army of 100,000 only three men got back alive. Henceforward the Mongols were unable to pry about our ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... I am not good—that is enough; I pry no farther—that is not the way. Here, O my potter, is thy making stuff! Set thy wheel going; let it whir and play. The chips in me, the stones, the straws, the sand, Cast them out with fine separating hand, And make a vessel of thy ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... his grim account of the death-bed of Louis XV writes: "We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed." Paul's comment: "cf. the episode of the death of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Folks are very curious. I do not mean that they are odd or amusing to look at. But they have curiosity, and want to peer and pry into things. It is not at all nice to want to find out all about other Folks' affairs. It belongs to a poor, mean nature to want to do that. But to want to inquire into matters for the sake of getting true knowledge is right and worthy even ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... to a child to attempt to force a feeling before its normal time, as to a bud, to pry open its petals to hasten God's processes. Even the Divine Child "grew." "That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual," is God's ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... wanted money, and he wanted it badly, but the tailor had no right to pry into his private affairs—certainly ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... boy!' cried Master Peter, 'none of your flights, I beseech you, for affectation is the devil.'—The boy answered nothing, but going on: 'Now, sirs,' quoth he, 'some of those idle people, that love to pry into everything, happened to spy Melisendra as she was making her escape, and ran presently and gave Marsilius notice of it; whereupon he straight commanded to sound an alarm; and now mind what ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... expense of the poor Unitarians at York. So they went into the house, and presently arrived another chaise, but ere I could make any further observations, the porter of the out-of-the-way house came up to me, asking what I was stopping there for? bidding me go away, and not pry into other people's business. 'Pretty business,' said I to him, 'that is being transacted in a place like this,' and then I was going to say something uncivil, but he went to attend to the new-comers, and I took myself away on my own business as he bade me, not, however, before observing that ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... do, that will do!" Chia Lien rejoined laughing, "none of these sham attentions for me! So long as you don't pry into my doings it will be enough; and will I go so far as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... upon its top; And bark, that all the way across the sea Ran straight and speedy, perish at the last, E'en in the haven's mouth seeing one steal, Another brine, his offering to the priest, Let not Dame Birtha and Sir Martin thence Into heav'n's counsels deem that they can pry: For one of these may rise, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... once, but tried living in a boarding house, which suited her tolerably well. The two women who kept the boarding house were educated and considerate and had long ago ceased to be inquisitive. Such a variety of people met there that it would have been too much of an undertaking to pry into the secrets of each individual. Such things only interfered with business. Effi, who still remembered the cross-questionings to which the eyes of Mrs. Zwicker had subjected her, was very agreeably impressed with the reserve of the boarding house keepers. But after two weeks had passed ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... not return, his wife became very uneasy. She ran to Ali Baba for comfort, and he told her that Cassim would certainly think it unwise to enter the town till night was well advanced. By midnight Cassim's wife was still more alarmed, and wept till morning, cursing her desire to pry into the affairs of her brother and sister-in-law. In the early day she went again, in tears, to ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... small a part of him it was that touched our muddy or dusty earth. Thence comes moral bewilderment, and even intellectual loss, in regard to what is best of him. When Shakspeare invoked a curse on the man who should stir his bones, he perhaps meant the larger share of it for him or them who should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects or even the merits of the character that he wore in Stratford, when he had left mankind so much to muse upon that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep me from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... estoit garnie Et en droite fleur de jeunesse! Je pry a Dieu qu'il te maudie, Faulse Mort, plaine de rudesse! Se prise l'eusses en vieillesse, Ce ne fust pas si grant rigueur; Mais prise l'as hastivement Et m'as laissie piteusement ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... Mr. Waters, who had got only a teaspoonful of the medicine, which very likely was just about the right amount. Mr. Waters swung quite loose and free from his limb, and got down without much trouble, and it took him all the afternoon to go around from tree to tree and pry the rest of my ancestors loose, and unwind them, because those new-fangled tails would snap together like springs, and it took several days' steady practice and straightening before they were really useful at a moment's notice. By that time, ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... for horseless, or intensive farming, a low, light house may be used, which the attendant never enters. A portion of the roof lifts up to fill feed-hoppers, gather eggs or spray. These small houses may be made light enough to be moved short distances by a pry-pole, the team being required only when they are moved to ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... life, a long thirst, a long purse, and a short memory!" was his toast, into whose cryptic meaning Gonzaga made no attempt to pry. As the fellow set down his cup, and with his sleeve removed the moisture from his unshorn mouth, "May I not learn," he inquired, "whose hospitality I have ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... "I don't want to pry into your secrets. Don't make any confessions to me. I have no right to call you to account," ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... brief lines, my reverend friend, By a safe, private hand I send (Fearing lest some low Catholic wag Should pry into the Letter-bag), To tell you, far as pen can dare How we, poor errant martyrs, fare;— Martyrs, not quite to fire and rack, As Saints were, some few ages back. But—scarce less trying in its way— To laughter, wheresoe'er ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Czar the strain of prolonged warfare against unseen and desperate foes was terrible. Surrounded by sentries, shadowed by secret police, the lonely man yet persisted in governing with the assiduity and thoroughness of the great Napoleon. He tried to pry into all the affairs of his vast empire; and, as he held aloof even from his chief Ministers, he insisted that they should send to him detailed reports on all the affairs of State, foreign and domestic, military and naval, religious and agrarian. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... funds for another armed attack on Slavery in Kansas. The sentimentalists asked no questions. And if hard-headed business men tried to pry too closely into his plans, they found him a past master in the art ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... "I'll throw a wire at my sister and tell her not to move out to Jiggersville until day after to-morrow. In the mean time we'll have to get a crowbar and pry your family circle loose from my premises. Nothing doing in the ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... hateful judicature that was ever known among civilised men. The subaltern impostors were thrown into dungeons. But the chief criminal continued to be master of the King and of the kingdom. Meanwhile, in the distempered mind of Charles one mania succeeded another. A longing to pry into those mysteries of the grave from which human beings avert their thoughts had long been hereditary in his house. Juana, from whom the mental constitution of her posterity seems to have derived a morbid ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... attendants, some of whom had left the encampment to carry the news of his defeat to his brother, and others were availing themselves of the means which Saladin had supplied for revelling. The wounded man slept under the influence of Saladin's wonderful talisman, so that the dwarf had opportunity to pry about at pleasure until he was frightened into concealment by the sound of a heavy step. He skulked behind a curtain, yet could see the motions, and hear the words, of the Grand Master, who entered, and carefully secured the covering ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... who found "the warmest welcome at an inn," found George's to be economical. "What do you think," he writes, "must be my expense, who love to pry into everything of the kind? Why, truly one shilling. My company goes to George's Coffee-house, where, for that small subscription I read all pamphlets under a three shillings' dimension; and indeed, any larger would not be fit for coffee-house perusal." ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... would," replied her aunt. "I'm a great believer in married women paying attention at home before they begin to pry into their neighbors' affairs. It's a good ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... at me, with a searching glance that seemed to pry into my heart and probe its wounds. "How does she use you, Pip; how does she use you?" she asked me again, with her witch-like eagerness, even in Estella's hearing. But, when we sat by her flickering fire at night, she was most weird; for then, keeping Estella's hand drawn through her arm and ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... things, mother," said Compton, taking the things. "But it is not well that people should pry in upon one who is making medicine. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... himself 'John Hagar' in the handwriting of my father, it shows that somebody is not telling the truth. I used to pore over the old farm records in my father's hand at Stone Ridge in the old account books stowed away in places where a boy loves to poke and pry. I know it as well as I know yours. Do you suppose she would not know it? When a man writes as few letters as he does, the handwriting does not change." Paul laid the letter upon the coals. "It is the only witness against her, but it loses ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... spent for liquor), he might have bought back his name, but the prisoners' artel, or guild, always insisted upon the strict fulfilment of such bargains in default of the money being refunded; and if the authorities suspected such exchanges, they did not pry into them, it being immaterial to the officials (in Siberia at least) what man served out the sentence, so long as they could make their accounts tally. Thus much in ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... to that he hath done, whether it be good or whether it be bad." From these and a few kindred texts we might infer that the author, aware that he "knew but in part," simply held the belief without attempting to pry into special methods, details, and results that at the time of the judgment all should have exact justice. He may, however, have unfolded in his preaching minutia of faith not ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... said, inhaling deeply; "the guy in charge isn't exactly a free information bureau. When it comes to peddling the bull con he's there, but when you try to pry off a few slabs of cold hard fact it's his ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Silence. There could be no delay in action. With his nerves still a-tingle, the boy seized a stout bit of wood, evidently cut for the fireplace, inserted it between the window bars, bore down and with a low squeak of protest the nails came out. Another pry, with the sill for a fulcrum, and there was a hole big enough for a body to get through. The bit of wood now acted as a step and in a moment Gus was ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... repeated Eve. "Business is a very convenient word when you don't want to tell a person what your real errand is. Not that I want to pry into Adam's secrets—far from it. He's quite welcome to keep what he likes from me, only I'd rather he wouldn't tell me half things. I like to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... affected; with none of them is it concerned. God is pleased to try some with ten talents, others with five, others with only one. That "so it seems good in his sight," is all we know about it; and all we need to know. Should we attempt to pry into it, the answer given by our Lord to an officious enquirer respecting another, might be ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... mistake, so far as this part of the public is concerned," said his mother, her soft brown eyes gazing lovingly upon them, "but we won't pry into your secrets, only invite you to join our circle when you have ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... mumbled Boltwood, pouching the gold piece. "I don't pry into things that ain't my business. I'll row across and get ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... Unwilling to pry into other people's secrets, I was turning back when the speakers, hearing the noise, rushed from the arbour, with their swords half drawn. One was the owner of the chateau: the other ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... "Don't pry into my secrets," she enjoined. "We may meet in Barnstaple to-morrow. If the weather clears, I want to go in and see those ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... age, assisted his father with a mien which betokened that he considered his services indispensable. With his bare head and feet he ran up and down the timbers as nimbly as a squirrel. When a beam was being lifted, he cried, "Pry under!" as lustily as any one, put his shoulder to the crowbar, and puffed as if nine-tenths of the weight fell upon him. Valentine liked to see his little boy employed. He would tell him to wind the twine on the reel, to carry the tools where they were wanted, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... repeated his attempt to pry through the guarded curtain; but often eyed it. Every hour or so an ecclesiastic peeped in, eyed him, chilled him, and exit. All this was gloomy, and mechanical. But the next day a gentleman, richly armed, bounced in, and glared at him. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... English and French revolutions, and still greater moral and social changes yet to come, are direct consequences of these and similar discoveries. Even alchemy and astrology were not believed because people thirsted for gold and were anxious to pry into the future, for these desires are as strong now as they were then: but because alchemy and astrology were conceptions natural to a particular stage in the growth of human knowledge, and consequently determined during ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... Now, will you be good enough to go—if there is nothing more in my room that you are anxious to pry into? ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... to enact the spy On fellow souls, a Spiritual Pry— 'Tis said that people ought to guard their noses, Who thrust them into matters none of theirs; And tho' no delicacy discomposes Your Saint, yet I consider faith and pray'rs Amongst ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... baptismal covenant mean something, or Laud, who allowed such a play as 'The Ordinary' to be written by his especial protege, Cartwright, the Oxford scholar, and acted before him probably by Oxford scholars, certainly by christened boys. We do not pretend to pry into the counsels of the Most High; but if unfaithfulness to a high and holy trust, when combined with lofty professions and pretensions, does (as all history tells us that it does) draw down the vengeance of Almighty God, then we need look no further than this one neglect of the seventeenth ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... was this: that the place of Receiver-General was at present too important, and would occasion too much surprise and speculation; that it would not do to go beyond a place worth fifteen thousand to twenty thousand francs a year; that they had no desire to pry into the King's secrets; and that his correspondence ought not to be communicated to anyone; that this did not apply to papers like those of which I was the bearer, which might fall into his hands; that he would confer an obligation by communicating them, in order that blows aimed in ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... and the whole marriage law had to be adjusted accordingly. That is no longer possible. When a woman assumes her own moral responsibility, in sexual as in other matters, it becomes not only intolerable but meaningless for the community to pry into her most intimate physiological or spiritual acts. She is herself directly responsible to society as soon as she performs a social act, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ye may; The spirit of England none can slay! Dash the bomb on the dome of Paul's— Deem ye the fame of the Admiral falls? Pry the stone from the chancel floor,— Dream ye that Shakespeare shall live no more? Where is the giant shot that kills Wordsworth walking the old green hills? Trample the red rose on the ground,— Keats is Beauty while ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... illness, and who had been the girl's companion on the misty moor. What had happened during those hours of suspense and danger? What barriers had been swept aside; what new vistas opened? Edith's own love was too sweet and sacred a thing to allow her to pry and question into the heart-secrets of another, as is the objectionable fashion of many so-called friends, but with her keen woman-senses she took in George Elgood's every word, look, and movement ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... men, who had dealings with banks in South Africa, the opinion I had so often heard expressed has become firmly rooted in me, that the greater the rascal the greater the credit he enjoys with his banks. The banks do not pry into his moral character: they are satisfied that he meets his overdrafts and promissory notes punctually. The credit system has encircled this beautiful globe of ours like a serpent's coil, and if we do not mind, it bids fair to crush us out of breath. ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... mercy," said the voice of Agnes in a compassionate tone. "I meant not indeed to pry into your privacy; but as I was coming up the stairs, I thought I heard a scream. I feared you ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... were playing the same game now: they smiled and smirked at each other. They had not been playing the same game before. Now they recognised that there was a conspiracy between them.... But he was host, his business for the moment was to make his guests comfortable, and not pry into their inmost bosoms. So before Mrs Weston realised that she had the whole table attending to her, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... friendly recognition of the familiar voice, of blank surprise upon perceiving that this voice came from the lips of a total stranger. She looked searchingly upon the smoked glasses, obviously trying to pry into the secret of the hidden eyes. Jaune's blood rushed up into his face, and he realized that detection was imminent. Mercifully, at that moment the crowd opened, and with a bow that hid his face behind his hat he made good his retreat. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... recovered a grace and power of motion in water which are not equalled by the greyhound on land. Why have the seals hung back? I believe I know the secret. It is the baby! No one knows where the porpoise and the whale cradle their newborn infants—it is so difficult to pry into the domestic ways of these sea-people—but evidently the seals cannot manage it, so they are forced to return to the land when the cares of maternity ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... I am filled with presage That, some fair noon of balmy airs, I shall indite a rude Field Message If Colonels pry in my affairs; Shall tell them simply, "It is early May, And here the daffodils are almost old; About that sentry-group I cannot say—— In fact it leaves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... on that tack. But Chung's idea might be worth probing a little. "Sure," he said. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry." He took another sip as he hunted for suitable words. A beautiful girl, a golden wine ... and vice versa ... why couldn't he simply relax and enjoy himself? Did he have to go fretting about what was probably a perfectly ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... something squirming under her, thought that one of the boa constrictors had got loose, and that she had sat down on it. So naturally she fainted away. I came running in with one of my men as soon as I heard the outcries, and after a while we managed to pry up the Fat Woman with a couple of cart-rungs and get the Dwarf out from under her, after which she came to in due time and got over her fright. But the Dwarf was a good deal flattened out by the pressure, and I was afraid at first that his ribs had been ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... Preach all Faith up, and preach all Reason down, Making those jar whom Reason meant to join, And vesting in themselves a right divine), Let me, through Reason's glass, with searching eye, Into the depth of that religion pry 580 Which law hath sanction'd; let me find out there What's form, what's essence; what, like vagrant air, We well may change; and what, without a crime, Cannot be changed to the last hour of time. Nor let me suffer that outrageous ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... white papillons and one yellow butterfly reminded me of the Camarones Mountain; the wild bee and the ladybird-like Ba'zah stuck to us as though they loved us; and we were pestered by the attentions of the common fly. The Egyptian symbol for "Paul Pry" is supposed to denote an abundance of organic matter: it musters strong throughout Midian, even in the dreariest wastes; and it accompanies us everywhere, whole ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... weeks with her, She went to see the doctor three times a week. He used a pry to open her jaws, which was very painful to her but she gradually grew better. We were so happy in each other's society. I took her every place to see sights in that grand, philanthropic city. I believe Philadelphia, "Brotherly Love," has more evidence of the meaning ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... Paul Pry in question (to come down to my life) never 'intrudes.' It is his peculiarity. And I put the stop exactly where I was bid; and was going to put Gabriel's speech,[93] only—with the pen in my hand to do it—I found that the angel was a little ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... and knock. No response followed the repeated blows from her hard knuckles. She then tapped smartly on Mrs. Butterfield's bedroom window with her thimble finger. This proving of no avail, she was obliged to pry open the kitchen shutter, split open the screen of mosquito netting with her shears, and crawl into the house over the sink. This was a considerable feat for a somewhat rheumatic elderly lady, but this one never grudged trouble when she wanted to ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not all. Whoso will pry, must needs light upon matters for suspicion. Glancing over the side, in the wake of every scupper- hole, we beheld a faded, crimson stain, which Jarl averred to be blood. Though now he betrayed not the slightest trepidation; for what ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... I pry and spy! You know it is not true, Anna. I only came to ask you to play with us, and—and how was I to know that you were doing something that you didn't want any one to see? Why don't you want any one to see you? What are you burning?" Betty stepped nearer and ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Le Geyt had murdered his wife, in a sudden access of uncontrollable anger, under the deepest provocation, the police naturally began to inquire for him. It is a way they have; the police are no respecters of persons; neither do they pry into the question of motives. They are but poor casuists. A murder is for them a murder, and a murderer a murderer; it is not their habit to divide and distinguish between case and case ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... again. His beady eyes glowed at her ardently. "Gee, you know I wish I really was married to you, Maggie! If I was, you bet money couldn't ever pry you loose from me!" ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... latter. I don't think that I am at all of a suspicious nature, but I really should like to learn a little about this man. I do not mean that I am going to try to do so. It would be an unworthy action to pry into another's business, when it is no concern of one's own. Still, I should like to know ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... traitor—you mustn't think that of him. But it isn't in his nature to facilitate things. In the present crisis he will feel that he is personally responsible for the expenditure of five million dollars. He will examine and investigate, and probe and pry, and will want to worry through every pen-scratch which has been made ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... and taking the paper in his hand he glanced over it. He had no desire to pry into any man's private affairs, but he wasn't going to sign anything without first ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... waiting in the hall, most of them resolved to leave the President's service. Clarissa saw herself deprived of all the protection of love, and cast out from the circle where birth is respected and binding forms are recognized as the least of duties. She was exposed to every eye, the boldest gaze could pry into her inmost soul, she had become a public object, nothing about her was any longer her own, she herself could no longer find herself, find anything in herself upon which she could lean, she was branded, without and within, food for the general prurience, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... that, you'd better think twice before you go," he retorted. "She was a mighty badly broken-up woman the last time I saw her, but even so I judge she's still got spunk enough left in her to resent having an unauthorized and uninvited stranger coming about, seeking to pry into her own private sorrow. But it's your affair, not mine. Besides, judging by everything, you probably don't think my advice is worth ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... attitude towards her held an element of that loyal, enthusiastic devotion which an older woman not infrequently inspires in one considerably younger than herself—a devotion which accepts things as they are and has no wish to pry into the secrets of ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... overmuch concerning myself, is it concerning ANOTHER man, rather, that I ought to write—concerning HIS wants, concerning HIS lack of tea to drink (and all the world needs tea)? Has it ever been my custom to pry into other men's mouths, to see what is being put into them? Have I ever been known to offend any one in that respect? No, no, beloved! Why should I desire to insult other folks when they are not molesting ME? Let me give you an example of what I mean. A man may go on slaving ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... leaves, but the king's son was not there. They went back to the queen. She looked long in her magic crystal, but little could she see; for the king's son had hidden himself in a small cave beside the tarn-stones, and into the darkness the crystal could not pry. ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... ain't the end of the ol' corner stake, left jest whur't was broke off, when the rest was wanted to pry a wheel out o' the slew, or ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... Doctor, "you're probably lying like a trooper when you make out that you did nothing, but I'll pry the truth out of you sooner or later. Now I've got to get to work. Send ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... is as injurious to a child to attempt to force a feeling before its normal time, as to a bud, to pry open its petals to hasten God's processes. Even the Divine Child "grew." "That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual," is God's ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... interest. Two of these moons have displayed definite signs of human life. It is promised also that the coming lens will unlock the doors of the several moons and permit the astronomers of Jupiter to pry into the secrets of their ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... him. One day, Agrippa left his house, at Louvain; and, intending to be absent for some time, gave the key of his study to his wife, with strict orders that no one should enter it during his absence. The lady herself, strange as it may appear, had no curiosity to pry into her husband's secrets, and never once thought of entering the forbidden room: but a young student, who had been accommodated with an attic in the philosopher's house, burned with a fierce desire to examine the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... far from his father's house, where it was customary to load sloops with wood. Upon one of these occasions, he persuaded a party of boys to pry up a pile of wood and tip it into a sloop, in a confused heap. Of course, it must all be taken out and reloaded. When he saw how much labor this foolish trick had caused, he felt some compunction; but ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... therefore, our trusty Diabolonians, yet more pry into, and endeavour to spy out the weakness of the town of Mansoul. We also would that you yourselves do attempt to weaken them more and more. Send us word also by what means you think we had best to attempt the regaining thereof: namely, whether by persuasion ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... not to be alarmed. And after that they talked together about everything delightful, while Sir Buzz stood at the door and did sentry; but he stood a brick up on end first, so that he might not seem to pry upon the ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... is not captious or gluttonous, there should be no lack of good eating in Athens, despite the reputation of the city for abstemiousness. Let us pry therefore into the symposium of some good citizen who is dispensing ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... manifest the power of the human intellect?" and so on, howling out ironical remarks like those; and s'posin' he kept that dog on that leg until he made you swear to pay the bet, and then at last had to pry the dog off with a hot poker, bringing away at the same time some of your flesh in the dog's mouth, so that you had to be carried home on a stretcher, and to hire several doctors to keep you ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... came here to pry into your affairs—to turn our friendship into a means for my own aggrandizement? You think that I report to my government that which you and I may say to each other, or leave unsaid, before your study fire? Was it not I ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... himself aloof, still held his trophy concealed from her curious eyes. She tried to grasp his hand, missed it, then succeeded. Then she tried to pry open ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... family are wont to do, but there comes an awesome, shivering fear that it is true in some degree. How many times she has seen Gertrude check Marcia when Floyd was under discussion. She has never tried to pry into family secrets, but she knows there have been many about her; a certain kind of knowledge that all have shared, a something against her. She has fancied that she made some advances in living down ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Why do you deny it? You keep up a confidential correspondence together, you and the count; I am quite aware of that. Come, you may confess it, for I have no wish to pry into your secrets." ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... your letter would both afflict and surprize me in the extremest degree. The unfortunate event to which it principally relates, is such as cannot but affect me nearly. And separate from this, there is a veil of mystery that hangs over the horrid tale, behind which I dare not pry, but with the most trembling anxiety, but which will probably in a very short ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... great point with Roy to find favour in the sight of Mr. Massingbird, his possible future master. Lionel partially saw through the man; he believed that he had some covert motive in seeking the interview with him, and that Roy was trying to pry into his affairs. But Roy found himself baffled also by Mr. Verner, as he had been by Matiss, in so far as that he could learn nothing certain of the existence or non-existence of ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Nay, shrink not, thus afraid - I'll harm thee not! Fly not, my love, from me - I have a home for thee - A fairy grot, Where mortal eye Can rarely pry, There shall ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... they pry it all loose from him, but one mawnin' ole man Sanford wakes up clean as a whistle. They've copped the whole works—he ain't got nothin'. So he goes to keepin' books fur a whisky house in Loueyville, 'n' he holds the job down steady fur twenty years. The only time he quits pen-pushin' is when ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... impulse of my love is to dissuade you from seeking to know more. Your mind will be full of ideas; your hands will be perpetually busy to a purpose into which no human creature, beyond the verge of your brotherhood, must pry. Believe me, who have made the experiment, that compared with this task, the task of inviolable secrecy, all others are easy. To be dumb will not suffice; never to know any remission in your zeal or your watchfulness will not suffice. If the sagacity of others detect ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... had discovered more than had ever been known before about bees and ants, and when he was sure he could learn more still, and was more and more anxious to peep and pry into their tiny homes, and their ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... you to circumvent God?" Mike asked, wondering if he'd have to pry everything out of ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to their knees, because the jaded horses could barely pull the empty vehicle through the mire or up the weary hill. They were frequently compelled to alight and grope around in impenetrable darkness and beating storm for rails from a neighbouring fence, with which to pry the wheels out of a mud-hole, into which they had, to all appearance, hopelessly sunk, or to dig themselves out of snow banks in which both horses and stage were firmly wedged. If they were so fortunate ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... unheeded. The camp is roasted out. Strong hands and hand-spikes pry a couple of glowing logs from the front and replace them with two cold, green logs; the camp cools off and the party takes to blankets once more—to turn out again at ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... his quaking limbs he took him aside and said, "I know this fellow. Ya Allah! Allah! For all his vaunts and visions he has gone to Abd er-Rahman. God will show! God will show! I dare not take him! Abd er-Rahman uses him to spy and pry on his Bashas! Camel-skin coat? Allah! ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... determined only to employ our own men on our second visit to the eaves. A fair remuneration for the salvage of our ship was all that Captain Montbar looked for or expected, and we saw no reason why we should disclose our secret to any beyond those chosen from our own company, nor did Montbar seek to pry into our business, contenting himself with our promise, at the end of the week either to pay him salvage or surrender our ship and ourselves, to be disposed of in such manner ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... they have usually been applied to extrinsic matters, we cannot receive an explanation of them from what has been moved or said in debate. The place of a judge is his forum—not the legislative hall. Were he even disposed to pry into the motives of the members, it would be impossible for him to ascertain them; and, in attempting to discover the ground on which the conclusion was obtained, it is not probable that a member of the majority could indicate any that was common to all; previous prepositions are ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... behind the willows as Sam had said. Awkwardly he pushed off, hoping that Lucy would pry the whole story out of her son and put Rupert on their ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... betrayed her into saying:—"Ah, my dear, the little one makes me think of my own little child I left behind me, that died—oh, such a many years ago!..." Her voice broke into such audible distress that her hearer could not pry behind her meaning; could only murmur a sympathetic nothing. The old lady's words that followed seemed to revoke her lapse:—"Long and long ago, before ever you were born, I should say. But she was my only little girl, and I keep her in mind, even now." Had not Widow Thrale hesitated, it ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... I hated it most awfully. I wanted to be let alone and to work out my own theory of things. If you'd said a word—if you'd tried to influence me—the spell would have been broken. But just because the actual you kept apart and didn't meddle or pry, the other, the you in my heart, seemed to get a tighter hold on me. I don't know how to tell you,—it's all mixed up in my head—but old things you'd said and done kept coming back to me, crowding between me and what I was trying for, looking at me without speaking, like old friends ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... his might until at least half the length of the rail was out of sight. It was poked down right behind the calf's forelegs. Russ thought that if he could pry up the fore-end of the calf, the animal could not drown ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... dangerous nature. He did not cease the publication of the Weekly Herald. On the contrary, he prospered in both his enterprises until persuaded by the "printer's devil" in the office of the Port Huron Commercial to change the character of his journal, enlarge it, and issue it under the name of Paul Pry, a happy designation for this or kindred ventures in the domain of society journalism. No copies of Paul Pry can now be found, but it is known that its style was distinctly personal, that gossip was its specialty, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... ye cannot bear them now.' Had the now in his life passed? Had the then come when a fuller revelation was about to be vouchsafed? Nay! even the Apostle—the man inspired—only knew in part. Why should he, then, try to pry into the clouds and darkness that were round about the awful throne? And yet in Him who sat on that throne was no darkness at all. Supposing the feelings struggling in his heart now were rays of light ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... diapered with Flora's riches, as if she meant to wrap Tellus in the glory of her vestments: round about in the form of an amphitheatre were most curiously planted pine trees, interseamed with limons and citrons, which with the thickness of their boughs so shadowed the place, that Phoebus could not pry into the secret of that arbor; so united were the tops with so thick a closure, that Venus might there in her jollity have dallied unseen with her dearest paramour. Fast by, to make the place more gorgeous, was there a fount so crystalline and clear, that it seemed Diana ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... compare notes on these matters with some frank and hearty friend whose means and outgoings are much the same as their own. I do not think of such a case,—but of the prying curiosity of persons who have no right to pry, and who, very generally, while diligently prying into your affairs, take special care not to take you into their confidence. Such people, too, while making a pretence of revealing to you all their secrets, will often tell ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... was clever enough to bridle her indignation. He followed up his advantage swiftly, leaving her no time to pry for a weak spot in ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... all hell can't pry me loose. I saw most ov the row, an' I reckon I ain't so dumb that I can't catch onto the game what Lacy is tryin' ter play. I didn't hear what you an' him was talkin' about, so I don't know just the cause o' the rumpus, but the ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... money for it, not being so poor as that came to. Accordingly, on the day following, I managed to set the men at work on the other side of the farm, especially that inquisitive and busybody John Fry, who would pry out almost anything for the pleasure of telling his wife; and then, with Uncle Reuben mounted on my ancient Peggy, I made foot for the westward, directly after breakfast. Uncle Ben refused to go unless I would take a loaded gun, and indeed it was always ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... him. This was all the plunder his expedition afforded. Yes: there was one other article, and, to my mind, more significant than the vest of the hidalgo. This was a short and stout crowbar of iron; not one of the long crowbars that farmers use to pry up stones, but a short handy one, such as you would use in digging silver-ore out of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had been the girl's companion on the misty moor. What had happened during those hours of suspense and danger? What barriers had been swept aside; what new vistas opened? Edith's own love was too sweet and sacred a thing to allow her to pry and question into the heart-secrets of another, as is the objectionable fashion of many so-called friends, but with her keen woman-senses she took in George Elgood's every word, look, and movement ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... for another armed attack on Slavery in Kansas. The sentimentalists asked no questions. And if hard-headed business men tried to pry too closely into his plans, they found him a past master in the art ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... though not a learned body, are, as an order, the best friends of the people. They seem to mingle with them more immediately, as their counsellors and comforters; and to go among them more, when they are sick; and to pry less than some other orders, into the secrets of families, for the purpose of establishing a baleful ascendency over their weaker members; and to be influenced by a less fierce desire to make converts, and once made, to let them go to ruin, soul and body. They may be seen, in their coarse ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... mail, of course, daily, but he was not sneak enough to pry into its secrets, even had the chance presented itself. Sometimes she tossed the letters away carelessly, but he observed that there were ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... right. When the starved and exhausted malamutes dragged their silent burden into the Northwest Mounted Police outpost barracks at Crooked Bow twenty-four hours later, an ax and a sapling bar were required to pry Francois Breault from his bier. Previous to this process, however, Sergeant Fitzgerald, in charge at the outpost, took possession of the soiled envelope pinned to Breault's red scarf. The information it bore was simple, and yet exceedingly definite. Few men ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... have only a minute. Helena, this friend of yours, this Dr. King, saw fit to pry into my affairs. He came to Philadelphia to ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... good reason. For, if you should have sought to pry, it might have aroused suspicions and there is no ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... few words with the emperor in private. Having gained the opportunity he did obeisance before him and after repeatedly calling him "master," and "god" (terms that were already being applied to him by others), he said: "I have done nothing of the sort. And if I obtain a respite, I will pry into everything and both inform against and convict many persons for you." He was released on these conditions, but did not report any one; instead, by advancing different excuses at different times, he lived until ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... arts, whereby they thought to protect themselves from evil, and to pry into the secrets of futurity. Because of these things, ancient Babylon was suddenly overwhelmed,—"for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments." These could not save, as they supposed. Therefore God said to them: "Stand now with thine enchantments, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored to pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the child of ignorance, ignorance is also the child of fear; the two react on, and produce each other. The more men dread Nature, the less they wish to know about her. Why pry into her awful secrets? It is dangerous; perhaps impious. She says to them, as in the Egyptian temple of old—"I am Isis, and my veil no mortal yet hath lifted." And why should they try or wish to lift it? If she will leave them in peace, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... great number of geese on the edge of a sandbank—our table is right in the bows, and we have a clear view of the banks on either side as we go along, even at meal times we have the field-glasses handy to pry into the scenes of animal life on river side—the captain, who generally has his gun handy, said, "Yes, certainly we must have a shot at them," and for a moment I hoped he would drop anchor, and that ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... snap jerked through the Disan's body and the arm hung limp and dead. No expression crossed the man's face. The knife was still locked in the fingers of the paralyzed hand. With his other hand Lig-magte reached across and started to pry the blade loose, ready to continue the battle one-handed. Brion raised his foot and kicked the knife free, sending it ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... through the woods we happened to stop a minute. Then we see this Frenchy sneaking through the woods. We wondered what was up. Then he vanished. We looked about, some quiet-like, and on tiptoe, and then we saw this shipmate o' your'n pry apart some bushes and head in this way. It looked ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... gave him a glass of home made wine to drink, while she told him the story much as she had already told it to the marquis, adding a hope to the effect that, if ever the marquis should express a wish to pry into the secret of the chamber, Malcolm would not encourage him in a fancy, the indulgence of which was certainly useless, and might ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... when it came to marketing and handling grain. He was away out in the country somewhere—busy plowing, busy seeding, busy harvesting, busy something-or-other. He was a Farm Hand who so "tuckered himself out" during daylight that he was glad to pry off his wrinkled boots and lie down when it got dark in order to yank them on again, when the rooster crowed at dawn, for the purpose of "tuckering himself out" all over again. It was true that without him there would have been ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... carry the news of his defeat to his brother, and others were availing themselves of the means which Saladin had supplied for revelling. The wounded man slept under the influence of Saladin's wonderful talisman, so that the dwarf had opportunity to pry about at pleasure, until he was frightened into concealment by the sound of a heavy step. He skulked behind a curtain, yet could see the motions, and hear the words of the Grand Master, who entered, and carefully secured the covering of the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Mr. Crow had a long talk. They got on famously together, because the old gentleman liked to pry into other people's affairs and the Major loved to talk ...
— The Tale of Major Monkey • Arthur Scott Bailey
... never the Opportunity of Performing. Another Reason why Men cannot form a right Judgment of us is, because the same Actions may be aimed at different Ends, and arise from quite contrary Principles. Actions are of so mixt a Nature, and so full of Circumstances, that as Men pry into them more or less, or observe some Parts more than others, they take different Hints, and put contrary Interpretations on them; so that the same Actions may represent a Man as hypocritical and designing to one, which ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... This branch of the resolution is therefore out of the question. By what authority, then, have the committee undertaken to investigate the course of the President in regard to the convention which framed the Lecompton constitution? By what authority have they undertaken to pry into our foreign relations for the purpose of assailing him on account of the instructions given by the Secretary of State to our minister in Mexico relative to the Tehuantepec route? By what authority have they inquired into the causes of removal from office, and this from the parties themselves ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... idle to tell him to "Keep away!" it is worse than useless to lose your temper and order him to "Clear out!" it is a physical impossibility for him to do either; the law of his being requires him to remain where he is and to indefatigably get in the way. If he did not pry into everything and ask a thousand questions, the thoughtful observer would be fearful lest he were an idiot. The American small boy is not idiotic; tested by his curiosity concerning automobiles, he is the fruition ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... felt that I was only doing right in rebelling. So after waiting till Ephraim was in the pantry, washing up the dinner-things with the housemaid, I slipped down the garden to the boat-house. The door was padlocked, as I had feared; but with an old hammer-head I managed to pry off the staple. I felt like a burglar when the lock came off in my hand. I felt that I was acting deceitfully. Then the thought of Ephraim came over me, making me rebellious to my finger-tips. I would go on the river, I said to myself, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... strifes of words; by most profound theological discussions, ending in nothing but weariness; but were satisfied, that, if men would go to Christ, they would find truth. O, happy time! in which men had not learned to dissect their own hearts, and pry curiously into their feelings, and torture themselves by anxious efforts to feel right, and tormenting doubts as to whether their inward experiences were as they ought to be, but believed that all good feelings would come in their own time out of Christian ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... age of the world that fairies got an idea riveted into their heads which nothing, not even hammers, chisels or crowbars can pry up. Neither horse power, nor hydraulic force nor sixteen-inch bombs, nor cannon balls, nor torpedoes ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... excellent taste and feeling, he declined the honor in favor of Sir William Jones. But the chief advantage which the students of Oriental letters derived from his patronage remains to be mentioned. The Pundits of Bengal had always looked with great jealousy on the attempts of foreigners to pry into those mysteries which were locked up in the sacred dialect. The Brahminical religion had been persecuted by the Mahommedans. What the Hindoos knew of the spirit of the Portuguese government might warrant them in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... woman to pry into others' secrets, and felt guilty as she fled from the attic, taking the lamp with her. Afterward, as she sat on the narrow piazza, basking in the warm Spring sunshine, she pieced out the love affair of Jane Hathaway's early ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... the subject; even under their strange circumstances, favourable as they were to intimacy and confidences, it seemed impertinent to him to pry into the mysteries of his companion's life. Only he asked, at ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... in action. With his nerves still a-tingle, the boy seized a stout bit of wood, evidently cut for the fireplace, inserted it between the window bars, bore down and with a low squeak of protest the nails came out. Another pry, with the sill for a fulcrum, and there was a hole big enough for a body to get through. The bit of wood now acted as a step and in a moment Gus was ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... and by careful manoeuvring had themselves retained to unravel the case. This brought into existence hordes of professional informers who secured the opening wedges for the fake agencies. Men and women, many of them of some social standing, made it a practice to pry around for secrets which might be valuable able; spies kept up their work in large business establishments and began to haunt the cafes and resorts of doubtful reputation, on the watch for persons of ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... meant to give her a false impression, and that when he knew as well as she how she detested falsity! As for his reasons for concealment,—let him keep his reasons! She angrily told herself that Jane Selden had no desire to pry into a politician's secrets. But he should have said that the letter was a letter! With which conclusion, the coach having drawn up before Vinie Mocket's door, Mrs. Selden dismissed the matter from her mind, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... qualities. And so to an actor: Hamlet first, and Bob Logic afterwards, if you like; but don't think, as they say poor Liston used to, that people will be ready to allow that you can do anything great with Macbeth's dagger after flourishing about with Paul Pry's umbrella. Do you know, too, that the majority of men look upon all who challenge their attention,—for a while, at least,—as beggars, and nuisances? They always try to get off as cheaply as they can; and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... you to be cautious in your communications, Abimelech, concerning our money matters. My daughter gave me a hint about the last mortgage, which I did not half like. Children think they have a right to pry into a father's expences; and to curb and brow-beat him, if the money be not all spent in gratifying their whims. Be more close, Abimelech, if ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... whin he wint in; but wan day a man come up to him, an' says he, 'Ye know that ordhnance Schwartz inthrajooced?' 'I do,' says Dochney, 'an I'm again it. 'Tis a swindle,' he says. "Well,' says th' la-ad, 'they'se five thousan' in it f'r ye,' he says. They had to pry Dochney off iv him. Th' nex' day a man he knowed well come to Dochney, an' says he, 'That's a fine ordhnance iv Schwartz.' 'It is, like hell,' says Dochney. ''Tis a plain swindle,' he says. ''Tis a good thing f'r th' comp'nies,' says this ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... said, with a gentle sigh. "I will trust you. As a matter of fact, I have felt that I could trust you from the first. I won't pry into your schemes, because if they are successful I shall benefit by them. And if you like to bring a cartload of convicts down here, pray do so. It will only puzzle the neighbours, and drive them mad with ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... no one believed that, except her little girl, who thought her mother must know best. Rosamond would sit by her for hours, gazing into the river that flowed through their garden, and listening to her mothers stories of golden palaces beneath the water. But she also liked to pry about her father's forge, and wonder at the quick sparks and great roaring fires. Her cousin Alfred would stay there with her, but while she was watching the red glow of the fire and the heavy fall of her father's hammer, he was gazing upon the ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... sailor's chest. Hidden treasures are always found in sailors' chests, ye know. And taking a three-foot bar of iron, which every gentleman in tales carries concealed upon his person, we, you and I,—none of the others, of course,—will pry this chest open—to find ducats and doubloons, and piastres, and sous-marquees—and a map of the Spanish Main and the Dry Tortugas—with crosses in blood. I'll tell you, ye can have my share of it now," he ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... his attempt to pry through the guarded curtain; but often eyed it. Every hour or so an ecclesiastic peeped in, eyed him, chilled him, and exit. All this was gloomy, and mechanical. But the next day a gentleman, richly armed, bounced in, and glared at him. "What is ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... business to pry into the affairs of his church-members!" replied Mr. Winter, growing more excited again. "That is what ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... still believed that we could move the rock by throwing our united weight on a long pry; and many of the boys agreed with him. We felled a spruce tree seven inches in diameter, trimmed it and cut a pry twenty feet long from it. Carrying it to the rock, we set a stone for a fulcrum, and then threw our weight repeatedly on the long end. The rock, which must have weighed ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... crime, sir, they must have the support of every reasonable member of the community, though I cannot doubt that the official machinery is amply sufficient for the purpose. Where your calling is more open to criticism is when you pry into the secrets of private individuals, when you rake up family matters which are better hidden, and when you incidentally waste the time of men who are more busy than yourself. At the present moment, for example, I should be writing a treatise ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more contemptuous austerity the objects of the King's passion, and the pandars to his vices. However high his own ideal of domestic virtue, Clarendon was a man of the world, not blind to its vices, and not eager to pry into scandals or pursue the secrets of private life. It was not only the vice of Charles's courtiers, it was the sickening parade of debauchery in all its nakedness, which seemed to him to make the Court unmanly and ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... emphatically. "But it must mean more to me, who am deprived of every occupation. If I were a writer, I could still dictate. If I were a business man, I could conduct my business. But I am a soldier, and not a clever soldier. Jealousy, a continual and irritable curiosity—there is no Paul Pry like your blind man—a querulous claim upon your attention—these are my special dangers." And Ethne laughed gently in contradiction ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... dashed on the instant by the sudden snorting and shying of two or three of the horses in passing, and we laid hold of our weapons, keying ourselves to the fighting pitch. But, curiously enough, the riders made no move to pry into the cause. So far from it, they flogged the shying ponies into line and rode on stolidly; and thus in a little time that danger was overpast and the evening silence of the mighty forest was ours to keep or ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... to wish to pry into futurity. We are impatient to penetrate the clouds that envelope us, and to discern the distant course which Providence has prescribed for our feet. Curiosity combines with self-interest to urge this inquiry; but the reproof which Peter received is justly merited ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... am attempting to pry into your private affairs, Mr. Harding. In a case of this kind, the clues that lead to the unravelling of the mystery often lie on the surface in some trifling circumstance that seemingly has nothing whatever ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... birds, no doubt," The vulture said, "are the most fit Both for capacity and wit, And very docile: they will do My business, as I wish them to. And hawk—the hawk is a good fellow— And chanticleer, with cockscomb yellow; But all the ravens—they must go— Pry in futurities, you know. That will not do; to baffle all With truth, for the apocryphal. No; jays and pies will do far better,— They talk by rote, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... will be angry with thee; Come Thou shalt know all my drift, I hate her more, Than I love happiness, and plac'd thee there, To pry with narrow eyes into her deeds; Hast thou discover'd? Is she fain to lust, As I would wish her? Speak ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... 'sweet and ingenuous as are your faces, I could not read upon them that ye would prove to be Whigs and friends of the good old cause. Ye might have taken me to where excisemen or others would have wanted to pry and peep, and so endangered my commission. Better a voyage to France in ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... taking up a piece of iron that had been thrown on the floor, he made that little hammer Ole has in his hand, and a number of wrought nails; and he brought them home and showed Ole how to use the hammer and drive the nails into the chair; and when he had driven them all into the wood, papa would pry them out for him, and the work would commence all over again, and Ole was ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... disliked her, and hated to see her come where they were. She never got invited anywhere, because nothing was safe from her little Paul Pry fingers; and when company came she generally got sent out of the room. It was a great pity, because she was really a pretty little girl, and a very ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... only they lie far, far away from what appears on the surface,—far as that rivulet lies from its source! My dear young sir, Mr. Darrell has known griefs on which it does not become you and me to talk. He never talks of them. The least I can do for my benefactor is not to pry into his secrets, nor babble them out. And he is so kind, so good, never gets into a passion; but it is so awful to wound him,—it gives him such pain; that's why he frightens me,—frightens me horribly; and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lines, my reverend friend, By a safe, private hand I send (Fearing lest some low Catholic wag Should pry into the Letter-bag), To tell you, far as pen can dare How we, poor errant martyrs, fare;— Martyrs, not quite to fire and rack, As Saints were, some few ages back. But—scarce less trying in its way— ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... that such a microscope (to speak in figure) might one day be applied by that Power to whom only the human heart is fully known. I added, however, that, if I knew more of his mental history for some years past, (into which my affection-should never induce me impertinently to pry,) I might, perhaps, in some measure, account for his scepticism; that I could even conceive cases of minds so "encompassed with infirmity," or so dependent on states of health, as to render such a state involuntary, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... in the party is sent up the tree, and given a stick wherewith to frighten or poke or pry the cornered animal out of his castle. Compelled to leave the hole, it creeps out upon a limb, and squatting down, snarls at the stranger, who tries to shake loose its hold. But this is a vain attempt. A raccoon can cling like a burr. Try to drag your pet 'coon off the top of a fence, and ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... say was this: that the place of Receiver-General was at present too important, and would occasion too much surprise and speculation; that it would not do to go beyond a place worth fifteen thousand to twenty thousand francs a year; that they had no desire to pry into the King's secrets; and that his correspondence ought not to be communicated to any one; that this did not apply to papers like those of which I was the bearer, which might fall into his hands; that he would confer an obligation by ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... world, received up into glory, wherein are things the angels desire to look unto, or with vehement desire bend, as it were, their necks, and bow down their heads to look and peep into, (as the word used, I Pet. i. 12, importeth) is a subject for angelical heads to pry into, for the most indefatigable and industrious spirits to be occupied about. The searching into, and studying of this one truth, in reference to a closing with it as our life, is an infallible mark of a soul ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... no more to Lanfranc than my need of him, and he was little interested to pry deeper into the matter. He was himself a lively youngster of no more than twenty, but he had been trained to arms, had fought in Spain, and had an honourable record on the grass. Merely his black eyes flashed when he learned what was toward, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... for the cardinal was scandalized in the antechamber. There, to his great astonishment, d'Artagnan heard the policy which made all Europe tremble criticized aloud and openly, as well as the private life of the cardinal, which so many great nobles had been punished for trying to pry into. That great man who was so revered by d'Artagnan the elder served as an object of ridicule to the Musketeers of Treville, who cracked their jokes upon his bandy legs and his crooked back. Some sang ballads about Mme. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Padre at last, in his coarse way stirred by Jose's evident truthfulness. "Well—as you wish—I will not pry into your secrets. But, take a bit of counsel from one who knows: when you reach Simiti, inquire for a man who hates me, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... concerning his progenitors, and rested well content with the scantiness of his knowledge. The character and condition of his father, of whom alone upon that side of the house he had personal cognizance, did not encourage him to pry into the obscurity behind that luckless rover. He was sensitive on the subject; and when he was applied to for information, a brief paragraph conveyed all that he knew or desired to know. Without doubt he would have been best pleased to have the world ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... you came out here seeking to learn my business, to pry into my personal affairs. That was not a very gentlemanly act, Captain West, and I hardly see how you can ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... out the cow-chains. Never mind the horse,—he'll be alive and kicking; and if his legs don't do their duty, let them pay for the roast. Ditto as to the hogs,—let them save their own bacon, or smoke for it. When the roof begins to burn, get a crow-bar and pry away the stone steps; or, if the steps be of wood, procure an axe and chop them up. Next, cut away the wash-boards in the basement story; and if that don't stop the flames, let the chair-boards on the first floor share ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... there's no need to yell so loud. You know I've got back my hearing. What want ye with me? I'm sure I have no wish to pry into the secrets of this young man ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Margot's illness, and who had been the girl's companion on the misty moor. What had happened during those hours of suspense and danger? What barriers had been swept aside; what new vistas opened? Edith's own love was too sweet and sacred a thing to allow her to pry and question into the heart-secrets of another, as is the objectionable fashion of many so-called friends, but with her keen woman-senses she took in George Elgood's every word, look, and movement ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the cogency of arguments, the force of pathetick sentiments, the various colours of diction, or the flowery embellishments of fancy; of all that engages the attention of others they are totally insensible, while they pry into worlds of conjecture, and amuse themselves with phantoms in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... shown a better one. The same looseness of the rocks that permitted the escape of the smoke so freely, will permit, also, their being removed or torn away. We will now uncage him by digging down into his den. Ho there! my merry men below, go to cutting heavy pry-poles, and look up your crow-bars, picks, sledge-hammers, and shovels. There ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... receive her, and she will tell you some new things. Let her tell her story without interrupting her, and give close attention, and you will see she has got the lever of truth, that God helps her to pry where but few can. She cannot read or write, but the law ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... During the subsidence of the waters it seems that the Ark made fast there for the night, just before laying a course for Ararat; and the monkey and his wife—desperately bored by their long cooping-up among so many uncongenial animals—took advantage of their opportunity to pry a couple of tiles off the roof and get away. The tradition hints that Noah had been drinking; at any rate, their absence was not noticed, and the Ark went on without them the next day. By the time that the Deluge fairly was ended, and the Rhone reopened to normal navigation, a large monkey family ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... back in the scabbard—which there was no need to have told you, by the way. And I fancy that in telling you about my inner conflict I have laid it on rather thick to glorify myself. But let it pass, and to hell with all who pry into the human heart! Well, so much for that 'adventure' with Katerina Ivanovna. So now Ivan knows of it, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... dreamed rich music in the rattling mills. 'Ye foundries, ye shall cast my church a bell,' Loud cried the Future from the farthest hills: 'Ye groaning forces, crack me every shell Of customs, old constraints, and narrow ills; Thou, lithe Invention, wake and pry and guess, Till thy deft mind ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... prejudice is a-dying. We need not pry into the secret of its birth. Rather is this a time of jolliness and glad indulgence. For the era of rouge is upon us, and as only in an elaborate era can man, by the tangled accrescency of his own pleasures and emotions, reach that refinement which is his highest excellence, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... he said. "It is one of my failings, I admit, but I have never gone much farther into your domestic affairs than to pry into the antecedents ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... let's lay that subject on the table for some of our night talks; and you can scold us all you like. We have a lot of work to do now, and let's forget the old pry. Now you lie down on that couch where I put you, and Leslie ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... "Never pry into the secrets of families," said Fleda. "Hugh and I have a couple of convenient little fairies in our service that ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... that the place of Receiver-General was at present too important, and would occasion too much surprise and speculation; that it would not do to go beyond a place worth fifteen thousand to twenty thousand francs a year; that they had no desire to pry into the King's secrets; and that his correspondence ought not to be communicated to any one; that this did not apply to papers like those of which I was the bearer, which might fall into his hands; that he would confer an obligation by communicating them, in order ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... the emperor in private. Having gained the opportunity he did obeisance before him and after repeatedly calling him "master," and "god" (terms that were already being applied to him by others), he said: "I have done nothing of the sort. And if I obtain a respite, I will pry into everything and both inform against and convict many persons for you." He was released on these conditions, but did not report any one; instead, by advancing different excuses at different times, he ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... case at once," she said; "I am afraid, if you wave it about like that, you will drop it, and I value it very much. You had no right to come into my room and meddle with my things, and poke and pry in all ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... and the mate let out more of the anchor chain. But they couldn't go very far, for the wind was so strong and the waves were so high and the heavy anchor chain held them back near the ship. When they had got as far as they could, they managed to pry the anchor overboard. It went into the water with a tremendous splash, wetting all the men; but they didn't mind, for they were all wet through already with the rain and the splashing of the waves. ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... it slid a little bit, and then more and more, until finally it was rolling along quite rapidly. As the bank sloped down to the river like a little hill, Bunny hardly had to push or pry at all now, and a minute later the raft was ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... water which are not equalled by the greyhound on land. Why have the seals hung back? I believe I know the secret. It is the baby! No one knows where the porpoise and the whale cradle their newborn infants—it is so difficult to pry into the domestic ways of these sea-people—but evidently the seals cannot manage it, so they are forced to return to the land when the cares ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... Briggs! Why don't you manifest the power of the human intellect?" and so on, howling out ironical remarks like those; and s'posin' he kept that dog on that leg until he made you swear to pay the bet, and then at last had to pry the dog off with a hot poker, bringing away at the same time some of your flesh in the dog's mouth, so that you had to be carried home on a stretcher, and to hire several doctors to keep ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... be done according to your word," said I. "I will furbish up my exterior, and this very afternoon make my first appearance in the character of Paul Pry." ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... about again. Yes, the position was right. If she fell here, a man with a shovel could easily pry down tons of sand from either bank upon her in a few minutes. The burial might be done by himself without any other soul knowing ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... bucked centre. Two large lady spectators who had seen the Duke of Roxburgh married and had often blocked traffic on Twenty-third Street fell back into the second row with ripped shirtwaists when Violet had finished with them. William Pry loved her at ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... ashamed, Bianca!" said the Princess. "What right have we to pry into the secrets of this young man's heart? He seems virtuous and frank, and tells us he is unhappy. Are those circumstances that authorise us to make a property of him? How are we entitled ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... broke his rules of caution as to go on foot, past the church of San Polo, to visit the beautiful Barozza; and he resolved, if possible, to catch him on one of these journeys. 'It so chanced on the 28th of February, which was the second Sunday of Lent, that having gone, as was my wont, to pry out whether Lorenzo would give orders for going abroad that day, I entered the shoemaker's shop, and stayed awhile, until Lorenzo came to the window with a napkin round his neck for he was combing his hair—and at the same moment I saw a certain Giovan Battista Martelli, who kept his sword ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... said this, the neck of the fowl was drawn and its throat cut; and either the dead fowl, or its value in money, was given to the poor. In the evening previous to the feast of expiation, a man wishing to pry into futurity carried a lighted candle to the synagogue, and from particular appearances of the flame he prognosticated whether good was to follow him and his, or whether he and his family were to be ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... said is soonest mended,' is proverbial in quarrels of all kinds. I have no wish to pry or play mischief-maker, and, if Mr. Basil Bainrothe with his diplomatic talents could do nothing to mend the difficulty, I had no right to suppose that I could succeed better, with my ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... on being questioned as to the events of my past life, I had occasion to pry into this picture-chamber. I had thought to be content with selecting some few materials for my Life's story. I then discovered, as I opened the door, that Life's memories are not Life's history, but the original work of an ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... got to pry now," said Lilly with her little air of decision. "Who knows what treasures we may unearth? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... out, he need only climb back out of the ravine—to her. But Blake's work was not the kind to slip or pull out. The watcher looked at the powerful figure backing rapidly down that roof-like pitch. One of the toes of the level tripod under the taut loop would easily pry the rope off the spike-head. He turned his pack around to get at the tripod—and paused to look upwards at the three tiny faces peering down over the ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... without a cap, reared above the stern, came full aboard without breaking, covered the whole boat, sweeping over her like a cuff from a gigantic hand. The Rector received the shock square on the back, but nothing, apparently, could loosen his iron grip from the tiller, nor pry his feet from the deck against which they were braced. He felt the water get deeper and deeper above his head, and a terrible groaning as if the boat were going to pieces under the strain. Then, as he came ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... where you came from, why, and when you are likely to be searched for. Now, you know and so do I that part of what they found out they wouldn't accept. Time-travel is impossible. So when you children told them where you come from they wouldn't believe it. They'd try to pry back behind what they'd consider a lie. They'd use different techniques of inquiry. They'd use inhibition-releasing drugs. ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys. In a similar way, psychology itself, when pushed to any nicety, discovers an abhorrent baldness, but rather ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... here until the next boat," he heard Locke saying as the victoria stopped. "I'd like to see somebody pry me loose from ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... period, it was easy to treat these questions as too transcendental, or as lying too far beyond the domain of positive science to require serious discussion. But it is no longer possible to restrain curiosity from attempting to pry into the relations which connect the present state of the animal and vegetable worlds, as well as of the various races of mankind, with the state of the fauna ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... far broke his rules of caution as to go on foot, past the church of San Polo, to visit the beautiful Barozza; and he resolved, if possible, to catch him on one of these journeys. 'It so chanced on February 28, which was the second Sunday of Lent, that having gone, as was my wont, to pry out whether Lorenzino would give orders for going abroad that day, I entered the shoemaker's shop, and stayed awhile, until Lorenzino came to the window with a napkin round his neck—for he was combing his hair —and at the same moment I saw a certain Giovan Battista ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Dr. Quine's school at Notting Hill, Mr. Leslie passed a short probation in the provinces, and joined the Royalty Theatre in 1872, making his debut on the London stage in the character of Colonel Hardy in "Paul Pry." He subsequently visited America to play in "Madame Favart," at the Fifth Avenue Theatre. On his return to London he created the character of the Duke in "Olivette." Shortly after this, in 1882, in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... He wanted money, and he wanted it badly, but the tailor had no right to pry into his private ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... not lax. People sniffed his smoke, noting every change in its flavor, and pressed around Judge Thayer's garden fence trying to get a look at the operations. Judge Thayer was not a little indignant over the scoffings and denunciations, and this impertinent curiosity to pry upon what he gave them to understand was ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... "By Allah, O my lord, he went up before my eyes and I am still awaiting him." Then the Captain hurried away a second time and rummaged about, high and low, and left no place whereinto he did not pry and spy, yet he came upon no one. He was perplext at his affair and again going down to the Barber said to him, "O Man, we have found none." Still the fellow said to him doggedly, "Withal a man did go within, whilst I who am his familiar here ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... from him ever since he left. I confess that I feel curious, and should be glad to hear from him—that is, of course, unless something is involved which it would be impertinent for a comparative stranger to pry into. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... narrative. This rich vestment the hunter carried away with him. This was all the plunder his expedition afforded. Yes: there was one other article, and, to my mind, more significant than the vest of the hidalgo. This was a short and stout crowbar of iron; not one of the long crowbars that farmers use to pry up stones, but a short handy one, such as you would use in digging silver-ore out ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... his part was not wholly satisfied with what he had heard concerning the new attempt of the mysterious tourist to pry into his affairs. He every little while would spring some new question, which Larry answered to the best of his ability. Evidently Frank was trying to discover the real motives actuating Mr. Marsh when he so suddenly decided ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... come back; he carried his hands to his face stammering: "Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!" And muttered invectives followed: the train-bearer was an artful hypocrite who feigned modesty and humility, a vile spy appointed to pry into everything, listen to everything, and pervert everything that went on in the palace; he was a loathsome, destructive insect, feeding on the most noble prey, devouring the lion's mane, a Jesuit—the Jesuit who is at once lackey and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... conjecture he was right. When the starved and exhausted malamutes dragged their silent burden into the Northwest Mounted Police outpost barracks at Crooked Bow twenty-four hours later, an ax and a sapling bar were required to pry Francois Breault from his bier. Previous to this process, however, Sergeant Fitzgerald, in charge at the outpost, took possession of the soiled envelope pinned to Breault's red scarf. The information it bore was simple, and yet exceedingly definite. Few men in dying ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... are sometimes sent among an enemy, to discover the state of his affairs, to pry into his designs, and carry back information. This is a dishonorable office; spies, if detected, are ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... big doctor thoughtfully, "while she was unconscious it took me ten minutes to pry open her fingers and disengage a rather heavy dog-whip from her clutch.... And there was some evidences of blood on the lash and on ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... me to dive into ladies' secrets; I want not to pry into other people's affairs. But, pray, how does she employ herself?—Yet she came but yesterday; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... fastened upon her set her pulses tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance, and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that face, passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his. At last they were left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew he could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips. His hands and face were working and a tremour went over her. She leaned back far to look up where the fireworks were and she ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Bunch, "I'll throw a wire at my sister and tell her not to move out to Jiggersville until day after to-morrow. In the mean time we'll have to get a crowbar and pry your family circle loose from my premises. Nothing doing in the ghost ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... them on all four sides before you try to pull them up. A spade is a fine thing to use to pry out a pin that is deep in the ground, and a wooden mallet is better than an axe or hatchet to drive them in with; but, unless you have a large number of pins to drive, it will hardly pay you to get a mallet especially ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... towards her held an element of that loyal, enthusiastic devotion which an older woman not infrequently inspires in one considerably younger than herself—a devotion which accepts things as they are and has no wish to pry into the ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... upon our globe's last verge shall go, And view the ocean leaning on the sky: From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, And on the lunar world securely pry. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the rule," he said. "Because the old priests did pry and peer, it was ruled henceforth that only the blind could enter the Holy of Holies." I'd swear he was smiling, if thirty teeth peeking out of what looked like a crack in an old suitcase can ...
— The Repairman • Harry Harrison
... say where he picked up this notion of his about the dead body," continued the captain. "It's not my place to pry into secrets; but I advise you to call the crew aft, and contradict the boy, whether he speaks the truth or not. The men are a parcel of fools who believe in ghosts, and all the rest of it. Some of them say they ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... his heel. "I wish I could take to that fellow," he thought, "but I can't; he's such a sneak! What the deuce was there to tremble about? Does he think I want to pry into ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... There must be something, somewhere, that will give us the meaning of a few words, and we'll use them to pry meaning out of more words, and so on. We may not live to learn this language, but we'll make a start, and some ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... out to field agents all over the United States, and, quietly but efficiently, the FBI went to work. Agents began to probe and pry and poke their noses into the files and data sheets of every mental institution in the fifty states—as far, at any rate, as they ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Arimanes, Byron's "Prince of Earth and Air." The gray figure from most ancient myth is not less real to us than Mefistofeles in "Faust." At least we clearly feel the human daring that feared not to pry into forbidden mysteries and refused the solace of unthinking faith. And it becomes again a question whether the composer had in mind this subjective attitude of the hero or the actual figures and abode of the spirits and their king. It is hard to escape the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... had embraced his knees. He was overwhelmed by this extraordinary coincidence. 'Approach. O heaven! O Providence! It is he, behold the object of my gratitude. ... My benefactor! My son!' But let us not pry further into so affecting a passage; it is sufficient to state that Don Alvarez, after promising his protection to Zamore, hurried off to relate this remarkable occurrence to ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Cornet Heald had, in his marriage, all unwittingly laid up a peck of fresh trouble for himself. This was brought to a head by the action of his spinster aunt, Miss Susannah Heald, who, until he came of age, had been his guardian. Suspecting Lola of a "past," she set herself to pry into it. Gathering that her nephew's inamorata had already been married, she employed enquiry agents to look into this previous union and discover just how and when it had been dissolved. They did their work well, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... vacuum was formed by the refluence of the wave. Where a crevice is filled with water the entire force of the blow of the wave is transmitted by hydraulic pressure to the sides of the fissure. Thus storm waves little by little pry and suck the rock loose, and in this way, and by the blows which they strike with the stones of the beach, they quarry out about a joint, or wherever the rock may be weak, a recess known as a SEA CAVE, provided that the rock above is coherent enough ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... not: so I take a stranger's due." Self-love like this is knavish and absurd, And well deserves a damnatory word. You glance at your own faults; your eyes are blear: You eye your neighbour's; straightway you see clear, Like hawk or basilisk: your neighbours pry Into your frailties with as keen an eye. A man is passionate, perhaps misplaced In social circles of fastidious taste; His ill-trimmed beard, his dress of uncouth style, His shoes ill-fitting, may provoke a smile: But he's the soul of virtue; but he's ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... discovered), and F (a magazine of wit), and fair G, and H, and I, and brave old J, and charming K, and L, and M, and N, and O (fair twinklers), and I am puzzled between three P's—Peacock, Miss Pardoe, and Paul Pry—and Queechy, and R, and S, and T, mere et fils, and very likely U, O gentle reader, for who has not written his novel now-a-days?—who has not a claim to the star and straw-colored ribbon?—and who shall have the biggest and largest? ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... till Ephraim was in the pantry, washing up the dinner-things with the housemaid, I slipped down the garden to the boat-house. The door was padlocked, as I had feared; but with an old hammer-head I managed to pry off the staple. I felt like a burglar when the lock came off in my hand. I felt that I was acting deceitfully. Then the thought of Ephraim came over me, making me rebellious to my finger-tips. I would ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... ask. Although our young engineer could not imagine why Thorpe Walling had come to Newfoundland, he instinctively felt that the visit had something to do with his own trip to the island. He knew that Thorpe delighted to pry into the secrets of others; and also that he was of a vindictive nature, quick to take offence, and unscrupulous in his enmities. Therefore, as his instructions permitted him to visit whatever part of Newfoundland ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... ambition to enact the spy On fellow souls, a Spiritual Pry— 'Tis said that people ought to guard their noses, Who thrust them into matters none of theirs; And tho' no delicacy discomposes Your Saint, yet I consider faith and pray'rs Amongst ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... veterinary surgeon was sent for to attend a horse which had ripped its side open on the hinge of a farm gatepost. On arriving at the farm he found that nothing had been done for the wounded horse, but that a man was busy trying to pry the hinge out of the gatepost in order that it might be greased and put away, which, in the opinion of the Cambridge wiseacres, would conduce to the recovery of the animal. Similarly Essex rustics opine that, if a man has been stabbed with a knife, it is essential to his recovery that ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... we will stick to Knollsea,' said Ethelberta, half in doubt. 'Yes—otherwise it will be difficult to see about aunt's baptismal certificate. We will hope nobody will take the trouble to pry into our household. . . . And now, Picotee, I want to ask you something—something very serious. How would you like ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... I; "but, pry'thee, dear Ibrahim, read me this riddle: if the devil gets into water and kills, why don't he kill when he gets ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... usurp my right, Nor hold the sceptre in his childish fist, Nor wear the diadem upon his head, Whose church-like humours fits not for a crown. Then, York, be still awhile till time do serve; Watch thou and wake when others be asleep, To pry into the secrets of the state; Till Henry, surfeiting in joys of love, With his new bride and England's dear-bought queen, And Humphrey with the peers be fallen at jars. Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose, With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfum'd, And in my standard bear the ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... that over," he said. "I like to put chaps like that on a false scent. He's a Poll Pry, that's what that chap is. P'raps he'll be wanting to sell you a plantation. But now then, sir, business. Directly I tell my mates and crew where we're going—if so be as we agree—the first question will be: What are we ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... very sick?" Edith ventured to ask, and instantly the round bright eyes shot at her a glance of alarm, while the negress replied, "Dunno, misses. He keeps his 'fars mostly to hisself, and Phillis has done larnt not to pry." ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... puzzling aspect to her mind. She admitted that scientists, viewed as a genus, were objectionable; but insisted that Fern, to whose personal charms she was keenly alive, was an exception to the rule. She felt confident that so good a man as he could never have tried to pry into the secrets of God Almighty. Tharald yielded grumblingly, inch by inch, and thus saved his dignity, although his daughter, in the end, prevailed. She obtained his permission to request the guest to remain, and not interpret ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Greece, threatened to bring upon his subjects and city of Tyre, in revenge for a discovery which the prince had made of a shocking deed which the emperor had done in secret; as commonly it proves dangerous to pry into the hidden crimes of great ones. Leaving the government of his people in the hands of his able and honest minister, Helicanus, Pericles set sail from Tyre, thinking to absent himself till the wrath of Antiochus, who was mighty, should ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... strangers generally. I do not believe any food—that is, solids—ever passed the woman's lips since her attack of paralysis, consequent upon her mishap. As for an occasional teaspoonful of water or milk, I sometimes force her to take it by using an instrument to pry open her mouth, but that is painful to her. As early as 1865 I endeavored to sustain life in this way, for I feared that, in obedience to the universal law of nature, she would die of gradual inanition or exhaustion, which I thought would ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... in the basement of his father's house (where he took the precaution to label all his bottles 'poison'), he began the publication of a new and better journal, entitled the PAUL PRY. It boasted of several contributors and a list of regular subscribers. One of these (Mr. J.H.B.), while smarting under what he considered a malicious libel, met the editor one day on the brink of the St. Clair, and taking ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... mules were unhitched, a long rope was attached to one end of the boat, stout shoulders were placed under the pry poles, and with a "Heave'o! and another! and still another!" it was finally slid into the water amid loud cheers from the assembled spectators. These cheers were answered from the other side of the river, where nearly ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... one' to be a burglar, he'd have to get to the door before he could pry it off, would he ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... beside me here, extend his wand over this contiguity of roofs, uncover every chamber, and make me familiar with their inhabitants! The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a spiritualized Paul Pry hovering invisible round man and woman, witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing brightness from their felicity, and shade from their sorrow, and retaining no emotion peculiar to himself. But none of these things are possible; and if I would know interior of ...
— Sights From A Steeple (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... making mysteries? I do not wish to pry into your affairs. I would have trusted you anywhere; but when it comes round to me that you have been sending a private messenger to one of the young gentlemen there, I don't know what to be at! I would not believe ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... can take the top off a bottle of soda pop with an opener that will pry it up, but you cannot pull ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... a happy boy, With face lit up by hope and joy, Who thinks that nothing shall destroy His vine, his pride and pleasure, Is standing near, with kindling eye, As if its very look would pry The cup apart, therein to spy The ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... one should not judge of even a poor enthusiastic woman, dead two hundred years ago, on that sole authority. Never was there a more nauseous creature of the pious kind than this Presbyterian Paul Pry of 1644-46. He revelled in scandals, and kept a private office for the receipt of all sorts of secret information, by word of mouth or letter, that could be used against the Independents and the Sectaries. [Footnote: Richard Baxter, as he himself tells us, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... approve of it. Only the old thing has been left so long, and there's such a mystery about it, and we're not harming or disturbing anything, that perhaps it isn't so dreadful. Anyhow, we must be very careful not to pry into anything we ought not touch. Perhaps then it will be all right." Cynthia agreed to all this without hesitation. She, indeed, had even stronger feelings than Joyce on the subject of their trespassing, but the ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... out before the lieutenant got to us," Jimmie cut in. "I guess this bunch of Boy Scouts don't need any United States army to pry us out of our troubles. We almost got here first," he ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... let me alone, boy? Into what have you come here to pry? You are odious—yes, odious!" She stamped her foot. "And I thought last night, that you were in trouble. Was I not kind to you for that, and that only?" She broke off pitifully. "Oh, Harry, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... elsewhere and anywhere," Harleston interjected. "I'll trust you not to pry into matters other than the letter. By the way, whose was ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... delicately-nurtured merchant's son slept side by side on their leaf-strewn floor, and even La Salle, excited and surprised as he had been, at last fell into a broken slumber. But when all were asleep, and no human eye could pry into his secret sorrows, Regnar seated himself by the flaring lamp, and drawing from his breast a locket, took from it a small folded paper, and a closely-curled ringlet of yellow hair, such as St. Olave, the warrior saint of Norway, laid in the lap of the ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... of six years of age, assisted his father with a mien which betokened that he considered his services indispensable. With his bare head and feet he ran up and down the timbers as nimbly as a squirrel. When a beam was being lifted, he cried, "Pry under!" as lustily as any one, put his shoulder to the crowbar, and puffed as if nine-tenths of the weight fell upon him. Valentine liked to see his little boy employed. He would tell him to wind the twine on the reel, to carry the tools where they ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... shoulder of one side approach each other, and so lessen the space within the abdomen on that side. On the other side a support has been removed for the contents of the abdomen, and they sag down until they pry the uterus out of place and press it over towards the side where there is less pressure. The broad ligament on one side is stretched from use and on the other side shortened from disuse, and so the ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... exultingly, "I think we have stolen a march on them. I don't believe they were prepared for this, not at least at this stage in the game. Don't ask me any questions, Walter. Then you will have no secrets to keep if anyone should try to pry them loose. Only remember that this man Lawrence is ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... monkeys, cats, dogs, a farm-yard, or a full band, with equal facility. He would also give you Mr. Keeley, in "Betsy Baker;" Mr. Paul Bedford, as "I believe you my bo-o-oy"; Mr. Buckstone, as Cousin Joe, and "Box and Cox;" or Mr. Wright, as Paul Pry, or Mr. Felix Fluffy. Besides the comedians, Mr. Footelights would also give you the leading tragedians, and would favour you (through his nose) with the popular burlesque imitation of Mr. Charles ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... happen in that ring. He give me no time to spring. He fell on me like a horse. I couldn't keep my feet against him, and though, as I saw, he could get his hold when he liked, he wanted to chew me over a bit first. I was wondering if they'd be able to pry him off me, when, in the third round, he took his hold; and I begun to drown, just as I did when I fell into the river off the Red C slip. He closed deeper and deeper on my throat, and everything went black and red and bursting; ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... in another person's concerns: and were it not that what I do for want of memory, others do more often for want of good faith, I should always, in matter of fact, rather choose to take the truth from another's mouth than from my own. If every one would pry into the effects and circumstances of the passions that sway him, as I have done into those which I am most subject to, he would see them coming, and would a little break their impetuosity and career; they do not always seize us on a sudden; there ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... and went into an inner room, replacing the letter as she did so, and folding over the flap, so that it would seem as though she knew nothing of the contents. Sally quickly saw the kind of person she was—an interfering creature, with "Miss Pry" written all over her. She was tall and thin, and had gooseberry eyes and a small nose and a large sycophantic mouth. Sally had a picture of her all the time she was away—grey-blue dress and all. She didn't like her. She hated her. She ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... I should not pry into arrangements I must later be able to deny convincingly with a clear conscience. I can only plead, my dear Blauvelt, the tenseness of the ...
— The Outbreak of Peace • Horace Brown Fyfe
... - That Second Calendar, Son of a King, On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined, Pausing at one mysterious door, To pry no closer, but content his soul With his kind Forty. Yet I could not rest For idleness and ungovernable Fate. And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame (That wonder-working word!), Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans, And soaring, soaring on From air to air, came charging to the ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... a desire to pry into foreign affairs; witness the following letter from Thomas Hardy to Dr. Adams, Secretary of the London Society for ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... and women who make up the world, and bettering our condition by bettering theirs. Of a future life he said he knew nothing, and concerning the supernatural he was silent, even rebuking his disciples for trying to pry into the secrets of Heaven. The word "God" he does not use, but his recognition of a Supreme Intelligence is limited to the use of a word which can best be translated "Heaven," since it tokens a place more than it does a person. Constantly he speaks of "doing the will of Heaven." ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... as injurious to a child to attempt to force a feeling before its normal time, as to a bud, to pry open its petals to hasten God's processes. Even the Divine Child "grew." "That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual," is God's ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... have had the pleasure of drilling him clean," said Arizona, harking back to it with savage pleasure, "but I shot out the light. I wanted him to die slow, and before the end I wanted to pry his eyes open and make him see my face and know that it was me that done for him! That was what I wanted. But he turned yaller and ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... children carelessly and idiotically, cursing them with abominable manners and poisoning their nascent minds against him, and he has no redress. She may neglect her home, gossip and lounge about all day, put impossible food upon his table, steal his small change, pry into his private papers, hand over his home to the Periplaneta americana, accuse him falsely of preposterous adulteries, affront his friends, and lie about him to the neighbours—and he can do nothing. She may compromise his honour by indecent dressing, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... What possible excuse was she going to give for it, in the face of her behaviour to him that afternoon on the moorland? Merely to have asked for shelter on account of the heat, appeared to her now as the flimsiest of excuses, and would appear to him as an excuse simply to pry upon him, to see his mode of living. He had not returned to the parlour. Doubtless his absence was a silent rebuke to her. She had thrust the necessity of hospitality upon him, but he intended to show her plainly that it was entirely of ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... Master Euseby, are all God's creatures in this meadow, because they never pry into such high matters, but breathe sweetly among the pig-nuts. The only things we hear or see stirring are the glow-worms and dormice, as though they were sent for our edification, teaching us to rest contented with our own little light, and to come out and seek our sustenance ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... divine will we should not pry, but should absolutely refrain from it as from the divine majesty, for it is inscrutable, and God has had no desire to declare it in this life. He desires to show it under certain tokens or coverings, as Baptism, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Works. Louisa was Louisa Holcroft. Guichy was possibly the Frenchman, mentioned by Crabb Robinson, with whom the Lambs had travelled to France. Poole was, I imagine, John Poole, the dramatist, author of burlesque plays in the London Magazine and later of "Paul Pry," which, it is quite likely, he based on Lamb's ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... wild notion, Finding it easy for a Frog to jog On with a kind King Log. But in the fulness of the time, there came A would-be monarch—Legion his fit name; A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated, Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated; A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature, A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature. This new King Stork, With a fierce, fussy appetite for work; Not satisfied with fixing like a vice Authority on Town and Country Mice, Tried to extend his sway to pools ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... crack!" Jack retorted. "But I'm more interested in wondering what would become of us. Guess we'd better keep a good thousand feet up, and not bother trying to pry into the ice-floe's secrets." ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... his termagant, never suffering himself to utter a complaint of her to others, never suffering others to censure her within his hearing. This loyalty may have had its roots in pride—indeed, no other soil can be assigned to them—a pride that would allow no strangers to pry into the sore places of his being. He frowned now to hear Hortensia's angry mention of her ladyship's name; and if his blue eyes moved uneasily under his beetling brows, it was because the situation irked him. How should he stand as judge between Mistress ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... much from the violent conduct of her husband) still, I say, striking for personal attractions and accomplishments; and is avowedly of an unspotted character. Let the defendant, therefore, but attempt to pry further than he has done into the private habits of my client, as regards his wife, and I shall not hesitate still further to tear down the beautiful appearance of adopted sanctity, simplicity, and innocence of deportment, with which ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... squeals, and the horses cut up some; but the driver has landed on his feet and has them by the head in no time at all, so we wa'n't dragged around any. Noticin' that, I lays still and waits for Toodle to pry himself loose. But the Doc. don't seem in any hurry to move, and the next thing I know I hear him groanin' and mumblin' under his breath. Between groans he was tryin' to say over that rigmarole ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... carry out the cow-chains. Never mind the horse,—he'll be alive and kicking; and if his legs don't do their duty, let them pay for the roast. Ditto as to the hogs,—let them save their own bacon, or smoke for it. When the roof begins to burn, get a crow-bar and pry away the stone steps; or, if the steps be of wood, procure an axe and chop them up. Next, cut away the wash-boards in the basement story; and if that don't stop the flames, let the chair-boards on the first floor share a similar fate. Should the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... dismissed their remonstrances with a fine scorn. What did they take her for? Was she any less fit for the post of secretary than she had been before? Her duties had been a pleasure from the first; they would afford her greater delight than ever now. And why should they bring in a stranger to pry into their affairs? They might give her more salary, if they liked—and here she laughed merrily; but she wasn't going to give up the work she liked more than anything ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... little mound; swing the back of your axe vigorously against it, adze-wise, between your legs. Nine times out of ten it will crumble, and the tenth time means merely a root to cut or a stone to pry out. At length you are possessed of a plot of clean, fresh earth, level and soft, free from projections. But ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... see it when I come along wid mah mule, Boomerang, an' I tried t' git it outer de way, but I couldn't. Den I left Boomerang an' mah wagon at de foot ob de hill an' I come up heah t' git a long pole t' pry de log outer de way. I didn't t'ink nobody would come along, case dis road ain't ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... Phyllis, come, bright heaven's eye Cannot upon thy beauty pry; Glad Echo in distinguished voice Naming thee will here rejoice; Then come and hear her merry lays Crowning thy ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... have been so good and kind to me! So good, I can't express it! Do let me do something for you. I know you have a secret, and I am afraid it is that, even more than my going, which is making you so miserable. I don't want to pry into it, dear Jack, but remember that my father is a rich man, and he is powerful, too. If you won't mind telling him about it, I know—I am quite, quite sure—he will do anything in his power for you. Think what you have done for me! And he loves me—he ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... sense of honor forbids him to pry into his love's secret thoughts, he would have asked whom she ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... are the Mount Sinai; the bounds whereof are the Laws of them that represent Gods Person on Earth. To look upon them and therein to behold the wondrous works of God, and learn to fear him is allowed; but to interpret them; that is, to pry into what God saith to him whom he appointeth to govern under him, and make themselves Judges whether he govern as God commandeth him, or not, is to transgresse the bounds God hath set us, and ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... others. He put them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty. He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan lay bare its treasure—and he saw the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the English sailed to India in their own ships, several English merchants and others had gone to India from time to time in the Portuguese ships, and some overland; from a desire to pry into and to participate in the advantages of that gainful commerce. Of those who went by land, several letters and relations remain which will be found in the sequel: But of all who performed the voyage as passengers in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... pursue the subject; even under their strange circumstances, favourable as they were to intimacy and confidences, it seemed impertinent to him to pry into the mysteries of his companion's life. Only ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... often think of that. But I couldn't ask her, you know. I had no right to pry into her secrets. When I came away, she got up to see me off; and I almost felt tempted to carry her into the ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... merely in those who believe in it, but in the general sentiment of the community, to a larger extent than most good people seem to be aware of. It need n't be true, to do this, any more than Homoeopathy need, to do its work. The Spiritualists have some pretty strong instincts to pry over, which no doubt have been roughly handled by theologians at different times. And the Nemesis of the pulpit comes, in a shape it little thought of, beginning with the snap of a toe-joint, and ending with ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... illicit acts, from force of habit; and such people open their friends' letters, thrust themselves in at private meetings, become spectators of rites they ought not to witness, enter holy grounds they ought not to, and pry into the lives ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... first opening of the Book, he lights on a place in which Captain Swan had inveighed bitterly against most of his Men, especially against another John Reed a Jamaica man. This was such stuff as he did not seek after: But hitting so pat on this subject, his curiosity led him to pry farther; and therefore while the Gunner was busie, he convey'd the Book away, to look over it at his leisure. The Gunner having dispatch'd his business, lock'd up the Cabbin-door, not missing the Book, and went ashore. Then John Reed shewed it to his Namesake, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... box? Yes; you had it in your hands when Manuel brought you out. They could hardly pry your ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... seein' fur themselves an' givin' the poplars the lie! Don't ye place no dependence on a poplar, Janet, they be shivery, whisperin' critters! They turn pale when there ain't nothin' the matter; they keep their shade t' themselves, jest plain miserly; an' they pry too much. 'T ain't proper; 't ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... no good. Your husband is no dumb fool to be "influenced" this way or that by two women! He is a man with ideas of his own. If he was disappointed in you as wife, he has possibly turned to some other woman. If so the more you pry and suspect and hint around, the more positively he will turn away from you. If you "found out" and made things warm for him or another he would simply hate and despise you and be the harder set against ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... be frightened," gaily exclaimed Bertheroy, who, despite his careless and abrupt ways, was really very shrewd. "I haven't come to pry into your secrets.... Leave your papers there, I promise you that I ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... except that our teacher of handicrafts, the sapper Sabum, sometimes gave us a hint. The first thing was to mark out the plan, then with the aid of levers pry the rocks out of the fields, and by means of a two-wheeled cart convey them to the site chosen, fit them neatly together, stuff the interstices with moss, and finally put on a roof made of pine logs which we felled ourselves, earth, moss, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that I had never waited! How does it happen though, so many Neighbours prone to pry, as I am, Are not caught ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... we was coming through the woods we happened to stop a minute. Then we see this Frenchy sneaking through the woods. We wondered what was up. Then he vanished. We looked about, some quiet-like, and on tiptoe, and then we saw this shipmate o' your'n pry apart some bushes and head in this way. It looked queer ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... bear the rose upon its top; And bark, that all the way across the sea Ran straight and speedy, perish at the last, E'en in the haven's mouth seeing one steal, Another brine, his offering to the priest, Let not Dame Birtha and Sir Martin thence Into heav'n's counsels deem that they can pry: For one of these ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... vainly pry Into the page that's folded there? I shall be better by and by: The porters, as I sit and sigh, Pass and ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... and left an aching heart behind. She might dismiss Marcia's tirade as other members of the family are wont to do, but there comes an awesome, shivering fear that it is true in some degree. How many times she has seen Gertrude check Marcia when Floyd was under discussion. She has never tried to pry into family secrets, but she knows there have been many about her; a certain kind of knowledge that all have shared, a something against her. She has fancied that she made some advances in living down the dislike; Mrs. Grandon has been kinder of late, and Marcia, since her marriage, quite confidential. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of the great chain was a murderous job. When we loosened it, the huge seas would sweep over the logs and us while we tried to get them overboard. It was touch and go. We had to use capstanbars to pry the big logs over and over. We tried to push them with the rolling of the ship. One wave would carry a mass of the logs away, and the next wave would bring them back, crashing into the vessel, catching in the rigging, and nearly pulling it down, and the masts with it. Dodging ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Hercules will aid confer. Look wisely in the proper quarter, To see what hindrance can be found; Remove the execrable mud and mortar, Which, axle-deep, beset thy wheels around. Thy sledge and crowbar take, And pry me up that stone, or break; Now fill that rut upon the other side. Hast done it?" "Yes," the man replied. "Well," said the voice, "I'll aid thee now; Take up thy whip." "I have ... but, how? My cart glides on with ease! I thank thee, Hercules." "Thy team," rejoin'd the voice, "has ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... shot across the painter's face. He paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fireplace, and stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frost-like ashes ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... suspected something with all the coming and going; the whispering and smothered giggles in corners, etc., but she wasn't the kind to pry into other people's affairs, and so, no matter what she may have thought, she kept ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... cease the publication of the Weekly Herald. On the contrary, he prospered in both his enterprises until persuaded by the "printer's devil" in the office of the Port Huron Commercial to change the character of his journal, enlarge it, and issue it under the name of Paul Pry, a happy designation for this or kindred ventures in the domain of society journalism. No copies of Paul Pry can now be found, but it is known that its style was distinctly personal, that gossip ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Literacy," the man on the screen continued. "I'm not going back to the old argument that any kind of socialization is only the thin edge of the wedge which will pry open the pit of horrors from which the world has climbed since the Fourth World War. If you don't realize that now, it's no use for me to repeat it again. But I will ask you, do you realize, for a moment, what a program of socialized Literacy ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... The judgments of the court were dissolving ancestral ties, destroying homesteads, and causing the transference of household gods to distant dwellings. Such are the inevitable results of an attempt to pry into ancient titles, and to investigate claims the basis of which lies even a few decades from ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... impression upon the bulkhead by his direct attack, he changed his tactics now and undertook to loosen one of the jambs where it was wedged into the rock at top and bottom. After a desperate struggle he succeeded in loosening the entire structure so that he could pry it out far enough to squeeze ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... from Buxton, I was so confident of the bird's tameness I used to carry him in my hand out to the tulip tree, and there I often sat and read, while Richard would pry into the moss and the bark of the tree, searching for insects, and though he could fly well by this time, he did not try to do so, but seemed content ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... those of us who haven't automobiles, life is pleasant and without responsibilities. We ride in every new automobile, and, what is more, we go over it as carefully as a farmer does a new horse. We open its hood and pry into its internal economy. We crank it to test its compression—half the Homeburg men who have achieved broken wrists by the crank route haven't autos at all. We denounce the owner's judgment on oils and take his machine violently away from him in order to prove that it will pull better uphill ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... expenses of attending to the register and maintaining local interest in the principles of the party, and in the "great cause" which it supports, wisely communicated with "headquarters." As to what passes there, religious silence should be observed. There is no evidence available, and to pry into such mysteries were profane, but shortly afterwards it is announced that Mr. X., with the highest recommendations, will address the association. The local managers are quietly informed that he is willing to pay all expenses of the local organisation, to subscribe to the party clubs, and to ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... glad of his confidence, regarded it as sacred, and would not violate it so much as to make the least effort to learn what messages she was carrying. Nothing, of course, would have been easier than to pry open one of these envelopes. Sometimes the lapel was hardly sealed. But she would as soon have ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... adjoining room, long tables were laid out, on which servants were placing refreshments for the fte about to be given on this joyous occasion. I felt somewhat shocked, and inclined to say with Paul Pry, "Hope I don't intrude." But my apologies were instantly cut short, and I was welcomed with true Mexican hospitality; repeatedly thanked for my kindness in coming to see the nun, and hospitably pressed to join ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... to this! He looked at it, wide-eyed. He was very hungry. The ration, in its blue tin, like a box of shaving talcum, had been handed to each of the party in a chorus of shouting and laughter. And now it was to save his life. He managed to pry open the box, and ate some of its contents, slowly. It ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... of Paul Pry was suggested by the following anecdote, related to me several years ago, by a beloved friend:—An idle old lady, living in a narrow street, had passed so much of her time in watching the affairs of her neighbours, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... And in order to produce such Egos the process of "Involution" of Principles seems to have been caused, and the subsequent wonderful Evolutionary process instituted. What that "Reason" is, is Unknowable, as we have said over and over again. We cannot pry into the Infinite Mind of the Absolute, but we may form certain conclusions by observing and studying the Laws of the Universe, which seem to be moving in certain directions. From the manifested Will of the Divine One, we may at least hazard an idea as to its purposes. And ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... own alone, and you have no right whatever to pry into it. I thought you were posing as his friend!" she cried in bitter protest, as she stood with both ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... during the bright September afternoon. But before the glow of a lovely sunset had faded from the sky the artillery once more opened on the ridge above, and reports came in that the Federals were crossing the Antietam near Pry's Mill. Lee at once ordered Longstreet to meet this threat with Hood's division, and Jackson was ordered into line on the left of Hood. No serious collision, however, took place during the evening. The Confederates ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... driven foot by foot, until they wore compelled to retreat to the loft and draw up the ladder. The lower portion of the cabin was in full possession of the besiegers, who demolished everything they could lay their hands on, with much gusto. They did their utmost to pry up the trap door, but were beaten back. Suddenly to the "Wild Geese's" surprise, the lower part of the cabin was abandoned by the Hens. They thought it a ruse to draw them out, so I they lay quiet for some time. There were no windows in the loft. Bye and bye Paul ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... a smile: "I'm not going to pry into your letters." In his heart he knew that it was impossible to put the revelation of their secret to Addie into any words that would not be painful to him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... with her, She went to see the doctor three times a week. He used a pry to open her jaws, which was very painful to her but she gradually grew better. We were so happy in each other's society. I took her every place to see sights in that grand, philanthropic city. I believe Philadelphia, "Brotherly Love," has more evidence ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... the best part of the morning to make a drag that was satisfactory and pry the big bear on it then the carcass was bound down with ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... the sweetness Of thy honied voice; the neatness Of thine ankle lightly turn'd: With those beauties, scarce discern'd, Kept with such sweet privacy, That they seldom meet the eye Of the little loves that fly Round about with eager pry. Saving when, with freshening lave, Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave; Like twin water lilies, born In the coolness of the morn O, if thou hadst breathed then, Now the Muses had been ten. Couldst thou wish for lineage higher Than twin sister of Thalia? At last for ever, evermore, Will ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... what you mean," said James, "instead of trying to pry information out of someone who happens ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... behind the trees while Tom touched them off. This time there were three sharp explosions, a shower of fragments rattled through the branches above our heads, and on going to inspect the result we found that the rock had been so shattered that it was an easy matter to pry out the pieces with pick and crowbar—a task of which Joe and I ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... ventured, "you're doing your best to prolong the strike. You're actually giving those women money, I know. Yesterday, when I called to see you, I saw the stub in your chequebook, which was lying open on the desk in your boudoir. I didn't mean to pry, but ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... And there is another element that I am bound to acknowledge. There was an element of jealousy of Anne Bullard. Both of us had tried to help Miss Emily. She had foiled my attempt in her own endeavor, a mistaken endeavor, I felt. But there was now to be no blemish on my efforts. I would no longer pry or question or watch. ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... long. They are already abroad in the woods, and were it not for the fear of the Wolf they would be thicker therein, and faring wider; for we have slain many of them, coming upon them unawares; and they know not where we dwell, nor who we be: so they fear to spread about over-much and pry into unknown places lest the Wolf howl on them. Yet beware! for they will gather in numbers that we may not meet, and then will they swarm into the Dale; and if ye would live your happy life that ye love ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... acknowledgment and recompense for their services; and Louis, the most jealous monarch that ever lived, was peculiarly averse and inaccessible to any one who seemed either to presume upon service rendered or to pry into ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... horseless, or intensive farming, a low, light house may be used, which the attendant never enters. A portion of the roof lifts up to fill feed-hoppers, gather eggs or spray. These small houses may be made light enough to be moved short distances by a pry-pole, the team being required only when they are moved to a ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... sat, Conferring thus in solemn chat: "How is the modern taste decay'd! Where's the respect to wisdom paid? Our worth the Grecian sages knew; They gave our sires the honour due: They weigh'd the dignity of fowls, And pry'd into the depth of Owls. Athens, the seat of earned fame, With gen'ral voice revered our name; On merit title was conferr'd, And all adored th' Athenian bird." "Brother, you reason well," replies ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... the spike pull out, he need only climb back out of the ravine—to her. But Blake's work was not the kind to slip or pull out. The watcher looked at the powerful figure backing rapidly down that roof-like pitch. One of the toes of the level tripod under the taut loop would easily pry the rope off the spike-head. He turned his pack around to get at the tripod—and paused to look upwards at the three tiny faces peering down over ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... when the old frontiersman arrived; Bat's threat to expose something; Eleanor's perturbed letter; the father's half furtive defiant existence. He was too proud to ask more than the other cared to tell, too loyal to pry into any part of her life that she could not willingly share with him. He sat gazing into the mystic afterglow of the Desert, a flame of fire over a lake of light. It was as the old man had said, he had asked her to strengthen ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... all blame for the outbreak of the Rebellion.[782] "The distempered humor predominant in the Common people", which had occasioned the insurrection, they declared the result of false rumors "inspired by ill affected persons, provoking an itching desire in them to pry into the secrets of the grand assembly".[783] They snubbed the King's commissioners, replying to their request for assistance in discovering the common grievances that the Assembly alone was the proper body to correct the people's wrongs.[784] Yet when the commons did come to the Burgesses ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... on one foot, the hip and shoulder of one side approach each other, and so lessen the space within the abdomen on that side. On the other side a support has been removed for the contents of the abdomen, and they sag down until they pry the uterus out of place and press it over towards the side where there is less pressure. The broad ligament on one side is stretched from use and on the other side shortened from disuse, and so the ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... had to pry him loose! You have got the grip of the devil himself. The police surgeon told me they would have to put a whole new set of plumbing in his throat. Said he wouldn't have believed that any living thing, short of a gorilla, could have clamped ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... more easily, for now you may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have the roof unboarded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught a lesson in wariness which you will need if you would survive your unbuilding. The bare rafters, solid oak, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... asylum in the basement of his father's house (where he took the precaution to label all his bottles 'poison'), he began the publication of a new and better journal, entitled the PAUL PRY. It boasted of several contributors and a list of regular subscribers. One of these (Mr. J.H.B.), while smarting under what he considered a malicious libel, met the editor one day on the brink of ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... lower cave," said Brodie. "Everything we can pry loose is going down with us. We'll pitch the loose chunks of gold over the cliff and we'll stow 'em away somewhere else—where King, if things break some way we don't look for, won't find 'em! We start right now, while there's daylight. What's ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... have them. I must. Nothing easier than to pry open a door or window in the north wing, by the ball-room. When I saw Grafton I would tell him. Nay, I would write him that day. I was even casting about me for an implement, when I heard a step on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their heroism for humanity, too. They meet death face to face, as they pry close into the cause of decay, the secret of morbid growth. There is more danger in certain germs than in lions. Blood-poisoning is to the surgeon a more constant menace than hunger to an Arctic explorer. These students never know what destroyer they may unwittingly unloose. Cross-section ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Warrens had obliged me to put on) presented in their idea the image of a real sorcerer. Being near midnight, they made no doubt but this was the beginning of some diabolical assembly, and having no curiosity to pry further into these mysteries, they fled with all possible speed, awakened their neighbors, and described this most dreadful vision. The story spread so fast that the next day the whole neighborhood was informed that ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... found science in his toys. The quadrants lying about his father's carpenter's shop led him to the study of optics and astronomy; his ill health induced him to pry into the secrets of physiology; and his solitary walks through the country attracted him to the study of botany and history. While carrying on the business of a mathematical-instrument maker, he received an order to build an organ; ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... of his ninth year. It seemed quite an age, but this appearance was contradicted by troublesome facts. He was very small for his age and hopelessly tied to the apron strings of his mother in spite of all his father's efforts to pry him loose. The reason for this failure was that his father lacked the time or the capacity for winning the ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... interrupted himself for an instant, and then said: I don't want to pry into your family affairs. But was your father what is called well-to-do? I mean, when you ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... as far as whaling is concerned, comes to an end. For all practical purposes she becomes a humdrum merchantman in haste to reach her final port of discharge, and get rid of her cargo. No more will she loiter and pry around anything and everything, from an island to a balk of drift-wood, that comes in her way, knowing not the meaning of "waste of time." The "crow's-nests" are dismantled, taut topgallant-masts sent up, and royal yards crossed. As soon ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... retorted. "She was a mighty badly broken-up woman the last time I saw her, but even so I judge she's still got spunk enough left in her to resent having an unauthorized and uninvited stranger coming about, seeking to pry into her own private sorrow. But it's your affair, not mine. Besides, judging by everything, you probably don't think my advice ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... dramatic power? How bitter now seemed the whole tragedy of his desertion and his shame!—shame that he made sweet and lovely {9} by the mere magic of his personality, but that was none the less shame. Yet as Shakespeare forgave him, should not we forgive him also? I did not care to pry into the ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... know!" said Morgan again. "Someday I may take you aside and explain the facts of precognition and other talents as I understand them. I'm probably quite wrong. But I do know better than to try to pry certain kinds of information from my Talents. ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... notes on these matters with some frank and hearty friend whose means and outgoings are much the same as their own. I do not think of such a case,—but of the prying curiosity of persons who have no right to pry, and who, very generally, while diligently prying into your affairs, take special care not to take you into their confidence. Such people, too, while making a pretence of revealing to you all their secrets, will often tell a very small portion of them, and make various statements ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... eyes that were fastened upon her set her pulses tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance, and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that face, passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his. At last they were left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew he could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips. His hands and face were working and a tremour went over her. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... There's nothing like brothers and sisters for telling one home-truths. I suppose it is the penalty of having been a regular Paul Pry in my childhood, in spite of poor Eleanor making me learn "Meddlesome Matty" as soon as I could speak. I always do and always shall ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an affectionate letter from Stephen Smith in Bombay, which had been forwarded to her from Endelstow. But since this is not the case referred to, it is not worth while to pry further into the contents of the letter than to discover that, with rash though pardonable confidence in coming times, he addressed her in high spirits as his darling future wife. Probably there cannot be instanced a briefer and ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... stood together for some little time, looking at nothing in particular. And yet it was borne in upon me that friend Barbara rarely thought of me when I was not present with her. I doubt much that this should have given annoyance, for why should we pry into another's thoughts? And yet it rankled in my bosom, and I could but feel that I knew the truth. I should have liked her to think much of me, in sooth: I should have liked her to think of me while she knitted the stockings ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Lights went out and when he came back to Earth he was lying the wrong way of his Bed with Blue Badges all over him, trying to swallow a Bath Towel, which he afterward discovered was his Tongue. By getting a Leverage under his Head he managed to pry it up and then he sat on the edge of the Bed and called himself Names. He had nothing left over except the Cards given to him by the Brothers from up State somewhere. He had a dim and sneaking Recollection that he had given his address and ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... passed on the way is mentioned. At Paris, under the auspices of Mazarin, many architects and artists were assembled. "I hope I shall give you a very good Account of all the best Artists in France," he wrote to a friend. "My business now is to pry into Trades and Arts. I put myself into all shapes to humour them; 'tis a comedy to me, and tho' sometimes expenceful, I am loth yet to leave it." He mentions not only leading men like Colbert, but more than twenty architects, painters, and designers he met, and above all Bernini, the architect ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... again come back; he carried his hands to his face stammering: "Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!" And muttered invectives followed: the train-bearer was an artful hypocrite who feigned modesty and humility, a vile spy appointed to pry into everything, listen to everything, and pervert everything that went on in the palace; he was a loathsome, destructive insect, feeding on the most noble prey, devouring the lion's mane, a Jesuit—the Jesuit who is at once ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... affectation of simplicity covers and reveals by turns a great thirst for ingenuity. Swift's prose is a fair example; in the "Tale of a Tub" and even in "Gulliver" at first sight there seems to appear only an honest and simple directness; but pry beneath the surface statements, or allow yourself to be dazzled by their coruscations of meaning, and you immediately see you are watching a stylistic prestidigitator. The later, more orderly dignity of Dr. Johnson's exquisitely ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... Tottie lost no further time. To pry the letter open and unfold it was the swift work of a thumb and finger made dexterous by long use of the cigarette. "'Great news, my darling!'" ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... was lawful for the children of Israel to borrow jewels of the Egyptians, which supposes a promise of restitution, though they intended not to pry them back again. God gave commandment so to spoil them, and the Egyptians were divested of their rights, and were ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... I guess. The first time at supper I says to him: 'Have some more of the spuds, Mr. Frelinghuysen.' 'Oh, don't be so formal and offish, Eighteen,' says he. 'Call me Hal—that's short for halberdier.' 'Oh, don't think I wanted to pry for names,' says I. 'I know all about the dizzy fall from wealth and greatness. We've got a count washing dishes in the kitchen; and the third bartender used to be a Pullman conductor. And they work, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... earthly sovereignty. How difficult it is to get even the renewed and regenerated mind to understand and realise Heavenly things, and to wean it from what is of the earth earthy! He checks their presumption—He tells them these are questions which they may not pry into. There is to be no present fulfilment of these visions of millennial glory. That day and that hour are to be wrapt in unrevealed and impenetrable secrecy. The Church may not attempt rashly and inquisitively to lift the veil. She is not to know the time of the ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... number of young plants, in which case there is much room for good sense in taking them up. Many lay hold upon the canes and pull so hastily that little save sticks comes out. A gardener wants fibrous roots rather than top; therefore, send the spade down under the roots and pry them out. Suckers and root-cutting plants can be dug in October, after the wood has fairly ripened, but be careful to leave no foliage on the canes that are taken up before the leaves fall, for they ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... occasionally so far broke his rules of caution as to go on foot, past the church of San Polo, to visit the beautiful Barozza; and he resolved, if possible, to catch him on one of these journeys. 'It so chanced on February 28, which was the second Sunday of Lent, that having gone, as was my wont, to pry out whether Lorenzino would give orders for going abroad that day, I entered the shoemaker's shop, and stayed awhile, until Lorenzino came to the window with a napkin round his neck—for he was combing his hair —and at the same moment I saw a certain ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... imitated by innumerable painters, because he shed on art a light of grace so pleasing, that his works will always be held in great price, and himself honoured by all students of design. Would to God that he had always pursued the studies of painting, and had not sought to pry into the secrets of congealing mercury in order to become richer than Nature and Heaven had made him; for then he would have been without an equal, and truly unique in the art of painting, whereas, by searching for that which he could never find, he wasted his time, wronged ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... part of the two hours was spent in "franking"—that is censoring—his men's letters. It was a very unwelcome task, and although he thoroughly appreciated the military necessity, he cordially hated being forced, as it were, to pry into their ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... Netherland, envoys an audience, the wrath of ambassador Mendoza was kindled. That magniloquent Spaniard instantly claimed an interview with the King, before whom, according to the statement of his colleagues, doing their best to pry into these secrets, he blustered and bounced, and was more fantastical in his insolence than even Spanish envoy had ever ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a summer resort in northern Indiana, where I noticed a nuthatch hitching up and down and around the slender stem of a sapling, pausing at intervals to thrust something into the crevices of the bark. My curiosity led me to pry into the bird's affairs. Stepping smartly forward, I drove him away, not heeding his vigorous protest of "yank, yank," and examined the bark of the sapling. What did I discover? A colony of black ants were scuttling up and down the tree, apparently under stress ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... very infancy is so corrupt and wicked as to give itself up to the idolatry of worthless and contemptible things. I cannot understand even now what he meant by these words. Whenever one loves anything, is it not very beautiful and perfectly right that one does not pry into it and finger it too closely? What is a rose, when I pull it to pieces? It is so perishable, and therefore so dear. Was it my poor Clary's fault, that she was only a leather doll? Last week I was looking at her again one day, and could ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... a suspicious character, to say the best of him; and although I know that you think you are right in encouraging his visits, other people do not know that; they may judge you harshly. I do not wish to pry into secrets; but you have sought to comfort me by bidding me have perfect confidence in this man? I must ask what knowledge you have of him. How far are you aware of his character and employment? How do you know ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... did not care to make it an object for well-meaning detectives to pry into the affairs of indiscreet members ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... infinitely malignant, and the hand of our power should close over them at once. They have formed plots to destroy property, they have entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the Government, they have sought to pry into every confidential transaction of the Government in order to serve interests alien to our own. It is possible to deal with these things very effectually. I need not suggest the terms in which they ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... he stammered, "to ask you any more. I could not pry into a private matter. That would not be—-" His voice failed; he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Drumtochty, and we, were cut off from the lowlands by miles of forest, so our manners retained the fashion of the former age. Six elders, besides the minister, knew the tragedy of Flora Campbell, and never opened their lips. Mrs. Macfadyen, who was our newspaper, and understood her duty, refused to pry into this secret. The pity of the glen went out to Lachlan, but no one even looked a question as he sat alone in his pew or came down on a Saturday afternoon to the village shop for his week's provisions. London friends thought me ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... over," he said. "I like to put chaps like that on a false scent. He's a Poll Pry, that's what that chap is. P'raps he'll be wanting to sell you a plantation. But now then, sir, business. Directly I tell my mates and crew where we're going—if so be as we agree—the first question will be: What ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... waiting till Ephraim was in the pantry, washing up the dinner-things with the housemaid, I slipped down the garden to the boat-house. The door was padlocked, as I had feared; but with an old hammer-head I managed to pry off the staple. I felt like a burglar when the lock came off in my hand. I felt that I was acting deceitfully. Then the thought of Ephraim came over me, making me rebellious to my finger-tips. I would go on the river, I said to myself, I would go aboard all the ships in the Pool. I would show ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... exclaimed Robinson. "Do not pry into sorrows which you cannot understand. I would be alone with ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... father that they should open the chest, thereby exciting a most unwonted burst of ire. "I pry into poor Jamie's accounts while he's lost his mind of grief about that girl!" (For also to him Mercedes, now nigh to forty, was still a girl.) "I would not stoop to doubt him, sir." Yet, on the other hand, Mr. Bowdoin would probably have never condoned a theft, once ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... attend a horse which had ripped its side open on the hinge of a farm gatepost. On arriving at the farm he found that nothing had been done for the wounded horse, but that a man was busy trying to pry the hinge out of the gatepost in order that it might be greased and put away, which, in the opinion of the Cambridge wiseacres, would conduce to the recovery of the animal. Similarly Essex rustics opine that, if a man has been stabbed ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the big house, half-starved. Why, really, Mr. Ranger, they don't have enough to eat. And they dress in clothes that have been in the family for a generation. They make their underclothes out of old bed linen. And the grass on their front lawns is three feet high, and the moss and weeds cover and pry up the bricks of their walks. They're too 'proud' to work and too poor to hire. How much have they ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... it seems that the Ark made fast there for the night, just before laying a course for Ararat; and the monkey and his wife—desperately bored by their long cooping-up among so many uncongenial animals—took advantage of their opportunity to pry a couple of tiles off the roof and get away. The tradition hints that Noah had been drinking; at any rate, their absence was not noticed, and the Ark went on without them the next day. By the time that the Deluge fairly ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... a preacher's business to pry into the affairs of his church-members!" replied Mr. Winter, growing more excited again. "That ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... time" to answer. The honey on our hands, coupled with the dust, made a grit that in opening and closing the breech caused the mechanism to stick, and the honey clinging to the shells caused the breech chamber to stick, making the shell cases jam in the gun after being discharged, forcing us to pry open with a sharp pick the breech each time to extract the empty cartridge. All during the operation the Major was cursing like a madman at the men, whoever they were, that brought the bees into ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... apudeco. Proxy anstatauxulo. Prudence singardemo. Prudent singardema, prudenta. Prune cxirkauxhaki. Prune seka pruno. Pruning shears brancxotondilo. Prussian, a Pruso. Prussic acid ciana acido. Pry sercxi, rigardeti. Psalm psalmo. Psalmody psalmokantado. Psalter psalmaro. Pseudonym pseuxdonomo. Psychology psikologio. Puberty virigxo. Public publika. Publican drinkejmastro. Public-house drinkejo. Publicity publikigo, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... "This letter, which the disposition of Almighty Providence has so strangely delivered into my hands, was addressed to no less a person than the criminal himself, the infamous President of the Suicide Club. Seek to pry no further in these perilous affairs, but content yourself with your own miraculous escape, and leave this house at once. I have pressing affairs, and must arrange at once about this poor clay, which was so lately a gallant and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... giggled confusedly, and looked for assistance to a sardonic Boer whom she was going to marry, who shook his head sadly, indicating thereby that these were mysteries into which it was not well to pry. Thrown on her own resources, she plunged into the recesses of an intricate calculation, in which her fingers played a considerable part, and finally, with an air of triumph, announced that it ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... out, Nicko. Treat our clients with a little more respect or I'll pry a few scales off ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... wide-eyed bewilderment. What did he mean, what could he possibly mean? She couldn't for the life of her make out, but she did not want to pry too curiously into ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... thing than is to be seen, and yet he thinks he sees nothing: his own eye stands in his light. He is a fellow commonly guilty of some weaknesses, which he might conceal if he were careless:—now his over-diligence to hide them makes men pry the more. Howsoever he imagines you have found him, and it shall go hard but you must abuse him whether you will or no. Not a word can be spoke, but nips him somewhere; not a jest thrown out, but he will make it hit him. You shall have him go fretting out of company, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... of us who haven't automobiles, life is pleasant and without responsibilities. We ride in every new automobile, and, what is more, we go over it as carefully as a farmer does a new horse. We open its hood and pry into its internal economy. We crank it to test its compression—half the Homeburg men who have achieved broken wrists by the crank route haven't autos at all. We denounce the owner's judgment on oils and take his machine ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... respect which is paid to candid and impartial readers, to acquaint them, by way of introduction, with what they are to expect, and what they may depend upon, and yet with this caution too, that it is an indication of ill nature or ill manners, if not both, to pry into a secret ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... spear, gore, spit, stab, pink, puncture, lance, stick, prick, riddle, punch; stave in. cut a passage through; make way for, make room for. uncover, unclose, unrip^; lay open, cut open, rip open, throw open, pop open, blow open, pry open, tear open, pull open. Adj. open; perforated &c v.; perforate; wide open, ajar, unclosed, unstopped; oscitant^, gaping, yawning; patent. tubular, cannular^, fistulous; pervious, permeable; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the spheres, Captivate their mortal ears; While Jove descends into this tower, In a golden streaming shower. To disguise him from the eye Of Juno, who is apt to pry Into my pleasures: I to day Have bid Ganymede go to play, And thus stole from Heaven to be Welcome on earth to Danae. And see where the princely maid, On her easy couch is laid, Fairer than the Queen of Loves, Drawn ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... and long revolving stood On some deep, dark design; thence shot with haste, And o'er the mounds of Paradise he past: By his proud port, he seemed the Prince of Hell; And here he lurks in shades 'till night: Search well Each grove and thicket, pry in every shape, Lest, hid in some, the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... sky, to the song of the Cicadae (The Cicada Cigale, an insect akin to the Grasshopper and found more particularly in the south of France.—Translator's Note.); you subject cell and protoplasm to chemical tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you pry into death, I pry into life. And why should I not complete my thought: the boars have muddied the clear stream; natural history, youth's glorious study, has, by dint of cellular improvements, become a hateful and repulsive thing. Well, if I write for men ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Arch of a Bridge in a second of Time, or in enquiring if a Cube Line of Rain falls more in the Mouse-Month, than in that of the Ram. He form'd no Projects for making Silk Gloves and Stockings out of Spiders Webbs, nor of China-Ware out of broken Glass-Bottles; but he pry'd into the Nature and Properties of Animals and Plants, and soon, by his strict and repeated Enquiries, he was capable of discerning a Thousand Variations in visible Objects, that others, less ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... also, assuming him to be an honest taxpayer who is not seeking opportunities to evade taxation. One advantage is that he is relieved in almost every case from the necessity of revealing to the tax officials the whole of his personal income. The tax does not pry into his personal affairs. Another advantage is that the tax is paid out of current income, being deducted from the income as it is received. It is therefore distributed over the year and adjusted to the flow of income as it comes in. A tax thus collected ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... revealed to man by God or through the ordinances of the Church, not to be sought after through curiosity by unlettered men themselves. Yet for as much as Satan is never at rest, and can transform himself on occasion into an angel of light, he is ever present with men urging them on to pry into these hidden mysteries and to make light of the ordinances of God. He puts into their mouth words similar to those by which he tempted the woman to her fall, and men listen greedily as our first mother did, and are led into destruction when they think they are walking ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... tangled up in long coils of Red Tape, She's the butt for each Jeremy Diddler's coarse jape, Every filthy Paul Pry's ghoulish giggle. JOHN BULL, my fine fellow, wake up, and determine To stamp out the lives of the venomous vermin Who round your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... you're going to stay here, of course, to look at Austin's lovely view! Think of his having hidden that view away from us all till now! I want to go through the house later on, and without Austin, so I can linger and pry if I like! I want to look at every single thing. It's lovely—the completest Yankee setting! It looks as though we all ought to have on clean gingham aprons and wear steel-rimmed spectacles. No, Austin, don't ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... vagabonds! We may not always wish to follow in their footsteps, but we like to keep near them and pry into their careless, happy lives. When the Bohemians enter a pot-house we are too virtuous, presumably, to go in likewise, but we stand without, to get a tempting whiff of hot negus and a snatch of some genial jest or tuneful song. Then, if ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the world," said the Doctor, earnestly, "less anxious to pry into the secrets of others than I am. I take things as I find them. If the cook sends me up a good dish I don't care to know how she made it. If I read a good book, I am not the less gratified because there may have been something amiss with ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... themselves retained to unravel the case. This brought into existence hordes of professional informers who secured the opening wedges for the fake agencies. Men and women, many of them of some social standing, made it a practice to pry around for secrets which might be valuable able; spies kept up their work in large business establishments and began to haunt the cafes and resorts of doubtful reputation, on the watch for persons of wealth and prominence who might be foolish enough to place themselves in compromising ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... crowbar, steward. I dared not put my weight on it for a proper pry. I took a room in a small but respectable hotel, European plan. It was in Boston, I think I said. Oh, how careful I was of my crowbar! I scarcely ate enough to keep my frame inhabited. But I bought drinks for others, most carefully selected—bought drinks ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... and his faith and confidence in the importance of daily toil and all honest labour. He smoked a little, drank a little, but never lost his head became obtrusively familiar, noisy or inquisitive. I felt ashamed to think how deliberately I had sought him out, to pry into the secrets and facts of his daily life, but solaced myself into the assurance that it could not at least bode him harm and it might possibly ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... out his head. In vain Perris tugged at the reins. The lack of curb gave him no pry on the jaw of the chestnut and sheer strength against strength he was a child on a giant. The strips of leather burned through his fingers and the first great point of the battle was decided in favor of the horse: he had the bit in his teeth. It was a vital advantage for, as every one knows ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... 'savour of His knowledge in every place,' but we have also to remember that in our hearts there is a secret place, and that 'not easily forgiven are they who draw back the curtains,' and let a careless world look in. It is not for others to pry into the hidden mysteries of the fellowship of a soul with the indwelling Christ, however it may be the Christian duty to show to all and sundry the blessed and transforming effects of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... hour every tousled head was buried deep in its fragrant pillow, and even we are not permitted to "tap the tank of dreams." Surely a girl scout and her visitor may dream her own dreams; why should outsiders pry ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... Christ said, 'I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.' Had the now in his life passed? Had the then come when a fuller revelation was about to be vouchsafed? Nay! even the Apostle—the man inspired—only knew in part. Why should he, then, try to pry into the clouds and darkness that were round about the awful throne? And yet in Him who sat on that throne was no darkness at all. Supposing the feelings struggling in his heart now were rays of light from Him—rays seeking to pierce the ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... I make it a point of honor never to pry into Tish's secrets, so we did not, of course, look into the drawer. However, a moment later I happened to upset my glass of water and naturally went to the sideboard drawer in question for a fresh napkin. And Tish's revolver was lying underneath ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... it without speaking to Mr. Verner. It was a great point with Roy to find favour in the sight of Mr. Massingbird, his possible future master. Lionel partially saw through the man; he believed that he had some covert motive in seeking the interview with him, and that Roy was trying to pry into his affairs. But Roy found himself baffled also by Mr. Verner, as he had been by Matiss, in so far as that he could learn nothing certain of the existence or non-existence ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... above it like an idealizing mirage. His attitude at this time recalls a suggestion of his own in "Sights from a Steeple": "The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a spiritualized Paul Pry, hovering invisible round man and woman, witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing brightness from their felicity, and shade from their sorrow, and retaining no emotion peculiar to himself." ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... my dear, 'answered Miss Wendover. 'Bessie said it would suit you; and all I ask you is to keep it tidy. I hope I am not a tyrant; but I am an old maid. Of course, I shall never pry into your room; but I warn you that I have an eye which takes in everything at a flash; and if I happen to go past when your door is open, and see a bonnet and shawl on your bed, or a gown sprawling on your sofa, my teeth will be set on edge for the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... knew nothing about tables and chairs, and that he would accept, in the way of a lodging, with his eyes shut, anything that Tristram should offer him. This was partly veracity on our hero's part, but it was also partly charity. He knew that to pry about and look at rooms, and make people open windows, and poke into sofas with his cane, and gossip with landladies, and ask who lived above and who below—he knew that this was of all pastimes the dearest to Tristram's heart, and he felt the more disposed to put it in his way ...
— The American • Henry James
... I don't think we have any right to pry into the Unknown. Some day, undoubtedly, it will be given us to know, but until that day comes, we had far better leave ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... existence like the lords of the soil of old; the young girls consider it an honor to be allowed to associate with them; and the padres in their turn find many convenient opportunities. They have no jealous wives to pry into their secrets, and their position as confessors and spiritual advisers affords them plenty of pretexts for being alone with the women. The confessional, in particular, must be a perilous rock-a-head for most of them. In an appendix to the "Tagal Grammar" (which, by-the-bye, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... too much, to distract them with pride and dissipation; whereas, a little, with a blessing, might have made them happy in both their states of existence." "Well," said Lucifer, "enough! enough! we have more need of arms than words. Sirrah, this hubbub is owing to some great neglect; go back, and pry into every watch, and discover who has been neglectful; and what dangerous characters have been permitted to escape, for there are some evils abroad, that are not known." Away he went, at the word, and in the meanwhile, Lucifer ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... an imaginary person, almost as well known in that age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. Swift had assumed the name of Bickerstaff in a satirical pamphlet against Partridge, the maker of almanacs. Partridge had been fool enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff had rejoined in a second pamphlet still more diverting than the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... want to make some amends, to somewhat mitigate the blow - when it's so easy to do it. See I shall leave you absolutely free. I shall not question you, not pry, not even make an allusion. But do you then spare our family too. That is all I ask. Spare our ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one hand and a vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken away from the occupation of attending to the castors, and scolding her little black boy meantime. Wood-house! cried I, which way to it? Run for God's sake, and fetch something to pry open the door —the axe! —the axe! he's had a stroke; depend upon it! —and so saying I was unmethodically rushing up stairs again empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard-pot and vinegar-cruet, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... happened. This was Mr. Burleson's preconception of what he was for and what a Post Office was for and not a hundred million people could pry him out of it. Mr. Burleson ran his Post Office to suit himself and his own boast for himself, and the people naturally in being suited with their Post Office had to take anything that was left over that they could get after Mr. ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... On one of these bricks you will detect a cross scratched. That's the one. It will look as well cemented as the rest, but if you throw water against it, you will find that in a little while you will be able to pry it out. Take something to do this with, a knife or a pair of scissors. When the brick falls out, feel behind with your hand and you ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... I don't want to pry into private matters, but I couldn't help wondering to-night, as we came along, if this pretty little wife of yours knew the secret of your outgoings and ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... han', your story tell, When wi' a bosom crony; But still keep something to yoursel Ye scarcely tell to ony. Conceal yoursel as weel's ye can Frae critical dissection; But keek thro' ev'ry other man [pry] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... We might get some fool to buy him. Anyway, you'd better tell Sam to pry him round a bit somehow when the show's opening. He looks all right when he gets a move on him, but he ain't worth a hill o' beans lyin' curled up there in a corner. How'd it do to get a dingo, and put it in ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... their efforts at pulling, but her roots had evidently gone down to China without stopping; next they endeavored to pry her up, but she was manifestly stuck by some ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... come to quarrel with me now; Would you know more of me than I allow? Whence are you grown that great divinity, That with such ease into my thoughts can pry? Indulgence does not with some tempers suit; I see I must become ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... busy girl comes to fetch water from the well. Her feet run on the pavement like rapid fingers over harp-strings. Hastily she ties a negligent knot with her hair, and loose locks on her forehead pry into the dark ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... grasping his hand. "I grieve to find you in such a position, but I am happily not called upon to act on your information, of which, indeed," he added with a smile, "I will choose to doubt the accuracy. It is not for me to pry into your family affairs, but if you desire to confide in me, I will assuredly counsel and help you to ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... say? My hand's wet. But it's victory. Shall it be go? or stay? [I should show them all I can, or they may pry closer than they ought.] Shall I have it out and be done with it? To see Mary at once [to carry bastion after bastion at the charge] - there were the true safety after all! Hurry - hurry's the road ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... Snivel have found it convenient to make a trip of pleasure into the country. And though the affair creates some little comment in fashionable society, it would be exceedingly unpopular to pry too deeply into the private affairs of men high in office. We are not encumbered with scrutinizing morality. Being an "unfortunate woman," the law cannot condescend to deal with her case. Indeed, were it brought before ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... fond. It was a trifle truly, but Lewis Rand had meant to give her a false impression, and that when he knew as well as she how she detested falsity! As for his reasons for concealment,—let him keep his reasons! She angrily told herself that Jane Selden had no desire to pry into a politician's secrets. But he should have said that the letter was a letter! With which conclusion, the coach having drawn up before Vinie Mocket's door, Mrs. Selden dismissed the matter from her mind, and, descending, was met by ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... and twisted his mouth cynically. "Huh! Then it's good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all hell can't pry her loose." ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... that subject on the table for some of our night talks; and you can scold us all you like. We have a lot of work to do now, and let's forget the old pry. Now you lie down on that couch where I put you, and Leslie and I'll ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... Dusky he grew, and long revolving stood On some deep, dark design; thence shot with haste, And o'er the mounds of Paradise he past: By his proud port, he seemed the Prince of Hell; And here he lurks in shades 'till night: Search well Each grove and thicket, pry in every shape, Lest, hid in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... of my father, it shows that somebody is not telling the truth. I used to pore over the old farm records in my father's hand at Stone Ridge in the old account books stowed away in places where a boy loves to poke and pry. I know it as well as I know yours. Do you suppose she would not know it? When a man writes as few letters as he does, the handwriting does not change." Paul laid the letter upon the coals. "It is the only witness against her, but ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Ole has in his hand, and a number of wrought nails; and he brought them home and showed Ole how to use the hammer and drive the nails into the chair; and when he had driven them all into the wood, papa would pry them out for him, and the work would commence all over again, and Ole was happy all ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... bending and peering round the trunk of an elm draped to the ground in flounces of its own green. The last response to her whistle had seemed to come from a spot so close in front of her that she feared to risk another step, and yet, peep and pry as she might, she could neither spy out nor nearer decoy the cunning challenger. In a sense of delinquency she noted the sky showing yellow and red through the hill-top pines, and seeing she must make short end of her play, prepared to rush out upon the rogue and have an old-time ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... were driven foot by foot, until they wore compelled to retreat to the loft and draw up the ladder. The lower portion of the cabin was in full possession of the besiegers, who demolished everything they could lay their hands on, with much gusto. They did their utmost to pry up the trap door, but were beaten back. Suddenly to the "Wild Geese's" surprise, the lower part of the cabin was abandoned by the Hens. They thought it a ruse to draw them out, so I they lay quiet for some time. There were no windows in the loft. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... alone, boy? Into what have you come here to pry? You are odious—yes, odious!" She stamped her foot. "And I thought last night, that you were in trouble. Was I not kind to you for that, and that only?" She broke off pitifully. "Oh, Harry, I ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... how dare he meddle and pry into the Misses Templeton's family affairs! There is something I mistrust in the man; he is smooth and plausible, but he is crafty too; he is deep—deep—and if I do not ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... which, finding locked, I had not disturbed on my former visit. But first I explored the steward's pantry, in search of knife or hatchet. I found the latter, and, with it tucked into my belt, felt my way aft. It may have required five minutes to pry open the chest, and the reward was scarcely worth the effort. The upper tray contained nothing but clothing, and beneath this were books, and nautical instruments, with a bag of specie tucked into one corner, together ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... riches, as if she meant to wrap Tellus in the glory of her vestments: round about in the form of an amphitheatre were most curiously planted pine trees, interseamed with limons and citrons, which with the thickness of their boughs so shadowed the place, that Phoebus could not pry into the secret of that arbor; so united were the tops with so thick a closure, that Venus might there in her jollity have dallied unseen with her dearest paramour. Fast by, to make the place more gorgeous, was there a fount so crystalline ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored to pry into the depths of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... are quite right," Fenwick grunted. "I must see to this. It will never do for all these chattering magpies to pry into my business. You had better go into Canterbury this morning and see if you can't arrange for a proper staff of servants to come. ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... the Lights went out and when he came back to Earth he was lying the wrong way of his Bed with Blue Badges all over him, trying to swallow a Bath Towel, which he afterward discovered was his Tongue. By getting a Leverage under his Head he managed to pry it up and then he sat on the edge of the Bed and called himself Names. He had nothing left over except the Cards given to him by the Brothers from up State somewhere. He had a dim and sneaking Recollection that he had given his ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... daily dragging virgins to thy cave;—clad also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear but Death's? A Griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis, seem these moments for thee.—We will pry no further into the horrors of a ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... his wife's advice and did not attempt to pry into Jimmy's affairs. "He is quite old enough to look after himself," Mrs. Walter said, "and I don't see why you should be private detective for May and Ida. I believe they would try and manage you, too, if I would let them. Oh, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... heart from its very infancy is so corrupt and wicked as to give itself up to the idolatry of worthless and contemptible things. I cannot understand even now what he meant by these words. Whenever one loves anything, is it not very beautiful and perfectly right that one does not pry into it and finger it too closely? What is a rose, when I pull it to pieces? It is so perishable, and therefore so dear. Was it my poor Clary's fault, that she was only a leather doll? Last week I was looking at her again one day, and could not make out myself how ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... filled with presage That, some fair noon of balmy airs, I shall indite a rude Field Message If Colonels pry in my affairs; Shall tell them simply, "It is early May, And here the daffodils are almost old; About that sentry-group I cannot say—— In fact it leaves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... the shoulder, and they crept away from the stable without the Arab knowing that they had been there, for it seemed shameful to pry upon his grief. When they reached their room again ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... her, and hated to see her come where they were. She never got invited anywhere, because nothing was safe from her little Paul Pry fingers; and when company came she generally got sent out of the room. It was a great pity, because she was really a pretty little girl, and ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... girl comes to fetch water from the well. Her feet run on the pavement like rapid fingers over harp-strings. Hastily she ties a negligent knot with her hair, and loose locks on her forehead pry into the dark ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... she does!" said sallow Miss Pry. "There never was such a complexion as that born on to ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... though the first impulse of the poet were to set his back against the wall and deal with all his antagonists at once, by challenging their right to pry into his private conduct. It is true that certain poets of the last century have believed it beneath their dignity to pay any attention to the insults and persecution of the public. But though a number have maintained an air of stolid indifference ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... therefore, was to send out a galley under Volusenus "to pry along the coast," and meanwhile to order the fleet which he had built against the Veneti to rendezvous at Boulogne. Besides these war-galleys (naves longae) he got together eighty transports, enough for two legions, besides eighteen more for the cavalry.[75] These last were detained by a contrary ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Captain's attention was attracted by a singular object of mechanism. It seemed so undefined in its application, that he was reminded of the old saying among sailors when they fall in with any indescribable thing at sea, that it was a "fidge-fadge, to pry the sun up with in cloudy weather." It was a large pedestal about six feet high, with a sort of platform at the base for persons to stand upon, supplied with two heavy rings about eight inches apart. It was surmounted by an apex, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... eager friendship, was reticent as regards the past, and Ann's attitude towards her held an element of that loyal, enthusiastic devotion which an older woman not infrequently inspires in one considerably younger than herself—a devotion which accepts things as they are and has no wish to pry into the secrets ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... not caring to pry into the conjugal drama that was secretly and silently playing its last act before ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... knees, because the jaded horses could barely pull the empty vehicle through the mire or up the weary hill. They were frequently compelled to alight and grope around in impenetrable darkness and beating storm for rails from a neighbouring fence, with which to pry the wheels out of a mud-hole, into which they had, to all appearance, hopelessly sunk, or to dig themselves out of snow banks in which both horses and stage were firmly wedged. If they were so fortunate as to escape these mishaps, the deep ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... know as it couldn't be," said the man whom they called Hankie. "He is a proper cunning one to pry out." ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... and in genuine distress the courtier hurried on. "If you would listen, Madame! 'Tis true that Jeanne d'Aumerle has found the surest lever to pry ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... save, and not destroy— I would not pry into thy secret soul; But if these things be sooth, there still is time For penitence and pity: reconcile thee With the true church, and through ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... this reason that she sat still for a minute in the boat, looking up at Toyner, trying to pry into his attitude toward her. At the end of the minute he put out his hand to lift her up, and ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... Since spring I had been studying the wild life of this lonely island below the rocky gorge extending hither from the village bridge. The wood-wren, the willow-wren, and the garden-warbler had nested in the thickets, and every evening I had visited the place to pry on their doings, and to note how the flowers in glad succession blossomed and faded—their presence in this lonely sanctuary known only to myself, and to the birds, bees, and butterflies, and to the little shrews that rustled over the dry leaves beneath. But ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... launched in safety, but the Paul Pry, Mr. Walker's boat, was not so fortunate; the water in the bay deepened rapidly from the steepness of the bank, and the steersman, who was keeping her bow on whilst the crew were launching, got frightened from the depth of water and the violence of the surf, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... ignorance were not yet unhorsed. The Jewish police-officers, though they allowed coach-gentry to enter and take up their quarters where they pleased, did not fail to pry into their affairs the next day, as well for the protection of the Jewish community against equivocal intruders as in accordance with ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the stable be threatened, carry out the cow-chains. Never mind the horse,—he'll be alive and kicking; and if his legs don't do their duty, let them pay for the roast. Ditto as to the hogs,—let them save their own bacon, or smoke for it. When the roof begins to burn, get a crow-bar and pry away the stone steps; or, if the steps be of wood, procure an axe and chop them up. Next, cut away the wash-boards in the basement story; and if that don't stop the flames, let the chair-boards on the first floor share a similar fate. Should the "devouring element" still ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... me that I had left duties unperformed. With the power, perhaps, to act in the place of destiny and avert misfortune from my friends, I had resigned them to their fate. That cold tendency, between instinct and intellect, which made me pry with a speculative interest into people's passions and impulses, appeared to have gone far ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whereby they thought to protect themselves from evil, and to pry into the secrets of futurity. Because of these things, ancient Babylon was suddenly overwhelmed,—"for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments." These could not save, as they supposed. Therefore God said to them: "Stand now ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... of the women you knew in the West." An insatiable curiosity to hear the truth about his marriage seized her; but no sooner had she yielded to it than she felt an impulsive regret. What right had she to pry into the hidden sanctities ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... head. In vain Perris tugged at the reins. The lack of curb gave him no pry on the jaw of the chestnut and sheer strength against strength he was a child on a giant. The strips of leather burned through his fingers and the first great point of the battle was decided in favor of the horse: he had the bit in his teeth. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... good of themselves, they also occasionally hear much that is valuable. So Bates and Miss Ocky were in conspiracy to conceal from him some conversation they had had! Um. It would be funny if he couldn't pry the truth out of one of them; mentally, he girded up ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... up to write at my bureau; I dare say, it's only to pry into what I am about; but excuse me, my dear Sir, for that. Adieu! ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... bushy grey head. "That's not the real reason, son. The world has a wife for every man; if he hasn't found her by the time he's thirty-five, there's some real reason for it. Well, I don't want to pry into yours, but I hope it's a sound one and not a mean, sneaking, selfish sort of reason. Perhaps you'll choose a Madam Selwyn some day yet. In case you should I'm going to give you a small bit of good advice. Your mother—now, she's a splendid woman, Selwyn, a splendid woman. She can't be matched ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Dochney was an honest an' sober man whin he wint in; but wan day a man come up to him, an' says he, 'Ye know that ordhnance Schwartz inthrajooced?' 'I do,' says Dochney, 'an I'm again it. 'Tis a swindle,' he says. "Well,' says th' la-ad, 'they'se five thousan' in it f'r ye,' he says. They had to pry Dochney off iv him. Th' nex' day a man he knowed well come to Dochney, an' says he, 'That's a fine ordhnance iv Schwartz.' 'It is, like hell,' says Dochney. ''Tis a plain swindle,' he says. ''Tis a good thing f'r th' comp'nies,' says this man; 'but look what they've done f'r th' city,' ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... moral properties; at the dreadful laying bare of other folk's sores and nakedness? I wonder sometimes that any of the audience can look at the stage in company with the rest; the natural man, one would expect, would have the lights of the pit extinguished, and, if he needs must pry, pry at ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... received an affectionate letter from Stephen Smith in Bombay, which had been forwarded to her from Endelstow. But since this is not the case referred to, it is not worth while to pry further into the contents of the letter than to discover that, with rash though pardonable confidence in coming times, he addressed her in high spirits as his darling future wife. Probably there cannot be instanced a briefer and surer rule-of-thumb test of a man's temperament—sanguine ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Henry Ward Beecher. 'Liza Em'ly 's goin' around huggin' herself 'n' groanin' to beat the band, but young Dr. Brown says he can't do nothin' for her because there ain't no way to get in behind a rib 'n' pry it out to place again. I guess the truth o' the matter is 't he 's jus' plum tired out piecin' 'n' mendin'. It's been a big job sewin' up after Jathrop's cow tore round like that. They say 's he had all of a foot to over-'n'-over along Mr. Fisher, 'n' Mr. Jilkins is jus' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... Christmas. It's that Dyer. He's about as mean as they make 'em. The only reason he didn't die long ago is becuz th' Devil's thought him too mean to pay any 'tention to. If ever he should die an' go to Heaven he'd pry up th' golden streets an' use the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... that, and I never did pry into other people's affairs. Tell me it was nothing about my husband, and I shall ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... amusement, of knowing the interior movements occasioning the course of events. This is a legitimate and reasonable curiosity; for every man hath a right to open and examine the mechanism of his own watch, put together for his proper use, although he is not permitted to pry into the interior of the timepiece which, for general information, is displayed ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... own that it is my weakness to pry into the untrodden nooks and corners of life. I have wasted many precious hours in toiling through black-letter folios and tracts which had no other merit than their rarity. And I have put myself to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... began. Then—"Oh, do play fair," he urged. "You're younger than I am. Uncle Dick expects me to look after you. Goodness knows I don't want to pry into your affairs, but when you borrow fifteen dollars and then want twenty-five the same week, what's a fellow to think? If some one is borrowing from you, it's time to call a halt; you're ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... find itself alone 'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone; Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... the invention they display, though of these there are very few in Spain. Sometimes I dine with my neighbours and friends, and often invite them; my entertainments are neat and well served without stint of anything. I have no taste for tattle, nor do I allow tattling in my presence; I pry not into my neighbours' lives, nor have I lynx-eyes for what others do. I hear mass every day; I share my substance with the poor, making no display of good works, lest I let hypocrisy and vainglory, those enemies ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... twist and pry with his cold-chisel forced this flimsy outer door away from its lock. Beneath it, thus lightly masked, stood the more formidable safe door itself. Durkin drew in a sharp breath of relief as he looked at it with critical eyes. It was ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... "Derechief pry ly dit Evesqe a soen Segur le Roy qe ly plese aider &c.... e sur ceo transmettr', sa lettre al vesconte de Lanark. E une autre, si ly plest, a ses Forresters de Geddeworth de autant de Merin [meremium, meheremium, wood for building] pour fere ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... his long absence, nor did Martin pry into it. He was content to see his friend's cadaverous face opposite him through the steam rising from a tumbler ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... we've been unfortunate in having tire-trouble on the way home. And now we seem to be stuck in the mud. I had no idea the roads were in such a condition, or of course I shouldn't have gone. We can't possibly pry the motor up in this darkness, so I think we may as well leave it where it is, first as last until morning, and walk the rest of the ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... you for these marks of your esteem and confidence," said Edmund; "be assured that I will not abuse them; nor do I desire to pry into secrets not proper to be revealed. I entirely approve your discretion, and acquiesce in your conclusion, that Providence will in its own time vindicate its ways to man; if it were not for that trust, my ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... him on the strength of his information. I know some of the best men of the best families in England who are paying through the nose in that way. But their private affairs are no business of mine, Mr. Strong; and it is not to be supposed that because I go and dine with a man, I pry into his secrets, or am answerable for all his past life. And so with our friend Clavering, I am most interested for his wife's sake, and her daughter's, who is a most charming creature: and when her ladyship asked me, I looked into her affairs, and tried to set them straight; and shall ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pointed it out to us, it was plainly visible. One of the detectives picked up a crowbar and others, still with the hastily selected implements they had seized to fight the fire, started in to pry ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... his house to the closest and dearest, doesn't keep back the key of a closet or two? I think of a lovely reader laying down the page and looking over at her unconscious husband, asleep, perhaps, after dinner. Yes, madam, a closet he hath: and you, who pry into everything, shall never have the key of it. I think of some honest Othello pausing over this very sentence in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing at Desdemona opposite to him, innocently administering sandwiches to their ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... retired and pleasant route, without houses or travellers, except some young men who were lounging upon a bridge in Chelmsford, who leaned impudently over the rails to pry into our concerns, but we caught the eye of the most forward, and looked at him till he was visibly discomfited. Not that there was any peculiar efficacy in our look, but rather a sense of shame left in ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... This permitted me to retain a sort of quasi self-respect for a day or two till my honesty rallied itself, and forced me to realise and to admit that I was, to all intents and purposes, a common Paul Pry, performing a disreputable act for the gratification it gave me. I determined I would at least be honest with myself—and this was my verdict. You will, perhaps, fancy that when I arrived at this decision I at once mended my ways and resigned ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... in the world," said the Doctor, earnestly, "less anxious to pry into the secrets of others than I am. I take things as I find them. If the cook sends me up a good dish I don't care to know how she made it. If I read a good book, I am not the less gratified because there may have been something ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... was about to grant the Netherland, envoys an audience, the wrath of ambassador Mendoza was kindled. That magniloquent Spaniard instantly claimed an interview with the King, before whom, according to the statement of his colleagues, doing their best to pry into these secrets, he blustered and bounced, and was more fantastical in his insolence than even Spanish envoy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... consideration leads me, perforce, into another subject. Let us pry a little narrowly into, and, in God's name, examine upon what foundation we erect this glory and reputation for which the world is turned topsy-turvy: wherein do we place this renown that we hunt after with so much pains? It is, in the end, Peter or William that carries ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... propriety. He hates those who are forward and determined, and, at the same time, of contracted understanding.' 2. The Master then inquired, 'Ts'ze, have you also your hatreds?' Tsze-kung replied, 'I hate those who pry out matters, and ascribe the knowledge to their wisdom. I hate those who are only not modest, and think that they are valourous. I hate those who make known secrets, and think that they are straightforward.' CHAP. XXV. The Master said, 'Of all people, girls and servants are the most difficult ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... a square slab, having on it certain characters and a drawing of a serpent held firmly in the talons of a condor. These symbols excited my curiosity not a little, and I noticed that the stone, which was about three feet square, was loosely resting in its place. I managed to pry it up, and found a dark cavity beneath. It was nearly square, but of its depth I could not judge, owing to the darkness. To satisfy myself on this point, I got a very long stem of one of those gigantic grasses ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... smile: "I'm not going to pry into your letters." In his heart he knew that it was impossible to put the revelation of their secret to Addie into any words that would not be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the way is mentioned. At Paris, under the auspices of Mazarin, many architects and artists were assembled. "I hope I shall give you a very good Account of all the best Artists in France," he wrote to a friend. "My business now is to pry into Trades and Arts. I put myself into all shapes to humour them; 'tis a comedy to me, and tho' sometimes expenceful, I am loth yet to leave it." He mentions not only leading men like Colbert, but more than twenty architects, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... whose body is perfectly symmetrical. By standing on one foot, the hip and shoulder of one side approach each other, and so lessen the space within the abdomen on that side. On the other side a support has been removed for the contents of the abdomen, and they sag down until they pry the uterus out of place and press it over towards the side where there is less pressure. The broad ligament on one side is stretched from use and on the other side shortened from disuse, and so ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... would pry into this matter, and in this way attain such faith quickly and suddenly, you will then have waited too long. Yet you are to understand well, that they who are strong have enough to do, although we are not ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... said Kennedy exultingly, "I think we have stolen a march on them. I don't believe they were prepared for this, not at least at this stage in the game. Don't ask me any questions, Walter. Then you will have no secrets to keep if anyone should try to pry them loose. Only remember that this man ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... The Demon of Perversity, he had been the first in literature to pry into the irresistible, unconscious impulses of the will which mental pathology now explains more scientifically. He had also been the first to divulge, if not to signal the impressive influence of fear which acts on the will like an anaesthetic, paralyzing ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... up to my room and sew or read. Sew! Every hook and eye and button on my clothes is moored so tight that even the hand laundry can't tear 'em off. You couldn't pry those fastenings away with dynamite. When I find a hole in my stockings I'm tickled to death, because it's something to mend. And read? Everything from the Rules of the House tacked up on the door to spelling out the French short story in the back of ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... others who tried to pry into the mystery, Freddie Firefly had no luck at all. For Kiddie Katydid made no reply to his inquiries. Kiddie merely smiled in a most annoying fashion and kept on repeating ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... insist on finding out things that were not intended for her to know. I hadn't thought. If mothah took all the trouble of sending a special-delivery lettah to you to keep me from knowing till my birthday, I'm not going to pry around trying to ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... like to have forgot a secret I must need tell your ladyship.—Ned, you must not be so jealous now as to listen. Love. [Leading BERINTHIA up the stage.] Not I, my lord; I am too fashionable a husband to pry into the secrets of my wife. Lord Fop. [Aside to AMANDA squeezing her hand.] I am in love with you to desperation, strike me speechless! Aman. [Strikes him on the ear.] Then thus I return your passion.—An impudent ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... little too far this morning, and I'll show her that I'm Miss Wilton, and that she's only the governess—and—and——Now, where's that child gone to? I do think Marjorie is a perfect nuisance. I don't see anything good in her. Paul Pry, I call her. Paul Pry, and a little busy-body. I suppose she'll go and make up to Miss Nelson now, and tell her what I've said. No, though, that isn't like her. She does try to stick up for one. Poor little plain mite. Well, I don't intend to obey Miss Nelson, Marjorie or no Marjorie. Basil is ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the chiefs of the Beard, Thou shall know the mystery In which thy curious eye wishes to pry, When thy beard ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... of ignorance, ignorance is also the child of fear; the two react on, and produce each other. The more men dread Nature, the less they wish to know about her. Why pry into her awful secrets? It is dangerous; perhaps impious. She says to them, as in the Egyptian temple of old—"I am Isis, and my veil no mortal yet hath lifted." And why should they try or wish to lift it? If she will leave them in peace, they will leave her in ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... she could see only the distressed figure which had sat on the sofa, with hands jerking on its knee. Did she love Philip Caniper? Had they quarrelled long ago, and did she now want to make amends? No, no! She shut her eyes. She must not pry. She felt as though she had caught herself reading a letter which belonged to some ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... law-abiding. I'm respectable. I don't pry. I don't nose into other people's business. Why should I? Just ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... contributions to the literature about nature: one must admire the man's untiring enthusiasm, but his book is mainly a storehouse of facts; how rarely does he invest the facts with charm! To pry into nature's secrets and conscientiously report them seems to be the aim of the English parson; but we get so little of the parson himself. What were his feelings about all these things he has been at such pains to record? The things themselves are not enough. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... reality be, he is a suspicious character, to say the best of him; and although I know that you think you are right in encouraging his visits, other people do not know that; they may judge you harshly. I do not wish to pry into secrets—but you have sought to comfort me by bidding me have perfect confidence in this man. I must ask what knowledge you have of him. How far are you aware of his character and employment? How do you know ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... Thence comes moral bewilderment, and even intellectual loss, in regard to what is best of him. When Shakspeare invoked a curse on the man who should stir his bones, he perhaps meant the larger share of it for him or them who should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects or even the merits of the character that he wore in Stratford, when he had left mankind so much to muse upon that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep me from incurring any part of the anathema in requital ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... said something 'bout there bein' a plan in his watch-case, Gen'ral," spoke up Jack. Schoverling nodded, and turned to the hut. A moment later he came out, a smashed and bent gold watch in his hand. This they managed to pry open with a knife, and the explorer pulled out a tiny, many-folded map of onion-skin paper. The tracings were made in a brown ink, with marks that ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... from out her inmost cells, Fretting the narrow path, her eggs conveys; Or the huge bow sucks moisture; or a host Of rooks from food returning in long line Clamour with jostling wings. Now mayst thou see The various ocean-fowl and those that pry Round Asian meads within thy fresher-pools, Cayster, as in eager rivalry, About their shoulders dash the plenteous spray, Now duck their head beneath the wave, now run Into the billows, for sheer ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... question was built upon the supposed necessary connection of certain aspects and conjunctions or oppositions of the stars and heavenly bodies, with the events of the world and the characters and actions of men. The human mind has ever confessed an anxiety to pry into the future, and to deal in omens and prophetic suggestions, and, certain coincidences having occurred however fortuitously, to deduce from them rules and maxims upon which to build an anticipation ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... honey!' 'Oh, Jim!' 'Oh, you Charlie!' 'There's my boy!' 'There's daddie!' 'How soon you coming home, son?' It took all the ability of scores of reserve policemen between 129th Street and 135th Street, where the uptown reviewing stand was, to pry those colored enthusiasts away ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... wicked dwarfs. In the winter, when the earth is frozen hard, they are obliged to stay below and cannot work their way through; but now, when the sun has thawed and warmed the earth, they break through it, and come out to pry and steal; and what once gets into their hands, and in their caves, does not ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... riband was attached—an ivory miniature—and she picked it up wondering. She stood up gazing at it, in such bewilderment to find her eyes upon it that she scarce knew what she did. She did not mean to pry; she would not have had the daring so to do if she had possessed the inclination. But the instant her eyes told her what they saw, she started and blushed as she had never blushed before in her tame life. The warm ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty. He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan lay bare its treasure—and he saw the dull ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... you," said Charlotte, with what seemed a pride in his knowing ways. "Eatin' up the celery an' all, the minute 'fore dinner, too. I wonder you don't pry into ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... such a simple, witless creature that the man on guard on the landing has not thought to pry while she has been with us, and has allowed the door to be shut. He cannot then see in, as the grated opening has been closed, out of regard to Madame's sex. So this morning I got Brigitte's consent to my plan, for the poor girl is the softest-hearted creature ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... nothing so becomes a man, As modest stillness, and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage: Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let it pry through the portage of the head, Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it, As fearfully as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide; Hold hard the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... progress, two men pry lintels, cheeks, and other large stones from the fireplaces, as well as stones at the openings of brick ovens. As many old bricks from the chimney are salvaged as possible. Large stone door steps are also removed but generally no attempt is ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... would convince you of what it's up to me to prove—to say nothing of the fact that I count on your entrance at the last minute to put an end to the whole bad business. For it is a bad business—believe me. But not a word of that now. You couldn't pry open my lips with a ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... tunnel; transpierce^, transfix; enfilade, impale, spike, spear, gore, spit, stab, pink, puncture, lance, stick, prick, riddle, punch; stave in. cut a passage through; make way for, make room for. uncover, unclose, unrip^; lay open, cut open, rip open, throw open, pop open, blow open, pry open, tear open, pull open. Adj. open; perforated &c v.; perforate; wide open, ajar, unclosed, unstopped; oscitant^, gaping, yawning; patent. tubular, cannular^, fistulous; pervious, permeable; foraminous^; vesicular, vasicular^; porous, follicular, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of them are all out of shape, but the people are so used to seeing the buildings lean, almost like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, that they think nothing about it. Once in awhile the road will give way under a heavily loaded truck, but they pry the load out, repair the roadway, and go ahead as though the highway were built upon ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... doorsteps, carried into the old Siward house by old Siward servants, drunk as his forefathers? It was none of Fleetwood's business. It was none of the servants' business. It was nobody's business except his own. Who the devil were all these people, to pry into his affairs and doctor him and dose him and form secret leagues to disobey him, and hide decanters from him? Why should anybody have the impertinence to meddle with him? Of what concern to them were his vices or ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... offence," replied March. "I've no desire to pry into any man's secrets. Nevertheless, it's but natural to want to know how to address a man ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... earth to act differently; but I cannot sit on his knee as Beulah sometimes does; I cannot throw my arms around his neck when I kiss him, as Beulah does; I cannot pat his cheek, as Beulah does, when he says anything to laugh at; nor can I pry into his secrets, as Beulah does, or affects to do, to tease him. I should be more reserved with one who has not a drop of my blood in his veins—no, not a single drop." In this way, indeed, Maud ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Church's head, that her members should be each other's keepers; that they should watch over one another, and admonish and reprove one another, as need requires. It is not meant, that they should pry into one another's secrets, or be busybodies in other men's matters, but that they should watch over one another's life and conversation, that if they do well they may be encouraged; if ill, that they may, by counsel, reproof, instruction, and exhortation, ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... Eve. "Business is a very convenient word when you don't want to tell a person what your real errand is. Not that I want to pry into Adam's secrets—far from it. He's quite welcome to keep what he likes from me, only I'd rather he wouldn't tell me half things. I like to know all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... only that part of the castle which can be reached from the front entrance, leaving the back entrance and the part of the building commanded immediately by it, to the menials, as also the small garden whose high wall you see yonder; and never at any time seek to pry or peep into them, nor to open the door which communicates from the front part of the house through the corridor with the back. I do not urge this in jest or in caprice, but from a solemn conviction that ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Pry in 1884. Two chillun was born. The girl is living and the boy might be, but I don't know. My daughter works out ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... like this is knavish and absurd, And well deserves a damnatory word. You glance at your own faults; your eyes are blear: You eye your neighbour's; straightway you see clear, Like hawk or basilisk: your neighbours pry Into your frailties with as keen an eye. A man is passionate, perhaps misplaced In social circles of fastidious taste; His ill-trimmed beard, his dress of uncouth style, His shoes ill-fitting, may provoke a smile: But he's the soul of virtue; but he's kind; ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... of course, daily, but he was not sneak enough to pry into its secrets, even had the chance presented itself. Sometimes she tossed the letters away carelessly, but he observed that there were some which ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... of superstition, was not in this respect superior to his time, but, on the contrary, was remarkable for the encouragement which he gave to the professors of this pretended science. Indeed, the wish to pry into futurity, so general among the human race, is peculiarly to be found amongst those who trade in state mysteries and the dangerous intrigues and cabals of courts. With heedful precaution to see that it had ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... his progenitors, and rested well content with the scantiness of his knowledge. The character and condition of his father, of whom alone upon that side of the house he had personal cognizance, did not encourage him to pry into the obscurity behind that luckless rover. He was sensitive on the subject; and when he was applied to for information, a brief paragraph conveyed all that he knew or desired to know. Without doubt he would have been best pleased to have the world ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... and forks! On such a walk, how easy to pick one's self up after lunch, throw the dinner-table away, and trot on to the next village. As a girl passes from town to town, how eager she is to note their characteristics, to look at the people curiously, and to pry into their shop-windows. How much she learns about Nature! Is the sky so blue at home? Are the wild flowers so abundant? Is the grass so soft and green? Oh, girls! try to make yourselves at home with Nature, and walk out among her attractions. In all your observations of Nature ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... wood thrush stands up before you or perches upon a limb, and turns his spotted waistcoat toward you in the most open and trusting manner. In fact, few birds have such good manners as the wood thrush, and few have so much the manner of a Paul Pry and eavesdropper as the catbird. The flight of the wood thrush across the lawn is such a picture of grace and harmony, it is music to the eye. The catbird seems saying, "There, there! I told you so, pretty ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... But I haue cause to pry into this pedant, Methinkes he lookes as though he were in loue: Yet if thy thoughts Bianca be so humble To cast thy wandring eyes on euery stale: Seize thee that List, if once I finde thee ranging, Hortensio will be quit with ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... in with his lever to pry off the remaining boards of the wall, but this movement was promptly checked. Our next task consisted in making long bolts by which the brackets of the horizontal bars were bolted entirely through the partition walls and held so powerfully ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... to be trusted! Mind, I have no wish to pry into your business; but perhaps we can be of service. Are ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... could not help asking, with a momentary sense of chagrin. But the next moment he added, in a milder tone, "I don't mean to pry into your business." ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... and if you did it would do you absolutely no good. Your husband is no dumb fool to be "influenced" this way or that by two women! He is a man with ideas of his own. If he was disappointed in you as wife, he has possibly turned to some other woman. If so the more you pry and suspect and hint around, the more positively he will turn away from you. If you "found out" and made things warm for him or another he would simply hate and despise you and be the harder set against you. This ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... made a grit that in opening and closing the breech caused the mechanism to stick, and the honey clinging to the shells caused the breech chamber to stick, making the shell cases jam in the gun after being discharged, forcing us to pry open with a sharp pick the breech each time to extract the empty cartridge. All during the operation the Major was cursing like a madman at the men, whoever they were, that brought the bees ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... around the base of these with a dull knife or a small screwdriver blade. With the same tool pry the thick skin away from the frontal bone. When the eyes are reached have a care not to cut their lids, working closer to the bone than the skin. Use the screwdriver again to scoop up the skin from the so-called tear pits in front of ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... will stick to Knollsea,' said Ethelberta, half in doubt. 'Yes—otherwise it will be difficult to see about aunt's baptismal certificate. We will hope nobody will take the trouble to pry into our household. . . . And now, Picotee, I want to ask you something—something very serious. How would you like me to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... was coming through the woods we happened to stop a minute. Then we see this Frenchy sneaking through the woods. We wondered what was up. Then he vanished. We looked about, some quiet-like, and on tiptoe, and then we saw this shipmate o' your'n pry apart some bushes and head in this way. It ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... leaves are brown and crackly. I can do what I like with it after this. So when my other transplanting grows tiresome, I fall upon my phlox. Every year some of it needs thinning, so quickly does it spread. I take the spading-fork, and, with what seems like utter ruthlessness, I pry out from the thickest centers enough good roots to give the rest breathing and growing space. Along the path edges I always have to cut out encroaching roots each year, or else soon there would be no path. But all that I take out is precious, either to give ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... surprising, however, that Wellington and his colleagues, following out the maxims of a Whig policy, should be viewed by their own party somewhat in the light of traitors. Accordingly we see them figuring in this character in some of the caricatures of the day, one of which (one of the "Paul Pry" series), published by Geans in 1829, may be cited as an example of the rest, and shows them to us in the act of Burking Old Mrs. Constitution, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... to India in their own ships, several English merchants and others had gone to India from time to time in the Portuguese ships, and some overland; from a desire to pry into and to participate in the advantages of that gainful commerce. Of those who went by land, several letters and relations remain which will be found in the sequel: But of all who performed the voyage as passengers in the Portuguese vessels, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... such things when I was younger, and I'm free to say I took more stock in dreams and such like than I do now. I rec'lect old Parson Lorimer—this Parson Lorimer's father who was settled here first—spoke to me once about it, and said it was a tempting of Providence, and that we hadn't no right to pry into secrets. I know I had a dream-book then that I picked up in a shop in Bristol once when I was there on the Ranger, and all the young folks were beset to get sight of it. I see what fools it made of folks, bothering their heads about such things, and I ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... State House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... mortality—we pay our national tribute to private enterprise in milk, a tribute of many thousands of babies every year. We try to reduce this tribute by inspection. But why should the State pay money for inspection, upon keeping highly-trained and competent persons merely to pry and persecute in order that private incompetent people should reap profits with something short of a maximum of child murder? It would be much simpler to set to work directly, employ and train these private persons, and run the dairies and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... if you want to, but you'll be disappointed, Paul Pry. Lower left-hand drawer with the key ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... grace and power of motion in water which are not equalled by the greyhound on land. Why have the seals hung back? I believe I know the secret. It is the baby! No one knows where the porpoise and the whale cradle their newborn infants—it is so difficult to pry into the domestic ways of these sea-people—but evidently the seals cannot manage it, so they are forced to return to the land when the cares of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
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