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More "Shrewd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Antwerp, when the admirer of Rubens broke forth into a rapturous exclamation, which put an end to the dispute and attracted the notice of the inhabitants, many of whom by shrugging up their shoulders and pointing to their foreheads, gave shrewd indications that they believed him a poor gentleman disordered in ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... or no thought; upon the career he had embraced, and which he beheld obscurely before him. The Minister was a great friend of his family. A mountaineer of the Cevennes, brought up on chestnuts, his dazzled eyes blinked at the flower-bedecked tables of Paris. He was too shrewd and too wily not to retain his advantage over the old aristocracy, which welcomed him to its bosom: the advantage of harsh caprices and arrogant refusals. Ligny knew him, and expected no favours at his hands. In this respect he was more perspicacious than his mother, who credited herself ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... many of the younger couples go to the Louisiane and Antoine's, to continue the dance, and as my room at Antoine's was directly over one of the dancing rooms of the establishment, I might make a shrewd guess as to how long they stayed up, after my companion ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... she was being asked to answer her own question, Aunt Caroline considered. Then, with a flash of shrewd insight, "Well," she said, "if there were any possible excuse for it, I should say ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Kelley, as shrewd and unscrupulous a man as any in the annals of imposture, readily consented, but on pretty hard terms. He was to be taken in as a member of Dr. Dee's family, retained on a contract, and paid an annual stipend of fifty ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Mrs. Willoughby, a widow of great beauty and fascination, a brunette, good-natured, clever, and shrewd. I might here pause, and go into no end of raptures on the various qualities of this lady's character; but, on the whole, I think I'd better not, as they will be sufficiently apparent before the end of ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... the master's cabin, introduced him, and stood by while they bargained. The sick skipper glowered at Mr. Gibney when Scraggs, with a wealth of detail, explained their presence, but, for all his predicament, he was a shrewd man and instantly decided to use Gibney and McGuffey as a fulcrum wherewith to pry a very low price out of Captain Scraggs. Mr. Gibney could not forebear a grin as he saw the captain's plan, and instantly he ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... shaped the whole course of their reasoning, is calmly and unhesitatingly discarded. The passion for the miraculous, the absorbing sense of diabolical capacities, have all vanished like a dream. The old theological measure of probability has completely disappeared, and is replaced by a shrewd secular common sense. The statements of the witches were pronounced intrinsically incredible. The dreams of a disordered imagination, or the terrors of the rack, would account for many of them; but even when it is impossible ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the exploits of the day. You will no doubt smile, and wonder what exploits such a cur is able to perform; but I assure you that if he is at all like some of the gipsy dogs I have heard of, he has been taught a good many very shrewd tricks. The dogs of the gipsies are sometimes trained to steal for their masters. The thief enters a store with some respectably dressed man, whom the owner of the dog will commission for the purpose, and—the man having made certain signals to the animal—the gipsy cur, after ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... so now, his bearing and features were Nevil incarnate. But to the shrewd eye of Broome the last seemed subtly overlaid with the spirit of the East—a brooding stillness wrought from the clash of opposing forces within. When he laughed and talked it vanished. When he fell silent, and drifted away from ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... unsealed, in whom the waters are flowing, the labour mingles gently and genially with the thought, and the plough he holds with his hands lays open to the sun and the air more soils than one. Mr. Sclater without his books would speedily have sunk into the mere shrewd farmer; Donal, never opening a book, would have followed theories and made verses to the end ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... presence of royalty, as before those from whom they have nothing to hope or fear; the result being, that most minds quail before them. There were two Gitanas at Madrid, one Pepita by name, and the other La Chicharona; the first was a spare, shrewd, witch- like female, about fifty, and was the mother-in-law of La Chicharona, who was remarkable for her stoutness. These women subsisted entirely by fortune-telling and swindling. It chanced that the son of Pepita, and husband of Chicharona, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... said that the reckless exportation to the West Indies caused this extermination, but it is difficult to believe that so shrewd a race as were the Narragansett planters ever would have committed such a killing of a goose of golden eggs. The decay of the race was the action of a simple law—cause and effect. The conditions which rendered the pacer so desirable did not exist after the Revolution. Roads were improved, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Her small, shrewd eyes softened, as she received the gay salute with a smile and returned it. Her liking for this particular sextette ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... jine the two plantations. One is too little for her to rule. She's allus wanted our south 'bacco patch. Her hundred niggers and Massa's hundred would make a crew. O, she's a shrewd one; she sees further than her nose. She'd make my shettle fly fast ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... go away and try my fortune elsewhere, or to sit still and await events. A more impetuous man would have adopted the first of these alternatives, but my experience of life, confirmed as it was by the advice of Emma, who was a shrewd and far-seeing woman, soon convinced me that if I did so I should have no more chance of success than would an egg which undertook a crusade against a brick wall. Doubtless the egg might stain the wall and gather ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... They knew very well that these shouts and acclamations were not addressed to them, but only to General Bonaparte, the conqueror of Lodi and Arcola, the hero of the pyramids, the "savior of society," who, on the 18th Brumaire, had rescued France from the terrorists. Both consuls were shrewd enough to draw a lesson from this enthusiasm of the people, and willingly to fall back into the shade rather than to be forced into it. The Tuileries had been appointed for the residence of the three consuls, but the next day after ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... pursued with the most inveterate malice. John Gudyill, reinstated in his dignity, was more important than ever; and Cuddie, with rapturous delight, entered upon the cultivation of the mains of Tillietudlem, and the occupation of his original cottage. But, with the shrewd caution of his character, he was never heard to boast of having fired the lucky shot which repossessed his lady and himself in their original habitations. 'After a',' he said to Jenny, who was his only confidant, 'auld Basil Olifant was my leddy's cousin and a grand gentleman; ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was not a scrupulous man; but unlike them he was shrewd and far-sighted, and understood the statesmen and the peoples with whom he had to deal. The main object of his foreign policy was to preserve the prestige of the German army as the chief instrument of power in Central ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... his date too closely, we may take it that he was a leading man in Miletus for the greater part of the {3} first half of the sixth century before Christ. We hear of an eclipse predicted by him, of the course of a river usefully changed, of shrewd and profitable handling of the market, of wise advice in the general councils of the league. He seems to have been at once a student of mathematics and an observer of nature, and withal something having analogy with both, an inquirer ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... eighty, with a close cap and tiny flat white curls round her face,' whose function is 'quiescence in an easy-chair under the sense of compound interest gradually accumulating,' and who 'does her malevolence gently;' or Mr. Hackit, a shrewd, substantial man, 'who was fond of soothing the acerbities of the feminine mind by a jocose compliment.' Where but in George Eliot would you get a tea-party described with ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the sea and not the land has changed its level, was generally held at the time Lamarck wrote, though Strabo had made the shrewd observation that it was the land which moved. The Greek geographer threw aside the notion of some of his contemporaries, and with wonderful prevision, considering the time he wrote and the limited observations he ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... revert to personal matters. He turned instead to the topic always most congenial to him: the humours and ironies of the human comedy, as presented by his own particular group. His malicious commentary on life had always amused Susy because of the shrewd flashes of philosophy he shed on the social antics they had so often watched together. He was in fact the one person she knew (excepting Nick) who was in the show and yet outside of it; and she was surprised, as the talk proceeded, to find herself so little interested in his scraps of gossip, and ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... are practically amphibious, spending half their time in the ocean, and are therefore of necessity clean. So are certain coast negroes and Indian tribes living along river-banks. But Ellis (Pol. Res., I., 110) was shrewd enough to see that the habit of frequent bathing indulged in by the South Sea Islanders was a luxury—a result of the hot climate—and not an indication of the virtue of cleanliness. In this respect Captain Cook showed less acumen, for he remarks (II., 148) that "nothing appears ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a knowledge of it to the sages of his empire. He also entreated them to bring him a little oil from the lamp of our Saviour, in Jerusalem, which he concluded must have marvelous virtues. It has been supposed, and with great reason, that under this covert of religion, the shrewd Tartar sovereign veiled motives of a political nature. The influence of the pope in promoting the crusades had caused his power to be known and respected throughout the East; it was of some moment, therefore, to conciliate his good-will. Cublai Khan had no bigotry ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... seventeen persons present and it looked as if a decision was inevitable. The landlord was shrewd. His first act was to invite all to drink at his expense, after which he made each pledge himself to abide by the decision, whatever it might be. These preliminaries being arranged, a show of hands was called for. The ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... means ill-looking. His cheeks and chin were clean shaven, the close-cut beard showing bluely under the coarse skin. For the rest, his hair was black and thick, slightly streaked with gray, and heavy eyebrows as dark in hue as his hair, overhung a pair of shrewd, gray eyes like small pent-houses. The man was Eugene Mortlake, the brains of the Mortlake Company. The individual who had just descended from the automobile, throwing a word to the chauffeur over ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... if I don't buy land here I'll take him West with me," said Murrell quietly. Bladen gave him a swift, shrewd glance, but Murrell, smiling and easy, met it frankly. "Come," he said, "it's a pity he should grow up wild in the pine woods—get him away from Yancy—I am' willing to spend five hundred dollars ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... himself by a reply, the lawyer estimated his possible client in one of his brief but shrewd and calculating glances. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... poet, of July 21, 1883, affirms that the account is correct in every particular, adding, 'My own explanation of the matter has been that the shrewd Italian felt his way by the involuntary help of my own eyes and face.' The story has been reprinted in the Reports of ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... I was satisfied, and returned in a comparatively cheerful mood to my plodding. I have a shrewd suspicion that my chief, Mr. Foster, used his good offices on my behalf with ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... minor characters are good and life-like, particularly Guibert, the shrewd, hesitating, talkative, cynical, really good-hearted old courtier, whom not even a court had deprived of a heart, though the dangerous influence of the conscienceless Gaucelme, his fellow, has ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... are serious bourgeois, well along in the fifties, just a trifle ridiculous, perhaps on account of their allure and their attire. But should one grow to know them better he would soon realise that most of them are shrewd, hard-working business men, each burdened with an anxiety or a sorrow ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... Tories; but take her on her own politics, ask her about other men or women and the chicanery of everyday existence - the rubs, the tricks, the vanities on which life turns - and you will not find many more shrewd, trenchant, and humorous. Nay, to make plainer what I have in mind, this same woman has a share of the higher and more poetical understanding, frank interest in things for their own sake, and enduring ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Sandeau, who had used it in Marianna. George Sand changed it to that of Indiana) is a typical woman, strong and weak, tired even by the weight of the air, but capable of holding up the sky; timid in everyday life, but daring in days of battle; shrewd and clever in seizing the loose threads of ordinary life, but silly and stupid in distinguishing her own interests when it is a question of her happiness; caring little for the world at large, but allowing herself to be duped by one man; not troubling much about her own dignity, but watching ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... though shrewd and clever and prudent, he often calls unfortunate. For Nestor goes back home quickly and safely, but Odysseus wanders about for a long time and endures constantly innumerable sufferings and dangers. So it is a desirable and blessed thing if fortune is ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... could only stare at him and could not even interrupt him. For her shrewd woman instinct told her so convincingly that even her sense of loyalty could not eject the doubt which assailed her mind, that if there was not truth in what he was saying there was ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... a sovereign whose situation rendered jealousy only common prudence, it is not surprising that the wealth of Belisarius excited the imperial cupidity, and induced Justinian to seize great part of it" (Greece under the Romans, chap. 3). There is shrewd insight in this, and though we may regret that we cannot attain to more, it is better than leaving the ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... of his era to depend upon other achievements than those of war. "My intention certainly is," he said to Thibaudeau, "to multiply the works of peace. It may be that in the future I shall be better known by them than by my victories." The Memoires of the shrewd observer to whom the words were uttered, give us perhaps a more intimate acquaintance with the Consular Bonaparte than does any other single book; and it is impossible to study them without deriving the impression that he was at this ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... Pulteney), which has grown with the industry of the port. The society never again tried to resume its original purpose of creating new fishing centres, and here in Pulteneytown it has obviously only acted the part of the shrewd building speculator, investing in the ground-rents of a rising community and prudently helping in its development. Through this change of purpose it has contrived to save some of its capital, and having recently resolved to be ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... me or in spite of me, is that what it means? I have said no, but no does not satisfy him. [There is, however, no record from Symonds's side of any letter by Whitman to Symonds in this sense up to this date.] But read this letter—read the whole of it: it is very shrewd, very cute, in deadliest earnest: it drives me hard, almost compels me—it is urgent, persistent: he sort of stands in the road and says 'I won't move till you answer my question.' You see, this is an old letter—sixteen years old—and he is still asking the question: he refers to it in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Police entered his office at ten minutes to five. M. Desmalions, who had filled his post for the past three years with an authority that made him generally respected, was a heavily built man of fifty with a shrewd and intelligent face. His dress, consisting of a gray jacket-suit, white spats, and a loosely flowing tie, in no way suggested the public official. His manners were easy, simple, and full of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... you? See how it will be when I come to talk to him! A shrewd fellow like that who got out of the Micklethwayte concern just in time. Catch him giving up a place like that, though he may ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you see it—you're right there, Al, shrewd and clever! Al, there are ten freshmen in the Dickinson. Think hard now, the idea's growing. Ten freshmen. Suppose,—I only say suppose now that as a disciplinary measure we should decide that no freshman could enter the Jigger Shop say—well ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... from the burning. As a preliminary step, he was invited to supper, and treated with peculiar respect. The matter was gently touched upon, but discussion postponed until another occasion. Mr Levisohn being very shrewd, very needy, and enjoying no particular principles of morality and religion, perceived immediately the object of his hostess, met her more than half-way in her Christian purposes, and accepted her numerous invitations to tea and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... owing to the stupid money system, which these laborers them selves help to keep in force, the results of their combined efforts were either usurped by an unproductive class fortunate enough to be born rich, or those shrewd enough to accumulate money, such as trust managers, bankers, real estate speculators, stock jobbers, and brokers, gamblers, burglars, money loan swindlers, high salaried ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... earing and harvest, he knew nothing of agricultural operations. Of stock he was equally ignorant, and of the comparative goodness or badness of soil he was, of course, no judge. Such a man, in the choice of a farm, was sure to be shaved by the shrewd Yankee proprietor, and my poor friend ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... the poste, "and great scoundrels they are, too! We have been shadowing them for some time, but could never detect them in any overt act until to-day. They belong to a very dangerous gang of prowlers, led by a shrewd German named Waldmann, whose headquarters are in a wretched caboulot of the ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... a rogue to understand a rogue, and the reason of Vivian Standish's complete success in playing off his counterfeit manners, was because he had chosen to display them within a circle where shrewd or suspecting observation never found its way. He saw clearly what a field lay open to him in the drawing-room, and the delightful company of Ottawa's elite. All he had to do was to introduce himself to this "tony" little city fashionably dressed, and with that self-sufficient reserve ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Let us attach them to the veranda by a wisp of straw rope, such as would not have held a person's hat on that blustering day. And with all these protestations of hurry, they proved irresponsible like children. Kelmar himself, shrewd old Russian Jew, with a smirk that seemed just to have concluded a bargain to its satisfaction, intrusted himself and us devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy was patently fallacious; and for that matter a most unsympathetic ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was not a very big brain; for that matter, her feet were tiny. She had the good sense to realise that her brain would last longer than her feet, so she got as much for them as she could while the applause lasted. She drove shrewd bargains with the managers and shrewder ones with Wall Street admirers, who experienced a slim sense of gratification in being able to give her tips on the market, with the assurance that they would see to it ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... depreciate it. In it the spirit of the Old Comedy is still at work. The privileged merry-maker, who, under different names, has appeared on almost all stages, whose part is at one time a display of shrewd wit, and at another of coarse clownishness, has inherited something of the licentious enthusiasm, but without the rights and privileges of the free and unrestrained writers of the Old Comedy. Could there be a stronger proof that the Old Comedy, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... at a few of the remaining incidents of this outwardly calm, yet inwardly eventful life. In an evil hour—though to it we owe the "Illustrations to Blair's Grave"—he fell into the hands of Cromek, the shrewd Yorkshire publisher, and was tenderly entreated, as a dove in the talons of a kite. The famous letter of Cromek to Blake is one of the finest examples on record of long-headed worldliness bearing down upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... with Rahl, to quarter himself upon an army acquaintance, and thus knew nothing of the hardships to which they were subjected. When he heard in the morning how they had fared, he at once sought the commander, and by a shrewd exaggeration of the Merediths' relations with Howe, supplemented by some guineas, secured the banishment of enough officers from the house to restore to the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... so awfully shrewd! Your eye is so everlastingly out for the main chance, and you're still so young that I predict a—a great future for you. I might even suggest that ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... and as full of life and vigour as his master was sapless. Just midway to the threescore years and ten, his bodily powers were at their highest, and in the ten years he had served Louis his mind had ripened so that few men were more astute, more shrewd to see and seize upon advantages, whether for himself or his master. In the King's service few scruples troubled him, the questionable act was Louis', his part ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... and extravagant conceptions of mediaeval heraldry. In the catalogue, the really ingenious piece of workmanship was entitled a 'Life-size model of the dodo'—a name, our readers know, appertaining to a now extinct bird, the very existence of which was at one time denied by shrewd men and good naturalists. Perhaps the following history of this curious creature, from its first to its last appearance before the eyes of men, will not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... not even brilliant scientists frequently exhibit the same lack of logic back in the Twentieth Century? Did not the historians, the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome show themselves to be the same shrewd observers as those of succeeding centuries, the same masters of the logical and ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... there Miss de Compton beheld a display of fox tactics shrewd enough to excite the admiration of the most indifferent—a display of cunning that seemed to be something ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... AND STOUGHTON) is a novel full of shrewd philosophy and excellent talk. Mr. ALEXANDER BLACK sets out to prove nothing, to justify no political or social attitude, but just to draw his fellow-Americans as he sees them going about their war-time ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... and chain corslet, still an Irishman was so ugly a foe, that it was not worth while to fight with him unless he could be robbed afterwards. The Danes, who, like their descendants of Northumbria, the Lowlands, and Ulster, were canny common-sense folk, with a shrewd eye to interest, found, somewhat to their regret, that there were trades even more profitable than robbery and murder. They therefore concentrated themselves round harbors and river mouths, and sent forth ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... mintage of the East was stamped upon his features. He was a man accustomed to sway, if not to lead. His companion was as plainly as eastern product, but his manner was subordinate though his face that, alone of the three, seemed to hold a measure of fearful wonder at the turbulent throng of men, was shrewd enough. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... all with a puzzled look. He resented the insult which Blondel had flung at his friend Baudichon, but he saw all going against them, and no chance of redress; nay, capital was being made out of that which should have been a disadvantage. Worst of all, he was uneasy, fancying—he was very shrewd—that he caught a glimpse, under the Fourth Syndic's manner, of another man: that he detected signs of emotion, a feverishness and imperiousness not quite explained by ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... was buried decently, and Captain Walshawe reigned alone for many years at Wauling. He was too shrewd and too experienced by this time to run violently down the steep hill that leads to ruin. So there was a method in his madness; and after a widowed career of more than forty years, he, too, died at last with some guineas ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... said Agatha. "Yet you stated that you didn't think we would find the lode!" Then she gave him a shrewd glance. "Aren't you a little impatient to get ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... Theos confronted the speaker,—a tall, spare man with a pale, clean-shaven, intellectual face, small, shrewd, speculative eyes, and very straight, neatly parted locks,—a man on whose every lineament was expressed a profound belief in himself, and an equally profound scorn for the opinions of any one who might possibly presume to disagree with him. He smiled condescendingly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... here announce that our hero was under a disguise, and he persuaded Wagner to go with him, and he observed that his companion ate very heartily. He observed another fact. Near the table where he sat with Wagner another party, a shrewd-faced man, had taken a seat, and Jack soon fell to the fact that this shrewd-faced man had young Wagner under surveillance, and when the two young men had nearly completed their repast this party boldly walked ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... Garrison's pay, and when she appeared with a dazzling necklace and a superb new gown at the garrison ball not long after Frost and his shrinking bride left for their honeymoon, people looked at her and then at each other. Nita Terris was sold to "Jack" Frost was the verdict, and her shrewd elder sister was the dealer. Mrs. Frank knew what people were thinking and saying just as well as though they had said it to her, yet smiled sweetness and bliss on every side. Frankly she looked up into the ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... say. As it happened, she believed that no one of the guests had witnessed the scene between herself and Mary, and to try to relate it, even with emendations of her own, would hardly redound to her credit. She was too shrewd not to know that the average person resents an affront against childhood. Then, too, Constance Stevens was making rapid strides toward popularity among the girls of Sanford High School and her cowardly nature ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... the inner door, followed by Mrs Tarleton, and throws herself on her knees by Bentley. Mrs Tarleton, whose knees are stiffer, bends over him and tries to lift him. Mrs Tarleton is a shrewd and motherly old lady who has been pretty in her time, and is still very pleasant and likeable and unaffected. Hypatia is a typical English girl of a sort never called typical: that is, she has an opaque white skin, black ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... trace an excellent illustration of the natural affinity between the fondness for feudalism and the love of law-breaking in Sir WALTER SCOTT. Whatever his head and his natural common sense dictated (and as he was a canny Scot and a shrewd observer, they dictated many wise truths), his heart was always with the men of bow and brand; with dashing robbers, moss troopers, duellists, wild-eagle barons, wild-wolf borderers, and the whole farrago of autocratic scoundrelism. With his soul devoted to dreams of feudalism, his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... [Laughing.] Ha, ha! there is the camp-style, too, A very cut-throat air! How this shrewd fool Makes the punctilio of honour show! Change helmets into coxcombs, swords to baubles, And what a figure is poor chivalry! Thanks ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... no way out of it, old friend. Were it not that he is in charge of the constable, I should have said that your only course was to aid your son to escape; but Knapp is a shrewd fellow as well as an honest one. You cannot possibly get your son away without his assistance, for he is handcuffed to the bed, and Knapp, in so serious a matter as this, would not, I am sure, lend himself to an escape. I have no doubt that with ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... stood awkwardly behind the two men, weary of the subject and waiting restlessly for the slow march to begin again. By the time they had crossed the quadrangle his restlessness had risen to fever. He wondered how his father, whom he knew for a shrewd suspicious man, could be duped by the servile manners of the porter; and the lively southern speech which had entertained him all the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... strengthening in it. It is, of course, the figure of a man and not of a State; it is a man, clean, clean shaved and almost obtrusively strong-jawed, honest, muscular, alert, pushful, chivalrous, self-reliant, non-political except when he breaks into shrewd and penetrating voting—"you can fool all the people some of the time," etc.—and independent—independent—in a world which is therefore certain to give ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... and Rapp in particular, when speaking to me about the journey, could not conceal some marks of discontent on account of the great respect which Bonaparte had shown the clergy, and particularly to M. de Roquelaure, the Archbishop of Malines (or Mechlin). That prelate, who was a shrewd man, and had the reputation of having been in his youth more addicted to the habits of the world than to those of the cloister, had become an ecclesiastical courtier. He went to Antwerp to pay his homage to the First Consul, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the world without ever appealing to aught but their calculations. True, those who know how to make their "pile" are rated as men of ability. But look a little closer. How much of it do they owe to the unselfishness of the simple-hearted? Would they have succeeded had they met only shrewd men of their own sort, having for device: "No money, no service?" Let us be outspoken; it is due to certain people who do not count too rigorously, that the world gets on. The most beautiful acts of service and the hardest tasks have generally little ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... sat at her corner, beside Mary. He didn't talk, but his Wellington mouth moved perpetually in and out, and his small reddish eyes twinkled, twinkled, with a shrewd, secret mirth. You thought every minute he would burst out laughing, and you wondered what you were doing to ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... however, was not merely a keen man of business and successful tradesman. He was, in addition, an idealist and a dreamer of dreams; but so shrewd and level-headed was he, that he kept the two things quite apart. His business was never neglected, and he returned to it all the fresher, inasmuch as in his off times his mind was ardently concerned ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... the genii." "Why, are we not at Grand Cairo?" said Mobarec: "shall we not there find beautiful maidens?" "You are in the right," answered the prince; "but how shall we explore where they are?" "Do not trouble yourself about that," answered Mobarec; "I know a very shrewd old woman, whom I will entrust with the affair, and she ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... Doulah, the Nawab Vazir, who confirmed to him all his hereditary or acquired lands on the plains, at an easy rate; and, going there frequently to hunt, seems to have amused himself with the Raja’s children. The youngest son Samar, a lame but shrewd man, seems in particular to have attracted his notice, and he bestowed on him the title of Nader Shah, by which he is much better known than ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... or "the hotel." As in ancient Etruria, so here, the people assemble after heavy rains to pick up what luck throws in the way. It is said that they often gather gold pieces, square as well as round, bearing by way of inscription "prayers" to the Apostle of Allah. Some of us, however, had a shrewd suspicion that the Tibr, or "pure gold-dust," is still washed from the sands, and cast ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... dropsy, here is a strange fantastical oddity, one of your brethren, who harangues every day in the Pump-room, as if he was hired to give lectures on all subjects whatsoever — I know not what to make of him — Sometimes he makes shrewd remarks; at other times he talks like the greatest simpleton in nature — He has read a great deal; but without method or judgment, and digested nothing. He believes every thing he has read; especially if it has any thing ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... pool which served for the whole district. If by any chance disease broke out, the wearied beasts that met at the watering or drank of the tainted pool carried it far and wide, and plague soon raged from end to end of the country. Even in the days of Henry VIII. shrewd observers noted that the new grazing farms, where the cattle were better fed and kept separate, alone escaped these ravages, and that it was these farms whence came the only meat to be found in the ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... see! Wot ef I get a hundred thousand folks to pay me for tellin' it? But, speakin' o' this young feller, I calkilated to send him to the Turkey Buzzard Hotel;" and he looked at his sister with a shrewd ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... friendly, then," said Pliny with an anticipatory twinkle in his shrewd little gray eyes which gave direct contradiction to his words. "If Abner hain't feelin' jest cheerful them boys'll be wrastlin' all over ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... smart and shrewd, oh, very! When the hard times came, which made so many changes in the lives of the people who lived in the Green Forest and on the Green Meadows, Mr. Skunk was very quick to see that unless he could think of some way to protect himself, it was only a matter of time ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... many times, rubbed his hands, mopped his head, and cursed most things under heaven and some in it, Master Baldassare found himself watching the laundresses on the shore. They were the usual shrill, shrewd, and laughing line—the trade seems to induce high mirth—and as such no bait for the old merchant by ordinary; but just now the sun and breeze together made a bright patch of them, set them at a provoking flutter. Baldassare, prickly with dust, found them like their own cool ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... genial tempered man. He was shrewd and quick-witted, like a native of York, as he was. I received the greatest kindness from him as well as from his family. His house was like a museum. It was full of cabinets, in which were placed ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the whole affair great fun and objected to being caught—at least Ryan's dog objected. The porter in our car caught Hal, but Ryan told him to let the dog go, that he would bring the two back together. This was shrewd in Ryan, for he reasoned that Major Carleton might wait for an officer's dog, but never for one that belonged to only an enlisted man; but really it was the other way, the enlisted men held the brakes. The dogs ran back almost a mile ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... chocolate, cotton and the like. These they trade or sell. When they return to Juchitan, they carry with them a lot of salted and dried fish, shrimps, salt and eggs. Upon these expeditions the whole family accompanies the woman; the traveling is done almost entirely by night. These Zapotec women are shrewd at bargaining. They must be doing a paying business. It was interesting to see the primitive devices for weighing. The scales consisted of two tin pans of equal size and weight hung from a balance beam. The only weight was a stone ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... shrewd blow has been dealt to the British by our abandonment, in agreement with the prospectus, of the Beckmesser Line. All has gone according to our hopes, our longings and our prayers. We ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... favourite became supreme. He was entirely without education, possessed little experience in affairs of state, and had led the life of a commonplace idler and voluptuary until past the age of fifty. Nevertheless he had a shrewd mother-wit, tact in dealing with men, aptitude to take advantage of events. He had directness of purpose, firmness of will, and always knew his own mind. From the beginning of his political career unto its end, he conscientiously and without swerving pursued a single aim. This was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... you give if I get Jesus into your hands?" Of all things this was probably the last they had thought might happen. Their eyes gleam. How much indeed—a good snug sum to get their fingers securely on his person. But they're shrewd bargainers. That's one of their specialties. How much did he want? Poor Judas! He made a bad bargain that day. Thirty pieces of silver! He could easily have gotten a thousand. Judas did love money greedily, and doubtless was a good bargainer too, but anger was in the saddle now, and ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... dissolved in fat; and, but for a crescent of white hair at the back of his head, he was completely bald. He reminded you of Mr Pickwick. He was grotesque, a figure of fun, and yet, strangely enough, not without dignity. His blue eyes, behind large gold-rimmed spectacles, were shrewd and vivacious, and there was a great deal of determination in his face. He was sixty, but his native vitality triumphed over advancing years. Notwithstanding his corpulence his movements were quick, and he walked with a heavy, resolute tread as though he sought to impress ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... flowers. The usual scholar's cap covers his grey hair. The blue-grey eyes are glancing down at his writing. Studies for the marvellously painted hands are among the Louvre drawings. The very Self of the man—the lean, strong, thinking countenance,—the elusive smile, shrewd, ironical, yet kindly, stealing out on his lips,—is alive here by ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... him—he was too thoroughly commonplace. His ways of living were those of a well-to-do man. Although he had nothing beside his pay, and his pension was all that he had to look to in the future, the major always kept two years' pay untouched, and never spent his allowances, like some shrewd old men of business with whom cautious prudence has almost become a mania. He was so little of a gambler that if, when in company, some one was wanted to cut in or to take a bet at ecarte, he usually fixed his eyes on his boots; but though he did not allow himself any extravagances, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... hour before the rest of the Glengarry men could arrive, and much fighting may be done in that time. He must avert attention from Macdonald Dubh, who was waiting to cram LeNoir's insult down his throat. Yankee Jim had not only all the cool courage but also the shrewd, calculating spirit of his race. He was ready to fight, and if need be against odds, but he preferred to fight on as ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... had been foreign secretary under Pitt, and the whigs who had joined Pitt's ministry in 1794, among whom Lords Spencer and Fitzwilliam and above all Windham call for special notice. Windham's powerful and comprehensive speech contained more than one shrewd forecast of the future. For once, Pitt and Fox supported the same measure, and Pitt, dwelling on security as our grand object in the war, specially deprecated any attempt on the part of Great Britain "to settle the affairs of the continent". Fox, in advocating peace, fiercely denounced the war ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... was falsehood, more or less consciously elaborated by the "finance editors," consciously initiated and encouraged by the shrewd business men of the Manderson group, who knew that nothing could better help their plans than this illusion of hero-worship—knew also that no word had come from Manderson in answer to their messages, and that Howard ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... of a bricklayer, and when he passed as a lawyer had to be content with petty suits that no one else would take up. It was said that he became the lover of Madame Rastoil, and it was certainly through her influence that he won his first cases. He was shrewd enough to show no particular political proclivities; so after the Coup d'Etat of 1851, when they were looking out for a mayor, his name was at once thought of. He was elected, and from that time everything prospered with him. As a result ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... some shrewd remarks on the evident attention of the Great Powers to establish an interest among the little sovereignties of Germany. Thus, Russia has married "her eldest daughter to an adopted Bavarian. The Cesarowitch is married to a princess of Darmstadt," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of no mean sagacity, quite up to the average standard of Scottish common sense, not a low one; and, though incapable of understanding any manner of lofty thought or passion, is a shrewd measurer of weaknesses, and not without a spark or two of kindly feeling. See first his sketch of his master's character to Mr. Hammorgaw, beginning: "He's no a'thegither sae void o' sense, neither"; and then the close of the dialogue: "But the lad's ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... to convince him. Rather it was an indefinable murmur that rose from her decks, an aura of sound. Sight gave him no corroboration, although he went aloft halfway to the main crosstrees with the shrewd idea that by so doing he would secure a downward sight that must surely reveal a gleam in the skylight if any of her official crew were in ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... affected very shrewd ideas about the surprise push that was coming off; but since they only nodded their heads wisely and refused to be drawn, we suspected that they knew no more about it than we did. They would point, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... A faint smile broke over the girl's shrewd face. "Why, I wouldn't care what you did or said, Alfred," she cried. "He's trying to rob me, and I'd have a right to ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... captain-general was aroused. He consulted his legal adviser and factotum, a shrewd, meddlesome Escribano or notary, who rejoiced in an opportunity of perplexing the old potentate of the Alhambra, and involving him in a maze of legal subtilities. He advised the captain-general to insist upon the right of examining every convoy passing through the gates of his city, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... into his face, which had an honest interest and kindliness in it, and his heart warmed with a faint hope. If this young man had been shrewd enough to guess at his unhappy secret, might he not be willing to intercede with the Doctor for him? He ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... to?" rejoined his wife, with a wink of shrewd humor at the rest. "I say, Frank, are you goin' to look for him too? Mavrone, but that's sinsible! Why, thin, you snakin' ould rogue, is that the way wid you? Throth I have often hard it said, that 'one fool makes many;' but sure enough, 'an ould fools worse nor any.' Come in here ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... cat over a bowl of cream, England's Majesty sits lapping all this up. But, when he has done, her commentary is shrewd ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... evidence, there is the testimony of Mr. Bell that, at Fulton's request, he sent him information, plans, &c., of Mr. Miller's first experiments. The long and the short of the story is clearly this:—Mr. Fulton was a shrewd and clever engineer. He came to England, copied the steam-engine which Symington had combined—one can hardly say invented—and then returned to his own country, and applied it successfully, for which the Republic ought to be thankful to him, and to honour his name; but, for ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... would then be a privilege only to speak to her. This was, after all, not so extravagant a fancy as it might appear, for romance, the mother of chivalry and many graces, still finds shelter in the hearts of such men as him from the wide spaces of the newer lands. Shrewd as they are, and practical, they see visions now and then, and, what is more, prove them to be realities with ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... She was too shrewd to deny it outright, for in that case she, the daughter of the old man at the Tore Peak farm, would have been going with the tourists solely to ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... long before five!" the Superintendent smiled, though his shrewd grey eyes were coldly critical. It was most unlikely that she was the Lady of Peacock Alley; yet all things are possible where a woman is concerned, as he knew from experience. "About what time was it when the cab stopped before the ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... could stand it no longer, but went off into a scream of laughter, which even the surprised and offended looks of the ignorant and simple-minded, but shrewd, Yankee could not check. So offended was he, indeed, that no entreaties or explanations were sufficient to mollify him, and the story was abruptly broken off. It was not for two or three days that the boys' explanation ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... and unaccompanied by Rusty Snow this time, Jarvis clambered up the steps to wave to the old Kentuckian. As the major turned away, he stroked his snowy mustache with a shrewd twinkle in his blue ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... that's something to be proud of," lauded Elfreda Briggs, favoring Hippy with an amused smile. The stout young man's remarks were quite in accord with her own distinct sense of humor. Hitherto she had listened without comment, absorbing all she heard and mentally appraising it in her shrewd fashion. She had chosen to break into the conversation at that moment because of an idea that was slowly taking shape in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... reported in a recent speech: "It is not an ambitious destiny for so great a country as ours to manufacture only what we can consume, or produce only what we can eat." In face of this utterance of so shrewd and able a public man, even the extreme character of the recent tariff legislation seems but a sign of the coming change, and brings to mind that famous Continental System, of which our own is the analogue, to support which Napoleon added legion to legion and enterprise to enterprise, till the ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... New Rochelle, New York, and removed it to his garden, where it increased apace. But not even for a gift could he induce a neighbor to relieve him of the superfluous bushes, so little esteemed were blackberries in his day. However, a shrewd lawyer named Lawton at length took hold of it, exhibited the fruit, advertised it cleverly, and succeeded in pocketing a snug little fortune from the sale of the prolific plants. Another fine variety of the common wild blackberry, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... without his family. Theobald wanted to be rid of his son, it is true, in so far as he wished him to be no nearer at any rate than the Antipodes; but he had no idea of entirely breaking with him. He knew his son well enough to have a pretty shrewd idea that this was what Ernest would wish himself, and perhaps as much for this reason as for any other he was determined to keep up the connection, provided it did not involve Ernest's coming to Battersby ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... and moor. But it is not so with their sons. Their business habits are learnt in the counting-house; a good school, doubtless, as far as it goes: but one which will expand none but the lowest intellectual faculties; which will make them accurate accountants, shrewd computers and competitors, but never the originators of daring schemes, men able and willing to go forth to replenish the earth and subdue it. And in the hours of relaxation, how much of their time is thrown away, for want ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... out of condition: it is suffering from moral and intellectual "trench-feet." Heavy drafts have introduced a large and untempered element into our composition. Many of the subalterns are obviously "new-jined"—as the shrewd old lady of Ayr once observed of the rubicund gentleman at the temperance meeting. Their men hardly know them or one another by sight. The regiment must be moulded anew, and its lustre restored by ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... that trap and then missing his man? I shouldn't have done that. You wouldn't have done it. In plain words there's some dope coming between Mark and his work, and I should like to hear what you think of him, you being an independent witness and a pretty shrewd cuss. You've had a chance to study his make-up, so tell me what you think. I'm tired of fooling around ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... stocks of tinned goods are in reserve—are as cheap as water and fuel. Our unsullied appetites demand few condiments. Why olives, when if need be—and the need has not yet manifested itself—as shrewd a relish and as cleansing a flavour is to be obtained from the pale yellow flowers of the male papaw, steeped in brine—a decoration and a zest combined? Our mango chutney etherealises our occasional salted goat-mutton—and ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... and steady perseverance were the means by which he achieved his greatness. Nature endowed him with genius, and his sound sense enabled him to employ the precious gift as a blessing. He was prudent and shrewd, like the men amongst whom he was born; the pocket-book which accompanied him on his Italian tour containing mingled notes on art, records of daily expenses, and the current prices of marble. His tastes were simple, and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... in my new acquaintance. He was communicative, shrewd, and peculiar; and though apt to express himself quaintly, it was always with the pith of one who had seen a great deal of at least one portion of his fellow-creatures. The conversation, under such circumstances, did not flag; on the contrary, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... practical, hard common sense of New England and the sympathetic, poetic temperament of the South was in this young New England farmer—the genial, beauty-loving nature of his Southern father, the rigid honesty, the strong convictions, the shrewd sense of his Northern mother. Quiet and reserved in general, he was to those who knew him well, kind-hearted, broad-minded, fun-loving. He not only took an active interest in the affairs of the little mountain community, but his mind and heart went ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... It is true the doctor is an officer of the Legion of honor, and was formerly surgeon to the ex-emperor; but, nevertheless, he would get the worst of it. Moreover, you would have due warning in case of adoption—but how about marriage? Old Minoret is shrewd enough to go to Paris and marry her after a year's domicile, and give her a million by the marriage contract. The only thing, therefore, that really puts your property in danger is your uncle's marriage ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... find the girl, and you know it. And I tell you what, Mr. Losely, Colonel Morley, who is a very shrewd man, does not ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were altogether too shrewd and full of tact to approach their object directly. They adopted the artifice of arousing and studiously cultivating another sentiment of equal strength, which should spring up side by side with their ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... into the water many times, rubbed his hands, mopped his head, and cursed most things under heaven and some in it, Master Baldassare found himself watching the laundresses on the shore. They were the usual shrill, shrewd, and laughing line—the trade seems to induce high mirth—and as such no bait for the old merchant by ordinary; but just now the sun and breeze together made a bright patch of them, set them at a provoking flutter. Baldassare, prickly ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... and absorbed in his own feelings, he yet saw plainly that his advent was disturbing to these men. They looked alarmed, exchanged glances, and then quickly turned to him. One of them, a tall, rugged man with sharp face and shrewd eyes and white hair, got ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... however, by our people. It is difficult to say just where necessity ends and luxury begins. But each year, yes every month, new things are brought out, and people begin to buy them, because the traders and the people who sell are shrewd and know how to cultivate taste and the desire for ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... modest, unaffected, colloquial: a sincere friend, a natural human being, a genial comrade, one eminently calculated to make a woman happy. You, on the other hand, are the most charming woman I have ever met. Your conversation is wonderful. I have sat here almost in silence, listening to your shrewd and penetrating account of my character, my motives, if I may say so, my talents. Never has such justice been done me: never have I experienced such perfect sympathy. Will you—I hardly know how to put this—will ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... the career he had embraced, and which he beheld obscurely before him. The Minister was a great friend of his family. A mountaineer of the Cevennes, brought up on chestnuts, his dazzled eyes blinked at the flower-bedecked tables of Paris. He was too shrewd and too wily not to retain his advantage over the old aristocracy, which welcomed him to its bosom: the advantage of harsh caprices and arrogant refusals. Ligny knew him, and expected no favours at his hands. In this respect he was more perspicacious than his mother, who credited herself ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... of these reveries. He had gone out to visit some traps which he had set in a place where he had noticed the tracks of wild cats. While going along through a dense forest with his gun strapped on his back he got so lost in thought that his naturally shrewd instincts as a hunter, sharpened by practice, seemed to have deserted him, and he nearly stumbled over a huge, old she bear and a couple of young cubs. With a growl of rage at being thus disturbed the fierce brute rushed at him, and quickly broke ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... but out of the bag: this fatal hint at "some secret mission" made that plain. A little carelessness, some more shrewd probing into his affairs, and the jig would be up, indeed. This was the one way that their enemies in Hunston could interfere with him—insisting on knowing why he had come there; and Coligny Smith had had the bull luck, as Peter put ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... carefully, not only Eyton, but Ethelwynn and yourself. I was often near you when you least suspected my presence. But that crafty old scoundrel was possessed of the ingenuity of Satan himself, combined with all the shrewd qualities that go to make a good detective; hence in every movement, every wile, and every action he was careful to cover himself, so that he could establish an alibi on every point. For that reason the work was extremely difficult. He was a veritable ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... became stoutness; but what you most saw when you saw him was his face of consummate refinement: very regular, with eyes always glassed by gold-rimmed spectacles, a straight, short, most sensitive nose, and a beautiful mouth with the sweetest smile mouth ever wore, and that was as wise and shrewd as it was sweet. In a time when every other man was more or less bearded he was clean shaven, and of a delightful freshness of coloring which his thick sunny hair, clustering upon his head in close rings, admirably set ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of course, for my death," said the King quietly. "If only, you were twenty years younger than I am, it would be better." He fixed the General with shrewd eyes. "What do those asses of doctors ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... on two pieces of lawyer-cane each bent to form the half of an irregular ellipse. This net ("moorgaroo") is manipulated by two men working in concert, principally for the capture of eels. They do not wait for the eel to come to them, but by shrewd scrutiny discover its whereabouts under the bank of the creek or among the weeds and roots. Then one silent man holds the net widespread, or adroitly dodges it into intercepting positions, while the other beats the luckless fish in its direction with more or less fluster. The persistency with which ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economical old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea-table, by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth—an ingenious expedient, which is still kept ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... the court house Tish's lips were moving, and I knew she was rehearsing what she meant to say. I think that even then her shrewd and active mind had some foreboding of what was to come, for she called back unexpectedly ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... discourse Terry had endured the frank appraisal of the shrewd black eyes. He experienced a pleasant reaction when the Major again extended his ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... sitting in a deck chair, on a scrap of ragged ground forming the angle between the row of canvas stables and the great tent, a cob pipe in his humorous mouth, a thick half litre glass of beer with a handle to it on the earth beside him, and I hear his shrewd talk of far-away and mysterious lands. His pretty French wife, who knows no English, charmingly dishevelled, uncorseted, free, in a dubious peignoir trimmed with artificial lace—she who moulded in mirific tights, sea-green with ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... followed the janitor into the room was neither the one nor the other, but a weazened white-faced Londoner, with a shrewd eye and the false, cringing smile of a small shopkeeper. He explained in the strident vernacular of the Cockney that his name was Henry Hobbs—"Enery Obbs" was his own version of it—and he kept a pawnbroker's shop ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... appeared with a dazzling necklace and a superb new gown at the garrison ball not long after Frost and his shrinking bride left for their honeymoon, people looked at her and then at each other. Nita Terris was sold to "Jack" Frost was the verdict, and her shrewd elder sister was the dealer. Mrs. Frank knew what people were thinking and saying just as well as though they had said it to her, yet smiled sweetness and bliss on every side. Frankly she looked up into the ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... from his hands, in which he had hidden it, and behold! all alone as Perseus had supposed himself to be, there was a stranger in the solitary place. It was a brisk, intelligent and remarkably shrewd-looking young man, with a cloak over his shoulders, an odd sort of cap on his head, a strangely twisted staff in his hand and a short and very crooked sword hanging by his side. He was exceedingly light and active in his figure, like ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... the simplest thing in the world—and so it is if you happen to look in the right place! and when you do so it's a hundred to one that you think your own cleverness and knowledge guided you to it! Chance? Oh dear, no! From that time forth your reputation is made as "a shrewd fellow who knows a thing or two"; and if your find was made in a mine, you are an "expert" at once, and can command a price for your report on other mines commensurate with the ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Cappy Ricks, was a Yankee; when he did business he liked to chaffer; and, after all—he thought—there was a certain shrewd philosophy in what his foxy father-in-law had said. At least Cappy had supplied him with ammunition for argument; so he went back to Hudner's office and argued and pleaded and ridiculed, but all to no avail. He returned to ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... gallant stand, although blood flowed in a swift red stream from a wound that the monster had made in Beowulf's neck with its venomous fangs, and ran down his corselet. A stroke which left the Firedrake unharmed shivered the sword that had seen many fights, but Wiglaf smote a shrewd blow ere his lord could be destroyed, and Beowulf swiftly drew his broad knife and, with an effort so great that all the life that was left in him seemed to go with it, he ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... of his absorbing reverie, Teddy suddenly paused and looked around him. He was lost. Shrewd enough to understand that to attempt to extricate himself would only lead into a greater entanglement, from which it might not be possible to escape at all, he wisely concluded to remain where he was until daylight. Gathering a few twigs and leaves, ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Are these men not necessary to society? Do they not create occasion and opportunity for labor? Are not their active and powerful brains at the back of all progress? There may be a thousand men idling, and poorly fed and clothed, in a neighborhood: along comes one of these shrewd adventurers; he sees an opportunity to utilize the bark of the trees and the ox-hides of the farmers' cattle, and he starts a tannery. He may accumulate more money than the thousand men he sets to work; but has he not done more? Is ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... that I walked over with from the cross-roads," said Carraway. "He struck me as a shrewd man of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the creation of a navy. An idea was now carried into effect which many suppose to have sprung from the French Revolution; for the army was made more effective by opening its high grades to the commons.[A] A reform was also made in taxation, and shrewd measures were taken to spread commerce and industry by calling the nobility ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... telling every one what had happened to Jimmy Skunk and Reddy Fox, he found a comfortable perch in an old apple-tree and was strangely silent. The fact is, Sammy Jay was doing some hard thinking. He had suddenly begun to wonder. It had popped into that shrewd little head of his that it was very strange how suddenly Peter ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... was a shrewd, kindly, gray-haired old Yankee, cherishing a true American contempt for all peoples from Asia or the south of Europe. He was conversational when we first started, but his evident desire to do the honors of Honolulu handsomely was chilled by a suggestion from one of the saints that, when ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... home induced him to stay. Washington especially wrote that he must not think of retiring, and prophesied that he would soon be "found at the head of the diplomatic corps, be the government administered by whomsoever the people may choose." He remained, therefore, at the Hague, a shrewd and close observer of the exciting events occurring around him, industriously pursuing an extensive course of study and reading, making useful acquaintances, acquiring familiarity with foreign languages, with the usages of diplomacy and the habits of distinguished society. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... and careworn, and her laugh had the mild gayety of champagne not properly corked. These things were apparent even to Mr. Bilkins, who was not a shrewd observer. ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... here I woo the Muse with no control, And here my books—my life—absorb me whole. Here too I visit, or to smile, or weep, The winding theatre's majestic sweep; The grave or gay colloquial scene recruits My spirits spent in Learning's long pursuits. 30 Whether some Senior shrewd, or spendthrift heir, Wooer, or soldier, now unarm'd, be there, Or some coif'd brooder o'er a ten years' cause Thunder the Norman gibb'rish of the laws. The lacquey, there, oft dupes the wary sire, And, artful, speeds th'enamour'd son's desire. There, virgins oft, unconscious what they prove, ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... Berg. This knight belonged indeed to a race said to have been descended from an archbishop of Cologne, but his disposition was evil, and his covetousness and avarice made him wish to increase what earthly possessions he had. But the lord of Rheinfels was shrewd enough and hesitated before entrusting his pretty daughter and her large dowry to such a man. As already remarked this entirely agreed with the maiden's desire. She was really deeply in love with the chivalrous ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... they took to their work, raising questions and objections in a most business-like manner, but without the slightest appearance of captiousness or a desire to make difficulties. Their interpreter, Moriama, is a very good Dutch scholar, and, of course, being a remarkably shrewd gentleman withal, has a leading part in the proceedings; but all seem to ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... as she rose, I realized that she was a prim little personage, but of such a decided nature that she might have been stigmatized by the term stubborn. I had seen such women before; of a certain soft, outward effect, apparently pliable and amenable, but in reality, deep, shrewd and clever. ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... But of clue there was none. Naturally the station agent had come safely out of his trance, but with that absence of memory of what had happened characteristic of the hypnotized. The trail disappeared in the sands of the Miembres road. Shrewd old Harvey Whitehill was at his ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... center of the circle and the limit of the circumscribed area until in theory, at least, the article is found. Should he fail, he is never at a loss for excuses, but the specialists in this line are generally very shrewd guessers well versed in ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... mingling of fact, visible to his shrewd eye, and fiction drawn from ancient fancy, Major Harris leads us on. But Aden is not yet exhausted of wonders—an island in its bay, Seerah, (the fortified black isle,) is pronounced to have been the refuge of Cain on the murder of Abel; and its volcanic and barren ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... beast that I made my attack. The decks were slippery with the horrid slime of them. The crew surged about in their battling, and, moreover, constantly offered themselves as a rampart before me by reason of Tob, the captain's threats. But I gave a few shrewd progues with the lance to show that I did not choose my will to be overridden, and presently was given room ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... rest, they mounted and again took up the trail, soon leaving behind their halting-place, which the boys named Lake Christopher, much to the vain little darky's chagrin. He had a shrewd suspicion that he would not hear the last of his fright ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... introduce into one of her books (in satire her hand was heavy) a young poet who was always talking about it. I couldn't quite understand her irritation on this score, for she had nothing at stake in the matter. She had a shrewd perception that form, in prose at least, never recommended any one to the public we were condemned to address, and therefore she lost nothing (putting her private humiliation aside) by not having any. She made no pretence of producing works of art, but had comfortable ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... ask "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all. Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: —Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with. God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20 One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... hastily, this time meeting Craig's eye frankly. "No. I wish I had. Why—the fact is, I don't know who did—no one seems to know, yet, evidently. But," he added, leaning forward and speaking rapidly, "I think I could give a shrewd guess." ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... There were hundreds of shrewd capitalists in American cities in 1876, looking with sharp eyes in all directions for business chances; but not one of them came to Bell with an offer to buy his patent. Not one came running for a State contract. And neither did any legislature, or city council, come forward ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... Caroline was sprightly rather than witty, affectionate, but ill educated; but while her laugh was giddy, her words promised genuine feeling. When, in response to her companion's shrewd questioning, the girl spoke with the heartfelt effusiveness of which the lower classes are lavish, not guarding it with reticence like people of the world, the Black Gentleman's face brightened, and seemed to renew its youth. His countenance by degrees lost the sadness ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... I had perhaps mistaken the word, and imagined it to be Corps, from its similarity of sound to the real one. For an accurate and shrewd unknown gentleman, to whom I am indebted for some remarks on my work, observes on this passage—'Q. if not on the word Fort? A vociferous French preacher said of Bourdaloue, "Il preche fort bien, et moi bien ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... boats come out?" asked Mart, who had resolved to bother no more about the Pirate Shark, as he had a shrewd notion that Jerry was not quite right in the head. ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... The shrewd old glover looked closer into the matter. "You will drive the poor bonnet maker mad," he whispered to Henry, "and set him a-ringing his clapper as if he were a town bell on a rejoicing day, when for order and decency it were better he ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... may be good logic, but they make poor rhetoric for those who need them most. Men are wonderfully imitative in killing themselves. Once the practice is come in vogue, it becomes a rage, an epidemic. Atheism and Materialism form the best nidus for the contagion of suicide. It is a shrewd remark of Madame de Stael: "Though there are crimes of a darker hue than suicide, yet there is none other by which man seems so entirely to renounce the protection ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... happen to the greatest expert at any stage of the game. In a recent competition George Duncan took eleven shots over a hole which eighteen-handicap men generally do in five. No! Back horses or go down to Throgmorton Street and try to take it away from the Rothschilds, and I will applaud you as a shrewd and cautious financier. But to bet at golf is ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... would go to his club. They are serious bourgeois, well along in the fifties, just a trifle ridiculous, perhaps on account of their allure and their attire. But should one grow to know them better he would soon realise that most of them are shrewd, hard-working business men, each burdened with an anxiety or a sorrow which ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... arrived steamer, in boats, offering furs, carved horn implements, moccasins, walrus-teeth, and the like for sale. These wares are of the rudest type, and of no possible use except as mementos of the traveller's visit to these far northern latitudes. This people are very shrewd in matters of trade, and are not without plenty of low cunning hidden behind their brown, withered, expressionless faces. They are small in stature, being generally under five feet in height, with prominent cheek bones, snub noses, oblique Mongolian ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... proved to be a young German with a round, ruddy face, which was so innocent of guile as to be out of harmony with the shrewd, piercing black eyes looking out of it. The Englishman eyed him inquisitively, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... accomplishments. She had no accomplished companions to put her to shame for her deficiencies. She was fond of a book, she could write an unformed, legible hand, and add up a simple sum. The doctor, not a bad judge, called her a shrewd, reasonable little lass. She had mother-wit, a warm heart, and a nice face, as sweet and fresh as a bunch of roses with the dew on them, and he did not see what she wanted with talking French and playing the piano; if his wife would believe ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... retreats where it is quite conventional, and even degage, for the most Perfect Gentleman to wait in what still remains to him, while an obliging fellow creature swiftly presses his trousers; or, lacking this convenient retreat, there are shrewd inventions that crease while we sleep. Hangers, simulating our own breadth of shoulders, wear our coats and preserve their shape. Wooden feet, simulating our own honest trotters, wear our shoes and keep them from wrinkling. No valet could do more. And as for laying out our clothes, ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... Lacrima Christi, supernaculum!" And, above all, the most holy Abbey of Thelema, over the gate of which was written the words that are never far from the hearts of wise Utopian Christians, the profound words, the philosophical words, the most shrewd Cabalistic words, and the words that "lovers" alone can understand—"Fay que ce Vouldray!" ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... with some such enterprise and perseverance as Columbus discovered when he entered on the unknown waste of the Atlantic. His opinions meet with our unqualified approbation, being sound, American, and discriminating. We fancy these Europeans will begin to think in time that Jonathan has some pretty shrewd notions concerning themselves, the critturs!' This was extracted from the People's Advocate, a journal edited with great ability, by Peleg Pond, esquire, a thorough-going republican, and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... said, "you have the name of being a very hard-headed and shrewd business man. You come here offering my husband's honour and your banking account. I could not possibly accept these things from a person to whom I can make no return. If you will let me know the exact amount of my husband's ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I take it," resumed Colonel North, bending a shrewd yet kindly glance on the recruits, "that we should already know of your conduct last night. Major Davis wired me concerning it from Salida last night. Men, this is a very good start, or, rather, a second one, for your record, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... did this himself, tearing up a stake, and in almost the twinkling of an eye making a big hole, through which the four red foxes shot like lightning. The last seen of them, the shrewd little animals were flying away into the woods that as yet had not felt the scorching breath of ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... he was peasant-skulled For their tricks; and hence The traitors' shrewd schemings were all annulled By his bit of sense. He knew but one thing;—what his people thought them, And therefore in danger he freedom brought them. The whole was his vision, He would no scission; His words were but few, and of these the ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... peer, that mighty man of muscle, Is on his legs, what slender pegs! "ye noble Earl" of Russell; Thus might he speak, did not of speech his shrewd reserve the folly see, And thus unfold the subtle plan of ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... life had been spent in one long exercise of deference and self-effacement. The dauphin, on the other hand, with a more regular face than his father, had none of that quick play of feature when excited, or that kingly serenity when composed, which had made a shrewd observer say that Louis, if he were not the greatest monarch that ever lived, was at least the best fitted ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... smiled, and with harmless unconstraint chatted yet a long time with the shrewd and versatile ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Rogojin, she possessed—so he had heard—not only money, but pearls, diamonds, shawls, and furniture, and consequently she could not be considered a bad match. In brief, it seemed to the doctor that the prince's choice, far from being a sign of foolishness, denoted, on the contrary, a shrewd, calculating, and practical mind. Lebedeff had been much struck by this point of view, and he terminated his confession by assuring the prince that he was ready, if need be, to shed his very ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... old hall hung round with pikes and with bows, With old bucklers and corslets that had borne many shrewd blows. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to lose his health and spirits, and there crept through his shrewd gravity and kindliness a petulance and dejection, Medallion was the only person who had an inspiriting effect upon him. The Little Chemist had decided that the change in him was due to bad circulation and failing powers: which ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... been smoking and watching me with a shrewd smile hovering about his mouth, began to chuckle audibly. He kept it up so long that it attracted the ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... side of a wood, in a country a long way off, ran a fine stream of water; and upon the stream there stood a mill. The miller's house was close by, and the miller, you must know, had a very beautiful daughter. She was, moreover, very shrewd and clever; and the miller was so proud of her, that he one day told the king of the land, who used to come and hunt in the wood, that his daughter could spin gold out of straw. Now this king was very fond of money; ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... value upon the glory of her house than upon the glory of the Christian arms. This was the occasion for the good wife Dona Sancha to show her courage and loyalty, which stand out in striking contrast to the treacherous acts of her jealous aunt. It was Shakespeare who said: "These women are shrewd tempters with their tongues;" and as the alcayde had been won over at the time of Gonzalez's first captivity, so now again Dona Sancha put her nimble wits to work and devised another plan for his release. In ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... time we saw the wretched fellow he was being led away in irons to prison. We have since heard that he continues in his downward career, having served out his time in prison, and will undoubtedly end his life in a felon's cell unless he is shrewd enough to escape his just deserts. Having lost all desire to do right, to be noble, pure, and good, all efforts to reform and restore him to the path of rectitude were fruitless. It was only the fear of impending death that caused him to pause for a few days in his criminal ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... young Wesleyan minister who had been ordained three years previously, became a more or less constant visitor at the mission. He was in charge of a station about thirty miles distant. A tall, spare man, with dark eyes and hair, he had the reputation of being extremely shrewd. Belonging to the more modern school, the fundamental axiom did not weigh heavily upon him; in fact it was hardly a burthen at all, but rather a cloak that could be donned or ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... disposition, he became what he called "a tradesman by force of circumstance"—and not a bad tradesman, either. He had done all this and more. Unlike most self-made men who remain yoked like oxen to their sordid affairs (in harness, they aptly call it) he had been shrewd enough to retire from business in the heyday of his age, on a relatively modest competence of fifteen million dollars a year. He was spending his time at present in the gratification of personal whims, and leaving the remaining millions to be picked up by whoever cared to take the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... been effected by the very Company which had been instrumental in getting them sent on what they now stigmatized as a fool's errand. They felt as if they had been duped and made tools of, by a set of shrewd men of traffic, who had employed them to crack the nut, while they carried off the kernel. In a word, M'Dougal found himself so ungraciously received by his countrymen on board of the ship, that he was glad to cut short his visit, and return to shore. He was busy at the fort, making ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... of the Dalesmen had, indeed, a shrewd suspicion. Tupper looked guilty; Jem Burton muttered, "I knoo hoo 'twould be"; while as for Long Kirby, he vanished entirely, not to reappear till three ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... and was eventually chased out of Bohemia to make room for John. Now John was heavily handicapped and did little to remove his disabilities, in fact he rather aggravated them. He was only fourteen when he found himself a King and a married man. His father, a shrewd and enterprising monarch, died before John had really become acquainted with his capital, and so there was no unbiassed adviser to whom the young ruler could turn. John did not live on the best ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... london last Friday. He is entertained to-day at Hampton Court by the Duke of Grafton.(1087) Don't you believe it was to settle the binding the scarlet thread in the window, when the French shall come in unto the land to possess it? I don't at all wonder at any shrewd observations the Marshal has made on our situation. The bringing him here at all—the sending him away now—in short, the whole series of our conduct convinces me that, we shall soon see as silent a change as that ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... proceeded to set forth the reasons for such a message, as he had conceived them within his shrewd mind. First, it seemed that the pestilence had visited Gorumna in the absence of its mistress, and that the Dark Master had caught a score of the O'Malleys who had been wrecked in Bertraghboy Bay, promptly hanging them all. Between the plague and the ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... rattling through the yards. Another page crackled. Ha! Here was that unknown gentleman-thief again, up to his old tricks. It is remarkable how difficult it is to catch a thief who has good looks and shrewd brains. I had already written him down as a quasi-swell. For months the police had been finding clues, but they had never laid eyes on the rascal. The famous Haggerty of the New York detective force,—a man whom not a dozen New York policemen knew by sight and no criminals ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... to cherish a feeling of superb disgust for shrewd dealers who were carried along on the wings of fashion. He took a dislike to anything that was famous; for fame smelled of and tasted to him like money. He shuddered at the mere thought of the chaos that arises from opinions and judgments; the disputes as to the merits of different ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... When the art of printing was first introduced into England, and carried on in Westminster Abbey, a shrewd churchman is said to have observed to the Abbot of Westminster, "If you don't take care to destroy that machine, it will very soon destroy your trade." He saw at a single glance of the press, the downfal of priestly dominion in the general diffusion of knowledge that would be occasioned by ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... than Truesdale. His hair was beginning to retreat before his advancing forehead, and about his eyes were coming to appear those lines proper to the man who is in business for himself and pretty largely absorbed in it. He had a pair of shrewd but kindly brown eyes and a straightforward and serious manner. He held his hand more or less on the pulsing actualities of the town, and at one time or another he took Truesdale to most of his clubs—the Crepuscular, the Consolation, the Simplicity, the Universe. At most of these they dined ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... well-furnished edifice, with windows of stained glass. Within its walls, there worship on the Sabbath, scores of dusky Presbyterian Christians. The pastor, the Rev. Charles Crawford, in whose veins there flows the mingled blood of the shrewd Scotch fur trader and the savage Sioux, lives in that comfortable farm house a few rods distant. He has a pastorate that many a white minister might covet. Miles to the west, still stands in its grassy cove on the ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... almost be called a treatise on Friendship, so full is it of advice about the sort of person a young man should consort with, and the sort of person he should avoid. It is full of shrewd, and prudent, and wise, sometimes almost worldly-wise, counsel. It is caustic in its satire about false friends, and about the way in which friendships are broken. "The rich hath many friends," with ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... genius, but one of the most benevolent, as well as wittiest of men. He stuttered, but far from this lessening the charm of his conversation, Miss Edgeworth used to say that the hesitation and slowness with which his words came forth added to the effect of his humour and shrewd good sense. Dr. Darwin's sudden death, 17th April 1802, whilst he was writing to Mr. Edgeworth, was a great sorrow to ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the barber plays an important part. In the Arabian tales he is generally a shrewd, meddling, inquisitive fellow. In Spain and Italy the barber is often the one brilliant man in his town; his shop is the place where gossip circulates, and where many a pretty intrigue ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... hermitage. At the door stood Bob Binkley, his old friend and companion of the days before he had renounced the world—Bob, himself, arrayed like the orchids of the greenhouse in the summer man's polychromatic garb—Bob, the millionaire, with his fat, firm, smooth, shrewd face, his diamond rings, sparkling fob-chain, and pleated bosom. He was two years older than the hermit, and looked ...
— Options • O. Henry
... answer their call as speedily as possible. But few words of consultation were required for the subject, and in a short time I had selected the man for the preliminary investigation, and requested his presence in my office. John Manning was the operative chosen for this task, an intelligent, shrewd and trusty young man of about thirty years of age, who had been in my employ for a long time. Well educated, of good address, and with a quiet, gentlemanly air about him that induced a favorable opinion at a glance. Frequently, prior to this, occasions had presented ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Oakley's condemnation. Returning weary and dispirited from a final attempt to interest an influential personage in his behalf, I was startled by a smart tap upon the shoulder, and looking round, beheld the shrewd, good-humoured countenance of Mr Anthony Scrivington, a worthy man and excellent lawyer, who had long had entire charge of my temporal affairs. Upon this occasion, however, I felt small gratification at sight ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... a black goat-skin, the pipe of honour placed beside him. A grave, quiet man, with kind eyes, but already far on in the winter of life. Opposite him sat his host, the owner of the tent and father of the girls. Shrewd-eyed, keen-faced, quietly he did his bargaining. Earlier in the day the elder girl had laid the plan before him: herself for Melun, the necklace-seller of Assouan, who owned neither camels nor goats, but would pay well in silver straight from the hands ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... speedily create such a revulsion of public opinion as might bring about another rebellion. Hyde, staunch Royalist as he is, would never suffer the King to make so grievous an error; nor do I think for a moment that Charles, who is shrewd and politic, and above all things a lover of ease and quiet, would think of bringing such a nest of ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... at a table upon which was a lamp and various papers. Seen in the light he was a fine-looking, soldierly man of about forty years, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a bronzed face, shrewd, stern, strong, yet not wanting in kindliness. He scanned hastily over some papers, fussed with them, and finally put them in envelopes. Without looking up he pushed a cigar-case toward Duane, and upon Duane's refusal to smoke he took a cigar, rose to light it ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... Linden came in, and looked up at this unusual apparition from under an extraordinary hat which drooped on all sides of his face, as if like its wearer it had long given up all idea of keeping up appearances. The face itself was strong, shrewd, apt. And so Mr. Skip looked at Mr. Linden. Cindy on her part, did nothing but wring the dish cloth and shake it out again, entirely oblivious of the greeting with which Mr. Linden favoured both parties; and she listened to the words ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... though I had no idea you shared the knowledge. Zeally's cleverness struck me as a trifle too—ah—phenomenal for belief. I scented some low intrigue; and Polly's dismissal may indicate my pretty shrewd guess at ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ever, but whether by accident or design she gave no chance for Gifford to get in a private word. With the knowledge of what he had seen on the previous afternoon and of the change in her attitude he was too shrewd to show any anxiety for a confidential talk. He watched her closely when he could do so unobserved, but her face gave no sign of trouble or embarrassment. He wondered if there could after all be anything in his idea of persecution, and the more curious he became the ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... degree of good humor and cordiality that surprised and astounded our agent, Val, to tell the truth, felt rather queer; for, on comparing M'Loughlin's nonchalance with the significant good humor of the new comers, he was too shrewd not to feel that there was a bit of mystery somewhere, but in what quarter he could not ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... bordering on the country of the negroes of Jalof. Such was the scanty information of a positive kind which the Prince had to guide his endeavors. Then there were the suggestions and the inducements which to a willing mind were to be found in the shrewd conjectures of learned men, the fables of chivalry, and, perhaps, in the confused records of forgotten knowledge once possessed by Arabic geographers. The story of Prister John, which had spread over Europe since ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... most intelligent natives of the country, whom he had met with on Mount Lebanon. From morning until night, for several weeks, they were together, and hours were spent by them, almost every day, in discussing religious subjects, and upon a mind so candid, so shrewd, so powerful in its conceptions, and so comprehensive in its surveys, as that of Asaad, an impression favorable to protestant christianity could not ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... skirt. Dorinda had been undressed and rocked to sleep at sunset. Preciosa had gone upstairs at the same time. I saw her lying upon the foot of our bed after supper, her eyes narrowed to slender slits with sleep or slyness. I had a shrewd impression that if I were to go upstairs now I should not find her in the same place. Instead of verifying the surmise in this way I stole noiselessly out of the family group, sauntering along carelessly ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... clearly convinced of Christ's innocence of any crime that threatened Roman supremacy, and therefore was bound to have given effect to his convictions, and let Jesus go. He had read the motives of the priests, which were too plain for a shrewd man of the world to be blind to them. That Jews should be taken with such a sudden fit of loyalty as to yell for the death of a fellow-countryman because he was a rebel against Caesar was too absurd to swallow, and Pilate was not taken in. He knew that something ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... vetturinos? A man like Gaetano, by himself, was enough to modify radically one's conception of the possibilities of the Italian character. In appearance he was a strong-bodied Yankee farmer, with the sun-burned, homely, kindly, shrewd visage, the blue jumper, the slow, canny ways, the silent perception and enjoyment of humorous things, the infrequent but timely speech. It was astonishing to hear him speaking Italian out of a mouth ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... of the horrible hairy Abolitionist gloating constantly over the thought of a massacre of Southerners by Negroes, which did duty for a portrait of Lincoln in the South, was not convincing to Marylanders, who knew the man himself and found him a kindly, shrewd, and humorous man of the world, with much in his person and character that recalled his Southern origin, who enforced the law with strict impartiality wherever his power extended, and who, above all, punctiliously returned any fugitive slaves ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... he would deceive nobody; but still he would be thought a fool, because he would either get very little for his property, or else fail to sell it at all. By concealing these defects, on the other hand, he will be called a shrewd man—as one who has taken care of his own interest; but he will be a rogue, notwithstanding, because he will be deceiving his neighbors. Again, let us suppose that one man meets another, who sells gold and silver, conceiving them to be copper or lead; shall he hold his peace that he may make ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... day, and every night I returned, self-charged with hope; and now the trial was at hand. When the work of impaneling the jury was begun, old Conkwright was there with his challenges. How shrewd he was, how sharp were his eyes. And when night came the panel was ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... country with a passion which was the more genuine because it was exacting and, at times, sharply critical. There runs through all his work, as a critic of manners and men, as well as of art, a wisdom of life born of wide and keen observation; put not into the form of aphorisms, but of shrewd comment, of keen criticism, of nice discrimination between the manifold shadings of insincerity, of insight into the action and reaction of conditions, surroundings, social and ethical aims on men and women. The stories written in his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... all would end. He traced it from its beginning; from the day when he wrote his first "boost" story; from the hundred-dollar bill that Conward had placed in his hands. It was a simple course to trace; so simple now that he was amazed that only Conward and a few shrewd others had seen it at that time. It had begun with the prosperity of incoming money; the money of a little group of speculators and adventurers and the others who hung on their train. They had filled the few hotels and office buildings. Presently some one began to build a new hotel. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... our responsibility lies—a thing which we shall never do if we are governed by the net impression which disengages itself from speeches like those of Mr. Churchill. For the net result of that speech, the impression, despite a few shrewd qualifications which do not in reality affect that net result but which may be useful later wherewith to silence critics, is that war is inevitable, a matter of "destiny," that diplomacy—the policy pursued by the respective ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... do at the above-bridge navy, in a large and national light, we are not inclined to go into critical details, such as are to be met with, passim, in the shrewd and amusing work of "The Passenger on board the Bachelor." There may be something in the objection, that there is no getting comfortably into one of these boats when one desires to go by it. It may be true, that a boy's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... diplomacy: much of it has been merely shrewd and skillful lying. If you will review the list of the most famous diplomats of Europe for the last thousand years, you will find that a considerable portion of them won their fame and reputation by ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... a shrewd man, but it took an hour to make him understand it all; events had come about ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... at 'em pretty shrewd and sez: "When I git home I shan't pay no forty cents a pound for cinnamon. I can tell 'em I've seen the trees and I know it ort to be cheaper." Sez he, "I could scrape off a pound or two with my jack-knife if ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... that the failure to fulfill your contract has cost me at least ten thousand dollars?" said the shrewd manager, the commercial side of his nature ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... that I needed an assistant, and observing that Browne's two sketches of the Showman's letter and the Mormons had made him well known, invited him to take a place in our office. He was a shrewd, naif, but at the same time modest and unassuming young man. He was a native of Maine, but familiar with the West. Quiet as he seemed, in three weeks he had found out everything in New York. I could illustrate this by a very extraordinary fact, but I have not space for everything. I proposed ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... in temper, devoted to his religion and his family, a good father and a good scholar, he deserved the love and respect which every evidence that we have shows him to have gained from his family and his neighbours. His wife's was a somewhat more positive nature: shrewd and acute, high-minded and determined, with a strong sense of humour, and with an energy capable of triumphing over years of indifferent health, she was ardently attached to her children, and perhaps somewhat proud of her ancestors. We are told ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... found that these Russian gypsies were as unaffected and child-like as they were gentle in manner, and that they compared with our own prize-fighting, sturdy-begging, always-suspecting Romany roughs and rufianas as a delicate greyhound might compare with a very shrewd old bull-dog, trained by an unusually ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... not plant tobacco, nor buy it, nor sell it, but since they loved the fascinating weed then as men love it now, they somehow invoked or spirited it into their pipes, though they never could smoke it in public unfined and unpunished. The shrewd and thrifty New Haven people permitted the raising of it for purposes of trade, though not for use, thus supplying the "devil's weed" to others, chiefly the godless Dutch, but piously spurning it themselves—in public. Its use was absolutely ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... their own masters. There were no more masters of the sword. But you couldn't get along without masters of some sort, and there arose a new set of masters—not the great, virile, noble men, but the shrewd and spidery traders and money-lenders. And they enslaved you over again—but not frankly, as the true, noble men would do with weight of their own right arms, but secretly, by spidery machinations and by wheedling and cajolery and lies. They have purchased your slave judges, they have debauched your ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... possession of the boat and appropriate it to his own use. Every reason urged him to do this. One of the most powerfully exciting causes was the wish—natural to the white as well as the red man—to outwit his enemies. To capture their canoe would be a brilliant winding up of the shrewd escape he had made from the parties on the water and land. Besides this, it had become plain that the only way to get across the Susquehanna was by using a craft equal in every respect to ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... to see thee?' said Kester, cocking his eye at Sylvia with the old shrewd look. 'That ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... alert. His reply to the magi was that he did not know where the Child was, but he hoped they would succeed in their mission. He requested, furthermore, that when they had found the King they should inform him, that he also might visit Him. The magi departed, and shrewd officers were at once sent to follow them, but, as subsequently appeared, with slight success. The magi eluded the officers and found the Child. Joseph and Mary had moved from the stable into a house in Bethlehem, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... attention in this channel, there may come a reinforcement of the family property, which will enable you to hold out until the Pope dies, or some prince or other gets into a quarrel with him, which is always happening, and then a move may be made for you. My father, I'll promise you, is shrewd enough, and always keeps his eye open to see where there is a joint in the harness, and have a trusty dagger-blade all whetted to stick under. Of course, he means to see you righted; he has the family interest at heart, and feels as indignant as you could at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... raises its head in a very imposing manner: it is composed of many varieties of architecture; but I think the order under which it must be classed is the preposterous. They call it Trollope's folly; and it is remarkable how a shrewd woman like Mrs Trollope should have committed such an error. A bazaar like an English bazaar is only to be supported in a city which has arrived at the acme of luxury; where there are hundreds of people ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... on the field of politics consisted in somewhat inglorious though not unskilful retreats; when he afterwards carried boldness to the point of rashness, he encountered a signal defeat. Nevertheless, while he utterly lost his political hold on the masses, and even the confidence of shrewd politicians, he never ceased to retain the profound respect of his countrymen, not only as the first of English generals, but as the most ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... inclined to take things somewhat for granted. Jeanne Falla did not fail, in due course, to tell me so, and she was a very shrewd woman and understood her kind better than any man that ever was born. Now, taking things for granted is always, and under any circumstances, but most especially where the unknown is in question, a most unwise thing to do. And what can equal for unfathomableness the workings ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... to start a run. More money is sunk, and the returns do not appear to be so speedy. I cannot give you even a rough estimate of the expenses of such a plan. I will only say that I have seen gentlemen who are doing it, and who are confident of success, and these men bear the reputation of being shrewd and business-like. I cannot doubt, therefore, that it is both a good and safe investment of money. My crude notion concerning it is, that it is more permanent and less remunerative. In this I may be mistaken, ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... most cunning of gods; in the midst of obstacles he seems to be in his own element, but as his very existence depends upon the enjoyment of those who ardently worship him, the shrewd, all-seeing, little blind god contrives to bring success out of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... place of the living artist. The pianola can never rival the living performer; nor the orchestrion the orchestra; nor the chromo the painting. No mechanical device has yet been invented to produce poetry; even if some shrewd Yankee should invent a printing machine which would pick out rhymes as some printing machines seem to pick out letters, the result would not be a poem. This is the reason too why mere perfection of execution never really ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the old western scout and trapper whom Mr. Temple had brought from Arizona, that he was never surprised at anything. If a grizzly bear had wandered into camp it would not have ruffled him in the least. He would have surveyed it with calm, shrewd deliberation, taken his corncob pipe out of his mouth, knocked the ashes out of it, and proceeded to business. If the grizzly bear had been one of the large fraternity who believe in "safety first" ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and avenge the injured. To complete his chivalrous equipment, which he had begun by fitting up for himself a suit of armor strange to his century, he took an esquire out of his neighborhood, a middle-aged peasant, ignorant, credulous, and good-natured, but shrewd enough occasionally to see the folly of their position. The two sally forth from their native village in search of adventures, of which the excited imagination of the knight— turning windmills into giants, solitary turrets into ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... whip-lash. Abruptly suspicion kindled in her shrewd gray eyes. "Harry of Monmouth feared neither man nor God. It needed more than any death-bed repentance to frighten him into restoring my liberty." There was a silence. "You, a Frenchman, come as the emissary of King Henry ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... turn up, his gray eyes had a merry, mischievous expression, and his lips were generally parted in a smile. A casual observer would have said that he was a happy-go-lucky, merry, impudent-looking lad; but he was more than this. He was shrewd, intelligent, and exceptionally plucky; always ready to do a good turn to others, and to take more than his fair share of blame, for every scrape he got into. He had fought many battles, and that with boys ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... and by the author of The Voyages and Adventures of Capt. Barth. Sharp, p. 80. According to them, the pigs were thought to be of tin, and only one of them was saved, the rest being left in the prize when she was turned adrift. Later, when Sharp's men reached the West Indies, a shrewd trader there, perceiving this remaining pig to be silver, took it off their hands, and then sold it for a round sum; whereupon deep chagrin fell upon the pirates, who had duped themselves by abandoning a rich cargo of silver. It will however be ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
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