"Adroit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... guaranties for their personal safety were given. It is noteworthy that only religious interests received attention, no mention being made of commercial privileges. More noteworthy still, is the absence of anything tangible given by the adroit envoy in exchange for what he got. The Sultan was reassured as to the status of such Moors as might remain under Spanish rule, and was encouraged to count upon unspecified future advantages from the friendship of King Ferdinand. A truly singular result ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... cannot help admiring her in the more reflective pieces; the songs I don't care for. The method in which she handles curious subjects, and at the same time impresses us with a full conviction of her modesty, is very adroit, and somewhat blinds us to the fact that no such poems were demanded of her ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... had said to her: "You are beautiful." No one else had ever intimated such a thing. In fact, for five years she had been taunted almost daily because of her lack of all physical charms. Perhaps she could learn the truth about herself by some adroit questioning of the ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... diplomatic civility. Canning was a master of insolence; he could go to the utmost verge of insult and innuendo, without absolutely crossing the line which separates them from formal observance of propriety; but it cannot be said that the American correspondence in this instance was equally adroit. In replying to Erskine's formal offer of reparation for the "Chesapeake" affair, certain points essential to safeguarding the position of the United States were carefully and properly pointed out; then the reparation, as tended, was accepted. There ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... had no concern about Tompkins' canal record. Possibly he thought the disappearance of Bucktail opposition took that issue out of the campaign; but he was greatly worked up over the unsettled accounts, and in his usual adroit manner set influences to work to discourage Tompkins' acceptance of the nomination, and to secure the consent of Smith Thompson, then secretary of the navy, to make the race himself. He had little difficulty in accomplishing ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... has missed," thought I, standing by in a silent part of this three-cornered convention. M'Iver smiled mildly, half, I should think, at the manner in which his thrust had been foiled, half to keep MacLachlan still with us. His next attack was more adroit though roundabout, and ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... capable, and well know how to recommend whatever they have to sell. You walk into a store just to look around; there may be nothing that you want, but the adroit manner in which the salesman talks, and the way in which he explains the good points of every article at which you look, makes it extremely difficult for you to leave the store without making some purchases. Salesmen and commercial travellers in the United States ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... the same tastes, the same desires in life, and you will certainly have the most agreeable house in Bordeaux. Your wife need only bring her night-cap; all is ready for her. You are fortunate indeed in such a mother-in-law. A woman of intelligence, and very adroit, she will be a great help to you in public life, to which you ought to aspire. Besides, she has sacrificed everything to her daughter, whom she adores, and Natalie will, no doubt, prove a good wife, for she loves her mother. You must soon ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... CD-ROM publishers are not eager to have their products really hook into wide area networks, because they fear it will make their data suppliers nervous. Moreover, until relatively recently, one had to be rather adroit to run a full TCP/IP stack plus applications on a PC-size machine, whereas nowadays it is becoming easier as PCs grow bigger and faster. LYNCH also speculated that software providers had not heard from their ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... responsible both to me and to the hong for the carrying-out of the contract which had been duly agreed upon. In my limited experience, the fu t'ou is a great blessing. I found mine capable, reliable men, adroit in smoothing away difficulties and very ready to meet my wishes. As for the contract, that was a serious matter. Each detail was carefully entered in a formidable document, the route, the stages, the number of men, the amount to be paid, and the how and where ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... adroit student of men. No speech could have better served his purpose of inducing his followers to remain with him. It was as if he declared: "You may all desert me, but I will remain true to ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... father and sister exceedingly. They often blamed me for it; but, as they could not hinder that person from coming into the house, all their efforts were in vain; for I was very adroit in doing anything that was wrong. Now and then, I am amazed at the evil one bad companion can do,—nor could I believe it if I did not know it by experience,—especially when we are young: then is it that the evil must be ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... he was more an adroit courtier than an able general: but formidable by his renown, by his address in augmenting it, and in making others concur in this object. He had contrived to flatter the whole nation, and every individual of it, from the general ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... stairs were side by side, and being made of the same boards as the wainscoting, were scarcely visible when closed, while the single knob that was used, being transferable from one to the other, naturally gave the impression that there was but one door. When this adroit villain called my attention to the little window around the corner, he no doubt removed the knob from the stairs' door and quickly placed it in the one opening upon the chute. Another door, connecting the two similar landings without, explains how he got from the chute staircase into which he passed ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... individuals of that mixed band. I recognise the Teutonic type—the fair hair and whitish-yellow moustache of the German, the florid Englishman, the staid Scot, and his contrast the noisy Hibernian; both equally brave. I behold the adroit and nimble Frenchman, full of laugh and chatter, the stanch soldierly Swiss, and the moustached exile of Poland, dark, sombre, and silent. What a study for an ethnologist is that band of odd-looking men! ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... entitled to attain power by persuasion. At the risk of incurring the suspicion of disloyalty, if not of treason, the Republicans clung tenaciously to their rights as a minority. By persistent use of the press, by unremitting personal efforts, and by adroit electioneering, the leaders succeeded in arousing the apathetic masses and converted their minority into an actual majority. They won, therefore, for all time that recognition of the right of legal opposition which is the primary ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... know that honesty has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake, that an unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite true that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn in his shoes and pocket; a reaper is not given to writing begging-letters, but he is quite capable of cajoling the dairymaid into filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish instincts are ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... this stroke, which was not adroit, and replied, "No, sire; I was ignorant of your majesty's wish; above all, I was ignorant of your haste to see Belle-Isle, and I ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... saw that Brown and Wattles entertained a high respect for the military prowess of the Indian chief. They pronounced him to be not only a bold, but an adroit warrior; one, full of resources and ingenuity, when his means were taken into the account. The number of men with him, however, Brown assured Mark, was less than nine hundred, instead of exceeding a thousand, as had ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... us that words are things? They are indeed things, and things of mighty influence, not only in addresses to the passions and high-wrought feelings of mankind, but in the discussion of legal and political questions also; because a just conclusion is often avoided, or a false one reached, by the adroit substitution of one phrase, or one word, for another. Of this we have, I think, another example in ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... from his fair friend at this moment. "Wait a little; don't answer yet," would have occurred to the common mind. But that was not Friedrich's resource: he answers by return of post, as always in such cases;—and in the following adroit manner brushes off, without hurt to it, with kisses to it rather, the beautiful hand that has ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... found his attorney who had motored out from El Toro, waiting to confer with him regarding Bill Conway's adroit manoeuver of the morning. Mrs. Parker busied herself with some fancy work while her daughter sought the Farrel library and pretended to read. An atmosphere of depression appeared to have settled over the rancho; Kay observed that even Pablo moved ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... safe kind of glory—whether we may not purchase it too dear; especially if we allow education, which ought to be directed to the making of men, to be diverted into a process of manufacturing human tools, wonderfully adroit in the exercise of some technical industry, but good ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... been sufficiently remarked upon is that the French party made a very adroit use of her. The clerks at Poitiers, while inquiring at great length into her religion and her morals, brought her into evidence. These Poitiers clerks were no monks ignorant of the world; they constituted the Parliament ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... which the President listened to in the matter was that of that adroit Mormon agent, Colonel Thomas L. Kane. Kane's part in the business came out after these appointments were announced, and after the Buffalo (New York) Courier had printed a communication attacking Young's character ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... adroit management, Stuyvesant swept away many annoyances in the shape of territorial claims. When the Plymouth Company assigned their American domain to twelve persons, they conveyed to Lord Stirling, the proprietor of Nova Scotia, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... of Queen Victoria sketches an interesting case of subordination and superordination in which the queen is the subordinate, and her adroit but cynical minister, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... and fickle, slips through your fingers every moment; bah! he is attractive, bewitching, he is delightful! Suppose they are enemies, you fling every one, dead or alive, in their teeth. You reverse your phraseology for their benefit, and you are as keen in detecting their faults as you were before adroit in bringing out the virtues of your friends. This way of using the mental lorgnette is the secret of conversation nowadays, and the whole art of the complete courtier. If you neglect it, you might as well go out as an unarmed knight-banneret to fight against men in armor. And I make use of ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... it really was of him to wait and wait for the other's ruin. How easily might not the adroit and lucky Alphonse come across many a brilliant business opening, and make plenty of money without a word of it reaching Charles's ears. Perhaps, after all, he was getting on well. Perhaps it would end in people ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... somewhere uptown, probably at Your Hotel. Mr. Opp paused irresolute: his soul yearned for solitude, but the rain-soaked dock offered no shelter except the slight protection afforded by a pile of empty boxes. Selecting the driest and largest of these, he turned it on end, and by an adroit adjustment of his legs, ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... of speech, like a hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with it. He was something strange and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten with this original person because he was not to be caught by their flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their Parisian's grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature only responded to the sonorous vibration ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Dumas fils show an ingenious combination of this subdivision with the anecdotal play. And Pinero—our exception—how would "Percival" classify His House in Order, which has a strong story? In reality it is a very adroit mixture of story, idea, and comedy of character, this is the case with the other works of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... did she bring them out, those vanities And trinkets of those girls of bygone days; with what adroit eloquence did she introduce all their foibles and virtues to Felicia! Oh, but she was a fine old gossip, was Margot! She couldn't quite trust herself to touch Octavia's clothes that first day. She plunged ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... to speak a little inarticulately; and he missed a few details, but by adroit cross questioning his hearers obtained a clear understanding of the whole situation—starting with the rescue of Bug's brother and ending with the events that had ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... where you meet with natives, you will either by adroit management or by other means endeavour to get hold of a number of full-grown persons, or better still, of boys and girls, to the end that the latter may be brought up here and be turned to useful purpose in the said ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... newfound river, declared "As for Sturgeon, all the World cannot be compared to it." They told of a unique and spirited way the Indians had of catching these huge, lubberly fish. In a narrow bend of the river where the sturgeon crowded, an adroit fisherman would clap a noose over the tail of a great fish (a fish perhaps much larger than himself) and go plunging about with his powerful captive. And he was accounted "cockarouse," brave fellow, who kept his hold, diving and swimming, and ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... the reader should fail to grasp the full meaning of the boldface, was a three-column cartoon, crudely drawn but adroit enough. It represented West, unpleasantly caricatured, garbed in a swallow-tail coat and enormous white gloves, with a gardenia in his buttonhole, engaged in booting a lad of singular nobility of countenance ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... on account of his military reputation. He lived only one month after his inauguration, and Tyler, the Vice President, who succeeded him, reverted to his old political principles, which were Democratic, and broke with the Whigs. By an adroit and steady use of the executive power he effected the annexation of Texas, but the master spirit in this enterprise was Calhoun, his Secretary of State. Polk, his Democratic successor, coveted California ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... off-hand manner, which passed for heartiness, and considerable powers of being pleasant when he liked, went down with the school in general for a good fellow enough. Even in the School-house, by dint of his command of money, the constant supply of good things which he kept up, and his adroit toadyism, he had managed to make himself not only tolerated, but rather popular amongst his own contemporaries; although young Brooke scarcely spoke to him, and one or two others of the right sort showed their opinions of him ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... for the arts. Many fine pictures already hung upon his walls. Knowing this, a certain picture-broker threw himself in his way, and, by adroit management and skilful flattery, succeeded in turning the pent-up and struggling current of the old gentleman's feelings and thoughts in this direction. The broker soon found that he had opened a new and profitable mine. ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... Count, and you, Sir Karl," answered the duke, giving his right hand to Max and familiarly offering me his left. This hard duke had been beaten into a gracious mood by Max's adroit mixture ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... you, because it has wandered throughout the newspapers of the world, the story of a famous Russian officer, famous, too, as a great swordsman, who once faced a brown bear robbed of her young, and beat her into insensibility, since his blows were swifter and more adroit than those delivered by her great forearms. In the midst of the battle, some thought of this hard Russian tale drifted through the mind of Hayes, as he dealt blow after blow upon the muzzle of the brute seeking ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... the bosom of Antonio is bared to the knife—when this brief but brief-less barrister, this skylarking young judge of Belmont steps jauntily forward, with a most preposterous quibble on her lips, and manages by an adroit subtlety to defeat the judgment to which the plaintiff is legally entitled. She awards the flesh, fibres, nerves, adipose matter, in controversy, to Shylock; but declares his life and fortune confiscate if he sheds a drop of blood, or takes more ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... began, with a quiet, well-bred ease which made her visit seem perfectly natural, "We are now strangers, but I trust we shall not remain such very long. Indeed, I am already sure that you can help me very much." (This asking help instead of offering it was certainly adroit policy.) "I am a Christian worker in this district. My name is Alice Wetheridge. I am well acquainted with Mrs. Wheaton, and the little she has told me about you has made me wish to know you well; and I trust you will meet me with the spirit in which I come—that of honest ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... doorway of Music Hall was just ahead. In a moment the party were within its friendly shelter, stamping off the snow. The girls were adjusting veils and hats with adroit feminine touches; the pretty chaperon was beaming approval upon them, and the young men were taking off their wet overcoats, when Maidie ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... all loved Philip, and yet they turned with delight, when out-door pleasures were in hand, to the strong and adroit Harry. Philip inclined to the daintier exercises, fencing, billiards, riding; but Harry's vigorous physique enjoyed hard work. He taught all the household to swim, for instance. Jenny, aged five, a sturdy, deep-chested little thing, seemed ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... a few more years. I wonder if I shall be as young-looking as you, Emma?" This was a very adroit thrust on the part of Miss Agatha, but for ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... party held a convention, adopted a State constitution, and petitioned for admission to the Union. They elected State officers with Charles S. Robinson as Governor. This organization had really no legal standing; in form it was revolutionary. But the Free State party were not only resolute, but adroit. They had no mind to actively rebel against the United States Government, or come into collision with its forces. Governor Robinson, their foremost leader, was a man of New England birth, who had served a profitable ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... was bold, direct, imperious, and masculine; he went straight to his mark, and if he encountered opposition he either rode over it or broke it down. When Jefferson met with opposition he went round it or undermined it; he was adroit, flexible, and extremely averse to open fighting. There was also good ground for a genuine difference of opinion between the two secretaries in regard to the policy of the government. Jefferson was ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... nature. But fortune only partly favored them, for many had lost all the wealth which they had gathered in their career of piracy, their very clothes hanging in rags about their limbs. Some, indeed, had been more fortunate or more adroit in their singular navigation, but, as a whole, they were a woe-begone and miserable party when, a few days afterwards, they reached the isle of Perlas. Here were some friendly vessels, on which they embarked, and near the end of April they reached ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... measure affecting male interests. Therefore many of the M.P.'s timorously voted for the second reading of the Conciliation Bill in order to stand well with their Constituencies, yet looked to the Premier to trip it up by some adroit use of Parliamentary jiu-jitsu. They were not disappointed in their ideal politician. The Bill after it had passed its second reading by a large majority was referred to a Committee of the whole House, which seemingly ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... buy security in a world where after all one has to buy everything: so he employed an adroit agent, and quietly purchased that mountain, the refuse of all Barkington. But he felt so ill-used, he paid for it in his own notes: by this means the treaty reverted to the primitive form of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the saddle on the right horse. take advantage of, make the most of; profit by &e. (use) 677; make a hit &c. (succeed) 731; make a virtue of necessity; make hay while the sun shines &c. (occasion) 134. Adj. skillful, dexterous, adroit, expert, apt, handy, quick, deft, ready, gain; slick, smart &c. (active) 682; proficient, good at, up to, at home in, master of, a good hand at, au fait, thoroughbred, masterly, crack, accomplished; conversant &c. (knowing) 490. experienced, practiced, skilled, hackneyed; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... realized that things were not "going straight," that collections made were not being turned over to her, that she was being asked to falsify records. She never could resist his personality, and soon became more adroit than he in juggling figures. Everything went wrong fast. No one suspected cocain—they thought it was whiskey till Eva was forced to tell much to the good old doctor-details revealing her husband's uncouth carelessness of habits, his outbreaks ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... feet in the grass awakened Elisaveta. Light, adroit hands dressed her. The quiet boys helped her to rise. Elisaveta rose and looked around her: a light green Grecian tunic draped her tired body within its broad ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... and advisable precautions against being polluted by our presence. He was a free-thinker in his own way, and a friend of Gulab-Lal-Sing, and so he rejoiced at the idea of showing us how much skillful sophistry and strategical circumspection can be used by adroit Brahmans to avoid the law in some circumstances, while adhering at the same time to its dead letter. Besides, our good-natured, well-favored host evidently desired to obtain a diploma from our Society, being ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the squadron under command of Captain Perry having met the British squadron of superior force, a sanguinary conflict ended in the capture of the whole. The conduct of that officer, adroit as it was daring, and which was so well seconded by his comrades, justly entitles them to the admiration and gratitude of their country, and will fill an early page in its naval annals with a victory never surpassed in luster, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... from the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer end, and a weight in its middle, while the other end is secured to the ship. By adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is readily made to follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at last locked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... no notion of breaking out like this when I came up," she said quietly. "I was going to be very adroit. I intended to give you a friendly boost along the right road, if I could. But it has all been bubbling inside me for a long time. You perhaps think it very unwomanly—but I don't care much what you think. My ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... had gone to the Dingle in person, and, by adroit use of the divinity which hedges a detective, had persuaded a keeper to lead him to the tree where, as Mr Stokes had said, the cups had ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... write on Prudence, whereof I have little, and that of the negative sort? My prudence consists in avoiding and going without, not in the inventing of means and methods, not in adroit steering, not in gentle repairing. I have no skill to make money spend well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees my garden discovers that I must have some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate lubricity[661] and people without perception. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... which must have cost that Count very little short of 120 guineas. The shelves of the front repository were almost wholly filled with English books, in the choicest bindings; and dressed out to catch and captivate the susceptible bibliomaniac, in a manner the most adroit imaginable. To the left, on entrance, were two rooms filled with choice paintings; many of them just purchased at the Frankfort fair. Some delicious Flemish pictures, among which I particularly noticed ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... from Ellis Island to Manhattan much puzzled Vanderlyn. Puffing and blowing from his hurry (which had been less adroit than Vanderlyn's) they met Karrosch on the New York pier, about to ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... With all the adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody those minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly unimportant to the great matter immediately in hand—Stevens now propounded his direct inquiry, and ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... class are on foot from the dawn of day. Their talent is evinced by the adroit mode in which they baffle the vigilance of the porters. They go up the staircase, sometimes on one pretext, and sometimes on another, look round them, and if they find any keys in the doors, which is common enough, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... individuals can not be said to be wholly without education. Even the wildest savage is taught by his superiors not only the best mode of procuring food and shelter known to his race, but also the most adroit manner of defending himself and destroying his enemy. But we use the term in a higher, broader, and more capacious sense, as having reference to the whole man, and the whole duration of his being. A volume might be filled in stating ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... was no recognition of England upon this coinage, which was begun in 1652 and kept up for more than thirty years. Such pieces of money used to be called "pine-tree shillings"; but, so far as looks go, the tree might be anything, and an adroit friend of New England once gravely assured the king that it was meant for the royal oak in which his majesty hid himself after the ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... door-knob. An expression which Katharine knew well from her childhood, when he asked her to shield him in some neglect of duty, came into his eyes; malice, humor, and irresponsibility were blended in it. He nodded his head to and fro significantly, opened the door with an adroit movement, and stepped out with a lightness unexpected at his age. He waved his hand once to his daughter, and was gone. Left alone, Katharine could not help laughing to find herself cheated as usual in domestic bargainings with her father, and left to do ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... interviews with the Dean he had been appointed to a post in the Cathedral, sat down to it too; and Rosamund and Dion looked in to congratulate Mr. Thrush, and to tell him how delighted they were with his bearing in the procession and his delicately adroit manipulation of his wand. Mr. Thrush received their earnest congratulations with the quiet dignity of one who felt that they did not spring from exaggeration of sentiment. Like all great artists he knew when he had done well. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... adroit flank movement, rapidly executed, Serena managed to possess herself once again of the seat of honour upon the sofa, thereby interposing a thin but impenetrable barrier between her hostess and the latter's own particular fetish, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... was the widow of an English gentleman; she had recently come to America, and had but few acquaintances, and still fewer friends; she felt the loneliness of her situation, and admitted that she much desired a friend to counsel and protect her; the adroit adventuress concluded her extemporaneous romance by adroitly insinuating that her income was scarcely adequate ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... which distinguishes true art from false. He does not eat them with deliberate mastication; he does not even—like your ordinary amateur—drink them in separate gulps; but he contrives, by some swiftly-adroit process of levitation, that the whole plateful shall rise in a noiseless and unbroken flood from the table to his mouth, whence it glides down his gullet with the relentless ease of a river pouring into a cavern. Altogether, a ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... impossible; in other words, that a contradiction in terms can be true and false at one and the same time. That, my Lord, and ladies, and gentlemen," he went on, raising his voice almost to a shout, "is still, and, I hope, in the interests of true science, and not adroit jugglery with figures and formulae, will ever remain, another impossibility. Professor Marmion has apparently trisected the triangle, squared the circle, and doubled the cube. It may be that he has persuaded some present that he really ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... "Adroit as a monkey, resolute as a dog, dumb as a fish; there's La Chouette, just as the devil has made her, ready to serve you if she is capable—and she is rather," answered the hag in a lively manner. "I hope we have famously decoyed the young country girl, who is safely fastened up in Saint Lazare ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... those of neighbouring states, more used to fatigue, to long marches and rapid evolutions. The brilliance of their success and its long duration are thus explained, for the chiefs of the empire never seem to have had the faintest suspicion of the adroit policy which was afterwards to bind so many conquered peoples to the Roman sceptre. The first necessity for civilized man is security: the hope, or rather the certainty, of enjoying the fruits of his own industry in peace. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... punctured this terrible motto on his manly right arm. Le leopard, emblem of England, was his aversion; he shook his fist at the caged monster in the Garden of Plants. He desired to have "Here lies an enemy of England" engraved upon his early tomb. He was skilled at billiards and dominoes, adroit in the use of arms, of unquestionable courage and fierceness. Mr. Jones of England was afraid of M. de Castillonnes, and cowered before his scowls and sarcasms. Captain Blackball, the other English aide-de-camp of the Duchesse d'Ivry, a warrior of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was the seldom case. James Holden needed a very adroit lawyer to tell him how and when his rights and privileges as a citizen could be granted, and under what circumstances. From the evidence already at hand, James saw loopholes available in the matter of the legal age of twenty-one. But he also knew that he could not ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... man for men more than for man, the curious reverse in this of my father. He delighted in public life, had a native turn for affairs, for all that society needs and demands,—clear-headed, ready, intrepid, adroit; with a fine temper, but keen and honest, with an argument and a question and a joke for every one; not disputatious, but delighting in a brisk argument, fonder of wrestling than of fencing, but ready ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the thread of what the Persian, in tones as soft and unruffled as ever, was saying in reply to his words. He gathered himself up to hear and to answer, and there followed a discussion in which a number of those present joined; a discussion full of cleverness and the adroit handling of words, yet which left Philip in the confusion of being made to realize that what to him were vital truths were to those about him merely so many hypotheses upon which to found argument. There were ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... subject, had caught enough to become interested in the patient up-stairs, and daily made some inquiries concerning her condition, and, as it appeared to me—grown a little morbid, like Miss Jorgensen—was peculiarly adroit in ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... life and society under Nero. A glance at these books shows that they belong to the latest school of nineteenth-century fiction, to a period when careful scholarly accumulation of accessories and adroit adaptation of history have taken the place, not only of convention and clumsy invention, but also of the free untrammelled handling of types and traditions which gave freshness and originality to the simpler ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... character. Her warmth of manner faded; the sullen cloud of dogged resistance to authority was rising in her poor dirty face, when Hilary, beginning with, "Now, we are not going to scold you; but we must hear the reason of this," contrived by adroit questions, and not a few of them, to elicit the ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... four and a half inches thick, extend but half her length, leaving more than a hundred feet at each end covered by a plate of only five-eighths of an inch in thickness; and in case these portions should be injured, she must rely upon her water-tight compartments. An adroit foe, in a light craft of greater speed, avoiding her batteries, which are planted behind her armor, might possibly assail her unprotected ends, and, although he could not sink her, still, by shot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... stock still, for when hunter and hunted are both of them racing, if they are only side by side, it is as good as though neither of them moved. [17] And the creature I have always envied," he continued, "the centaur—if only he had the intelligence and forethought of a man, the adroit skill and the cunning hand, with the swiftness and strength of a horse, so as to overtake all that fled before him, and overthrow all that resisted—why, all these powers I shall collect and gather in my own person ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... are we of our moods—I was more than half in a rage with him. For as we went we encountered Mistress Barbara on Lord Carford's arm. The quarrel between them seemed past and they were talking merrily together. On the sight of her the Duke left me and ran forward. By an adroit movement he thrust Carford aside and began to ply the lady with most extravagant and high-flown compliments, displaying an excess of devotion which witnessed more admiration than respect. She had treated me as a boy, but she did not tell him that he was ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... belonged to the Lupai tribe, from the east of the Irrawaddi; they had come to Meinkhoon for the purpose of procuring amber. In manners and dress they resembled the Shan-Chinese, they were provided with firelocks, in the use of which they were certainly adroit. The usual weapons of the Hookhoong Singphos are dhas and spears. I ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... And, of course, I tried to seize him. But the rascal was too quick. He was down and away in an instant. You never saw a thing so daring and adroit. ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... unassuming ways helped to make him extremely popular with the common people, in whom he had much greater faith than his cousin John had; and, above all, he was an eminently successful manager of men. Shrewd, wily, adroit, unfailingly tactful, an adept in all the arts of the politician, he is considered to have done more than any other one man, in the years immediately preceding the War of Independence, to mould and direct public opinion in his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... division of families, and which introduced a rough and partial sort of property. Along with rudimentary ideas of property, though not connected with them, came the rudimentary forms of inequality. When men were thrown more together, then he who sang or danced the best, the strongest, the most adroit, or the most eloquent, acquired the most consideration—that is, men ceased to take uniform and equal place. And with the coming of this end of equality there passed away the happy primitive immunity from jealousy, envy, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... leisure. Now, Mr Welles had come to that glade in the Park for the special purpose of making a communication, which he felt rather an awkward one to make with that amount of grace which beseemed him: nevertheless, being a very adroit young man, and much given to turning corners in a rapid and elegant manner, he determined to go through with the matter. If it had only been anyone ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... he wept his life away; happier, nevertheless, and more honourable in the sight of God and man than if, like a Mazarin or a Talleyrand, and many another crafty politician, both in Church and State, he had hardened his heart against his own mistakes, and, by crafty intrigue and adroit changing of sides at the right moment, had contrived to secure for himself, out of the general ruin, honour and power and wealth, and delicate food, and a luxurious home, and so been one of those of whom the Psalmist says, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... faculty for putting everything on his client's side in the best light, and his adversary's in the worst. He could "tear a witness to pieces," and turn him inside out. His junior, Skimpin, was glib, ready-armed at all points, and singularly adroit in "making a hare" of any witness who fell into his hands, teste Winkle. He had all the professional devices for dealing with a witness's answers, and twisting them to his purpose, at his fingers' ends. He was the Wontner or Ballantyne of his day. Mr. Pickwick's "bar" was ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... sternness, the Prince concluded his address. Next morning the members of the club were suitably provided for by his munificence, and the President set forth upon his travels, under the supervision of Mr. Geraldine, and a pair of faithful and adroit lackeys, well trained in the Prince's household. Not content with this, discreet agents were put in possession of the house in Box Court, and all letters or visitors for the Suicide Club or its officials were to be examined by Prince Florizel ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me, I am sorry to say, of the way in which a naturally amiable and considerate householder might be expected to listen to the arguments of an adroit and accomplished burglar showing cause why he should be locked into the plate-closet to protect ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... and not by the majority of the individual members present, as in ordinary legislative proceedings, the majority of the delegates from each colony determined the vote of that colony; and by a previous and very adroit proposal, an agreement was entered into that the vote of Congress should be published to the world as UNANIMOUS, however divided the votes of members on the question of Independence might be; and on this ground the signatures of those who had opposed ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... whom we once saw at Hanover, managing a certain contested Heritage for Friedrich Wilhelm; adroit Nussler, though he has yet got no fixed appointment, nor pay except by the job, is urged to build;—second year hence, 1733, occurs the case of Nussler, and is copiously dwelt upon by Busching his biographer: "Build yourself a house in the Friedrichs ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the weak point of an enemy, and a knack of so draping commonplaces with rhetoric that they shall have the momentary air of profound generalizations, he is also, like him, more cunning in expedients than capable of far-seeing policy. Adroit in creating and fostering prejudice, acute in drawing metaphysical distinctions which shall make wrong seem right by showing that it is less wrong than it appeared, he is unable to see that public opinion is never moulded by metaphysics, and that, with the people, instinct is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... by persons of adroit cunning. It was maddening. This had ceased to be an adventurous lark. It was to become a fight against weapons whose sole object seemed to be to guard the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... suppression of truth, and an adroit perversion of the explanation which General Reed gave to the demands of the American Commander-in-Chief, respecting his correspondence with the British Commissioners, his descendants have managed, so far, with tolerably general success, to thrust into the ranks of the Carrolls and Hancocks, the Putnams ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... very adroit question, had the detective not been upon his guard, but without flinching, he looked doubtfully but steadily into his face, ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Dexterous, facile, adroit, politic, versatile,—as Lord Palmerston certainly is,—fertile in resources, prompt to seize and use to the utmost every advantage, endowed with unusual popular gifts, and blessed with imperturbable good-humor, it cannot be denied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... measure, but according to the rules it was necessary to obtain a two-thirds vote in order to get the amended bill before the House for action. This it was impossible to do. Nevertheless, the wool growers and manufacturers were able "through their large influence, persistent pressure and adroit management" to procure an act in the same session which increased the duties on wool and woolens far above the war rate. In 1869 the duties on copper were raised, as were those on steel rails, marble, flax and some other ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... responsible for the nomination of Tyler as Vice-President. He was consequently very angry when he learned what had taken place at the White House, and he availed himself of the first opportunity to speak of the scene in the Senate, portraying the principal personages present with adroit sarcasm. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... stalking had fairly begun, the girl became absorbed in the game. All memory of Sayre, if there indeed had been any to make her falter in her purpose, now departed. She was a huntress pure and simple, silent, furtive, adroit, intent upon her quarry. There came a kind of fierceness into her concentration; the joy of the chase thrilled her as she crept noiselessly through the woods, describing a circle, crossing the stream far above the sleepy fisherman, gliding, stealing ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... hammering, went on gnawing, and Titus died. His brain was opened, and an animal as big as a sparrow with a beak of iron was found in it. The truth of this story would be, that some magicians, not especially adroit hypnotists, hammered at Titus' tympanum. His nerves, tried by climatic fever—a great facilitator of hypnotism—and by debauchery, gave way, ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... their glittering array, had paused on their way to the ball, would return in the morning, and sit with her, face to face, in communion on far other and graver matters. Sick and erring hearts showed themselves to her in utter sincerity, while, with unwearied sympathy and adroit wisdom, she poured on them, drop by drop, the light, the truth, the life, they needed. No one can tell to how many she was a spiritual mother, her direction all the more welcome and efficacious that she was not a director by ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... good-bye to her friends and go at once to her sister, Lady Anstruthers, whose husband's country seat was but a short journey from London. Bettina and her father had arranged that the fact should be kept from the society paragraphist. This had required some adroit management, but ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... original is one of the anomalies of modern life. And yet the original is before us and around us all the time, inviting us to notice that it is only the exceptional that is reproduced with attractive skill and that it is only the abnormal that is emphasized with adroit arrangements of line and color. Day after day we read of the sensational divorce cases, but there is not one line of the tens of thousands of happy marriages upon which no cloud of discord ever falls. Day ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... would make her rounds alone, but often Arthur would join her for an afternoon drive to Huntingdon, and it greatly amused him to listen to his girl-wife's adroit manner ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... scholarly than DuBois, less eloquent than the late J.C. Price, he is yet the foremost figure in Negro national life. He is a great educator and a great man, and though one may not always agree with him, one must always respect him. The race has produced no more adroit diplomatist than he. The statement is broad but there is no better proof of it than the fact that while he is our most astute politician, he has succeeded in convincing both himself and the country that he is not in politics. He has none of the qualities of the curb-stone ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... the great assembly at Paris, dazzled with the unaccustomed role to which they were called, and desirous to please the King in their personal interest or in that of their towns, would be under the control of the adroit lawyers who were prepared to work on their minds and to direct the debates. The bull, nevertheless, if its exact tenor had been known, might well have produced in many respects a contrary effect to the wishes of the King. The reproaches of Boniface touching the debasement of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "How adroit he is to-night, Jack;" but the General rather pitied the lad, with whom he imagined Kate was playing as a cat with ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Oregon question was at its acutest stage, in the autumn of 1845, Polk sent John Slidell, an adroit politician of Louisiana, to Mexico, to renew the friendly relations which had been broken off immediately after the passage of the joint resolution by Congress. Slidell was authorized to negotiate a treaty by which European ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... the difficulties of their position. I told him that the Duke had said to me, 'If the King had been a very clever man, he would probably have played a more adroit game, by letting them go on till Parliament met, and then taking the opportunity which would soon present itself of breaking them up;' that I disagreed with the Duke, and thought it infinitely more convenient ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... More readable and adroit imitations of Greek tragedy were furnished by Pacuvius' younger contemporary, Lucius Accius, son of a freedman of Pisaurum (584-after 651), with the exception of Pacuvius the only notable tragic poet of the seventh century. An active author also in the field of literary history and grammar, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... painter largely at Fontainebleau and in Versailles, invested him with the order of St Michael, bestowed on him letters of nobility, and visited him frequently at his work, occasions when there were not wanting adroit courtiers to liken the Grand Monarque to the Emperor Charles V., ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... refuge with the Queen of Navarre, who was fortunate enough to reconcile her protege with the court and the university. The person whom she employed to effect this was an adroit man who had succeeded in deceiving the government. Francis I based his glory upon the patronage and encouragement which he accorded to learning, and Calvin, as a man of letters, merited consideration. The King needed some forgiveness for serious political faults, and, with reason, he believed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... rocks, attempted to conceal themselves from the researches of the fishermen. These the party in the boat detected by the slightest indications; the twinkling of a fin, the rising of an air-bell, was sufficient to point out to these adroit sportsmen in what direction to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... them at adroit intervals, reminding us of the arrangement of voices in an ancient catch, where one voice takes up the phrase another has dropped, and thus seems to give the web of harmony a ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... words aroused Alfred's curiosity. By adroit questioning he ascertained that the great work of art was a panorama illustrative of "The Pilgrim's Progress," to be exhibited in churches, schools and such places, at twenty-five cents for adults; ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Marya Dmitrievna found expression only in her more and more beaming face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting more and more into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness of his adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered about on his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna produced no less impression by slight exertions—the least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or stamp her foot—which everyone appreciated in view of her size ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the other Whigs were equally wise. Repelling the Democratic charge that they were unpatriotic in denouncing the war, they voted in favor of every measure to sustain, supply, and encourage the soldiers in the field. But their most adroit piece of strategy, now that the war was ended, was in their movement ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... not much more than a regularly-organized band of robbers and murderers. The men were extremely wily and adroit; they could adopt any disguise, and penetrate without suspicion wherever they chose to go. They were trained, too, to obey, in the most unhesitating and implicit manner, any orders whatever that the chieftain gave them. Sometimes ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of Southern whites to Northern sympathy and sanction, the adroit, insiduous plea made by Bishop Fitzgerald for suspension of judgment because those "who condemn lynching express no sympathy for the white woman in the case," falls to the ground in the ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... contentions, so accustom people to each other's humours as to establish the soundest and strongest of all friendships. Walpole had adopted Atlee because he found him useful in a variety of ways. He was adroit, ready-witted, and intelligent; a half-explanation sufficed with him on anything—a mere hint was enough to give him for an interview or a reply. He read people readily, and rarely failed to profit by the knowledge. Strange as it may seem, the great blemish of his manner—his ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the click of a rifle brought her to her senses. Towards the end of August the amount of looting became serious. On the other side of the river was a big camp, where troops were sent to refit and rest. Here the thieves played many cunning tricks and there was some killing. They were adroit in stampeding horses and in the confusion that followed making off with several. The sentries were not allowed to load their rifles, as promiscuous firing was a source of danger to the occupants of the tents, which were crowded ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... were others of greater qualifications and longer experience than I nearer the tragedy—but they, by every token of likelihood, have become a part of the tragedy. The honored—must I say the lamented—Stead, the adroit Jacques Futrelle, what might they not tell were their ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... admirable subject for a biographer. He belonged to a class of men, rare in America, who are remarkable, not so much for their talents or their achievements, as for their adventures and the vicissitudes of their fortunes. Europe has produced many such men and women: political intriguers; royal favorites; adroit courtiers; adventurers who carried their swords into every scene of danger; courtesans who controlled the affairs of states; persevering schemers who haunted the purlieus of courts, plotted treason in garrets, and levied war in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... while he never rebuked, yet was adroit in warding off temptations to break the Commandments. He began to chuckle as if he had just ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... Victorian architect with a deep sense of the umbrella-like gentlemanliness of XIV century vaulting. The present occupant, A. Chelsea, unofficially Alfred Bridgenorth, appreciates Norman work. He has, by adroit complaints of the discomfort of the place, induced the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to give him some money to spend on it; and with this he has got rid of the wall papers, the paint, the partitions, the exquisitely planed and moulded casings with which the Victorian cabinetmakers enclosed and ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... showed an excellent knowledge of Scripture and great ingenuity in explaining it on his own side. He was an adroit and skilful disputant, and, considering that he was a foreigner, had a great mastery ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... his measure, read "Youth" or "Falk" or "Heart of Darkness," and then try to read the best of Kipling. I think you will come to some understanding, by that simple experiment, of the difference between an adroit artisan's bag of tricks and the lofty sincerity and passion ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... should so far mistake her talents as to attempt it." And on Zara, "for her own benefit, the comic Clive put on the royal robes of Zara: she found them too heavy, and, very wisely, never wore them afterwards."[5] Part of the half she could do well is noticed, once again, by Davies: particularly adroit and distinguished ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... at the back, I was unable to see Sam. My adroit move, I took it, had baffled him. I ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... the natural beauty of the surroundings, but to obey the divine command, and by his exemplary life to prove to the complete satisfaction of the white people his genuine honesty of purpose. By this adroit speech the Prophet succeeded in allaying suspicion, and thus under the guise of peace and religion Tecumseh was enabled to continue his preparations for war. When the council had terminated, Tecumseh, ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... remarked a thousand times that God deprives slaves of half their judgment, lest, recognizing their miserable condition, they should be thrown into despair. For though they are very adroit in many things which they do, they are so stupid that they have no more sense of being enslaved than if they had never enjoyed liberty. Every land becomes their country, provided they find enough to eat and drink, which is very different ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... this is undoubtedly true. We see every day that a mere story-play—a play which appeals to us solely by reason of the adroit stimulation and satisfaction of curiosity—very rapidly exhausts its success. No one cares to see it a second time; and spectators who happen to have read the plot in advance, find its attraction ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... long they slept the hours peacefully away, the strong, athletic, well-knit, muscular white boy, the slender, agile, adroit Indian side by side, their firm young cheeks pillowed on thousands and thousands of dollars' worth of ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... government, and the assertion of new social rights that seemed to have been created only in order to be extinguished. The recovery of Belgium and the conclusion of peace with Turkey were effected under circumstances that brought the adroit and guarded statesmanship of Leopold into just credit. His settlement of the conflict between the Crown and the Provinces, between the Church and education, between the noble and the serf, marked the line in which, for better or for worse, Austrian policy ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... a real change in their relationship, but neither of them understood it. The change was that Rodney was no longer playing. Little by little he had dropped his artistic posing for her benefit, his cynical cleverness, his adroit simulation of passion. He no longer dramatized himself, because rather often he forgot himself entirely. His passion had ceased to be spurious, and it was none the less real because he loved not a real woman, but one of his own ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Said the fairy, after receiving him graciously: "Sir, I will tell you a great secret. The princess has a great cat whom she loves so well that she cares for nothing and nobody else; but she will be obliged to marry any person who is adroit enough to walk upon the ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... with truffles. Solon devoured his portion in the twinkling of an eye, and as he was prone to coveting the property of others, he fixed his eyes, full of affectionate longing, on his neighbor's plate. Active, adroit, and watching his opportunity, he seized the moment when the priest was carrying his glass to his lips; to extend his paw, seize a truffle, and swallow it, was the work of but half a second. Beside himself with indignation, the holy man turned quickly and looked at the robber with flashing ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... assez riche pour m'epouser avec deux cent mille francs de moins: je suis bien aise de vous les apporter en mariage. Je suis persuadee que la Comtesse et le Marquis ne se haissent pas. Voyons ce que me diront la-dessus Lepine et Lisette, qui vont venir me parler. L'un, est un Gascon froid,[7] mais adroit; Lisette a de l'esprit. Je sais qu'ils ont tous deux la confiance de leurs maitres; je les interesserai a m'instruire, et tout ira bien. ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... Co. C was with the regiment, just returned from hospital partially recovered from a wound received at Malvern Hill. Joyce was a unique character, small of stature, illiterate, an adroit forager, and, if you didn't know him, you might take him for a mere braggadocio. But such was not the case. He was destitute of fear, or, if he ever experienced the sensation, he overcame it. At Glendale the Colonel ordered the line forward. ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... no vantage-ground unoccupied. The high social standing and reputation of his client were set forth at their best. Every slenderest discrepancy of statement between Salome's witnesses was ingeniously expanded. By learned citation and adroit appliance of the old Spanish laws concerning slaves, he sought to ward off as with a Toledo blade the heavy blows by which Roselius and his colleagues endeavored to lay upon the defendants the burden of proof ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... if at some bland satirical touch, delivered with such adroit garnish of apparent good breeding as to present no ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... and swam under water, until out of range of the arquebuses—where, assured of safety, he took the sword from between his legs where he had hidden it, and commenced to make passes with it, jeering the while at our men whom he had deceived so easily. This theft, as well as many very adroit ones that they committed, has given these people the name of Ladrones, and is the reason for calling all the islands inhabited by them by the same name. This appellation is easily pardoned as long as they find opportunity to exercise ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... ambuscades only by detachments of skirmishers, who scoured the burning woods on either side of the highway. The general, often far in advance of the column in his eagerness to overtake the foe, declared that this was the most adroit expedient to which a retreating army could resort, and that it entailed upon him all the disadvantages of a night attack. By slow approaches, and with constant skirmishing, the Federals were driven back to Franklin village, and the double darkness of the night and the smoke arrested the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the Constitution ratified, without recommendations, by a majority of two to one. In this body Fayette County was represented by Nicholas Breading and John Smilie. The latter gentleman, of Scotch-Irish birth, an adroit debater, led the opposition. In the course of his criticisms he enunciated the doctrines which were soon to become a party cry; the danger of the Constitution "in inviting rather than guarding against the approaches of tyranny;" "its tendency to a consolidation, not a confederation, of ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... dinner,' said Lord Eskdale, who knew his man, and made an adroit movement forwards, as if he were very anxious to see ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... dross of earthly origin falls away more and ever more; it is ennobled to the life eternal and strives toward it. The experience of such an old age is irreconcilable with evil, and it only makes the means clearer and the skill more adroit victoriously to battle against wickedness. Deterioration through increasing age is simply the fault of our time, and it necessarily results in every place where society is much corrupted. It is not nature which ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... was tall, well-proportioned, graceful; his features were clean-cut and expressive of both intelligence and amiability; his manner was cordial and unaffected; his mind was vigorous and his industry unremitting. Furthermore, he was an able lawyer, a fluent orator, a persuasive debater, an adroit parliamentarian. Upon entering the Senate at the early age of thirty-two, he had won prompt recognition by a powerful speech in opposition to the tariff of 1824; and by 1828, when he was reelected, he was known ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... concealed their hands. Sometimes the public had been mistaken as to the true character of their officials, but sooner or later the truth had developed, for in most instances, wealth was openly for or against certain men and measures. But the adroit ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... to say of Philippe two or three times a month, giving him a tap on the cheek, "Here's a young rascal who'll stand to his guns!" The boy, thus stimulated, naturally and out of bravado, assumed a resolute manner. That turn once given to his character, he became very adroit at all bodily exercises; his fights at the Lyceum taught him the endurance and contempt for pain which lays the foundation of military valor. He also acquired, very naturally, a distaste for study; public education being unable to solve the difficult problem ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... against a tree wiping his eyes, and everybody up and down the street was smiling and saying, "That's Lawyer Ed's laugh. What's he up to now, I wonder?" Jock checked his mirth quickly; it was not seemly to rejoice too heartily over one's own humour, but before the joy of it had left, by an adroit turn, J. P. had sent the conversation ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... ideas, the pet notions of groups of people, the popular common-places, and the current habits of thought and feeling. Newspapers, popular literature, and popular oratory show the effort to operate suggestion along these lines. They rarely correct; they usually flatter the accepted notions. The art of adroit suggestion is one of the great arts of politics. Antony's speech over the body of Caesar is a classical example of it. In politics, especially at elections, the old apparatus of suggestion is employed again,—flags, symbols, ceremonies, and celebrations. Patriotism is systematically ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... now, This latest Age in repetition cries: For Belial, the adroit, is in our midst; Mammon, more swoln to squeeze the slavish sweat From hopeless toil: and overshadowingly (Aggrandized, monstrous in his grinning mask Of hypocritical Peace,) inveterate Moloch Remains ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the manufacture of elaborate products of skill often times seems and is very simple. The workmen in large establishments, where labor is greatly subdivided, become wonderfully adroit in doing a fraction of something. They always remind us of the Chinese or the old Egyptians. A young person who mounts photographs on cards all day long confessed to having never, or almost never, seen a negative developed, though standing at the time within a few feet of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... content to dwell by Walden Pond, it was not merely with designs of self-improvement, but to serve mankind in the highest sense. Hither came the fleeing slave; thence was he despatched along the road to freedom. That shanty in the woods was a station in the great Underground Railroad; that adroit and philosophic solitary was an ardent worker, soul and body, in that so much more than honourable movement, which, if atonement were possible for nations, should have gone far to wipe away the guilt of slavery. But in history sin always meets with condign punishment; the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sub-committee was appointed, at Hunky Ben's suggestion, to consider the whole matter, and take what steps seemed advisable. Hunky was an adroit and modest man—he could not have been a first-rate scout otherwise! He managed not only to become convener of the committee, but succeeded in getting men chiefly of his own opinion placed on it. At supper that night in Charlie's cottage, while enjoying May's cookery and presence, ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Conspiracy of the Spaniards against the Republic of Venice, in 1618. Voltaire compares the author of this History to Sallust; and pronounces it superior to the English tragedy—an assertion, which, like many others from the same source, was the convenient sentence of an adroit but reckless ignorance. The merits of St. Real are undoubtedly great; but Otway's indebtedness to him is exceedingly slight; and it is remarkable to see how ingeniously, from a few meagre historical details, the great dramatist ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... exposure, have been seized upon with avidity by a score or more of unscrupulous alienists who are prepared to sell their services to the highest bidder. These men are all the more dangerous because, clever students of mental disease and thorough masters of their subject as they are, they are able by adroit qualifications and skilful evasions to make half-truths seem as convincing as whole ones. They ask and receive large sums for their services, and their dishonest testimony must be met and refuted by the evidence of honest physicians, who, by virtue of their attainments, have a right to demand ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... was not an agreeable one. Mr. Alvord is a clever man and an adroit one, or I should not persist in employing him as my lawyer; but he never understood me. At this time, and with this letter in his hand, he understood me less than ever, which naturally called out my powers of self-assertion and led to some lively conversation between us. But that is ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green |
