"Deft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... copper, brass, and iron. They may possibly have had copper earlier still from the Northern Indians on the other side of the Rocky Mountains; but brass and iron they could, of course, only have obtained from Europeans. They had already become very deft at dealing with these metals, and twisted the iron into collars which weighed upwards of twelve pounds, also beating it into plates ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the food. But not to the drinks. I took him, after all, to my club. I innocently suggested cocktails; but, no. He declined—in a deft but straightforward way. Country principles. Small-town morals. He made me feel like a—well, like ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... quick, and deft, and intelligent; but above all she was fire, the living flame of life, a blaze of personality that was compounded of will, sweetness, and daring. Her father was a chief, and his blood ran in her veins. ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... Missioner. With a chuckle of delight Father Roland plunged the tines of his fork hilt deep into the breast of the duck, seized a leg in his fingers, and dismembered the luscious anatomy of his plate with a deft twist and a sudden pull. With his teeth buried in the leg he looked across at David. David had eaten duck before; that is, he had eaten of the family anas boschas disguised in thick gravies and highbrow sauces, but this duck ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... A deft blending of love and politics. A New Englander is the hero, a crude man who rose to political prominence by his own powers, and then surrendered all for ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... held the contents of each boll; from sixty to eighty bolls were required to yield a pound in the seed; and three or four pounds of seed cotton furnished one pound of lint. When a boll was wide open a deft picker could empty all of its compartments by one snatch of the fingers; and a specially skilled one could keep both hands flying independently, and still exercise the small degree of care necessary to keep the lint fairly free ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... where peasants in bright-coloured shirts and vests lounged. After much haggling and good-humoured banter, Sanine hired one of the little boats. Ivanoff was a deft and powerful oarsman, and the boat shot forward across the water like a living thing. Sometimes the oars touched reeds or low-hanging branches which for a long while after such contact trembled above the deep, dark stream. Sanine steered with so much erratic energy that the water foamed ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... With deft touch she outlined in rough on the first page, the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina, tracing his possible route by Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Dover, Norfolk and Raleigh, or by Washington, Richmond, ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... dirty thumb, then the soil round the hyacinth, then the blue china. Between every investigation he stared at Maggie as though he were now seeing her for the first time. At last, however, he was bending over Martin, and his examination was clever and deft; he had been, like his patient, used to better days. Martin was ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... in it; myriads of men thank God for it. So is it with the influence of a good mother. It is not given us to follow each tiny shaft of light in its endless searchings, neither do we note how the riot of the waste places within us is pruned by deft hands into a tenuous symmetry, nor how, in the midst of this life's growth, is laid the foundation of the kingdom of Heaven, by the silent masonry of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... ruddy garment and two yet-watching men: Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen. And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed him dead. We sell the body for silver....' Then Judas cried out and fled Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set: A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret; Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed To stern Jehovah lest ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... his younger brother, Yorinaga, who held the post of sa-daijin, there existed acute rivalry. The kwampaku had the knack of composing a deft couplet and tracing a graceful ideograph. The sa-daijin, a profound scholar and an able economist, ridiculed penmanship and poetry as mere ornament. Their father's sympathies were wholly with Yorinaga, and he ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... appreciated the honour; the room was cleared, music struck up, and festivity was soon in progress. What a display of neat ankles and deft feet in mocassins! What a clattering of sabots and shuffling of "beefs"! The perspiration rolled off the brow of the musician, and young Lecour was whirling round like a madcap with the daughter of the ferryman ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... A deft musician does the breeze become Whenever an AEolian harp it finds: Hornpipe and hurdygurdy both are dumb Unto the ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... lad. Be quick," cried Lady Dene, with deft fingers beginning to arrange the roses in the vases. "Oh! please help me," she cried, turning to Gladys Norman, who had stood watching ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... moved the cards with a deft assurance to their desired combination he smiled drolly at ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... autumn sun shone upon a more peaceful, pastoral, manufacturing community. The wooden nutmegs were slowly ripening on the trees, and the white pine hams for Western consumption were gradually rounding into form under the deft manipulation of the hardy American artisan. The honest Connecticut farmer was quietly gathering from his threshing floor the shoe-pegs, which, when intermixed with a fair proportion of oats, offered a pleasing substitute for fodder to the effete civilizations of Europe. An almost ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... He was very deft with his penknife, and in a few minutes had carved S. P. M. and A. S. G., encircling the initials by a ring and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... trunks and swampy places, so that we really walk three or four times the distance to Hog Harbour. Our guide uses his bush-knife steadily and to good purpose: he sees where the creepers interlace and which branch is the chief hindrance, and in a few deft cuts ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... time the mass of iron scraps became molten. Suddenly Poissan plunged the cast-iron cup into the seething mass. The cup floated and quickly began to melt. As it did so he waited attentively until the proper moment. Then with a deft motion he seized the whole thing with a long pair of tongs and plunged it into a vat of running water. A huge cloud of ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the senseless use of certain words and phrases, which a good writer uses only when he must, Mr. Beckett always when he can. We give without comment a mere list of these:—maugre, 'sdeath, eke, erst, deft, romaunt, pleasaunce, certes, whilom, distraught, quotha, good lack, well-a-day, vermeil, perchance, hight, wight, lea, wist, list, sheen, anon, gliff, astrolt, what boots it? malfortunes, ween, God wot, I trow, emprise, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... had happened? If so, the Stannard dinner stood ready to replace it, even though she and her captain had to fall back on what could be borrowed from the troop kitchen. No, the oven door was open, the precious chickens, brown, basted and done to a turn, were waiting Suey's deft hands to shift them to the platter. (No need to heat it even on a December day.) Mrs. Stannard's quick and comprehensive glance took in every detail. The "stick" was obviously figurative—mere vernacular—yet something serious, for Suey's olive-brown skin was jaundiced with worry, and ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... things, he might lose the knowledge of proportion and a taste for the beauties of nature. I know very well that he will go on daubing for a long time without making anything worth noticing, and will be long in mastering elegance of outline, and in acquiring the deft stroke of a skilled draughtsman. He may never learn to discern picturesque effects, or draw with superior skill. On the other hand, he will have a more correct eye, a truer hand, a knowledge of the real relations of size and shape in animals, ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... in his pride believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise the rope tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage he sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry. But his strength ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... strike those pendent rings is no less than was the skill to strike armor-joint, visor, or plumed crest. It was of old an exercise for deadly combat on the field of battle; it is no less an exercise now to you for the field of life—for the quick eye, the steady nerve, and the deft hand which shall help you strike the mark at which, outside these lists, you aim. And the crowning triumph is still just what it was of old—that to the victor the Rose of his world—made by him the Queen of Love and Beauty for us all—shall give her smile and with her own hands place on ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... stifled her. She fetched her cape and hat. They were lying upon his table, and as she took them she could see the sheets of an unfinished letter. The writing was firm and fine, with the regular alignment and spacing of one who is deft about handwork. Her eye glanced over the page; the letter was in answer to a doctor in Baltimore, who had asked him to cooperate in preparing a surgical monograph. "I should like extremely to be with you in this," ran the lines, like ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... to typify to her Paris,—the people, men as well as women, who came in for their cakes or syrop, the eagle-eyed Madame perched high at the comptoir, holding the entire business in her competent hand, and all the deft girls in their black dresses, nimbly serving, "Oui, Madame! Voici, Monsieur! Que desirez-vous?" etc. She admired the neat glass trays of tempting sweets, the round jars of bonbons, the colored liqueurs, the neat little marble-topped ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... Miss Poster could resist, Mrs. Burgoyne had put up her deft hands, and in a moment, with a pull here, and the alteration of a hairpin there, she had loosened the girl's black and silky hair, till it showed the beautiful waves above the ear in which it did indeed resemble the marble ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... government which had been bred to virtue by eighteen years of political penury. It entered upon its tasks with vigor, ability and enthusiasm. It had its policies well defined and it set briskly about carrying them out. A deft, shrewd modification of the tariff helped to loosen the stream of commerce which after years of constriction began again to flow freely. There was a courageous and considered increase in expenditures for productive objects. A constructive, vigorously executed immigration ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... hair that is fluffy, straight, banged, or half curled; Has a parasol, oft by her deft fingers twirled. She has eyes either brown or black, gray or true blue; Has a neat fitting glove and ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... periodical essay in the Tatler and the Spectator, which exhibit the comprehensiveness of the Irish temperament in writing by affording a contrast between the Irish force and vehemence of Swift and the Irish play of kindly wit and tender pathos in the deft and ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... wight took his needle so bright And threaded its eye with a wee ray of light From the Rhine, sunny Rhine; And, in such a deft way, patched a mirror that day That where it was mended no expert could say— Done so fine ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... the knapsack. My eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, and I was just able to see her deft hands at work upon the fastenings. She made no noise, and I watched her with an ever-growing wonder. A female burglar is a personage difficult to imagine. Certainly, no one ever could have suspected this girl with the violet eyes of being an expert crackswoman; ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... in picturing his peril, happily outlived! How her heart trembled and her strong young limbs shook as she lived over in breathless agony the crisis of that night! He had carried her glove in his bonnet—she remembered the deft little movement of stowing it there just the moment before he bent and flashed away among the shadows. Excuse enough for ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... inexorable spiritual tragedy. It was a scene whose like had never before been attempted without both protagonists on the stage, and it lasted twenty-five minutes; a scene as difficult to write as to act; but the two playwrights admitted that in the deft use of words which, without repetitions by the woman, left the audience in no doubt what the man was saying, made it almost possible to see him, and in the rising scale of emotion, the act was a surpassingly ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... party in the parlor, and Stuyvesant felt a strange shyness when striving to persuade himself to send his card to that young officer and boldly ask to be presented. Surely it was the proper thing to seek and meet her and thank her for her deft ministrations the night of the fire. Surely a man of his distinguished family and connections need not shrink from asking to be introduced to any household in all our broad domain, and yet Stuyvesant found himself nervous and hesitant, wandering about the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... admiration, a repetition of the search. The result, however, was the same. Then the two men came over to him, and he felt his bonds softly loosened. Only the gag remained in his mouth, and one by one his garments were removed from him. A trained valet could not have been more careful or deft. The contents of all his pockets were hastily run through and restored. His under garments were felt all over for any hidden hiding place. Even his shoes were taken off, and the inner sole cut through with a knife. Finally ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... advantage in numbers, he proposed to hold Lee in place with one of his wings while he thrust the other behind Lee's left, between the Confederate army and Richmond. But he had started a game at which two could play and had challenged a more deft and daring gamester than himself. Early divining his purpose, Lee, leaving a small part of his force to engage Hooker's left, with the rest vigorously assumed the counter-offensive, sending Jackson, as usual, around Hooker's extreme right. Both ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... more brains and uses them less than would seem possible," growled Mr. Vandeford, as he with a few deft lines near the close of the second act got the heroine off the stage and out of an impossible situation in which Miss ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to regret, indeed she went so far as to smile at Janet's consternation, when she should find out that for once her "Lambkin" had fooled her. Quickly she leapt from her bed and dressed herself for the first time alone. Though her fingers were deft and skillful at the tapestry frame, and neat and clever at limning, they were slow and bungling when drawing together the laces of her girdle, indeed 'twas very insecurely done, and when she was dressed she had forgotten her stays, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... "Besides he's deft and wondrous airy, And of the noblest of the fairy! Chiefe of the Crickets of much fame In ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... Turkish bath and osteopathic hospital attendants. But Linday was not yet satisfied. He put Strang through his whole repertoire of physical feats, searching him the while for hidden weaknesses. He put him on his back again for a week, opened up his leg, played a deft trick or two with the smaller veins, scraped a spot of bone no larger than a coffee grain till naught but a surface of healthy pink remained to be sewed over ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... was charming. It was not quite perfect, however. It was too manifestly and studiously arranged, and it had the finnicking exactness of the favourite gallery of some connoisseur. For its nobility of form, its deft and wise softness of colouring, its half-smothered Italian joyousness of design in ceiling and cornice, the arrangement of choice and exquisite furniture was too careful, too much like the stage. He smiled at the sight of it, for he saw and knew that Jasmine had had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Buddir ad Deen Houssun, all fixed their eyes upon him, and admiring his shape, his behaviour, and the beauty of his face, they could not forbear looking upon him. When he was seated every one deft their seats, came near him to have a full view of his face, and all found themselves moved with love ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... she was triumphant and happy as the darting needle danced ecstatically down a hem, drawing the stuff along under its vivid stabbing, irresistibly. She made the machine hum. She stopped it imperiously, her fingers were deft and ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... his Erfurt parliament, March 20, 1850. Bismarck was fast becoming a "practical politician." Through deft stacking of the cards, the radical delegates drew only the low cards, and the Kreuz-Zeitung crowd and other ultra-conservatives were well supplied with aces ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... spearman and archer let fly at precisely the same instant, and Jared Long, who was so anxious to help his friend, saw only the deft movements of the archer. Grimcke could not fire at both in time to save himself, but he instinctively did the very best and indeed the only thing that could be done. Without moving his feet, he dropped to a sitting posture, instantly popping ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... suave, so kindly, so magnetic. He called Homans and Raymond and Weir and others who were in the house at the moment and stated Ken's case. His speech flowed smooth and rapid. The matter under his deft argument lost serious proportions. But it seemed to Ken that Worry did not tell the boys the whole truth, or they would not have laughed at the thing and made him out over-sensitive. And Ken was now growing too discouraged and bewildered to tell them. Moreover, he was getting stubborn. The thing ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... lord, this one thing is sufficient to confirm my worth to be equal or better than the Senses, whose best operations are nothing till I polish them with perfection; for their knowledge is only of things present, quickly sublimed with the deft[253] file of time: whereas the tongue is able to recount things past, and often pronounce things to come, by this means re-edifying such excellences as time and age do ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the dangling cinch, and with a deft hand tucked the latigo strap through the ring and drew it tight, there was a look of almost pathetic wistfulness on the watching stranger's face—a look of ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... eye and deft hand, Weston went through dresser drawers, and cupboard shelves. Looked into the books on the night table, and in a short time had satisfied himself that there was no ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... for Francis, a cocoanut cup, elaborately carved, a genuine work of art, representing a battle. Madame Graslin was walking at the time on the terrace, in the direction which overlooked Les Tascherons. She sat down on a bench, took the cup in her hand and looked earnestly at the deft piece of work. A few ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... bade of craftsmen deft at large to seek the skilfullest, the most curious and cunning to work structures of stone;— upon that chosen site God's temple to grace as the Guarder of souls gave her rede from on high. She the Rood hight with gold to inlay and the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... to bring credit and praise to the town. "We must have an arch at the bridge, and a crown, And 'Welcome to Arthur,' arranged all so fine With balsam and tamarack, spruce and green pine; But the crown shall be flowers, the fairest that blow, Or are made by deft fingers, from paper you know, And many a fair one who skilfully weaves Wreaths and garlands, shall bring them of ripe maple leaves; And then, as 'Jason Gould' that so snug little boat, The most cosy, most ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... statecraft and the functions of linguister to the embassy, did not altogether escape public utility in these bellicose preparations. The young gunner, who had had the opportunity of observing her during the march hither, shortly applied to her for assistance in his professional devoir. He wanted a deft-handed young person to construct the cartridge-bags for the ammunition which he was fixing for the little piece and the two coehorns. And thus it chanced that she found herself in the blockhouse, cheek by ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... is the mother of invention, made them deft and handy with axe and adze, bradawl and waxed end, anvil and forge. The squire himself was no mean blacksmith, and could shoe a horse, or forge a plough coulter, or set a tire as well as the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... the usual course by praying the Court of Chancery for a Commission de Lunatico Inquirendo, is timorous, and rests on prejudice. Plt., if successful, is saddled with his own costs, and sometimes with Deft.'s, and obtains no compensation. It seems clear that a jury sitting at Nisi Prius can deal as well with the main fact as can a jury sitting by the order of the Chancellor; and I need not say the costs will go with their verdict, to say nothing of the damages, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... they had to build their old railroad down in the bottom of this river bed." With deft fingers Alice Marcum caught back a wind-tossed whisp of hair. "It's ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... the direction of this last sound, Lanyard found the small side door ajar. He opened it, and hesitated a moment, looking out as though questioning the weather; simultaneously his deft fingers wedged the latch back with ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... spoke in the strong Yorkshire dialect, which we are obliged to render into intelligible English—"marry, I weet not,—it is some curious puppet-box, or quiet contrivance, that Master Warner, whom they say is a very deft and ingenious personage, is permitted to bring hither for the Lord ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... soft paper in the sleeves of Gheta's ball dress, and Lavinia, finding an unexpected reluctance to proceed with what she had come to say, watched the servant's deft care. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... humour and deft satire to any of its predecessors, and no holiday will be so gay but this volume will make it gayer.... It is a book of rollicking good humour that will keep you chuckling long ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... and 'A Rose,' Mrs. Rhoda Holmes Nicholls shows us a true water-color executed by a master hand. The subject of each is slight; each stroke of her brush is made once and for all, with a precision and dash that are inspiriting; and you have in each painting the sparkle, the deft lightness of touch, the instantaneous impression of form and coloring that a ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... great flat trays piled high with steaming white dishes. They swung corners in grand free sweeps, the trays tilted far sideways to balance centrifugal force; they charged the swinging doors at full speed, and when Bobby held his breath in anticipation of the crash, something deft and mysterious happened at the hem of their black skirts and the doors flew open as though commanded by a magic shibboleth. They were tall and short, slender and stout, dark and light, but they had these things in common—they all dressed in black and white, their hair ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... to get a drawing of that chap in action. His lines are magnificent," Mary had never been in a sleeping car before, and was fascinated to see the sloping ceilings of the state-rooms change like pantomime trick into beds under the deft handling of the porter. She liked the white coat of this autocrat of the road, and the smart, muslin trimmings of the colored maid. She and Stefan had the compartment next their host's; Farraday and McEwan shared one ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... green oak stick until he saw a live coal shining red in the gray about it. This he rolled out upon the hearth, and then took it between thumb and finger and deposited it within the bowl of his pipe by a deft motion, which gave it ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. The training of the schools we need to-day more than ever,—the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defence,—else what shall save us from a second slavery? Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek,—the freedom of life and ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... would your own children—or even mine. It's quite heroic, of course, but it's sheer madness, and I do not feel I ought to encourage it. I would not mind a thousand or so to train a good cook for the Cresswells, or a clean and faithful maid for myself—for Helene has faults—or indeed deft and tractable laboring-folk for any one; but I'm quite through trying to turn natural servants into masters of me and mine. I—hope I'm not too blunt; I hope I make myself clear. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... replying. Never had she seemed to dear, so beautiful to him. The rose-tinted light that fell softly from a Bohemian chandelier over her head, flooded her coiled hair, her face, her hands, with soft warm color. The slight dressing that her wound now required was covered by a deft arrangement of her hair. She had regained her usual tint. Nothing now told of the accident, the close call she had had, from death, so short a time before. And old Flint smiled, as ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... Wiggins dashed lightly up the stairs after the Terror. In less than two minutes the deft hands of the Twins had dealt with the bed; and their intelligent eyes were eagerly scanning the hapless unprotected bedroom. Erebus sprang to the shaving-brush on the mantelpiece and thrust it under the mattress. The Terror ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... plates laden with turkey, ham, fried chicken, or broiled, and some sort of jelly or relish. One ate standing, with her escort doing yeoman service as waiter, until her appetite was fully appeased. Hot biscuit, hot egg bread, and light bread—salt rising, freshly sliced—were passed about by deft black servitors. The side tables were under charge of family friends, each specially skilled in helping and serving. Carving, of course, had been done before hand. Occasionally, very occasionally, where a wedding throng ran well into the hundreds, there was barbecue ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... deft cast from Armstrong had sent the rope across the bows within Roger's reach, while the doctor, with the other end lashed round his body, was running at full speed towards the ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... restrict itself wholly to its plantation cycle. In New Orleans Mr. Cable daintily worked the lode which had been deposited there by a French and Spanish past and by the presence still of Creole elements in the population. Yet he too was elegiac, sentimental, pretty, even when his style was most deft and his representations most engaging. Quaintness was his second nature; romance was in his blood. Bras-Coupe, the great, proud, rebellious slave in The Grandissimes, belongs to the ancient lineage of those African princes who in many tales have been sold to chain and lash and have escaped from ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... to me, and I looked into it with some interest. I knew that Jane was deft with her fingers, but I did not know that she had a special wish to cultivate this deftness or to put it to ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... very deft and tender in their handling, and Tom bit his lips to refrain from groaning over his acute pain; but for all that the job was a tedious and trying one, and when he was lashed into the sack ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... boots should be strong, her gloves long and stout. She thus adapts her attire to the occasion. In the evening she will have an opportunity for the delicate boot and the trailing gauze or silk, or that deft combination of all the materials known as ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the inconvenience of long hair when our own regimental tonsorial artist is waiting to bob it for you free of charge? Luxurious saloon; deft workmanship; no tips. His speciality—memento locks. Twelve such souvenirs guaranteed from one crop. Bald soldiers supplied to taste from surplus clippings. A delicate, lasting and inexpensive compliment to lady friends on leaving ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... the rollers from outside, where they needed it most; and when, that evening, Ben suggested that one of the guns standing in the pleasaunce should be examined, they made the servants stare by the deft way in which they helped him to handle the ponderous mass of metal, hitching on ropes and dragging it out from where it had lain half-covered with ivy to where it was now planted, so that it could be made to sweep ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... deft hands she helped to set the board. None of the men offered to assist her, and Leroy watching her, felt a sudden sense of annoyance that this woman should seem, even for a moment, to be in the position of a ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... inner office Van Horn, his dress coat off, gave the chloroform while the Scotchman set the arm; and the American surgeons, no longer crowding, but standing off respectfully as if at a clinic, looked on critically. It was rapid and deft work, they admitted, especially since the surgeon was using another man's splints, and the patient proved to be one of the subjects who fight the anesthetic ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... any annoyance. Then she is so deft, so dainty. She touches books with the lightest of fingers. She will sit and look at pictures, and it quite surprises me how much she ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... thickly powdered with blue iris powder, and on her long train, that a monkey held up at the end, were embroidered in gaudy colors the signs of the zodiac. She was not the Queen of Sheba, she was a nurse whose face he could not see in the obscurity, and, sticking an arm behind his head in a deft professional manner, she gave him something to drink from a glass without looking at him. He said "Thank you," in his natural voice, which surprised him in the silence; but she went off without replying and he saw that it was a trayful of glasses that had tinkled as she had ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... than plain statement, for a deft waiter was constantly coming in and out, he supplied Hermione with glimpses of his own career, and ascertained from her that she had secured Marcelle's services through the good offices of a lady who was ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... auctioneer, drove up in his dogcart. He touched his hat to Colonel Eden, gave an order to his clerk and crossed the yard briskly. He twisted the cigarette he smoked into the corner of his mouth with deft movements of his lips, waved his hand to various acquaintances and looked round him with quick, cheerful glances. No man in the country was quicker to appreciate the financial worth of a crowd. He knew before a single bid was made whether ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... afterward, to remember for how long she had thought the woman who attended on her a servant. And yet she did think her so until the morning when it suddenly occurred to her that it was not possible any ordinary servant should be so deft and self-contained at once: servants were not so calm—that was it, so calm. Even the best of them were hurried and anxious, and if they were old and valued, they got on one's nerves the more: one had to consider them. Of course, ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... apprentice, to some small task, an experiment made upon a comparatively worthless body, supplies him with material which it does not much matter whether he spoils or not, and then if by practice the hand becomes deft, he is set to better work. God sets us to try our 'prentice hands here in the world, and if we administer that rightly, not necessarily perfectly, but so as to show that there are the makings of a good workman in us by His gracious help, then ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "and glad I am to see her again." And with a deft push here and a gentle pull there, she succeeded in getting the sick ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... to stop the tears racing over her cheeks, turned, and fled with long steps back to the crowd of girls surrounding poor Miss Anstice, Miss Salisbury herself wiping the linen gown with an old napkin in her deft fingers. ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... response while he made close examination. At the base of Mr. Kenny's neck, well above the shoulder-blade, dark blood was welling slowly from an ugly puncture. And in front there was a corresponding puncture, but smaller. And presently his deft and gentle fingers, exploring the folds of the boy's undershirt, closed upon ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Her maid, a deft Viennese, who had remained with this accommodating mistress for five years, quieted her by telling her that the master was better, that he was still asleep, not having slept for the greater ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... old Squire split his foot open with an ax, they lived so far in the country they couldn't get a physician every time it needed attention, and her kind, brave mamma undertook to dress the wound herself every morning. She would let the deft little fingers squeeze a sponge full of tepid water over the cut as many times as it was necessary, then hold the scissors and bandages, and help in other ways. And old Squire said the tender, compassionate little face "ho'ped 'im as much ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... Apollo could only be worthily served in singing robes and laurel crowned. And yet many of Jonson's lyrics will live as long as the language. Who does not know "Queen and huntress, chaste and fair." "Drink to me only with thine eyes," or "Still to be neat, still to be dressed"? Beautiful in form, deft and graceful in expression, with not a word too much or one that bears not its part in the total effect, there is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a certain stiffness and formality, a suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... and the fingers of the left hand, deft and agile, limit and select those which the flute shall ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... distinguish and compare the quality of things. What I am here maintaining is that art is not necessarily the production of something artistic; that is the same impulse only when it rises in the heart of an inventive, accomplished, deft-fingered, eager-minded craftsman. If a man or a woman has a special gift of words, or a mastery of form and colour, or musical phrases, the passion for beauty is bound to show itself in the making of beautiful things—and ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... With deft fingers, the newcomer measured out a powder from one of his packages and administered it to the unconscious lad and next turned his attention to the wounded leg. Emptying a spoonful of liquid from ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... deft, can readily wait on a dozen people, especially if all the necessary articles for changing the courses, plates, silver, etc., are arranged on a side table in the room or outside ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... ardent sportsman, and he spent much of his time in the woods and fields, fishing, riding, walking, hunting. He had a special relish for gardening and for photography, and he liked to undertake laborious jobs in carpentry, at which he was quite deft. That his feeling for the things of the natural world was acutely sensitive and coloured by imagination and emotion is abundantly evidenced in his music. He was fond of taking long, leisurely drives and rides through the rich and varied hill country about Peterboro, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... to you at once." With a Frenchwoman's tact she busied herself in getting out the blue foulard and pretended not to see the blush and smile which accompanied Kathleen's opening of the box. She did not speak again, helping Kathleen with deft fingers to finish her toilet, and then stood back to contemplate the effect. "Will mademoiselle attend the ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... polished boards. For Diana, there were two joys connected with the old house: the joy of entering in, a stranger and conqueror, on its guarded and matured beauty, and the joy of adding to that beauty by a deft modernness. Very deft, and tender, and skilful it must be. But no one could say that time-worn Persian rugs, with their iridescent blue and greens and rose reds—or old Italian damask and cut-velvet from Genoa, or Florence, or Venice—were out of harmony with the charming ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... its exterior was the ordinary, old-fashioned, one-and-a-half story farmhouse, improved by a piazza; but the interior, under the deft hands and good taste of my wife, had an appearance both home-like and cozy that was ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... Dyck's very charming portrait of Charles I of England and Henrietta, a most deft and distinguished work, and Raphael's famous portrait of Leo X with two companions: rather dingy, and too like three persons set for the camera, but powerful and deeply interesting to us, because here we see the first Medici pope, Leo X, Lorenzo de' Medici's son Giovanni, who ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... With deft, gentle touches, she cleaned away the blood and grime, parting his thick hair now and then with delicate care. Her hands were steady now, and having steeled herself for anything, the sight of a jagged, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... he left her there and went unto his bellows and turned them upon the fire and bade them work. And the bellows, twenty in all, blew on the crucibles, sending deft blasts on every side, now to aid his labour and now anon howsoever Hephaistos willed and the work went on. And he threw bronze that weareth not into the fire, and tin and precious gold and silver, and next he ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... what seems temperamental abruptness: "Sit down. One can always think better sitting down." She catches a chair under her with a deft movement of her heel, and Miss Garnett sinks provisionally into her seat. "And I think it needs ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... Eelan first came home; but a year or two after, the family conferences took a more serious tone. She had learnt to keep her father's books in the shop, and had become deft at housework; but there was no prospect of her settling in a house of her own; many of the best young men in the place had offered themselves as lovers ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... was kneeling before her trunk, had whipped out her key, unlocked it, and was swiftly selecting the numbers wanted from the trays, her breath coming quickly, her deft fingers choosing unerringly, when an indignant voice said, in Portuguese, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... Kate, spluttering still. Pixie had flipped over a page with a deft movement, and sat with hands folded on her lap, a ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... for a moment the officer, if he too is an old hand, quietly removes the candle from the lantern and with a deft turn of his wrist tips the boiling-hot contents of the tallow cup surrounding the flaming wick out upon the bare arm or exposed chest of the "case." When the fit was genuine, as of course it sometimes was, the test had no particular reviving effect; but if the man were shamming, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... morning, Gwynne Ellis, armed with brushes, palettes, and divers other encumbrances, would ramble away over shore or cliff, bringing with him in the evening the most beautiful scenes and views of the neighbourhood, which his deft brush had transferred to the pages of his portfolio. He was a true artist, and, moreover, possessed one admirable trait, generally lacking in inferior artists, namely, humility! And as he held up for Cardo's inspection ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... year that can be spared from the school. Aside from the ploughing, the labor is light. Pruning, grafting, budding, the picking of the grapes, the gathering of the fruit from the trees, the sorting, packing, and canning, are labor for light and deft hands, and labor distributed through the year. The harvest, of one sort and another, is almost continuous, so that young girls and boys can have, in well-settled districts, pretty steady employment—a long season in establishments packing oranges; at another ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... taste and try tills temper, sirs, Mood it and brood it in your breast— Or if ye ween, for worldly stirs. That man does right to mar his rest, Let me be deft and debonair, I am ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various |
