"Fingered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... once in a thousand generations; that in every white, black, or other coloured pigeon, which may have transmitted its proper colour during centuries, there should be a latent capacity in the plumage to become blue and to be marked with certain characteristic bars; that in every child in a six-fingered family there should be the capacity for the production of an additional digit; and so in other cases. Nevertheless there is no more inherent improbability in this being the case than in a useless and rudimentary organ, or even ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... eat too much that falls from the lodgers' tables) were talking local politics with a foxy-faced young tradesman of the semi-professional sort. The barman, who had had enough to drink, was thumb-fingered, loud-voiced, hastily slow. Sometimes the sound of a heavier wave than usual broke through the buzz of conversation, and sometimes, when the conversation dropped, wave after wave could be heard sweeping ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... "I remember coming to the harbour in a ship. What was it called? The Burrawalla!" and as he fingered the papers in the pocket-book, and came upon his father's signature, Meurig Wynne, he became much excited, and hunted eagerly until he found a folded paper, out of which he drew a long curl of ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Saturday he remembered Roma with a good deal of self-reproach, and everything that happened during the following days made him think of her with tenderness. During the morning an aide-de-camp brought him the casket containing the Collar of the Annunziata, and spoke a formal speech. He fingered the jewelled band and golden pendant as he made the answer prescribed by etiquette, but he was thinking of Roma and the joy she might have felt in hailing him cousin ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... If she was thinking of a little blond child—lying in a hospital bed—if she was thinking of a man with sleek hair, trying to make a new start—if she was thinking of a girl with dark, flashing eyes, and a small, grubby-fingered boy, her expression did not mirror her thought. Only once she spoke, as she was ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... demand an accounting and to avenge. It seemed incredible, and yet there could be no other explanation. Malbihn shrugged. Well, others had sought Malbihn for similar reasons in the course of a long and checkered career. He fingered his rifle, and waited. ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... burst the toils, if she oiled herself it would slip through them. When a Dyak village has turned out to hunt wild pigs in the jungle, the people who stay at home may not touch oil or water with their hands during the absence of their friends; for if they did so, the hunters would all be "butter-fingered" and the prey would slip ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... fingered the curls and braids, inquiring with every touch of the hand or adjustment of a hair-pin: "Does that ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... foreseen had risen; for the present he could not appear at the bank to draw against the balance he always maintained there. His own future, how he should be able to subsist, even if he could evade those who sought him, had thus become problematical. John Steele fingered that last sovereign; started to turn, when he caught the look in the other's eyes. Did it recall to him his own plight but ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... Forrest fingered a revolver, but he dared not shoot for fear the bullet should find the slender form of Evie, who we saw was huddled close to his side. Mannering laughed as he passed us and waved his ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... square-built, black-haired, homely-featured old woman, in a big, round starched white cap and a flowing black silk gown. She sat in an uncushioned oaken armchair by the window, with some white knitting in her bony, blunt-fingered brown hands, and tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on her nose. But the spectacles couldn't hide the goodness or the soundness or the sweetness that looked forth from her motherly old ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... her father fingered the three seal-impressions, discussing them with her in the language of a savant. She herself examined them minutely and expressed opinions. Now and then she glanced apprehensively to that open window. He pointed out to her where she was wrong in her estimate of the design of the circular one, explaining ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... back to a table near the door, where his chair was turned down at a game of draw. He started talking in a low tone to the man seated next to him. The first interest of their entrance soon died out. The dealer at faro went on imperturbably sliding card after card out of the case, the case-keeper fingered the buttons on the wires of his abacus and the players shifted their chips about the layout or nervously shuffled them between ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... club Capt. MacVeagh stood treat. British wassail and what not. The twenty-five dollars melted pleasantly and the captain fell off in a happy doze as rosy fingered Aurora ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... crescent, Unsanative and now senescent, A plastered skeleton of lath, Looked forward to a day of wrath. In the dead night, the groaning timber Would jar upon the ear of slumber, And, like Dodona's talking oak, Of oracles and judgments spoke. When to the music fingered well The feet of children lightly fell, The sire, who dozed by the decanters, Started, and dreamed of misadventures. The rotten brick decayed to dust; The iron was consumed by rust; Each tabid and perverted mansion Hung in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unexpected and unimaginable. The little women make me eat, laughing much, with that perpetual, irritating laugh which is peculiar to Japan—they make me eat, according to their fashion, with dainty chop-sticks, fingered with affected grace. I am becoming accustomed to their faces. The whole effect is refined—a refinement so entirely different from our own that at first sight I understand nothing of it, although in the long run it may end ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... angry gleam faded from his eyes, and a dreamy look came into them as he let the heavy lids droop a little, and remained silent, apparently lost in thought. The women ceased sobbing, and watched his altered face, while Gianbattista sank down into a chair and absently fingered the pencil that ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... strains, as if he spelled a word with stammering syllables. Eugene's musical expression was in his throat alone; his fingers were almost powerless to bring out the meaning of sweet sounds. A drunken crew on a rolling vessel might have danced to the tune that Eugene Hautville fingered on his brother's fiddle that morning while his sister walked back and forth overhead, running the gantlet, as it were, of an agony which his masculine imagination could not compass, well tutored as it was by the lessons of ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a firm, round figure, no angles, everything, including elbows, in curves; blooming cheeks and smooth-skinned, taper-fingered hands tanned a very honest brown,—the hands of a ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... must be light-fingered too, they say to themselves, or they would not be after putting their hands into our tar. What else can bring them ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... mountebank said to me; "it is a matter of exercise and habit, that is all! Of course, one requires to be a little gifted that way, and not to be butter-fingered, but what is chiefly necessary is patience and daily practice ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... too much," said the prince. He had helped himself to a glass of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke. "You expect the world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and heavy, remember that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks. You would never make a diplomatist. I have heard of negotiations going forward ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... train-robbers and cattle-rustlers who lived in a cave out in Arizona, and they had for a leader a guy named Three-fingered Pete. Pete could draw a gun quicker with his three fingers than any ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... thickset, red-faced lady, without a waist and plainly clad in untrimmed linsey-wolsey, who was speaking authoritatively to a hysterical-looking young girl, upon whose narrow shoulder she rested a heavy, fat-fingered hand as she walked. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... serves to heighten its difficulties. For example, since writing the sentence ending on that word 'hope,' I have covered two whole pages with writing which has now been converted into ashes among the logs upon my hearth. For the covering of those pages two volumes had been fingered and referred to, if you please, and my faulty memory drawn upon for yet a third quotation. So much for the habit of literary allusiveness, engrained into one by years of book-making, and yet more surely, I suspect, by labour for hire ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... man, leaned on the counter and fingered lovingly the bracelet which he had lifted out of its nest of blue plush. Archie, leaning on the other side of the counter, inspected the bracelet searchingly, wishing that he knew more about these things; for he had rather a sort of idea that the ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... position in which any one who has ever loved a donkey recognizes scathing criticism. Daphne fingered one of them ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... yachting seemed to be a gratuitously monstrous union. His pals had left him; why? 'Not the "yachting" brand'; and why not? As to the size, comfort, and crew of the yacht—all cheerfully ignored; so many maddening blanks. And, by the way, why in Heaven's name 'a prismatic compass'? I fingered a few magazines, played a game of fifty with a friendly old fogey, too importunate to be worth the labour of resisting, and went back to my chambers to bed, ignorant that a friendly Providence had come to my rescue; and, indeed, rather resenting ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... heart beating 'gainst the elbow warm) We passed into the great refreshment-hall, Where the heaped cheese-cakes and the comfits small Lay, like a hive of sunbeams, brought to burn Around the margin of the negus urn; When my poor quivering hand you fingered twice, And, with inquiring accents, whispered "Ice, Water, or cream?" I could no more dissemble, But dropped upon the couch all in a tremble. A swimming faintness misted o'er my brain, The corks seemed starting from the brisk champagne, The custards ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... hour to wait for the up train, and it's pleasanter waiting there than here," replied Blunt; "besides, I have business at Langrye; I want to see one of my friends there who is looking after light-fingered gentry." ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... tornado. From the shelter of screens and from retired nooks, come sounds indicative of garments doffed and donned with abnormal celerity and severity, but never a word of joking, and never a cry for deft-fingered Kitty's assistance, and then, little by little, even these noises die away, and the palace of the Sleeping Beauty could not be more quiet. No girl stirs from her lurking-place, until our yourself issue from your pet corner, and then Nell, a warning finger on her lip, noiselessly emerges ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... elastic, and ready to yield to any force that is higher. So the tree stands, not mere lumber and cordwood, or an obstacle to be gotten rid of by fire, but an embodiment of life unexhausted for a thousand years. The fairy-fingered breeze plays through its myriad harp strings. It makes wide miles of air aromatic. Animal life feeds on the quintessence of life in its seeds. But most of all it is an object lesson that power ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... up the cap and fingered it, half idly. "He has a large-sized head for his years," he remarked; "if it be full of brains, hereafter ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... dismissed Croft; then she wrote a note to John Merkle, in care of his bank. By this time the cavernous regions at the rear of the theater were nearly deserted. She listened; but, hearing Wharton still in conversation with the watchman, she locked her door once more and sat down to wait. As she fingered the note a doubt formed in her mind—a doubt as to the advisability under any circumstances of leaving written evidence in another's hands. Finally she destroyed the missive, determining to make use of the telephone on the following day. As to just ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Winters, Howard, Nye, Stewart, Neely Johnson, Hal Clayton, North, Root—and my brother, upon whom be peace!—and then the desperadoes, who made life a joy, and the "slaughter-house," a precious possession: Sam Brown, Farmer Pete, Bill Mayfield, Six-fingered Jake, Jack Williams, and the rest of the crimson discipleship, and so on, and so on. Believe me, I would start a resurrection it would do you more good to look at than the next one will, if you go on the way you ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... around him the Master of Santiago; in the carved seats of the choirs the stout canons intoned an endless growling litany; at the sacristy door, the flare of the candles flashing occasionally on the jewels of his mitre, the bishop fingered his crosier restlessly, asking his favorite choir-boy from time to time why Don Jorge had not arrived. And messengers must have come running to Don Jorge, telling him the service was on the point of beginning, and he must have waved them away with a grave gesture ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... stolen one since leaving the cow country," snarled the other. "There is no knowing what kind of property you light-fingered gentlemen ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... have done. Glazzard occasionally inspected his companion's features, which were not vulgar, yet not pleasing. The young man had a habit of sucking in his cheeks, and of half closing his eyes as if he suffered from weak sight; his limbs twitched now and then, and he constantly fingered his throat. ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... explanation had satisfied her, for she was smiling with considerable vivacity as she made the remark. Up to that instant she had neglected her back hair. Now she gracefully, lingeringly fingered it to see if it was properly in place. In doing so, she managed to drop ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... that is unintelligible in the world, all that is alien to man, has been drawn, as it were, from its dark retreat, clothed in radiant form, and presented to the mind as a glorified image of itself. Every phenomenon of nature, night and "rosy- fingered" dawn, earth and sun, winds, rivers, and seas, sleep and death,—all have been transformed into divine and conscious agents, to be propitiated by prayer, interpreted by divination, and comprehended by passions and desires identical with those which ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... tangled in half-dreams of a devolution by which, when national amity shall have become mentionable besides personal pence, London shall attract to herself all the small vice, as she does already most of the great, from the country, all the thrusters after gain, the vulgar, heavy-fingered intellects, the Progressive spouters, the Bileses, the speculating brigandage, and shall give us back from the foggy world of clubs and cab-ranks and geniuses, the poets and painters, all the nice and witty and pretty people, to make towns such as this, conserved and purified, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... of pain. But, ascending from lowest to highest, through every scale of human industry, that industry worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the laborer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted worker in bronze, and in marble, and with the colors of light; and none of these, who are true workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found the law of ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... but she whose black hair discontents her, sings, and Pippa "listens and comes close," for the song has words as sweet as any of her own . . . and the red-fingered one calls to her to come closer still, they won't eat her—why, she seems to be "the very person the great rich handsome Englishman has fallen so violently in love with." She shall hear all about it; and on the steps ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... which asserts that every morning a melodious sound is emitted from the first named of these two colossal figures as he salutes his rosy-fingered Mother whom he acknowledges as the source of all Light and Wisdom. The bodies are described as being "without motion, the faces without expression, the eyes looking straight forward, yet a certain grand simplicity occasions them to ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... mounting the beach answers the shout of hosts mid-sea; until, as the last line of the Israelites have gained the beach, the shields clang, and the cymbals clap; and as the waters whelm the pursuing foe, the swift-fingered winds on the white keys of the foam play the grand march of Israel delivered, and the ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... as he fingered the gate latch. "Old Jim's been 'round a right smart time, en he don't confer with young women on business matters. He read the leetle fine print legal ad in the papers en he sent his handyman, Joe Craig, to Logan, the receiver gent, en got ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... school principal reported that six children in one family needed underwear. A visitor discovered that one of the boys who had the reputation of being unruly and light-fingered also had adenoids. He was taken to a hospital for operation, and was later ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... sat down next to each other. A long and quelling silence followed the lighting of my cigarette. Feeling rather at a loose end, I thought out a few stage directions—"here business with handkerchief, etc."—and adjusted the buckles on my shoes. I looked at some photographs and fingered a paper-knife and odds and ends on the table near me. The oppressive silence continued. I strolled to the book-shelves and, under cover of a copy of "Country Conversations," peeped at the Master. He appeared to be quite ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... doubtless they had been surprised by the posse before they had opportunity to run or put up a fight. Moran was there, stretched comfortably on Wade's own cot, smoking a cigar. Once, he looked directly toward the window at which the watcher had placed himself, but the latter did not move. Instead, he fingered his gun and waited; he was not sure that he really wanted to avoid detection; if it came, Moran would pay, and the rest, at the moment, did not seem to matter. He had forgotten ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... final judgment was adverse to the West African plan, because of the difficulty of getting skilful natives to tend young plants, and prepare the products. Tea he regarded as quite hopeless from this difficulty, and he said he did not think you would ever get Africans at as cheap a rate, or so deftly fingered to roll tea, as you can get Asiatics. No one knows until they have tried it the trouble it is to get an African to do things carefully; but it is a trouble, not an impossibility. If you don't go off with fever from sheer worry and vexation the thing can be done, but in the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that the deep instinct of where he should at last find her must confidently have worked for him, since she confessed to her instinct of where she should find him; which meant—oh it came home to him as he fingered his sealed treasure!—neither more nor less than that she had now created between them an equality of experience. He wasn't to have done all the suffering, she was to have "been through" things he couldn't ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... Grey Sr. made a mistake. He got a hold of my hand and fingered it. He came and took me in his ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... as if all this frequently fingered fat didn't belong to her, for she raised no protest. Should any one, however, try to get the best of her on the price of a roll, she would turn into a ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and company in which he was hidden. What we call obscure condition or vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... nervous whistle. "I see what you mean, pal. With all our eggs in one basket, we sure can't afford to get butter-fingered ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... his finger uncertainly over the keyboard searching for a key from which to make a start. The group watched him expectantly. As he struck a note each member of his audience jumped back in surprise at the sound. Fresno scratched his head and gingerly fingered another key. After several false starts, backing and filling, over the keyboard, he began to pick out with one finger the air "The ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... cents, he lounged into the restaurant where the young Russian bloods assembled who wrote for the Yiddish Labour papers, and 'knew it all.' He would draw them out about Yvonne Rupert. He established himself near a table at which long-haired, long-fingered Freethinkers were drinking ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... at her. The other guy fumbled for a cigarette. Driver poked at the lighter on the dash, still dividing his attention between the road and Nurse Farrow. The man beside him reached for the lighter when it popped out and he held it for her while she puffed it into action. Farrow fingered the triggers on the skin-blast hypos. The man beside the driver replaced the lighter in its socket on the dash. The driver slid aside and to the floor, a second before the other hospital orderly flopped ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... seconded her entreaty with much solicitude. Caddy was now the mother, and I the godmother, of such a poor little baby—such a tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely anything but cap-border, and a little lean, long-fingered hand, always clenched under its chin. It would lie in this attitude all day, with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering (as I used to imagine) how it came to be so small and weak. Whenever it was moved it cried, but at all other times it was so patient ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Jack could well understand, but the last part of it, making collusion to the wealth, was a little dark, as he thought, bekase, he hadn't fingered any of it at the time: still, he knew she was truth to the back-bone, and wouldn't desave him. They hadn't travelled much farther, When Jack snaps his fingers with a 'Whoo! by the powers, there it is, my darling—there it ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... had stretched one hand towards Nellie; the other he had laid on his heart, where it seemed to encounter some sort of hard obstruction. This he vaguely fingered, wondering what it might be, while he gave his order to Barrett. With a sudden cry he dipped his hand into his breast-pocket and drew forth the bottle he had borne away from Mr. Druce's. He snatched out his watch: one o'clock!—fifteen minutes overdue. Wildly he called the waiter back. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... which was clasped around his wrists, while the other held his ankles in their steel embrace, while above him, watching his every movement, was a man dressed in the uniform of a captain of police who in a most menacing manner fingered the trigger of a revolver, which Jim recognized as the same weapon that he had attempted to ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... horses on the race-course, and look big at the multitude we have bubbled. Is not this your minister come into office? Does not this remind you of his equipage, his palace, his plate? In both cases lightly won, lavishly wasted; and the public, whose cash we have fingered, may at least have the pleasure of gaping at the figure we make with it! This, then, is our harvest of happiness; our foes, our friends, are ready to eat us with envy,— yet what is so little enviable ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who she was,—the beautiful Sie-Thao? For a thousand years and more the trees have been whispering above her bed of stone. And the syllables of her name come to the listener with the lisping of the leaves; with the quivering of many-fingered boughs; with the fluttering of lights and shadows; with the breath, sweet as a woman's presence, of numberless savage flowers,—Sie-Thao. But, saving the whispering of her name, what the trees say cannot be understood; and they alone remember the years of Sie-Thao. Something ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... slight unspeakably, Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face - Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race, Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea, The brown eyes radiant with vivacity - There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, A spirit intense and rare, with trace ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... knows them. They had a wonderful game with that Englishman, Sir Arthur, this morning. Stripped him of half a pound of eight-inch leaves—a neat little stack. A crooked game, of course. Those fellows are more nimble-fingered than Rance Rankin ever dared ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... and I kept the window shut, but could not help watching, with a fearful joy, the many-fingered hazy pale vibrations, the reflections of the levin in the hollow of the land. And sadly I began to think of Uncle Sam and all his goodness; and how in a storm, a thousandfold of this, he went down his valley in the torrent of the waves, and must have been drowned, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... stared at him, her lids narrowing. "I hadn't thought of that possibility." She fingered her ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... to be, the earth was thrown out over the sides, and so the well was gradually sunk to the required depth, the plank-siding being added gradually as the shaft was lowered. These rived planks and the tops of the four corner-poles, that can now be seen and fingered less than two feet below the surface of the ground, were not very uniform in thickness, and of course have rotted off at the top by time and exposure; but enough of both has been preserved till this time by constant submergence in the water and in the unusually moist soil above it to betray without ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... rooms, chambers of art in themselves, took care, as an influence, of the general manner, and made people bland without making them solemn. They were only people, as Mrs. Stringham had said, staying for the week or two at the inns, people who during the day had fingered their Baedekers, gaped at their frescoes and differed, over fractions of francs, with their gondoliers. But Milly, let loose among them in a wonderful white dress, brought them somehow into relation with something ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... night, when with labor oppressed, All mortals enjoy the sweet blessing of rest," a phantom stood at Lucy's bedside and fingered her. She awoke with a violent scream, the first note of which pierced the night's dull ear, but the second sounded like a wail from a well, being uttered a long way under the bedclothes. "Hush! don't be a fool," cried the affectionate phantom; and kneaded the uncertain form through the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... primed, finished. clever, cute, able, ingenious, felicitous, gifted, talented, endowed; inventive &c 515; shrewd, sharp, on the ball &c (intelligent) 498; cunning &c 702; alive to, up to snuff, not to be caught with chaff; discreet. neat-handed, fine-fingered, nimble-fingered, ambidextrous, sure- footed; cut out for, fitted for. technical, artistic, scientific, daedalian^, shipshape; workman- like, business-like, statesman-like. Adv. skillfully &c adj.; well &c 618; artistically; with skill, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to do and then do it?" said Mrs. Merrill after Mary Jane had made pictures on the window pane and rummaged through the mending basket and poked her finger into the canary's cage and fingered the forbidden little green balls on the ends of the fern leaves. "Little girls can't expect to have a good time when they do all the things they are not allowed to do. Go and play with Marie Georgiannamore, you haven't played with her ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... from a ragged tramp on his personal warranty only. Still, a diamond that size conjured up a vision of many thousands of pounds. Then, thought I, such a stone could scarcely exist without being mentioned in every book on gems, and again I called to mind the stories of contraband and light-fingered Kaffirs at the Cape. I put the question of purchase on ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... I answered defiantly,—"Now that we are writing to each other I wish to call your attention to the fact that for many months past there has been a constant flow of one-fingered music from your little boy, which penetrates through the floor of my library and makes all work impossible. May I beg you therefore to see that your child is taught a new tune immediately, seeing that the National Anthem has lost its first freshness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... 'Touchwood' mascot?" he asked. She signified a negative, and then nervously fingered her gauze. "No? It's a well-known mascot. Sort of tiny imp sort of thing, with a huge head, glittering eyes, a khaki cap of oak, and crossed legs in gold and silver. I hear that tens of thousands of them are sold. But there is ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... inherent qualities and limitations of a man are settled for good and all, whether he will be a negro or a white man, whether he will be free or not of inherited disease, whether he will be passionate or phlegmatic or imaginative or six-fingered or with a snub or aquiline nose. And not only that, but even before his birth the qualities that are not strictly and inevitably inherited are also beginning to be made. The artificial, the avoidable handicap ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... the lot of the women who were round about him here and there, in chairs. Ah! those poor little black shawls, those miserable pleated caps, those wretched tippets, those doleful seed rosaries they fingered ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... might manage her. The money comes from the Eustace property, and I'd sooner it should go to you than a half-hearted, numb-fingered, cold-blooded ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... He fingered controls lightly, depressed a few more keys, and set one vernier, already at a ratio of a million to one, down to ten million. He then stepped up his velocity, and found that the guides worked well up to a speed much greater than any ever reached by Fenachrone vessels ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... which changing colours run riot through sky and clouds—pearly grey, jet black, dark dun, pale lavender, deep mauve, rich carmine, and brightest gold. These colours fade away into the darkness of the night; the stars then peep forth and twinkle brightly. At the approach of "rosy-fingered" dawn their lights go out, one by one. Then blue tints appear in the firmament which deepen into azure. The glory of the ultramarine sky does not remain long without alloy: clouds soon appear. So the scene ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... leaned against the door, as her eyes met Malbone's. Then she made her way to a chair, and leaning on the back of it, which she fingered convulsively, looked with bewildered eyes and compressed lips from the one to the other. Malbone tried to speak, but failed; tried again, and brought forth only a whisper that broke into clearer speech as the words went on. "No use ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Antony, what can be so sweet as thy sweet words? The harbour of his rest to the storm-tossed mariner—surely that is sweet! The dream of Heaven's bliss which cheers the poor ascetic priest on his path of sacrifice—surely that is sweet! The sight of Dawn, the rosy-fingered, coming in his promise to glad the watching Earth—surely that is sweet! But, ah! not one of these, nor all dear delightful things that are, can match the honey-sweetness of thy words to me, O ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... incessantly up and down the Nile, had made the same observation on some rock of the Thebaid; and that the music of the rocks there led to the jugglery of the priests in the statue of Memnon? Perhaps, when, "the rosy-fingered Aurora rendered her son, the glorious Memnon, vocal,"* (* These are the words of an inscription, which attests that sounds were heard on the 13th of the month Pachon, in the tenth year of the reign of Antoninus. See Monuments de l'Egypte Ancienne.) ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... there was the rub. He laid bare his heart. She aided him with her cool advice. She was very sensible. Her brother-in-law and her sister would welcome him in their household, for he was a lover of music and his intentions were honourable. Of course, he sighed, of course, and fingered his red tie. Why not, she argued, remain at Marienbad for three weeks more and complete his cure? Anyhow, he was not so stout! She looked up at him ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... their close friendship did the Queen command him to make a song for her. This had been at Dover, about vespers, in the starved and tiny garden overlooking the English Channel, upon which her apartments faced; and the priest had fingered his lute for an appreciable while before he sang, more harshly than was ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... man? Certainly, at first sight, it looked very like one; but, on closer inspection, it rather seemed to be some kind of a creature that lived in the sea. For on his legs and arms there were scales, such as fishes have; he was web-footed and web-fingered, after the fashion of a duck; and his long beard, being of a greenish tinge, had more the appearance of a tuft of seaweed than of an ordinary beard. Have you never seen a stick of timber, that has been long tossed about by the waves, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... gestures which seemed to suggest the energy of one already uplifted by triumph. Beadon Clarke listened with the passivity of a man encompassed by melancholy, and sunk deep in the abyss of shame. Aristide Dumeny was reading a letter which he held with long-fingered, waxen-white hands very near to his narrow dark eyes. His close-growing thick hair looked more glossy now that there was artificial light in the court; from the distance its undulations were invisible, and it resembled a cap of some heavy and handsome material drawn ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... George Sea Otter had never had such an experience— he, happily, having been raised in a country where, with the exception of waiters, only a pronounced vagrant expects or accepts a gratuity from a woman. He took the bill and fingered it curiously; then his white blood asserted itself and he handed the bill back ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... eve yet lingered, Bathed in kindly light those hill-tops cold; Fringed each cloud, and, stooping rosy-fingered, Changed Rhine's waters ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... owned, was a kind soul. She always put the pretty ones to housework—"it gives us a chance at the windows. I have Fernando, who works at the sand-carting in the river. He never fails to look up this way. Some day he will ask for me." She peered at herself in a pail of water, and fingered her cap daintily. "How does my skirt hang now, Manuela? Too short, I fancy. Did you ever see such shoes as they give you here! Lucky that nobody ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared Telemachus rose and dressed himself. He bound his sandals on to his comely feet, girded his sword about his shoulder, and left his room looking like an immortal god. He at once sent the criers round to call the people in assembly, so ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... many-fingered Summer! We hold thee very dear, as well we may: It is the kernel of the year to-day— All hail to thee! thou art a welcome comer! If every insect were a fairy drummer, And I a fifer that could deftly play, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... fever. Everything seemed new and clear; the tea, the buttered toast and jam tasted absurdly good; tobacco had never smelt so nice. And walking up and down the empty room, he stopped here and there to touch or look. He took up Stella's work-basket, fingered the cotton reels and a gaily-coloured plait of sewing silks, smelt at the little bag filled with woodroffe she kept among them. He sat down at the piano, playing tunes with one finger, thinking: 'To-night she'll ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... am going to make this typewriting machine go or nto: that last word was intended for n-not; but I guess I shall make some sort of a succss of it before I run it very long. I am so thick-fingered that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... makes trouble?" The vast bulk of the Vorm-man who was the Starfall's private law moved through the crowd with serene confidence in his own strength, which no one there, unless blind, deaf, and out-of-the-senses drunk, could dispute. His scaled, six-fingered, claw hand reached out for ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... one voice from those assembled, the words: "Samory hath spoken! Allah send him blessings abundant!" and as they did so each fingered his amulets, little scraps of parchment whereon verses from the Koran were written in sprawly Arabic. At that moment, too, I noticed, for the first time, that right opposite us was the grinning, evil face of the black giant, Kouaga, the man who ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... and dog poor when she died, that's certain. Like everything else I can lay mind on she came to a bad end—Lord reckons where Phebe is. I always thought you were weak fingered to let Hannah go—with that house built and all. I suppose maybe you weren't, though; well out of a ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the sitting-room the judge was lost in the pages of a worn old copy of Tom Moore. He fingered the pages with a tenderness of other days, and lingered over the forgotten lines with a half-quizzical, half-sad smile on his lips. For he had been a lover once, and Sandy's romance stirred dead leaves in his heart that sent up a ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... had entered the room and handed a note to the chairman. It was passed along to Van Derwater's place and left in front of him. He took it up without opening it, and fingered it ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... master and mistress in to breakfast. Here again, as he seated himself, the Colonel was conscious of an agreeable flood of astonishment. There was quite an air about this Christmas breakfast. Fixing his keen eyes on the tablecloth and napkins, he stealthily fingered them with a searching look at the waiting negro. Fortunately his interest was speedily diverted. He caught sight of the orchids and the tear-stained face of his wife bending over them. With a wrench ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... turned to counting his notches. "Know-alls! That's wot they is—ruddy know-alls! Told me I didn't know wot a fair win' wos!" he muttered as he fingered his 'log.' ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Brambila****, were not likely to be soon forgotten by the officers of this settlement. During their stay here, the greatest harmony subsisted between the seamen of the two ships and our people, the latter in but few instances exercising their nimble-fingered talents among them; such, however, as did choose to hazard a display, and were detected, were ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... weapon which the boy fingered so curiously. The tomahawk itself was shaped like a slender axe, and wrought of beaten copper, with a half-inch edge of gleaming steel cleverly welded on, forming a deadly blade. At the butt end of the axe was a delicately ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... in the darkness to watch the stars slowly seeming to pass from east to west, and as he said half-aloud those words about being alone he slowly fingered the revolver-holster on one side of his belt and the hunting-knife in its sheath, which done, he pulled at the strap which slung his rifle, and getting it round to the front he rested it upon his knees, and began mechanically to examine the breech as if to make ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... been at school for about three weeks, the boys called him Six-fingered Jack; but his real name was Willie, for his father and mother gave it him—not William, but Willie, after a brother of his father, who died young, and had always been called Willie. His name in full was Willie Macmichael. It was generally pronounced Macmickle, which was, ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... Darkness wide Rolls in light from side to side; Mark, slow drifting to the West Down the trough and up the crest, Yonder piteous heartsease petal Many-motioned rise and settle — Petal cast a-sea from land By the awkward-fingered Hand That, mistaking Nature's course, Tears the love it fain would force — Petal calm of heartsease flower Smiling sweet on tempest sour, Smiling where by crest and trough Heartache Winds at heartsease scoff, Breathing mild perfumes ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... held Stephen in a spell. Figures stood out from the group. A white-haired patriarch, with eyes raised to the sky; a flat-breasted woman whose child was gone, whose weakness made her valueless. Then two girls were pushed forth, one a quadroon of great beauty, to be fingered. Stephen turned his face away,—to behold Mr. Eliphalet Hopper ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Wheeler, upon occasion, across a Sunday-noon, lace-spread breakfast table, when she was slim and cool fingered in orchid-colored draperies, and his newest gift of a six-carat, pear-shaped diamond blazing away on her right hand. "Say, aren't these Yvette bills ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... truth found in 'The Autobiography of a Thief' is not only stranger but far more interesting than much of the present day fiction. The autobiography of 'Light-fingered Jim' is absorbing, in many pages startling, in its graphicness.... In spite of its naturalness, daring and directness, the work has a marked literary style—a finish that could not have been given by an unexperienced hand. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... one sense the humblest, in another they are the most honoured, of the earth's children: unfading as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered, constant-hearted, is intrusted the weaving of the dark eternal tapestries of the hills; to them slow, iris-eyed, the tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... fule tongues, ye churls," said an old woman, who hobbled past them, as they stood talking near the carriage; "this was nae witch, but a bluidy-fingered thief ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... murmured the baptismal words with motionless lips, and snatched another soul from the fangs of the "Infernal Wolf." [ 1 ] Thus, with the patience of saints, the courage of heroes, and an intent truly charitable, did the Fathers put forth a nimble-fingered adroitness that would have done credit to the profession of which the function is less to dispense the treasures of another world than to grasp those which pertain ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... the war began," I told myself, "can any Englishman have had such an opportunity vouchsafed to him for getting easily and safely into that jealously guarded land as you have now! You have plenty of money, what with your own and this ..." and I fingered Semlin's wad of notes, "and provided you can keep your head sufficiently to remember always that you are a German, once over the frontier you should be able to give the Huns the slip and try and follow up the trail ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... five-fingered hands. This violent natural sign of horror was comforting: she saw that he was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the letters from Canada about the Powers case, and fingered them over a little. He had brought them home this evening, and it wasn't the first time either, to try to get a good hour alone with Marise to talk it over with her. He frowned as he reflected that he seemed to have had mighty little chance ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... down to the income, which was ample, and even paid off the one mortgage that encumbered this noble estate at five per cent., only four per cent. of which was really fingered by the mortgagee; the balance went to a go-between, though no go-between was ever wanted, for any solicitor in the country would have found the money in a week at ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... light-fingered lot they are here this winter!" Miles exclaimed in a petulant tone. "Just see what a rush we had to save the stores from your cache the night ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... captain's natural taciturnity he distorted into a studied attempt to insult him because of his past shortcomings. He imagined that his superior held him in contempt, and so he chafed and fumed inwardly until one evening his madness became suddenly homicidal. He fingered the butt of the revolver at his hip, his eyes narrowed and his brows ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... slender in her black wrapper, and listlessly fingered the telegram, which was now two days old. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... was one heart that burned hot with passion, that fashioned itself after the form of hatred, for little Francette had seen, first a glow in a man's eyes and then a gift in his hand, and she fingered a small, flat blade that hung in her sash with one hand, the while the other strayed on the head of Loup. Dark was the fire that played in her pretty eyes, heavy the anguish that rode ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... mind when she saw my face. You know, Mag, if there's a thing that's fixed in your memory it's the face of the body you've done up. The respectables have their rogues' gallery, but we, that is, the light-fingered brigade, have got a fools' gallery ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... good enough things," says she, "though I have better in my chest at home. It is a good enough cloak, and I am in need of a new cloak." At that she fingered the scarlet, and the touch of the fine stuff went to her mind like singing. "Come," says she, "if it were only for your civility in showing it, what will you have for ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an AEolian harp; and especially why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favorite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang, then they both paused while the orchestra played and the man fingered the hand of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to start singing with her. They sang together and everyone in the theater began clapping and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage—who represented ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... his homely, keen little face even. The eyes held their own thought, and never answered yours; but on the mouth there was a forlorn depression sometimes, like that of a man who, in spite of his fame, felt himself alone and neglected. It rested there now, as he idly fingered the chessmen. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... soon the distant door closed behind them. Then the newcomer did a strange thing. He cast a swift glance over the sleeping faces, to assure himself that he was not watched, and with the light-fingered stealth of the born thief, he slipped his thin hand into Zaidos' breast pocket. Withdrawing it, he smiled wickedly at the sight of what he held. He rose to his feet, hastily pocketed his find, and for ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... in the main hold of the ship. Here were avenues of swinging cots, in double tiers, the enamelled iron white as snow, and on the pillow of each cot lay a dark head, save where some were sitting up—the Sikhs binding their hair as they fingered the kangha and the chakar, the comb and the quoit-shaped hair-ring, which are of the five symbols of their freemasonry. The Field-Marshal stopped to talk to a big sowar. As he did so the men in ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... me earnestly, and when he spoke again his voice had a fatherly ring. "If I make bold, it's yer honor's forgiveness I ask—but, if it was me that was in Paris I'd stay there," and putting his glass down quickly, he rolled to the door, fingered his hat there for one moment, put it on awry, and with the oft-repeated statement, "Oi was priest's boy in Tipperary, bedad," he swayed ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... you know nothing of me, I know something of you, for Messer Brunetto, your philosopher, is one of my very good friends. I had this trinket of him a week ago." And as she spoke she fingered an enamelled and jewelled pendant against her neck that must have cost the scholar a merry penny. "Well, Messer Dante, you who are young and of high spirit, would you have a queen of beauty married to a king ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... David fingered the troublesome forelock thoughtfully for a moment, then said, with something of the former impetuosity coming back ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... into the space left by the stout Ussher, and fingered the hack of the shelf. "Pull," ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... the stranger's split, Camille looking on, holding her cunt open for inspection at the same time, and going through the motions of frigging herself whilst I was shoving. Then came endless variety. I had two other French ladies, and fingered their cunts whilst I fucked a third, then two more, laying cunt upwards, legs in the air, and arses meeting over Camille's head. At last I had six altogether at once, and spent the evening with them naked, fucking, frigging, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... the discovery that Meeker had been lurking in the passage while I was listening to Captain Riggs and Harris in the storeroom, I leaned against the companionway and fingered the shell crucifix, wondering how near Meeker had come to making an end of me. Of course, the finding of the crucifix down there, and the man who ran up the ladder when surprised by Riggs, meant nothing else but that Meeker ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... fields; but the fields are there, for those who can see them, behind the veil of smoke, and through them a wayfarer may still travel with the Knight who loved freedom and courtesy, the Monk shaking his belled bridle, the Ploughman on his mare, and the dainty fingered Prioress with her eyes as grey as glass, riding to join other pilgrims travelling east to Canterbury ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... are not roused but merely disconcerted by the spectacle of passion. Mr. Soper said he supposed he could "make a 'armless remark." And still thirsting for companionship he pursued Mrs. Downey to the drawing-room. As he went, he fingered his little box of bon-bons as if it had been a talisman ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair |
