"Knack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hands to her looks? And I took my opera-glasses to watch her proceedings. Oh! they were very simple: first of all a glance, then a smile, then a slight sign with the head, which meant: 'Are you coming up?' But it was so slight, so vague, so discreet, that it required a great deal of knack to succeed as she did. And I asked myself: 'I wonder if I could do that little movement, from below upwards, which was at the same time bold and pretty, as well as she does,' for her gesture was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... here & there some touches which inclined me to hope that the whole piece might be worked up by the same hand. I am sorry to pronounce it has failed: but Ponere Totum is the great secret; and in our exhibitions a common Dauber, possest of that happy knack, will often be attended with tolerable success, and exult at the failure of a superior artist who has only ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... all means—for if the Searchers come, they'll never be so uncivil to ransack thy Lodgings; and we are bound in Christian Charity to do for one another—Some rich Commodities, I am sure—and some fine Knick-knack will fall to thy share, I'll warrant thee —Pox on him for a young Rogue, how punctual he ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... experience for one day. A man gets out of the habit of being shot over after two years of peace and the memory of the little chips of flying woodwork flicked from the bows of the dingy as he had pulled out into the river was distinctly discouraging. Whoever fired the shots had a pretty knack with a rifle. It was the whirr of a bullet just over his head persuaded him to put back to port. After that the firing ceased. As he dragged the almost foundering dingy on to the mud a fast motor launch went scurrying down stream ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... great king! In 30 years more: 1. The invincible had been beaten a vast number of times. 2. The sage was the puppet of an artful old woman, who was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had quite forgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his enemies (for 4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose term, that may apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in turn. 6. The love of his people was as heartily detested by them as scarcely any other monarch, not even his great-grandson, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... make the best foreman, won't he?" appealed Prescott. "Tom has a knack for just such jobs as this, and it's going to be a ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... Grace, absent-mindedly. "There has to be a knack, or something, and you have it. I haven't. I couldn't do it, even if I wanted to, and I don't think ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... left hand on the bow below the loop of the upper end of the string, the tip of the thumb and knuckle of forefinger pressing firmly on opposite edges of the bow. Draw the bow firmly to you with the right hand, while you push down and away from you with the left. A little practice will soon give the knack. No part of the body except the face must be turned towards the target. Stand with the feet at right angles to the direction of the target and have them a few inches apart. In handling the arrow avoid touching the feathers, and in the act ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... that the departing of that first Summer was a sad matter to him. He had done his best, you see, and a whole new world of trying had been thrown open to him. And really he was beginning to get the knack of that kind of weaving. And she was a fine big apple-cheeked ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... find with American women, if it can be so called, and that is their inquisitiveness; I know that this is a common fault with all women, but it is most conspicuous in the Americans. They have the knack of finding out things without your being aware of it, and if they should want to know your history they will learn all about it after a few minutes' conversation. They are good detectives, and I think they should be employed in that ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... said, divining my thoughts (with his strange knack); "I knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the Bury ball. Did I not, dear, dear ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... only visible things, will seem sheer insanity—is sobriety for a Christian. The world is perfectly right when it says: 'If you believe you can do a thing, you have gone a long way towards doing it.' The expectation of success has often the knack of fulfilling itself. But the world does not know our secret, and our secret is that our humble faith brings into the field the reserves with the Captain of our salvation at their head. Therefore a self-distrusting Christian can say, and say without exaggeration or presumption, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... perhaps, still is—haunted by the phantasm of a big white sow which had accidentally been run over and killed. It was occasionally heard grunting, and had the unpleasant knack of approaching one noiselessly from the rear, and of making the most unearthly noise just ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... said Joe. Major Holt's daughter Sally had a sort of understanding with Joe, but the major hadn't the knack of cordiality, and nobody felt too much at ease with him. Besides, Joe was wearing a uniform for the first time this morning. There were only eight such uniforms in the world, so far. It was black whipcord, with an Eisenhower jacket, narrow silver ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... advanced, Bowers, aided by Cherry-Garrard, sorted out the rations, which he weighed and packed in the most business-like manner. Bowers was always well served, for he had the happy knack of enlisting volunteers for whatever his particular ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... the pastry," says Mr. Laws, the judge, with a profound bow. "I wish, madam, we had such a happy knack of pastry at home as you have at Castlewood. I often say to my wife, 'My dear, I wish ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... though!" he exclaimed, swerving the plane in a long, ascending spiral. All the art, the knack of flight came back to him, at the touch of the wheel, as readily as swimming to an expert in the water. Fear? The thought no more occurred to him than to you, reading ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... repeating them; and yet in the whole narrative I can scarce promise you one adventure, as my account is rather of what I saw than what I did. The first misfortune of my life, which you all know, was great; but tho' it distrest, it could not sink me. No person ever had a better knack at hoping than I. The less kind I found fortune at one time, the more I expected from her another, and being now at the bottom of her wheel, every new revolution might lift, but could not depress me. I proceeded, therefore, ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... so much an act of strength to dart a harpoon into a soft thing like a white whale, but of practice and knack. The shaft of the harpoon is so long and heavy, that if it is directed well and with good aim it curves over and falls with ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... great work here, Sergeant Baber being in charge and the guiding spirit amongst them. Carberry from Western Australia proved his worth in another manner. The 4th Brigade were some distance up the gully and greatly in want of water. Carberry seems to have the knack of divining, for he selected a spot where water was obtained after sinking. General Monash drew my attention to this, and Carberry was recommended ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... yet have not the gift of expressing what they feel in any artistic medium. It is these, alas! who cumber the streets and porticoes of literature. They are attracted away from homely toil by the perilous sweetness of art, and when they attempt to express their raptures, they have no faculty or knack of hand. And these men and women fall with zealous dreariness or acrid contemptuousness, and radiate discomfort and uneasiness ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... had got herself in hand again. "It isn't a gift," she said, lightly. "It's just a little knack that amuses me. There's no money in it. Besides, it's too late now. One's got to do a thing superlatively, nowadays, to be recognized. I don't draw superlatively, but I do handle infants' wear better than any woman ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... don't mind very much. I am not the right man for this constituency. It has outgrown me. I have not the knack of handling a big crowd. What I want is a fine old crusted unprogressive seat, where I shan't constantly be compelled to drop my departmental work and rush down to propitiate my supporters with untruthful harangues. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... think that a house without a good roomy attic is like a man without brains. Possibly living in a brainless house has affected the mental outlook of my relatives, although their brains are well enough. Peggy is not exactly remarkable for hers, but she is charmingly pretty, and has a wonderful knack at putting on her clothes, which might be esteemed a purely feminine brain, in her fingers. Charles Edward really has brains, although he is a round peg in a square hole, and as for Alice, her brains ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... than Tusser's doggerel. It is something that, swimming in such a brave company, he should keep his head above water; and something more that in one other point Tusser can vie with the foremost. His knack of christening his personages with ad hoc names recalls Shakespeare's, which, with its Dick the Carter and Marian's nose, was of the same kind and degree. Here is an example, where he wishes to instil the value of hedge-mending. If you let your ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... a school-boy! In the second place, Varvara Pavlovna took upon herself the labour of ordering and purchasing the trousseau, even of choosing the bridegroom's gifts. She had a great deal of practical sense, much taste, much love for comfort, and a great knack for securing for herself that comfort. This knack particularly astonished Lavretzky when, immediately after the wedding, he and his wife set out in a commodious carriage, which she had bought, for Lavriki. How everything which surrounded him had been planned, foreseen, provided for ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... glittered large buckles set with precious stones. If to this we add that his gait was the elegant gait of a dancing master, that he had a certain cat-like suppleness of body, and that his little legs had a strange knack of knocking the heels together on fitting occasions,—for instance, when leaping across a gutter,—it could not fail but that the little decorator got himself singled out everywhere as an extraordinary creature. With other ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and the shooting began. The rabbits bolted well, and Howard experienced a lively satisfaction, quite out of proportion, he felt, to the circumstances, at finding that he could shoot a great deal better than his pupil. The old knack came back to him, and he toppled over his rabbits cleanly and in ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... giving a garden party in the spacious but somewhat urban grounds of her mansion in Kensington. Perhaps because it was the first affair of its sort of the season, and perhaps, also, because Cecilia Amesbury had the knack of making friends in every walk of life, it was remarkably well attended. Two stockbrokers, Roger Kendrick and his friend Maurice White, who had escaped from the City a little earlier than usual, and had shared a taxicab up west, congratulated themselves upon having ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his governing body, of which Aldous was one. The affair was difficult, personal, odious. To have wasted nearly three hours upon it was, to a man of Aldous's type, to have lost a day. Besides he had not his grandfather's knack in such things, and was abundantly conscious ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... trespasses on this side of purgatory. Nay more, if it rests with me to direct your future lucubrations, I shall certainly urge you to a repetition of the same conduct, on purpose to shew what an admirable knack you have at confession and reformation; and so without more hesitation, I shall venture to command the muse, not to be restrained by ill-grounded timidity, but to go on and prosper. You see, Madam, when once the woman has tempted us, and we have tasted the forbidden fruit, there ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... speak, the power of following two ideas simultaneously, and nothing is more favorable in conjuring than to be able to think at the same time both of what you are saying and of what you are doing. I eventually acquired such a knack in this that I frequently invented new tricks while going through my performances. One day, even, I made a bet I would solve a problem in mechanics while taking my part in conversation. We were talking of the pleasure of a country life, and I calculated during this time the quantity of wheels and ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... quite dry the seed may be put deeper. Proceeding in this way, covering first with one foot and then with the other, the planters get on quite rapidly, although the hills are so near together. The planting is not at all tedious after one gets the knack of it, and is light and pleasant work. Some planters put two kernels instead of one in each hill, to insure a stand, but this practice increases the cost considerably, and is by no means general. After the seeds are planted they are very slightly, if at all, above ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... the crowd without any hesitation on account of his age—angry as she was, Amaryllis feared several times lest the clumsy people should over-turn him, and tried her best to shield him. But he had a knack of keeping on his feet—the sort of knack you learn by skating—and did not totter much more ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the platform when any local movement was in progress—and could not understand why he was put up there to address the audience, unless it was for his infinite brass. The language he employed was rude, his sentences disjointed, his meaning incoherent; but he had a knack of an apropos jest, not always altogether savoury, but which made a mixed assembly laugh. As his public speeches did not seem very brilliant, they supposed he must have the gift of persuasion, in private. He did ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... replied, 'but I seemed to them as one that mocked.' Now, this of talking, and, especially, of talking about religious things to children, is one of the most difficult things in the world,—that is, to do it well. Some people have the happy knack of talking to their own and to other people's children so as always to interest and impress them. But such happy people are few. Most people talk at their children whenever they begin to talk to them, and thus, without ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... all the girls and boys. Her ready smile, a knack of getting a quick and appropriate answer back when they tried to tease her, made her a popular girl. In the class club she was appointed on committees and soon was taking an active part in the organization. And ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... admiring No. 1 for the confidence with which he disported himself among the Greek aorists, in the labyrinths of which I myself often went astray, and for the knack he had of solving mathematical problems. He was, moreover, very widely read in belles lettres, and had almost a grown-up man's taste with regard to books at a time when I still continued to admire P.P.'s [Footnote: P.P. was a writer whose real name was Rumohr. He wrote a number of historical ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral. Of all incumbents of that high office, Robert Southey had the most notable knack at drugging the Samson of public joy and cutting his hair to the quick; and he had an artistic color-sense which enabled him so to blacken a public grief as to give it the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... no little satisfaction to the crew, who raised a chorus whenever a rope had to be pulled or a brace taughtened, the fine weather and brighter surroundings making the sailors apparently forget, with that sort of happy knack for which seafaring folk are generally distinguished, all the rough time we had coming down Saint George's Channel, when off the Tuskar, and the terrible events of ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... would generally refer them to some young attorney, for whom he would speak a good word at the same time. He was ever kind and courteous to these young beginners when he was the opposing counsel. He had a happy knack of setting them at their ease and encouraging them. In consequence he was the favorite of all who came in contact with him. When his heart was in a case he was a powerful advocate. I have heard more than one attorney say that it was little use to expect ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... one requiring slightly more knack, is to grasp the animal's tail and throw it by a quick jerk across the pressure of the rope. This is productive of ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... recorded, with evident pride in the recollection, that while on board the "Worcester," notwithstanding his youth, his captain used to say, "He felt as easy when I was upon deck as any officer of the ship." It is doubtful, indeed, whether Nelson ever possessed in a high degree the delicate knack of handling a ship with the utmost dexterity and precision. He certainly had not the reputation for so doing. Codrington,—a thorough Nelsonian, to use his own somewhat factious expression—used to say in later years, "Lord Nelson was no seaman; even in the earlier stages of the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... not more'n six bits at any one time, suh. Seems like I've sorter got the knack of livin' ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dear, free your mind, and then we'll fix things up right smart. Nothin' I like better, and Lisha says I have considerable of a knack that way," replied Mrs. Wilkins, with a smile, a nod, and an air of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... command of the small army which was now operating from the north along the railway line with Mafeking for its objective. Plumer is an officer of considerable experience in African warfare, a small, quiet, resolute man, with a knack of gently enforcing discipline upon the very rough material with which he had to deal. With his weak force—which never exceeded a thousand men, and was usually from six to seven hundred—he had ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said Hilderman cheerily. "You scientist fellows have a knack of making your difficulties a little greater than they really are, in order to get more credit for surmounting them. I know your little ways. I'm an American, you know, professor; you can't get ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... while always boldly and continuously outlining the course of historical events, has the knack of seizing upon incidents which reveal the true character of historical personages. These histories are attractive as romance and possess a peculiar power of impressing the memory, being written ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... fortunate enough to possess the necessary knack will soon be in request as jockey at the forthcoming meeting, when, if he should happen to secure a win, the confidence it immediately gives him does more than any other thing to transform him ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... knack of it," approved Jim. "Don't pitch in too hard at first. Later on, after you grow used to it, you can work twice as fast, and it won't ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... may call a knack! How well she looks at her work, and with that cheerful, friendly face! Everything that she touches is well done;—everything improves and flourishes under her eye. If she were only not so violent and passionate!—but it is not in her heart, there never was a better ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... he'd a made it foggier, and where's there's no understandin' he'd a made it less understandable. I daresay he'd a bin Prime Minister in no time- -he's just the sort. They likes a good old muddler for that work— someone as has the knack o' addlin' the people's brains an' makin' them see a straight line as though'twere crooked. It keeps things quiet an' yet worrity-like—first up, then down—this way, then that way, an' never nothin' ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... like that!" she said, with gay imperiousness. "You pale-eyed folk have a horrible knack of making one feel as if one is under a microscope. Your worthy uncle is just the same. If I weren't so deeply in love with him, I might resent it. But Nick is a privileged person, isn't he, wherever he goes? Didn't someone once say of him that he rushes in where ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... extremely harsh treatment Ravenscroft has met with at the hands of the critics it may be worth while emphasizing Genest's opinion that his 'merit as a dramatic writer has been vastly underrated'. Ravenscroft has a facility in writing, an ease of dialogue, a knack of evoking laughter and picturing the ludicrous, above all a vitality which many a greater name entirely lacks. As a writer of farce, and farce very nearly akin ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... sobbed against the girl's shoulder. "It seems as if I might have saved more," he said, pitifully, "but—I have had heavy expenses, and somehow I didn't seem to have the knack that some men have. I made one or two investments that didn't turn out well. I didn't say ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "picking-up" has to be done. This means that all the unburnt timber on the ground has to be rolled together and burnt. Tree-ferns should not be felled, as they do not burn well. The best way of killing them is to cut off the fronds just below where they spring from the stem. Some knack is required to cut in just the right place, but it is easily acquired. There are certain precautions to be observed in burning-off, which the settler should make himself acquainted with. Information on this point and in regard to any matters of ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs
... is short-lived; his contempt only is rooted, and his resentment lasting.—The above was only one instance of his building too much on practical data. He has an ill habit of prophesying, and goes on, though still decieved. The art of prophesying does not suit Mr. Cobbett's style. He has a knack of fixing names and times and places. According to him, the Reformed Parliament was to meet in March 1818—it did not, and we heard no more of the matter. When his predictions fail, he takes no further ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Hamilton "stands alone" and Gueulette does not. On the other hand, they charge Voltaire with actually "tracing" over Gueulette. ("Zadig est calque sur les Soirees Bretonnes.") This is again an exaggeration; but Gueulette had, undoubtedly, a pleasant and exceedingly fertile fancy, and a good knack of narrative. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... mighty good knack of catching his rainbows, anyhow," answered Hallam; "and you'd better not let the idea get away with you that he isn't a force to be reckoned with. He's young yet, and very new to business, but you remember ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... dixerat feceratque, arte quadam ostentator" (He had a knack of showing off and advertising whatever he said ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... artificial age make it not improbable that Philetas professed to teach the art of poetry. A French critic and poet of our own time, M. Baudelaire, was willing to do as much 'in thirty lessons.' Possibly Philetas may have imparted technical rules then in vogue, and the fashionable knack of introducing obscure mythological allusions. He was a logician as well as a poet, and is fabled to have died of vexation because he could not unriddle one of the metaphysical catches or puzzles of the sophists. His varied activity seems to have worn him ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... "we were at school together, and I generally had the knack of getting on better than you, ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... strongly at the hinge with earth-ingrained hands—to discourse on polities and religion, and to opine that our policy in China was "neither my eye nor my elber." "The little lady," as he called Hester, had a knack of drawing out Abel; but to-day, as he did not see her, she slipped past him, and, crossing the church-yard, sat down for a moment in the porch to regain her breath, under the card of printed texts offered for the consideration of his flock by their ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... was ready to take for granted that he should one day restore the balance. He was a canny and far-seeing youth, with appetites and aspirations, and he had not a scruple in his composition. His mother's theory of the happy knack he could pick up deprived him of the wholesome discipline required to prevent young idlers from becoming cads. He had, abroad, a casual tutor and a snatch or two of a Swiss school, but no consecutive study, no prospect of a university ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... Georgia. We took two-hourly spells at the tiller. The men who were not on watch crawled into the sodden sleeping- bags and tried to forget their troubles for a period; but there was no comfort in the boat. The bags and cases seemed to be alive in the unfailing knack of presenting their most uncomfortable angles to our rest-seeking bodies. A man might imagine for a moment that he had found a position of ease, but always discovered quickly that some unyielding point was impinging on muscle or bone. The first night aboard the boat was one ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... storks' nests on the chimneys; winking at the ya vrouws who showed their faces at the windows, and joking the women right and left in the street; all of whom laughed and took it in amazing good part; for though he did not know a word of their language, yet he always had a knack of making himself ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... a peculiar knack of jerking the date-stone, which makes it strike with great force: I never saw this "Inwa" practised, but it reminds me of the water splashing with one ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... cheerful wilderness, and it hasn't the knack of altering much," Dick thought, as he tramped from the Docks westward. "Now, what must ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... before I advise. Bring out every rag you 've got, and we 'll see what can be done," said Polly, looking as if she enjoyed the prospect, for she had a great deal of that feminine faculty which we call "knack," and much ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Pictures like these, dear madam, to design, Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line; Some wandering touches, some reflected light, Some flying stroke alone can hit 'em right: For how should equal colours do the knack? Chameleons who can paint in white and black? "Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot"— Nature in her then erred not, but forgot. "With every pleasing, every prudent part, Say, what can Chloe want?"—She wants a heart. She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought; But never, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... a lover of the play and all that belonged to it. Dramatic literature he knew fully. He was one of the not very numerous people who can read a play: a knack, the fruit of much knowledge and some imagination, comparable to that of reading score. Few men better understood the artificial principles on which a play is good or bad; few more unaffectedly enjoyed ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... put briefly on paper original ideas about something that they know at first hand. Mrs. Jones makes better sponge cake than any one in town; the fact is known to all her friends. If sponge cake is a desirable product, why should not the woman who has discovered the little knack that turns failure into success, and who is proud of her ability and special knowledge, tell her club of it, instead of laboriously copying from a book—or, let us say, from two or three books—some one else's compilation ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... inventions are compared with the simple and stately facts. Who could have imagined such a heart-break as that? Yet it went along with the fulfillment of everyday duty and made no more noise than a grave under foot. I doubt if fiction will ever get the knack of such things." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and flames, For lands enrich'd by crimson streams, For inquisitions taught by Spain, Of which the Christian world complain." Dick, we agree—all's true thou'st said, As that my Muse is yet a maid. But, if I may with freedom talk, All this is foreign to thy walk: Thy genius has perhaps a knack At trudging in a beaten track, But is for state affairs as fit As mine for politics and wit. Then let us both in time grow wise, Nor higher than our talents rise; To some snug cellar let's repair, From duns and debts, and drown our care; Now quaff of honest ale a quart, Now ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... myself up the trunk with my knees as before. In this way I got along very well, and after an awkward slip or two, in which my knees suffered somewhat and my breeches still more, soon acquired the knack of the thing, and speedily reached the lowermost branch, after which the rest of my ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... a frank intimacy in this little circle into which whim had led her. She spent most of her time with the children. She gave Elsie two hours' lessons a day, and, since she had a knack of making them interesting, Tinker often enjoyed the benefit of her teaching. After lessons she shared most of their amusements, and learned to be a pirate, a brigand, an English sailor, a Boer, and ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... woman,—so you may judge what Jesuits women are! They are so jesuitical that the cunningest Jesuit himself could never guess to what extent of jesuitism a woman may go, for there are a thousand ways of being jesuitical, and a woman is such an adroit Jesuit, that she has the knack of being a Jesuit without having a jesuitical look. You can rarely, though you can sometimes, prove to a Jesuit that he is one: but try once to demonstrate to a woman that she acts or talks like a Jesuit. She would be cut to pieces rather than ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... speculated how long her sister had been in the room. Their conversation had been innocent enough, but it was not one that she would wish Elizabeth to have overheard. And somehow Elizabeth had a knack of ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... you think of that? Our cook went away to her brother's wedding last week, and Mother was sick, and so I tried; and Pa (I tried saying Father, but he wouldn't let me!) said the things tasted good, and I had a knack for flavouring. That made me feel so happy, Margaret! Because I had just gone ahead till I thought a thing tasted right. I did not want to be bothering 'round with cook-books, and besides, ours was lost, for ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... that he could gather up almost as many coins as Benny had in his best day. Joe had acquired the knack of opening his mouth under water without swallowing any of the liquid. Then came an idea for varying ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... chance to delude himself with vain pretences: it was quite plain to everybody that the rhetorician Augustin was not a success. Now, why was this? Was it that he lacked the gift of teaching? Perhaps he had not the knack of keeping order, which is the most indispensable of all for a schoolmaster. What suited him best no doubt was a small and select audience which he charmed rather than ruled. Large and noisy classes he could not manage. At Carthage, these rhetoric classes were particularly difficult ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... restless soul. And every time he returned home he was more restless. So the Boones moved from place to place and each time others went along with them. Daniel had a knack of leadership, but no sooner would everyone be settled around him than he'd pack up and go to another place. Daniel couldn't be crowded. He had to have elbow room no matter where he had ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... us with its own peculiar gusts; and the 'Akabah Gulf, as usual, acted wind-sail. A long detour was necessary in order to spare the mules, which, however, are much less liable to injury, under such circumstances, than horses, having a knack of learning ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... from his kindly, forceful personality. Of all the officers on board "Jimmy the One" was, with perhaps the exception of the Captain, most beloved by the men. A seaman to the fingertips, slow to wrath and clean of speech, he had the knack of getting the last ounce out of tired men without driving or raising his voice. Working cables on the forecastle in the cold and snowy darkness, when men's faculties grow torpid with cold, and their safety among the grinding cables depends more ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... to speak. And it is just so with the quality of power at the piano. It certainly is not due to physique, nor to brute strength, else only the athlete would have sufficient power. No, it is the 'knack,' or rather it is the result of ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... you have," answered Mr. Hawkehurst, with supreme nonchalance; "you've heard of her often enough, only you've a happy knack of not listening to other people's affairs. But you must have been wrapped up in yourself with a vengeance if you don't remember to have heard me ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... patiently, as becomes a man and an officer, because no sailor is really good-tempered during the first few days of a voyage. There are regrets, memories, the instinctive longing for the departed idleness, the instinctive hate of all work. Besides, things have a knack of going wrong at the start, especially in the matter of irritating trifles. And there is the abiding thought of a whole year of more or less hard life before one, because there was hardly a southern-going voyage in the yesterday ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Uyoweh, it seems, had for the last few years been in a state of chronic discontent with the policies of the neighbouring chiefs. Formerly a pagazi for an Arab, he had now assumed regal power, with the usual knack of unconscionable rascals who care not by what means they step into power. When the chief of Uyoweh died, Mirambo, who was head of a gang of robbers infesting the forests of Wilyankuru, suddenly entered Uyoweh, and constituted ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... about her to console her, but she wept so that, for all my seventeen years and pride of manhood, it set me weeping also, and with such a hiccoughing noise, since I had not a woman's knack of quiet tears, that it finally turned her own grief ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a pilot in those days by the name of Jack Leonard who was a perfectly wonderful creature. I do not know that Jack knew anymore about the river than most of us and perhaps could not read the water any better, but he had a knack of steering away ahead of our ability, and I think he must have had an eye that could see farther ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... experts. Meanwhile his imagination enabled him to understand the exact extent of a novice's ignorance, the precise details which I did not know and must know, the essential apparatus I had to be shown the knack of, before he fled to ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... even the contempt, of his associates. But in the eyes of posterity, his happy-go-lucky life is amply redeemed by the work he has left behind him, for it is pure and good. His river of speech flows ever on shining like molten gold. No man of his time possessed the adroit knack of bright writing in a more eminent degree. The pawky humour of his side-hits, the blending of light and shade in the process of the narrative, the beauty and melody that can be noted even in the sound of the sentences, combine to delight the judgment, the ear, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the best months for sea-trout, and as they are dry months the angler often has to put up with indifferent sport. The fish will, however, rise in tidal water and in a few localities even in the sea itself, or in salt-water lochs into which streams run. Sea-trout have an irritating knack of "coming short," that is to say, they will pluck at the fly without really taking it. There are occasions, on the other hand, in loch-fishing where plenty of time must be given to the fish without tightening on it, especially ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... were out was Nick Lang. There was nothing really strange about that fact, because Nick would almost rather play ball than eat; and any boy about whom this can be said must be pretty fond of the National sport. Nick had always shown considerable knack in playing, though he was apt to make himself disagreeable, and want to run things. Possibly this trait might not show so prominently, now that his conceit had been so heavily bumped in his encounter with Hugh. Then again, Mr. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... more zeal than melody, until he got the erysipelas in his lower lip, and a hint of rustication from the tutors. Yet he was more ambitious than successful. His reputation on the road grew worse and worse every day. He had a knack of shaving turnpike gates, and cutting round corners on one wheel, and getting his horses into every possible figure but a straight line, which made every mile got over without an accident almost a miracle. At last, after taking a four-in-hand over a narrow bridge, at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... to dine on Henry's wine and L.F. Austin's wit. This dear, brilliant man, now dead, acted for many years as Henry's secretary, and one of his gifts was the happy knack of hitting off people's peculiarities in rhyme. This dreadful Christmas dinner at Pittsburg was enlivened by a collection of such rhymes, which Mr. Austin called a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... to insinuate that a really well-dressed Frenchwoman is not better dressed than most English women, or that the French have not a peculiar knack of putting on their clothes to the best advantage; for there is no doubt upon the matter. But, if we maybe allowed to judge from the examples brought over to us in the shape of bonnets and head-dresses, and other articles of a lady's toilette, we should say that there must be a considerable ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... elbows that she cannot throw a stone at a hen in the way in which a stone properly should be thrown at a hen, made suitable atonement for this articular oversight by endowing her joints with the facile knack of turning on exactly the right angle, with never danger of sprain or dislocation, for the subjugation of a back-latching frock. Moreover, years of practice have given her adeptness in accomplishing this achievement, so that to her ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... to hammer that 'ere into their noddles, full chisel, as hard as he can drive. I could larn him somethin', I guess, about hammerin' he ain't up to. It ain't every one that knows how to beat a thing into a man's head. How could I have sold so many thousand clocks, if I hadn't had that knack? Why, I wouldn't have sold half ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... d'Hubieres granted it at once, and as she wished to carry off the child with her, she gave a hundred francs as a present, while her husband drew up a writing. And the young woman, radiant, carried off the howling brat, as one carries away a wished-for knick-knack from a shop. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... to come back to the store Sadie left to marry, not one of her traveling-men victims, but a steady person, in the paper-hanging way, whose suit had long been considered hopeless. After that Fanny took her place. She developed a surprising knack at selling. Yet it was not so surprising, perhaps, when one considered her teacher. She learned as only a woman can learn who is brought into daily contact with the outside world. It was not only contact: it was the relation of buyer and seller. She learned to judge people because she had ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... hadn't I been overwhelmed and choked with sentiment all day long? Sentiment? Of all the bosh—but, never mind. Louie at least didn't bother me in that way. Yes, it's a fact, Macrorie, she's got an awful knack of giving comfort ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... they—it comes to to same thing—have the fiend's own knack of discovering a man's weak place. I confess I rather go out of my way to conciliate Number Five study. It may be soft, but so far, I believe, I am the only man here whom they haven't ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... committed was known to the man who wrote a letter and blotted it on the sheet which has been before the court. That man also, as it was clear to us an hour ago, directed a certain envelope which you have also seen. I may add that Mr. Taynton had, as I knew, an extraordinary knack of imitating handwritings; I have seen him write a signature that I could have sworn was mine. But he has used that gift for ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... for twenty-five years, had dealt kindly. He had perfect health, an income more than sufficient for his needs, a profession which interested without monopolizing him, a thoroughly contented disposition, and the happy knack ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... separation had taught him to see how very silly he had been in regard to this woman,—and had also detracted much from those charms which had delighted him on board ship. She was pretty, she was clever, she had the knack of being a pleasant companion. But how much more than all these was wanted in a wife? And then he knew nothing about her. She might be, or have been, all that was disreputable. If he could not shake himself free from her, she would be a millstone round his neck. He was ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... would journey to Rome next Easter in order to present a collection of penny toys to the Pope. Society loves folly if it is sufficiently blatant. The folly of Eustace was just blatant enough to be more than tolerated—enjoyed. He had by practice acquired a knack of being silly in unexpected ways, and so a great many people honestly considered him one of the cleverest ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... schools, though from a different cause. It was not very often that he visited at the Rectory during Master Charley's holidays; but when he did, that young gentleman favoured him with such accounts of the peculiar knack the second master possessed of finding out all your tenderest places when he "licked a feller" for a false quantity, "that, by Jove! you couldn't sit down for a fortnight without squeaking;" and of the jolly mills they ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... amazing and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent speech ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... much at my rude tongue, A dish o' brath at me he vlung, Which so incensed me to wrath, That I up an' knack un instantly to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... herself and fixes up a drink to suit the occasion. She's all sorts of fancies about what's what for all kinds of times and conditions, and you bet she can just hit the spot! Ain't a clerk here can put up a drink to touch her. She's a sort of knack at it. Every once in a while, when the Boss sees her, he calls out to her to mix ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... help her. Then I recollected that ten years before, when I went up to Maine to visit my sister, I'd rented the place, just as it stood, to folks of the name of Marchant, a fine couple that didn't look beyond each other unless 'twas at their son. In past times my grandmother had an old-country knack of raising healing herbs and all sorts of sweet-smelling things, along with farm truck, so that folks came from all about to buy them and doctors too, for such things weren't sold so much in shops in those days ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... relieved the dumb anguish of serving maids by the penning of their love letters; he seemed to have a knack at this vicarious manner of love-making and when in the full maturity of fifty years, certain London publishers requested him to write for them a narrative which might stand as a model letter writer from which country readers should know the right tone, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... his action for years after. She married against his will. He never forgave her. My father did not seem to have the knack of getting along in the world, and he moved to America in the hope of bettering his condition. He did not better it. My father died ten years ago, a prematurely broken down man, and my mother and I struggled along as best we could until she died two years ago. My grandfather returned her letter ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... steamers pick their way carefully; we do not give them as wide a berth as formerly, for the wakes they turn are no longer savage—but wakes, even when sent out by stern-wheelers at full speed, now give us little trouble; it did not take long to learn the knack of "taking" them. Whether you meet them at right angles, or in the trough, there is the same delicious sensation of rising and falling on the long swells—there is no danger, so long as you are outside the line of foaming breakers; within ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... along with a superior officer in charge. The lieutenant had taken quite a sudden fancy for Rob and his two chums; but then that was not strange, Tubby told himself, since the patrol leader always had a knack of making friends wherever ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... I somehow suppose that they hadn't the knack, For in spite of it all they have never come back, And I own that the future looks dismally black ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... filled to the neck with humor, and was a past-master in the art of repartee, always in plain talk, remember. Explain it if you can. Bill was roundly hated by many because he had a way of talking straight truth. He had an uncanny knack of seeing behind the human scenery of the Bad Lands, and always told right out what he saw. That is why they were all afraid ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... knack of saying just the thing that would please everybody, and saying it in the right way and at ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... unscrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers (who, as King of Prussia, brought into being a military and skeptical genius—and therewith, in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged type of German), the problematic, crazy father of Frederick the Great, had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knew what was then lacking in Germany, the want of which was a hundred times more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form—his ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of a profound instinct. MEN WERE LACKING; ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was a good fighter for what he believed was right, and as a warrior for his cause he had armed himself in every possible way. He had a passable knowledge of English and an amazing familiarity with the Scriptures. He also possessed a knack of interpreting any phase of it to strengthen the argument from his standpoint. But I, too, could fight for ideals; love of freedom and the divine right of the individual were themes as dear to me as they were hateful ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... to multiply the subjects of His Majesty. This hope of liberty was therefore vain; nor could I hope to purchase my discharge, unless any charitable soul would lend me a large sum of money; for, though I made a good deal, as I have said, yet I have always had through life an incorrigible knack of spending, and (such is my generosity of disposition) have been in debt ever ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... month or two; but I mean, never lose view of that great object; pursue it with discretion, but pursue it always. 'Pelotez en attendant partie'. You know I have always told you that speaking in public was but a knack, which those who apply to the most will succeed in the best. Two old members, very good judges, have sent me compliments upon this occasion; and have assured me that they plainly find it will do; though they perceived, from that natural confusion you were ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... stirrups than the modern jockeys, although he had in a measure conformed to the crouching seat. Alan's friends wondered why he stuck to Tommy, some of them considered he was getting past it, but Alan had a knack of keeping to old hands who had done him good service. In business this caused many a split ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... the hilt of that delicate blade, too, sticking out from his wristband. Ah! I've seen him throw that short blade from his coat-sleeve and strike a dollar at twenty yards! Wonderful skill with knives you have, Don Ignacio; but you never yet tried your knack with me! Oh no, my Tuerto—bird of ill omen that you are! We can't do without one another just yet, so let us wait and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... interest for me except as his vehicle, the vehicle in which he arrived; which brought him to his destination quicker perhaps than any other which he could have chosen. His talent was so adroit that he might have chosen almost any other; chance and a happy knack and a habit of observation determined his selection of the written word. Compared with the spectacle of his arrival, what he has written is neither here nor there. What I have written myself is neither here nor there. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... shop in vain. 'Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane: I sent them, with a load of books, Last Monday, to the pastry-cook's. To fancy they could live a year! I find you're but a stranger here. The Dean was famous in his time, And had a kind of knack at rhyme. His way of writing now is past: The town has got a better taste. I keep no antiquated stuff; But spick and span I have enough. Pray, do but give me leave to show 'em: Here's Colley Cibber's birthday poem. This ode you never yet have seen, By Stephen ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... laborers had Sutton's pride or Mamise's piety in the work. Just as she began to get the knack of catching and placing the rivets Pafflow began to register his protest against her sex. He took a low joy in pitching rivets wild, and grinned at her dancing ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... for that afternoon, which we were both awfully keen about; then mother and father were coming home in the evening, after having been away a fortnight, and, though on the whole I had got on quite nicely with the housekeeping, it would be a relief to be able to consult mother again. Things have a knack of not going so smoothly when mothers are away, as I daresay ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... adjectives she chose, with unerring deftness and rapidity, the one that taste and discrimination would most surely have rejected, fitting out her subject with a whole wardrobe of slop-shop epithets irrelevant in cut and size. To the invaluable knack of not disturbing the association of ideas in her audience, she added the gift of what may be called a confidential manner—so that her fluent generalizations about Goethe and his place in literature (the lecture was, of course, manufactured ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... my duty consists in speaking to the public, in turning a compliment, in making things pass off pleasantly, as the saying is; and, without boasting, I flatter myself that I have a certain knack—" ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Lady Blast, you must understand, has such a particular Malignity in her Whisper, that it blights like an Easterly Wind, and withers every Reputation that it breathes upon. She has a particular Knack at making private Weddings, and last Winter married above five Women of Quality to their Footmen. Her Whisper can make an innocent young Woman big with Child, or fill an healthful young Fellow with Distempers that are not to be named. She can turn a Visit into ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... have not between us Old Colonial's knack and activity, nor are we endowed with muscles of such steely fibre. We keep our clutch determinedly, desperately, and we are flung and bumped among the tree-roots and brushwood. The pig is screaming like a hundred railway engines; kicking, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... He was a powerful man physically and turned off his work with a ready knack which left him free to think. All day as he moved to and fro in the rustling corn rows, he thought, and with his thinking, his powers expanded. He had the ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... reading, however, she had been long used: her uncle read well, her cousins all, Edmund very well, but in Mr. Crawford's reading there was a variety of excellence beyond what she had ever met with. The King, the Queen, Buckingham, Wolsey, Cromwell, all were given in turn; for with the happiest knack, the happiest power of jumping and guessing, he could always alight at will on the best scene, or the best speeches of each; and whether it were dignity, or pride, or tenderness, or remorse, or whatever were to be expressed, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Coleridge was a dream. I shall not get away before the end (or middle) of June, and then you will be frog-hopping at Boulogne. And besides I think the Gilmans would scarce trust him with us, I have a malicious knack at cutting of apron strings. The Saints' days you speak of have long since fled to heaven, with Astraea, and the cold piety of the age lacks fervor to recall them—only Peter left his key—the iron one of the two, that shuts amain—and that's the reason I am lockd up. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Coppinger was not a great artist, but it had been conceded to him, even in the studio, that he had pretty colour (which was quite without reference to his own complexion) and a knack of catching a likeness. Added to these gifts he possessed a third, in being able to talk without hindering the activities of his brush. They talked a great deal to each other during those long, delightful mornings in the sunny corner ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... list we find already the adjective rum meaning good, fine,—a word that has crept into general use among the lower classes in London, without ever gaining promotion. The fate of new words in this respect is curious. Often, if they are convenient, or have knack of lodging easily in the memory, they work slowly upward. The Scotch word flunky is a case in point. Our first knowledge of it in print is from Fergusson's Poems. Burns advertised it more widely, and Carlyle seems fairly to have transplanted it into the English of the day. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the Adriatic. If you struck a Mecca pilgrimage the odds are you would meet a dozen of Sandy's friends in it. In shepherds' huts in the Caucasus you will find bits of his cast-off clothing, for he has a knack of shedding garments as he goes. In the caravanserais of Bokhara and Samarkand he is known, and there are shikaris in the Pamirs who still speak of him round their fires. If you were going to visit Petrograd or Rome or Cairo it would be no use asking him for introductions; ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... was redrawn for the book it was embellished with "blowing whales and sailing ships; and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and elaborately forged the signature of Captain Flint and the ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... lines in stanzas of ten, describing archery fights and heroic duels that are rather tedious by their similarity, and offensive from the smell of the shambles; and which any quick-witted stripling with the knack of rhyming might perhaps have done as well, and less coarsely, after reading Chapman's or Ogilby's Homer, or the fighting scenes in Spenser, the Border Ballads, &c. But even this composition is not unconscious of the true afflatus, such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various |
