"Skim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he. "She will skim like a bird over the snow; so get into the sleigh, and we will go straight off ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... tern fleck and skim The morning's rim; Or the dark thrushes clear Their flutes of music leisurely and sheer, Then hush ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... subject. What we've done we gladly did, and we're more than glad we did it for you, sir. But as for doing it again, we can't do it, for it ain't in us. Even if we tried to do the best we could for you, all you'd get would be something like skim-milk—good enough for cottage cheese and bonnyclabber, but nothing like good fresh milk ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... justifiable, to seize the spirit of the writer. The expatiation was long and the movement slow, because Rousseau was full of his thoughts; they were a deep and glowing part of himself, and did not merely skim swiftly and lightly through his mind. Anybody who takes the trouble may find out the difference between this expression of long mental brooding, and a merely elaborated diction.[65] The length is an essential part of the matter. The whole work is ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... sure you are deeper than I am. I like to skim the surface as I go through life; one gets the cream ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... Taenarus came Euphemus whom, most swift-footed of men, Europe, daughter of mighty Tityos, bare to Poseidon. He was wont to skim the swell of the grey sea, and wetted not his swift feet, but just dipping the tips of his toes was ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... my maids' dresses myself, of some cheap material," the princess said, continuing the previous conversation. "Isn't it time to skim it, my dear?" she added, addressing Agafea Mihalovna. "There's not the slightest need for you to do it, and it's hot for ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the police gods, which grind not so slowly but ofttimes exceeding fine, were about done with their grinding; and as the last of the grist came through the hopper, the last of the afternoon sunlight came sifting in through the windows at the west, thin and pale as skim milk. One after another the culprits, patrolmen mainly, had been arraigned on charges preferred by a superior officer, who was usually a lieutenant or a captain, but once in a while an inspector, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... another rejects; so we are approved as men's fancies are inclined.... As apothecaries, we make new mixtures every day, pour out of one vessel into another; and as those old Romans robbed all cities of the world to set out their bad-cited Rome, we skim off the cream of other men's wits, pick the choice flowers of their tilled gardens, to set out our own sterile plots. We weave the same web still, twist the same rope again and again; or, if it be a new invention, 'tis but some bauble ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... epistle—skim the Deep—fly o'er Yon smooth expanse to the Teutonic shore! Haste—lest a friend should grieve for thy delay— And the Gods grant that nothing thwart thy way! I will myself invoke the King2 who binds In his Sicanian ecchoing vault the winds, With Doris3 and her Nymphs, ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... Ye have nests in the forest, all tangled and dark; Ye build and ye brood 'neath the cottagers' eaves, And ye sleep on the sod, 'mid the bonnie green leaves; Ye hide in the heather, ye lurk in the brake, Ye dine in the sweet flags that shadow the lake; Ye skim where the stream parts the orchard decked land, Ye dance where the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... In the combat he'll not faint; On the stones he will not stumble, 560 Time nor toil shall make him humble; In the stall he will not stiffen, But be winged as a Griffin, Only flying with his feet: And will not such a voyage be sweet? Merrily! merrily! never unsound, Shall our bonny black horses skim over the ground! From the Alps to the Caucasus, ride we, or fly! For we'll leave them behind in the glance of an eye. [They mount their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... while close off our starboard bow, there appeared advancing toward us a fairy like fleet, with low, rakish hulls, taut rig, and sails made whiter by the moonbeams playing upon them. The whole fleet seemed to skim over the sea, though the "Two Marys" scarce moved. One, more tiny than the rest, and which appeared to have made an offing, bore down for us, and seemed intent upon crossing our bows. The major, whose attention had been directed ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... and not as much as by a tremor of the eye-lid did either show how delighted she would have been to sit beside the handsome young man and skim along the road to ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... it is imperative that we hurriedly skim over the saddest and most serious by-product of United States slavery, race prejudice. We are familiar enough with the limitations of the man of color in the South today. In the days of slavery, discriminations were just ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... they do that of sleep, without knowing it. To the end that even sleep itself should not so stupidly escape from me, I have formerly caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, so that I might the better and more sensibly relish and taste it. I ponder with myself of content; I do not skim over, but sound it; and I bend my reason, now grown perverse and peevish, to entertain it. Do I find myself in any calm composedness? is there any pleasure that tickles me? I do not suffer it to dally with my senses only; I associate ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... incessantly without fixing myself on any one, in order that nothing should escape me, principally attending to the doors. I took advantage of the opportunity to say a word here and a word there, to pass continually near those who were suspected, to skim and interrupt all conversations. D'Antin was often joined by the Duc de Noailles, who had resumed his habit of the morning, and continually followed me with his eyes. He had an air of consternation, was agitated and embarrassed in countenance—he commonly so free and easy! D'Antin ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... beef, one pound salt pork, and one pound mutton; cut into pieces about three inches by two, let it boil, and skim. Take two or three carrots, one large turnip, one large head of celery, three or four leeks, a good green cabbage, cut in four, the other vegetables cut into pieces of moderate size, not too small; put them in with the ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... slight change in the form of "letters," or strokes, will make easy reading of Chinese impossible. It is a mistake to suppose that the Chinese have to "spell their way" laboriously through the written character so familiar to them: it is just as easy to "skim over" a Chinese newspaper in a few minutes as it is to "take in" the leading features of the Times in the same limited time; and volumes of Chinese history or literature in general can be "gutted" quite easily, owing ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... cause. Then came the fatal Wednesday—the 'd.w.t.' day as we call it—for Granville always saves up his rejected addresses for us to 'decline with thanks' for Wednesdays. There was a good batch of them this day, so Waterford and I took half each. I took a hurried skim through mine, but no 'Ancient and Modern Athletic Sports' were there. I concluded therefore Waterford had it. Granville writes in the corner of each 'd.w.t.,' or 'd.w.t. note,' which means 'declined with thanks' pure and simple, or 'declined with thanks' and a short polite note to be written ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... lived in the world," she said; after a pause, "you are a man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach, who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn much do but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they conceive the dignity of the design—the horror of the living fact fades from their memory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember, I think, and are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of these two elements, which is the very keynote of this letter, is wonderfully set forth in this passage. They would require much more space than we command for their treatment, for every clause is weighty as gold. We can but skim the surface, and try to bring out the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... rack! Ye riders, bronze your airy motion! Still skim the seas, so snowy craft,— Forever sail to meet the ocean! There bid the tide refuse to slide, Glassing, below, thy drooping pinion,— Forever cease its wild caprice, Fallen at the feet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... of seconds I hung fire," said Big Slim. "I had it in my mind to jump into the room, follow, and lay him out. But a better plan came to me. Why not skim down the scaffold, and get the lad as he left the ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... tie it up in a cloth, unless you boil rice in the pot. If rice is used, put in two-thirds of a tea cup. A pound or two of salt pork, boiled with the turkey, improves it. If you wish to make a soup of the liquor in which the turkey is boiled, let it remain until the next day, then skim off the fat. Heat and ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... I can get on their trail?" thought Larry, as he watched the houses skim by, and held himself in his seat, beside Grace, to avoid the jouncing and swaying ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... and along the banks of our big rivers you may see the Common Gull with numbers of his black-headed cousins. His beak and legs and webbed feet are greenish yellow, and this is quite enough to distinguish the two birds. Their habits are much the same. Both skim over the sea, or the coast, looking for waste food. They are not very "choice" in their meals; dead fish or live fish, young crabs, worms, shell-fish or grubs they eat readily, as well as any offal thrown from passing ships, or the refuse of ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... useful knowledge, while others go to the bottom, we only skim the surface; are despised by people of solid sense, of true honour, and superior talents; and shutting our eyes, move round and round, like so many blind mill-horses, in one narrow circle, while we imagine we have all the world ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... much; but he would have left me all, if he had thought that I wanted it: he shall have a good large bowl of milk for supper. It was but last night he skimmed the cream off his milk for me, because he thought I liked it. Heigho!—God knows how long they may have milk to skim—as long as I can work they shall never want; but I'm not so strong as I used to be; but then I shall get strong, and all will be well, when my husband comes back (a drum beats at a distance). Hark! a drum!—some news from abroad, perhaps—nearer and nearer (she sinks upon a ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... strand, That left all void of foes to us those habitations lie. Ortygia's haven then we leave, and o'er the sea we fly By Naxos of the Bacchus ridge, Donusa's green-hued steep, And Olearon, and Paros white, and scattered o'er the deep All Cyclades; we skim the straits besprent with many a folk; And diverse clamour mid the ships seafarers striving woke; Each eggs his fellow; On for Crete, and sires of time agone! And rising up upon our wake a fair wind followed ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... to sea. In the haze and the blur of it, Mr. Harley could see nothing, say nothing; his impulse was to be alone and collect himself. He felt as might one who has been staring at the sun. Storri's picture of an enterprise so vast that it proposed to set out the world like a mighty pan of milk, and skim the cream from two hemispheres, dazzled him and caused his wits ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... to these "Letters on the Regicide Peace" and consult the title-page, you will find them ostensibly addressed to 'a Member of the present Parliament'; and the opening paragraphs assume that Burke and his correspondent are in general agreement. But skim the pages and your eyes will be arrested again and again by ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... our tiny craft skim. It should be noted here that Aaleck, Jock, and Jeanettie were first to get their education. Scotland was the first country that required all parents, high or low, to educate their children, and established the parish ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... between Christian and Pagan champions; journeys through undiscovered lands and over untracked oceans; fantastic hyperboles of desire, ambition, jealousy, and rage, employed as motive passions. Enchanted forests; fairy ships that skim the waves without helm or pilot; lances endowed with supernatural virtues; charmed gardens of perpetual spring; dismal dungeons and glittering palaces, supply the furniture of this romance no less than of its predecessors. Rinaldo, like any other hero of the Renaissance, is agitated ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Tragedies: Consists of a few short tales of people who have been members of the divorce colony. Whilst the comedy part describes characters who find life is all froth, who skim its surface, so to speak, those portrayed in this chapter are people who take existence seriously; who want to drain the cup of life to its last dregs! If one listens as one reads one can almost hear the steady ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... addition of a cheese large as the moon at full. There was always plenty of cheese of various kinds in the house: whole milk cheese carefully aged until its flavour was like that of English Stilton or Italian Gorgonzola; skim milk cheese stuffed with cloves and cardamom seeds; and dark brown goat milk cheese of a cloying sweetness ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... clerk had sent in a quantity of candies and tobacco. The priest had given potatoes; the clergyman had supplied a copy of the Bible in syllabic characters; and the minister had given the silver-plated wedding ring. The nuns had presented a supply of skim-milk and butter. Mr. Spear provided jam, pickles, and coal-oil for the lamps. The Mounted Police contributed two dollars to pay for the "band"—the fiddle and the concertina—and ammunition enough for the feu de joie. The friends and relations had given a ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... dogs, and sometimes children, have been killed by its bite; but it has not generally been fatal to men. These snakes are fond of cream, and will wind their way into the dairy, and skim the milk-pans, and sometimes visit hen-roosts, and suck ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... o'er gulfs profound, With nimble glide the skaters play; O'er treach'rous pleasure's flow'ry ground Thus lightly skim, and ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... house is a regular sanatorium. The only trouble is, that the little good-for-nothings that come of utterly used-up and worn-out stock, and ought to die, can't die, to save their lives. So they grow up to dilute the vigor of the race with skim-milk vitality. They would have died, like good children, in most average country places; but eight months of shelter in a regulated temperature, in a well-sunned house, in a duly moistened air, with good sidewalks to go about on in all ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... effects "to another gentleman," and undertook with an air of great fidelity to bring all to a right bearing. On the whole, as the Atlantic is so broad and deep, ought we not rather to esteem it a beneficent miracle that messages can arrive at all; that a little slip of paper will skim over all these weltering floods, and other inextricable confusions, and come at last, in the hand of the Twopenny Postman, safe to your lurking-place, like green leaf in the bill of Noah's Dove? Let us be grateful for mercies; let us ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... pony to desperate endeavor. She seemed to merely skim the dry grass of the open plateau, and in ten minutes Helen saw a riderless mount plunging up the side of a coulee ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... flocks of sea-birds that so long had accompanied us. It is something remarkable that they only inhabit the colder latitudes, for in a warmer climate it is a rare thing to find them. Sometimes a few weary land-birds that have strayed from their homeward way, skim over the ocean, or rest upon the masts; how they maintain themselves on the wing cannot be conjectured, but certain it is, they have been seen on the trackless ocean, when no point of land was within ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... pieces there will come a messenger, to bid him to the King, so he will lay my flesh in a cauldron of brass and set it upon a brasier before going to the presence and he will say to thee, 'Keep up the fire under the cauldron till the scum rise; then skim it off and pour it into a phial to cool. Wait till it cool and then drink it, so shall naught of malady or pain be left in all thy body. When the second scum riseth, skim it off and pour it into a phial against my return from the King, that I may drink it for an ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the upholsterer, to whom Guy telegraphed in hot haste, bidding him hunt New York over for the desired shade. Where he found it I never knew, but find it he did, or something approximating to it, a faded, washed-out color, which seemed a cross between wood-ashes and pale skim milk. A sample was sent up for Guy's approval, and then the work commenced again, when order number three came in one of those dainty little billets which used to make Guy's face radiant with happiness. ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... heights, lie prone in Dantesque confusion. There are rock-doves and falcons fluttering about the sunny precipices; cliff-swallows build precarious habitations against the roof of yawning caverns; sandpipers and wagtails skim over the streamlet that glides in a smiling flood across reaches of yellow sand. The charm of water in the waste! This Seldja-brook is a true child of the sun; cold in the morning and evening hours, its restless little heart ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... of news, sir. It's all a whirl. The devil seems to have broken loose in Wyoming. Let me skim through Loomis' note. ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... unspeakable comfort it is capable of affording, will agree with me that no other book, ancient or modern, can in the remotest degree be compared to it. Too many people read it merely as a matter of conscience. They skim over a chapter at a time with very little thought or reflection. Even that way may be better than neglecting it altogether, but surely that is not the way a book with consequences so immeasurably important ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... be sure, his daughter has become attached to her, but what of that? She must learn that she cannot have every whim gratified; she is a spoiled child at best, and will not be likely to improve under her skim-milk discipline. Leave me alone for managing affairs. I've got the staff in my own hands, and all they can do wont make me anything but the Honorable Mr. Santon's lady! though I'm greatly mistaken if he don't look ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... a pleasant little excursion from Gurgan Point to the harbour; the sea was luckily calm, but there was sufficient breeze to enable The Kittiwake to skim over the water like her sea-gull namesake. The girls, who by this time had grasped the depths of their friend's plot, enjoyed the situation immensely. They were actually having their coveted sail in the very company of the dear lady who had so expressly forbidden the jaunt, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... exclaimed Mr. Sponge, who, having watched them till they began to skim in their flight, saw them stop, flap their wings, and drop among some straggling gorse on the hill before them. 'Let's break the covey; we shall ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... night, When all the stars were shining bright, There came a rap on our house door Which made me leap from bed to floor. To me had come a telegram From my old chums, Dick, Tom and Sam Asking if I had a notion To sail with them upon the ocean. To skim along on ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... is possible without the use of expensive foods. In fact, among the cheap foods are some consisting mostly of protein, some consisting mostly of fat, and some consisting mostly of carbohydrate. For instance, cheap sources of protein are skim milk, beans, cheese, and peanuts. Cheap sources of fat are oleomargarine and cottonseed-oil. Cheap sources of carbohydrate, i.e., starch and sugar, are bread, bananas, potatoes, glucose, and even ordinary sugar. If a diet, selected for cheapness, is ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... the fact. When a storm is coming, Virgil also makes his swallows skim low about the lake, which ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... us; but the old book is ever the same. What would the old man do without it? And to you who are young I would say—you may re-read, you first must read. Choose worthy books to love. As for those who know no book long enough either to love or despise it—who skim through good and bad alike and forget page ninety-nine while reading page 100, we may simply say to them, in the words of the witty Frenchman, "What a sad old age you ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... Montaigne conservative and discreet; Rabelais sought development of all the faculties alike, Montaigne gave preference to the training of the judgment; Rabelais would thoroughly master every branch of human knowledge, Montaigne was content to skim over the sciences. And yet, Montaigne must be recognized as an important factor in education, not only for his own teachings, but because undoubtedly Bacon, Locke, Rousseau, and other apostles of reform were greatly influenced by him. Bacon furthered Montaigne's theories ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... for me when they were exactly opposite the grand stand, full half a mile away—the moment that I remembered from year to year as one of exquisite illusion—for then the horses seemed to lift from the earth as with wings, and to skim over the track like a covey of low-flying birds. The finish was tame to this. Mrs. March and I had our wonted difference of opinion as to which horse had won, and we were rather uncommonly controversial because we had both decided ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... down—arrived in Rosario in time for the early boat to the capital. It was sent in large baskets made of rushes, and packed in many layers of cool, fresh leaves; so that it arrived at Buenos Ayres, forty hours after leaving Mount Pleasant, perfectly fresh and good. The skim milk was given to the pigs, who had already increased to ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... house, in which she received her own particular friends, wrote her letters, and read; just then she was engaged in the latter occupation, for the books had come in from the library that day, and she had sat down after luncheon to skim them through before selecting any which ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... other to the left, while the third kept near the middle of the stream. Then two would swerve toward shore, or perhaps it was all three, and again it was Jennie who kept the farthest from land, or perhaps a fancy led her to skim so close that some of the overhanging ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... in the picture as hard at work, enameling whatever few articles of furniture and household use the grasping selfishness of their elders has spared to them. One is painting the toasting fork in a "skim-milk blue," while another is giving aesthetical value to the Dutch oven by means of a new shade of art green. The bootjack is being renovated in "old gold," and the baby is sitting on the floor, smothering its own cradle ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness, but too weak to contain it. The tears well and fall as the dog barks in the hollow, the children skim after hoops, the country darkens and brightens. Beyond a veil it seems. Ah, but draw the veil thicker lest I faint with sweetness, Fanny Elmer sighed, as she sat on a bench in Judges Walk looking at Hampstead Garden Suburb. But the dog went ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honeyed spring, And float amid the liquid noon, Some lightly on the torrent skim, Some show their gaily gilded trim, Quick glancing ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hive, gather up all the scattered bees, and put them in. Get some honey; if candied, heat it till it dissolves; comb honey is not so good without mashing; if no honey is to be had, brown sugar may be taken instead; add a little water, and boil it till about the consistence of honey, and skim it; when cool enough, pour a quantity among the combs, directly on the bees; cover the bottom of the hive with a cloth, securing it firmly, and bring to the fire to warm up. In two or three hours they will be ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... skim fresh water off the sea, as practised at the mouths of the Rhone, the Nile, &c. The word is derived from the Dutch vlieten, to skim milk; it also means to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... about the first part of our voyage. We had the usual amount of rough weather and calm; also we saw many strange fish rolling in the sea, and I was greatly delighted one day by seeing a shoal of flying-fish dart out of the water and skim through the air about a foot above the surface. They were pursued by dolphins, which feed on them; and one flying-fish, in its terror, flew over the ship, struck on the rigging, and fell upon the ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... as wooden and solid as need be, and Affery went straight down it without any of those deviations peculiar to dreams. She did not skim over it, but walked down it, and guided herself by the banisters on account of her candle having died out. In one corner of the hall, behind the house-door, there was a little waiting-room, like a well-shaft, with a long narrow window ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... stop swinging in its orbit if I don't meet just so many people a day, write so many letters, hear so many lectures, skim through so many books? Of course if I'm earning my living I must work for it and work not only honestly but hard. But it seems to me that most of the terrific hurrying we do hasn't much to do with really essential work after all. It's a kind of habit we get into, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... a khaki fresco on the cab and sides of the giant commissary trucks that raise the dust along the winding white road over the hills. Snorting motorcycles with two men over the motor and an officer in the side car skim over the ground, passing all others. A lukewarm sun disappears in a slot in the mountains and a blue grey mist forms in the valleys. A chill comes over the air and a cold new moon ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... mud-turtle visits it. Sometimes, when I pushed off my boat in the morning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself under the boat in the night. Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teeter" along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fish hawk sitting on a white pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another moment would plunge us into the abyss—down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we were borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at all, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall between us ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... in fact, bound for the office of the Beacon—the local weekly. And thoughts of what tremendous possibilities might be stretching out from this very hour, and of what she would say to Ed Martin, the editor, made her feet now skim along impatiently, and now slow down with ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... flies. Just as it trembled on the rise; Not lighter does the swallow skim Along the smooth lake's level brim; And when Lord Marmion reached his band, He halts, and turns with clenched hand, And shout of loud defiance pours, And shook his gauntlet at the towers, "Horse! horse!" the Douglas ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the city; The lamps in the streets are streamed with rain; And sparrows complain beneath deep eaves, And among whirled leaves The sea-gulls, blowing from tower to lower tower, From wall to remoter wall, Skim with the driven rain to the rising sea-sound And close grey wings ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... pine-grove, whispering tales of love. Anglers repaired to the deep pond in quest of trout, but more likely to find water-snakes and snapping turtles. Far in the distance, on the right, moving like fairy gondolas through the cypress-covered lagoon, little barks skim the dark surface. They move like spectres, carrying their fair freight, fanned by the gentle breeze pregnant with the magnolia' sweet perfume. The fair ones in those tiny barks are fishing; they move from tree to tree trailing their lines to tempt the finny tribe here, and there breaking ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... that was his craft. To-morrow she'll be gone, it is whispered, to try for pearl in prohibited Dutch waters. Can't you imagine her slinking round the islands, watching for the patrolling gunboat, and ready, directly she has passed, to slip into the bay, skim it of its shell, and put to ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... in the Dietary; General Composition; Digestibility; Sanitary Condition of Milk; Certified Milk; Pasteurized Milk; Tyrotoxicon; Color of Milk; Souring of Milk; Use of Preservatives in Milk; Condensed Milk; Skim Milk; Cream; Buttermilk; Goat's Milk; Koumiss; Prepared Milks; Human Milk; Adulteration of Milk; Composition of Butter; Digestibility of Butter; Adulteration of Butter; General Composition of Cheese; Digestibility; ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... skim the surface of knowledge, And seldom its root to reach, Is a recipe one may offer To direct "How ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... Your face tells me enough. Now you've sucked me dry, eaten me hollow, killed my ego, my personality. To that I answer: how, my beloved? Have I killed your ego, when I wanted to give you the whole of mine; when I let you skim the cream off my bowl, that I'd filled with all the experience of along life, with incursions into the deserts and groves of knowledge ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... one question at a time. For the snipe, I found them very unexpectedly, I tell you, in a bit of marshy meadow just at the outlet of the pond. Garry was paddling me along at the top of his pace, after a wing-tipped wood-duck, when up jumped one of the long-billed rascals, and had the impudence to skim across the creek under my very nose—'skeap! skeap!' Well, I dropped him, you may be sure, with a charge, too, of duck shot; and he fell some ten yards over on the meadow; so leaving Garry to pursue the drake, I landed, loaded my gun ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... went to th' buttery to skim the milk," said she, giving Polly an opportunity to compare the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... flight, They scour the regions of the night, Free as the winds that wildly blow O'er hill and dale the blinding snow, Or, through the woods, their frolics play, And whirling, sweep the dusty way, When summer shines with burning glare, And sportive breezes skim the air, And Ocean's glassy breast is fanned To ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... I don't think so! I've got an idea. Maudie Heywood's sure to make a most beautiful copperplate copy; we'll borrow hers, and just skim them over to get a kind of general acquaintance with the subject, sufficient to show 'intelligent interest'. Gibbie won't be able to question us with those ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... you see by the froth that the fluid grows thicker You, should skim it (with glee) for it's turning to liquor! While it ferments, please continue to skim: At the end, you may murmur the Bartender's Hymn. This makes a booze that is potent enough— Seal in a hogshead—and hide it ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... should we not make a canoe, something swifter and more manageable than those vessels we as yet possess? I often long for a light skiff, in which I might skim over ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrew'd and knauish spirit Cal'd Robin Good-fellow. Are you not hee, That frights the maidens of the Villagree, Skim milke, and sometimes labour in the querne, And bootlesse make the breathlesse huswife cherne, And sometime make the drinke to beare no barme, Misleade night-wanderers, laughing at their harme, Those that ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and vegetables in two quarts of water over a slow fire—adding pepper and salt. Skim occasionally, and after two hours add two tablespoons of sherry; then strain through fine soup-strainer or cheese-cloth. This is the basis of all the following soups, ...
— Simple Italian Cookery • Antonia Isola
... gesture of flight is present throughout his music. Throughout it, one hears the beating of wings. Sometimes, it is the light flutter of glistening ephemeridae that wheel and skim delightfully through the limpid azure. Sometimes it is the passionate fanning of wings preparing themselves for swift sharp ascents. Sometimes, it is the drooping of pinions that sink brokenly. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... red-men rally With dance and song the woods resound; The hatchet's buried in the valley; No foe profanes our hunting-ground! The green leaves on the blithe boughs quiver, The verdant hills with song-birds ring, While our bark canoes, the river Skim, like swallows ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... sir, you'll have nothing to do with him. Keep your hand out o' the pot; there's no man can skim boiling lead with his hand and not burn his ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... wild deer of the forest At the river stoop to drink, But from the rush of waters All panic-stricken shrink; And the mountain eagles sailing O'er the cataract's foaming brim Alarmed, on soaring pinions, Away, o'er Heaven's clouds skim. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... ord'nary folks. They need speshul food. You'll need to give 'em boiled milk plain or with pap, you kin git fancy crackers an' soak 'em. Then ther's beef-tea. Not jest ord'nary beef-tea. You want to take a boilin' o' bones, an' boil for three hours, an' then skim well. After that you might let it cool some, an' then you add flavorin'. Not too much, an' not too little, jest so's to make it elegant tastin'. Then you cook toasties to go with it, or give 'em crackers. Serve it to 'em hot, an' jest set around blowin' it so it don't scald their ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... few pairs of snow-shoes like Tolly Tip's here," suggested Bobolink, enthusiastically, "we might skim along over ten-foot drifts, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... spoon. When it has been on about ten minutes, dredge it with flour, and keep doing so till you have stirred in as much as will thicken it. Then cover it with about a gallon of boiling water, adding it by degrees, and stirring it together. Skim it when it boils, and then put in a dram of ground black pepper, and two drams of allspice. Set the pan by the side of the fire, or at a distance over it, and let it stew very slowly for about three hours. When the meat is sufficiently ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... be kept together; beef, mutton and ham in another lot; one makes a white stock, the other brown. If the quantity is small, put them all together. Crack the bones, put them in the bottom of a large soup kettle, cover with cold water, bring slowly to boiling point and skim. Push the kettle to the back part of the stove, where the stock may simmer for at least three hours, then add an onion into which you have stuck twelve cloves, a bay leaf, a few celery tops, or a little celery seed, and a carrot cut into slices; simmer gently for ...
— Made-Over Dishes • S. T. Rorer
... of mind, as a beginning. I felt the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... varies with the character of these commodities, from the world-market for stock exchange securities down to the minimum market consisting of a few neighbouring farmers competing to sell their over-ripe plums or their skim-milk. The chief qualities which determine ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... sugar, isinglass, and 1/2 pint of water into a lined saucepan, and boil these ingredients for 20 minutes; then put in the strained lemon-juice, the strained infusion of the rind, and bring the whole to the point of boiling; skim well, add the wine, and run the jelly through a bag; pour it into a mould that has been wetted or soaked in water; put it in ice, if convenient, where let it remain until required for table. Previously to adding the lemon-juice to the other ingredients, ascertain that it is ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... fancy to him, was always teaching him something or other likely to prove useful. "Now, Tom, you may be no wiser nor a young gull as has never learned to fly," I heard the old man say; "but listen, my boy, if you follows my advice you'll soon be able to spread your wings and skim over the water just for all the world like one on them big albatrosses one meets with off the Cape of Good Hope, you've heard speak of." Tom had not heard of such a place, so Grampus told him all about it, and a great deal more besides. In that way my young follower picked up his sea lore. ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... 'ere dock-smell nigh finished me. No skim-milk smell about that, but the ginooine jam,—an awful pooty nosegay! 'T was reg'lar rank p'is'n. Never see anythin' like it. Oh, 'twas te'ble! Took hold o' my nose dreffle bad; I'm afeard my stomach'll be a goner. 'T wa'n't ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... grew upon him as he swept along the ice under the starlight. Venus made a glowing path toward the west and seemed eager to reassure him. He was sorry he could not skim down that avenue of light which flowed from the love-star, but he was forced to turn his back upon it and face the ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... any such recommendation in regard to that intolerable book. It is, to speak frankly, one of the very few books—one of the still fewer novels—which I have found it practically impossible to read even in the "skim and skip and dip" fashion which should, no doubt, be only practised as a work of necessity (i.e. duty to others) and of mercy (to oneself) on extraordinary occasions, but which nobody but a prig and a pedant will absolutely disallow. Almost the only ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... geranium was growing right out of the roof. The front porch looks out upon the sea. Oh, it's such a dark, deep, sparkly blue! And when the sky is blue, too, and the sand is golden, and the white gulls skim next the water—nothing could be more beautiful in all the world! I think of you a hundred times a day, and wish that you were here. So does Dad. I've told him all about the Vigilantes, and he's so interested. He says he's thankful every day that I have such fine friends at ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... "We hear, Mrs. Skim; and quite agree with you that he knows very little about us and our affairs," answered one of the swallows with a shrill chirp, like a scornful laugh. "We work harder than he does any day. Did ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... popular tradition and antiquarian learning with strange facility; but he had tramped through many a long day's march, and pored over innumerable ballads and forgotten writers, before he had anything to skim. Had he not—if we may use the word without offence—been cramming all his life, and practising the art of story-telling every day he lived? Probably the most striking incidents of his books are in reality mere modifications of anecdotes which he had rehearsed a hundred times before, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Schalckenberg, belongs the honour and glory of having made dwo mosd imbordand disgoveries, disgoveries of ingalgulable value do the worldt, disgoveries which will enable me do soar ad will indo the highesd regions of the embyrean, do skim the surface of the ocean, or do ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... on the following version, the translator begs to shelter himself under the well-known observation of Lord Chesterfield, "that everything suffers by translation, but a bishop!" Those to whom such a dilution is necessary will perhaps be contented with the skim-milk as they cannot get the cream.- TRANS. Thy beauty, seductress, leads mortals astray, Over hearts, Lise, how vast and resistless thy sway. Cease, duchess, to blush! cease, princess, to rave— Venus sprang from the foam of the ocean wave. All the gods ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... of feet, and Maud raised herself swiftly and leaned forth in time to see an athletic little figure in navy blue wearing a jaunty Panama hat, skim like a bird over a sweeping Dorothy Perkins just coming into bloom and alight on one leg with the perfect poise of a winged Mercury on the ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... the hill the farm-boy goes, His shadow lengthens along the land, A giant staff in a giant hand; In the poplar-tree, above the spring, The katydid begins to sing; The early dews are falling;— Into the stone-heap darts the mink; The swallows skim the river's brink; And home to the woodland fly the crows, When over the hill the farm-boy goes, Cheerily calling,— "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" Farther, farther over the hill, Faintly calling, calling still,— "Co', boss! co', boss! ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... the house, filled a bucket with my salad, and started toward the edge of the woods, singing happily as I sped on feet so light and frolicsome that they seemed to skim the ground. How wonderful is ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... hear, General Dingo seemed to be kindly contributing some noise while we feasted. There were guns going off around town, and pretty soon we heard that cannon go 'BOOM!' just as he said it would. And then men began to skim along the edge of the plaza, dodging in among the orange trees and houses. We certainly had things stirred up in Salvador. We felt proud of the occasion and grateful to General Dingo. Sterrett was about to take a bite off a juicy ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... the wages came slack; and the farmer got the new reaping-machine, and my binding came to an end; and topping turnips for a few days in the foggy November mornings don't bring you in much, even when you havn't just had a baby. And the skim milk was long ago gone, and the leasing, and the sack of tail-wheat, and the cheap cheeses almost for nothing, and the hedge-clippings, and it was just the bare ten shillings a-week. So at last, when we had heard enough of eighteen shillings a-week up in London, and we scarce ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... as the thought of a love forgotten, The hours skim past, while before me flies That face of the Sun and Mist begotten, Its ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... and research in its relation to the later empires that ruled at Babylon have produced results of literary rather than of historical importance. But we should exceed the space at our disposal if we attempted even to skim this fascinating field of study in which so much has recently been achieved. For it is time we turned once more to Egypt and directed our inquiry towards ascertaining what recent research has to tell us with regard to her ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... There was no better feeding-ground, for when that insatiable gunner came on them there it was easy to run low among the hemlock to the great pine, then rise with a derisive whirr behind its bulk, and keeping the huge trunk in line with the deadly gun, skim off in safety. A dozen times at least the pine had saved them during the lawful murder season, and here it was that Cuddy, knowing their feeding habits, laid a new trap. Under the bank he sneaked and watched in ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... I could see. I imagined that here as in Switzerland every inhabitant of easy means would be able to offer hospitality. I entered and begged that I might have dinner by paying for it. The peasant handed me some skim milk and coarse barley bread, saying that was all he had. The milk seemed delicious and I ate the bread, straw and all, but it was not very satisfying to one exhausted by fatigue. The man scrutinised me and judged by my appetite the truth of the story I had told. Suddenly, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey |
