"Fingered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... village had met at a quilting party at ten o'clock with Mrs. Martin Waddell. There Sarah had had a seat at the frame and heard all the gossip of the countryside. The nimble fingered Ann Rutledge—a daughter of the tavern folk—had sat beside her. Ann was a slender, good-looking girl of seventeen with blue eyes and a rich crown of auburn hair and a fair skin well browned by the sunlight. She was the most dexterous needle worker in New Salem. It was Mrs. Peter ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... by one Wotton, who in the year 1585 kept an academy for the education and perfection of pickpockets and cut-purses: his school was near Billingsgate, London. As in the dress of ancient times many people wore their purses at their girdles, cutting them was a branch of the light-fingered art, which is now lost, though the name remains. Maitland, from Stow, gives the following account of this Wotton: This man was a gentleman born, and sometime a merchant of good credit, but fallen by time into decay: he kept an alehouse near ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... that she believed her tale to be done. I permitted the silence to go a minute, perhaps, while she fingered the cigarette paper ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... nervous whistle. "I see what you mean, pal. With all our eggs in one basket, we sure can't afford to get butter-fingered with the ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... ravaged the plantations of our settlers. It will be good to get to some profitable employment, for such a war, without either fighting or plunder, I have never seen. I give you my word that I have scarce fingered silver since the beginning of it. I would not for the sacking of London go through with ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... glass, a bit of old Italian brocade, and chrysanthemums in a china bowl coveted by collectors. Every detail spoke of the connoisseurship, the refined and personal taste characteristic of Oxford in the eighties. The authority on art put up his eye-glasses and fingered his ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... letter; and because it was his first, he did not know it was a love letter. He had written it on the pages of a field note book. On the reverse side, were figures of triangulations and scaled timbers, which Eleanor fingered lovingly because the dumb signs seemed to connect her life with his before—before what? Ask ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... lip in a grin, and I could see a horrid tier of teeth, which seemed to have grown together like concrete in one huge fang. "It is in my power, Dr. Phillimore, to blow your brains out here and now. The noise of the sea would cover the report," and he fingered a pistol that now I perceived in his hand. "Outside yonder is a grave that tells no tales. The dead rise up never from the sea, by thunder! And the port's open. I'm half in the mind——" He threw the weapon carelessly upon the bunk and laughed. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... Larkin fingered his newspaper nervously and tried to simulate an interest in some news note. He hated to display sentiment, yet the fates had given him a double burden of it. As a matter of honest fact, he was as sentimental as a woman, and was forever trying to hide the ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... not want her then; he was not going to want her at forty. For practical purposes Camelford was out of the question. She might marry somebody else altogether—and fare worse. She might remain a spinster: she hated the mere name of spinster. The inky-fingered woman journalist that, if all went well, she might become: it was not her idea. Was she acting selfishly? Ought she, in his own interests, to refuse to marry dear Nat? Nellie—the little cat—who would suit him at forty, would not have ...
— The Philosopher's Joke • Jerome K. Jerome
... among them, taking meals with them on their mats, and eating "two fingered" poi as if I had been used to it all my life. Their mirthfulness and kindliness are most winning; their horses, food, clothes, and time are all bestowed on one so freely, and one lives amongst them with ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... murder-lust. Once, as he saw them halt at the edge of the grass plot, and he observed Masten draw Hagar close to him and kiss her, his right hand dropped to the butt of his pistol at his right hip, and he fingered it uncertainly. He drew the hand away at last, though, with ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hie thee to bed, good Denys. Next to Margaret I love thee best on earth, and value thy 'coeur d'or' far more than a dozen of these 'Tetes d'Or.' So prithee call me at the first blush of rosy-fingered morn, and let's away ere the woman with the hands ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... could see, as he watched her, though there were tears in the eyes that rested on the scene without. But she was seeing other things, he knew, and not sorrowful things either, he said to himself, with a little surprise, as he fingered uneasily an open letter that lay on the ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... solicitude. Caddy was now the mother, and I the godmother, of such a poor little baby—such a tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely anything but cap-border, and a little lean, long-fingered hand, always clenched under its chin. It would lie in this attitude all day, with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering (as I used to imagine) how it came to be so small and weak. Whenever it was moved it cried, but at all other times it was so patient ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... question besetting him since their separation. She put it to him that the deep instinct of where he should at last find her must confidently have worked for him, since she confessed to her instinct of where she should find him; which meant—oh it came home to him as he fingered his sealed treasure!—neither more nor less than that she had now created between them an equality of experience. He wasn't to have done all the suffering, she was to have "been through" things he couldn't ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... "Kate Greenaway" manner, and her red cashmere frock, gathered full from the yoke, came almost to the floor. This, with her poke bonnet, gave her the look of a quaint little woman. She had a white fur tippet about her neck and made no fussy objections when Emil fingered it admiringly. Alexandra had not the heart to take him away from so pretty a playfellow, and she let them tease the kitten together until Joe Tovesky came in noisily and picked up his little niece, setting her on his shoulder for every one to see. His children were all boys, and ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... Chris!" Opening the box, he fingered the pellets curiously. "A blessed thing, your science! Three ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... after her marriage; hence disunion betwixt him and his son on the one part, and the members of that family on the other. They laid sundry misfortunes, and particularly the loss of male heirs which at that time befell them, to my parent's not having done the hereditary homage to the bloody-fingered Bahr-geist." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an AEolian harp; and especially why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favorite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... as she grew bolder in her thefts, at last deducted such sums, that my master began to wonder how he sold so much, and gained so little. She pretended to assist his inquiries, and began, very gravely, to hope that "Betty was honest, and yet those sharp girls were apt to be light-fingered." You will believe that I did not stay there ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... manage her. The money comes from the Eustace property, and I'd sooner it should go to you than a half-hearted, numb-fingered, cold-blooded Whig, like Fawn." ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... towards him with a smile. Nevertheless, Wrayson noticed what seemed to him a strange thing. The slim-fingered, bejewelled hand which rested upon the ledge of the box was trembling. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... home cannot be too proud, from Field-Marshal to officer's servant. As one of Mr. Punch's correspondents at the front writes: "Dawn to me hereafter will not be personified as a rosy-fingered damsel or a lovely swift-footed deity, but as a sturdy little man in khaki, crimson-eared with cold, heralded and escorted by frozen wafts of outer air, bearing in one knobby fist a pair of boots, and in the other a tin mug of black ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... remember coming to the harbour in a ship. What was it called? The Burrawalla!" and as he fingered the papers in the pocket-book, and came upon his father's signature, Meurig Wynne, he became much excited, and hunted eagerly until he found a folded paper, out of which he drew a long curl ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... she wondered, as she fingered it through the cloth. "It feels like a key. If I break two or three stitches, I ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... loosening onions, beets, turnips, etc., from the soil or for cutting spinach. Running the hand- plow close on either side of carrots, parsnips and other deep-growing vegetables will aid materially in getting them out. For fruit picking, with tall trees, the wire-fingered fruit-picker, secured to the end of a long handle, will be of great assistance, but with the modern method of using low-headed trees it ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... would slip through them. When a Dyak village has turned out to hunt wild pigs in the jungle, the people who stay at home may not touch oil or water with their hands during the absence of their friends; for if they did so, the hunters would all be "butter-fingered" and the prey ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... soup came to the boil on the Primus stove. Priscilla poured it out It was hot, of about the consistency usual in soup, and it smelt savoury. Nevertheless Miss Rutherford, after watching for an opportunity to do so unseen, poured hers out on the ground. Frank fingered his mug irresolutely and once took a sip. Priscilla, after looking at her share intently, carried it off and gave ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... people beneath thee. Thee rules by the sword, or the word of peace, friend?" The fat, smooth hands fingered the beads swiftly. Shelek Pasha was disturbed, as he proved by replying in French —he had spent years of his youth in France: "Par la force morale, toujours, madame—by moral force, always," he hastened to add in English. Then, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... when Atavism comes, if I may say so, to intersect variation? The two cases of which I have mentioned the history, give a most excellent illustration of what occurs. Gratio Kelleia, the Maltese, married when he was twenty-two years of age, and, as I suppose there were no six-fingered ladies in Malta, he married an ordinary five-fingered person. The result of that marriage was four children; the first, who was christened Salvator, had six fingers and six toes, like his father; the second was George, who had five fingers and toes, but one of them was deformed, showing ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... at four crossroads, with a four-fingered post in the centre. We had agreed to leave our destination to chance. We ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... we are. Some very very few and unlucky folks at the game cut their heads sheer off, or stab themselves mortally, and perish outright, and there is an end of them. But,—heaven help us!—many people have fingered those ardentes sagittas which Love sharpens on his whetstone, and are stabbed, scarred, pricked, perforated, tattooed all over with the wounds, who recovered, and live to be quite lively. Wir auch have tasted das irdische Glueck; we also have gelebt ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He fingered controls lightly, depressed a few more keys, and set one vernier, already at a ratio of a million to one, down to ten million. He then stepped up his velocity, and found that the guides worked well up to a speed much greater than any ever reached ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... Joan fingered her watch, but she made no further remark; she realised that no amount of malicious comment could be so dramatically effective now as the slow slipping ...
— When William Came • Saki
... out the door, Colihan could have sworn he saw the Personnelovac wink. He walked over to it and fingered the lever. It was ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... long as mouth and tongue can wag' will pray and hear sermons, but will not cut off a darling lust; such deceive their own souls. Some are allured but not changed: 'There is some kind of musicalness in the word; when well handled and fingered by a skilful preacher,' it has a momentary influence; 'they hear thy words, but do them not.' (Eze. 33:30) Above all things, beware of hypocrisy, for when it once enters, it spreads over the soul, as the leprosy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the Lincolnshire breed of pigs{458}, and in the stamens of many garden flowers); parts of a similar nature might become increased in number (as the vertebrae in the tails of pigs, &c., &c. and the fingers and toes in six-fingered races of men and in the Dorking fowls), but analogous differences are observed in nature and are not considered by naturalists to destroy the uniformity of the types. We can, however, conceive such changes to be carried to such length that the unity of type might be obscured and finally ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... and soon the distant door closed behind them. Then the newcomer did a strange thing. He cast a swift glance over the sleeping faces, to assure himself that he was not watched, and with the light-fingered stealth of the born thief, he slipped his thin hand into Zaidos' breast pocket. Withdrawing it, he smiled wickedly at the sight of what he held. He rose to his feet, hastily pocketed his find, and for a moment stood looking down at Zaidos. With a noiseless laugh he nodded sneeringly ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... hath as fine a hand at picking a pocket as a woman, and is as nimble-fingered as a juggler. If an unlucky session does not cut the rope of his life, I pronounce he will be a great ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... done, they should have killed six each," said Umslopogaas moodily. "Well, they have left the more for us to finish," and he fingered ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... help laughing, though there was a twinge of pain at his stout little heart, as he fingered the solitary penny in the faded cap. "Done? Well, I guess I've waked you up, sir, which was about ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... own here. The Akor-Neb civilization is of a fairly high culture-order, even for Second Level. An atomic-power, interplanetary culture; gravity-counteraction, direct conversion of nuclear energy to electrical power, that sort of thing. We buy fine synthetic plastics and fabrics from them." He fingered the material of his smartly-cut green police uniform. "I think this cloth is Akor-Neb. We sell a lot of Venusian zerfa-leaf; they smoke it, straight and mixed with tobacco. They have a single System-wide government, a single race, and a universal ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... masses. This while, to the same place came his orison-mutterer impaletocked, or lapped up about the chin like a tufted whoop, and his breath pretty well antidoted with store of the vine-tree-syrup. With him he mumbled all his kiriels and dunsical breborions, which he so curiously thumbed and fingered, that there fell not so much as one grain to the ground. As he went from the church, they brought him, upon a dray drawn with oxen, a confused heap of paternosters and aves of St. Claude, every one ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... party were gathered around me; Arnold's wound had been tightly and deftly bandaged, and the flow of blood checked. A whisper of my strange discovery ran from mouth to mouth, and Flora pressed my arm in silent sympathy. There was a solemn hush, and every eye was on me as I fingered the locket in search of a spring, for I knew it opened that way. I must have touched the spot by accident, for of a sudden the trinket flew open. But the inside was quite empty. I could not repress ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... young men. There is quite a difference between getting scared and being hurt. My beef outfit has orders to go three hundred miles south of our range and cover all round-ups northward. It was a severe winter, and the drift was heavy, but I'm not worrying any about that sore-fingered outfit. Promptly meeting government contracts is our work to-day. My cattle are two weeks behind time, and the beef herds must leave Dodge to-morrow. Help me figure it out: Can you put me on the railroad by noon?" he concluded, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... did not look at Sylvie, but gazed somberly at Pete. It was a strange look, at once appealing and threatening, pitiful and dangerous. Pete fingered his fork nervously. Finally Bella stood up and began to clear the table with an ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... aware that I have been soured by prison indignities. But still the conviction remains with me that parliamentary interests are not those battles of gods and giants which I used to regard them. Our Gyas with the hundred hands is but a Three-fingered Jack, and I sometimes think that we share our great Jove with the Strand Theatre. Nevertheless I shall go back,—and if they will make me a joint lord to-morrow I ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... you going to do with these?" inquired a Bible student who had joined him at the counter and fingered ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... to Lucy, and Lucy, who always did what she was asked to do, went up quietly to her uncle's knee, and, blushing all over her neck while she fingered her necklace, said, "Will you please play us a tune, uncle?" But Uncle Pullet never gave a too ready consent. "We'll see about it," was the answer he always gave, waiting till a suitable number of minutes ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... the Horae. The Hora of Spring accompanied Persephone every year on her ascent from the lower world, and the expression "The chamber of the Horae opens" is equivalent to "The Spring is coming." 'Rosy-bosomed'; the Gk. rhodokolpos: compare the epithets 'rosy-fingered' (applied by Homer ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... outward for useful service, instid o' bein' turned inside out to attract a young child's admiration—not thet I hold it against Miss Phoebe thet her knuckles is reversed. Of co'se she can't be very strong-fingered. No finger could git much purchase ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... better go and see another agent." She fingered the advertisement regretfully. "It seems a pity to waste this," she added with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... are doing for art what the Jews did for prize-fighting—they ruin it. They make art the laughing-stock of all refined and educated people. Art applied solely to sculpture and painting is dead; it will not rise again in these our times. But art, the fairy-fingered beautifier of all that surrounds our homes and daily walks, save paintings and statuary, never breathed so fully, clearly, nobly as now, and her pathway amid the lowly and homely things around us is shedding beauty wherever it goes. The rough-handed artisan ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... containing a population of good promise. Three landings were made there, and at the fourth place Patteson jumped ashore on a rock and spent some time in calming the fears of a party of natives who had been frightened in their canoe by the boat under sail overtaking them. 'hey fingered bows and arrows, but only from nervousness,' he says. However, they seem to have suspected the visitors of designs on their load of fine taro, and it was some time before the owner would come out and resume it. On all these isles the plan could ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has arisen from a technical peculiarity of the instrument, which makes a repetition of the same note difficult without the interpolation of what is known among pipers as "cuts" or "warblers," i.e. grace notes fingered with great rapidity (see below for an example). These warblers, which consist not only of single notes but of groups of from three to seven notes, not consecutive but in leaps, assist in relieving ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... little. This was new and strange for him. To pay twenty-five dollars that he was not obliged by any self-interest to pay, would have been an act contrary to all his habits and to all the business maxims in which he had schooled himself. Nevertheless, he fingered his papers a minute in an undecided way, and then he said that he couldn't do it. If he began to pay creditors in that way "it would ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... rice. Seaweed tricked him; bubbles vanished and he reached to grasp them. Round and round he swam, and finally his hands closed over something small and slippery. Breathlessly he fingered it, and opening his hand as he trod water, he beheld ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... spires: floating between the two blues, hung the aerial shapes of the Chaunsey and the Channel Islands; and nearer, along the coast-line, were the fringing edges of the shore, broken with shoals and shallows—earth's fingers, as it were, touching the sea—playing, as Coleridge's Abyssinian maid fingered the dulcimer, that music that haunts ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... am going to make this typewriting machine go or nto: that last word was intended for n-not; but I guess I shall make some sort of a succss of it before I run it very long. I am so thick-fingered that I miss ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that lay beside them and fingered it for a moment, as though wondering of what he would rhyme. Afterward he sang for her as they sat ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... art in themselves, took care, as an influence, of the general manner, and made people bland without making them solemn. They were only people, as Mrs. Stringham had said, staying for the week or two at the inns, people who during the day had fingered their Baedekers, gaped at their frescoes and differed, over fractions of francs, with their gondoliers. But Milly, let loose among them in a wonderful white dress, brought them somehow into relation with something that made them more finely genial; so that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... education of the younger ones being the chief of these darling wishes. Picotee wanted looking to badly enough. Sol and Dan required no material help; they had quickly obtained good places of work under a Pimlico builder; for though the brothers scarcely showed as yet the light-fingered deftness of London artizans, the want was in a measure compensated by their painstaking, and employers are far from despising country hands who bring with them strength, industry, and a desire to please. But their sister had other lines laid ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... went. Mr. Snape, having carefully brushed his hat and taken down from its accustomed peg the old cotton umbrella, also took his departure; and the fourth navvy, who inhabited the same room, went also. The iron-fingered hand of time struck a quarter past four on the Somerset House clock, and still Charley Tudor lingered at his office. The maid who came to sweep the room was thoroughly amazed, and knew that something ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Lockwood fingered the combination hopelessly. There were some millions of combinations and permutations that only a mathematician could calculate. Only one was any good. That one was locked in the mind of the man who now seemed to baffle us as ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... told her, and she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious. He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, shamefaced ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... at Sam's story and then, the coffee being served, she fingered the handle of the cup and a shrewd look came ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... because the creature is constantly changing its shape. This continual change of shape is caused by a continuous prolongation and drawing-in of its pseudopods, or "false-feet," which also gives the creature the appearance of a "many-fingered" organism. This creature shows the first step toward "parts," for it has something like a membrane or "skin" at its surface, and a "nucleus" at its centre, and also an expanding and contracting cavity within its substance, which it uses for holding, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... 1876, at Moscow (P. Jurgenson), in six volumes, is described on the title-page as "Complete works of Fr. Chopin critically revised after the original French, German, and Polish editions, carefully corrected and minutely fingered for pupils." [FOOTNOTE: This edition has been reprinted by Augener & Co., of London.] The work done by Klindworth is one of the greatest merit, and has received the highest commendations of such men as Liszt and Hans von Bulow. Objections that can be made to it are, that the fingering, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of his visit immediately, and while he was speaking he fingered a roll of bills which he had taken from his pocket the better to arouse ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... pocket-book, which was stuffed full of old papers. The old man fingered them lovingly and with careful touch, until he found the one he sought. It was a somewhat long document, written on blue, official-looking paper, and attested by several seals. He read it from beginning to end with close attention, and gave a grunt of satisfaction ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Chinamen, I shifted to windward, stepping over the sprawling forms of sleepers till I found another place, the only objection to which was the proximity of numerous brown feet and the hot engine-room. The squalling of an infant ushered in the rosy-fingered dawn. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... me," he stoutly asseverated. "Ye think mo' o' him 'n o' me, kase ye 'low he air rich, an' book-larned, an' smooth-fingered, an' fini-fied ez a gal, an' goin' ter buy the hotel. I say, hotel! Now I'll tell ye what he is—I'll tell ye! He's a criminal. He's runnin' from the law. He's hidin' in the old hotel that he's purtendin' ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... proceeded to the carriage-house, took a fine new buggy that we had never used, the cushions and harness of our carriage, then cut the carriage up and left it. They then sent about sixty of the slyest, smoothest-fingered rogues I have ever seen in the Federal army (all the rogues I ever did see were in that army), into the house to search for whisky and money, while the officers remained in the back-yard trying to hire the servants to tell them where we had money hid. Their search ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... call me to breakfast, appeared upon the terrace above me, and was surprised that I could play the fiddle so well. The grim old man from the castle came too, and was as much amazed, and at last the maids came, and they all stood up there together agape, while I fingered away, and wielded my bow in the most artistic manner, playing cadenzas and variations until I was ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... justly famous the world over for the surpassing size and excellence and abundance of its timber, is a long, many-fingered arm of the sea reaching southward from the head of the Strait of Juan de Fuca into the heart of the grand forests of the western portion of Washington, between the Cascade Range and the mountains of the coast. It is less than a hundred miles in length, but so numerous are the branches into which ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... starvation, but they do not go far towards satisfying the reviving appetite of a convalescent. Walking with brisk step down the road, Callandar began to imagine the kind of meal he would order—a clear soup, broiled steak, crisp potatoes—a few little simple things like that! He fingered his pocketbook lovingly, glad that, for the first time in some months, he actually wanted something that money ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... his face, I could see that he had not a thought in his mind beyond the game. Dubkoff's hands, on the contrary, were small, puffy, and inclined to clench themselves, as well as extremely neat and small-fingered. They were just the kind of hands which generally display rings, and which are most to be seen on persons who are both inclined to use them and fond ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... Casey, breathing deep when, stomach full and resentment toward the past blurred by satisfaction with his present, he filled his pipe and fingered his vest pocket for a match. "Gas stoves can't cook nothin' so there's any taste to it. That there's the first real meal I've et in six months. Light a match and turn on the gas and call that a fire! Hunh! Good ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... at heel. Almost everybody has seen the loud aggressive swaggering boy with the meek admiring small boy in his train. The small boy glorifies the other in his mind, setting him on a level with Three-Fingered Jack, or Goliath's conqueror, and the aggressive boy, feeling rather than understanding the other's reverence, does his best to look as if he deserved it. To see Lil swagger and to hear her bark, and to see the foolish humble Schwartz ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... ready for anything. He approached her, unfastened her dress, discovered her rosy nipples tipping the snowy hills of her bosom. He fingered them in rapture, and they seemed to get so impudently hard that he could not resist the temptation of sucking the delicious little strawberries of love. But, his friend getting impatient, he proceeded to raise her dress in front, exhibiting a lovely little ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... felled him, his bloody sword still in hand, stared closely at the American, and fingered his fur jacket curiously. Presently he muttered a few words in some strange tongue. When Craig did not reply, he again spat out the words, his dark brows bunching malevolently. And this time Wes understood part of what ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... strange hazard, all the women were seated on the same side; and the Countess further had for neighbors two saintly nuns who fingered long rosaries and mumbled Paters and Aves. One of them was old and had a face so deeply pitted with smallpox, that she looked as if she had been shot full in the face by a rapid-firing gun. The other, very frail, had a ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... of the breast-fin of a young Selachius. The radii of the median fin-border have wholly disappeared. The shaded part on the right is the section that persists in the five-fingered hand of the higher Vertebrates. (b the three basal pieces of the fin: mt metapterygium, rudiment of the humerus, ms mesopterygium, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... dinner-time, too, and father's home to-day." Glancing up the road, she caught sight of Millie Higgins and another girl in the distance. She particularly did not want to meet Millie just then. She made such rude remarks, and she always fingered things so. Mona had not forgiven her either for leading her astray the day her ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... manner of the French court painters who simpered and painted a hundred and fifty years ago. Ribbons fluttered from the throat and shoulder of this demure, fair-skinned, and blue-eyed creature, who was so palpably playing at masquerade. A silken parody of a shepherdess—a laughing, dainty, snowy-fingered aristocrat, sweet-lipped, provocative, half reclining under a purposely conventional oak, between the branches of which big white clouds rolled in a dark-blue sky—this was Rosalie as Duane had painted her with all the perversely infernal skill of a brush always ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... gun. The report sent Tom's heart into his mouth again. Several of the boats pushed off at once into the stream; and the crowds of men on the bank began to be agitated, as it were, by the shadow of the coming excitement. The St. Ambrose crew fingered their oars, put a last dash of grease on their rollocks, and settled their feet ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... below in chains, and did not know what to do at such treachery. The wine foamed in his head and he hung sick against the rail until Ayllon came sidling and fidgeting to find out where the pearls came from. He fingered the strand on Young Pine's ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... in the shadows grew louder with the setting sun. Branches snapped unaccountably in the trees overhead and every now and then leaves or a twig fell softly to the ground, close to where he lay. Reaching into his jacket, Alan fingered his pocket blaster. He pulled it out and held it in his right hand. "This pop gun wouldn't even singe a robot, but it just might ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... qualification (by examination) attesting a minimum amount of skill. Not even grammar is necessary for authorship, or even for successful authorship. Besides which, writing is done by innumerable persons in their spare time—Literature is a world of inky-fingered blacklegs. Thus, writing admits neither of the union-fixed minimum wage of the manual labourer, nor of the etiquette-fixed fee of the professional; so that the methods of the trade union are only partially applicable to the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... round him was darkness, and the ivory crucifix shone dimly, dimly. Outside the door a page was sleeping; he woke him and bade him bring light.... In his sorrow, Don Sebastian began to look at the things his wife had loved; he fingered her rosary, and turned over the pages of the half-dozen pious books which formed her library; he looked at the jewels which he had seen glittering on her bosom; the brocades, the rich silks, the cloths of gold and silver that she had delighted ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... The detective fingered his small, sandy moustache. He was an insignificant-looking little man, undersized, with thin frame and watery eyes. His mouth, however, was hard, and there were some tell-tale little lines at ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... finding a small but valuable lamp missing from the table whereon he showed his wares. Among the dozen odd persons pressing about the booth his eye singled out a slight, handsome boy in Oriental dress; and since Syrian serving-lads were proverbially light-fingered, the Sicyonian jumped quickly at ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... which feebly once Lighted the cheek of lean captivity With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone On the pure smiles of infant playfulness. No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes Of joy fingered winds and gladsome birds And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... boy six or seven years old a quack phrenologist stopped at our house and Father kept him over night. In the morning he fingered the bumps of all of us to pay for his lodging and breakfast. When he came to my head I remember he grew enthusiastic. "This boy will be a rich man," he said. "His head beats 'em all." And he enlarged on the great wealth I was to accumulate. ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... fear fingered at the strings of the man's heart. At the back of his neck he felt the hair begin to lift. Then he smiled by ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Romance ran swiftly. The past, with its red flare of life, its keen memories and dulled regrets, was swept away by the promise of dawn and the unknown. "A clean break and a hard fight," he murmured, as he reined up to rest his horse. Turning, he could distinguish Ramon, who fingered the crucifix at his throat. Waring's face grew grim. He felt suddenly accountable for ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... silk stockings. In the knot of sunny curled hair drawn high upon her head she wore a single white rose. A bunch of roses lay in her lap, also a manuscript in Madge's slightly vertical handwriting, which she fingered restlessly. ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... She fingered the dainty white frills lovingly as she remembered the sunny summer days at home in the little sewing-room, where cherry boughs poked their blossoms in at the window, when her mother and sisters ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he wrote in unpublished poems, "Steel in Soft Hands" and "To Our Hills": — We mourn your fall into daintier hands Of senators, rosy fingered, That wrote while you fought, And afar from the battles lingered. And again in "Raven Days" and "Tyranny": — Oh, Raven days, dark Raven days of sorrow, Will ever any warm light come again? Will ever the lit mountains of To-morrow Begin to gleam athwart the mournful plain? Young Trade ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the others but learning the work sooner, and gayer-hearted; now the Canadian-French contingent furnished all the new help, and stood in long rows before the noisy looms and chattered in their odd, excited fashion. They were quicker-fingered, and were willing to work cheaper than any other ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... looked in. The men were wearied, their faces haggard and ghastly pale. Quickly and coolly they fingered the cards, but in their hollow eyes burned the fever of the game, a game where golden eagles were the chips and thousand-dollar jack-pots were unremarkable. No doubt they had lost and won greatly, but they gave no sign. What did it matter? In the dumps waiting to be cleaned ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... motionless lips, and snatched another soul from the fangs of the "Infernal Wolf." [ 1 ] Thus, with the patience of saints, the courage of heroes, and an intent truly charitable, did the Fathers put forth a nimble-fingered adroitness that would have done credit to the profession of which the function is less to dispense the treasures of another world than to grasp those which ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... fingered the corner of the apron of coarse cloth covering her petticoat of whitish cloth rayed with wide black stripes; the young boy convulsively grasped his cap of brown wool. They stopped at the foot ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue |
