"Pack of cards" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when set up and finished, should be mounted on "shields" of fancy wood; oak or mahogany being the best, unless ebonized and gilded pine is preferred. The shapes are usually a modification of the conventional "heart," such as will be found in a pack of cards. This being purely a matter of individual taste, the taxidermist may easily make as many patterns as he chooses by doubling a piece of brown or stiff paper and cutting his shapes out therefrom. One of these paper patterns ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... pack of cards. She had promised to lend the cards to a neighbour that evening; her husband was to have brought them home early in the day; he had forgotten to do so and she had come to fetch them. So there was no murder and no dirty linen, but the cabin had ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... Not quite satisfied, I left it about thirty yards away, to view the situation quickly, as there were only twenty minutes to go. Hardly had I left the machine than a "whizz-bang" fell and struck the parapet immediately above the ladder, tumbling the whole lot of sandbags down like a pack of cards. ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... generally adopted it. "Books! prithee, don't talk to me about books," said old Sarah Marlborough. "The only books I know are men and cards." "Dear old Sir Roger de Coverley sent all his tenants a string of hogs' puddings and a pack of cards at Christmas," says the Spectator, wishing to depict a kind landlord. One of the good old lady writers in whose letters I have been dipping cries out, "Sure, cards have kept us women from a great ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Spain, and though in many places I have scarcely been able to procure a glass of wine, or a bit of bread, or any of the first conveniences of life, yet I never went through a village so mean and out of the way, in which I could not have purchased a pack of cards.' This was in the middle of the seventeenth century, but I have no doubt it is true ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... trousers, Mills, but as he doesn't keep clothing, we'll have to get some canvas and cut you out a pair. I traded off the beans he let me have for some tobacco for the Right Bower at the other shop, and got them to throw in a new pack of cards. These are about played out. We'll be wanting some brushwood for the fire; there's a heap in the hollow. Who's going to bring it in? It's the Judge's turn, isn't it? Why, what's the matter ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... road; for there was not a mark on him, and a fool could have told he had just been drowned in Lac Tremblant. There was nothing in his pockets to tell how he had got there: only a single two-dollar bill and a damp pack of cards in a wet leather case. Thompson's solitaire cards! Somehow the things gave me a lump in my throat; I wished I had talked more to Thompson in the long evenings. The letter in my pocket from him was Dudley's, and I did not mention it to Billy. ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... "A pack of cards being scattered in the room, if his master have previously selected one of them, the dog will find it out ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the ardor of their combat, the crowd would begin to dwindle away. The judges quick to understand the loss of trade after vainly trying to induce the litigants to new efforts, would gently and suggestively push under their hands a pair of dice boxes or a pack of cards and the dispute would sometimes end upon the throw of a die or the ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... she discovered, to her horror and amazement, that all four girls were out of bed—were dressed in brilliantly-fantastic costumes, representing the four grotesque "Queens" of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs, familiar to us all on the pack of cards—and were dancing a quadrille, in which Jessie sustained the character of The Queen of Hearts. The next morning's investigation disclosed that Miss Yelverton had smuggled the dresses into the school, and had amused herself by giving an impromptu fancy ball to her companions, ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... written an article in the Strand Magazine of his dreams of tricks that he would like to be able to do. To meet the late Charles Bertram "at home" was a study in itself. To have seen him playing, as a child would play, with a pack of cards until he stumbled across a new sleight and watched the enjoyment written all over his face, was a proof of his deep ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... half-closed eyes. One of them came up to Lars Peter. "Are you doing anything tonight?" said he. "There's a couple of us here—retired farmers—going to have a jolly evening together. We want a partner." He drew a pack of cards from his breast-pocket, and began ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... pair of navy revolvers, a pair of shot-guns, a pair of duelling swords, and a couple of bowie-knives. He offered to serve as second for both parties, and to give the word when to begin. He also took out of his valise a pack of cards and a bottle of poison, telling them that if they wished to avoid carnage they might cut the cards to see which one should take the poison. Then he waited anxiously for their reply. For a little space there was silence. Then he became conscious of a tremulous ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... were giving out their deep-tongued notes and re-echoing over the hills. I looked at my watch; it was the Ave Maria— sunset. I came back with a rush to reality; all my dream views vanished, and the castles in the air tumbled down like a pack of cards. Nothing remained of my wondrous dream, with its marvellous visions, its stately procession of emperors, kings, queens, pontiffs, and ministers—nothing remained of them all, but only my poor, humble self, private and obscure, still to toil on and pray and suffer. I had ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... same evening, as he happened to be looking through his writing table drawer with Puss beside him looking over his elbow, she spied a pack of cards, and then he was forced to pick them out to please her, then draw them from their case. At last, trying first one thing, then another, he found that what she was after was to play piquet with him. They had some difficulty at first in contriving for her to hold ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... she would always remind me. The next day I set off on my way here. I got out at the station at daybreak; I'd been asleep, tired out, with my eyes half open, I was drinking some coffee. I looked up and there was suddenly Marfa Petrovna sitting beside me with a pack of cards in her hands. 'Shall I tell your fortune for the journey, Arkady Ivanovitch?' She was a great hand at telling fortunes. I shall never forgive myself for not asking her to. I ran away in a fright, and, besides, the bell rang. I was ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had turned steadily against him. It was truly the devil's own luck and no mistake. If only the luck would turn, he would quit the game of chance forever—cast off the ungrateful Dolores, and.... He drew a much-worn pack of cards from his breast pocket and began cutting them with a dexterity acquired ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... has no bounds. Imagine whatever complication of events you may, I am ready to maintain that such a complication has occurred or will present itself. Lieuben, a German lunatic, bet that he would succeed in turning up a pack of cards in the order stated in the written agreement. He turned and turned ten hours per day for twenty years. He had repeated the operation 4,246,028 ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... too, he made the acquaintance of the gossoon Murtagh, who taught him Irish in return for a pack of cards. In the course of his wanderings with his father's regiment he develops into a well-grown and well-favoured lad, a shrewd walker and a bold rider. "People may talk of first love—it is a very agreeable event, I dare say—but give me the flush, the ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... "place the pistols on the table, the ones I gave you as we came on shore. Side by side, Brutus. The silver mountings look well against the dark mahogany. Do they not cheer you, Jason? And now, Brutus, a pack of cards from the bookshelves. It will be a pretty game, Lawton, as pretty a game ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... begin," said the soldier, gleefully, and pulling a pack of cards out of his pocket, he threw them on a chair and went away, returning shortly afterward with ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... took up the pile of letters on his desk and sat shuffling them like a pack of cards. He dealt them deliberately to two imaginary players; then he pushed them aside and ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the seal from a new pack of cards, dexterously spreading them across the table. His hands, Gordon saw, were extraordinarily supple, and emanated a sickly odor of glycerine. His companion's were huge and misshapen, but they, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... similar in attitude and size, but no exactness is necessary in either of these respects. Then, by a simple contrivance, I make two pinholes in each of them, to enable me to hang them up one in front of the other, like a pack of cards, upon the same pair of pins, in such a way that the eyes of all the portraits shall be as nearly as possible superimposed; in which case the remainder of the features will also be superimposed nearly enough. These pinholes correspond to what are technically known to printers ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... of vingt-un begins," she says in soliloquy, "I've got a pack of cards to be dealt out here—among them ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... days he called on Pierson and, seating himself at the table, began to shuffle a pack of cards. He ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... resist deceiving his own partner. Whist is a game which requires no ordinary combination of qualities; at the same time, memory and invention, a daring fancy, and a cool head. To a mind like that of Tiresias, a pack of cards was full of human nature. A rubber was a microcosm; and he ruffed his adversary's king, or brought in a long suit of his own with as much dexterity and as much enjoyment as, in the real business of existence, he dethroned a ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... considered a very able assembly. The Civil War had brought the most illustrious men of the nation to the surface, and their acquaintance leaves a pleasant memory. When I look over their photographs, now it is like shuffling an old pack of cards which have been played out,—they have nearly all gone to the Upper Chamber,—in this world or the next. Grow and Holman are the only ones in the House now. Thaddeus Stevens was the leader of the House, and treated me with the most distinguished consideration,—even ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... these people, what could they be themselves but lordly, beautiful, brilliant, brave, and wise? We saw four Greeks on donkeys on the road (which is a dust-whirlwind where it is not a puddle); and other four were playing with a dirty pack of cards, at a barrack that English poets have christened the "Half-way House." Does external nature and beauty influence the soul to good? You go about Warwickshire, and fancy that from merely being born and wandering in those sweet sunny plains and fresh ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... servants crowded into the room. All pressed round Hermann. The other players left off punting, impatient to see how it would end. Hermann stood at the table, and prepared to play alone against the pale, but still smiling Chekalinsky. Each opened a pack of cards. Chekalinsky shuffled. Hermann took a card and covered it with a pile of bank-notes. It was like a duel. Deep ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... want, and carousin' with the rotten women in the coal-towns, and sittin' up all night winnin' each other's money with a greasy pack of cards! They take their pleasure where they find it, and ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... is Alice, so please Your Majesty," said Alice very politely; but she added to herself, "Why, they're only a pack of cards, after all!" ...
— Alice in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... of the Rebels, some of whom lay on heaps of straw, asleep, or, at all events, giving no sign of consciousness; others sat in the corners of the room, huddled close together, and staring with a lazy kind of interest at the visitors; two were astride of some planks, playing with the dirtiest pack of cards that I ever happened to see. There was only one figure in the least military among all these twenty prisoners of war,—a man with a dark, intelligent, moustached face, wearing a shabby cotton uniform, which he had contrived to arrange with a degree of soldierly ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Cribbage differs from all other games by its immense variety of chances. It is played with the full pack of cards, often by four persons, but it is a better game for two. There are also different modes of playing—with five, six, or eight cards; but the best games use those with ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... down the paper with a groan and turned to his desk, moved by a desperate hope that he could force himself to appreciate the reality of the interests those piled envelopes represented. He seized them feverishly, and began to shuffle them over like a pack of cards. His random glance was arrested by a thin, wavering hand he knew well, scrawled on an envelope that bore the picture and name of a New York hotel. Had he been a student of chirography, he might have read the secret of the enigma that tormented him in those pale, uncertain ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... hand beneath his white overall, the Chinaman who had been referred to as Li-King-Su calmly produced a pack of cards, unemotionally shuffled them and ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... The idea was suggestive. He, too, the proud, the honourable, the upright would steal, and thus punish the world. He looked into his make-up box. It contained bitter defiance, angry scorn, and a card-sharper's pack of cards. He took them out; and thus SONOGUN, the expelled atheist, made up ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... was in Amiens the German aeroplanes came over and bombed the city. Opposite the hospital a three-story house collapsed like a pack of cards, burying seventeen people in its ruins. I saw a French airman bring down one boche by a clever feat. He evidently could not aim upward to his satisfaction, so he turned upside down, and while flying ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... assure you ... I never for a moment thought of 'making conversation' about the 'Improvisatore' or novels in general, when I wrote what I did to you. I might, to other persons ... perhaps. Certainly not to you. I was not dealing round from one pack of cards to you and to others. That's what you meant to reproach me for you know,—and of that, I am not guilty at all. I never could think of 'making conversation' in a letter to you—never. Women are said to partake of the nature of children—and my brothers call me 'absurdly childish' sometimes: ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... into the street, falls faint—and dreams her ball. Whereupon our authentic magician, coming to his own, lifts a curtain of her queer little mind and gives us an all too short glimpse of the state function, with an h-dropping, strap-hanging King and Queen out of a pack of cards; their disdainful Prince, who is none other, of course, than our policeman done into a bewigged Monsieur Beaucaire; a moody and peremptory Peer, Lord Times; the Censor (black-visored, with an axe); a grotesquely informal Lord Mayor; a bevy of preposterous revue ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... divination is worked by cutting and dealing cards or studying the palm of your hand. And the things which they tell you are the most silly and shallow babble in the world; a mess of phrases worn out over and over again. Here is a specimen, as gabbled to the customer over a pack of cards laid out on the table; anybody can do the like: "You face a misfortune. I think it will come upon you within three weeks, but it may not. A dark complexioned man faces your life-card. He is plotting against you, and you must ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... number of the Tatler, poetry is promised under the article of Will's Coffee-house. The place, however, changed after Dryden's time: "you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires in the hands of every man you met, you have now only a pack of cards; and instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the truth of the game." "In old times, we used to sit upon a play here, after it was acted, but now ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... old friend saw her face suffused with a wrath for which he was utterly unable to account. With a hazy idea that something had passed which he had not heard, he caused a diversion by sending Mrs. Church indoors for a pack of cards, and solemnly celebrated the occasion with a game of whist, at which Mrs. Church, in partnership with Mrs. Banks, either through sheer wilfulness or absence of mind, contrived to lose ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... till about half past ten in the evening, when one of the company pulled out a pack of cards and flung it on the table where Mara Moor was sitting. The effect was startling. Her face took on a deathly pallor; she trembled, arose from her seat, staggered across the room, and took a chair in the remotest corner. So great was her agitation that ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... man at the table gathered up a greasy pack of cards. "Yes, it's the Weasel, all right," he said. "I'm glad he obeys orders. I told him not to show ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... up and carefully treasured, was a pack of cards, excessively dirty, and reduced to an oval form by repeated paring of their dilapidated corners. The lads were both much burned by the sun, their hands were anything but clean, and their long nails were edged with black; one had a dudgeon-dagger ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... allude to the subject in writing or in authenticated speech. Though he courted occasions for renown, he did not seek applause. His position as a Queen's favourite in any case must have brought aversion upon him. Tarleton, as he half acted, half improvised, is said to have shuffled a pack of cards, and pointed at him, standing behind the Queen's chair, an insolent innuendo: 'See, the knave commands the Queen.' The comedian, if the story be true, could reckon upon the support of a vast body of popular malevolence. Still, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... dirty pack of cards. Among them was a girl who appeared to be very young and very pretty, was decently clad, and resembled her companions in no way, except in the harshness of her voice, which was as rough and broken as if it ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... steady head than Fred's was needed to withstand the contagion. Dick had been to the theatre—knew it all like a book, and would take Fred there as soon as they got out; then he had a first-rate pack of cards, and he could teach Fred to play; and the gay tempters were soon spread out on their bed, and Fred and his instructor sat hour after hour absorbed in what to him was a new world of interest. He soon learned, could play for small stakes, and felt in himself ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was a jenny for carding the lace. There was a pack of brown cardboard squares, a pack of cards of lace, a little box of pins, and on the sofa lay a heap of ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... him, but I just wanted Pa to give his consent, so he couldn't kick if he got caught in his own trap. You see? Well, this morning the minister and two of the deacons called on Pa, to have a talk with him about his actions in church, on two or three occasions, when he pulled out the pack of cards with his handkerchief, and played the music box, and they had a pretty hot time in the back parlor, and finally they settled it, and were going to sing a hymn, when Pa handed them a little hymn book, and the minister opened it and turned pale and said, 'what's this?' and ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... dresses to-day with little ceremony, and hitched them together anyhow. Conny caught up a tambourine and Patty a worn-out pack of cards, and they clattered down the tin-covered back stairs. In the lower hall they came face to face with Miss Jellings, clothed in cool muslin, and in a more affable frame of mind. Patty never held her grudges long; she had already forgotten her momentary indignation at not being ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... Julie! You have been gone long enough to break the bank twice over. What luck have you had?" exclaimed the husky voice of a woman who sat in an easy chair beside a wood fire, telling her own fortune with an old pack of cards, spread upon a sewing board, ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... please your Majesty,' said Alice very politely; but she added, to herself, 'Why, they're only a pack of cards, after all. I ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... life were Mrs. Golden's pack of cards for solitaire, her worn, brown Morris-chair, and accretions of the cheap magazines with pretty-girl covers which Mrs. Golden ransacked for love-stories. Mrs. Golden had been reading all the evening before, and pages of newspapers were crumpled in her chair, not one ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... "On your life taste not of the cake or the sweetmeats; and bring me two sticks of wood, you huzzy." She arranged the sticks on a decaying fire, inside a high brass fender, pulled up a stand near the hearth, lighted two candles, and placed on it a pack of cards. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... smoke of a candle; heaps of hanks of yarn in the dusty corners; a half-used broom; other heaps of yarn on the old toppling desk covered with dust; a raisin-box, with P. Teagarden done on the lid in bas-relief, half full of ends of cigars, a pack of cards, and a rotten apple. That was all, except an impalpable sense of dust and worn-outness pervading the whole. One thing more, odd enough there: a wire cage, hung on the wall, and in it a miserable pecking chicken, peering dolefully with suspicious eyes out at her, and then down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... mine, 'n' if we should try a race you might reach the tavern a minute before me, 'n' you might not, for I'm pretty nimble 'n' all-fired long-winded. So I say, let's have things fair 'n' square. I've got a pack of cards in my pocket, 'n' I'm fur goin' into Jones's old camp—it's only a few steps beyond here, in the edge of the woods, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... neck. She is as erect in her comely embonpoint as a statue of Ceres; and her dark face, with its delicate aquiline nose, firm proud mouth, and small, intense, black eye, is so keen and sarcastic in its expression that you instinctively substitute a pack of cards for the chess-men and imagine her telling your fortune. The small brown hand with which she is lifting her queen is laden with pearls, diamonds, and turquoises; and a large black veil is very carefully adjusted over the crown of her cap, and falls in sharp contrast ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... his sagacity and also the prediction of a soothsayer, to whom the four sisters had applied to know the rank of their future husbands, for, requested to draw at venture from a pack of cards, Marguerite straightway drew the king of swords, Eleanor the king of money, Sancie the king of goblets, and Beatrice the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... led the way to his quarters, where he produced a table, chairs and a pack of cards. The four men ranged themselves ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... Lord James to his daughter doubtfully. But the Englishman was fingering a pack of cards with seeming nonchalance, and Genevieve met her father's glance with a quiet smile. He shook his head, and ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... case-bottle containing, I believe, rum. Mr. Horrocks served myself and my pupils with three little glasses of wine, and a bumper was poured out for my lady. When we retired, she took from her work-drawer an enormous interminable piece of knitting; the young ladies began to play at cribbage with a dirty pack of cards. We had but one candle lighted, but it was in a magnificent old silver candlestick, and after a very few questions from my lady, I had my choice of amusement between a volume of sermons, and a pamphlet on the corn-laws, which Mr. Crawley had been ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Cap Roche happened to set eyes on Hop Wah, who was sitting at a table, showing half a dozen miners some tricks with a pack of cards. ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... stairs, Division Street lay right before our eyes, and further inquiry was superfluous. Indiman's spirits had risen amazingly. "Why, it's only an elementary exercise," he said, smilingly. "Divide an East Side street by a pack of cards, and the quotient is the Queen of Spades; you simply cannot escape from the conclusion. ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... so. I had brought a pack of cards in my pocket, and I thought that, as we were a partie carre, you might have your rubber after all. But I see that the enemy's preparations have gone so far that we cannot risk the presence of a light. And, first of all, we must choose our positions. These are ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... same thing. I, too, had my canonical hours, in the quarters of the life-guard: a cigar was the censer; a pack of cards, the hymn-book; and there were never wanting other devotions and exercises of a ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... his chair, slapped his palm on the waiting pack of cards, and cut for the deal while Vaniman ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... similar purport, and began the reform he could not live to continue, by throwing away the ancient pack of cards that had solaced our captivity during the flood and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stood behind him and examined, phrenologically, the bumps on his head, while Miss Vining, seated at his feet, read his palm, and Miss Darrell produced a dream book and a pack of cards, and carefully cast his horoscope. But, except that it transpired that he was going to take a journey, that somebody was going to leave him money, and that a dark lady was coming over the sea to trouble ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... that hand and that same pack of cards on the table till I've had it looked over," said Ronicky Doone. "I've dropped a cold thousand to you, and you're winning it with stacked ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... with her long neck uncovered, her scanty dark hair twisted into a knot on the nape of her neck, no larger than the fist of a two-year-old child. She looked at us rather cheerfully. Besides the candlestick, she had on the table in front of her a little peasant looking-glass, an old pack of cards, a tattered book of songs, and a white roll of German bread from which one or two bites had been taken. It was noticeable that Mile. Lebyadkin used powder and rouge, and painted her lips. She also blackened her eyebrows, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... were still gripping the moulded edge, as though he had never changed his position since the first time he had seen him. Shaky, the carpenter, looked up from the little side table at which he was playing "solitaire" with a greasy pack of cards; his face still wore the puzzled look with which he had been contemplating the maze of spots and pictures a moment before. Those others who were new to him turned on him curiously as they heard Slum's ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Christian employment but making these and suchlike, out of sheep- shanks and marrow-bones. I never liked gambling all my life, it being contrary to the Ten Commandments; and mind of putting on the back of the fire the old pack of cards, with the Jack of Trumps among them, that the deboshed journeymen tailors, in the shop with me in the Grassmarket, used to play birkie with when the maister's back was turned. This is the first time I have acknowledged the transaction to a living soul; had they found me out at the time, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Take an ordinary pack of cards and throw out the twelve court cards. Now, with nine of the remainder (different suits are of no consequence) form the above magic square. It will be seen that the pips add up fifteen in every row in every column, and in each of the two long diagonals. The puzzle is with the remaining ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... up the pack of cards and examined the markers. She was debating with herself what Trenta could possibly mean by his extraordinary conduct, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... were telling my fortune with a pack of cards," he said. "No, my girl, I shall have only one friend to rely upon, if ever I am well enough to go outside this house; and that friend is myself. I have spent the fortune my father left me; I have spent the price of my commission; and I have ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... readily; "I've always wanted to play shuffleboard, though I've no idea whether it's played with a pack of cards or ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... please your Majesty," said Alice very politely; but she added, to herself, "Why, they're only a pack of cards after all. I ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... one of the Mulligan fraternity got out a pack of cards and proposed a game to while away the time. There was a young squatter in the carriage who looked as if he might be induced to lose a few pounds, and the sportsmen thought they would be neglecting their opportunities if they did ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... parties. Let me see, when I was a girl there were candy-pullings, and 'companies' where you sat around and were bored until somebody proposed playing 'The Prince of Paris Lost his Hat' or some game like that. When the old folks went to bed, our hostess would find a pack of cards—authors, most likely—or play a waltz on the soft pedal for two couples to dance. Wholesome but ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... fifteen men eagerly intent on the operations of the banker. A heavy-jowled man with overhanging black eyebrows, he was seated in a half-circle cut into the centre of one side of the table. In front of him was a bright steel box sufficiently large to contain a pack of cards with the face of the top card discernible at an opening at the top. The cards were pressed upwards in the box by springs, and at the side a narrow opening allowed the operator to push the cards out one at a time, thus disclosing the faces of those underneath and deciding the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... shut up!" Norma called, departing. And unashamed, when dinner was finished, and the table cleared, she produced a pack of cards and said that she was going to play The ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... old Neapolitan nurse, who was predicting future events from a pack of cards, dropped them and peered out. But the noise in the second tilted wagon was especially confused, for there the gay shouts of the boy choir, only half of whom were on horseback, mingled with the loud talking of the women, the screams of the babies, and the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... true, what becomes of 'popular sovereignty' and of the divine quality of the rights derived from universal suffrage as contrasted with rights derived from inheritance, or, for that matter, with rights derived from a dice-box or the shuffling of a pack of cards? Considering what the usual origin is of 'tactical necessities' in politics, and what forces determine political 'combinations of all sorts,' is it going too far to say that the odds, so far as public interests are concerned, are in favour of the dice-box or ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Fans are thus discharged, the Word of Command in course is to ground their Fans. This teaches a Lady to quit her Fan gracefully, when she throws it aside in order to take up a Pack of Cards, adjust a Curl of Hair, replace a falling Pin, or apply her self to any other Matter of Importance. This Part of the Exercise, as it only consists in tossing a Fan with an Air upon a long Table (which stands by for that Purpose) may be learned in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... "Kanjifah"a pack of cards; corrupted from the Persian "Ganjfah." We know little concerning the date or origin of this game in the East, where the packs are ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... a hat, but not to wear; I wear a sword, but not to slay, And ever in my bag I bear A pack of cards, but ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... the higher forms of enjoyment. It stimulates emulations, which St. Paul enumerates among things to be avoided; it is the accompaniment of gambling and low society; and, while we must admit that a pack of cards in itself is not evil, yet it can be and often is made most detrimental to the best interests ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... men sat about a long low office. They were, for the most part, middle-aged working men and sat in silence reading and smoking pipes. At a table pushed against the wall a bald-headed young man with a scar on his cheek played solitaire with a greasy pack of cards, and in front of him and sitting in a chair tilted against the wall a sullen- faced boy idly watched the game. When the three men came into the office the boy dropped his chair to the floor and stared at Ed who stared back at him. It was as though ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... kind of feeling. Here, for example, is a course that I am quite sure, if I pursue it, will land me in evil. Does the drunkard take a glass the less, because he knows that if he goes on he will have a drunkard's liver and die a miserable death? Does the gambler ever take away his hand from the pack of cards or the dice-box, because he knows that play means, in the long run, poverty and disgrace? When a man sets his will upon a certain course, he is like a bull that has started in its rage. Down goes the head, and, with eyes shut, he will charge a stone wall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... smash windows? Let's see—it's red fours, black fives up?" remarked Tom, as he prepared the pack of cards for playing. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... both plaintiff and defendant may be examined in such cases as these. What a different complexion this would have put on the suit. The whole case would have tumbled to pieces like a pack of cards. For Mr. Pickwick "put into the box" would have clearly shown that all that had been thus misconstrued, was his proposal for engaging a valet, which was to have been that very morning. He would have related ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... urbanic green-grocers, who are near enough to boxing-day to know that silver on the tongue is necessary to charm silver from the pocket. The Captain has sent to learn if any consignments are for him, to ask the loan of a pack of cards, and Victoria's company to spend the evening at the Albert—which invitation ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... our two horses and sat down one on either side of a great flat rock. The Bart took a pack of cards out of his tunic, and I had only to see him shuffle to convince me that I had no novice to deal with. We cut, and the ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Wolsey made her the paymaster of Europe. "The reputation of England for wealth," said an English diplomatist in 1522, "is a great cause of the esteem in which it is held."[692] But, by 1523, that wealth had failed; Parliament refused to levy more taxes, and Wolsey's pretensions collapsed like a pack of cards. He played no part in the peace of Cambrai, which settled for the time the conditions of Europe. When rumours of the clandestine negotiations between France and Spain reached England, Wolsey staked his head to the King that they were pure invention.[693] He could not believe ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... I bear you no ill will," he said, "and I am inclined to your side of the story. Whoever you are, you have the bearing of a gentleman; and, now that we have come to an understanding, I shall treat you as such. I have a pack of cards downstairs. I'll go and get them. This is not my house, or I should have placed you in better quarters. I shall leave the door unlocked," ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... over a dirty pack of cards; among them I saw a girl who appeared to be very young and very pretty, decently clad, and resembling her companions in no way, except in the harshness of her voice, which was rough and broken as though it had performed the office of public crier. She looked ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... driven out most of the rest; some seem to have quite gone out of sight; some have crossed the sea; some have abandoned the land as a livelihood. Of the few, the very few that still remain, still fewer abide in their original homes. Time has shuffled them about from house to house like a pack of cards. Of them all, I verily believe there is but one soul living in the same old house. If the French had landed in the mediaeval way to harry with fire and sword, they could not have ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... story may go at any minute. It would collapse like a pack of cards if another bomb fell near enough for us to feel the concussion. And young Durward would have about as much chance as a rat in ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... garden," went on Charlotte, reproachfully, "and flopped down like that when the Queen said 'Off with his head!' she'd have offed with your head; but Alice wasn't that sort of girl at all. She just said, 'I'm not afraid of you, you're nothing but a pack of cards'—oh, dear! I've got to the end already, and I hadn't begun hardly! I never can make my stories last out! Never mind, I'll tell you ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... firmly. "I am a Methodist! I guess I can start off on a short tower, without takin' a pack of cards with me. And if I had 'em right here in my pocket, or a set of dominoes, I shouldn't expect to take up the time of the President of the United States a playin' games at this time of the day." Says I in deep tones, "I am a carrien' errents to the President that the world knows ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... stood sorting out the letters on the hall table, running them over swiftly, then going through them slowly, one by one, scanning each address, each post-mark; then, with shaking hands, shuffling and sorting them like a pack of cards, and going through them again. She had not written. He could remember that he heard the blood beating in his ears, and at the same time his mother's voice: "Bring the doctor a cup of coffee." . . . ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... You can be the most maddening thing in all the world! [Taking up a pack of cards, he lets them fall with a long slithering flutter] After behaving as you have this evening, you might try to make some amends, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... No-thank-you—will you fork out for some wine to-night? No? Well then, take that and that, and be hung to you for a little muff." Another time it would be, "Hi there, No-thank-you—we want sixpence for a pack of cards. Oh, you won't be so sinful as to part with sixpence for cards? Confounded little miser;" "Niggard," said another; "Skinflint," shouted a third. And a general cry of "Saint," which expressed the climax of villainy, ended the verbal portion of the contest. And then, some one ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... a particularly fastidious sergeant either, but he preferred a damp towel in his roll to damp clothes on his back. Every man knows the dreary halts in camp when the rain pours outside, or the regiment is held in reserve. For times like these a pack of cards or a book is worth carrying, even if it weighs as much as the plates from which it was printed. At present it is easy to obtain all of the modern classics in volumes small enough to go into the coat-pocket. In Japan, before starting for China, we divided up among the correspondents ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... parents; and a capital way it is to encourage liberality in children. I gave mamma a very neat brass thimble, and she gave me a half-guinea piece. Then I gave her a very pretty needle-book, which I made myself with an ace of spades from a new pack of cards we had, and I got Sally, our maid, to cover it with a bit of pink satin her mistress had given her; and I made the leaves of the book, which I vandyked very nicely, out of a piece of flannel I had had round my neck for a sore throat. It smelt a little ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... went with no end of the siege. It was a long day in the office. The superintendent pored over the books, and pretended to forget he was a prisoner. They took down only the topmost shutters. Some of the clerks got out a pack of cards, and asked Job to take a hand. One said contemptuously, "Oh, you're a goody-goody, parson!" when he refused, but the others quickly silenced him in a way that showed their respect for Job. The cards dropped from their hands before ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... that," he said, leaning on the table with a yawn. "Oh, Lord, how tired I am!... but I shall not be able to sleep. I'm actually too tired to sleep. Have you got a pack of cards, Scarlett? or a decent cigar, or a glass of anything, or anything to show me more amusing than that nightmare of an elephant? Oh, I'm sick of the whole business—sick! sick! The stench of the tan-bark never leaves my nostrils except when the odor of ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... a true story," said the Chevalier; "have you got a pack of cards, Von Konigstein? I will ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... tell you the truth I never want to see a pack of cards again. I want to cut the game. I'm sick of our life and the useless extravagance. I want a change. Let's get rid of the whole thing—take a smaller house—have fewer servants. Think ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... not require more dexterity in the fingers to draw out a man's purse from his pocket, or to take a lady's watch from her side, without being perceived of any (an excellence in which, without flattery, I am persuaded you have no superior), than to cog a die or to shuffle a pack of cards? Is not as much art, as many excellent qualities, required to make a pimping porter at a common bawdy-house as would enable a man to prostitute his own or his friend's wife or child? Doth it not ask as good a memory, as nimble an invention, as steady a countenance, to forswear yourself in Westminster-hall ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... now. The stifled groans of ruined players, as they passed out, their mute imprecations, their stupefied faces, found him impassive. He was the spirit of Play incarnate. If the young man had noticed this sorry Cerberus, perhaps he would have said, "There is only a pack of cards ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... us begin." From one of his bags he took a pack of cards. He sat at the table and shuffled them. "There are many games of patience," he continued. "They are all founded on averages and thousands of combinations, so intricate that the law of recurrence can be determined only by months of figuring. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... bringing two glasses of a muddy liquid, a piece of cloth, the color of which was concealed under a layer of dirt, and a pack of cards ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... I did not learn for what." He was at "the Protestant Academy" at Clonmel, and "read the Latin tongue and the Greek letters with a nice old clergyman." From a schoolfellow he learnt something of the Irish tongue in exchange for a pack of cards. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Jim produced an old pack of cards from his pocket and suggested a game of poker. My luck went against me from the beginning, and when we stopped playing I had lost fully two-thirds of my share. The next morning I awoke feeling remorseful and sulky, and demanded that Jim play another game to give me a chance ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... have been taken and hanged on my account, and the consideration that he could be, and the dread that he would be, were no small addition to my horrors. When he was not asleep, or playing a complicated kind of Patience with a ragged pack of cards of his own,—a game that I never saw before or since, and in which he recorded his winnings by sticking his jackknife into the table,—when he was not engaged in either of these pursuits, he would ask me to read to him,—"Foreign language, dear boy!" While I complied, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... every domestic circle to which they can by any means obtain admittance. It ought to be a source of pride to my countrymen, that they are more of a marrying people than the English or French, and do not regard women in the same degraded light as a gambler does a pack of cards, that are to be shuffled and played with for a while, and then thrown away. Our naval and military officers are rather remarkable for their readiness to form matrimonial connexions; while on the other hand, our young men who are educated to the law, physic, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames |
