"Pencil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Henry VIII. when he made one of his noble courtiers apologize to Holbein for some slight, bidding him, at the same time, to know that he could make a hundred such as he, but it was past his power to make a Holbein. And you know how a great monarch picked up Titian's pencil which had fallen. How greatly did Alexander honour Apelles, in that he would suffer none else to paint his portrait. And when the painter, by drawing his Campaspe, fell in love with her, he presented her to him. It is a bad policy, Eusebius, to put slights upon these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... extensive. The firm, if I remember, is that of the Messrs. Agnew, and, though originating here, they have now a house in London. Here I saw some interesting objects, purchased by them at the recent sale of the Rogers collection; among other things, a slight pencil and water-color sketch by Raphael. An unfinished affair, done in a moment, as this must have been, seems to bring us closer to the hand that did it than the most elaborately painted picture can. Were I to see the Transfiguration, Raphael would still be at the distance of centuries. Seeing ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... information which can be acquired without leaving one's fireside in London or St. Petersburg he gives not a word, but the valuable testimony of the eyewitness he records in a series of drawings in which Eastern life is 'taken in the fact' with a truth and liveliness of touch rarely found in an amateur pencil. The letter-press is a secondary part of the work,—merely to render the drawings intelligible; and we are convinced that if the author could have imagined a more unpretending title for his book than ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... of now. Was an erasure advisable? she decided against it, cleverly. She merely drew her pen through the not, leaving the first two letters intentionally visible, and blurring the last. She then re-enveloped the letter, much pleased with the result, and wrote a short note in pencil to accompany it; then hunted up an envelope large enough to take both, and directed it to W. at the Post Office, East Croydon. This was the last address the convict had given. Where he was actually ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... faience, and on various preparations, by all direct methods, in oil, wax, tempera, and other media; mural paintings; fresco painting on walls; drawings and cartoons in water color, pastel, chalk, charcoal, pencil, and other media, on any ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... handed me a poem he had just dashed off written with pencil, "To my Saxon Blonde." I was surprised and somewhat flattered, regarding it as a complimentary impromptu. But, on looking up his poetry in the library, I found the same verses ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... here is said to have thrown away his pencil in despair; but it is still more difficult to give a description of the place in words. Having selected a spot for anchoring, with the help of a fisherman who acted as our pilot, we pulled on shore, and making our way over about four hundred yards ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... a message for me," replied Rose. "Only a scrawl in pencil which the groom found on the saddle-room table, to say that nobody need try to trace him. And only to think that our banns ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty, or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of any earthly pencil. Pass then, my good painter, to something more within its power; and the next article brought forward should naturally be myself—a picture of the Opium-eater, with his "little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug" lying beside him on the table. As to the opium, I have ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... his text was: "Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." Next day at noon his niece found him in his study chair, his pencil dropt from his lifeless hand. Before him was a ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... his tablets from his pocket, tore a leaf out, took his pencil, laid the paper upon the corner of the mantel-piece, wrote a few lines, folded the note, and concealed it in his hand as the door opened, and admitted Mrs. Waugh, Marian and Jacquelina. There was a telegraphic glance between the elder lady ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the eye," said the Zouave Harry. "'Ere, I'll stick it up opposite of him when he comes back to dress. Got a pin and a pencil, some of you?" ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... those of the negroes; but it would be no easy matter for Tony to obtain spirits, for these were strictly prohibited in the Federal camp. Perhaps he might help Tony in this way. He fortunately had a small notebook with a pencil in his pocket, and as his guards were still at the window he ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... peer in the white great coat mused for a moment with his pencil at his lip, and then said, "Well, I'll give you six. What do you say ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... room, and he placed himself where he could see out at it. But there was nothing to be seen which afforded him any hope of comfort. There must be a pilot on board, and he began to wonder if there could be any way to communicate with him. He took from his pocket a piece of paper and pencil. He wrote a brief statement of the outrage which had been perpetrated upon him, folded the paper, and put it in his vest pocket, where he could readily slip it into the hand of the pilot, if he found the opportunity to do so. The captain had promised to give him his liberty ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... a little paper and a pencil, and a friendly jailer promised to have the letter sent to ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... your Rod, which must be in oil, you must first make a size with glue and water, boiled together until the glue be dissolved, and the size of a lye-colour: then strike your size upon the wood with a bristle, or a brush or pencil, whilst it is hot: that being quite dry, take white-lead, and a little red-lead, and a little coal-black, so much as altogether will make an ash-colour: grind these altogether with linseed- oil; let it be thick, and ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... making a sketch of Wilkes. While Justice Pratt, with what Wilkes called "the eloquence and courage of old Rome," was laying down the law upon the prisoner's plea preparatory to setting him at liberty, Hogarth's busy pencil was engaged upon the first sketch for that caricature which has helped to make Wilkes's features famous and infamous throughout the world. The print was promptly published at a shilling, and commanded an enormous sale. Nearly four thousand copies, it is said, were ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... say a few syllables in one note, and end her sentence in a soft modulation upwards, then downwards, then into her own note again. The curve of sound was as artistic as any line of beauty ever struck by his pencil—as satisfying as the curves of her ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... Sketches owe their existence chiefly to frequent peregrinations in Chinese cities, with pencil and note-book in hand. Some of them were written for my friend Mr. F. H. Balfour of Shanghai, and by him published in the columns of the Celestial Empire. These have been revised and partly re-written; others appear ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... the laughing sea-blue eyes with golden lashes, or it might be the smooth curves of mouth and chin. But the face as a whole escaped him, though he never tired of studying it, and was always trying to produce its likeness; now with pencil upon paper, now with finger in the sand. No artist in the world could hope to show the beauty of that face as he beheld it, the glow its smile diffused through all his being. Even his mother's shrieks to him to get money from the Emir enhanced his rapture, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... by, and scarcely leave me time to write. Dinky-Dunk is a sort of pendulum, swinging out to work, back to eat, and then out, and then back again. Olie is teaming in lumber and galvanized iron for a new building of some sort. My lord, in the evenings, sits with paper and pencil, figuring out measurements and making plans. I sit on the other side of the table, as a rule, sewing. Sometimes I go around to his side of the table, and make him put his plans away for a few minutes. We are very happy. But where the days fly to I scarcely ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Sierra sunset cannot be accurately delineated by pencil or brush. The combined pigments of a Hill and a Moran and a Bierstadt cannot adequately reproduce so gorgeous a canvas. The lingering sun floods all the west with flame; it touches with scarlet tint the serrated outlines of the distant summits and hangs with ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... boots, a silver pencil, or a horse of small value, as an infallible specific for getting rid of a troublesome guest. He always had the satisfaction to find he never came ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... manuscript, perched upon a chair the wrong way so that its back would serve as a desk, engaged busily in making changes here and there in the pages with a pencil. Like any author, it was never too late for minor improvements and suggestions. I don't doubt but that if Manton had permitted it, Millard would have been quite apt to interrupt a scene in the taking in order to add some little touch occurring to him as his action sprang to ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... Betty explained, "the girl comes in, and we ask her questions. Then if I don't like her I take my pencil from behind my ear, and rap against my palm with it. If Nancy doesn't like her she says, 'You're losing a hairpin, Betty.' If we like her we ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... had, when Turenne advanced to Marienthal, been left at a town some four leagues away. A messenger reached Hector from Turenne with a note scribbled in pencil:— ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... bit, why should he hesitate? And why should he not paint the legs of the Queen of Spain—or even the underpinning of the Queen of Hawaii—as well as her arms? But if we pause to point out all the absurd contradictions in this flake of ultra-French froth we shall wear out more than one pencil. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... would be much improved if she would extract her four front teeth from the lower jaw, and wear the red ointment on her hair, according to the fashion of the country; she also proposed that she should pierce her under lip, and wear the long pointed polished crystal, about the size of a drawing pencil, that is the "thing" in the Latooka country. No woman among the tribe who has any pretensions to be a "swell" would be without this highly-prized ornament, and one of my thermometers having come to an end I broke the tube into three pieces, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... "Laws" of the above date, which formerly belonged to Amasa Paine, who entered the Freshman Class at Yale in 1781, is to be found a note in pencil appended to the above regulation, in these words: "This Law was annulled when Dr. [Matthew] Marvin, Dr. M.J. Lyman, John D. Dickinson, William Bradley, and Amasa Paine were classmates, and [they] claimed the Honor of abolishing it." ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... out of sight, when he stopped in the middle of the street under a glimmering lamp, and wrote with his pencil on a scrap of paper. Then, traversing with the decided step of one who remembered the way well, several dark and dirty streets—much dirtier than usual, for the best public thoroughfares remained uncleansed in those times of terror—he stopped at a ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... with your apology, Antipho; but what are you doing now? for you never lay down or suspend your pencil, let who will talk and argue. The lines of that smaller face in ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... countenance was worthy of the pencil of a painter, while the little lawyer was thus running on. His astonishment for a time overpowered ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... was a rough sketch of grandma on his slate. It was done with a few strokes of the pencil, but there was really some likeness to the dear old lady in it, and mother felt sure her boy would some day be ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... later a pistol-shot was heard, and Ergin, instinctively fearing the worst, rushed to his friend's assistance, only to find that the latter had taken his life. Beside the dead man was a sheet of paper bearing the words, hastily scrawled in pencil: "Farewell! I go to a ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the Committee. Madame Zancig with great rapidity named the articles as Mr. Zancig took them up in answer to his "What is this? and this?" etc. An incident which struck me as remarkable was the following. Mr. Zancig raised a pencil, saying, "What is this?" and after Madame Zancig had correctly stated what it was, he took up immediately (not in the vicinity of the pencil, but some distance from it) a case, and said, "And this?" ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... space at more than forty thousand miles an hour, it seemed that we were stationary. Movement was now easy—too easy, in fact, for we were practically weightless. The professor was having a time of it manipulating a pencil and a pad of paper on which he had a mass of small figures that were absolutely meaningless to me. He was calculating and plotting our course and, without him, we should never have reached ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... stories at table, and I have not forgotten them. The Emperor stayed there, peaceful and quiet, interrupting his long silence with few words smothered under his big moustache; then he roused himself a little and explained his ideas of machinery. He was an inventor. He would draw a pencil from his pocket and make drawings on my father's designs. He spoiled in that way two or three studies a week. He liked my father a great deal, and promised works and honors to him which never came. The Emperor ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... affectations of sophists, or professors, their staginess or their inelegance, the harsh laugh, the swaggering ways, of Thrasymachus, whose determination to make the general company share in a private conversation, is significant of his whole character, he notes with a finely-pointed pencil, with something of the fineness of malice,—malin, as the French say. Once Thrasymachus had been actually seen to blush. It is with a very different sort of fineness Plato notes the blushes of the young; of Hippocrates, for instance, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... and sciences, I may mention the Academy of Fine Arts, the Museum, Theatre, etc. In the Academy of Fine Arts is something of everything, and not much of anything—a few figures and busts, most in plaster, a few architectural plans and pencil drawings, and a collection of very old oil paintings. It really seemed to me as if some private picture gallery had been carefully weeded of all the rubbish in it, which had then been put here out of the way. Most of the oil paintings are so injured, that ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... plain engravings, photographs, lithographs, water colors, oil colors, crayons, steel plates, newspaper cuts, mezzotints, pencil, writing, show cards, labels, or, in ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... of columns. One of them was torn open, revealing the simple anatomy of its construction. The temple looked as if it might contain two rooms of generous size. Strange little product of some western architect's remembering pencil, it brought an air of distant shores and times, standing here in the waste of the prairie, above the bright blue waters of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... fell through the slit to the door-mat, Katie made at Melisande a grimace which, had not the panels been opaque, would have astonished the Emperors. Resuming her dignity, she picked the thing up, and, at arm's length, examined it. It was inscribed in pencil. Katie's lips curled at sight of the large, audacious handwriting. But it is probable that whatever kind of handwriting Zuleika might have had would have been just the kind ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... man's way of asking his brother-of-the-pencil for such information as he possessed. But though, as a general thing, when several reporters are on a general story, they interchange common news, Larry was in no mind to share what he had with Peter. His paper had gone to the trouble to send him down in good season, a piece of forethought ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... said Dinah, and flushed suddenly and hotly at the thought of what she had once endured at her mother's hands for daring to pencil the shadows under her eyes. It had been no more than a girlish trick—an experiment to pass an idle moment. But it had been treated as an offence of immeasurable enormity, and she winced still at the memory of all that ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... boys were in bed and only Pat and Mike sat keeping her company, the widow rose from her seat, went to a box already packed and took therefrom an account book and pencil. ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... seat before a small rosewood table, and with a pencil in her hand, and a piece of drawing-paper before her, said, "You will not mind my sketching as we talk. I have an idea floating through my head, and I want to throw it off on paper; I can listen and answer, just as ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... dime and the pennies with a pleasant grin and a (grandmother prompted) "Thank you". But the gift didn't startle him. Dimes must have been a fairly usual part of his life. But a few minutes before the interviewer left she dropped her pencil. It was new and long and yellow. The child's eyes clung to it as he returned it. "Would you like to have it." the young woman asked, "would you like a pencil of your very own, to draw with?" Would he! The child's whole face beamed. Dimes were as nothing compared ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... business crept into the lighter discussion, and, in an instant, the gaiety evaporated and left expressionless men and quick sharp sentences steely with decision, or indirect and imperturbably blank. A memorandum book and a gold pencil would appear for an enigmatic note, after which the cheerfulness ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the Irish Guards, arriving in Dublin on a recruiting tour, is enthusiastically cheered; John E. Redmond reviews at Dublin 25,000 of the Irish National Volunteers; Limerick welcomes recruiting officers; every man in the British Navy has received a pencil case, the gift of Queen Mary, formed of a cartridge which had been used "somewhere in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Cicely arrived, to find Bridget making tea, and Nelly listening with a little frown of effort, while Marsworth, pencil in hand, was drawing diagrams a la Belloc, to explain to her the Russian retreat from Galicia, how impossible not to feel cheered by Farrell's talk and company! The great bon enfant, towering in the little room, and positively lighting it up by the red-gold of his-hair and ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been holding his own on the opera stage, less for his voice than for his dashing appearance, slightly repaired with pencil and rouge, and the legend of romantic love affairs that floated like a rainbow around his name—noble dames fighting a clandestine warfare for him; queens scandalizing their subjects by blind passions he inspired; ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... turned my head from her, and looked at the sunbeam which pierced the shadow above us like a golden pencil. It rested at my side about six inches from me, and I reckoned that it would lie in the scarlet ring painted upon my breast within some fifteen minutes. Meanwhile the clamour of battle grew louder ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... and terrace. Happily I had noted everything on my way up, and left nothing intentionally to be done on returning. In making such excursions as this, it is above all things desirable to seize and book every object worth noticing on the way out: I always carried my note-book and pencil tied to my jacket pocket, and generally walked with them in my hand. It is impossible to begin observing too soon, or to observe too much: if the excursion is long, little is ever done on the way home; the bodily powers being mechanically exerted, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Margaret spread the bedding on the floor, wrapped the sick woman in a sheet, and laid her upon it, finding the poor creature so light from emaciation that she was as easy to lift as a child. The only thing that the old woman would consent to do, was to go with a pencil note to Mr Grey, and bring back the clean dry straw which would be given her in his yard. She went, in hopes of receiving something else with the straw; and while she was gone, Margaret was quite alone ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... who never bent his wit To make the pencil trace Asaka's[163] line Spell out one letter of the book divine? In vain, in vain his sire's behest he hears:— Nought may he do ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... of the Royal Society, gives increased vividness to the picture of this extraordinary person in his study, solving mysterious problems, and suggesting others still more mysterious; and then the lock of silvery hair adds the last touch to fancy's picture—like a stroke of the pencil which, when a portrait is nearly complete, gives life and expression ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... stake, Nancy thought irritably, ran up into a considerable sum, when one's partner bid as madly as young Mrs. Billings bid. She was doubled, and redoubled, and she lost and lost; Nancy saw Elsie's white hand, with its gold pencil, daintily scoring four ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... of bread, a tinned tongue, and two tins of preserved peaches. As I set it down again, after having examined it, my heart leaped to see that beneath it there lay a sheet of paper with writing upon it. I raised it, and this was what I read, roughly scrawled in pencil:— ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... Hogarth. "Nothing remains but this,"—taking his pencil and dashing off the similitude of a painter's palette broken. "FINIS!" exclaimed the artist; "the deed is done—ALL IS OVER." Hogarth never handled pencil again, and within a month of the completion of this picture ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... at Distin again as he spoke, and the young Creole avoided his eye with the result that the constable made a note in his book with a pencil which seemed to require ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... said before, there isn't any hair; only on the slopes of the cheese are some very pale, faint, downy lines, which look as though they had been sketched on lightly with a very soft drawing pencil and would wipe off readily. That, however is the inception and beginning of what afterward becomes, among our race, hair. To look at it you could hardly believe it, but it is. Barring accidents or backwardness, it continues ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... began to scribble with a pencil. From the tone of his voice I knew that he had reached the precise stage at which something brilliant—the real thing of ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... fashioned of baskets hung on ropes, big stones serving as weights. Some gamin from the village, who had been to school, was always on hand to volunteer as book-keeper for the owners, entering the sales in pencil on almost ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... head, but I think he suspected me. Anyhow he moved so often, and so hid his face with his hands and the newspaper, that I was completely baffled. Now it is a remarkable head—just the head I have been wanting for my Marshal Romero—and if, with your rapid pencil and your skill in seizing expression, you could ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... occupied, he sketched in various attitudes the imposing figure of the old woman, and endeavoured to fit this beautiful Torso with a head not unworthy of it. But herein, after many attempts, he failed. His excitement, so long indulged, had risen into fever. His diseased fancy controlled his pencil, and blended with features of the highest order of beauty so many touches of the old woman's ghastly visage, that he threw down his pencil, and abandoned all further ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... removed, and we commenced smoking regalias and drinking madeira at twelve dollars a bottle! This was ordered in by someone, not in single bottles, but by the half-dozen. I remembered thus far well enough; and that, whenever I took up a wine-card, or a pencil, these articles were ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... table, his head buried in his hands. Mr. Wilde drew a rough sketch on the margin of yesterday's Herald with a bit of lead pencil. It was a plan of Hawberk's rooms. Then he wrote out the order and affixed the seal, and shaking like a palsied man I signed my first writ of ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... awful result. Then an idea struck me, and I took the pencil and began to figure on ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... pencil-case out of his pocket, picked his teeth therewith, and surveyed us from head ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... and pencil (year round work, good wages): Special elementary art trades, perforating and stamping, costume sketching, ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... from anywhere, driven by the draught. But, even so, with that mechanical action peculiar to most people under like circumstances, he stooped and picked up the paper, turned it over between his fingers, and saw that a few words were scribbled on it in pencil. The light was too dim to read by, so Kennard, still quite mechanically, kept the paper in his hand and went up to his room. There, by the light of the lamp, he read the few words scribbled ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... with remarks about the recent airship flight of Tom and Mr. Sharp, and discussions about the new submarine. This talk went on even after the table was cleared off and the three had adjourned to the sitting-room. There Mr. Swift brought out pencil and paper, and soon he and Mr. Sharp were engrossed in calculating the pressure per square inch of sea water at ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... natural course of events that a dirty boy should enter the room at this juncture and deliver a note to Simon, which called forth all his energies and sympathies in a moment. The note, folded in a hurry, written with a pencil, was from a brother artist, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... most interesting object to her, when as a small girl she was taken for her daily walk, was "some dear little child in tatters." The small young lady's interest in street children was something more than philanthropic; it was intensely artistic. As soon as she could wield a pencil, she began to make ragamuffin pictures, and to dream of a career as the "champion painter of the poor." Gifted with a keen sense of humor, she was quick to see the happy side of a life whose exterior is apparently one of misery; and it was this side which she determined to portray. ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... assembled, and we gathered round the witch's table. The majority were ladies—those adorers of the marvellous! The names of friends were called for; the ladies took the alphabet, and running over it with the point of a pencil, the spirit rapped as the wished-for letter was reached. John Davis was soon spelt, each letter probably having been indicated by the tremulous touch of affectionate hope. Harriet Mercer was then rapped out by the obliging spirit. The pencil and the alphabet were ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the Inspector closed his notebook, thrust the pencil back in its place along the back, fastened the elastic about the book, ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... goes from C to E," he commented an instant later, "repeats that —C again, falls to B, up to G, repeats that—I wish he would wait till I get my pencil." ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of the papers containing the notice, mailing them back to the show for Mr. Sparling to read. On the margin of one of the papers so sent, Teddy wrote with a lead pencil, "no ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... indulgence of using the color should only be granted as a reward, after it has shown care and progress in its drawings with pencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints should always be within a boy's reach: in these days of cheap illustration he can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales without good wood-cuts in it, and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind; ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... Tony's diary for it. I found the thing among his effects after he was killed in Flanders. It's pretty certain Tony did not understand the water color. There was only this single entry in the diary about how he found it, and a query in pencil. ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... folded very small, and written in pencil. There was a strange faintness at my heart, and my fingers trembled as I opened them. Fear, fear was clutching me, compressing me ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... day grew warm, he took his seat on the stoop. He had pencil and paper this time with which to continue his calculations, and he calculated painfully ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... used to sing 'King Death,' and it was of his voice that Jerrold once remarked, 'I say, Leech, if you had the same opportunity of exercising your voice as you have of using your pencil, how it ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... used as houses by individuals and even by, whole families. A finer occasion for expressing the passions of madness in all their violence, contrasted with the serene virtue and benevolence of Him who went about continually doing good, could hardly be chosen for the pencil of an artist; and a faithful delineation of the rugged and wild majesty of the mountain scenery on the one hand, with the still calm of the lake on the other, would give an ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... air from a street-piano, heard while at work, will often gratify more than the choicest music played at a concert by the most accomplished musicians. A single good picture seen in a dealer's window, may give keener enjoyment than a whole exhibition gone through with catalogue and pencil. By the time we have got ready our elaborate apparatus by which to secure happiness, the happiness is gone. It is too subtle to be contained in these receivers, garnished with compliments, and fenced round with etiquette. The more we multiply and complicate appliances, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... these layers for yourself as you walk out into the country. Look at the first piece of bluff rock you come near, and observe the clear pencil-like markings of layer above layer—not often indeed lying flat, one over another, and this must be explained later, but however irregularly slanting, still plainly visible. You can examine these lines of stratification on the nearest cliff, the nearest quarry, the nearest bare ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... rebukes with assumed geniality; and, turning over the written paper, he displayed upon the under side the Imperial vermilion Sign. "Perhaps," he continued, "the omniscient person will still continue in his remarks, even with the evidence of the Emperor's unerring pencil to refute him." ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... there is a copy in the Douce collection in the Bodleian; at the beginning of which copy, on a fly-leaf, the words, "J.B. Inglis to his friend F. Douce, Esq.," are written; and opposite, on the inside of the cover, there is written in pencil, apparently in Douce's own hand, "I had read the MS. of this work before it ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... Thomas Nast's able pencil caricatured Blaine in Harper's Weekly as a magnetic candidate too heavy for the party elephant to carry; Puck portrayed him as the "tattooed man" covered all over with "Little Rock," "Mulligan Letters" and the like. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... had been pacing the floor, seized the note eagerly. It was written in pencil and by a hand that had trembled much. Yet there was no indecision in ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I write a pencil sketch, limned with considerable care, of a rather disagreeable looking young man, ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... letter is written by Hone in pencil: "This acknowledges a note from me to C.L. written in January preceding and sent by young Will Hazlitt. Received in my ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... full revenge of Dr. Birch, in our day the reigning tyrant of Charterhouse; and Russell well deserved his castigation both by pen and pencil. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... tolerable studies of rocks and trees on the first pages; a few not very striking caricatures, which seemed to have been commenced as portraits, but recalled no faces I knew; then a number of fragmentary notes, written in pencil. I found no name, from first to last; only, under the sketches, a monogram so complicated and laborious that the initials could hardly be discovered unless ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor
... I mean him to carry a letter to mamma; you know that he always goes back when he is ordered, and now I wish to see if he will not go back to the tents, if he is told. I have brought a piece of paper and pencil with me." ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... envelope, addressed to 'Mrs. Tarrant.' It contained a sheet of paper, on which was written in pencil: 'I beg you to see me, if only ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... straight nose, heavy jaws, and strong, determined mouth, with big, white teeth, piercing eyes and a commanding manner. The sinews stood out on his bronzed neck, and his muscular right arm swung high in the air, with a lead pencil grasped in the clenched fist. His big feet were planted squarely, with the heels together and the toes turned out. His voice rang out clear and true, and he paused impressively as he made each point. Within ten minutes the multitude was in an uproar of enthusiasm—handkerchiefs were waved, canes ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... and desert they sped, over the shore, out across the ocean. For a long time they hurtled through a huge blue loneliness, dark blue below, lighter blue above. Once they passed over a ship, a pencil dot trailing a pin-scratch of white. Another time they startled a high-flying albatross, which gave a frightened squawk and plunged down out of sight with folded wings. Aside from that, there was nothing to see until they reached ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... David, with the swoln cheek, has long painted, with genius in a state of convulsion; and will now legislate. The swoln cheek, choking his words in the birth, totally disqualifies him as orator; but his pencil, his head, his gross hot heart, with genius in a state of convulsion, will be there. A man bodily and mentally swoln-cheeked, disproportionate; flabby-large, instead of great; weak withal as in a state of convulsion, not strong in a state of composure: ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... leisurely some points which the stress of keeping herself companionable would not allow her to attend to while the assemblage was present. At the end of the survey, being somewhat weary with her clambering, she sat down on the slope commanding the gorge where the trees grew, to make a pencil sketch of the landscape as it was revealed between the ragged walls. Thus engaged she weighed the circumstances of Lord Mountclere's invitation, and could not be certain if it were prudishness or simple propriety in herself which had instigated her to refuse. She would have liked ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... below. The Med Ship again inverted itself, and its rockets pointed toward the planet and poured out pencil-thin, blue-white, high-velocity flames. It checked slightly, but continued to descend. It was not directly above the grid. It swept downward until almost level with the peaks of the mountains in which the mine lay. It tilted again, and swept onward over ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... down at her soberly, his hard, weather-beaten old face quite unmoved. "Here, you drive, will you, for a piece?" he said briefly, putting the reins into her hands, hooking his spectacles over his ears, and drawing out a stubby pencil and a bit of paper. "I've got some figgering to do. You pull on the left-hand rein to make 'em go to the left and t'other way for t'other way, though 'tain't likely we'll ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... danger, all right. It's great to be in danger." I have sat all day writing letters by our artillery. Every time a gun went off my pencil slid. The shock was so sudden, my nerves never took it on. Yet I was able to sleep a few yards in front of a battery. It would pound through the night, and I never heard it. The nervous equipment of an American would ravel out, if it were not for sound sleep. If shells came no nearer than four hundred ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... natural desire of speaking evil of our neighbour could in his case have been checked by no feelings of sympathy for a being so unsocial. On one account alone he fell somewhat under suspicion. As he made free use of his pencil in his solitary walks, and had drawn several views of the harbour, in which the signal tower, and even the four-gun battery, were introduced, some zealous friends of the public sent abroad a whisper, that this mysterious stranger must certainly be a French spy. The Sheriff ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott |
