"Poker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a dozen steaks, but that ain't saying you're going to git 'em," he retorted, with a feeble show of aggression. "And 's far as licking me goes—" He stopped to blow warmth upon his fingers, which were numbed with their grasp of the poker. "As for licking me, I guess you'll have to do that on the strength uh bacon and sour-dough biscuits; if you do it at all, which I claim the privilege uh doubting ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... my caress and exhibited to me this fourth jewel in her crown, noticed that I was agitated, and with the smile and the intention of calming me with a joke, said, "Darling, are not two pair a pretty good hand"? We neither of us play poker, but I could ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... the statement again and put it into the fire, watched it until it was reduced to ashes, then beat the ashes down with a poker. ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... erect as possible. If you are sitting in a chair, sit up straight, head back, chin in. If you are walking or standing, the same rule should apply. The more nearly you can assume the position which is sometimes criticized by the sarcastic statement that "He looks as though he had swallowed a poker," the more nearly you will approximate the ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, and gave no sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me vis-a-vis with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried off the attack with a poker ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... fetched the large toy pistol that is a foot long, and that has the trigger broken, and I took it because I am the eldest; and I don't think either of us thought it was the cat now. But Alice and H. O. did. Dicky got the poker out of Noel's room, and told Dora it was to settle the cat ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... down upon him General Sarrail wasted no lives, either French or English, but again withdrew. He was outnumbered, some say five to one. In any event, he was outnumbered as inevitably as three of a kind beat two pair. A good poker player does not waste chips backing two pair. Neither should a good general, when his chips are human lives. As it was, in the retreat seven hundred French were killed or wounded, and of the British, who were more directly in the path of ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... this blind, raging protest. It was a muddle of impressions: the picture of the poor soul with his clamor for a job; the satisfied, brutal egotism of Brome Porter, who lived as if life were a huge poker game; the overfed, red-cheeked Caspar, whom he remembered to have seen only once before, when the young polo captain was stupid drunk; the silly young cub of a Hitchcock. Even the girl was one of them. If it weren't for the women, the men would not be so keen on the scent for gain. The ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Monsieur Grosnez!" they called out. "Why don't you cut off your nose for a present to mademoiselle? She would then have no need to buy a kitchen poker. Ha! ha! ha!" But their coarse wit fell flat. Henri hardly heard it—all his thoughts, his burning love, his unquenchable passion, were centred in Mere Maxim: in spirit he was with her, alone with her, in the innermost recesses of the ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... must defend himself: for Mrs Climoe never promised anything which—if it happened to be unpleasant—she did not punctually perform. With swift cunning he snatched up his parcel of staples and screws, caught at a poker, and made ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... and a boy, one of the men being skipper, and the nearest approach to a human machine you ever saw. He is a Highlander, a thorough seaman, hard as mahogany and about as dark, stiff as a poker, self-contained, silent, except when ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... It has been found by experiment that, in order to turn 1 lb. of water into vapour, as much heat must be used as is required to melt 5 lbs. of iron; and if you consider for a moment how difficult iron is to melt, and how we can keep an iron poker in a hot fire and yet it remains solid, this will help you to realize how much heat the sun must pour down in order to carry off such a constant supply of vapour from ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... I told myself first thing," he added, taking up the poker and tapping the bright little stove with it; "I told myself she would be marryin' one of the boys most likely; I kep' that in mind steady, as you may say. I thought I was so used to the idee that it wouldn't jar me much of any ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... answered Humphreys. "I wanted to bring home to you in a very convincing manner the power which the hypnotist exercises over his subject. I could have done it even more convincingly, perhaps, by commanding you to take that perfectly cold poker in your hand, and then suggesting to you that it was red hot, when—despite the fact of the poker being cold—your hand would have been most painfully blistered. But probably the 'adder' experiment was ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... "There are as rich as Jews, and one of the greatest houses in India. Old Mr. Errington bought a fine place in the country lately, and this young man—I'm sure I don't know if he is young; he is as grave as a judge and as stiff as a poker—at all events he is an only son. I met him at the Burnett's yesterday. Well, he seemed to know Mr. Liddell's name quite well. Colonel Ormonde pricked up his ears too when I said you had gone to see him. It is a great advantage to have a rich old bachelor ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... noon by the sun and Tolleson's was practically deserted. No devotees sat round the faro, roulette, and keno tables. The dealers were asleep in bed after their labors. So too were the dance girls. The poker rooms upstairs held only the stale odor of tobacco and whiskey. Except for a sleepy negro roustabout attendant and two young fellows at a table well back from the bar, the cowboys had the big hall ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... ragged that I got patches o' sunburn on my back an' belly. I'm what ye might call a speckled man. My feet 'a' been bled. My body looks like an ol' tree that has been clawed by a bear an' bit by woodpeckers. I've stuck my poker into the fire o' hell. I've been singed an' frost bit an' half starved an' ripped by bullets, an' all the pay I want is liberty an' it ain't due yit. I've done so little I'm 'shamed o' myself. Money! Lord God o' Israel! If any man ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... face brightened in such evident relief that he turned to her suddenly and said almost regretfully, as a generous adversary might speak to one whom he hopelessly outclasses: "Madam, I hear you are fond of gambling. You should study the game of poker, which teaches us to hide our feelings. Now then," he walked back quickly to the desk, "I want you to open this ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... work of art, dressed with artificial manures, and tilled with artificial tools, perhaps by steam, is called the smiling face of nature. Here nature is strong and there exhausted, now animated and then asleep. At the poles, the features of nature are all frozen, and as stiff as a poker, and in the West Indies burnt up to a cinder. What a pack of stuff it is! It is just a pretty word like pharmacopia and Pierian spring, and so forth. I hate poets, stock, lock, and barrel; the whole seed, breed, and generation of them. If you see ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... it, considering the annoyance and the nature of the provocation; but she did not reflect how much might have been prevented by more forethought and less pre-occupation. She said not a word, but quietly returned to her copying; and when Henry came with paper and poker to remove the damage, she only shoved back her chair, and sat waiting, pen in hand, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the left, let the flock pass on, and you were free. I did so, and found myself in the dark with my friend Mary and the other "devils" she had told me would be there. They were all armed, some with logs, others with tongs. I had nothing, but was bold enough to go to the school-room, get a poker, and return to my accomplices ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... a business manager whose stiffness would serve as "a good example to a poker?" He acts toward his employees as the father of Frederick the Great did toward his subjects, caning them on the streets, and shouting, "I wish to be loved and not feared." "Growl, Spitfire and Brothers," ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Negotiation is now OUT in all manner of senses! Long ago (to use our former ignoble figure) he had "laid down the bellows, though there was still smoke traceable:" but now, by this Grumkow Letter, he has, as it were, struck the POKER through the business; and that dangerous manoeuvre, not proving successful, has been fatal and final! Queen Sophie and certain others may still flatter themselves; but it is evident the Negotiation is at last complete. What may lie in flight to England and rash desperate measures, which Queen ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... without saying more, and shut the door as he concluded. Mr Carker the Manager drew a chair close before the fire, and fell to beating the coals softly with the poker. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... smile on Mrs. Heckman's demure lips, but Wallace, astute lawyer that he was, presented the bland face of a poker player. Without a direct word being spoken I was made to understand that Miss Taft was not indifferent to my coming, and when at half-past eleven we started for Eagle's Nest I had a sense of committing myself to ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... did get it? It must have been some fellow without any name. "My dear brother, the other day a rap came to my door, and some fellows came in and proposed a quiet game of porker.'' A quiet game of porker, why, they wanted to kill him with a poker. "I consented and got stuck—'' Sam's dead, I've got a dead lunatic for a brother—"for the drinks.'' He got on the other side of the paper, why couldn't he get stuck all on one side. "P. S.—If you don't get this letter let me know, for I shall feel ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... shirt and then struggled into his pit-trousers, which were left on the hearth to warm all night. There was always a fire, because Mrs. Morel raked. And the first sound in the house was the bang, bang of the poker against the raker, as Morel smashed the remainder of the coal to make the kettle, which was filled and left on the hob, finally boil. His cup and knife and fork, all he wanted except just the food, was laid ready on the table on a newspaper. Then he got his breakfast, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... admitted fragments of poker gabble as the white-aproned waiters rushed around with their trays ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... quarters at Tupelo. Our principal occupation at this place was playing poker, chuck-a-luck and cracking graybacks (lice). Every soldier had a brigade of lice on him, and I have seen fellows so busily engaged in cracking them that it reminded me of an old woman knitting. At ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... And I'll smash those durned machines, though the last Clown in the world is hung for it. For that's me ...that's me! Oh, has it come to this, after all we've done for the theatre! Haven't we loved it, Grandfer, haven't we? My red-hot poker's in pawn, and I've worn out the sausages. But let's have a try to make him laugh. Take the starch out of him! Take the banknote rustle out of him! Take the Theatre from him. Save it and save him, too! Come on, old 'un. Kiss your hand, Columbine. Harlequin, if you love me, if you ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... red as fire and, in his shame and misery, did not know which way to look. But if he attempted to speak she became as stiff as a poker, and, raising her small hand, "Taisez-vous des egards, ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... her crimson leather cushions, free-lunged, free-limbed, the White Linen Nurse heard the smothered cry. Clear above the whirr of wheels, the whizz of clogs, the one word sizzled like a red-hot poker across her chattering consciousness. Tingling through the grasp of her fingers on the vibrating wheel, stinging through the sole of her foot that hovered over the throbbing clutch, she sensed the agonized appeal. "Short lever—spark—long lever—gas!" she ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... willing; because he had the blood that gambles anything. Quint was willing, because he was the better player. They sat down to the game, in the cabin, after supper. Poker. Cold hands. Nine of them. Winner of five ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... up the poker, he gave a vigorous blow to a hard lump of coal in the grate, and split ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git Otheller out of his snug government birth, now goes to work & upsets the Otheller family in most outrajus stile. Iago falls in with a brainless youth named Roderigo & wins all his money at poker. (Iago allers played foul.) He thus got money enuff to carry out his onprincipled skeem. Mike Cassio, a Irishman, is selected as a tool by Iago. Mike was a clever feller & a orficer in Otheller's army. He liked his tods too well, howsoever, & they floored him as they have many other promisin ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... speak to Myra alone on the first night aboard, and joined a party of men playing poker in the smoking-room, in preference ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... with flowing hair and long mustache. He had flashing fiery eyes which were capable of being subdued by a single glance of gentleness—her own. He was tempestuous, quick, and passionate, but in quarrel would be led by a smile. He was a combination of an Italian brigand and a poker player whom she had once met on a Mississippi steamboat. He would wear a broad-brimmed soft hat, a red shirt, showing his massive throat and neck—and high boots! Alas! the man before her was of medium height, with light close-cut ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... slender, all day long in the house adjoining to yours? Or, supposing a beneficent jury (beneficent to him) finds this to be no legal nuisance, has he a right to play it ill? Or, because juries, when tipsy, will wink at anything, does the privilege extend to the jew's-harp? to the poker and tongs? to the marrowbones and cleavers? Or, without ranging through the whole of the Spectator's culinary music, will the bagpipes be found within benefit of jury law? War to the knife I say, before we'll submit ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... bellicose articles, you are perpetually reminded of the favorite national game of "Poker." In this, a player holding a very bad hand against a good one, may possibly "bluff" his adversary down, and win the stakes, if he only has confidence enough to go on piling up the money, so as to make ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... are wrong about that, of course. Women do not read the love stories in the magazines. They read the poker-game stories and the recipes for cucumber lotion. The love stories are read by fat cigar drummers and little ten-year-old girls. I am not criticising the judgment of editors. They are mostly very fine men, but ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... have the goody sort! By the poker! they sell their sermons dearer than we sell the rarest and realest thing on earth—pleasure.—And they can spin a yarn! There, I know them. I have seen plenty in my mother's house. They think everything is allowable for the Church and for—Really, my dear love, you ought to be ashamed of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... champagne. The last of the wine he finished in somber mood like an unbroken and defiant man who chews the straw that litters his prison house. During his dinner he was continually sending out messenger boys. He was arranging a poker party. Through a window he watched the beautiful moving life of upper Broadway at night, with its crowds and clanging cable cars and its electric signs, mammoth and glittering like the ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... to the impassive, silent figure of her husband. He sat leaning back, with folded arms, and face a little uptilted. His knees were straight and massive. She sighed, picked up the poker, and again began to prod the fire, to rouse the clouds of soft, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... something of Lola Montez. "I must," he says, "have had a great moral influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or a book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, or other deadly weapon.... I always had a strange and great respect for her singular talents. There were few, indeed, if any there, were, who really knew the depths of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... can't marry we can be pals for evermore in the dear old place of our childhood. But of course we can marry. Hurry home, and if any Harley Street doctor gives you even a doubtful look, throw him up his own stairs to show how feeble you are, or tie his poker round his neck in a neat bow, and refuse to undo it until he apologizes. I'm sure you could! 'Ill' indeed! If you can't have a little fit, on the rare occasions when you see a snake, without fools saying you are ill or dotty or something, it is a pity! Anyhow there is ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... is a maid's heart no matter?—is a maid's life no matter? Why, woman! thou lackest stirring up with a poker! I marvel if I were sent ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... noted the attitude of the prisoners. As a French officer approached the German soldier, true to his years of iron discipline, leaped to his feet and stood rigid as a poker through the talk, but never the raising of a hand to cap, never ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... occasion, midnight the night before, a Friday, found us still busy with our work. My cot-mate was in difficulties with his rifle—the cloth of the pull-through stuck in the barrel, and he could not move it, although he broke a bamboo cane and bent a poker in the attempt. "It's a case for the armoury," he remarked gloomily. "What a nuisance that ramrods are done away with! We've been at it since eight o'clock, and getting along ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... walls, and the ceiling. The Cardinal drew off each plum-colored shoe, And left his red stockings exposed to the view; He peeps, and he feels in the toes and the heels; They turn up the dishes, they turn up the plates, They take up the poker and poke out the grates, They turn up the rugs, they examine the mugs; But, no! no such thing,—they can't ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... small way, and the Devil in me said, "How easy! You're all right." So I went on until I was stealing on an average of $1.50 per day. I still kept on drinking and playing cards. I had by this time blossomed out as quite a poker player and could do as many tricks as the best of them. I used to stay out quite late, and would tell mother that I was kept at the office, and little did she think that her ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... way, followed by a brass St. Andrew as stiff as a poker and as much resembling St. Andrew as I conceive; but my companion the Grenadier thought differently, for he pronounced him to be a Chef d'oeuvre. "Well now, Jack, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... he cautioned. "Mrs. Blarcum is in her room, but she has good hearing in spite of her age, and I think she is somehow mixed up with the mystery. Now we'll go to the top floor," and he took up a big poker, which was on a ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... Mr. Peter Hope, as he crossed and, taking up the poker, proceeded to stir the fire, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... to you, Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, breaking the lumps of coal with the poker in a very leisurely satisfied kind of a way,—"Did it ever occur to you to rejoice that you were not born a business man? ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... funeral ceremonies by a recurrence to the affair of the Yellowhouse Man, and a query as to what would have been the programme of the public-spirited hamlet of Wolfville if that invalid had died instead of yielding to the nursing of Jack Moore and that tariff on draw-poker which the genius of Old ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... train steamed out of Sainte-Menehould, a corporal of the line, who had been forced to sit up as stiff as a poker for several hours, stretched himself at length on the compartment seat with a sigh of relief. But the jerks and jolts of the carriage, the hard seat, made sleep impossible: the epaulettes of his uniform were an added ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... bespoke her, [Kept a dandling the kitchen poker;] Mary spoke her words like Venus, But said, 'There's something I ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... wrote me a letter filled, as his letters usually were, with bits of interesting gossip about the comrades. It ran in part as follows: "Since I last wrote you Comrade Ritchie has killed a man in Colorado. I understand that the comrade was playing a poker game, and the man sat into the game and used such language that Comrade Ritchie had to shoot. Comrade Webb has killed two men in Beaver, Arizona. Comrade Webb is in the Forest Service, and the killing was in the line of professional ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the street, and saw Judge Mayne's familiar greeting; and Major Cartwright stop him, and with his hand on the Butterfly Man's arm, walk off with him. Major Cartwright had kept George Inglesby out of two coveted clubs, for all his wealth; he was stiff as the proverbial poker to Howard Hunter, for all that gentleman's impeccable connections; he met John Flint, not as through a glass darkly, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... slough off and swallow your acquired prejudices as a lizard does his skin. Once wanting some womanly attentions, the stage-driver assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile House from the lady barkeeper. The phrase tickled all my after-dinner-coffee sense of humor into an anticipation of Poker Flat. The stage-driver proved himself really right, though you are not to suppose from this that Jimville had no conventions and no caste. They work out these things in the personal equation largely. Almost every latitude of behavior ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... friend had referred to. On my arrival, both our servants were up. My hands and clothes were dyed with blood, and they looked at me with astonishment. I ran hastily upstairs, to avoid them, and took the writing-desk, the key of which I knew hung to his watch-chain. Seizing the poker, I split it open, and took out the packet he mentioned. At this moment ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... had no regular hour for going to bed, but fell asleep everywhere, and were removed with the utmost precaution. Mrs. Sykes, going there, would find them jumping up and down with muddy feet on the drawing-room sofas or playing on the new grand piano with the poker. Miss Noel one day found Mr. Brown in a great state of perturbation, calling out, "Helen! Jane! Bijou! Come here, quick! The baby is bumping his head on the floor!" (The baby being three years old.) "Don't get angry, darling. If you won't bump your head, grandpa will bring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... ideal Sunday morning. Perhaps it did, but so far as talk was concerned a very different fact ruled as first favorite. It was known all over the barracks by breakfast time that Case, the bookkeeper, had bluffed out the young swell from the Columbia who had come down to teach them how to play poker and fight Apaches. "Willett stock" among the rank and file had not been too high at the start, had been sinking fast since the affair at Bennett's Ranch, and was a drug in the market when the command, as was then the custom of the little army, turned ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... Wozenham calling out from the balcony with crocodile's tears "It's Mrs. Lirriper been overcharging somebody to madness—she'll be murdered—I always thought so—Pleeseman save her!" My dear four of them and Caroline behind the chiffoniere attacking with the poker and when disarmed prize-fighting with her double fists, and down and up and up and down and dreadful! But I couldn't bear to see the poor young creature roughly handled and her hair torn when they got the ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... chicken with steel spurs. That air sweet singer of Israel that is so hifalugeon he has to anchor hisself to his boots, knows all the tricks, and is intimately acquainted with the kyards, whether it's faro, poker, euchre, or French monte. But blamed ef Providence a'n't dealed you a better hand'n you think. Never desperandum, as the Congressmen say, fer while the lamp holds out to burn you may beat the blackleg all to flinders and ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... moment, was spreading through the dry, white grasses under the clumsy wheels of the living-van, whose brown painted sides were beginning to blister and char, as Billy, rendered intrepid by desperation, grabbed the broken furnace-rake handle, usually employed as a poker, and beat frantically at the encroaching fire. As he beat he yelled, and stamped fiercely upon those creeping yellow tongues. There was fire from side to side of the field pathway now, the straggling hedge on both sides was crackling gaily. And realizing the unconquerable nature of the disaster, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Kid," grinned Harding, but he did not seem the least dismayed. I should not care to play poker with him. I lined out a beauty, and then ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... outbreaks of riotous mirth, such as whooping and screaming; causing confusion, at the same time, by various demonstrations of his enjoyments, such as throwing nails against the windows, beating on the floor with the poker, and occasionally interrupting our operations by tumbling down stairs, and causing us for a moment to believe him killed outright, or at least maimed for life. But there is a special providence over happy children; and save that he fell on one occasion into the bucket ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... just about enough insurance to bury you, don't you? You're fifty years old if you're a minute, Gabie, and if I ain't mistaken you'd have a pretty hard time of it getting ten thousand dollars' insurance after the doctors got through with you. Twenty-five years of pinochle and poker and the fat of the land haven't added up any bumps in the old stocking ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... see more and more clearly the hopelessness of my position. With an effort I rose and hurried hobbling into the study again. On the staircase was a housemaid pulling up the blinds. She stared, I think, at the expression of my face. I shut the door of the study behind me, and, seizing a poker, began an attack upon the desk. That is how they found me. The cover of the desk was split, the lock smashed, the letters torn out of the pigeon-holes, and tossed about the room. In my senile rage I had flung about the pens and other ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... a game of small-stake poker, but after the second month they countermanded the standing order for Saturday night musical comedy seats. So often they discovered it was pleasanter to remain at home. Indeed, during these days of household adjustment, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... where we often cooked in summer. One of the men was in the act of placing one chair upon another, and his companion was approaching Mary's room, when suddenly Nancy rushed out of the back kitchen with a red-hot poker in her hand, and placing herself ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... exquisite little girl of six say to a little boy, 'Go away; I can't dance with you, because my mamma says your mamma only keeps a maid to answer the doorbell.' When they get home from the dancing-class, tutors in poker and bridge are waiting to teach them how to gamble for each other's little dimes. I saw a little boy in knickerbockers and a wide collar throw down ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... lad, learning English fast, and anxious to show he had got hold of the English trick of not knowing when he was beaten. His French vanity insisted on his engaging the two, though one of them stood aside, and the other let him drive his nose all the compass round at a poker fist. What was worse, Matey examined these two, in the interests of fair play, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... poker and kill as many of 'em as I can," cried Randy, and ran out into the kitchen to do ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... two men, and into the kitchen. There they found Patty standing on a side table, armed with a long poker, while Mona danced about on the large table, brandishing a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. Patty was in paroxysms of laughter at Mona's antics, but Mona herself was in terror of her life, and yelled like ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... appeal to the average which in England is sentimentality. Compare, for instance, the admirable story "Boule de Suif," perhaps the best story which Maupassant ever wrote, with a story of somewhat similar motive—Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." Both stories are pathetic; but the pathos of the American (who had formed himself upon Dickens, and in the English tradition) becomes sentimental, and gets its success by being sentimental; while the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... to walk straight out of the office and leave him. It would be hard to say precisely on what second thought she checked herself and, picking up the poker, sedulously resumed her raking-out of the stove. Partly, no doubt, she repented of having taken offence when he meant none. He had been innocent, and her suspicion of him recoiled back in self-contempt. It was a relief to ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... orders for the fire, and went herself to see that it burned. Soon I was sitting before it, my feet on a stool, and a poker in my hand with which I smashed the smoky lumps of coal ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... in, and dressing his child like a shabby little Irish girl. He says that he who provideth not for those of his own household is worse than a heathen. That's perfectly true. And he would like to know what Brother Peck does with his money, anyway. He would like to insinuate that he loses it at poker, I guess; at any rate, he can't find out whom he gives it to, and he certainly doesn't spend it ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... rather the ghosts of fears than fears themselves that had assailed him, and this time they hardly came near him as he wrought. With his new file he made better work than before, and soon finished cutting through the top of the staple. Trying it then with a poker as a lever, he broke the bottom part across; so there was nothing to hold the bolt, and with a creaking noise of rusty hinges the door slowly opened to his steady pull. Nothing appeared but a wall of plank! He gave it a push; it yielded: another ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... him almost automatically. After a moment he laid down the poker, and drew the chair with her in it close to the fender. Then he picked up the cloak and put it about her shoulders, and finally moved away ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... holy poker! This knocks me out! The next time I'll marry a man, and have somebody around that can appreciate a joke. The Irishman said himself it would make ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... to six silent, overdressed, genial male friends, known as "the crowd." These he frequently asked to dinner on Sunday nights, a hard game of poker always following. Martie did not play, but she liked to watch her husband's hands, and during this winter he attributed his phenomenal good luck to her. He never lost, and he always parted generously with such sums as he ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... was made. She, on the other hand, maintained that he never meddled with the fire that he didn't put it out—in short, that he was a perfect fire damper; and, as he was always anxious to stir up things in the varous fireplaces, she made a practice of hiding the poker just before it was time for him to come into the house. One night there was an alarm of fire in the village and Budger flew ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... JOANNA's freak. Her husband had slain her. That was all. She with her flashes, her gaiety, her laughter, was consigned to dust. But in Sir JOHN's note-book it was written that, "The hob-nailed boot is but a bungling weapon. The drawing-room poker is better." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... the group and occupied themselves with writing. Several started a game of stud poker at one of the many tables. Harris wrote a few letters before joining in the play, and as he looked up from time to time he caught many curious glances leveled upon him. Morrow had been busily spreading the tidings that a would-be squatter was among them and they were curious to ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... days of old, had given notice to leave when he learned that Dirty Dick was about to assume command; but had been prevailed upon to stay by the promise of an enormous salary. Nothing disturbed his equanimity. On the previous Saturday evening, John had heated the wrong end of the poker in No. 15, knowing that Dumber's duty constrained him to march round the House after "lights out," to rake out any fires that might be still burning. Snug under his counterpane, the practical joker awaited, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Holmes. "If you hadn't had that poker-party with you I'd have knocked you out and gone to China with the Ward-Smythe jewels. Sherlock Holmes stock was 'way below par ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... the work of a moment to order up a brazier, a pair of pincers, a poker, a headsman and an axe. The instruments of torture waste no time in getting red-hot; and we anticipate the worst. Joseph, however, who has ignored these preparations and maintained an attitude of superbly indifferent aloofness, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... sir. I've left the poker in between the bars to get red-hot. Put that to your touch-hole. Beats slow ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... not. Each succeeding run of salmon averaged greater poundage. They were worth more. MacRae paid fifty, fifty-five cents. When Gower stood pat at fifty-five, MacRae gave up a fourth of his contract percentage and paid sixty. It was like draw poker with the advantage of the last ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Hill even as the Tuscaroras came in an impetuous sweep down Niagara Avenue. Meanwhile the machine of the hook-and-ladder experts from across the creek was spinning on its way. The chief of the fire department had been playing poker in the rear room of Whiteley's cigar-store, but at the first breath of the alarm he sprang through the door like a man ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... deliberation, and with undeniable malice aforethought, he kicked the nearest bunch of sea grass several feet in the air. His violence carried his leg high in the air and he partially lost his equilibrium. Simultaneously a white streak shot from beneath the porch and something like a red-hot poker thrust itself savagely into an extremely ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... some vice or other, even if it is only being good. Warburton had perhaps two: poker and tobacco. He would get out of bed at any hour if some congenial spirit knocked at the door and whispered that a little game was in progress, and that his money was needed to keep it going. I dare ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... offered himself. For Ike was regarded through all that south country as the most daringly reckless of all the cattle-men, and never had he been known to weaken either in "takin' his pizen," in "playin' the limit" in poker, or in "standin' up agin any man that thought he could dust his pants." Of course he was "white." Everyone acknowledged that. But just how far this quality of whiteness fitted him as a candidate for the communion table Shock was ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... months of his residence in England, the author renewed his impressions of Stratford (the grateful landlady of the Red Horse Inn showed him a poker which was locked up among the treasures of her house, on which she had caused to be engraved "Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre"); spent some time at Newstead Abbey; and had the sorrowful pleasure in London of seeing Scott once more, and for the last time. The great ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... and my pamily' play for tobacco by the hour. It is highly characteristic of Tembinok' that he must invent a game for himself; highly characteristic of his worshipping household that they should swear by the absurd invention. It is founded on poker, played with the honours out of many packs, and inconceivably dreary. But I have a passion for all games, studied it, and am supposed to be the only white who ever fairly grasped its principle: a fact for ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... people were discussing the death of Cummins. He succeeded in showing the due amount of interest and no more, and was diplomatic enough not to suggest that the murderers were now on their way to San Francisco. He took the train going East according to schedule, and found Darcy playing poker in the smoking car. Collins betook himself to his pipe at the other end of the car, glad that night had come, and that he would soon bid farewell to the Sierras. He felt the train swing round the horse-shoe curve through Blue Canon, and shortly afterward he noticed that ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... our species upon the edge of extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with vivid delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough chess games. When dark came we decided to take the risk, and ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... for the playing of whist, domino, or poker are often given by bachelors at their apartments or residences. In apartments this class of entertainment is only for men. Women should not go to bachelors' apartments except for luncheon, dinner, or supper. In a bachelor's house, ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... playing go-between. I don't relish any such work. It is very evident that you two have quarreled. I would about as soon consult that poker as ask Hartwell what is to pay. Now, child, what ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Christian Associations, Sunday schools or some other religious or reformatory enterprise. These outside activities were no hindrances to either pulpit or pastoral work; and, like that famous English preacher who felt that he could not have too many irons in the fire, I thrust in tongs, shovel, poker and all. The contact with busy life and benevolent labors among the poor supplied material for sermons; for the pastor of a city church must touch life at a great many points. Our domestic experiences in early housekeeping were very agreeable. ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... to wish it, I read his correspondence, while he absently twirled the poker in his hands, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... to which he alluded, was no other than a heap of sweet potatoes, that were very snugly roasting under the embers, and which Tom, with his pine stick poker, soon liberated from their ashy confinement; pinching them, every now and then, with his fingers, especially the big ones, to see whether they were well done or not. Then having cleansed them of the ashes, partly by ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... ideas on detergents, suggested we make black plastic discs, like poker chips but thinner and as cheap as possible, to scatter on a snowy sidewalk where they would pick up extra heat from the sun and melt the snow more rapidly. Afterward one would sweep up ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... enough for us to be square. We got good ranches back of us and can spend the winter playing poker at the Mesa Club if we feel like it. But if we stood where Billy George and Garner and Roberts and Munz do, I ain't so damn sure my virtue would stand the strain. Can you reach that ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... the second year, he had found his feet, and began to look about him for ways of retrenchment. His lordship's allowance was an obvious way. He had not to wait long for an excuse for annihilating it. There is a game called poker, at which a man without much control over his features may exceed the limits of the handsomest allowance. His lordship's face during a game of poker was like the surface of some quiet pond, ruffled by every breeze. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... earn a livin' by the sweat of his pony, he grows his hair, goes on the stage bustin' glass balls with shot ca'tridges and talks about 'press notices.' Let's see 'em, Billings. You pinch 'em as close to your stummick as though you held cards in a strange poker game." ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... first instrument of attack that comes to hand is an Irishman's weapon.—Thady brandished in terrorem a red hot poker, and his son with the agility of a cat took sanctuary under the bed, but at the intercession of the Squire was allowed to emerge with impunity, and admitted to a participation of the salt-herrings and apple-dumplings. The two friends declining an invitation ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... been famous, in the past twenty years, for an excess of good-nature toward each other. Mr. Bennett and Mr. Greeley are not supposed to partake habitually of the same dinners and wine, or to join in frequent games of billiards and poker. The compliments which the two great dailies occasionally exchange, are not calculated to promote an intimate friendship between the venerable gentlemen whose names are so well known to the public. No one expects these veteran ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... to his feet. He pulled down the sleeves of his coat, and gave an adjusting shake to its collar and lapels. Then he turned to my wife and said: "Madam, let us two dance a Virginia reel while your husband and that other one take the poker and tongs and beat out the music on the shovel. We might as well be durned fools one way as another, and all go to ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... poor; not an honest poverty, but a sham and artificial poverty—the inability to dress as others did, and to lose money at "bridge" and "poker", and to pay the costs of their self-indulgences. As for Thyrsis and his parents, they always paid what they owed; but they were not always able to pay it when they owed it, and they suffered all the agonies and humiliations of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... still say you ought to take up poker as a life work. Tiny, let's you and him sit down now and ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... then, though when you are sitting in your friend's parlor, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you may draw anything that is there, for practice; even the fire-irons or the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it is for practice, and not because it is a beloved carpet, or a friendly poker and tongs, nor because you wish to please your friend by drawing ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... licensed to preach; he was ordained minister of Colossie, Fife, in 1742, but returned to Edinburgh and in 1762 was made regius professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres to the university. He became a member of the great literary club, the Poker, where he associated with Hume, A. Carlyle, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith and others, and enjoyed a high reputation as a preacher and critic. The lectures he published on style are elegantly written, but weak in thought, and his sermons share the same ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... the various lines; of the delight of the voyage to any one not abnormally sensitive to sea-sickness; of the humors of the bagmen; of the occupations and amusements on board; of dolphins, fog-horns, icebergs, rope-quoits, grass-widows, and the chances of poker. It was all a holiday excursion, then? The two friends lit their cigars and went back to their arm-chairs. The tired and haggard look on George Brand's face had ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... quoted from the book, Seth planted himself before Tilly, with the long poker in his hand, saying, as he flourished ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... ideas concerning the clothing of their babies. One mother will wrap her baby in cotton, which is held in place by means of a roller bandage, and as you visit this home during the first week of baby's life, you will be handed a little mummy-shaped creature—straight as a little poker—all wrapped up in cotton and a roller bandage. The surprising feature is that the baby ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... in the end," they warn you, "no matter what you play." And the business man, who should know better, too often enters the share market as if he were sitting in an open poker party, among sharpers and pickpockets, and recklessly surrenders himself to every temptation of this devil-may-care atmosphere, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... occurred; as indeed how should she, till her eyes fell upon the door of the closet. Then she comprehended it all. You may imagine the rest, madame! Words couldn't paint it! When they came into the room, she was battering madly at the wall with the poker. But a few hours terminated her sufferings. She was already dead when Philippe was telling me of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... moonlight, and you came home in the midst, and Miss Kendal fainted away, so he catches up the ink and throws it over her instead of water, and you and Mr. Kendal came in and were mad entirely; and Mr. Kendal threatened to brain him with the poker if he did not quit it that instant, and sent Gilbert for a soldier for opening the door to him, but you and Lucy went down on your bare knees to get him ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the shipping season, Billy thought he had solved the problem—philosophically, if not satisfactorily. "I guess maybe it's just one uh the laws uh nature that you're always bumping into," he decided. "It's a lot like draw-poker. Yah can't get dealt out to yuh the cards yuh want, without getting some along with 'em that yuh don't want. What gets me is, I don't see how in thunder I'm going to ditch m' discard. If I could just turn 'em face down on ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... his feet in a perfect frenzy of rage and hurled the chair at Mrs. Keyser; whereupon she seized the poker and came toward him with savage earnestness. Then we adjourned to the front yard suddenly; and as Butterwick and I got into the carriage to go home, Keyser, with a humble expression in his ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... North; the boys wuz celebrated for horse racing and their skill at losin money at faro. They wuz hospitable and generous to a fault. Their house wuz open house, and their beverages wuz alluz the best. Money wuz no objick to them; for when they had a severe attack of poker, or faro, or hoss racin, they hed plenty uv octoroons and quadroons, with the real Guttle nose, wich brand wuz well known in Noo Orleans, and wood alluz command the highest possible figger that wuz paid in that market; or, ef they had no more than they wanted at home uv that style, why, ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... save sin, Mistress Rigg, that I should not dare to do an' it liked me. I have run after a thief with a poker: ay, and I have handled a Popish catchpoll, in Queen Mary's days, that he never came near my house no more. And wherefore, I pray you tell me, should I be more feared of a spirit without a body than of a ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... was a young man of a species with whom he had not come into contact in many years: a boy who did not know the first thing about poker, or bridge, or pinochle, who played outrageous billiards and who did not know who the latest reigning theatrical beauty was, and moreover, did not care a rap; who could understand a joke within reasonable time if he couldn't tell one; who was neither a nincompoop nor a mollycoddle. Thomas interested ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... or poker or something conventional of that sort?" said Josephine in her distinct voice, speaking to him as if ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... poento. Point (tip of) pinto. Point (to sharpen) pintigi. Point out montri, signali. Points (railway) relforko. Poise balanci, ekvilibri. Poison veneno. Poisonous venena. Poke the fire inciti la fajron. Poker fajrincitilo. Polar polusa. Pole (wooden) stango. Pole (shaft of car) timono. Pole (geography) poluso. Polecat putoro. Polemic disputo, polemiko. Police polico. Policeman policano. Polish poluri. Polish (substance) polurajxo. Polished (manners) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... mahogany ran the entire length, backed by big mirrors of French plate. The whole of the very large main floor was heavily carpeted. Down the center generally ran two rows of gambling tables offering various games such as faro, keeno, roulette, poker, and the dice games. Beyond these tables, on the opposite side of the room from the bar, were the lounging quarters, with small tables, large easy-chairs, settees, and fireplaces. Decoration was of the most ornate. The ceilings and walls ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... well in later years in America, when she deeply regretted that I had not called on her in Munich. I must have had a great moral influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend whom she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, chair, or other deadly weapon. We were both born at the same time in the same year, and I find by the rules of sorcery that she is the first person who will meet me when I go to heaven. I always had a great and strange respect for her singular talents; there were very few indeed, if ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... told himself with some assurance, would recognize him as the FBI Agent who had come into the Golden Palace two years before, clad in Elizabethan costume and escorting a Queen who had turned out to be a phenomenal poker player. After all, Las Vegas was a town in which lots of strange things happened daily, and he was dressed differently, and he'd aged at least two years in the ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Cleggett also learned later that two men had been concerned in the explosion which had broken the big rocks on the plain. One of them had won the Claiborne signet ring at poker after Reginald Maltravers had been stripped of his valuables, and had worn it. They had been dispatched with a bomb each, which they were to introduce into the hold of the Jasper B., retiring through the tunnel after they had started the clockwork mechanism going. It was known ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... that thought of it," she added, and she would have stooped down to pat the toy dog, with its red morocco collar, but she was so high up that she found it a difficult matter to bend down. "I am as stiff as a poker," said she. ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... their revolvers testified mutely as to their prowess. Their place was like all other dens, and consisted of the usual bar and lunch counter in one room, while in the adjoining one was the hall of gaming. Faro, roulette, hazard, monte, and the great national game, poker, held high carnival there nightly. Next to the "Goose" was a long narrow room used as a shooting gallery. The place was only a few doors around the corner from my office, and many a night on my way ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... seeing a red hot poker, or fighting with one, signifies that you will meet trouble ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... her strong enough? If so, I am very glad," said the mother, in a delighted voice. "Eh, Joe?" as there was a pause; and as he replaced the poker, he looked up to her with a colour scarcely to be accounted for by the fire, and she ended in an odd, startled, yet not displeased ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... square, whitewashed room Gray and Flint were playing cut-throat poker; Gary was at the telephone, but the messages received or transmitted appeared to be of no importance. There had never been any message of importance from the Falcon Peak or to it. There ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... about it than he had in years. The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the first Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he had committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the Everards' to ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... for an Ambassador's house. Then we'll bring Christmas presents home for you. What a game we are playing, we poor folks here, along with Ambassadors whose governments pay them four times what ours pays. But we don't give the game away, you bet! We throw the bluff with a fine, straight poker face. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... that scatters into flight, The poker players who have stayed all night; Drives husbands home with reeling steps, and then— Gives to the sleepy "cops" an ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... up, in a double rage, and intercepted Mr. Chainmail's pursuit of the Captain, placing himself in the doorway, in a pugilistic attitude. Mr. Chainmail, not being disposed for this mode of combat, stepped back into the parlour, took the poker in his right hand, and displacing the loose bottom of a large elbow chair, threw it over his left arm as a shield. Harry, not liking the aspect of the enemy in this imposing attitude, retreated with backward ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... finery on the floor.) But in the middle of it all, lend me the poker, which will answer for the master-kay, sure!—that poker that is houlding ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... round the border of the tablecloth, the markings of the mantelpiece resolve themselves into rows of madly- racing figures, the tongs leers in a degage and cavalier way at the artist, the shovel and poker grin in sympathy; there are faces in the smoke, in the fire, in the fireplace,—the very fender itself is a ring of fantastic creatures who jubilantly hem in the ashes. And it is not only in the grotesque and fanciful that Cruikshank excels; he is master of the strange, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... leading of a horse about. 9. By what states is Kentucky bounded by? 10. His servants ye are to whom ye obey. 11. Where are you going to? 12. They admitted of the fact. 13. Raise your book off of the table. 14. He took the poker from out of the fire. 15. Of what is the air composed of? 16. You can tell by trying of it. 17. Where have you been to? 18. The boy is like to his father. 19. They offered to him a chair. 20. This is the subject of which I intend to write about. 21. Butter brings twenty cents for a pound. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... explained to me for the twentieth time that she did only "the top of the work." My cook comes up to me every morning for orders, and always drops the deepest curtsey, but then I doubt if her hands are ever profaned by touching a poker, and she NEVER washes a dish. She is cook and HOUSEKEEPER, and presides over the housekeeper's room; which has a Brussels carpet and centre table, with one side entirely occupied by the linen presses, of which my maid (my vice-regent, only MUCH ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... Legations. For example, it was at the Priory that I first saw a real alive American, in the shape of General Schenk, the United States Minister to the Court of St. James. I remember well his teaching the whole houseparty to play poker—a game till then quite unknown ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... drawing-room of the worldling, or in common dress around the fireside of the unchristian Church member. Like the professional gambler his instrument is "cards," and he can shake the "dice." His games are whist, progressive euchre, and sometimes poker. The stakes now are not money, but the gratification of excitement and the indulgence of passion. One, two, four hours go by almost unnoticed. Prizes are offered for the best player. As a Catholic priest told me after he had won a small sum with cards. ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... the suggestion of someone, a poker game was started which lasted all night, and in the morning those who had indulged in the game were not feeling any too good—especially the losers—but, nevertheless, they all strolled over to the large adobe corral to see our party off. Mr. A——, ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the 23d of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in a settlement ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... not so big as the Avalanche," she began the moment she had shut the door behind her and faced the questioning eyes that commanded her to stand and deliver. "He's straight, too, but not so poker-stiff as Mrs. Ramrod. He's got a big haw-haw voice, and scrubs every word he says with a tooth-brush before he says it. His hands are as white—as white; and they're cleaner than Crosby Pemberton's. He's got a tan shirt on, plaited ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... he was surprised to see how much the fire had burned down in that time. He crept towards it, and began to put the brands together, when suddenly he recollected the potatoes. So he began to feel for them in the ashes, by means of a long stick, which they had obtained for a poker. The potatoes were all ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... rebuke; but underneath her cold outside lay a warm heart, to which conscience acted the part of a somewhat capricious stoker, now quenching its heat with the cold water of duty, now stirring it up with the poker of reproach, and ever treating it as an inferior and a slave. But her conscience was, on the whole, a better friend to her race than her heart; and, indeed, the conscience is always a better friend than ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... ungratefully. "Oh, my gosh, I am stiff as a poker. What do you say, Barry, to our doping this out around that fire—or have you got some other little thing in there you are keeping incog ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... drama. One night, as he was repeating the part of Alexander, with his wooden representative of Clitus, (an elbow chair), and coming to the speech where the old general is to be killed, this young mock Alexander snatched a poker, instead of a javelin, and threw it with such strength, against poor Clitus, that the chair was killed upon the spot, and lay mangled on the floor. The death of Clitus made a monstrous noise, which disturbed the ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... scratched his chin, bit off a chew of tobacco, stretched himself and said: "Well, I have been lending money all my life, and I don't see why I should stop now. Did you ever hear of anybody paying back borrowed money except in a poker game? I never did. Do people really pay back? I don't know what the custom is over in the part of the country you came from, but the rules are very strict here, and they are not violated very often—they rarely pay back. And they never violate ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... before you miss 'em." Camps seem to have some special attraction for pokers, but we learned they object to interference. Poke round peaceful as cats until "you rile them," Dan told us, and then glided into a tale of how a poker "had ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... match for the professional soldiers against whom they were pitted. He had the misfortune of meeting almost the only British leader then in South Africa capable of instinctively assessing him on the spot at his true valuation; and like a timid poker-player with a good hand, he allowed himself to be bluffed by the flourishes of his opponent. He held good cards, but he feebly threw them down. At Magersfontein he played his hand with skill, but lost the deciding game ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... religious people seem to think that 'good times' come and go, and that they can do nothing to bring or keep or banish them. But that is not so. If the fire is burning low, there is such a thing on the hearth as a poker, and coals are at hand. If we feel our faith falling asleep, are we powerless to rouse it? Cannot we say 'I will trust'? Let us learn that the variations in our religious emotions are largely subject to our own control, and may, if we will govern ourselves, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cloak, and, not even glancing at G.J., went to the fire and teased it with the poker. Bending down, with one hand on the graphic and didactic mantelpiece, and staring ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... gave each stoker A silver shovel and a golden poker. He'd button holw flowers for the ticket sorters And rich Bath-buns for the outside porters. He'd moun the clerks on his first-class hunters, And he build little villas for the road-side shunters, And if any were fond ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan |
