"Adroit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rushing to the various newspaper offices to countermand their advertisements! What gaps in the columns of the newspapers themselves! Where is the sugary lie—the adroit slander—the scoundrel meanness, masking itself with the usage of patriotism? All, all are vanished, for—the Morning Herald is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... to tell me that he was an adroit sharper, or, in other words, a skilful corrector of fortune's mistakes. He concluded by saying that I should find something worth looking at in the house ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... been drilled in this strategy. Every man understood—and to be a member of the League meant that one was politically educated. Victor believed in his associates as he believed in himself. Still, human nature was human nature. If Kelly should suddenly offer some adroit outrageous provocation—would the League be able ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... Mary Blyth, so in an equal ratio he hated his good helpmate Jenny. And then began that other wonderful process called reconciliation, whereby the wish gradually overcomes scruples through the cunning mean of falsifying their aspects. Whereunto, again, the new mistress contributed in the adroit way of all such wretches—instilling into his ear the moral poison which deadened the apperception of these scruples at the same time that it brought out the advantages of disregarding them. The result of all which was, that Jenny's husband, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... the window at the back, I was unable to see Sam. My adroit move, I took it, had baffled him. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... communities. Unscrupulous in their means, yet really honest in the belief that their objects can be attained, they are at once the rogues and fanatics of Mammon. This person was held to have been fortunate in some adroit speculations in the corn trade, and he was brought too frequently into business with Mainwaring not to be a frequent visitor at the house. In him Lucretia saw the very instrument of her design. She led him on to talk of business ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the pound of flesh is forfeited, the bosom of Antonio is bared to the knife—when this brief but brief-less barrister, this skylarking young judge of Belmont steps jauntily forward, with a most preposterous quibble on her lips, and manages by an adroit subtlety to defeat the judgment to which the plaintiff is legally entitled. She awards the flesh, fibres, nerves, adipose matter, in controversy, to Shylock; but declares his life and fortune confiscate if he sheds a drop of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Very adroit and very diplomatic, to be sure, on the part of the Baron; but surely he might have answered yes or no to the first question, without committing himself. And why not show my letter to Mr. Evans? Taking the ground he did, however, he forced me to the following conclusion, namely, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... the session in London was at that time rendered impossible by the pestilential sickness already referred to, which every day increased in severity. Buckingham, who although pliant and adroit yet had no regard whatever for others, wished to keep Parliament sitting until it had made satisfactory grants. While the members, and even the Privy Council, wished for a prorogation, he urged with success that the sitting ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Germany, and Russia. At other times, he conversed with the duke upon philosophy and state policy; and he was amazed at the varied information and wisdom of this young man, who seemed an experienced soldier and an adroit diplomat, a profound statesman, and a learned historian. By his dazzling talents, he not only interested but enchained ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... betrayed no excitement and conserved his energies with miserly care, was no more disturbed than if he had been taking a hand at cards. He faced his foe as before, presenting as little as possible of his body for a target, and met Pete's rush this time with an adroit side movement and a heavy lifting blow in the body that made Quigley gasp, and robbed him of the little bit of sense that had remained. He went blundering at Jim, lashing out with left and right. There was a rapid exchange, and using his guard arm in offence ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... came to take their seats, they somehow got mixed up again, so that Morgan found himself next to Margaret, whilst Diana and Archibald sat opposite. Morgan had more than a suspicion that this was the result of adroit manoeuvring on Diana's part. Very soon, however, there arose such a clattering dispute between that young lady and her neighbour, that Morgan could not talk to his, which made him rather angry. Anyhow, it was impossible not ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... now, This latest Age in repetition cries: For Belial, the adroit, is in our midst; Mammon, more swoln to squeeze the slavish sweat From hopeless toil: and overshadowingly (Aggrandized, monstrous in his grinning mask Of hypocritical Peace,) inveterate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... conversation is impossible where there is too much talk. Some sort of order must be imperceptibly if not unconsciously maintained, or the sentences clash in general conversation. Leading conversation is the adroit speech which checks the refractory conversationalist and changes imperceptibly the subject when it is sufficiently threshed or grows over-heated; it is guiding the talk without palpable break into fresh ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... the near-side. We were proceeding very comfortably, the driver, we were happy to notice, with his eyes shut, when suddenly something, a bad dream or indigestion, awoke him. He seized the reins, and, by an adroit movement, pulled the near-side horse over the edge, where it clung, half supported by the traces. Our driver did not appear in the least annoyed or surprised; both horses, I also, noticed, seemed equally used to the situation. We got out, and he got down. He took from under the seat ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... the encomienda of Chiapa was an astute person, in reality quite as vicious as any of the others but more adroit in concealing his evil doings; he found small difficulty in deceiving the simple friars and, by showing them hospitality and professing great respect for the New Laws, he succeeded in persuading them that he was their friend and protector. The harmony ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... by this most adroit, active, and intrepid cavalier to his little army, supplying by admirable sagacity and subtle management the want of a more numerous force. His orders being given and all arrangements made, he threw aside his lance, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... really thought that M. de Nailles could have any ideas but her own. When the adroit Clotilde was at a loss, she was likely to evoke this chimerical notion of her husband's having an opinion ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... particular place. Just as I have special times and places for certain books, so do they seem to have special times and places for certain talk. The first time I took them there they asked me what the mounds were, and by a series of adroit questions extracted the information that the people who had been buried there were now angels (I am not a specialist, and must take refuge in telling them what I was told in my youth), and ever since then they refuse to call it a ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... learn something of Ruth, blindly clutching at a possible bond between her and himself. It seemed years rather than days since he had heard from her. But in a single glance his trained eyes saw that David was in trouble, and by asking a few adroit questions he brought out all that the boy knew. The doctor sat so still for an instant after hearing what had passed between the judge and William Pressley, that David looked up in surprise to see what was the matter. Paul Colbert was very pale, and his eyes were glancing round, searching the deepening ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... Can't you find all your right books?" And with this adroit carrying of the war into enemy's country she deflected Mr. Eliot's interest back upon himself, at no time ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... less scholarly than DuBois, less eloquent than the late J.C. Price, he is yet the foremost figure in Negro national life. He is a great educator and a great man, and though one may not always agree with him, one must always respect him. The race has produced no more adroit diplomatist than he. The statement is broad but there is no better proof of it than the fact that while he is our most astute politician, he has succeeded in convincing both himself and the country that he is not in politics. He has none of the qualities of the curb-stone politician. ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... it really was of him to wait and wait for the other's ruin. How easily might not the adroit and lucky Alphonse come across many a brilliant business opening, and make plenty of money without a word of it reaching Charles's ears. Perhaps, after all, he was getting on well. Perhaps it would end in people saying, "See, at last Monsieur ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... the squadron under command of Captain Perry having met the British squadron of superior force, a sanguinary conflict ended in the capture of the whole. The conduct of that officer, adroit as it was daring, and which was so well seconded by his comrades, justly entitles them to the admiration and gratitude of their country, and will fill an early page in its naval annals with a victory never surpassed in luster, however much it ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... had gone to rejoin his father, and the adroit manner in which he had made his departure, taking with him a musket, a camel, and a horse, not only excited the wonder, but the admiration of those from whom ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... the boys—now shy lads in their teens, who had found the evidences of a struggle and possible murder so long before on the river bluff. Under the adroit lead of counsel, they told each the same story, and were excused cross-examination. Both boys had identified the hat found on the bluff, and testified that the brown stain, which now appeared somewhat faintly, had been a bright red, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... famous weekly, remaining in that capacity ever since. He was knighted in 1914. As a writer of light verse and as a parodist, his agile work has delighted a generation of admirers. Some of his most adroit lines may be found in his In Cap and Bells (1902) and The Battle of ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... be seen abstractedly passing along Mixen Lane; and then, in a moment, he would vanish, causing the gazer to blink like Ashton at the disappearance of Ravenswood. That abstracted pedestrian had edged into the slit by the adroit fillip of his person sideways; from the slit he edged into the tavern by a similar ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... favour with the King, who, not content with employing the painter largely at Fontainebleau and in Versailles, invested him with the order of St Michael, bestowed on him letters of nobility, and visited him frequently at his work, occasions when there were not wanting adroit courtiers to liken the Grand Monarque to the Emperor Charles V., and Le Brun ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... on the Castle Rock of Willie Wallace and was only nineteen when he danced without the music; to Simms, alias Gentleman Harry, who showed at Tyburn how a hero could die; to George Barrington, the incomparably witty and adroit—to these a full meed of honour has been paid. Even the coarse and dastardly Freney has achieved, with Thackeray's aid (and Lever's) something of a reputation. But James Hardy Vaux, despite his eloquent bid for fame, has not found his rhapsodist. ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... fight on Sunday,—Captain Carson, commanding General Grant's scouts. He was tall and slim, and had sparkling black eyes. He had travelled all over Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, had often been in the Rebel camps. He was brave, almost fearless, and very adroit. He said to a friend, when the battle began in the morning, that he should not live through the day. But he was very active, riding recklessly through showers of bullets. It was just at sunset when he rode up to General ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... turned the conversation, and, soon after, went away. He had been adroit enough to put his questions in the languid way of a man who had no personal curiosity, and was merely discharging ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... was in some ways, and not a few, a model private secretary for a busy statesman. He was a gentleman by birth, bringing-up, appearance, and manners; he was very quick, adroit and clever; he had a wonderful memory, a remarkable faculty for keeping documents and ideas in order; he could speak French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and conduct a correspondence in these languages. He knew the political and other gossip of most or all of the European ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... scatters them at adroit intervals, reminding us of the arrangement of voices in an ancient catch, where one voice takes up the phrase another has dropped, and thus seems to give the web of harmony a firmer and more ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... a bird. "Hold! do not wrong me," cried the bat; "I'm truly no such thing as that. Your eyesight strange conclusions gathers. What makes a bird, I pray? Its feathers. I'm cousin of the mice and rats. Great Jupiter confound the cats!" The bat, by such adroit replying, Twice ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... in the Duchy of Lackeverything," replied La Mothe, bowing with an equal gravity, and at the adroit parrying of a difficult question the smile crept down from Ursula de Vesc's eyes until it loosened the hard lines of the mouth, and bent them to that Cupid's bow La Mothe so much desired to see. "I ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... experiencing romantic love for the first time. This girl was the most glorious creature he had ever known, and the most womanly. Her sex was the very essence of her; she had no need to wear it like a furbelow. She was utterly different from the feminine, adroit women he had known; there was something cool and deep about her like a pool, and withal winged, like the birds that fly over it. She was marvelous—marvelous! he ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... fall whether in love or enmity. It is still by force of body, or power of character or intellect, that we attain to worthy pleasures. Men and women contend for each other in the lists of love, like rival mesmerists; the active and adroit decide their challenges in the sports of the body; and the sedentary sit down to chess or conversation. All sluggish and pacific pleasures are, to the same degree, solitary and selfish; and every durable band between human beings is founded in or ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... assembly at Paris, dazzled with the unaccustomed role to which they were called, and desirous to please the King in their personal interest or in that of their towns, would be under the control of the adroit lawyers who were prepared to work on their minds and to direct the debates. The bull, nevertheless, if its exact tenor had been known, might well have produced in many respects a contrary effect to the wishes of the King. The reproaches of Boniface ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Tung-chi, the adroit selection of a nephew of three summers to succeed to the throne as her adopted son, gave the Dowager the prospect of another long regency. Recalled to power by the [Page 274] reactionaries, in 1898, after a brief retirement, ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... Of course, I shall be more adroit, more careless, when I really come to it. But what I mean is that when we first see it together, the love-business, I shall want to feel that you are feeling every instant just as I ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... former friends plunder his widow and children; and they, in revenge, ill-use and even murder their slaves—thus one misfortune gives birth to various cruelties. During the fire, our allies proved themselves the most adroit and active thieves imaginable, though previously to that event we had never lost an article, although everything we possessed was open ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... him and seeth him tall and comely and well-shapen and adroit and all armed upon his horse, so he saith to him, "Sith that you are so coward, wherefore ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... which Mdlle. Lind may be said to have brought to England, and considered as her special property.... With myself, the real value of Madame Sontag grew, night after night—as her variety, her conscientious steadiness, and her adroit use of diminished powers were thus mercilessly tested. In one respect, compared with every one who had been in my time, she was alone, in right, perhaps of the studies of her early days—as a singer ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... politics, and that the word itself has come to mean something not to be touched without defilement. Consequently, what good men will not touch, bad men will. It is understood that bribery carries the election; and the Presidency is the result of an adroit process of financial engineering. I have myself been shown a handful of bank-notes publicly displayed in the ante-room of a Legislature, and sagaciously told: "That is the logic for legislators." Men think they cannot afford to go to Congress, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... later we were discussing that same good dinner, and maintaining a tolerably animated conversation over it, too. My father put a few adroit questions to me relative to my school experiences, which had the effect of "drawing me out," and he listened to all I had to say with just that appearance of friendly interest which is so flattering and encouraging ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... his associates. But in the eyes of posterity, his happy-go-lucky life is amply redeemed by the work he has left behind him, for it is pure and good. His river of speech flows ever on shining like molten gold. No man of his time possessed the adroit knack of bright writing in a more eminent degree. The pawky humour of his side-hits, the blending of light and shade in the process of the narrative, the beauty and melody that can be noted even in the sound of the sentences, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... recognition of this victory lead us to self-satisfaction and complacency, we should never forget that this mastery consists to a great extent in a recognition of the power of those blind forces, and our adroit control over them. It has been truly said that we attain no power over Nature until we learn natural laws and conform ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... faults, and follies of the elders. Without a drop of Irish blood in his veins, he inspired the belief that he must be own cousin to the newly-landed Hibernian who announced himself as "agin the governmint," for post and regimental commanders without exception found him the most adroit, crafty, sinuous, and troublesome of captains,—one who was forever doing something to try them, yet nothing on which they could try him. Well he knew his unpopularity and sagely judged his opportunities. The liberties he had dared with Warren he would not ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... after two interviews with the Dean he had been appointed to a post in the Cathedral, sat down to it too; and Rosamund and Dion looked in to congratulate Mr. Thrush, and to tell him how delighted they were with his bearing in the procession and his delicately adroit manipulation of his wand. Mr. Thrush received their earnest congratulations with the quiet dignity of one who felt that they did not spring from exaggeration of sentiment. Like all great artists he knew when he had done well. But when Rosamund ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... which they lived was stormed, one White killed at once, the other captured. As the latter stood awaiting execution and consumption, by an extraordinary stroke of fortune a whaling ship ran into the bay. The adroit captive offered, if his life were spared, to decoy his countrymen on shore, so that they could be massacred. The bargain was cheerfully struck; and when an armed boat's crew came rowing to land, the Pakeha, escorted to the seaside by a murderous and expectant throng, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... as he spoke and, adroit in managing men, reached out his hand as though to take the other's and so to clench the matter. Yet his heart leaped in surprise—a surprise which did not leave him wholly clear as to the other's motives—when the latter met his hand with so ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... Lady Anstruthers, whose husband's country seat was but a short journey from London. Bettina and her father had arranged that the fact should be kept from the society paragraphist. This had required some adroit management, but ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... away more and ever more; it is ennobled to the life eternal and strives toward it. The experience of such an old age is irreconcilable with evil, and it only makes the means clearer and the skill more adroit victoriously to battle against wickedness. Deterioration through increasing age is simply the fault of our time, and it necessarily results in every place where society is much corrupted. It is not nature which corrupts us—she produces us in innocence; it is society. He who ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... like his writings, were forceful; his plain dress and unassuming ways helped to make him extremely popular with the common people, in whom he had much greater faith than his cousin John had; and, above all, he was an eminently successful manager of men. Shrewd, wily, adroit, unfailingly tactful, an adept in all the arts of the politician, he is considered to have done more than any other one man, in the years immediately preceding the War of Independence, to mould and direct public opinion ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... many a double meaning. There is, in fact, no lyric song describing natural scenery that may not have beneath it some implied, often indelicate, allusion whose riddle it takes an adroit and practiced ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... the night before the luckless battle. My dear, faithful, skilful Olympus, the prince of leeches, is the only one who can conceal such things. But it would not do to take the old man to the war, and Glaucus is far less adroit. How I missed Olympus during those fatal hours! I seemed a monster even to myself, and he—Antony's eye is only too keen for such matters. What is the love of men? A blackened tooth may prove its destruction. An aspect ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brochures, as they call them, which the French political writers make the frequent medium of their discussions, was lately published at Paris, under the title of 'France, Mexico, and the Confederate States.' It is less a discussion of the Mexican question than an adroit appeal, under cover of it, in behalf of the Southern confederacy. It addresses itself to the enthusiastic temperament of Frenchmen, with the specious sophism, underlying its argument, that the South is fighting ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... brought her to her senses. Towards the end of August the amount of looting became serious. On the other side of the river was a big camp, where troops were sent to refit and rest. Here the thieves played many cunning tricks and there was some killing. They were adroit in stampeding horses and in the confusion that followed making off with several. The sentries were not allowed to load their rifles, as promiscuous firing was a source of danger to the occupants of the tents, which were ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... his wife should take the money away from him. Heber, using the argument which he felt would be of most avail, tried to frighten the man into soberness by picturing his wife's wrath; whereupon the adroit scamp replied that he knew what that would be, and had taken the precaution to have his hair cut short, so that she could not get a grip on it. Martyn could no more have chuckled over this depravity than he could have chuckled over the fallen angels; but Saint ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... Many of the most pronounced opponents of secession were given places in the public service. Toombs, who received the portfolio of State, though a secessionist, was conspicuously a moderate when compared with Rhett and Yancey. The adroit Benjamin, who became Attorney-General, had few points in common with the great extremists of Alabama ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... just serving fowl with truffles. Solon devoured his portion in the twinkling of an eye, and as he was prone to coveting the property of others, he fixed his eyes, full of affectionate longing, on his neighbor's plate. Active, adroit, and watching his opportunity, he seized the moment when the priest was carrying his glass to his lips; to extend his paw, seize a truffle, and swallow it, was the work of but half a second. Beside himself ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... her family, whom she must first consider. She must not add to the embarrassments of a lady who has already too large a visiting list. Unsolicited introductions are bad for both parties. Some large-hearted women of society are too generous by half in this way. A lady should by adroit questions find out how a new acquaintance would be received, whether or not it is the desire of both parties to know each other; for, if there is the slightest doubt existing on this point, she will be blamed by both. It is often the good-natured desire of a sympathetic person ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... true that adroit patrons of the South Carolinian rebellion have a third argument at their service which is no less specious. "All is over," they exclaim, "there is nobody now to sustain, there are no sympathies now to testify; in four days, peace will be ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... deaf-and-dumb alphabet." If I recollect rightly, either Lieutenant Tobey or Lieutenant Morton, both of the 58th Massachusetts, was in the class, and promised to convey the contents of the letter safely across to the soldiers by adroit finger manipulation. We were just finishing the French exercise, when Adjutant Gardner came greatly excited, and ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... the book, in spite of its obvious shortcomings, valuable as a picture of German character and manner. It is impossible to imagine Gretchen in a French or English story of the same class. The French girl would be more adroit and witty; the English girl would expect young men to wait on her; and neither of them would gush as Gretchen did about her old ladies. "My readiness to serve them knew no bounds. To arrange their seats ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... contest. Both boys were unusually strong for their ages, and were, in fact, very evenly matched. But at length Tom, by an adroit movement of the foot, tripped his opponent, and came down on top of him. He did not hold him down, for he was fond of fair play, but ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... imperceptibly and rapidly transforms a boy into a youth. He had already finished the cadet academy and with pride counted himself a junker; although he still walked around in a cadet's uniform, with aversion. He had grown taller, had become better formed and more adroit; the camp life had done him good. He spoke in a bass, and during these months to his most great pride the nipples of his breast had hardened; the most important—he already knew about this—and undeniable sign of virile maturity. Now, in the meanwhile, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... had been elicited at the preliminary investigation; and each nook and cranny of recollection in the mind of Anthony Burk, the station agent; of Belshazzer Tatem, the lame gardener; of lean and acrid Miss Angeline, the seamstress, was illuminated by the lurid light of Mr. Churchill's adroit interrogation. Thus far, the prosecution had been conducted by the District Solicitor, with the occasional assistance of Mr. Wolverton, who, in conjunction with Mr. Dunbar, had appeared as representative of the Darrington ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... we spoke of huckeny pokee, or huckeny ponkee, as it is sometimes called. It means in Rommany "sleight of hand," and also the adroit substitution of a bundle of lead or stones for another containing money or valuables, as practised by Gipsy women. The Gipsy woman goes to a house, and after telling the simple-minded and credulous housewife that there is a treasure ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... was altering a group of flowers that she was working in tapestry. The king showed the corner of his letter to La Valliere, and the latter held out her handkerchief with a look which signified, "Put the letter inside." Then, as the king had placed his own handkerchief upon his chair, he was adroit enough to let it fall on the ground, so that La Valliere slipped her handkerchief on the chair. The king took it up quietly, without any one observing what he did, placed the letter within it, and returned the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... a dream, not understanding the calamity that had fallen upon him. He even commended the adroit way in which the Spaniards had entrapped him, adding that since the landing of the white men he had been made aware of all their doings, but had felt sure of being easily able to overpower them as soon as ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... the nails adroit to steal, unclench the spoil, deliver, Lest yet that haunch voluptuous, those tender hands caressant, 10 Should take an ugly print ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... m'epouser avec deux cent mille francs de moins: je suis bien aise de vous les apporter en mariage. Je suis persuadee que la Comtesse et le Marquis ne se haissent pas. Voyons ce que me diront la-dessus Lepine et Lisette, qui vont venir me parler. L'un, est un Gascon froid,[7] mais adroit; Lisette a de l'esprit. Je sais qu'ils ont tous deux la confiance de leurs maitres; je les interesserai a m'instruire, et tout ira bien. Les voila ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... eligible gentleman as quickly as possible, and to place the heavy responsibility of managing her in the hands of a husband. The stubborn violence of Sir George's nature, the rough side of which had never before been shown to Dorothy, in her became adroit wilfulness of a quality that no masculine mind may compass. But her life had been so entirely undisturbed by opposing influences that her father, firm in the belief that no one in his household would dare to thwart his will, had remained in dangerous ignorance ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... upon this coinage, which was begun in 1652 and kept up for more than thirty years. Such pieces of money used to be called "pine-tree shillings"; but, so far as looks go, the tree might be anything, and an adroit friend of New England once gravely assured the king that it was meant for the royal oak in which his majesty hid himself after the battle ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... named Thais. Alexander made her his favorite and companion, though she was not his wife. Thais did all in her power to captivate and please Alexander during the feast by her vivacity, her wit, her adroit attentions to him, and the display of her charms, and at length, when he himself, as well as the other guests, were excited with wine, she asked him to allow her to have the pleasure of going herself and setting fire, with her own hands, to the great ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a hint that the young man needed looking after, and the adroit host, skilled in managing all kinds of people and in every condition, induced him to return to his room, under the pretence of wishing to taste his fine old brandy, and then kept him there until the lethargic stage set in as the result of his excess. And so an affair, which might have created much ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... that of the anointed King of My People. He has never given down on that point, however much he has applied State Socialism to appease the Socialistic agitation. He has personified Germany and German ambition with an adroit egoism and the sentiment of his inheritance. Those critics who see the machinery of the throne may say that he has the mind of a journalist, quick of perception, ready of assimilation, knowing many ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... taste for the arts. Many fine pictures already hung upon his walls. Knowing this, a certain picture-broker threw himself in his way, and, by adroit management and skilful flattery, succeeded in turning the pent-up and struggling current of the old gentleman's feelings and thoughts in this direction. The broker soon found that he had opened a new and profitable mine. Mr. Alexander had only to see ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... Majesty and what Ministers he knew not, and did not greatly care—that was not his business. The rotundity of the Hanoverian and the lean darkness of the Stuart were one to him. Both could reward an adroit servant.... His vanity, terribly starved and cribbed in his normal existence, now blossomed like a flower. His muddled head was fairly ravished with delectable pictures. He seemed to be set at a great height above mundane troubles, and to look ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... dress and bonnet, as every woman will in the spring (or any time), Fanny Forrester wrote to Willis, of the New Mirror, an appeal which he called "very clever, adroit, and fanciful." ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... sparrows as well; it ought perhaps to be looked upon as a mark of intellectual improvement, for originally their attempts consisted chiefly in a very unsuccessful giving chase to the flying bird, whereas the cats of to-day are skilled in a hundred adroit devices. It has often been a source of enjoyment to watch their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... received either moral or scientific truths unless they had supposed them supernaturally imparted, does it follow they would now give up moral truths any more than scientific because they believed them to have no other origin than wise and noble human hearts?" Overlooking the adroit introduction here of scientific truths as having originally been on the same footing with moral truths—for which we do not think there is any sufficient historic evidence—it is competent to reply that the great ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... speak a little inarticulately; and he missed a few details, but by adroit cross questioning his hearers obtained a clear understanding of the whole situation—starting with the rescue of Bug's brother and ending with the events that had ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... understand how any one, who was anticipating an attack from enemies from whom he could expect no mercy, was able to rest so calmly. Had he entrusted the keeping of his life—for in a struggle he could expect no more quarter for himself than for his companion—to any other one than the bold and adroit warrior whose fame for cunning was as great as for bravery; or had the relations betwixt himself and the savage been different, he would not have remained in the cabin a moment longer. But he shrunk from the betrayal of a want of confidence, and preferred ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... moved from where he stood. And Peredur spurred his horse, and ran at him wrathfully, furiously, fiercely, desperately, and with mighty rage, and he gave him a thrust, deadly-wounding, severe, furious, adroit and strong, under his jaw, and raised him out of his saddle, and cast him a long way from him. And Peredur went back, and left the horse and the arms with the attendant as before, and he went on foot ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... Aristophanes is a fair caricature of what would be always going on. Such an institution would be a perpetual blister applied to the most peccant parts of human nature. It amounts to offering 658 prizes for the most successful flatterer, the most adroit misleader of a body of his fellow-countrymen. Under no despotism has there been such an organized system of tillage for raising a rich crop of vicious courtiership. [7] When, by reason of pre-eminent qualifications ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... social rescue for Aileen. "What was the use?" he often asked himself, as he contemplated her movements, thoughts, plans, as contrasted with the natural efficiency, taste, grace, and subtlety of a woman like Berenice. He felt that the latter could, if she would, smooth over in an adroit way all the silly social antagonisms which were now afflicting him. It was a woman's game, he frequently told himself, and would never be adjusted till he had ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... within hail, both showing English colors, with purposes of mutual deception, affecting to belong to the English Navy. For an hour, through their speaking trumpets, the captains equivocally conversed. A very reserved, adroit, hoodwinking, statesman-like conversation, indeed. At last, professing some little incredulity as to the truthfulness of the stranger's statement, Paul intimated a desire that he should put out a boat and come on board to show his commission, to which the stranger very affably ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... adroit flank movement, rapidly executed, Serena managed to possess herself once again of the seat of honour upon the sofa, thereby interposing a thin but impenetrable barrier between her hostess and the latter's ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... a doubt; so are wolves; there are even monkeys as fierce as tigers. From being a fanatic he became an adroit politician, that is to say that from a wolf he became fox, climbed by imposture from the first steps where the infuriated enthusiasm of the times had placed him, right to the pinnacle of greatness; and the impostor walked on the heads of the prostrated fanatics. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... violent deaths. Ramon had been a great favorite of the dictator, but it was claimed signs were not lacking to show that a rupture between them was near. Watching them now, Yeager could well believe that this might be true. Culvera was suave, adroit, deferential as he raked in his chief's gold, but the irritability of the older man needed only an ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... With all the adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody those minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly unimportant to the great matter immediately in hand—Stevens now propounded his direct inquiry, and now ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... secured, and the officers of a dozen of the shrewdest private detective bureaus are put in possession of the few facts that have been ascertained. In a hundred directions public and private sleuths are set in motion. But their untiring efforts are unavailing. They have to combat a more adroit, more nervy and more intelligent force than they have ever before been brought ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... times he would give a sumptuous entertainment, and in one way or another induce his guests to pay for it. He was only less adroit in coining excuses than Theodore Hook, and had he lived a century later, we might have a volume full of anecdotes to give of his ways and no means. Meanwhile his unfortunate duchess was living on the charity of friends, while her lord and master, when he could ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so often before in this play and in that. And now and again even in his later novels we discover that Daudet has needlessly achieved the adroit arrangement of events so useful in the theatre and not requisite in the library. In "The Nabob," for example, it is the "long arm of coincidence" that brings Paul de Gery to the inn on the Riviera, and to the very next room therein at the exact moment when Jenkins catches up with ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with it. He was something strange and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten with this original person because he was not to be caught by their flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their Parisian's grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature only responded to the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and feeling. And he would very promptly ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... By prudent and adroit management, Stuyvesant swept away many annoyances in the shape of territorial claims. When the Plymouth Company assigned their American domain to twelve persons, they conveyed to Lord Stirling, the proprietor ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... discuss. If he were a professional faster, I would hardly hesitate to say his claim was fraudulent, for I am fully convinced that all the professional fasters are frauds. They are simply adept sleight-of-hand men. They work out some adroit trick by which they may get nourishment into their systems in spite of the always more or less negligent or suspicious watchers, and then advertise for a forty days' ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... beavers most adroit In the craft of waterworks? Were not clyster-pipes invented Through the cleverness ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... comprehend. But this sadness—this shade Which you speak of?... it almost would make me afraid Your gay countrymen, Sir, less adroit must have grown, Since when, as a stripling, at Paris, I own I found in them terrible rivals,—if yet They have all lack'd the skill to console this regret (If regret be the word I should use), or fulfil This desire (if desire ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... father and sister exceedingly. They often blamed me for it; but, as they could not hinder that person from coming into the house, all their efforts were in vain; for I was very adroit in doing anything that was wrong. Now and then, I am amazed at the evil one bad companion can do,—nor could I believe it if I did not know it by experience,—especially when we are young: then is it that the evil must be greatest. Oh, that parents ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... alternative to the policy of impartial non-interference with religious differences among his colonists, and the promotion of mutual forbearance among sects. Lord Baltimore may not have been a profound political philosopher nor a prophet of the coming era of religious liberty, but he was an adroit courtier, like his father before him, and he was a man of practical good sense engaged in an enormous land speculation in which his whole fortune was embarked, and he was not in the least disposed to allow his ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... a rift in the lute (a little matter of expert accounting on a joint operation), the firm of Macnooder and the Tennessee Shad had been dissolved and each financier had assumed an independent and belligerent attitude. The Shad had a certain adroit and devious imagination, but the practical mind was Macnooder. His point of view was purely economic. Hickey might plan the daring manoeuvre which made the conquest of the clapper possible, and revel in the faculty's amazement at the sudden silence of the tyrant will. Macnooder ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... an adroit student of men. No speech could have better served his purpose of inducing his followers to remain with him. It was as if he declared: "You may all desert me, but I will remain true ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... with continued protestations of friendship, was evidently accumulating resources, strengthening alliances, and distributing more extensively among the Indians guns and other weapons of Indian warfare. His warriors soon rivaled the white men in skill as sharp-shooters, and became very adroit in the use of their weapons. They were carefully laying up stores of powder and bullets, and Philip could not conceal the interest with which he endeavored to ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... who wrote in the 'grand style' by daring to be sincere to himself, to the aspect under which human things came to him, to the precise names of precise things. He had a sensitiveness in his soul which perhaps matched the deftness of his fingers, in their adroit, forbidden trade: his soul bent easily from his mother praying in the cloister to the fat Margot drinking in the tavern; he could dream exquisitely over the dead ladies who had once been young, and who had gone like last year's snow, and then turn to the account-book of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the committees, though they performed their duties with much zeal and assiduity, were hardly able to overtake the amount of business before them. It was not without much flattery and coaxing that the adroit Premier, of all men best formed for a general leader of the House of Commons, could persuade the unfortunate members that an unfaltering attendance of some six hours a-day in a sweltering and ill-ventilated room, where their ears were regaled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... we have already made as the messenger sent by Bensef to the bal-shem at Tchernigof. The condition of Itzig and his family had not improved since we last saw him. The little fortune which, if gossip spoke truly, he had acquired by his adroit manoeuvring at that time, had been dissipated; his family had grown larger and was a constant drain upon his meagre resources, while his income appeared to diminish as his expenses increased. Besides, Itzig had a daughter who was now of a marriageable age, and he was obliged ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... truth. No one could tell. Yet her flightiest moods were her most alluring moods. If she had not been so pretty and so adroit at dodging whippings when a child, 'Tite Laboise might not have set Mackinac by the ears as often as she did. But her husband could not comfort himself with this thought as he turned to the shop of madame her aunt, ...
— The Black Feather - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... in college, though brilliant in scholarship, had been critical and perilous. He was a decided favorite with the faculty and students; yet it required a great deal of hard winking and adroit management on the part of his instructors to bring him through without infringement of college laws and proprieties: not that he ever meant the least harm in his life, but that some extra generous impulse, some quixotic generosity, was always tumbling him, neck and ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... exercised his horses, killed his game, and tortured his piano. They seemed to think that the General, once accustomed to their sweetness and animation, could not do without it, and that their society would become indispensable to him. They mingled, too, with their adroit manoeuvres, familiar and delicate attentions, likely to touch an old man. They sat on his knees like children, played gently with his moustache, and arranged in the latest style the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... being frustrated, by persons of adroit cunning. It was maddening. This had ceased to be an adventurous lark. It was to become a fight against weapons whose sole object seemed to be to guard the retreat ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... of the world, is a very safe kind of glory—whether we may not purchase it too dear; especially if we allow education, which ought to be directed to the making of men, to be diverted into a process of manufacturing human tools, wonderfully adroit in the exercise of some technical industry, but good ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... nestling upon the blossom of a helianthus. Cudjo approached it stealthily, and with an adroit movement inverted the glass upon it, so as to inclose both bee and flower; at the same instant one of his hands—upon which was a strong buckskin glove—was slipped under the mouth of the glass, ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... familiar and favourite occupation;—the writing of a long letter to his brother George in America. This epistle is, as one might expect, almost entirely concerned with the art of poetry—what else has Keats to write about?—whether from the side of technique, or inspiration. He dwells on the adroit management of open and close vowels—he shows how "the poetry of earth is never dead;" he discusses the need of constant application to work, and how "the genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man." ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... all moved away together. At the hotel, however, he vanished, and it was only after a little adroit persuasion later that Mr. Pym got him to accept an invitation to dine with them in their private room ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... once a courtship as ardent and eager as it was open and avowed. His people, florid and colorful in temperament, are natural wooers, free of the language of affection and adroit in its use. Grant was very much in love with the girl, and she meant even more to him than that, since in aspiring to her his ambition stepped hand in hand ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... real change in their relationship, but neither of them understood it. The change was that Rodney was no longer playing. Little by little he had dropped his artistic posing for her benefit, his cynical cleverness, his adroit simulation of passion. He no longer dramatized himself, because rather often he forgot himself entirely. His passion had ceased to be spurious, and it was none the less real because he loved not a real woman, but one of ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the Castle and Imperial Wardenship of Nurnberg, some six hundred years ago or more, has consistently travelled one road, and this a very notable one. 'We, as I myself the royal Frederick still do, have all along proceeded,' namely, 'in the way of adroit Machiavelism, as skilful gamblers in this world's business, ardent gatherers of this world's goods; and in brief as devout worshippers of Beelzebub, the grand regulator and rewarder of mortals here below. Which creed we, the Hohenzollerns, have found, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... I to write on Prudence, whereof I have little, and that of the negative sort? My prudence consists in avoiding and going without, not in the inventing of means and methods, not in adroit steering, not in gentle repairing. I have no skill to make money spend well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees my garden discovers that I must have some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate lubricity[661] and people without perception. Then I have the same title to write ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was a process to which our forefathers were compelled by their want of drains, and consisted in leaving a house entirely empty for a time, to have the windows opened, the rushes renewed, and to adroit of a general purification. Families who had the means generally "went to sweeten" at ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... awaited the despatch of his card, Hedworth Westerling caught a glimpse of his person in a panel glass so convenient as to suggest that an adroit hotel manager might have placed it there for the delectation of well-preserved men of forty-two. He saw a face of health that was little lined; brown hair that did not reveal its sprinkle of gray ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... on the day of our departure, and with an adroit privacy, which in a layman would have been sly, presented her, in right of his holy calling, with a little book, the binding of which was mediaeval and costly, and whose letter-press dealt in a way which he commended, with some points on which she was not ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... line of march sharply to the right, sweeping along by the side of the force through which they had just cut their way, the musketeers on the flank firing into them as they passed. The movement was an adroit one, for in the gathering darkness the enemy in front would not be able to distinguish friends from foes, or to perceive the nature of the movement. For a few minutes they were unmolested, then the course was again changed, and Charlie was beginning to ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... it applies to you, Mr. Raffles," the other was adroit enough to add. "Mr. Garland was no friend of mine, and he was a fool, whereas I hope I may say that you're the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... interest to the plans and operation of human governments. They can do little by actual force. Nearly all the power that is held, even by the most despotic executive, must be based on an adroit management of the principles of human nature, so as to lead men voluntarily to cooperate with the ruler, in his plans. Even an army could not be got into battle, in many cases, without a most ingenious arrangement, by ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Barholm would never presume to attempt. And yet he seemed to have chosen her deliberately. He had set her literally at the head of his house. And Palliser, having heard a vague rumor that he had actually settled a decent income upon her, had made adroit inquiries ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... early date, and gave rise to the great realistic-nominalistic controversy.[184:5] A large part of the logical discussion in the Platonic dialogues is an outgrowth of the earlier "eristic," a form of disputation in favor with the sophists, and consisting in the adroit use of ambiguity.[184:6] It is natural that in its first conscious self-criticism thought should discover the need of definite terms. The perpetual importance of definition has been largely due to the great prestige in modern philosophy ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the forward push of his vigorous shoulders and the creased lines on his youthful forehead, asked if it were not true that the oil had been held up by a union jurisdictional dispute? There was a spattering of applause from the listeners at this adroit question and one man in the back of the room cried "Sha—" and then sat ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... fils show an ingenious combination of this subdivision with the anecdotal play. And Pinero—our exception—how would "Percival" classify His House in Order, which has a strong story? In reality it is a very adroit mixture of story, idea, and comedy of character, this is the case with the other ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... position. Mazarin has no such antecedents. He is not even a Frenchman; he does not even look like a noble. That he is clever we may be sure, or Richelieu would not have recommended him as his successor. But I fancy that it is the cleverness of an adventurer, and however adroit, an adventurer, and especially a foreign adventurer, will not hold power in France very long without exciting the hatred of the community and the hostility of the nobles. However, I suppose you are ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... Rose was artful, scheming, adroit, and dangerous. There are stories without number of him; and I will relate one or two solely because they characterise him, and those to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre |
