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More "Delicate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is chiefly as one of the most delicate of musicians. It is the lightness of his brush stroke that makes us marvel at the third act of "Tristan," the first scene of the "Walkuere." It is the delicacy of his fancy, the lilac fragrance pervading his inventions, that ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... disenchanted sage sat before him, with bitterness on his lips and irony in his speech and eyes. That sour wisdom, the measureless belief in himself and his opinions, with the independence which accompanied it, were found in a slender, delicate, and rosy-faced youth, with eyes as blue as forget-me-nots, and came from lips slightly faded, but marked by a tiny, youthful moustache. Besides, the perfect elegance of manner, the aestheticism and irreproachable grace in movements, in voice, in compliments, the utterance ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... urged to the task by "criticisms both friendly and unfriendly" (as he says) he did it; and did it wisely, because sparingly. But in his prefatory words he in a measure protests. He says:—"In this age, distinguished for almost everything more than sincerity, there are some people who would seem too delicate and refined to read their Bibles." And he concludes with the appeal,—"But the unsophisticated lovers of nature, who have not had the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the French language, I have no doubt will thank me for interpreting to them these honest and truthful fictions of the ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... vision spread itself out before the wondering man. The low roof and wide wings of the Briars, with the delicate traceries of vines over the walls and gables, shone a soft, old-brick pink in the glow of moonlight, and over and around it all gushed a very shower of shimmering white blossoms, surrounding the house ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the tread of many feet, and the sound of youthful voices, as one by one the pupils came back to their accustomed places. For a time Mary was undecided whether to return or not, for much as she desired an education, she could not help feeling delicate about receiving it from a stranger; but Mrs. Mason, to whom all her thoughts and feelings were confided, advised her to return, and accordingly the first day of the term found her again at Mount Holyoke, where she ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... like, anchored and lying with their valvular shells half open; while a couple of yards away lay one monster about two feet long, a bivalve with ponderous shells, whose edges were waved in three folds, and a glance inside whose opening showed a lining of the most delicate pinky tint. ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... now most delicate, as far as Buonaparte was concerned. His suggestion of a local militia contemplated the extension of the revolutionary movement to Corsica. His appeal to the National Assembly demanded merely the right to do what one French city or district after another had done: to establish local ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... peace. I got no aid from either. I did, however, receive aid from the Emperor of Germany. His Ambassador at St. Petersburg was the one Ambassador who helped the American Ambassador, Mr. Meyer, at delicate and doubtful points of the negotiations. Mr. Meyer, who was, with the exception of Mr. White, the most useful diplomat in the American service, rendered literally invaluable aid by insisting upon himself ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... forefathers with clear consciences, and on the other hand we now believe that many things are right that were held by our forefathers to be wrong. There was a time when slavery did not offend the most delicate conscience, and if we go still further back, we shall reach a time when theft was almost the only crime recognized and when wholesale murder was a virtue. Every age had its own standards, and it would be absurd to argue that an act was wrong if it received the ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... therefore, a kind of experimental physics relating to his own preservation. From this, before he has fully understood his place here on earth, he is turned aside to speculative studies. While yet his delicate and pliable organs can adapt themselves to the objects upon which they are to act, while his senses, still pure, are free from illusion, it is time to exercise both in their peculiar functions, and to learn the perceptible relations between ourselves and outward ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... has a woman's body, exquisitely slim and young, with the breasts of a virgin. Very chaste in attitude, she holds in her hand a long-stemmed lotus flower, but by a contrast that nonplusses and paralyses you the delicate shoulders support the monstrosity of a huge lioness' head. The lappets of her bonnet fall on either side of her ears almost down to her breast, and surmounting the bonnet, by way of addition to the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... the diverse seasons of the year) would be difficult. Yet theirs one I cannot forgeet, a poor fellow that goes thorow the toune wt a barrell of wine on his back; in his on hand a glass full halfe wt win; in his other a pint stoop; over his arm hinges a servit; and thus marched he crieng his delicate wine for 5 souse the pot thats our pint; or 4 souse or cheaper it may be. He lets any man taste it that desires, giving them ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... called, and one of the birds came forward, on delicate legs. Its grey speckled back was very elegant, it rolled its full, dark-blue neck as it moved to her. She crouched down. 'Joey, dear,' she said, in an odd, saturnine caressive voice, 'you're bound to find me, aren't you?' She put her face forward, and the bird rolled ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... brave burgomaster, Adrian Van der Werf, as he walked with stately pace, his daughter Jaqueline, appropriately called the Lily of Leyden, leaning on his arm. She was fair and graceful as the flower from which she derived her name, her features chiselled in the most delicate mould, her countenance intelligent and animated, though at present graver than usual. After leaving their house in the Broedestrat, the principal street of Leyden, they proceeded towards an elevation in the centre of the city, ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... the visitor arrived. Fresh flowers filled the vases, for it was early June, and the garden-beds were sweet with roses and lilies of the valley. The older girls wore new summer muslins, and Johnnie in white, her short curls tied back with a blue ribbon, looked unusually pretty and delicate. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... nearly always at his bedside, but this was no more than could be expected from a tender-hearted nurse towards a poor fellow who had fallen among enemies, and whose life depended upon unremitting care. The young man had throughout acted like a gentleman, was cautious, delicate, reserved, and quite above taking advantages of his position to toy with the feelings of Pauline. Furthermore, the girl had long been devoted to Major Hardinge, and the Major was devoted to her. Indeed, their relations might be said to be of the tenderest character. Finally, this American ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... was reposing himself, the goddess of fortune, looking like a lotus and assuming a personal embodiment, rendered her allegiance to him. When he became thus possessed of good fortune, that famous and delicate-looking creature appeared to all like the moon at its full. And high-minded Brahmanas worshipped that mighty being, and the Maharshis (great rishis) then said as follows to Skanda, 'O thou born of the golden egg, mayst thou be prosperous and mayst thou become ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... it all, I don't know girls. That's what worries me—she's such a little thing." He paused a moment. "I hope it's all right," he said, "marrying her. It seems pretty rough on them sometimes, I think—don't you—I fancy she's delicate and all that." Lionel nodded. "It does seem rather beastly," he admitted, "their having to have a hard time, I mean—but if they care for you—I suppose it works out all right." Winn paid no attention to this fruitless optimism. He went on with his study of Estelle. "She's—she's religious ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... on various inherited malformations and diseases, I will confine myself to one organ, that which is the most complex, delicate, and probably best-known in the human frame, namely, the eye, with its accessory parts. (12/13. Almost any other organ might have been selected. For instance Mr. J. Tomes 'System of Dental Surgery' 2nd edition 1873 page 114 ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... silence of double doors and of padded walls was upon the private room of the down-town office. Across the littered, ink-stained desk a man and a woman faced each other. Threads of gray lightened the hair of each. Faint lines, delicate as pencillings, marked the forehead of the woman and radiated from the angles of her eyes. A deep fissure unequally separated the brows of the man, and on his shaven face another furrow added firmness to the mouth. Their eyes met squarely, without a motion from faces imperturbable ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... times Henley's verse is imperialistic, over-muscular and strident, his noisy moments are redeemed not only by his delicate lyrics but by his passionate enthusiasm for nobility in whatever cause it was joined. He never disdained the actual world in any of its moods—bus-drivers, hospital interiors, scrubwomen, a panting train, the squalor of London's alleys, all found a voice in his lines—and ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... Nouvelle Heloise we find this language: "No disputing is here heard—that is, in the literary coteries—no epigrams are made; they reason, but not in the stiff professional tone; you find fine jokes without puns, wit with reason, principles with freaks, sharp satire and delicate flattery with serious rules of morality. They speak of everything in order that every one may have to say something, but they never exhaust the questions raised; from the dread of getting tedious they bring them forth only occasionally, shorten them hastily, and never allow a dispute to arise. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... seen but little of their mother, but her occasional glimpses of her had left her with a haloed image of a delicate, spiritual face that grew more and more Madonna-like with memory. The nimbus of the Divine Mother, as she herself had dreamed of her, had seemed indeed to illumine that ...
— Different Girls • Various
... this affair never pass our lips. We must spare our dear friend's feelings. Her constitution is too delicate ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... he said, "and the small bone is broken, but you will take no harm, save for the scars which must remain." Then, having treated the wounds with ointment, he wrapped the limb with such a delicate touch that it scarcely pained me, saying that by the morrow the swelling would have gone down and he would set ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... them, all old maids (Georgetown had five or six houses of four old maids in my childhood). These were in two sets, but the two older ones far outlived the two younger, who were always very retiring and delicate. When the last two were up in their nineties, being bed-ridden, one on one floor, the other on another, each with a nurse, they used to send messages to each other and exchange the novels which they read over and over again. At last, one night in the winter, the old house ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... pleasure itself is, and what its character is; so as to do away with all the mistakes of ignorant people, and in order that it may be clearly understood how dignified, and temperate, and virtuous that system is, which is often accounted voluptuous, effeminate, and delicate. For we are not at present pursuing that pleasure alone which moves nature itself by a certain sweetness, and which is perceived by the senses with a certain pleasurable feeling; but we consider that the greatest of all pleasures which is felt when all pain is removed. For since, when we ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... operative when the machinery was put to the test, or even while the work of dismantling and inspection was being carried on. There were, however, discovered, as a result of this rigid investigation of every mechanical detail, many artful cases of pipe-plugging, of steel nuts and bolts concealed in delicate mechanical parts, of ground glass in oil-pipes and bearings, of indicators that were so adjusted as to give inaccurate readings, of fire-extinguishers filled with gasoline—in fact, the manifold deceits which the Germans practised would make ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... exchequer without increasing the burdens of the tax-payer, and it is probable that the early return of prosperity to Italy, which was described in the last chapter, was, in great measure, due to the just and statesmanlike administration of Liberius. In the delicate business of allotting to the Gothic warriors the third part of the soil of Italy, which seems to have been their recognised dividend on Theodoric's Italian speculation, he so acquitted himself as to ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... BROTHER—I punctually received your third letter, containing a description of your unhappy and delicate situation. You may be assured that I perceive it as clearly as you do yourself; and I pity you the more because, in truth, I do not know what advice to give you. You are, like me, the victim of the former ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... to wave about. Poor sugary things, you're half-melted. You're frightened of the rain, poor delicate things. [Drinks.] ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... within their own limits, they are supreme. Half the modern romance, and many people think the better half, is written by women. That is perfectly natural, an obvious result of modern society. The romance to which our age best lends itself is the romance of ordinary society, with delicate shades of character and feeling in place of furious passion or picturesque incident. Women are by nature and training more subtle observers of these social nuances and refined waverings of the heart than any ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... pretty fine products. And when you consider that Tompion, at least, began life as a blacksmith it is the more remarkable. Think what it meant to work out of such a crude, rough trade into one so delicate! Still, it was an age of marvels—a strange, fantastic, interesting era in which to have lived. Many members of the Clockmakers' Company were blacksmiths who had graduated into this higher calling and ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... as day was breaking we got our anchor on board and steamed in toward the town. The comparatively shallow water of the bay, in the first gray light of dawn, had the peculiar opaque, bluish-green color of a stream fed by an Alpine glacier; but as the light increased it assumed a brilliant but delicate translucent green of purer quality, contrasting finely with the scarlet flush in the east which heralded the rising, but still hidden, sun. On our right, as we entered the wide, spacious harbor, were two or three flat-topped, table-like islands, or "keys," which, in general outline and appearance, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... danger, but the contrast between the plain speaking of the Bible in these matters, and the general affectation of secrecy outside its pages. An additional point of importance is the fact that in the Bible sexual topics are handled in a way which is by no means always delicate. I may recall the frequency with which the idea of the whore is employed for purposes of comparison; and I may refer also to the occasional use of strongly erotic language, as, for example, in the Song of Solomon. ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... The delicate frame and feeble health observable in Grace Aguilar throughout her life, displayed itself from infancy; from the age of three years, she was almost constantly under the care of some physician, and, by their advice, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... for the cruel fever to burn itself out. Dr. Longstreet told Philip that the fever had undoubtedly been contracted in the hospital, but it was not malignant, and would be little dangerous if Ruth were not so worn down with work, or if she had a less delicate constitution. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... spot amid the hills, A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place No singing skylark ever poised himself— But the dell, Bathed by the mist is fresh and delicate As vernal cornfield, or the unripe flax When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve, The level sunshine ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Why tremblest thou? Thou lovest it, then, my wine? Wouldst more of it? See, how glows, Through the delicate, flush'd marble, The red, creaming liquor, Strown with dark seeds! Drink, then! I chide thee not, Deny thee not my bowl. Come, stretch forth thy hand, then—so! ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... barkings of distant dogs, voices of women at the fountain, the songs of birds in the lower orchards. The green carpet of the plain is dappled by passing shadows thrown upon it by the clouds; the landscape has the charm of delicate tint and a sort of languid grace. Already I am full of a sense of well-being, I am tasting the joys of that contemplative state in which the soul, issuing from itself, becomes as it were the soul of a country or a landscape, and feels living within it a multitude of lives. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... days an' 'olidays, an' I'm damned if I know what for. For money,—just money stewin' in its own juice in a bank,—not money I can use. Well, everybody's trained so, I'm thinkin'. Anyway I took it friendly of you to put it so delicate, so fanciful as you did, so as them charity ladies didn't smell a rat. I appreciated that, an' thought the more of what you said. I'm not a ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... layers was a filling, which followed in a measure Dotty's idea of novelty. It was a combination of confectioners' icing, whipped cream, pineapple juice and a few delicate feathery flakes of freshly grated cocoanut. This delectable mixture was novel and of ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... in a generation of naturalists, and he might have been a mere naturalist among them. There are traces enough in his work of that alert sense of outward things which, in the pictures of that period, fills the lawns with delicate living creatures, and the hill-sides with pools of water, and the pools of water with flowering reeds. But this was not enough for him; he is a visionary painter, and in his visionariness he resembles Dante. Giotto, the tried ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... mineral is quite abundant and in fine masses, not of the great beauty and size of those taken from the Erie Tunnel, but still of great uniqueness. The mineral is recognized by its peculiar appearance, as is shown in Fig. 6, where it may be seen that it is in groups of fine delicate fibers about an inch long, diverging from a point into fan-shaped groups. The fibers are very tightly packed together, as are also the groups; they are very tough individually, and have a hardness of 4, and a specific gravity of about ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... manpower problems as well as the disposition of the fleet. But Knox was a personable man and a forceful speaker, and he was particularly useful to the President in congressional liaison and public relations. Roosevelt preferred to work through the secretary in dealing with the delicate question of black participation in the Navy. Knox himself was fortunate in his immediate official family. James V. Forrestal became under secretary in August 1940; during the next year Ralph A. Bard, a Chicago investment banker, joined the department as ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the Vicar. "How exquisite those delphiniums are!" he added after introductions were complete; "such a delicate blue! I should not have intruded had I known you had a party"—he waved his hand towards the single tennis-court, around which the wistful racquet-bearers were now (as it seemed) some thousands strong, "but it is always a pleasure"—he turned to me—"to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... cause. When Parliament was about to be dissolved, he was again invited to stand for Pontefract by a numerous deputation; he again hesitated, but finally accepted; Lord Mexborough withdrew, and he was elected without opposition. In person he is tall and finely formed, full of strength and grace, with delicate hands and feet, his face coarse and with a bad expression, his head set well on his shoulders, and remarkably graceful and even dignified in his actions and manners; totally without education, he ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the judgment and intelligence which has a general value that more than compensates the apparent specialization of manual functions. The very fact that the worker's services are still required is a proof that his work is less automatic (i.e. more intelligent) than that of the most delicate machinery in use; and since the work which requires less intelligence is continually being taken over by machinery, the work which remains would seem to require a constantly higher average of intelligence. It is, of course, true that there are certain ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the rose, like the flush in the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the lips of the bride. But the thorn had not yet reached her heart, so the rose's heart remained ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... physiognomy in repose was one of pain, and, in action, of power; the effect of the whole was not unlike that which is produced by the face of a high-bred horse, with its deep eyes and dilated nostrils. He was barely above medium height, and his figure was almost delicate. When he spoke his voice startled you—it was so low and deep to come from that slight frame. His lameness, which was slight, was due to a long-standing ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... gave rise to a notorious lawsuit, two inventors having had this ingenious apparatus patented on the same day and at nearly the same hour. This is one example among a thousand. In the history of dynamo-electric machines it is an equally delicate matter to fix upon the one to whom belongs the honor of having first clearly conceived the possibility of engendering ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... weighing not less than 18 lbs. They are a beautiful fish, and when first taken out of the water and struggle and flounder in the sun, they exhibit all the colors of the rainbow, but they soon expire, and when dead they are of a delicate white color. The trout, pike, and muscalonge devour them without mercy. Some of these voracious kinds have been caught with the remains of six white-fish ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... the old hunter, "you'd better come back to camp an' we'll see what we c'n do to improve them delicate attentions you've received. An' don't be quite the same kind of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... excepted, until everything was cut away. To the landsman it may appear a small job to cut ropes with axes, and thus liberate a vessel from the encumbrance and danger of falling spars; but the seaman knows it is often a most delicate and laborious piece of duty. The ocean is never quiet; and a vessel that is not steadied by the pressure of her sails, frequently rolls in a way to render it no slight task even to maintain one's footing on her decks; frigates ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... very good," said Cassandra, flushing all over her delicate face; "and I am sure," she added, "if it is possible for me to help one like you, I should ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... been only a few days ago, and Ray had shown the quilt, so rich and lustrous, and delicate with beautiful shellwork stitchery,—to the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... These delicate contrivances do not readily settle down in a new home, and for a week I ignored the barometer. This may have seemed unfriendly to a newcomer, yet surely it was kind not to observe any faults it might display during its novitiate. When on the Saturday ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... about this time our hero became sensible of the power of love; we mean of that sort which has more of the mind than the body, and is tender, delicate and constant; the object of which remains constantly fixed in the mind, and will not admit of any partner with it. It was in the town of Newcastle, so famous for its coal-works, which our hero visited out of curiosity, appearing there undisguised ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... Viceroy. The old noble, lifting it to the light, scanned the closely-written, faded lines on the tiny scrap of delicate parchment. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... character. The land is exceedingly fertile and bears in abundance all tropical products, particularly rice, sugar, and the abaca, a variety of the banana-tree. The fibres of the abaca are employed in making the finest and most delicate fabrics, of which from three to four million dollars' worth are exported annually. The exports of sugar amount to about four millions and a half, of gold to two millions and a half, and of coffee and tobacco close on to a million ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... James' version, manifestly entered early into the youth's ardent, prophetic soul, and, as a writer, had much to do in forming his magnificent prose style. Ruskin was in early years—indeed, far on in his manhood—in delicate health, and consequently he was educated privately till he passed to Christ Church College, Oxford, where, at the age of twenty, he won the Newdigate prize for verse, and graduated in 1842. His taste for art was manifested at ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... Jerusalem, an Oration spoken at the opening of the Ferrarese academy, the marriage of Leonora's sister Lucrezia with the Prince of Urbino, and the society of Leonora herself, who led the retired life of a person in delicate health, and was fond of the company of men of letters, helped to divert him from melancholy recollections; and a journey to France, at the close of the year following, took him into scenes that were not only totally new, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... failure, and she bit her lips in chagrin and hurt her delicate hands tugging vainly at various knobs and slides. But again and again she tried, and at last, when she was about to give up in despair, she heard a sudden click and the ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... in which men whom it is desirable for the Sovereign to honour are unable, from delicate health or slender fortunes, to enter upon an official career. For instance, a poor nobleman may dread the expenses of the Consulship; a man illustrious by his wisdom may be unable to bear the worries of a Praefecture; an ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... tuck up. Kimmer, a wench, a gossip; a wife. Kin', kind. King's-hood, the 2d stomach in a ruminant (equivocal for the scrotum). Kintra, country. Kirk, church. Kirn, a churn. Kirn, harvest home. Kirsen, to christen. Kist, chest, counter. Kitchen, to relish. Kittle, difficult, ticklish, delicate, fickle. Kittle, to tickle. Kittlin, kitten. Kiutlin, cuddling. Knaggie, knobby. Knappin-hammers, hammers for breaking stones. Knowe, knoll. Knurl, knurlin, dwarf. Kye, cows. Kytes, bellies. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... but a kindly and delicate mode of relieving me from the dangers of war. I have, as you must be conscious, no practical knowledge of business. Hebert can be implicitly trusted, and will carry out your views with a zeal equal to mine, and with ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "That delicate-looking lady over yonder, walking under the trees. She walks all the time, back and forth, no matter how cold it is. We can hardly keep her in the house. Her husband was killed during the war. She is a nice lady and tries to buck up for her children's sake, she says. ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... seams. You will see tracts of leafless beeches of a faint yellowish grey, and leafless oaks a little ruddier in the hue. Then zones of pine of a solemn green; and, dotted among the pines, or standing by themselves in rocky clearings, the delicate, snow-white trunks of birches, spreading out into snow-white branches yet more delicate, and crowned and canopied with a purple haze of twigs. And then a long, bare ridge of tumbled boulders, with bright sandbreaks between them, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Vincenza, "I am in a delicate position. It is not as if I were acting for myself. I am only my sister's agent—my half-sister's, I should say—poor little Catalina;" and the speaker broke off with a sigh and rolled a fresh cigarette ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... A delicate pink flush might have been seen to spread itself over Lord Dreever's face. He began to look like an angry rabbit. He had not a great deal of pride in his composition, but the thought of the ignominious ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... the circumference of the hips, the person will rock in walking, and plant his feet heavily upon the ground. If greater, so that the chief weight is above the limbs, the step will be light, as is familiarly seen in corpulent men, whose delicate mode of walking we witness with ever-recurring surprise. If the shoulders slope downwards, with the spine bending inwards, the individual 'cannot throw a stone, or handle firearms with dexterity.' When inclined forwards, and well relieved from the body, he may be ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... were often decorated with pictures of Sh[o]ji, with their cups and dippers. For, at these picnics, many men get drunk; so much so indeed, that after a while the master of the feast orders very poor and cheap wine to be served to the guests. He also replaces the delicate wine cups of egg-shell porcelain, with big thick tea-cups or wooden bowls, for the guests when drunk, do not know ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... "Faith, this is a delicate operation; and the paper may be hidden elsewhere into the bargain. We venture, we lose or we win; only this is somewhat out of my line of work. Self-preservation is not theft; let us ease our conscience with this sophism . . . Ha! the ladder. Those twenty louis were well spent. This ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... wiped every inch of plaster—sides and top—by means of a rag tied over the end of the broom. After that, in her oldest dress, with her head wrapped up, she tinted her retreat, the mop-boards included, a delicate blue. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... method of death was, Vezin certainly did not "live according to scale" so far as this particular event in his otherwise uneventful life was concerned; and to hear him recount it, and watch his pale delicate features change, and hear his voice grow softer and more hushed as he proceeded, was to know the conviction that his halting words perhaps failed sometimes to convey. He lived the thing over again each ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... conjugal life and the sweet blessings of pure love. They are pervaded by the intensity of joy, and full of roguish allusions to the young wife's shamefacedness, arousing the jest and merriment of her guests, and her delicate shrinking in the presence of longed-for happiness. Characteristically enough his admonitions to feed the fire of love are always followed by a sigh for ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... looked at the delicate body of the other man, and added: 'It wasn't too much for ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... betoken ignorance and others indicate extreme carelessness on the part of the writers by the inapt choice of their prepositions, which often express relations so delicate in their distinctions that nothing short of an extended study of the best writers will confer the desired skill. We present ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... walk, for fear of interview, the weakling's walk * Who sees two lion whelps the fount draw nigh: My cloak acts sword, my heart's perplex'd with fright, * Lest jealous hostile eyes th' approach descry: Till sudden hapt I on a delicate maid * Like desert-doe that fails ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... impression such an incident must make, when passions, hopes, and fears, were all afloat—think, too, how your brother and I, had we been ungenerous, could have added to these sensations! There was a man not so delicate. Colonel Barr'e rose—and this attended with a striking circumstance; Sir Edward Deering, one of our noisy fools, called out, "Mr. Barr'e,"(498) The latter seized the thought with admirable quickness, and said to the Speaker, who, in pointing ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... ill, her delicate Ladyship! So ill she just can't go on this evening! Wonder how long she thinks such an excuse will keep Lord Harold off when I want him on!" growled Obermuller, throwing her note over to me. He'd have liked to throw it at me ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... been drinking, but he was not intoxicated. He was slightly flushed, his eyes were abnormally bright. He looked, for the moment; rather amiable. Nikky was to learn, later on, how easily his smile hardened to a terrifying grin. The long, rather delicate nose of his family, fine hair growing a trifle thin, and a thin, straight body this was Karl, King of Karnia, and long-time ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... be sure, pitch has to be reckoned as a rude guide in setting the tones; but if pitch alone were the guide we would never attain to any degree of perfection in scale forming. We could never adjust our tones to that delicate fineness so much appreciated, which gives to ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... the moon, just risen, showed the form of Lady Vargrave slowly approaching the house. By the light, her features seemed more pale than usual; and her slight and delicate form, with its gliding motion and noiseless step, had in it ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a little timid as she presented herself at the tiny home the next afternoon. The girl herself answered her rap, and invited her into the wee living room. In an easy chair at one side of the fireplace reclined a delicate, ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... institutions, now more exactly poised and adjusted, to try the hazardous experiment of a new constitution, and renounce the mature wisdom of our ancestors for the crude whimseys of turbulent innovators! Besides the certain and inconceivable mischiefs of civil war, are not the perils apparent, which the delicate frame of liberty must inevitably sustain amidst the furious shock of arms? Whichever side prevails, she can scarcely hope to remain inviolate, and may suffer no less, or rather greater injuries from the boundless pretensions of forces engaged in her cause, than from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... was youthful in years and delicate in physique, so that her lessons were irregular. Besides herself, there were only two waiting girls, who remained in attendance during the hours of study, so that Y-ts'un was spared considerable trouble and had a suitable opportunity to attend to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... not over uncharitable to suppose that the statesman, practised in courts of law, and a powerful member of a triumphant cabal, might find and use means of advantage over his less skilful and less favoured adversary; and if it had been supposed that Sir William Ashton's conscience had been too delicate to profit by these advantages, it was believed that his ambition and desire of extending his wealth and consequence found as strong a stimulus in the exhortations of his lady as the daring aim of Macbeth ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... candle light played curious and fantastic tricks with their forms and faces, lighting up now and then the wrinkled, wizened face of the old man, with the horn-rimmed spectacles perched upon his nose, and now and then the delicate profile of the girl, the smooth, fair tresses ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... has yet been able to explain the delicate mechanism of the human soul; its fleeting and varying emotions of joy and sadness, its gleams of hope and shades of despair come and go, controlled by influences which entirely elude human scrutiny. In these days of gloom, rays of hope occasionally ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... old city—a large part of which we still describe as mediaeval—in an atmosphere totally unlike that of Italy, beside her devout brothers, Hubert and Jan, was Margaretha. When we examine the minute detail and delicate finish of the pictures of Jan van Eyck, we see a reason why the sister should have been a miniaturist, and do not wonder that with such an example before her she should have excelled in this art. The fame of her ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... puffing his pipe rather fiercely, in some contempt at this trivial discussion. He had no ear for music himself, and never went to church, as being of the medical profession, and likely to be in requisition for delicate cows. But the butcher, having music in his soul, had listened with a divided desire for Tookey's defeat and for ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... senses, without any perceivable defect of their organization, nature has made such a remarkable difference, and formed such an unequal distribution of the intellectual powers, that one shall be so organized as to be stupid, and the other be a man of genius, the question will become more delicate. I confess that, at first, we cannot consider the great inequality in the minds of men, without admitting that there is the same difference between them as between bodies, some of which are weak and delicate, while others are strong and robust. What can here occasion such variations from the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... whole nature is sensitive to the imprint of time, and the way in which time invades her, steals throughout her, finally lays her low, Tolstoy tracks and renders from end to end. And in War and Peace his hand is not less delicate and firm. The progress of time is never broken; inexorably it does what it must, carrying an enthusiastic young student forward into a slatternly philosopher of middle life, linking an over-blown matron with the memory of a girl dancing ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... herself up to as much of the baby as Delphy grudgingly allowed her, sewing, in the long intervals, on tiny slips as delicate as cobwebs. Even this occupation was not wholly a peaceful one. "Des wait twel he begin ter crawl, en' den whar'l dose spider webs be?" propounded Delphy in the afternoon of the third day. "Dey'll ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... a letter in a delicate hand, setting forth the old distress,—She is poor, and she has looking to her for support those that are poorer and more helpless than herself: she has tried sewing, but can make little at it; tried teaching, but cannot now get a school,—all places being filled, and more than filled; at last has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... sparkling with priceless mosaics, in those brilliant colours which Eastern taste alone can combine so as to avoid gaudiness, arches and columns of ineffable grace and richness, halls with domes emulating the sky, or else ceiled with white marble lacework, whose tracery seemed delicate and varied as the richest Venice point! But the wonderful beauty seemed to him to have in it something terrible and weird, like that fairyland of his native country, whose glory and charm is overshadowed by the knowledge of the teinds to be paid to hell. It ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... allowed him to use the release of Sanguily as a pretext for disagreeing with the government, and resigning his position in Cuba. The Spaniards seem to be most careful of their friends' feelings, and most polite in all their dealings with one another. It is a pity that this very delicate code of honor does not prevent them from murdering helpless prisoners, and ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Matilda turned to see what he was pointing at. A glass liqueur stand, with a crystal flask and tiny cups to match; as pretty and elegant as it could be; even rare in its delicate richness among so many delicate and rich things. The others were eager in their praise. ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... be she. The problem would have been quite simple even for Charlotte—but she wanted to go. Therefore her tender conscience vacillated. When you remember that Charlotte Bronte's conscience was, next to her genius, the largest, and at the same time the most delicate part of her, and that her love for her own people was a sacred passion, her words are sufficiently charged with meaning. A passion for M. Heger is, psychologically speaking, superfluous. You can prove anything by detaching words from their ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... bag of tarletane or Swiss muslin, made as tastefully as you please, and stuffing it full of the flowers. Another delightful scent is the mellilotte, or sweet clover, which grows wild in many parts of the country, and has, when dried, a fragrance like that of the tonquin-bean, only more delicate. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... is of fundamental importance for humanity, whose happiness and well-being depend largely on the best solution of this important problem. In dealing with such a delicate subject I shall endeavor to avoid narrow-mindedness and prejudice; I shall avoid tiresome quotations, and shall only employ technical terms when necessary, as they rather interfere with the comprehension of the subject. I shall take care to explain ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... eight days ago I was honored with your favor of the 20th ultimo. Your friendship, sir, in transmitting to me the anonymous letter you had received, lays me under the most grateful obligations, and if my acknowledgments can be due for anything more, it is for the polite and delicate terms in which you have been pleased to ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... of all his miseries real or imaginary, Swift had at least one pleasure. Among the many people making up the great household there was a little girl of seven named Esther Johnson. She was a delicate little girl with large eyes and black hair. She and Swift soon grew to be friends, and he spent his happiest hours teaching her to read and write. It is pleasant to think of the gloomy, untrained genius throwing off his gloom and ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... stared at him, their hearts too full of pity to do him the last favor one can ask of another, from the midst of the hordesmen there came a man of singular unfitness for such a scene—indeed a delicate woman had not been more out of place—for he was small, stooped, withered, very white haired, very pale, and much bearded—a black velvet cap on his head, and a gown of the like about his body, unarmed, and in every respect unmartial. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... together in the elder lady's sitting-room, and were now seated in a very graceful and well-arranged deshabille. The tea-cups out of which they had been drinking were made of some elegant porcelain, the teapot and cream-jug were of chased silver and as delicate in their sway. The remnant of food consisted of morsels of French roll which had not even been allowed to crumble themselves in a disorderly fashion, and of infinitesimal pats of butter. If the morning ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... long handle, is filled with water and brought to a boil over a brasier of coals: the coffee is placed in a similar brass dice-box and the boiling water poured on it. This boils up once, and is then poured into a delicate little china cup half the size of an after-dinner coffee-cup, and for a saucer you have what resembles a miniature bouquet-holder of silver or gilt filigree. If you take it in true Turkish style, you will drink your coffee without sugar, grounds and all; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... scented snow to follow the last melting drift which still glimmered among the trees in deep woodland gullies. A violet here and there looked up at us with blue eyes; in sheltered spots, fresh, reddish sprouts pricked the moist earth, here a whorl of delicate green, there a tender spike, guarding some imprisoned loveliness; buds on the beeches were brightening under a new varnish; naked thickets, no longer dead gray, softened into harmonies of pink and ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... slave in the family of a Roman senator, and was probably a native of Carthage. His genius presented the rare combination of all the fine and delicate qualities which characterized Attic sentiment, without corrupting the native purity of the Latin language. The elegance and gracefulness of his style show that the conversation of the accomplished society, in which he was ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the observatory with a sextant he made an observation every six hours, making allowance for the declination of the sun, meantime. This was an exceedingly delicate problem, but the Professor was fully equal to it. At the end of twenty-four hours he and the Doctor again donned their furs, stepped over the railing of the balcony and walked out upon the snow. The rest of the party had amused themselves while awaiting the ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... For this sum, so clandestinely and corruptly taken, he received a bond to himself, on his own account, as for money lent to the Company. For, upon the frequent, pressing, tender solicitations of the Court of Directors, always insinuated to him in a very delicate manner, Mr. Hastings had written to Mr. Larkins to find out, if he could, some of his own bribes; and accordingly Mr. Larkins sent over an account of various bribes,—an account which, even before it comes directly in evidence before you, it will be pleasant to your Lordships ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the way he looked at me over his pipe that he was wondering whether I knew anything. I don't think I ever liked my brother better than on that night; and I wanted him to understand that, whatever happened, it would make no difference between us. But the affair upstairs was too delicate to talk of, and all I could do was to try to keep his mind from brooding on it, by making him tell me things about politics. This is the kind of man my brother is. He is an astonishing master of facts, and I ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... Kensington Museum in London. "This typical Persian embroidery is a linen prayer or bath carpet, the bordering or outer design of which partly takes the shape of the favourite Persian architectural niche filled in with such delicate scrolling stem ornament as is so lavishly used in that monument of sixteenth-century Mohammedan art, the Taj Mahal at Agra. In the centre of the carpet beneath the niche form is a thickly blossoming shrub, laid out on a strictly geometric or formal plan, but nevertheless depicted with a fairly ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... was that they were as striking a pair of girls as any one could hope to meet in a day's march, but the delicate beauty of one was under a cloud which only a connoisseur's eye could see through—badly-cut garments and an unfashionable hat! On the other hand, Lady Diana's highly-coloured and slightly dairymaidish prettiness would have ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... for a final exam of some sort. Early in his preparation he decided that his father's advice was wise, and he put the stress of his effort on the church's work and how Negro youth had responded to it. The other matter was too delicate, he felt, for his amateur handling, and, besides, he was not altogether sure even ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... face of so exalted a moral passion it would be absurd to look for that urbane habit which seeks the well-being of one's self and the other fellow, not in exact obedience to harsh statutes, but in ease, dignity and the more delicate sort of self-respect. That is to say, it would be absurd to ask a thoroughly moral man to be also a man of honour. The two, in fact, are eternal enemies; their endless struggle achieves that happy mean of philosophies which we call civilization. The man of morals keeps order in ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... Her eyes seem to drink from my own. Her curls are carelessly thrown Back from white shoulder and cheek; And her lips seem strawberries, lost In some Arctic country of frost. The slightest curve on a face, May give an expression unmeet; Yet hers is so perfect and sweet, And shaped with such delicate grace, Its loveliness ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... different, as different as the dark forest from the open sunlit prairie. The scene at first did not seem real, it had a sort of a drop-curtain effect that was as familiar to me as the row of footlights and gilded boxes, but never did I expect to see those delicate tints, that blue atmosphere, the fresco colored rocks and all the theatrical properties of a drop-curtain duplicated in nature, yet here it was before me, not a detail wanting, even the impossible mammoth bed of gaudy flowers at the foot of the mountain was ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... must not be forgotten that our real practical standard measures are infinitely more refined and many thousand-fold more delicate than any indefinite and equivocal measures alleged to be found in the pyramid by even those who are most enthusiastic in the pyramidal metrological theory. At the London Exhibition in 1851, that celebrated mechanician and engineer, Mr. Whitworth, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... from me gingerly, by the collar, as a small white cat might grip a large brown rat by the back of its neck. Then, also gingerly, I dipped my fingers into one pocket after another. All were empty: yet now quite distinctly I heard a crisp, delicate ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... strangest quiet way imaginable. 'You insulted Lady Featherstone at Ohlau, Mr. Wogan,' said he, 'one evening when she hid behind your curtain. It was a very delicate piece of drollery, no doubt. But I shall be glad to show you another, view of it.' It is strange how that had rankled in his thoughts. I liked him for it,—upon my soul, I did,—though it was the only thing I ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... delicate hands carried a casket towards me—a casket open for the delectation of modest adoring eyes: thus did the world present itself ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... than were the features of this man, and the most skilful sculptor of Greece might have taken them as his model for a hero and a god. The forehead was exceedingly lofty,—a rare thing in a Gypsy; the nose less Roman than Grecian,—fine yet delicate; the eye large, overhung with long drooping lashes, giving them almost a melancholy expression; it was only when the lashes were elevated that the Gypsy glance was seen, if that can be called a glance which is a strange stare, like nothing else in this ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... drew up his tall form in the rigid manner of David, threw out his arm in the act of keeping time, and commenced what he intended for an imitation of his psalmody. Happily for the success of this delicate adventure, he had to deal with ears but little practised in the concord of sweet sounds, or the miserable effort would infallibly have been detected. It was necessary to pass within a dangerous proximity of the dark group of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... work wonders even with a frail and delicate woman. Barbara Harding steeled herself to the task, and after several moments of effort she succeeded in rolling the dead man against the door. The scraping sound of the body as she dragged it into position had sent cold shivers running up ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... qualities inferior to those of the white men; and, however much they overworked their conviction of negro inferiority, they could clearly see that the Abolitionists were applying a narrow and perverted political theory to a complicated and delicate set of economic and social conditions. It is no wonder, consequently, that they did not submit tamely to the abuse of the Abolitionists; and that they in their turn lost their heads. Unfortunately, however, the consequence of their wrong-headedness was more ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Yet her aunt, her best friend, says, "No, Sir, no; Sarah's no hypocrite!" which I was fool enough to believe; and yet my great and unpardonable offence is to have entertained passing doubts on this delicate point. I said, Whatever errors I had committed, arose from my anxiety to have everything explained to her honour: my conduct shewed that I had that at heart, and that I built on the purity of her character ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... an approach to absolute accuracy was necessary in every investigation in the field of science, and that such accuracy must be extended to the construction of the instruments used in these investigations and observations. In astronomy it is obvious that instruments of delicate exactness are most essential; yet Tycho Brahe, who lived in the sixteenth century, is credited with being the first astronomer whose instruments show ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... life and beauty, as it pleases God, and every seed takes its own peculiar body. Sown in corruption, they are raised in incorruption; sown in weakness, they are raised in power; sown in dishonour, they are raised in glory; delicate, beautiful in colour, perfuming the air with fragrance; types of immortality, fit for ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... to deal with political, as they now deal with scientific questions; to be as ashamed of undue haste and partisan prejudice in the one case as in the other; and to believe that the machinery of society is at least as delicate as that of a spinning-jenny, and as little likely to be improved by the meddling of those who have not taken the trouble to master ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... glanced at each other and at me; I was absorbed in my own bargains, and said, carelessly, that the pitchers were perfect beauties. Chloe pushed one pitcher a little forward, mamma pushed the other on a parallel line, then poised a decanter, and again applied her delicate knuckles for the test. That, too, rang out the musical, unbroken sound, so dear to the housewife's ear, and, with a pair of plated candlesticks, was deposited on the table. The peddler took up ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... intrusted to him, by the presence of a superior, in order, by this expedient, to silence the objections of the Elector of Bavaria. The imperial deputies, Questenberg and Werdenberg, who, as old friends of the duke, had been employed in this delicate mission, were instructed to propose that the King of Hungary should remain with the army, and learn the art of war under Wallenstein. But the very mention of his name threatened to put a period to the whole negociation. "No! never," exclaimed ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... Christ's Hospital, quite tired, poor boy, and hungry, wouldn't a bit of nice cake do him good! Adolphus is so fond of plum-cake, the darling child! And so is Frederick, little saucy rogue; and I'll give them MY piece, and keep my glass of wine for my dear delicate angel Shatty! [Takes bottle and paper out of her pocket, cuts off a great slice of cake, and pours wine from ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it ought to keep well. But when the red raspberry blooms, the fountains of plenty are unsealed indeed; what a commotion about the hives then, especially in localities where it is extensively cultivated, as in places along the Hudson! The delicate white clover, which begins to bloom about the same time, is neglected; even honey itself is passed by for this modest, colorless, all but odorless flower. A field of these berries in June sends forth a continuous murmur like that of an ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... words to express to your Excellency my just sense of your polite letter, of the delicate manner in which you caused it to be delivered, and your generous conduct towards the unfortunate in your power. Their pardon, which you have been pleased to grant on my account, is the most agreeable present you could ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... life and knowledge of human ways turned to my advantage on repeated occasions, whenever she reported a case as worthy or unworthy. When an application for aid or comfort required investigation—that is, ultimate cases requiring delicate, careful treatment, often impossible for the pastor to do—her feminine instinct and sagacity of experience took it in hand with a readiness that was surprising, in view of her always full hands. A gentle, trustful soul, a frank, unwavering friend, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... the last-mentioned work of art, is a representation of a young lady, as seen when presenting a full-blown flower to a favourite parrot. There is a delicate simplicity in the attitude and expression of the damsel, which, though you fail to discover the like in the tortuous figures of Taglioni or Cerito, we have often observed in the conduct of ladies many years in the seniority of the one under notice, who, ever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... cream. Well, my dear, I'm obliged to speak out; for you really are a pair of impostors, and I cannot have my house made a meeting place for would-be lovers. There—there—there, Mr Stratton, don't pray turn like that, and look as if you were going to rush away. Mine is a very delicate position, and I know my brother will be taking me to task some day about all this. Now, do take my advice; and give it all up—Percy Guest, if you break that cup I'll never forgive you. It ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... is as easily raised from seed as any plant whatever. These are to be sown on a gentle hot-bed in the spring; the seedlings, when of a proper size, are to be transplanted into the borders of the flower-garden, where they will flower, ripen, and scatter their seeds; but being a small delicate plant, whose beauties require a close inspection, it appears to most advantage in a tan stove, in which, as it will grow from cuttings, it may be had to flower all the year through, by ...
— The Botanical Magazine v 2 - or Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... beautiful work into its imperishable splendour, and that the artists who have the most wilful fancies may have a material which will drag out, and beat out, as their dreams require, and will hold itself together with fantastic tenacity, whatever rare and delicate service they set ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... full from the level of its middle height and comprehended as it cannot be from the depths; its suggestion of something never changing throughout eternity—yet dead—was a threat to the eager mind. They, the vast Alps, all wrapped round in ice, frozen, and their immobility enhanced by the delicate, roaming veils which (as from an attraction) hovered in their hollows, seemed to halt the process of living. And the living soul whom they thus perturbed was supported by no companionship. There were no trees or blades of grass around me, only the uneven and primal stones of that height. There ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... bowl, and made good play with her spoon, while between spoonfuls she looked at Nettie; and the good little woman smiled in her heart to see how easy it was for Nettie to obey her. The savoury, simple, comforting broth she had set before her was the best thing to the child's delicate stomach that she had tasted for many ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... supposing we shall be better prepared for any misfortune that may come if we can only contrive to dread it enough beforehand. Good heavens! We all need whatever strength we can get from happiness whenever it comes, as much as a plant needs the sunshine while it lasts. You wouldn't prepare a delicate plant for cloudy days by keeping it in the shadow; and I think one is simply an idiot who keeps in the shade to accustom himself ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... such glowing descriptions, and that no one else bore its honors more winningly. It was not an easy life, with all its exactions and incessant movement. It demanded more physical strength than most women possess, and we were not surprised to hear from time to time that she was delicate, and that she went through her season with feverish excitement. But she chose it; it had become necessary to her. Can women stop in such a career, even if they ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Arabs on the frontiers of Tunis. His Highness immediately produced this case, and said it was impossible for me to go whilst the routes were so insecure. He also alleged, and with more reason:—"The season was now too late, the heat was intolerable, and an European of my delicate constitution must succumb." We therefore returned much depressed. Colonel Warrington then, annoyed at the Bashaw's resistance, wrote the next day a letter to his Chancellor, requesting him to wait upon the Bashaw, and demand formally a passport for me, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... began to read the second volume of "Thaddeus of Warsaw." She was so deeply interested in the adventures of the noble Pole, that she forgot herself and all her surroundings. Masses of glossy dark hair fell over the delicate hand that supported her head; her morning-gown, of pink French muslin, fell apart, and revealed a white embroidered skirt, from beneath which obtruded one small foot, in an open-work silk stocking; the slipper having fallen to the ground. Thus absorbed, she took no note of time, and might have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... her, she is a neat, slightly prim, delicate beauty, with very fine features, and such sleepy eyes, as were probably the gift of Lely, since he has bestowed them generally on the women whom he painted. Mistress Anne Killigrew's hair is in ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... new suit of ready-made clothes and a derby hat of the model of the year before, were nearest; so near that the door, which swung outward, all but touched them. The other, a well-built, smooth-faced Easterner with a white skin and delicate hands, was opposite. His dress was the dress of a man of fashion, his cravat and patent leather buttoned shoes were of the latest style; but his linen was soiled now, and a two-days' growth of beard covered ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... sentimentalist. He gave himself the luxury of retrospection, he enjoyed the languorous moment; the music, the voice, the tinkle of the tambourine, the girl herself, sinuous, sensuous. It struck him that he had never seen an a'l'meh so cleanly and so finely dressed, so graceful, so delicate in manner. It struck him also that the kemengeh-player was a better-class Arab than he had ever met. The man's face attracted him, fascinated him. As he looked it seemed familiar. He studied it, he racked his brain to recall it. Suddenly he remembered that it was like the face of a servant of Imshi ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had often thought before, that Pamela, like Nan, only more calmly, less recklessly and disdainfully, had the aristocratic touch. Pamela, with her delicate detachments and her light, even touch on things great and small, made her feel fussy and petty ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... while practice is the surest way of fertilizing these germs. To efficiency in the art of acting there should come a congregation of fine qualities. There should be considerable, though not necessarily systematic, culture. There should be delicate instincts of taste cultivated, consciously, or unconsciously, to a degree of extreme and subtle nicety. There should be a power, at once refined and strong, of both perceiving and expressing to others the significance of language, so that neither shades nor masses of ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... accent of our English. We call such pieces dialect pieces for want of some closer phrase, but they are really not dialect so much as delightful personal attempts and failures for the written and spoken language. In nothing is his essentially refined and delicate art so well shown as in these pieces, which, as I ventured to say, described the range between appetite and emotion, with certain lifts far beyond and above it, which is the range of the race. He reveals in ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... wanting in the West; the East has been rich in patience and gentleness and in consideration for every kind of life, even the ant in the dust or the beast in the jungle. The East at its best has weighed conduct in delicate balances and traced the play of cause and effect in character far, far beyond the West; it has been content with simple things and found its true wealth in the inner life. It has willingly, for the sake of truth and goodness, subjected itself to disciplines, some of which ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... the reading was over, she had all her handkerchiefs brought, and chose the finest, which was of delicate cambric all embroidered in gold, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... even to his forehead, where it scattered itself in a few formless patches of pale red; and on his hairless face there scintillated restlessly the polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of the glasses which screened his delicate and restless eyes. His glossy black hair was parted in the middle and brushed in a long curve behind his ears where it curled slightly beneath the groove left by ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... McDougall calls it, is aroused by other children than one's own, and by others than children. It is called out particularly by things that are by nature helpless and delicate, but may be aroused by adults who are placed in situations where they are suffering and powerless. Samson, shorn of his strength, has been a traditional occasion for pathos. The sick, the bereaved, the down-and-outers, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... intense a study as the last; and they who talk of the savage and untutored genius of Aeschylus, are no wiser than the critics who applied the phrase of "native wood-notes wild" to the consummate philosophy of "Hamlet," the anatomical correctness of "Othello," the delicate symmetry of "The Tempest." With respect to the language of Aeschylus, ancient critics unite with the modern in condemning the straining of his metaphors, and the exaggeration of his images; yet they appear to me ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... looked as if it were made of a million dewdrops turned to diamonds and sprinkled over a lacy spider-web; the web swathing the tall and wandlike figure of Miss Billie Brookton in a way to show that she had all the delicate perfections of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... them either had children who could very well have eaten their own and part of the mother's ration, or they had children at the breast; and although they did not labour, yet their appetites were never so delicate as to have found the full ration too much, had it been issued to them. The like reduction was enforced afloat as well as on shore, the ships' companies of the Sirius and Supply being put to two thirds of the allowance usually issued to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... of his natural faculties, is quick and delicate in his sensibility; extensive and various in his imaginations and reflections; attentive, penetrating, and subtile, in what relates to his fellow creatures; firm and ardent in his purposes; devoted ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... several physicians invited by Dr. Price. These were successively introduced as Drs. Dudley, Hooper, and Ashe, all of whom were gentlemen of good standing, socially and in their profession, and considered it a high privilege to witness so delicate an operation at the hands of so eminent a ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... least a complete conquest, of the Victorian age is the humorous lyric in its more delicate developments. If the past can point to Prior and to Praed, we can boast, in their various departments, of Calverly, of Locker-Lampson, of Mr. Andrew Lang, of Mr. W. S. Gilbert. The comic muse, indeed, has marvellously extended her blandishments during the last two generations, ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... a soft voice which sounded at the foot of her bed. She opened her eyes, and saw the abbess, accompanied by a young woman with light hair and delicate complexion, who fixed upon her a look full of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tomb, and that the central slab of dark-veined marble was to be inscribed with the names of buried ones. They doubted, too, whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a creature of this earth, being so very delicate, and growing every day more fragile, so that she looked as if the summer breeze should snatch her up, and waft her heavenward. But still she watched the daily growth of the Temple; and so did old Walter Gascoigne, who now made that spot his continual haunt, leaning whole hours together on his staff, ...
— The Lily's Quest (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he was quite willing to wait for disagreeable ones until they happened. Not that he quailed personally from the prospect of martyrdom; this he could contemplate with complacency and even enthusiasm, but, zealot though he was, he did shrink from the thought that his beautiful and delicate wife might be called upon to share the glory of that crown. Indeed, as his own purpose was unalterable, he now himself suggested that he should go ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... saying anything which could hurt the dead girl's reputation, but it was his reticence and reservations which completed the story for his listener. He said that their flirtation ceased when Violet became engaged to Philip Heredith. On his own showing he then acted sensibly enough in a delicate situation, and was afterwards reluctant to accept the invitation to the moat-house. With one of his reticent evasions he slurred over his reason for changing his mind, but Colwyn guessed that it was due to the feminine disinclination to bury an old romance. Violet had probably ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... good as his word, was of inestimable service. He had, indeed, dealt with the delicate situation with admirable judgment. Finally he covered our retreat in a ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... mother! These chilly damps and the cold rush of winds Fling a rough paleness o'er thy delicate cheek— And thou seem'st lovely in thy sickliness Of most transparent beauty:—but it grieves me. Nay! tarry here by the blaze of the bright hearth:— I will return anon—and we have much 240 To listen ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... you," I said, "but it is a delicate subject. One cannot very well ferret for details of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of the hips, the person will rock in walking, and plant his feet heavily upon the ground. If greater, so that the chief weight is above the limbs, the step will be light, as is familiarly seen in corpulent men, whose delicate mode of walking we witness with ever-recurring surprise. If the shoulders slope downwards, with the spine bending inwards, the individual 'cannot throw a stone, or handle firearms with dexterity.' When ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... one of the broad leaves. But how surprised she was to see in the middle of the flower, a tiny little man, as white and transparent as if he had been made of crystal! He had a gold crown on his head, and delicate wings at his shoulders, and was not much larger than Tiny herself. He was the angel of the flower; for a tiny man and a tiny woman dwell in every flower; and this was the king ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... at the unexpected sound of his voice, yet uplifted the welcome water to her mouth, while Hampton, observing it all closely, could but remark the delicate shapeliness other hand. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... took the fact that wealth was used against him as a part of the inevitable drawbacks of his lot; and it is certain that he did not clearly take account of the whole business of corruption and jobbery as a hideous and growing peril to America. It is certain too that he lacked the delicate perception of propriety in such matters, or the strict resolution in adhering to it on small occasions, which might have been possessed by a far less honest man. The severest criticisms which Lincoln afterwards incurred were directed to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... switchboards, whilst the ear caught the ticking of many clocks, the gentle whir of a motor and occasionally the trembling note of an electric bell. But such sights and sounds conveyed only an impression of the delicate methodical means by which the daily and hourly variations of our weather conditions were being recorded—a mere glimpse of the intricate arrangements of a first-class meteorological station—the one and only station ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the dainties we possessed; our guest, however, seemed to feed upon it with an appetite as keen as if he had been educated in the Highlands; and what I could not help remarking with astonishment, although his air and manners proved that he could be no stranger to a more delicate way of living, not a single word fell from him that intimated he had ever been ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... the surface of the Moon in this year 1981. There were laboratories and observatories there, too. But it had been found that the alternating fortnights of boiling heat and near-absolute-zero cold on the lunar surface could play havoc with the delicate instruments used in certain researches. Hence Wheel Five had been built and was staffed by research men who were rotated ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... Henry William Gordon, already alluded to as the author of "Events in the Life of Charles George Gordon." Charlie Gordon, to use the name by which the subject of this memoir was always known among his friends, was a delicate lad, and, perhaps for this reason, was the special favourite of his mother, who appears to have been a fond parent and a sensible woman. She was always proud of her boy, and once or twice even annoyed him by speaking of him in ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... a delicate matter, which by choice of the co-operators themselves, easily adjusts itself to the requirements of the committee members, who are chosen to take charge of the tri-weekly scrubbing and sweeping. The detail for this work for each week, is made by ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... in demonstrating their failure, nineteen centuries after the contemptuous erasure of him from the calendar, to escape his power. It was reserved for the Philadelphia Commission to bring his reign (not the slightest intention of a pun) to a close. The most delicate silk or gem, and the most delicate wearer of the same, were enabled to pass under roof from San Francisco into the Main Building in Fairmount Park, and with a trifling break of twenty steps at the wharf might do so from the dock at Bremen, Havre or Liverpool. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... little thing, with the lustrous eyes and delicate skin that often so pathetically array the prospective victims of the White Man's Curse. She had been a tiny, unwanted item in a large family of twelve with which "Providence had blessed" a struggling friend and neighbor. The arrival of the last had robbed ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... be deemed to have reached its maturity till the power of the people at large had been established by the Reform Act of 1832. For its essence resides in the delicate equipoise it creates between the three powers, the ministry, the House of Commons, and the people. The House is strong because it can call the ministry to account for every act, and can by refusing supplies compel their resignation. The ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... is growing deep with snow O put your hand in mine, While the mirthful secrets that we know Bloom in the fire-shine— Flakes falling with an undertow Of delicate design. ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... dark... deadly... completely confused... Provocative!... delicate... dream-like... recesses, heavy doors And broad shadows, which lead to blue corners... And somewhere a sound that clinks like a Champagne glass. On a fragile rug lies a wide picture book, Distorted and exaggerated by a green ceiling light. How—soft little cats—piously white girls ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... empty, and had to go about by myself without his genial companionship. Our father took him down to Portsmouth, where he was to join his ship, the Aurora frigate, destined for the East India station, and our second brother Herbert accompanied him. Herbert was delicate, and required a change of scene and air. I longed to have gone too, but our father could not take both of us. My great desire was to see a large ship, a real man-of-war. I knew very well what a vessel was like, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of "Common Sense in the Household," etc. Plain, practical lessons for girls and young housekeepers of small means. Its directions are to be relied upon, and its results are invariably delicate, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... world's standard is only too current in the Church; and it needs a spirit kept in harmony with Christ's spirit, and some degree of the child-nature in ourselves, to preserve us from overlooking the delicate hidden beauties and unworldly greatness of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... ardent supporters of the Gun Club, who had married an aunt of the captain and daughter of an honorable Kentucky merchant)— Captain Blomsberry could not have wished for finer weather in which to bring to a close his delicate operations of sounding. His corvette had not even felt the great tempest, which by sweeping away the groups of clouds on the Rocky Mountains, had allowed them to observe the course of the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... which lent a wanness of its own to the delicate face where thoughtful care already mingled with a winning grace and loveliness of youth, the too bright eye, the spiritual head, the lips that pressed each other with such high resolve and courage of the heart, the slight ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... his personal accomplishments, and the tempting opportunity, all that he could obtain was an acknowledgment of his having made an impression upon her heart, which she hoped the dictates of her duty would enable her to erase. This confession he considered as a delicate consent; and, obeying the impulse of his love, snatched her up in his arms, with an intention of seizing that which she declined to give; when this French Lucretia, unable to defend her virtue any other way, screamed aloud; and the Capuchin, setting his shoulder to the door, forced it open, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... was perhaps better known to her than to any other human being, except Cassandra herself. Though this niece did not profess any special literary ability, her Aunt always valued her sound judgment on each new book: and in return she gave her, without fear of offending, advice[179] on the most delicate subjects. The short extracts from Fanny's diary, which her son, Lord Brabourne, gives us, show how constantly 'Aunt Jane' was the object of ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... The pale and delicate countenance of Nanna, who he thought was destined in all probability to droop and die like a water lily, which she so much resembled, carried the old man's mind back to the time when his father had promised to wed his mother, and he sighed as ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... little, meek-looking woman; with a sweet voice, and a very pale face. She might have been pretty when young, but my boyish impression was that she was very plain. By the side of her tall, stern partner, she looked the most delicate, diminutive creature in the world; and her gentle, timid manner made the contrast appear ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... of tall bushes and little slender trees standing in a delicate light. The mist had cleared to the transparency of still water, so still that under it the bushes and the trees stood in a cold, quiet radiance without a shimmer. The light itself was intensely still. What you saw was not the ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... sickness, and Scioppius doubtless only made pretence of envying the sparrows in order to be agreeably playful in a learned and far from playful work. Highly seasoned foods are injurious to health and impair the niceness of a delicate sense; and in general bodily pleasures are a kind of expenditure of the spirit, though they be made good in ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... attention of members, yet before the interview would come to a close some allusion to the Senatorship would generally occur, when he would respond in some such way as this: 'Gentlemen, that is rather a delicate subject for me to talk upon; but I must confess that I would be glad of your support for the office, if you shall conclude that I am the proper person for it.' When he had finished, he would generally take occasion to withdraw before any discussion on the subject ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... was far more beautiful than aught his fancy had pictured, or his eyes had seen. All seemed to feel that some tender secret possessed him, and all were most anxious as to what it was. Even the queen, herself, had observed it; but it was a delicate subject, and not to be spoken ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... much intelligence. A few were decidedly pretty; all were studiously clean and well dressed, and they formed a marked contrast in appearance and general style to the Cypriote women; the breed was superior, their hands were delicate and well cared for, but disfigured by the prevalent habit of staining the nails and palms with henna. This plant is called shenna by all Turks and Cypriotes, and it is imported from Syria for the purpose of dyeing the hair, and also the feet and hands of Turkish women. It is not a production ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... children which does not carefully consult these sensations, is to be condemned. The common notion about "hardening" is a grievous delusion. Not a few children are "hardened" out of the world; and those who survive, permanently suffer either in growth or constitution. "Their delicate appearance furnishes ample indication of the mischief thus produced, and their frequent attacks of illness might prove a warning even to unreflecting parents," says Dr. Combe. The reasoning on which this hardening-theory rests is extremely superficial. Wealthy parents, seeing little ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... seems scarce credible, that any Accustomance, or Diet, or peculiarity of Constitution, should enable a Man to distinguish with such Gross and Unsuitable Organs, such Nice and Subtile Differences as those of the forms of Asperity, that belong to differing Colours, to receive whose Languid and Delicate Impressions by the Intervention of Light, Nature seems to have appointed and contexed into the Retina the tender and delicate Pith of the Optick Nerve. Wherefore I confess, I propos'd divers Scruples, and particularly whether the Doctor had taken care ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... south-westerly wind into the eastern sky, where they lay in a long, low, grey band. Not a sound was to be heard, save every now and then the crow of a cock or the short cry of a just-awakened thrush. High up on the zenith, the approach of the sun to the horizon was proclaimed by the most delicate tints of rose-colour, but the cloud-bank above him was dark and untouched, although the blue which was over it, was every moment becoming paler. Clara watched; she was moved even to tears by the beauty of the scene, but she was stirred by something more than beauty, just as he who was in the Spirit ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... Ratichon, the confidant of two kings, three autocrats and an emperor, took that man to my bosom—fed him, clothed him, housed him, gave him the post of secretary in my intricate, delicate, immensely important business—and I did this, Sir, at a salary which, in comparison with his twenty centimes, must have seemed ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... approves. What he says, I indorse. We are one.'"[480] On this occasion, however, it is certain Seward accepted Weed's judgment with much reluctance. His heart was set upon the nomination, and his letters reveal disappointment and even disgust at the arrangement. "It is a delicate thing," he wrote, on the 27th of April, "to go through the present ordeal, but I am endeavouring to do so without giving any one just cause to complain of indifference on my part to the success of the cause. I have shut out the subject itself from ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... seems almost like mockery to ask if these Indians were capable of falling in love. Could a Huron to whom cruelty was a virtue, a duty, and whose chief delight was the torture of men and women or animals, have harbored in his mind such a delicate, altruistic sentiment as romantic love, based on sympathy with another's joys and sorrows? You might as well expect a tiger to make romantic love to the Bengal maiden he has carried into the jungle for his supper. Cruelty is not incompatible with appetite, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... as you please, and stuffing it full of the flowers. Another delightful scent is the mellilotte, or sweet clover, which grows wild in many parts of the country, and has, when dried, a fragrance like that of the tonquin-bean, only more delicate. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... of Love, and restless gusty Jealousies and wintry sea of revellings, whither am I borne? and the rudders of my spirit are quite cast loose; shall we sight delicate ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... as a delicate confession of her attachment, and a hint that no pecuniary gain could recompense her for its being rendered hopeless. He felt flattered. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... 1862, the "Pearl of Orr's Island" is ever new; a book filled with delicate fancies, such as seemingly array themselves anew each time one reads them. One sees the "sea like an unbroken mirror all around the pine-girt, lonely shores of Orr's Island," and straightway comes "the heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach, like the wild angry howl ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... so long as completely to hide her feet when she stood up on the entrance of her husband, Master Gresham. On either side of the room were several damsels with spinning-wheels and distaffs by their sides, or else actively plying their needles. A little boy, fair and delicate—a year or two younger than Ernst, he appeared—was playing on the ground near the couch on which the lady sat, with some of those wonderful toys for which Holland was already celebrated. The lady looked ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... their euil counsel, I was trauelling vnto Sartach 2 moneths which I could haue done in one, if I had gone by horse. I brought with me from Constantinople (being by the marchants aduised so to doe) pleasant fruits, muscadel wine, and delicate bisket bread to present vnto the gouernours of Soldaia, to the end I might obtain free passage: because they looke fauorablie vpon no man which commeth with an emptie hand. All of which things I bestowed in one of my cartes, (not finding the gouernours of the citie at home) for they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... shaped bench just above the water, which was secluded enough to escape all eyes except those of the beaver and the muskrat. The bank above was carpeted with fresh, dewy grass; blue bells and violets hid modestly under their dark green leaves; delicate ferns, like wonderful fairy lace, lifted their dainty heads to sway in the summer breeze. In this quiet nook the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... indeed a virtue in a woman (that might otherwise be very disagreeable to one) so exquisitely delicate, that it excites in any beholder, of a generous and manly disposition, almost all the passions that he would be apt to conceive for the mistress of his heart, in ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... under these delicate circumstances that Sir James resumed the command of his Majesty's fleet in the Baltic, and having rehoisted his flag on board the Victory on the 11th March 1810, he proceeded to Hawke Roads, which is the outer roadstead ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... fortunate in possessing Barlow's account of this voyage. It has, as one writer says, "all the freshness and gayety of an idyl. His description of the sweet smell wafted to the voyagers from the American shore, as from some delicate garden abounding with all kinds of odoriferous flowers, was noticed by Bacon, and utilized by Dryden to flatter one of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... were poured out with the impetuosity of longsuffering endurance finally vanquished, and before the speaker had concluded Marian was on her way to the door, that she might not listen to a conversation of so delicate a nature. But she did not pass beyond hearing before part ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... "Cranford" is full of the most delicate but veritable humor, as her allusion to the genteel and cheerful poverty of the lady who, in giving a tea-party, "now sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew; and we knew that she knew that we knew she had been ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Sankey went down to the school and arranged that Charlie, now ten years old, should accompany his brother. There were several boys no older than he; but Charlie differed widely from his elder brother, being a timid and delicate child, and ill fitted to take care of himself. Captain Sankey felt, however, after what Ned had told him of Mr. Porson, that he could trust to him during the school hours, and Ned would be an active protector ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... humility, very nearly allied to impertinence, that I could not see by his face that he knew my uncle; nor, indeed, had I known it, should I have thought it delicate to have mentioned it at such a time; as it might not only have implied a want of confidence in my own abilities, but also a suspicion that he might, by such a communication, have been induced to deviate from the rigid path of his duty, and might therefore have ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Chief Counsellor, had been committed the censorship of the press; and the supervision of those very papers which had been written by friends of the Republic to scatter broadcast in defense of its rights, formed not the least delicate part of his task. For the government demanded that they should maintain a fine reserve in method, and in spite of examples to the contrary freely given by their opponents, would tolerate neither heresy nor coarseness. Every detail of this world-renowned quarrel was ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... cask before his mouth closed from his astonishment; but as he flew his leathern lungs performed their office and warned the pillagers of peril. Out from cabins and storerooms poured the rascals, gorged with fine wines and delicate foods seized in their pillaging; steamy with blood not yet dried on their bestial faces. And when the great saloon was full, Dolores raised her torch above her head and blazed out ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... excited message, and found him in the depths of despair. It was the old story, human weakness, combined with lamentable lack of the most ordinary precautions against being found out. He gave me details, interspersed with exuberant denunciations of himself, and I undertook the delicate task of peace-maker. ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... of that; for, ambassador from a king, your relation and friend, I have a delicate commission to execute ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... Griffiths' hobby—a choice and select little garden, of lovely eucharis lilies mostly in tubs, and rare and beautiful flowers brought by him from his Barbadian home; while shading it and the courtyard was a fine specimen of that superb thing of beauty—a flamboyant tree—glorious with its delicate-green acacia-like leaves and vermilion and yellow flowers, and astonishing with its vast beans. A flight of stone stairs leads from the courtyard to the upper part of the castle where the living rooms are, over the extensive series of cool tunnel-like slave barracoons, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... gazing at the delicate contour of her face, partially turned away from him, the long, silken lashes shading eyes lowered upon the floor. A single gleam of the westering sun rested in golden beauty across her dark hair, stirred by the slight breeze blowing through the open window. In the silence he could hear his heart ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... in his tone or manner. As the girl lowered her gaze, he looked at her hungrily; his eyes feasted on the coils of dark hair, her long, black lashes, the curve of her cheek and her delicate color, the full, ruby lips, and the small, quivering chin. She was in the throes ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... devoted loyalty of Philip Sidney towards Elizabeth, and so high was the place which he held in her esteem, that she appears to have imputed the boldness of this letter to no motives but good ones; and instead of resenting his interference in so delicate a matter, she is thought to have been deeply moved by his eloquence, and even to have been influenced by it in the formation of her final resolve. But far other success attended the efforts of a different character, who labored with equal ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... after the wedding, for on that propitious day two friends of the bridegroom's—one of them the owner of the yacht—decided to return again to the place where there were to be found the most nymphlike of pretty creatures a man had ever by any chance beheld. Such delicate little fair crowned heads, such delicious little tip-tilted noses and slim white throats, such ripples of gay chatter and nonsense! When a man has fortune enough of his own why not take the prettiest ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... written on small note paper of the best quality. Elegant printed forms, some of them printed in gold or silver, are to be had at every stationer's by those who prefer them. The paper may be gilt-edged, but not coloured. The sealing-wax used should be of some delicate hue. ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... its power. He saw so much of virtue in the old order, that he insisted upon the equation of virtue with quintessence. Men of great property and position using their influence as a public trust, delicate in their sense of honor, and acting only from motives of right—these seemed to him the men who should with justice exercise political power. He did not doubt that "there is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom ... wherever they are actually found, they have, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... Caius.[375] It was perhaps natural that the people should pin their faith on the family of their champion; but it could hardly have increased the confidence of the community as a whole in the wisdom with which this delicate task would be executed, to find that it was entrusted to a family party, one of which was a mere boy; and the mistrust must have been increased when, somewhat later in the course of the year, the thorny questions which immediately encompassed the task of distribution ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... and sigh'd. And the child just turn'd her head towards Elizabeth there as she lay, And her little hands came together in haste, as though she would pray; And the words wrestled in her for speech that the fever-dry mouth cannot frame, And the strife of the soul on the delicate brow was written in flame: And Elizabeth call'd 'O Father, why does she look at me so? Will it soon be better for Anne? her face is all in a glow':— But with womanly speed and heed is the mother beside her, and slips Her ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... experience simple and clear enough. We are too near the fact to see it truly in its proper light. This man I understand to be faithful and discreet, one who may be intrusted with the investigation of the most delicate affairs. I will employ him immediately, in the confidence that no publicity will be given to this mystery. In the meanwhile, my dear Lady Belgrade, I counsel you to call the household servants all together. Do not inform them of the nature ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... was a vast building of white marble that seemed as delicate as lace work. It stood in a magnificent square where many beautiful fountains spouted jets of crystal water. King Ashmedai came forth on the balcony, and at his appearance all the demons and fairies became silent and went down on ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... I noticed that he never picked a rose, never smelled one. The early sun fell slanting through their petals till they glowed like thin little wheels of fire. John dear, it was that scalloped fire which Gargoyle was staring at. The flowers seemed to lean toward him, vibrating color and perfumes too delicate for me to hear. I only saw and smelled the flowers; Gargoyle looked as if he felt them! Don't laugh; you know we look at flowers because when we were little, people always said, 'See the pretty flower, smell the pretty flower,' but no one said, 'Listen and see if you can hear the flower ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... passing throngs was entirely superficial, found himself for some reason curiously attracted by this glimpse into a world of luxury of which he knew nothing; attracted, too, by the woman's delicate face with its uncommon type of beauty. Their eyes met as he stood there, stolid and motionless, framed in the doorway. Tavernake continued to stare, unmindful, perhaps unconscious, of the rudeness of his action. The woman, after a moment, glanced away at the shopwindow. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had by no means conducted his suit upon that narrow programme which he had drawn up at the outset. He very soon discovered that Gertrude's resentment—if resentment there was—was a substance utterly impalpable even to his most delicate tact, and he had accordingly set to work to woo her like an honest man, from day to day, from hour to hour, trusting so devoutly for success to momentary inspiration, that he felt his suit dignified by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... terrace before the priest's house, and imagined him thinking of her. The dry leaves of a palm-tree under the window of the room creaked in the light wind that blew over the flats, and she strove to hear the delicate rustling of ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... not to be thought of. It's a case that calls for extremely delicate surgery and a sure hand, but the ground is plainly mapped out and only some absolutely unforeseen complication is to be dreaded. And when it comes to those complications—well, Len, sometimes I think it must be the good Lord who works a man's brain for him at such crises, and makes it ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... (1800-1886), the Dorsetshire poet, was born on the 22nd of February 1800, at Rushay, near Pentridge in Dorset, the son of John Barnes and Grace Scott, of the farmer class. He was a delicate child, in direct contrast to a strong race of forebears, and inherited from his mother a refined, retiring disposition and a love for books. He went to school at Sturminster Newton, where he was considered the clever boy of the school; and when a solicitor named Dashwood applied to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... from undertaking the work which the Master gives them to do. They are not worthy; they have no skill or power for the delicate duty. But to all their timid shrinking and withdrawing, the Master's gentle yet urgent word is, "Do your best." They have only to kneel in lowly reverence and pray, for the beloved Master's sake, for skill and strength for the task assigned, ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... madam!" And Lettice could not forbear taking up the beautiful white hand of this most fair and delicate woman, and kissing it with the most respectful reverence. "Whatever you will be so very kind as to suggest to me I will so carefully attend to, and I shall be so much obliged ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... be about. But by two o'clock the next morning, Bertha was sweeping the kitchen, and Avice carding flax in the corner. They did not trouble themselves about breakfast; it was an unknown luxury, except for people who were very old or very delicate. Two meals a day were the rule: dinner, at nine in the morning: supper, at three in the afternoon. In those days they lived in a far harder and less comfortable way than we do, and they had generally better health. But, it must be admitted, they did not ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... had been that it should not be carried beyond human endurance; and we therefore find Cicero ridiculing it as a means of detecting crime, because a stalwart criminal of strong nerves might resist it and go free, while a physically delicate man, though innocent, would be forced to confess. Hence it was that under paganism a limit was imposed to the torture which could be administered; but, when Christianity had become predominant throughout Europe, torture was developed ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right to blame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally, and with becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange these delicate matters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself, there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble off her hands. What causes young people to "come out," but the noble ambition of matrimony? What sends them trooping ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sofa nearer to the bare table and began to eat with them. Sarah's motherly protestations induced him to take off his coat and hang it up in the watchman's office to dry. The same tender care served out to him the most delicate morsels, from a generous if uncouth table, and insisted upon their acceptance. If his old friends were hot with curiosity to know whence he came and what he had been doing, they, as the poor alone can do successfully, asked no questions nor even hinted at their desire. Not until the ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... well that the delicate pink blossoms were soon faded and crushed, and that twilight veiled their colours, for just as the cattle were being foddered for the night, there was a gay step on the narrow path, and with a start of terror, Patience beheld a tall soldier, in tall hat, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as though she knew that her baby was frail and delicate and feared lest the rough hands of her fellows might injure the ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with the dead, and to pray for them, is strong and universal. It survives whatever systems or whatever creeds men may invent for its suppression. Samuel Johnson is professedly a staunch Protestant, bristling with prejudices, but a delicate moral sense enters the rugged manhood of his nature. Instinctively he seeks to commune with his departed wife, after the manner dear to the Catholic heart, but forbidden to the Protestant. He keeps the anniversary of her death. He composes ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... throwing off the bed-clothes and sitting on the edge of the bed. "I am young and delicate and I need my rest. Seriously, Hunterleys," he added, "you take a chap out and make him drive you at sixty miles an hour all through the night, you keep him at it till nearly six in the morning, and you seem to think it a tragedy to find him ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... beautiful, and that He gave me my baby too.'—And there, as having said too much, she blushed in confusion, and began to busy herself with her flowers, delighting herself in silence over each many-belled hyacinth, each purple orchis, streaked wood sorrel, or delicate wreath of eglantine, deeming each in turn the most perfect ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... grasefully over his loins. Peepin' out from beneath his robes, was a delicate little foot, encased in a flesh cullered pair of No. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... her estimate of man,—she gathered together her spreading shine, and threw it down toward us in a glade of scarcely more than her own breadth, of even width, and sharply defined at the sides. It was a regular roadway on the water, intensest gold verging upon orange, edged with an exquisite, delicate tint of scarlet, running straight and firm as a Roman road all the way from the meeting-place of sky and sea to the ship. Or rather, not quite to the ship; for, when near at hand, it broke off into golden globes, which, under the influence of the light swell, came towards ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... deteriorating poison to the race; it depreciates the quality of a people. The task of Social Hygiene which lies before us cannot be attempted by this feeble folk. Not only can they not share it, but they impede it; their clumsy hands are for ever becoming entangled in the delicate mechanism of our modern civilization. Their very existence is itself an impediment. Apart altogether from the gross and obvious burden in money and social machinery which the protection they need, and the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... through scenes of turmoil, disaster, and dismay; and, during the continuance of arduous exertions, to recall the slow and certain progress of a fatal disease, which progressed during hardships too severe for the delicate frame of this amiable young man to sustain ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... remember that it does not last. By the sixth day the power would have fallen off by half. Besides, no one would dare to serve as engineer, for the radiation will rot away the flesh of a living man who comes near it, causing gnawing ulcers or curing them. It will not only break down the complex and delicate molecules of organic matter but will attack the atom itself, changing, it is believed, one element into another, again the fulfilment of a dream of the alchemists. And its rays, unseen and unfelt by us, are yet strong enough to penetrate an armorplate ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... Johnny. He was showing qualities which could not fail, when he grew up, to be of value to the nation. Loyalty, musical genius, determination, patience, industry—never before have these qualities been so finely united in a child of six. Was I to say a single word to disturb the delicate balance of such a boy's mind? At six one is extraordinarily susceptible to outside influence. A word from his father to the effect that the gentleman above was getting sick of it, and Johnny's whole ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... quite stiff; work it well, and let it rise again; grease a dutch-oven or spider, flour your hands, and roll it out in rings, or round several times, a little higher in the middle. They will be nearly all crust, and suit delicate persons that cannot ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... call politic doubts and scruples of conscience, but which I can only regard as symptoms of fear and disaffection? You can have no idea of 'duels betwixt relations so nearly connected'—and 'the affair seems very delicate and intricate'—and again, 'the matter has never been fully explained to you'—and, moreover, 'if you are expected to take an active part in the business, it must be when you are honoured with my full and unreserved confidence, otherwise ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... ruinous. In respect to territory and prestige Austria emerged from the Napoleonic wars with a distinctly improved status. But the internal condition of the monarchy, now as ever, imparted a forbidding aspect to any policy or movement which should give promise of unsettling in the minutest degree the delicate, haphazard balance that had been arrived at among the multiplicity of races, religions, and interests represented in the Emperor's dominions. In the west were the duchies, essentially German, which comprised the ancestral possessions of the Hapsburg dynasty; in the north ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... her. He admired her spirit in not telling him, her readiness to forgo his comfort and support before the absolute need for them was upon her. Her force of character was what he most admired in her, and this was a striking example of it. His own character, he knew, was rather subtile and delicate than strong. He was more than ever alive to the advantage of having her to lean upon in the difficult ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... far, at least, as her twofold personality admitted of private confidences. I have listened to the touching experiences of the Bearded Lady, whose rough cheeks belie her susceptible heart. Miss Jane Campbell has allowed me to question her on the delicate subject of avoirdupois equivalents; and the armless fair one, whose embrace no monarch could hope to win, has wrought me a watch-paper with those despised digits which have been degraded from gloves to boots in our evolution ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in richness, fit for any cultivation under heaven, and upwards of fifteen feet in depth. Before I quitted London, I heard that the climate of Australia was fine and equable, seldom varying, and well suited to a delicate constitution. I am satisfied that many consumptive persons live here, who in Scotland would be carried off in a month. You seldom hear a person cough. In church I have listened in vain for a single hoste; no, not even before the commencement of a psalm do you find the haughting and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... make a demand upon me because as my Chaplain you were asked to see a gentleman who called here on a delicate matter?" ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... bent over the register, on which the stranger had I written in clear, delicate characters: "Lysander Antonius Sinclair, B. N., ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... heard him sigh. He tried to help the ladies with their luggage, handed them the wrong parcels, dropped delicate packages, apologised, blushed, was very hot, collected dust from I know not where.... Once I heard a sharp, angry voice: "John! Oh!..." I could not believe that it was Marie Ivanovna. Of course she was hot and tired and ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... le pense, I really think so. He is surprised at the change in his character that his magnanimity has produced in him; a psychological touch as delicate as it ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... flowers, containing, as it does, many which, in New England, are rare exotics. Here you will find in richest profusion the fine-lady elegance of the syringa; there, glorious white lilies, so pure and stately; the delicate yet robust beauty of the exquisite privet; irises of every hue and size; and, prettiest of all, a sweet snow-tinted flower, looking like immense clusters of seed-pearl, which the Spaniards call "libla." But the marvel of the group is an orange-colored blossom, of a most rare and singular ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... just coming to the end of his thirty-second year. In physical appearance he was not like either the Norman or the Angevin type, but was taller and of a more delicate and refined cast, and his portrait shows a rather handsome face. In character and ambitions also he was not a descendant of his father's line. The humdrum business of ruling the state, of developing its law and institutions, of keeping order ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... about her shoulders and drew it tight. Then he sat beside her in silence. There were many things he could have said, but this seemed to be neither the time nor the place. Grant was not Transley. He had for this girl a delicate consideration which Transley's nature could never know. Grant was a thinker—Transley a doer. Grant knew that the charm which enveloped him in this girl's presence was the perfectly natural product of a set of conditions. He was worldly-wise enough to suspect that Zen also felt that ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... large extent its own ends. So much matter was given to the press that when it was published in full very few people had time to read it. As a general rule, the less real information there was to give out, the longer were the communiques. Experienced correspondents maintained that decisions on delicate questions were made with as much secrecy in Washington as ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... letter, and directly she saw it she recognized the handwriting as that of Mrs. Ferrars, the mother of Jervis. He had shown her some of his mother's letters, and there was no mistaking the regular, delicate handwriting. The paper was only written on on one side, and only two lines of ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... nearly a hundred miles of ground. We began to despair of finding the game we were in quest of, and were thinking of abandoning the chase, when at a distance of about seven miles from the camp, one of our most experienced hunters discovered the print of a small and delicate boot upon some soft ground leading to a marsh. Following this trail, it at last led us to a man sunk up to his waist in the swamp, and so covered with mud and filth, as to be quite unrecognizable. We drew him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... the piano are: "Six Bagatelles," of which the "Caprice" has a charming infectious coda, while the "Humoreske" is less simple, and also less amusing. The "Album Leaf" is a pleasing whimsy, and the "Idylle" is as delicate as fleece. Of the three "Characteristic Waltzes," the "Valse Sentimentale" is by far the most interesting. It manages to develop a sort of harmonic ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... unoffending," cried Nicholas. "A maiden more devout than Alizon never existed, nor one holding the crime she is charged with in greater abhorrence. She injure Richard! she would lay down her life for him—and would have been his wife, but for scruples the most delicate and disinterested on her part. But we will establish her innocence before his Majesty, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... nor foul in his conception, and her beauty appealed to him against his will. So also in his eyes a woman could be sinful, and her sins might seem terrible to him, and yet she herself was to him a woman still, a being delicate, refined, tender even in her wickedness; but a woman who could speak at once keenly and brutally of her marriage reacted upon him as a very ugly or painful sight, or as a very harsh and discordant sound that jars every nerve ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... a significance in the tone and words, and he looked sharply at White Lightning. A Spaniard, Francisco Alvarez, had tried to tempt him once from his people, but the attempt was open and abrupt. The approach of the chief was far different, gentle and delicate. Moreover, he liked White Lightning, and, as Henry believed, the chief was much the better man of the two. But here as before there was only ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... have had an unlucky experience. You know I have been preparing my own meals at the other camp, but to-day, when Mrs. Perkenpine brought me my clothes, she carried away with her all the provisions that had been left there. I supped, it is true, with Miss Raybold, but her appetite is so delicate and her fare so extremely simple that I confidentially acknowledge that I ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... Green, Blue and Yellow; Brown, with Umber, Carmine and Lamp Black; Scarlet, Carmine and Light Red. While it is true that a little color may relieve the dark metallic look of some Daguerreotypes, it must not be concealed that the covering of the fine delicate outline and exquisite gradations of tone of a good picture with such a coating, ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... a shapeliness delicate and fine. "The best things she's got!" a cold-blooded girl friend said of them, and meant to include Alice's mind and character in the implied list of possessions surpassed by the notable hands. However that may have been, the rest of ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... this time arranged the lock of his pistol and reprimed it, the hungry travellers resumed their weary march without coming to a decision upon this delicate point. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... girls. That's what worries me—she's such a little thing." He paused a moment. "I hope it's all right," he said, "marrying her. It seems pretty rough on them sometimes, I think—don't you—I fancy she's delicate and all that." Lionel nodded. "It does seem rather beastly," he admitted, "their having to have a hard time, I mean—but if they care for you—I suppose it works out all right." Winn paid no attention to ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... (syn Cerasus Juliana).—St. Julian's Cherry. South Europe. This bears large flowers of a most beautiful and delicate blush tint. P. Avium multiplex is a double form of the Wild Cherry, or Gean, with smaller ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... continued Mr. Silton, "there are two distinct sorts of what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... at this time: if I remember aright, the poet specified the "Death of Harold" as the theme of one. Long afterwards he read these boyish forerunners of "Over the sea our galleys went," and "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," and was amused by their derivative if delicate melodies. Mrs. Browning was very proud of these early blooms of song, and when her twelve-year-old son, tired of vain efforts to seduce a publisher from the wary ways of business, surrendered in disgust his neatly copied out and carefully stitched MSS., she lost no opportunity—when ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... became an issue of the gravest political character, and of the deepest personal interest; and a steady pursuit of this object, from October, 1768, to March, 1770, gave unity, directness, and an ever-painful foreboding to the local politics, until the flow of blood created a delicate and dangerous crisis. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... reform. It was his objection to shed blood, his readiness to give way, his affection for the people, which had allowed the Revolution to march on its bloody way without a check. It was the victims—the nobles, the priests, the delicate women and cultured men—who had reason to complain; for it was the king's hatred to resistance which left them at the mercy of their foes. Louis had been the best friend of the ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... qualities, the nobler potentialities; you have shown me to myself. Melinda! Do not think that I do not appreciate the difficulties of this hour for you. I know how your heart is shrinking, how your delicate maidenly modesty is up in arms. But Melinda, you know! you know! ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... This is indeed the month for Sicily. The goddess of flowers now wears a morning dress of the newest spring fashion; beautifully made up is that dress, nor has she worn it long enough for it to be sullied ever so little, or to require the washing of a shower. A delicate pink and a rich red are the colours which prevail in the tasteful pattern of her voluminous drapery; and as she advances on you with a light and noiseless step, over a carpet which all the looms of Paris or of Persia could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... other hand, he bids owners to "forbear threatening" their slaves. But so much might have been said by Cicero and Pliny; the former of whom, as Lecky says, wrote many letters to his slave Tiro "in terms of sincere and delicate friendship"; while the latter "poured out his deep sorrow for the death of some of his slaves, and endeavored to console himself with the thought that as he had emancipated them before their death, they had at least died ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... either of her two elder daughters. And her sons were quite frankly a trouble to her. The eldest, Sarah's junior by a year and a half, had just left Oxford suddenly and ignominiously, without a degree, and was for the most part loafing at home. The youngest, a boy of fifteen, was supposed to be delicate, and had been removed from school by his mother on that account. He too was at home, and a tutor who lodged in the village was understood to be preparing him for the Civil Service. He was a pettish and spiteful lad, and between ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... disappeared through one of the many doorways, Bradford stood still for a moment before his eyes focussed to the change of light. The pillars of the hall that supported the balcony corridor of the second story were wreathed with light green vines, delicate green draperies screened the windows, the pale light coming from many Japanese lanterns and exquisitely shaded bronze lamps rather than outside. Half a dozen little arbours were formed by large Japanese umbrellas, under which tea tables were placed, and the sweet air ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... March, a month of spring, but at night the trees snapped with the cold, as they do in December, and one could hardly put one's tongue out without its being nipped. The wolf-mother was in delicate health and nervous; she started at the slightest sound, and kept hoping that no one would hurt the little ones at home while she was away. The smell of the tracks of men and horses, logs, piles of faggots, and the dark road with horse-dung on it frightened ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... competitors—Littleton among them—had come in person to explain the merits of their respective drawings, and by the side of solid, red-bearded, undecorative Mr. Cass, Littleton may well have seemed a dandy. He was a slim young man with a delicate, sensitive face and intelligent brown eyes. He looked eager and interesting. In his case the almost gaunt American physiognomy was softened by a suggestion of poetic impulses. Yet the heritage of nervous energy was apparent. His appearance conveyed the impression of quiet trigness ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... that beautiful ocean. Long secluded, by difficulty of access from Europe, it is now in the course of being effectually opened up by the railway across the Isthmus of Panama. And the grandeur of this invasion by steam is beyond the reach of imagination. Thousands of islands, clothed in gorgeous yet delicate vegetation, and enjoying the finest climate, lie scattered like diamonds in a sea on which storms never rage—each in itself an earthly paradise. When these islands can be reached at a moderate outlay of time, money, and trouble, may we not expect to see ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... both holesome, fruitefull, and pleasant habitation, whereby lastly it followeth, that all the [Sidenote: Vnder the Tropickes is moderate temperature.] middle Zone, which vntill of late dayes hath bene compted and called the burning, broyling, and parched Zone, is now found to be the most delicate, temperate, commodious, pleasant and delectable part of the world, and especially vnder ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... delightful private sitting-room into which she had once dared to peep, and then shot out her little face again, half-terrified at her own audacity. There was no one in the room at the moment; but it did look cosy—the chairs so easy and comfortable, and all covered with such a delicate shade of blue. Sibyl knew that blue became her. She thought how nice she would look sitting in one of those chairs and being hail-fellow-well-met with Margaret Grant, and Martha her own friend, and all ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... the phrase survived. The commissary acted "with the hand" of his principal. We may take this to be the hand-sign, or seal, representing written authority. It involved a reckoning with his master, and naturally gave rise to a number of delicate questions. If a man bought a house for another, having been commissioned so to do, his principal must of course pay the price. But was he bound to accept his agent's selection? Could he not demur regarding the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... she liked the iron-grey of his moustache and hair; it was more becoming than all that hard, shiny black. Fanny was right. It was more becoming. And his skin—the worn bloom of it, like a delicate sprinkling of powder. Better, more refined than that rich, high red of the younger man in the gilt frame. To be sure his eyes, blurred onyx, bulged out of creased pouches; but his nose—the Postlethwaite nose, a very handsome feature—lifted itself firmly ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... Fouquet than the full stop which completes a phrase. But, for Vanel, Aramis' presence in Fouquet's cabinet had quite another signification; and, therefore, at his first step into the room he paused as he looked at the delicate yet firm features of the bishop of Vannes, and his look of astonishment soon became one of scrutinizing attention. As for Fouquet, a perfect politician, that is to say, complete master of himself, he had already, by the energy of his own resolute ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... his distempered government, seeing nothing around him but treacherous friends or enraged enemies, possessing the confidence of no party, resting his title on no principle, civil or religious, he found his power to depend on so delicate a poise of factions and interests, as the smallest event was able, without any preparation, in a moment to overturn. Death, too, which with such signal intrepidity he had braved in the field, being incessantly threatened by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... architecture is, as far as may be, to replace these; to tell us about nature; to possess us with memories of her quietness; to be solemn and full of tenderness like her, and rich in portraitures of her; full of delicate imagery of the flowers we can no more gather, and of the living creatures now far away from us in their own solitude. If ever you felt or found this in a London street; if ever it furnished you with one serious thought, or any ray of true and gentle pleasure; if there is in your heart a true ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... eat, they had, at all events, not suffered from hunger, as had been the case with so many others. But he was touched by the sight of Maurice's suffering. He saw that he was losing strength, and looked at him anxiously, asking himself how that delicate young man would ever manage to sustain the privations of that ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to Boston this godly gentleman was made minister of the church at Charlestown. But he was very delicate and in a few months he died. As a scholar and a Cambridge man he had been greatly interested in the building of the college at Cambridge. So when he died he left half his money and all his books to it. The settlers were very grateful for this bequest, and to ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the barrister all day, as he sat reading in chambers; they continued to form the ground-base of his manly musings as he was whirled to Hampton Court; even when he landed at the station, and began to pull himself together for his delicate interview, the voice of Uncle Ned and the eyes ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Laura. Without it, her nature tended to be wary and unproductive; and those in touch with her, had they wished to make the most of her, would no more have stinted with the necessary incentive, that one stints a delicate rose tree in aids to growth. Laura could swallow praise in large doses, without becoming over-sure. Under the present stimulus she sat top in a couple of classes, grew slightly ruddier in face, and much ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... watched them, at first idly and then with interest. Lady Elisabeth, in her cool muslin gown and simple hat, seemed to be moving in a world of her own, into which her companion's chatter but rarely penetrated. She walked with a slow and delicate grace, not without a characteristic touch of languor. Once or twice she looked around her—one might almost have imagined that she was seeking escape from her companion—and on one of these occasions her eyes met Maraton's. She stopped short. They were within a few feet ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... themselves by spinning. When the servant asked for water, the one eighty years old rose, opened a little wicket in the shutter, and handed him out the water. From spinning so much, her hands were very white and delicate; and when the servant saw them he thought, "It must be a handsome maiden, for she has such a delicate white hand." So he hastened to the king, and said: "Your royal Majesty, I have found what you seek; so and so has happened to me." "Very well," answered the king, ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... a very delicate matter to postpone the draft in one State, because of the argument it furnishes others to have postponement also. If we could have a reason in one case which would be good if presented in all cases, we could ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... distinguished publishers, and the same result has attended our investigation. We are therefore led to believe that Mr. Pickwick, with that anxious desire to abstain from giving offence to any, and with those delicate feelings for which all who knew him well know he was so eminently remarkable, purposely substituted a fictitious designation, for the real name of the place in which his observations were made. We are confirmed in this belief by a little circumstance, apparently slight and trivial in ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... we reached the gardens. We turned down a broad walk bordered by high yew hedges, at the bottom of which was a little gate leading into the park. The air was fragrant with the perfume of violets, and early stocks and hyacinths, mingled every now and then with a more delicate perfume from the greenhouses on the other side of the red-brick wall. How beautiful it all seemed, in that sweet, dancing sunlight!—the songs of the birds, the blossoming fruit-trees, and pink-budded chestnuts, the scents which floated about on the soft ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Karenina. Various and exquisite as she is, her whole nature is sensitive to the imprint of time, and the way in which time invades her, steals throughout her, finally lays her low, Tolstoy tracks and renders from end to end. And in War and Peace his hand is not less delicate and firm. The progress of time is never broken; inexorably it does what it must, carrying an enthusiastic young student forward into a slatternly philosopher of middle life, linking an over-blown matron with the memory of a girl ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... it was a matter of common notoriety that the honourable member's return was owing to the unusual and most uncommon ability displayed by him in the course of his canvass, aided as it was, by artfully applied and aristocratic feminine influence." This was a delicate allusion to Honoria and ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... of Metternich influenced the resolution of Francis II., it is certain that that monarch yielded nothing to the urgent solicitations of a Minister who conscientiously fulfilled the delicate mission consigned to him. M. de Champagny rejoined the Empress at Orleans, whither she had repaired on leaving Blois. He found Maria Louisa almost deserted, all the Grand Dignitaries of the Empire having successively returned ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in reference to the statements which he has had to make on the testimony of others, his position was necessarily different; and a very delicate matter he has sometimes found it to be, to deal with these statements. A desire, on the one hand, to expose to the wholesome breathings of public opinion whatever was really oppressive and unjust; a fear, on the other, lest he should compromise ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... battle of Magenta, I was sent out on a scout; and I went at the particular request of the Emperor Napoleon, who—permit me to add, in the presence of a company which seems to be inimical to my antecedents, if not to me—had unlimited confidence in my ability to perform this delicate duty with skill and success. Well, gentlemen, I passed our pickets; of course I mean the French pickets; for I was, as you are all aware, a colonel in the ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... and little theaters are alike, yet quite unlike. I had learned breadth in Shakespeare at the Princess's, and had had to employ it again in romantic plays for Charles Reade. The pit and gallery were the audience which we had to reach. At the Prince of Wales's I had to adopt a more delicate, more subtle, more intimate style. But the breadth had to be there just the same—as seen through the wrong end of the microscope. In acting one must possess great strength before one can be delicate in the right way. Too often ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... presents this objection—that you may not have the requisite judgment and knowledge of the world for so delicate ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... removed, the slim, muscular figure of the stranger was clearly visible, it seemed too soft for a man's. His hands as they grasped the beaker seemed white and delicate. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... a very pleasing face that looked into her own, olive-hued, with brows as delicate as a woman's. A thin line of black moustache outlined a mouth that was something over-sensitive. He was certainly quite ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... of the Austrians at Belikamen on August 16, 1914, the cavalry division was reenforced by some infantry and artillery, then sent on the delicate mission of driving a wedge in between the Austrians in Shabatz and those along the Drina. Spreading out across the Matchva plain, its left wing up against the slopes of the Tzer Mountains, and its ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... little parvenue!" replied Madame de Fleury. "I would never forgive Mademoiselle Melanie if she consented to anything of the kind. I suppose the banker's wife imagines this delicate green would tone down her milk-maid complexion. But she shall not ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... trolley lines, a train, a cab-stand, a good shopping street within a few steps, the place itself was a haven of rest after my long days in Paris meeting people by the dozen and taking notes of their work, and the cooking was the most varied and the most delicate I have ever eaten anywhere. A famous retired chef had offered his services three times a week for nothing and each girl during her two weeks in the kitchen learned how to prepare eggs in forty different ways, to say nothing of sauces and delicacies that ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... none of hers, she said, But she had found her where the ash lay white About a smouldering tent; her infant head All shelterless, she through the dewy night Had slumbered on the field,—ungentle fate For a lone child so soft and delicate. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... when the microscope discloses to us the silent laboratory of the seed, the bud and the blossom, do we recognize the infinite, ever-recurring form in the most minute tissues and cells, and the eternal unchangeableness of Nature's plans in the most delicate fibre. Could we pierce still deeper, the same form-world would reveal itself, and the vision would lose itself as in a hall hung with mirrors. Such an infinity as this lies hidden in this little flower. If we look ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... she suffered as only pure, tender womanly natures made for love can suffer. And by degrees I could not hide from myself that she suffered more than she could bear. The power of endurance of a pure, delicate soul like hers is infinite as long as in the kernel of her being, in her love life, she is satisfied and contented. But the sorrow that touches the kernel consumes her both ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... no doubt he was watched as closely as he was watching the second lieutenant. If he went aft, that would at once end the conference, if one was in progress. He could not call upon a seaman to report on such a delicate question without betraying himself, and he had not yet learned whom to trust in such a matter, and it was hardly proper to call upon a foremast hand to watch one of ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... corridor, agreeably conscious of the hum of admiration she aroused, came Lillian Astrupp, surrounded by a little court. Her delicate face was lit up; her eyes shone under the faint gleam of her hair; her gown of gold embroidery swept round her gracefully. She was radiant and triumphant, but she was also excited. The excitement was evident in her laugh, in her gestures, in her eyes, as they turned quickly in one direction ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... a lamp, from which the light falls on a bed of straw, and on the sleeping figure of a man. The high white brow, the pale and delicate features—them too we know, for they are those of Frank. Saved half-dead from the fury of the savage negroes, he has been reserved for the more delicate cruelty of civilized and Christian men. He underwent the question but this afternoon; ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... work by seeing any extraordinary difference made by judges of eating between one species of food and another. In families where a regularly good table is kept, children accustomed to the sight and taste of all kinds of food, are seldom delicate, capricious, or disposed to exceed; but in houses where entertainments are made from time to time with great bustle and anxiety, fine clothes, and company-manners, and company-faces, and all that politeness can do to give the appearance of ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... him then, and they went a long, long way from that, till they came to a high-topped city, and three times fifty brave champions in it, three times fifty modest women, and another young woman on a bench, with blushes in her cheeks, and delicate hands, and having a silken cloak about her, and a dress sewed with gold threads, and on her head the flowing veil ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... pound him awake—mere auricular demonstration having only the effect of lulling him into deeper child-like slumber. The surest and often only effective means was to tickle the slumberer gently on the soles of the bare feet with some airy, delicate instrument such as my tack-hammer, or a convenient broom-handle or flat-iron. Frequently I came upon young negro men of the age and type that in white skins would have been loafing on pool-room corners, reading to themselves in loud and solemn ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... my dear Ellen? You must have some reason for this intended seclusion. Last year I fancied you wished much to accompany us, and I ever regretted your delicate health prevented it. What has made you change your mind so completely? Have you any distaste for the ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... Immediately, however, Mr. Pecksniff has explained the object of his mission, Mrs. Gamp, who has a face for all occasions, thereupon putting on her mourning countenance, the surrounding matrons, while rating her visitor roundly, signify that they would be glad to know what he means by terrifying delicate females with "his corpses!" The unoffending gentleman eventually, after hustling Mrs. Gamp into the cabriolet, drives ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... now no longer young, and it seemed that, having found no reason for marrying at five-and-thirty, she would never find one. But such an argument evidently found no acceptance with Monsieur Robert Darzac. He continued to pay his court—if the delicate and tender attention with which he ceaselessly surrounded this woman of five-and-thirty could be called courtship—in face of her declared intention ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... old man laid aside his instrument, and taking his broadsword from the wall, proceeded with the aid of brick dust and lamp oil, to furbish hilt and blade with the utmost care, searching out spot after spot of rust, to the smallest, with the delicate points of his great bony fingers. Satisfied at length of its brightness, he requested Malcolm, who had returned long before the operation was over, to bring him the sheath, which, for fear of its coming to pieces, so old and crumbling was the leather, he kept laid up in the drawer ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the perfection of his natural faculties, is quick and delicate in his sensibility; extensive and various in his imaginations and reflections; attentive, penetrating, and subtile, in what relates to his fellow creatures; firm and ardent in his purposes; devoted ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... with a goodness that always characterized her it was granted for one hour longer, part of which was used by an appeal made by the sailor lads to be allowed to correspond with her two granddaughters, who were young ladies of prepossessing appearance. After some delicate negotiations and many assurances of honourable intentions, they were told that, provided their letters were confined to a history of their movements and their doings, and without any foolishness, they might write twice a voyage to the girls and to herself. "But," ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... James Frederic Prevost, is a most amiable and honourable man. Under the garb of coarse rusticity you will find, if you know him, refinement, wit, a delicate sense of propriety, the most inflexible intrepidity, incorruptible integrity, and disinterestedness. I wish you could know him; but it would be difficult, by reason of his diffidence and great reluctance to mingle with the world. It has ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... and it was with mingled feelings that she gazed on this unchanged spot. Each grey-lichened rock stood out from the mossy floor with a face that was familiar; all the little winding woodland paths, she knew where they led to, and could take the children to many a nook where wild flowers and delicate green ferns still loved to grow, at they did long ago when she used to ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... towards a closet of his apartment, and poured out a few drops of a dark liquid. His hand shook, as he raised the glass which contained them to his lips; and with a strange shuddering, a nervous tremor, as if all the delicate chords of his system were unloosed and trembling, he turned away from his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... later, on August 28, Fox met Prince Gortchakoff by appointment at the foreign office. After various complimentary allusions to the manner in which Mr. Fox had performed the delicate duties entrusted to him by his government, the Prince, in the name of the Emperor, presented a gold snuffbox set with diamonds.[21] The box, exquisitely chased, had the Emperor's miniature on the top surrounded by 26 diamonds. Six larger diamonds were ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... fire a cannon shot to kill a butterfly," he said, "and neither will I ever light a delicate cigarette with a huge, shapeless coal from a campfire. It would be an insult to the cigarette, and after such an outrage I could never draw a particle of flavor from it. No, Harry, we thank you, you mean well, but we can do ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... streams that pour into the tide of transgression flowing down the streets, concur to involve the inhabitants of populous vicinities in circumstances of great moral danger. Apart from all persuasion or direct influence, the very sight of immoralities is liable to injure that delicate sensibility to wrong which it is of the utmost importance to preserve in a pure and uncontaminated state. The nicely polished mind is susceptible of the breath of impurity; and when it once becomes dim and obscure in its ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... too many beautiful young wives, she had taken for granted that her place in her husband's heart was established for life, independent of any effort to retain it. She had not realised that love is a treasure which must needs be guarded with jealous care, that the delicate cord may be strained so thin that a moment may come when it reaches breaking-point. That moment had not come yet; surely, surely, it could not have come, ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... saw this, I wondered with myself to see such great and noble things. And again I admired upon the account of those virgins, that they were so handsome and delicate; and stood with such firmness and constancy, as if they would carry ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... a look of distress showed me his horse's blood-stained thigh. "Attraction" was the name of his pretty and delicate little grey mare, which he loved and cared for passionately. A bullet had pierced her thigh right through, and the blood had flowed down her leg. I calmed him by saying, "Come, come; it will be nothing. Go on foot behind ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... she said in English, extending her frail, delicate looking hand, "I am delighted to ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... the army before it withdrawn. The man to whom the Commander first looked for counsel under these conditions— Baird-Smith, of the Bengal Engineers—proved himself worthy of the high and responsible position in which he was placed. He too was ill. Naturally of a delicate constitution, the climate and exposure had told upon him severely, and the diseases from which he was suffering were aggravated by a wound he had received soon after his arrival in camp. He fully appreciated the tremendous risks which an assault involved, but, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... I don't think I can eat a thing!" said Midge, dropping her eyes, and trying to look fragile and delicate. ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... village, past the little church which the Silverton maidens were decorating with flowers, pausing a moment in their work to look at him as he went by. Among them was Marian Hazelton, but she did not look up, she only bent lower over her work, thus hiding the tear which dropped from the delicate buds she was fashioning into the words, "Joy to the Bride," intending the whole as the center of the wreath to be placed over the altar just where all could ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... often vividly, and even vigorously employed; and while the youths of the great families were solely directed to military prospects, the females often acquired solid and grave accomplishments. In short, we had among us as many artificers, not a few of them delicate and lovely, as could have furnished a Tower of Babel, if not built it; but our fabric would have had one exception, it would have had no "confusion of tongues;" for tongues there were none to be heard among us—all was silence, but when some work of striking beauty, and this was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... green and lemon yellow of the dawn. It might have been a statue save that as the song of the improvisatrice, a rhapsody to Apollo, thrilled the air with passionate sweetness, it raised its perfect arms in invocation. As though in response to the gesture the clouds flushed through delicate rose to crimson, while the radiance beneath their exquisite arch burned like molten gold, with ever-increasing intensity, until the sun itself blinded our eyes with ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... called Bridger from his station, his rifle cocked and the delicate triggers set, so perfect in their mechanism that the lightest touch against the trigger edge would ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... habitation, yet her virtues rendered her so admirable and so engraved her in the memory of every one, that the injury and lapse of time cannot efface her from it; for we shall ceaselessly mourn and lament for her, like Antimachus the Greek poet wept for Lysidichea, his wife, with sad verses and delicate elegies which describe and reveal, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... having a clean seed-bed will be apparent when it is called to mind that alfalfa is a somewhat delicate plant when young, and that because of this, it is ill able to overcome in the fight with weeds. Cleanness in the surface soil may be obtained by summerfallowing the land, by growing a root crop or a crop of corn or any of the non-saccharine sorghums. When the seed is spring ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... under his little wood-shed, and showed us, or rather modestly permitted us to see, his nearly finished canoe, it was like a first glimpse of some new and unknown genius of the woods or streams. It sat there on the chips and shavings and fragments of bark like some shy delicate creature just emerged from its hiding-place, or like some wild flower just opened. It was the first boat of the kind I had ever seen, and it filled my eye completely. What woodcraft it indicated, and what a wild free life, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... a mild, sunny one in early autumn, with a refreshing breeze perfumed with the delicate scent of after-harvest flowers wafting down from the cool regions of the Northwest, where lay the new El Dorado—the ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... you like leaves, till you had to be dug out with long shovels by those funny street-cleaners who go about looking dirty in white clothes. You would be a nymph in a shower of gold—only the gold would be paper! How like America!" He whistled again absently, touching the canvas with delicate strokes. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... eyes. Protected by her window, she found beauty even in the summer mood of San Francisco; and sometimes she went up into the tower of the Belmont house and watched the long clouds of dust roll symmetrically down the streets of the city's valleys; or the delicate white mist ride through the Golden Gate to wreathe itself about the cross on Calvary, then creep down the bare brown cone to press close about the tombs on Lone Mountain; then onward until all the city was gone under a white swinging ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... taken: my heart bums with living flame For Union shorn whenas Severance came, In the love of a damsel who forced my soul And with delicate cheeklet my reason stole. She hath eyebrows united and eyes black-white And her teeth are leven that smiles in light: The tale of her years is but ten plus four; Tears like Dragon's blood[FN334] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... humiliating reason why. He lost his self-possession and forgot that he deserved a stinging rebuke for his insincerity. He would have turned away in coldness and resentment. His visit might have come to an abrupt termination, had not Annie, with that delicate, womanly tact which was one of her most marked characteristics, interrupted him as he was about to say something to the effect, "Miss Walton, since you are so much holier than I, it were better that I should contaminate the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... imaginative tenderness and creative sympathy. It is delightful to watch the growth of human character either in life or in literature, and in 'The Heart of a Child' one can see the brilliancy of Frank Danby suddenly burgeoning into the wistfulness that makes cleverness soft and exquisite and delicate.... It is a mixture of naturalism and romance, and one detects in it the miraculous power ... of seeing things steadily and seeing them wholly, with relentless humor and pitiless pathos. The book is crowded with types, and they are all etched in with masterly ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... and, with one company of infantry in two Mackinaw boats, commanded by Lieut. Beach, they landed near the mouth of Fever river (Galena) about the first of October. The Major came up to Galena with a letter from Col. George Davenport to the writer, to assist him in the discharge of his delicate duty. Word was sent to Lieut. Beach not to proceed up the river until the afternoon of the next day, as the sight of troops by the miners might make them hard to manage; otherwise, I assured the Major, he would have no trouble. We proceeded ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... might be the case, but if the soles of your shoes are four inches broad, and are thick and strong, walking will not hurt your feet. You must walk or work until you perspire freely, every day of the week. Of course, you are in delicate health, with little endurance, but, as you have told me that you are willing to do anything, you are to work hard at something six or ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the Union ships, while the shot she received in return rattled harmlessly off her steel-mailed sides. The "Carondelet" was the first vessel to come to grief. She had hardly fired four shots when a heavy solid shot crashed through her side, and rattled against the most delicate part of the engine. She was helpless at once; and hardly had this damage been reported when a second shot came with a burst into an open port, killed five men, and broke its way out the other side. In ten minutes her decks were slippery with blood, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... he began, "my name is Townsend. I am one of the editors of People You Know. I might have sent one of our reporters to see you, but in a matter so important—and so delicate as this one is—I felt it would be better if I came personally to have a little talk with you and get your side of ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... than he was willing to have any one know, and he had overheard his son's remarks. While he was listening, it had suddenly flashed on him how he should handle this delicate matter of telling Jon Esserson that his daughter had ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the concentrated labour of genius of the highest order, and the expenditure of not less than 47,000 pounds, their success was complete, and Watt's inventions, in the words of Lord Jeffrey, rendered the Steam Engine "capable of being applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased, as to set weight and solidity at defiance. By his admirable contrivances, it became a thing stupendous alike for its force and its applicability, for the prodigious power it can exert, and the ease and precision, and ductility ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... knowledge. Your words will gain access to the commonsense of many who would perhaps regard the opinions of clergy as likely to be prejudiced or uninformed. I am of course not qualified to express an independent judgment upon the medical or physiological aspects of this delicate problem, but I desire on moral and religious as well as on social and national grounds to support your general conclusions, and to express the hope that your paper may have wide circulation among those who are giving attention to what is becoming ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett
... fall away. Reason is not excluded from these blind throbs of a blood that strikes to right the doings of the Fates. Nesta did not err in her divination of the good and the bad incarnate beside her, though both good and bad were behind a curtain; the latter sparing her delicate senses, appealing to chivalry, to the simply feminine claim on her. Reason, acting in her heart as a tongue of the flames of the forge where we all are wrought, told her surely that the good predominated. She had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... piercing, hoo is the causative prefix, ia the passive particle, which was, in old Hawaiian, commonly attached to the verb as a suffix. The Hawaiian speech expresses much more exactly than our own the delicate distinction between the subject in its active and passive relation to an action, hence the passive is vastly more common. Mr. J.S. Emerson points out to me a classic example of the passive used as an imperative—an old form unknown to-day—in the story of the rock, Lekia, the "pohaku ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... entered. Their brown, slipperless feet were caked with sticky mud, and directly they found themselves under shelter in a dry place they dropped the robes they had been holding up, and, bending down, began to flick it off on to the floor with their delicate fingers. They did this with extraordinary care and precision, rubbed the soles of their feet repeatedly against the boards, and then put on their yellow slippers and threw back the hoods which had been ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... yet seen. There were large fields of Indian corn, and many of another kind, called broom corn, being grown only to make brooms. We passed many fields of a brilliant orange-red pumpkin, which, when cooked, looks something like mashed turnips, and is called squash: it is very delicate and nice. But beautiful as the country was, even in the rain, we soon found out that we had left New England and its bright-looking wooden houses. The material of which the houses are built remains the ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... received its death-blow from our machetes. Sometimes we were fortunate enough to secure a bees' nest full of honey, or find luscious fruit. At times I stopped to admire a giant tree, eight or ten feet in diameter, or orchids of the most delicate hues, but the passage was hard and trying, and the stagnant air most difficult to breathe. The fallen tree-trunks, over which we had to step, or go around or under, were very numerous, and sometimes we landed in a bed, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... the greatest mathematician of his day. The exactness of his fine and analytic mind is reflected in the exquisite finish, the subtile wit, the delicate descriptive touches, that abound in his Quatrains. His verses hang together like gems of the purest water exquisitely cut and clasped by "jacinth work of subtlest jewelry." But apart from their masterly ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... shock she had received quickly passed off. She tottered, but did not fall, and stood up looking stronger than ever; seizing the wrist of the detective, she held it as if her delicate little hand were a vice, and ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... painful luxury more than the men, probably because they have very few ornaments. The two central front teeth are hollowed at the cutting edge. Many have quite the Grecian facial angle. Mapuio has thin legs and quite a European face. Delicate features and limbs are common, and the spur-heel is as scarce as among Europeans; small feet and hands are ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... through the heavens, like birds of prey with aerial wings, loaded with mists" and "the rains, the dew, which the clouds outpour."[504] As a reward for these fine phrases they bolt well-grown, tasty mullet and delicate thrushes. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... [Greek: idea] which this condition of being must finally assume is far indeed—far, perhaps, by ages and aeons—from becoming part of the general conception. Nowhere since the beginning has the gross problem of living ever so much as approached solution, much less the delicate and intricate one of living together: a propos of which your body corporate not only still produces criminals (as the body-natural fleas), but its very elementary organism cannot so much as catch a really athletic one as yet. Meanwhile you and I ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... our proceeding. Having advanced all the day, we at length encamped, much in the same manner as before. Fires were lighted, and huge pieces of elephant flesh placed to cook before them. A party of carriers had followed us, bringing more delicate provisions, and among them some jugs of palm-wine, with which, after the feast, the king and his more ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... declare that it was essentially a struggle between England and the Continent. After Eylau Alexander was proof against these arguments; but now the triumphant energy of Napoleon and the stolid apathy of England brought about a quite bewildering change in Russian policy. Delicate advances having been made by the two Emperors, an interview was arranged to take place on a raft moored in the middle of the River Niemen ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... do, a door at the east end of the wide corridor quietly opened, and a flood of light from Miss Allison's boudoir shot across the darkness. Elmendorf heard the soft rustle of silken folds, and hastened towards the light. Florence stood there at the door-way in some rich wrap of a pale, delicate shade of pink. Billows of creamy lace broke away from the shoulders and down along the entire front. The short elbow-sleeves seemed to burst into creamy foam, while a band of sable fur encircled and contrasted with the pure white throat, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... he lingered for awhile. A soft mist hung all around; sky and sea were of a delicate blurred blue-grey, the former mottled in places. The sun was not visible, but its light lay in one long gleaming line out on the level water; beyond, all was vapour-veiled. There were no breakers; now ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... getting a good reproduction from such work as that by which Mr. H.P. Kirby or Mr. D.A. Gregg is known. For this purpose their style could hardly be improved upon. A drawing can be made with fine and delicate lines and still reproduce well if there is not too much difference in size between the original and the reproduction required. In general, the best results can be obtained by making the plate about two thirds the size of ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 7, - July, 1895 • Various
... between the height of high and low water on this coast, and the lake-like illusion would have been perfect had it not been that the rocks were tinged with gold for a foot or so above the sea by a delicate species of fucus. In the exquisite inlet where I spent the night, trees and trailers drooped into the water and were mirrored in it, their green, heavy shadows lying sharp against the sunset gold and pink of the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... dwellings may be divided into three groups: (1) Those which are hollowed in earth or in wood; (2) those which in the simplest form result from the division of material of any kind; then, as a complication, of materials bound together; then, as a last refinement, of delicate materials, such as blades of grass or threads of wool woven together; such are the nests of certain birds and the tents of nomads; (3) those which are built of moist earth which becomes hard on drying; the perfection of this method consists of piling up ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... it on a bush to dry," promised Sarah amiably. "But I have to have some hot water, Winnie; Bony is delicate and I can't give him ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
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