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More "Fingering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long and anguishing weeks that followed on that anxious night in the Hotel of the Vos in't Tuintje, I have often wondered to what malicious promptings, to what insane impulse, I owed the idea that suddenly germinated in my brain as I sat fingering the dead man's letter-case in that squalid room. The impulse sprang into my brain like a flash and like a flash I acted on it, though I can hardly believe I meant to pursue it to its logical conclusion until I stood once more outside ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... to his playing with you, when he has finally acquired the proper mode of fingering, and plays in right time, and gives the notes with tolerable correctness, you must only then first direct his attention to the mode of execution; and when he is sufficiently advanced, do not stop ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... travelling sweep that rolls asunder overhead, heaven's laughter of purest blue among titanic white shoulders: it may mean fair smiling for awhile, or be the lightest interlude; but the watery lines, and the drifting, the chasing, the upsoaring, all in a shadowy fingering of form, and the animation of the leaves of the trees pointing them on, the bending of the tree-tops, the snapping of branches, and the hurrahings of the stubborn hedge at wrestle with the flaws, yielding but a leaf at most, and that on a fling, make a glory of contest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all eyes, Philosopher! a fingering slave, One that would peep and botanize Upon his ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... their excessive impatience and inordinate inquisitiveness to examine everything about it. One of them, thinking the cyclometer to be a watch, puts his ear down to see if he can hear it tick, and then persists in fingering it about, to the imminent danger of the tally-pin. After telling him several times not to meddle with it, and receiving overbearing gestures in reply, I deliberately throw him backward into an irrigating ditch. A gleam of intelligence overspreads the stolid countenance ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Fingering the hot rifle with close-pressed hands, Gale watched the sky line along the high point of lava. It remained unbroken. As his passion left him he feared to look back at his companions, and the cold chill returned ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... coming to my ear, I mount my fiery hoss and gallop wildly up to the store, enter with something of the sang froid, grace, abandon and recherche nonchalance with which Charles Yates ushers ladies and gentlemen to their seats in the opera-house, and, nervously fingering my butcher knife, fiercely demand goods and chattels of the clerk. This plan always succeeds. This is by way of explanation of this vast and unnecessary stationery of which this letter is composed. I ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... it quickly out and unbuttoned one coat-button: then, for lack of something to do with the hand, did the button up again. I decided to keep the miserable member fingering the button. To make matters worse Salome rested his eyes like a searchlight on the hand. At last he looked distressingly ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... into the room. I was standing then by the window; the glass was opened, and I was idly fingering the cement which clung to the masonry where "Jacob's Ladder" had been. He told me briefly that the King wanted me, and together we crossed the drawbridge and entered the room that had been ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... island must be wild over her. The father smiled, proud, yet disturbed by this praise. "Come, girl, what should you say to the master?" He spoke to her as if she were a child, and she, with lowered eyes, her face flushed, fingering a corner of her apron, stammered a few words in the Ivizan dialect: "No, I am not pretty. I am at your ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... you get after a long walk or a long play day. It was mind-sleepiness—Dickie had gone through so much in the last thirty-six hours that his poor little brain felt quite worn out. He fell asleep among the straw, fingering the clasp-knife in his pocket, and thinking how smartly he would cut the ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... was what I might call electric. The Colonel was positively bristling; he stood with his back to the fire, fingering an unlit black cigar, his face flushed, his being obviously roused and ready for action. He hated this mystery. It was poisonous to his nature, and he longed to meet something face to face—something he could gauge and fight. Dr. Silence, I noticed at once, was sitting before the map of ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the handles, ready. They screamed and gesticulated with excitement. And Frank Drayton leaned back in his office chair and looked at them, and burst out laughing, because, he said, they made such funny faces. When they got to fingering their knives, he tilted back his chair and rocked with laughter. His sudden, incredible mirth frightened them and stopped the mutiny. She could see him, she could see his ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... Ewing's invitation was a tribute to himself. To fit me for church on Sunday and other functions of civilisation he took Ewing (as counsellor) and myself to a tailor's and plunged enthusiastically into the details of my outfit. I can see him now, shaggy and shabby, fingering stuffs with the anxious solicitude of a woman ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... there, restlessly fingering the ornaments upon the chimneypiece, his eye brightened suddenly and, taking up the pretty bracelet lying there, he went slowly back to her, saying in a tone that was humble and serious enough now: "I will act like a man, and you shall never be ashamed again. Only be kind to me. Let me put this ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... [Pianoforte scores of the C minor and Pastoral Symphonies of Beethoven.] Only it is essential that I should correct the last proof, so that the edition may be absolutely correct. I also wish to add the fingering to several passages, to make them easier for amateurs. Be so good, therefore, as to send me, through the Embassy (or by any other opportunity which is not too expensive), two proofs to Rome, where I shall be ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... from their polished instruments. Penrod marked the shapes of the great bass horns, the suave sculpture of their brazen coils, and the grand, sensational flare of their mouths. And he saw plainly that these noble things, to be mastered, needed no more than some breath blown into them during the fingering of a few simple keys. Then obediently they gave forth those vast but dulcet sounds which stirred his spirit as no other ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... a hand-camera, which he placed on a seat beside him and pointed it towards the path from the house. As Riviere approached, Sylvester's left hand was fingering the silent release of the instantaneous shutter. He had made a practice of working his camera surreptitiously while his eyes held the eyes of ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... daylight. A pale March sunshine was beating down upon the cobbled streets, and passers-by were plentiful. There was no fingering of hilts or talk of skewering on either side. Nor must I show any of the anger that was boiling in me. My face was too well known in Madrid streets, and a Secretary of State does not parade emotions to the rabble. So I walked stiff and dignified amain, that ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... on one side, out of the way of the moving throng of people. Draconmeyer was fingering nervously his tie of somewhat vivid purple. His ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her as she had thought she should dislike a sister of Abigail Jones and the terrible Tim. She had not touched her piano since her arrival, for fear of the homesickness which its familiar tones might awaken, and when she saw Tim's big red hands fingering the keys, in her resentment at the desecration she said to herself that she never would touch it again; but when in a low aside Melinda added to her entreaties: "Please, Mrs. Markham, don't mind Tim—he means well enough, and would not be ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... very much," she came forward to his side and fell to fingering the top button of his coat caressingly; "would you mind it so very much not to call ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... I may have been—[disdainfully]—pretty. What good did it do anybody? [Fingering the dress with aversion.] And when would you have me hang ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... all herself and, with herself, her joy. Her face, already flushed by her walk, burned deeper still with shame. Yet the desire that three weeks of striving had swollen to a passion urged her forward, and, fingering the lovely thing about her waist to gain courage, she broke through the last ring of staring people and stood in front of Miss ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... the last shred of her dignity, to come and stand before him, nervously fingering her apron. "For the dear saints' sake, let no one hear you say that, good Fridtjof! Alas, how you have got it twisted! He is an Englishman who bent his head for food in the evil days. And now they that bought him will ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... rose from his chair, walked to the old bureau which stood near the door, opened it, and took from it a bulky volume, which he laid upon the table in front of him. But he did not seem at all bent upon reading. He began fingering the pages, until he came upon a bundle of bank-notes, and these he proceeded to count, with a whispering movement of his lips. He had but three or four more notes still to count, when his sharp ear detected the sound of stealthy footsteps, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... so undreamt-of a privilege, sent Austin's blood to the roots of his hair. He flourished his leg more proudly than ever as he stumped victoriously home and announced the great news to Aunt Charlotte. That estimable lady was fingering some notepaper on her writing-table as her excited nephew came bursting in upon her ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... these grand things?" said the father, gently fingering but half afraid to look at her, because of what had been in his own mind; "the sweetest Navy blue, and the brightest Army red, and little bits of silver lace so quiet in between them! I am sure I don't know what to call ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the previous half-hour had been riding slowly and studying the ground intently, suddenly reined up his mule, and, leaping lightly to the ground, knelt down and carefully examined the long, coarse grass that thickly carpeted the soil. For a full minute he remained thus, delicately fingering the blades and gently pushing them aside, then he rose to his feet, and, with a sigh of satisfaction, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... oh dear!" cried Mrs. Minto, with inadequate petulance. She stepped out on to the landing, fingering her mouth. Sally tiptoed after, hardly moved, but intensely curious. She was grinning, but nervously and with contempt of the row. "Joe!" called Mrs. Minto. "Joe! Come upstairs. Don't get quarrelling like that. Ought to be ashamed of yourself. Come ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... iron sphere in one hand, the learned professor began fingering it with the other, like Columbus illustrating the rotundity of the globe before the Royal Commission ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... no one's goin' to come," she said, fingering her last quarter. "I know it's Clara by the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... wind screamed down the Dale; while the snow fell relentlessly; softly fingering the windows, blocking the doors, and piling deep against the walls. Inside the house there was a strange quiet; no sound save for hushed voices, and upstairs the shuffling ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... nodded at him—she was fingering the plant of marguerite daisies that stood in its accustomed place between the easel and the wall. She plucked a flower and began hurriedly ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... and the moonlight fell in a silver glow on the old maid's thin but noble features; then Prescott saw a look of perplexity, mingled with another look which he did not wholly understand, but which did not seem hostile. She hesitated awhile, fingering the package, then she put it back upon the sill and beckoned ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... beneath it the subordinate clause: "Says Husband Too Absorbed In Business To Make Home Happy." For weeks afterward, wherever he went, he felt that blush upon his forehead. For the first time in his life the coarse fingering of public curiosity had touched the secret places of his soul, and nothing that had gone before seemed as humiliating as this trivial comment on his tragedy. The paragraph continued on its way through the press, and whenever he took up a newspaper he seemed to come upon it, slightly modified, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... behind the trees on every side, rifles shimmering in the subdued afternoon haze—wiry, gloomy-eyed men, their sleeveless sheepskin jackets belted in with leather, their sombre caps and trousers thinly banded with orange braid. They looked at him without speaking, almost without curiosity, fingering their gunlocks, ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... got into the outer room, Ussher and Feemy were not there. The dancing and drinking were going on as fast as ever; Shamuth, the piper, was in the same seat, with probably not the same tumbler of punch beside him, and was fingering away at his pipes as if the feeling of fatigue was unknown to him; and Mary, the bride, was still dancing as though her heart had not been broken all the morning with the work she had had to do. Biddy also, the Ballycloran housemaid, was in the seventh heaven of happiness—for hadn't she ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... shout the insult so that all might hear, but his parched throat refused him service, his trembling hand sought the scattered cards upon the table, he collected them together, quickly, nervously, fingering them with feverish energy, then he hurled them at the man opposite, whilst with a final effort he ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Young Mary's pride in her new dress. There was a buzz of unintelligible comments from the squaws as they pressed about the girl, fingering the material and patting ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... Miss Castlevaine was going upstairs and happened to see that first box of roses on the hall desk. Miss Sniffen was fingering a card. When Miss Nita received the box there was no card there. That was why she was so long in saying 'thank you,'—she didn't know where they came from. We finally found out through the boy ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... have in imitation of their epilogues introduced in their favourite voluntaries a sort of music quite foreign to the design of church services, to the great prejudice of well-disposed people. These fingering gentlemen should be informed that they ought to suit their airs to the place and business; and that the musician is obliged to keep to the text as much as the preacher. For want of this, I have found by experience a great ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... took up his opponent's dice box, and rattled it, and appeared inspecting and fingering the tali.[105] "You have won your throws fairly," he said, handing it back. "Now let us invoke the decision of Fortune once more. A libation to the Genius of Good Luck!" And instead of spilling out a few drops ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... head hung in shame, as if ostracized for incompetency, stood a young fellow whom Carter recognized as the escort of the Lady Trusia. His face was pale and dejected. Apparently unaware of the presence of the strangers, he was fingering his ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... was my request as he stood fingering his hat, and looking at Mary as though he had seen a vision, "and permit me to ask what the fact of your serving a priest in Ireland has to do with your presence ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... large eyes floated in light; even the bright strands of her yellow hair shone with unusual lustre; her step was so buoyant she scarcely seemed to touch the ground at all; she was all shy smiles; and as she came, with her slender white right hand she played with the new ring she wore on her left, fingering it nervously. But anyone more ecstatically happy than she seemed it is impossible to imagine. Menteith could not take his eyes off her. He seemed to gloat over ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Hague a twelvemonth before by Francis Aerssens, States' resident at the French court. That diplomatist, as we know, had been secretly commissioned by Henry to feel the public pulse in regard to the sovereignty, so far as that could be done by very private and delicate fingering. Although only two or three personages had been dealt with—the suggestions being made as the private views of the ambassadors only—there had been much gossip on the subject, not only in the Netherlands, but at the English and Spanish courts. Throughout the commonwealth there was a belief that Henry ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... shirt, with long full sleeves, of a gray wool undyed from the sheep. Then a very bulky short jacket which, after fingering it doubtfully, Travis decided was made of felt. It was elaborately decorated with highly colorful embroidery, and there was no mistaking the design—a heavy antlered Terran deer in mortal combat with what might be a puma. It was ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... stipulated rental. The elderly French gentleman, a dapper and interesting, specimen rarely paralleled at home, strolls about contentedly on the asphalt promenade back from the beach, smoking a cigar and fingering a light bamboo. Younger men, also well-dressed, pass in couples, or walk with a mother and daughter,—never with the daughter alone. Boatmen and candy-peddlers ramble in and out, a Basque fisherman or two linger about the scene, and ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... him in the face and edged towards him fingering with his dripping fingers the hilt ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... moment fingering each piece of his scanty clothing, recalling every piece of labor or battle which had added pouch, belt, strip of fabric to his equipment. Yet—there was still that odd sense of strangeness, as if none ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... to facts. In the meanwhile, let him dwell much among his fellow-craftsmen. They alone can take a serious interest in the childish tasks and pitiful successes of these years. They alone can behold with equanimity this fingering of the dumb keyboard, this polishing of empty sentences, this dull and literal painting of dull and insignificant subjects. Outsiders will spur him on. They will say, "Why do you not write a great book? paint a great picture?" If his guardian angel fail him, they may even ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shall wear them this night. It's the good old Father's blessing." She clasped them about Beryl's neck, fingering ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... stopped. He stopped, and Mark had now a hand on each of his shoulders and held him at arm's-length, held him with a fine idea that was not disconnected from the sight of the small neat weapon he had been fingering in the low luxurious morocco chair—it was of the finest orange colour—and then had laid beside him on the carpet; where, after he had admitted his visitor, his presence of mind coming back to it and suggesting that he couldn't pick it up without making it more conspicuous, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... pony to the last minute. Behind the saises sat as many of the Skidars' regiment as had leave to attend the match—about half the native officers, and a hundred or two dark, black-bearded men with the regimental pipers nervously fingering the big, beribboned bagpipes. The Skidars were what they call a Pioneer regiment, and the bagpipes made the national music of half their men. The native officers held bundles of polo-sticks, long cane-handled mallets, and as the grand stand filled after lunch they arranged themselves ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... for?' asked Philammon, fingering curiously the first coins which he ever had handled ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... he remembered that little was left of what Joseph Ashburn had given him. Crispin saw the flush, and reading aright its meaning, he drew from his pocket a purse that he had been fingering, and placed it quietly upon the table. "There are fifty Caroluses in that bag. That should suffice to carry you to France. Fare you well ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... know," Dryfoos resumed, looking aside at the cloth window-strap, which he kept fingering, "as you quite understood what made me the maddest. I didn't tell him I could talk Dutch, because I can't keep it up with a regular German; but my father was Pennsylvany Dutch, and I could understand what he was saying to you about me. I know I had no business to understood ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... gradually forgot to ask for originality of thought. The thought and the feeling which they despised departed from them, and they were left to felicitate themselves on their small science and their neat fingering. This is the history of the first attack of the Renaissance upon the Gothic schools, and of its rapid results, more fatal and immediate in architecture than in any other art, because there the demand for perfection was less reasonable, and less consistent with the capabilities ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it. How many monkeys—men, I mean—marry without knowing what a woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wives as the ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken the heart which they ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... stated that white men, and particularly live mechanics, were wanted for a job down South, but Dick hesitated for a few minutes, fingering a dollar in his pocket. Carefully spent, it would buy him his supper and leave something towards his meals next day, and he had been walking about since morning without food. If he went without his supper, the ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... up one of the pieces, fingering it delicately and inspecting with a critical eye the flat base on which it stood, and reflected for ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... mean or underhanded thing before in my life, but I sprang at that vest without the least hesitation, and fingering it with the lightest of touches, found in the smallest of inside pockets a key, which instinct immediately told me was that of the door I had once endeavored to pass. Oh, the rush of feeling overwhelming me as I held it in my hand! Would he miss it if I carried it off? ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... most of the policemen in Mexico, save the Rurales, that splendid company of highwaymen whom Diaz bought over from being bandits to be the guardians of the peace. This one eyed us meaningly, but Sherry gave him a reassuring nod, and our talk went on, while the blind man was fingering the money we had just given him. Presently Sherry said to him: "I'm Bingham Sherry," adding some other particulars—"and you're all right. I've a friend here who wants to talk with you. Come along; we'll take you home—confound the garlic, what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... behaviour again transcended all rules. For she stood before the dish of chestnuts, fingering one or two, with a somewhat unsteady motion of the corners of her mouth; and then put both her hands to her face and laughed, her ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... mad to have the bed, in all its shiny golden beauty, and once the arrangement was made they could hardly give over examining it, crawling beneath it, smoothing the mattress and fingering the springs. They shook it, poked it, patted it, and finally Apporo, filled with feminine pride, arrogated to herself the sole privilege of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... her face lest it should display too much of that locked, sullen calm underneath, and replied by an occasional word and nod to his running comments upon the different articles undergoing examination. Fingering carelessly the rare ornaments upon a fine set of brackets, her eye rested upon an elegant little gold mounted pistol. She turned away quickly, and ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of its being left in this solitary spot was, however, not within the compass of my philosophy, so I gave that up. On looking at it more closely, I noticed a plate, marked with the name and age of the person for whom it was intended, and on bringing my eyes near the letters, I was able, between fingering and reading, to make out the name of my old cudgel-fighting school-fellow, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... on the rack, while I am inflicting tortures on the Countess. What a shameful business we are carrying on! There are moments when I think that I have paid dearly for my life of luxury, for I know well," he added, half consciously fingering his locket, "that some day we shall meet some one stronger than ourselves, and then the inevitable ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... Admired Teras with the ebon thigh; A nymph that haunted the green Sestian groves, And would consort soft virgins in their loves, At gaysome triumphs and on solemn days, Singing prophetic elegies and lays, And fingering of a silver lute she tied With black and purple scarfs by her left side. Apollo gave it, and her skill withal, And she was term'd his dwarf, she was so small: 70 Yet great in virtue, for his beams enclosed His virtues in her; never was proposed ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... scherzos, and ballades. The critic tries to analyse the master's style of execution—a "mode" in which "delicacy, picturesqueness, elegance, and humour are blended so as to produce that rare thing, a new delight"—pointing out his peculiar fingering, treatment of scale and shake, tempo rubato, &c. But although the critic speaks no less appreciatively of the playing than of the compositions, the tenor of the notice of the second matinee (July 15, 1848) shows that the former ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... with another pause, and with great drops of perspiration gathering on his face, and on the backs of his hands. Yet another start, and he came very near; so near that he gazed into the blue of Ichabod's eyes. They seemed to him now devil's eyes, and he halted, looking at them, fingering the weapon in his hand, his ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... never seen the effects of a firearm before, though his books had taught him something of them, but when he saw the rat-faced one fingering the butt of his revolver he thought of the scene he had witnessed so short a time before, and naturally expected to see the young man murdered as had been the huge sailor earlier ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... jostled against the furniture, which was heaped together. But the sound of voices and of music guided him. He opened a door, and tumbled into the middle of a rout. Standing up before a piano, which a young lady in spectacles was fingering, Delmar, as serious as a pontiff, was declaiming a humanitarian poem on prostitution; and his hollow voice rolled to the accompaniment of the metallic chords. A row of women sat close to the wall, attired, as a rule, in dark colours without ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... us!" His first sight too, it seemed: since he had lived through twelve Italian summers without sense of the sun-steeped quality of atmosphere that, even in shade, gives each object a golden salience. He was conscious of it now only as it suggested fingering a missal stiff with gold-leaf and edged with a swarming diversity of buds and insects. The carriage moved so slowly that he was in no haste to turn the pages; and each spike of yellow foxglove, each clouding of butterflies about a patch ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... anything spherical. Also, he had a love for handling the heads of children; when, softly approaching a group from behind, he would, with his bright, quiet smile, lay slender, bony fingers upon a close-cropped little poll; with the result that the children, not relishing such fingering, would take alarm at the same, and, bolting to a discreet distance, thence abuse the idiot, put out their tongues at him, and drawl in a ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... perform a task until he can perform it almost automatically. The pupil who in the early stages of piano playing finds it most difficult to control and manage his fingers, after a time is able to forget all about his fingering and devote his entire attention to the pages of his music, and after this he is able to apparently let his fingers play the entire piece of music by themselves without a thought on his part. The best performers have told us that ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... a formula of words which some genius had devised for the fingering practice it gave one on the keyboard, and Joe Harned had written it hundreds of times before, just as thousands of others had done, without giving a thought to its meaning, or the significance that the substitution of a single ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... cents, Pa, and I'll pay it back to you just as soon as I can get a dollar changed," said Obadiah proudly, fingering the shining coins. ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... in lettuce culled from Academe and thyme of Mount Hymettus. In yonder loggia, lifted above the garden and the court, two lovers are in earnest converse. They lean beneath the coffered arch, against the marble of the balustrade, he fingering his dagger under the dark velvet doublet, she playing with a clove carnation, deep as her own shame. The man is Giannandrea, broad-shouldered bravo of Verona, Duke Guidobaldo's favourite and carpet-count. The lady is Madonna Maria, daughter of Rome's ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... into the room; the headmistress followed to inquire into the cause of the disturbance. Of course the master had the first word, and he was base enough to say I had become so violent on account of his correcting my fingering. When asked for my explanation, I answered that I would not contradict a liar—it was ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... strong white arms to fold you, But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you Bound on the rocks where the ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... said the trooper, with a trained man's confidence in his superior. 'Thin I'd best git up, p'raps.' And he arose and stood dubiously fingering the furrow plowed along the top of his head by the gold ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... on the watch over her young, her little quick figure never stood still in that room, but wandered from wall to wall, from window to door, fingering now one thing, now another. There was dust everywhere, the room could not have been cleaned for weeks, and June, quick to catch at anything that should buoy up her hope, saw in it a sign that he had been obliged, for economy's sake, to give ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... escape the dead weight of an impression that he was speaking to a stranger and not to his own flesh and blood. He wished now that he had shown affection on Jack's entrance. He had a desire to grip the brown hand that was on the edge of the desk fingering the rose stem; but the lateness of the demonstration, its futility in making up for his previous neglect, and some subtle influence radiating from Jack's person, restrained him. It was apparent that Jack might sit on in silence indefinitely; in a ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Connemara, he made his way to the examination-hall, an outside student in a borrowed cap and gown. Now, when for the first time he entered into the actual life of the college, could look up at windows of rooms that were his own, and reckon on his privilege of fingering tomes from the shelves of the huge library, the spirit of the place awed him anew. He neither analyzed nor attempted an expression of what he felt, but his first night within the walls was restless because of the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... the back porch and a coop for an old hen just off with her chicks; my dog needed a dog house, and I even aspired to a rowboat for the pond. I could hardly wait for material before getting to work. Fingering over those tools, my eye fell upon a motto graven on the inside of the lid of ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... on the desk, showing his ankles of pride, and fingering his mustache, smiling a squinty smile with his handsome, beady eyes as he said: "Oh, I'd take care of you. You aren't ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... going on, he was now enabled to indulge in a second glass of wine, and also in the luxury of a cigar. Mr. Blades' shirt-sleeves were turned up so as to display the anatomical proportion of his arms; and little Mr. Bouncer, with the grave aspect of a doctor feeling a pulse, was engaged in fingering his deltoid and biceps muscles, and in uttering panegyrics on his friend's ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... closed after the elders, and there was silence in the drawing-room. Herbert became restless, and wandered about the room opening books or fingering the ornaments in an aimless way; Nesta stared gloomily out of the window, and Brenda tried ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... whether he went to town or not I don't know. At any rate he forbade us to go out too, and promised us a whipping if we so much as touched the lamp with the tips of our fingers. Why, we should as soon have thought of fingering the priest's gold-embroidered chasuble. We were only afraid that the cord which held up all this splendor might break and we should get the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... country maidens quickly to fathom; as send-price-of-subscription-with-answer rebuses to solve; as oyster cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside fingering damply in his ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... purpose, sorting and indexing the Hewish dossier as long as the daylight lasted. Considine worked steadily through them as though he were dealing with a mathematical calculation. To Gabrielle, on the other hand, there was something mysterious in her occupation; fingering these papers that other fingers had touched she communed with the dead—not with her father, who could scarcely write his own name, but with the ancient stately Hewishes who had built Roscarna and grown rich on the Spanish ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... Yonder Kingdom looked upward quickly, curiously, still fingering the earth, and saw the offer ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... man got his pipe going, squatting on his heels as before, he told his tale. "Me spik Angleys no good," he said, fingering his Adam's apple, as if the defect was there. "Las' winter I ver' poor. All tam moch sick in my stummick. I catch him fine black fox. Wa! I say. I ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... indrawn breath. "I don't know," she said, "what it is. It seems as though I'd been here before. It looks so familiar to me—so good—" She went closer to where, still holding out the rain-coat, he stood on the other side of a table strewn with papers. She leaned on this, fingering a pen and looking at him with a shy eagerness. She was struggling, as so often, with an indefinable feeling which she had no words to express. "Don't you know," she went on, "every once in a while ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... the foolish boy had no love to his father to keep him from emigrating. He wanted to be his own master, and to get away into a place where he thought he could sow his wild oats and no news of it ever reach the father's house. He wanted to have the fingering of the money, and to enjoy the sense of possession. And so he went off on his unblessed road to the harlots and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... see her mistress just now. Anything would be better than that the servants should know that there was a quarrel. But every servant in the house had known all about it for the last three hours. When the door was closed and he was alone, he sat fingering the note, thinking deeply how he should answer it, or whether he would answer it at all. No; he would not answer it;—not in writing. He would give his wife no written record of his humiliation. He had not acted wrongly. He had said nothing more than now, upon mature consideration, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Patten, fingering his little mustache, then letting his thick fingers drop to the diamond in his tie, smiled with satisfaction. Smiling, he tiptoed down the hall and went out upon the veranda where he smoked his cigar serenely. ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... dressed, happy-go-lucky fellows enter together. One is fingering a guitar without playing any particular tune, and the other has his hat cocked over his eyes in a burlesque, dude-like manner. There ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... Gurd 's keepin' company with her this mornin'," said Dr. Spearmint, in a voice softer than a woman's. "I jest stopped to sing a little with 'em on the way. I look dreadful," he added, rather ostentatiously fingering a light blue necktie. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... in good friends that night—or rather I should say that I turned in, for I left him sucking an empty pipe and aimlessly fingering a volume of Mahan; and once when I woke in the night I felt somehow that his bunk was empty and that he was there in the dark ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... and noble countenance, would have supposed that he was looking on at the improvisation of a really great artist. The illusion would have been all the more natural because the performance of this mad music required immense executive skill to achieve such fingering. Gambara must have worked at it ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... interrupting counsel or witnesses: it was evident that things were not at all to his liking. And now as Meeking sat down the Coroner turned to Mrs. Bunning, who stood, looking wonderingly about her, and still fingering the apron in which she had been found ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... chap was nimbly fingering "Dixie" on the mandolin. The strains came down to the youth on the campus through the giant oak trees that half obscured the facade of "old Brighton." Over on the athletic field a bunch of freshmen "rookies" of the school battalion were being put through the manual ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... the fringe of an enormous shadow, for the sun has dipped behind the blue-domed mountains that keep back France. Small hands of scattered mist creep from the forest, fingering the vineyards that troop down towards the lake. A dog barks. Gygi, the gendarme, leaves the fields and goes home to take his uniform from its peg. Pere Langel walks among his beehives. There is a distant ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... him still fingering the book, but looking into the fire and far beyond. Behind him through the open window one sees how cold and clear the ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... exceedingly great—so great, in fact, that it seems as if the breaking point has almost been reached. The nervous condition is alarming, the sufferer noting in himself an inability to work, to play, to study or even to sit still. An observer would note the stammerer or stutterer in this condition fingering his coat lapels, putting his hands in his pockets and removing them again, biting his finger nails, constantly shifting eyes, head, arms and feet about. If at home, the sufferer in this condition would probably be seen walking about the house, ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... private visit, I feel convinced that the right and proper thing for me to do is to be at the station, or, at any rate, just outside, with my Order on. I shall not claim acquaintance with him, or anything of that kind," said Mrs. Poppit, fingering her Order; "but after my reception to-day at the Palace, nothing can be more likely than that His Majesty might mention—quite casually, of course—to the Prince that he had just given a decoration to Mrs. Poppit of Tilling. And it would make me feel very ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... and cut that cord," said Maurice, when his chum had been clumsily fingering the wrapping that bound the odd little packet for what to him ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... under our left ears? Are we unstrangulable, I ask you? Think of these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape of my own fingers, not for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which is something), but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking fingering, etc. No one that is so framed, I maintain it, but ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... Maidstone on my bike," said the new Lamb airily, fingering the little black mustache. "I can lunch at The Crown—and perhaps I'll have a pull on the river; but I can't take you all on the machine—now, can I? Run along home, ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... drawers, and other receptacles in Lord Lydstone's cabin. While they were thus employed, Mrs. Wilders sat at the cabin-table under the skylight, her head resting on one hand, and in an attitude that indicated the prostration of great sorrow. The other hand was on the table, fingering idly the various objects that strewed it. There were an inkstand, a pen-tray, a seal, a blotting-book or portfolio, and many other ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... taken out the cursed jewel and was fingering it in a nervous way which went to my heart of hearts. Gently removing it from his hand, I asked with all the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... the man in the velour hat observed, fingering the elk-tooth on his heavy watch-chain, "I'd like to know where they get this stuff about clothes coming down. Now, you take this suit I got on." He pinched his trousers-leg. "Four years ago I paid forty-two fifty for it, and it was real sure-'nough value. Well, here the other day I went into ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... met at eleven; then Clark had gone in to dance. So, seeking him, Jim wandered into the soft-drink stand that had once been a bar. The room was deserted except for a sleepy negro dozing behind the counter and two boys lazily fingering a pair of dice at one of the tables. Jim was about to leave when he saw Clark coming in. At the ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... pleaded again, 'consider that it is but for a short time.' Cromwell passed him in his pacing and, unsure of having caught his ear, Cranmer addressed himself to Throckmorton and Wriothesley, the two men of forty who stood gravely, side by side, fingering their long beards. 'For sure,' Cranmer appealed to the three silent men, 'what we must avoid is crossing the King's Highness. For his Highness, crossed, hath a swift and sudden habit of action.' Wriothesley nodded, and: 'Very sudden,' Lascelles allowed himself utterance, in a low voice. Throckmorton's ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... of spectacles," I whispered, picking them up. I was still fingering the broken lenses and the bent rims when Raffles tripped and almost fell, with a gasping cry that he made ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the never-ceasing topic at the Manse, Helen was for once profoundly silent. Even when her father had dropped asleep, as in his feebleness of age he frequently did in the very midst of conversation, she sat restlessly fingering her wedding-ring, and another which she wore as a sort of guard to it, the only jewel she possessed. It was a very large diamond, set in a plain hoop of gold. The earl had given it to her a few months ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... another he went, fingering the waxy leaves, studying the brilliant flower faces. Finally turning a corner and crossing the wild garden, to which he paid slight attention, he started down the other side of the house. Here an almost overpowering odor greeted his nostrils, and he went over to a large tree covered with ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... cast loose from the moving yacht and headed back to the shore—her occupants greedily fingering the bills Barr had given them for their work—Barr, from his station on the bridge, gave a start ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... weaving. They move silently, swiftly, gracefully. Two of their number begin to grind maize between stones. Two others plait baskets. An old medicine-man, with a bag of herbs, comes from the background, and seats himself near the drum, at left, taking an Indian flute from his deerskin belt, and fingering it lovingly. An Indian woman, arriving later than the others, unstraps from her back a small papoose, and hangs it to the limb of a tree. The Indian children stand towards the front of the greensward, shoot in a line their feathered arrows, run and pick up the arrows, ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... complex of passion and maternity. She wondered if it would ever come to her. She rather thought not. But she was also conscious of a new attitude among the three at the table, her mother's tense watchfulness, her father's slightly squared shoulders, and across from her her grandfather, fingering the stem of his wineglass and ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... seek the matron of the party, and left her companion at the door of the saloon, wistfully fingering a cigar in one hand, and feeling for a match with the other. Presently he gave himself a clap on the waistcoat which he had found empty, and was turning away, when Mr. Arbuton said, offering his own lighted cigar, "May I ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... floor, they stood before a machine where an operator was busy fingering a keyboard as if it were a typewriter. As he touched each key, it released a letter, and at the back of the machine Paul could see the silvery gleam as the miniature bar of metal dropped down and slipped into its place in the lengthening series ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... They had met at eleven; then Clark had gone in to dance. So, seeking him, Jim wandered into the soft-drink stand that had once been a bar. The room was deserted except for a sleepy negro dozing behind the counter and two boys lazily fingering a pair of dice at one of the tables. Jim was about to leave when he saw Clark coming in. At the same moment ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... laid it over Rabbit's neck, fingering the silver-white mane absently. It brought him quite close to Helen May, so that she could have put her hand ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... fellows enter together. One is fingering a guitar without playing any particular tune, and the other has his hat cocked over his eyes in a burlesque, dude-like manner. ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... hitching rack in front of the store, while Buck Stratton made a small bundle of his coat, vest, and a few necessaries from his bag and fastened it behind the saddle. The remainder of his belongings had been left with Pop Daggett, who lounged in the doorway fingering a roll of bills in his trousers pocket and watching his new acquaintance ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... I am glad you relieved me of the necessity of making some such suggestion. I think that is all—for the present." She stood up, and, fingering her glove, glanced down at the table for a moment. "May I pay, say, two hundred dollars ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... Herb, as he stooped and touched them, fingering each prong, "I've hunted moose in fall and winter since I was first introduced to a rifle. I've still-hunted 'em, called 'em, and followed 'em on snowshoes; but I never felt so thundering mean about killing an animal as I did about ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... von Buelow's edition of this piece is very near the solution suggested by Mendelssohn. At any rate, I advise using the Buelow edition, particularly as the figures are written out in full and the fingering is carefully marked—a very important consideration in one or two places in ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... said quietly, "or I think I might do you an injury." He was fingering the shovel nervously as he spoke. Thus Fogerty and I departed, banished even from ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... suffering people. Just at the entrance sat a boy, totally blind, both eyes having been torn out by a minnie-ball, and the entire bridge of the nose shot away. He crouched against the gable, in darkness and agony, tremulously fingering his knees. Near at hand, sat another, who had been shot through the middle of the forehead, but singular to relate, he still lived, though lunatic, and evidently beyond hope. Death had drawn blue and yellow circles beneath his eyes, and he muttered incomprehensibly, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... we are to blame, Edward—much to blame?" and her eyes wandered to the accusing triplet of big bank-notes lying on the table, where the congratulators had been gloating over them and reverently fingering them. Edward did not answer at once; then he brought out ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... piteous haste To put on convict-clothes, While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes Each new and nerve-twitched pose, Fingering a watch whose little ticks ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... the girl who had brought it, and said he would see her mistress just now. Anything would be better than that the servants should know that there was a quarrel. But every servant in the house had known all about it for the last three hours. When the door was closed and he was alone, he sat fingering the note, thinking deeply how he should answer it, or whether he would answer it at all. No; he would not answer it;—not in writing. He would give his wife no written record of his humiliation. He ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... I whispered, picking them up. I was still fingering the broken lenses and the bent rims when Raffles tripped and almost fell, with a gasping cry that he made no effort ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove. Zeke, nervously fingering the whip handle, looked down into the guileless face and mentally vowed never to betray the ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... to the other little fellows of like rank; "they call me a baby there, too, because I 'm so little and so young. But I 'll grow. And—I love you," he went on abruptly and determinedly, choking down his sobs and swallowing his tears, while fingering the handle of his dirk, and furtively rubbing his eyes with his other hand. "Oh, madam, if you would only wait until I got a frigate! Won't you? But no! You don't treat me like a man," he exclaimed bitterly, stamping his foot and ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... in those days of wonderment, Wonder and delight, No thought we spent what murder meant, Horror in the night; Or how a hidden dreadful plan Like a fingering weed Was growing up in the mind of man ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... at that," said Barclay slowly, fingering a paper-cutter on the desk before him. "Mr. Rathbawne is peculiar in one respect; he supports and considers the Union in every other. But he has always insisted upon his right to discharge the hands at will, and without giving reasons. Incompetency is only a word which ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... be here presently," she said, as she entered the room. And then her eye fell on Miss Vila and glanced quickly at Mr. Buckingham, who was nervously fingering his stick. "Meanwhile," she added, with a mischievous look, "I will ask you to remain with us, as Mr. Wilding will be obliged to see you here. Lillie, you have the gentleman's card. It seems awkward to wait for the formality of Henry's introduction. Will you have the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... surged around him cursing and shouting; but he stood up straight and terribly silent; only his keen grey eyes glanced down to the barrel of his pistol and he stood nervously fingering the small blue hammer with his thumb and measuring the distance between himself and the nearest ruffian who stood on the outskirts of the mob shaking a pistol in Conway's face and shouting: "Come on, men, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... respectfully several paces away, nervously fingering the guitar which he still carried. The other did not ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... babble shall not henceforth trouble me. Here is a coil with protestation! [Tears the letter. Go get you gone, and let the papers lie: 100 You would be fingering them, ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... "Now," he said, fingering the scarab, "if I was not dreaming, and if by some mysterious means Her Highness's promise is to be actually fulfilled, I ought to be able to take this ring off without opening my hand. Certainly, any fourth ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... there—snowdrops, scillas, "angels' tears," quite two dozen blossoms. She brought them into the little parlour and opened its window wide. The sun was shining, and fell on the flowers strewn on the table, ready to be made into the nosegay of triumphant happiness. While she stood fingering them, delicately breaking half an inch off their stalks so that they should last the longer in water, she became conscious of someone on the pavement outside the window, and looking up saw Mrs. Clirehugh. The past, ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... quick nuptials enter'd suddenly Admired Teras with the ebon thigh; A nymph that haunted the green Sestian groves, And would consort soft virgins in their loves, At gaysome triumphs and on solemn days, Singing prophetic elegies and lays, And fingering of a silver lute she tied With black and purple scarfs by her left side. Apollo gave it, and her skill withal, And she was term'd his dwarf, she was so small: 70 Yet great in virtue, for his beams enclosed His virtues in ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... naturalization and to strengthen his demand to be set free as an American citizen. The overseer, hearing his excited voice and seeing us examine a large sheet of paper, came up. He looked like a butcher, in his dirty-white linen coat, his legs planted apart, his hands fingering his short whip. The way in which he joined our group and made himself one with us, without so much as by your leave, was disturbing. The cool self-assurance of even a petty Russian official is sinister. They are straw men to your reason, but hard facts if you bump up against them. Our ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... was indeed there, fingering feverishly the sinuous ribands of the tape-machine. I sat at a little distance, watching him. Two results straggled forth within an hour, and, at the second of these, I saw with wonder Lord X.'s linen actually flush for a moment and then turn deadly pale. I looked ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... although the lower f''' and upper c''' keys worked on the same strings and produced the same pitch. Room was also made for five extra bass keys at the lower end of the upper manual. However, since short octave tuning was employed and it was desirable to be able to use the same fingering in the bass on both manuals, the tails of the C/E, D/F and E/G keys of the upper manual had to be bent to the left in order to work on the strings played by the F, G, and A keys respectively of the lower manual. The vacant space ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... the hubbub ceased. An hour later the rajah himself came on board with two or three attendants, and a man whom they recognized as speaking a certain amount of English. The rajah scowled at them, and from the manner in which he kept fingering his kris they saw that it needed a great effort on his part to abstain from killing them at once. He spoke for some time in his own language, and the interpreter ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... which may have been due to ennui, but also to the tingling of her nerves. Clyffurde saw that her hands were never still for a moment; she was either fingering the snowdrops in her belt or smoothing out the creases in her lace scarf; from time to time she raised her head and a tense expression came into her face, as if she were trying to listen to what was going on elsewhere in ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... a short pause—broken by Marsham, who was sitting a little apart from the others, restlessly fingering ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... deer, of course, in this valley," said Dick, fingering his rifle, "and sooner or later we'll get a shot at one of them, but it may be days, and—Al—I've got ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... at me for a moment steadily. "On the contrary, Bill, I dislike going to bed—here. And Mabel goes so early." She said it lightly enough, fingering the disorder upon my dressing table in such a stupid way that I saw her mind was working in another direction altogether. She looked up suddenly with a kind of nervousness from the brush ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... this time. And I'd like to know what triggered him into it. I can understand some roughhousing on his part—Stevens, too—providing these boys were on the prod in the beginning. But this book business was too deliberate. Books—" He held up the volume he was still fingering. "Where'd these come from ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... "Ten years ago the bright ones were from the South, but you Southerners are outstripped to-day, and it's the men from the West who are doing it. There's a fundamental reason there, I suppose, if you go deep enough," he added, fingering the ends of his short gray moustache while he kept an eye on his champagne glass. "We've done with mere classifying and imitation, and we're waiting for a fresh explosion of raw energy. Now for pure constructive imagination the North and ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... very sympathetic. She looked at a great number of rings, toying with them in voluptuous hesitation. She enjoyed fingering them. At last she chose one. The gold band on her finger frightened her. It made her feel a strange, different person, rather disreputable ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... the point of interrupting counsel or witnesses: it was evident that things were not at all to his liking. And now as Meeking sat down the Coroner turned to Mrs. Bunning, who stood, looking wonderingly about her, and still fingering the apron in which she had ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... of some of the Regicides have been prepared for the 31st volume of the Family Library. We suspect the editor to be M. D'Israeli, who has been poring over the records and fingering the dust of the Royal "martyr" for many years past. Our honourable friend, Clavering, of the Metropolitan, in his recollections of the British Museum, long since, says, "there sat D'Israeli, daily extracting from the voluminous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... us as she led the way to the upper regions. Pandora was for ever opening her box in those days: she was never weary of fingering her ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... for a moment fingering each piece of his scanty clothing, recalling every piece of labor or battle which had added pouch, belt, strip of fabric to his equipment. Yet—there was still that odd sense of strangeness, as if none of this ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... this for?' asked Philammon, fingering curiously the first coins which he ever had ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... she sat quite silent there in the shadows, and motionless except for fingering something white that lay in her lap, he waited uneasily. Was she angry again, he wondered, or perhaps she ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... ordered up to join Nome, the man who did this, eh?" he muttered, fingering the ragged edge. "I could kill him for what happened down there at Nelson House, ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... good bishop was deceived in supposing she was so decayed in her limbs and senses as himself perhaps and other of that age were wont to be; she said she thanked God that neither her stomach nor strength, nor her voice for singing, nor fingering instruments, nor, lastly, her sight, was any whit decayed; and to prove the last before us all, she produced a little jewel that had an inscription of very small letters, and offered it first to my lord of Worcester, and then ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... breathless moment neither spoke, Hampton fingering his gun nervously, his eyes lingering ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... sure," muttered Jimmie Dale—he was fingering the automatic in his pocket, "I am not sure that I can ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... It was the tutor, and his voice jarred and disturbed the dream, as a stone troubles the surface of still water. The vision trembled, and then broke, and the young lady found herself still sitting by the table and fingering the cracker paper, whilst the tutor chuckled and rubbed his hands by the fire, and his shadow scrambled on the wall like an ape upon a tree. But her "Yes" had passed into the young man's dream without disturbing it, and he ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with you. You ought to have an allowance, if only to teach you how to lay it out, and to gain some acquaintance with everyday business. Henceforward I shall let you have a hundred francs each month. Here is your first quarter's income for this year,' he added, fingering a pile of gold, as if to make sure that the amount was correct. 'Do ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... agreed with her husband, but that was small compensation since she saw her son only at meals, and was now absolutely afraid to address him. 'Enyushenka,' she would say sometimes—and before he had time to look round, she was nervously fingering the tassels of her reticule and faltering, 'Never mind, never mind, I only——' and afterwards she would go to Vassily Ivanovitch and, her cheek in her hand, would consult him: 'If you could only find out, darling, which Enyusha would like ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... her step was so buoyant she scarcely seemed to touch the ground at all; she was all shy smiles; and as she came, with her slender white right hand she played with the new ring she wore on her left, fingering it nervously. But anyone more ecstatically happy than she seemed it is impossible to imagine. Menteith could not take his eyes off her. He seemed to gloat over every item ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Dryfoos resumed, looking aside at the cloth window-strap, which he kept fingering, "as you quite understood what made me the maddest. I didn't tell him I could talk Dutch, because I can't keep it up with a regular German; but my father was Pennsylvany Dutch, and I could understand what he was saying to you about ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his longing palms within her gown and to set his unsteady hands close to her breast. But she, looking narrowly, was aware of the presence of the old man whom she once had known, and felt ashamed. She spurned the wanton and libidinous fingering, and repulsed the unchaste hands, telling the man also that he had need of arms, and urging him ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and down there, playing long and low. Oh, music, how he loved it; it seemed to set everything straight all at once in his head. With bow in hand and violin at rest, he surpassed himself that evening in ingenuity of fingering. He trembled to think of his own cleverness and skill. What a miracle of device! What a triumph of cunning! Not an element was overlooked. It was safe as houses. He could go to bed now, and drop off like a child; having arranged before he went to make Guy Waring his cat's paw, and ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... of the inner room came the sound of men's rapid voices. Hilda could distinguish Mr. Cannon's and Arthur Dayson's; there was a third, unfamiliar to her. Having nothing to do, she began to make work, rearranging the contents of her table, fingering with a factitious hurry the thick bundles of proofs of correspondence from the villages (so energetically organized by the great Dayson), and the now useless 'copy,' and the innumerable letters, that Dayson was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... you the husband of that witch over near Paynesville or Hawick, that goes singing and fingering on the strings on that box, getting people to weep and taking them away from their parents?" (Wife played a harp when she sang.) "You get out of this house as fast as your feet can ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... so again, never again," cried her husband; "you shall see, my poor wife!" He went to his inner room and returned with a handful of louis, which he scattered on the bed. "Here, Eugenie! see, wife! all these are for you," he said, fingering the coins. "Come, be happy, wife! feel better, get well; you sha'n't want for anything, nor Eugenie either. Here's a hundred louis d'or for her. You won't give these ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... inspired. He paced once or twice up and down the room, but he was evidently unconscious of his surroundings—he seemed possessed by thoughts which absorbed his whole being. Presently he seated himself at the table, and absently fingering the writing materials that were upon it, he appeared meditatively to question their use and meaning. Then, drawing several sheets of paper toward him, he began to write with extraordinary rapidity and eagerness—his pen travelled on smoothly, uninterrupted ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... on his feet. He stood martially erect, fingering his little, black mustache nervously, his dark eyes gleaming. He was a handsome, slim, dark man of forty, with a slightly Jewish cast of countenance, crimped black hair, parted in the centre, a large, but well-shaped nose, a full, round chin, and a low, white forehead—a face that suggested ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... the water straight, Towards a bowery island opposite; Which gaining presently, she steered light Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove, 430 Where nested was an arbour, overwove By many a summer's silent fingering; To whose cool bosom she was used to bring Her playmates, with their needle broidery, And minstrel memories of times ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... by enticing talk and really export fingering of the various parts of the admirable mechanism, Blaine half convinced his superior. More, for by adroit manipulation of a certain lock, with wrench and a pair of tweezers, he readjusted a certain valve hinge in ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... subject,—as his trusting heart looking to the bottom of that which vexed him, would see its clear way out,—he would rise to a higher melody, sweep the unseen strings with a bolder hand, and swiftly fingering the cords from his neck, down along his waistcoat, and up again to his very ear, create an ecstatic strain of perfect music, audible to himself and to St Cecilia, and ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... was the secret of the iron door and his father's constant fingering of the keys; and this was the plaything of his youth, The Wound, as he had called it. Robert bowed his head upon his hands and tried to recollect where he had thrust it last; but though he thought of a score of hiding-places ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... burnt a piece of paper, or even opened a letter. The Goyah, which is literally heathen female, did everything required on the Sabbath. His grandmother once called Solomon Ansell a Sabbath-female merely for fingering the shovel when there was nothing in ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... door stood open on the mild sunlight of the court, and hall and court were empty. The library door was open, too, and after listening in vain for any sound of voices within, she quickly crossed the threshold, and found her husband alone, vaguely fingering the papers on ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... me to catch up to her—she was making her own length to every stroke I took, and as she drew away he stood there, one hand on the tiller, the other in his pocket (I have often wondered if it was fingering a revolver in there!), his eyes turned steadily on me. And I began first to beg and entreat him to save me, and then to shout out and curse him—and at that, and seeing that we were becoming further and further separated, he deliberately put the yacht still ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... and unbuttoned one coat-button: then, for lack of something to do with the hand, did the button up again. I decided to keep the miserable member fingering the button. To make matters worse Salome rested his eyes like a searchlight on the hand. At last he looked distressingly straight ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... set himself to face his position. Surely he was still a man? Escape must lie some way. Then he laughed softly and bitterly to himself. Yes, there was escape—escape through the small blue hole in the forehead, which more than once he had pictured to himself lately with horrid reality when fingering his revolver—escape in the arms of the sea which he still loved, for in his day he had been a mighty swimmer. There were no other means save such as these. Long ago he had wearied of asking himself what manner ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... make those two jump out of the window with fright and surprise," he said to me, still fingering the switch impatiently. "You see, it works the other way, too, as I told you, if I choose to throw this switch. Suppose I should shout out, and they should hear, apparently coming from the fireplace, 'You are discovered. Thank you ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... right to left, the other with coquettish grace, from left to right, the swiftness of her face calmed into lazy contours, the magnificent full physique of her body relaxed as she lay with her silken ankles crossed on the nether chair support, her hands fingering a long necklace of jade, she appealed to me as the most marvellous example I had ever come across of ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... must be at such an angle when the neck is fixed, that the end of it near bridge must measure exactly thirteen-sixteenths of an inch from belly to top of ebony; by this means your bridge, as described, will be just a nice height for clean fingering of the strings. ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... went out the horse was standing at the door where Fanie had left it. But the old Kafir was kneeling by the steps fingering its hoofs, which were all bloody, and as Fanie came forward he put out his hands and left a little spot of blood ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last," said Prince Vasili one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre's elbow, speaking as if he were saying something which had long since been agreed upon and could not now be altered. "We start tomorrow and I'm giving you a place in my carriage. I am very glad. All ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... playing with you, when he has acquired the proper mode of fingering and plays in time and plays the notes with tolerable correctness, only then direct his attention to the matter of interpretation; and when he has gotten this far do not stop him for little mistakes, but point them ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... share of the double performance, which he led much after the careless, slap-bang style in which overtures that nobody listened to were performed in his day. It is a very great mistake to let learners play with violin accompaniment until they have thoroughly mastered the piano-forte without it. Fingering, the first of fundamental acquirements, is almost sure to be overlooked by the master, whose attention is not on the hands of his pupil but on his own bow; and the pupil, anxious to keep up with the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... ears? Are we unstrangulable? I ask you. Think of these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape of my own fingers, not for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which is something) but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking, fingering, &c. No one that is so framed, I maintain ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in making a gift one's self, without being hampered by this "all-together" notion, isn't there?—especially if the gift be a handsome one, and is going where it is very much needed. So as Joy sat fingering the pile of elegant worsteds, twining the brilliant, soft folds of orange, and crimson, and royal purple, and soft, wood-browns about her hands, it cost her a bit of a struggle to say this. It seems rather a small thing to write about? Ah, they are these bits of struggles in ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... and were in their usual attire. Tom-Jim-Jack wore a hat with plumes—not white, like the peers; but green tipped with orange. He was embroidered and laced from head to foot, had flowing bows of ribbon and lace round his wrists and neck, and was feverishly fingering with his left hand the hilt of the sword which hung from his waistbelt, and on the billets and scabbard of which were embroidered an ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... done the Government from that auspicious moment," concluded the lady, craning her long neck with an air of pardonable pride, and fingering the massive chain that depended from it with a caressing fondness, "I need not speak. Indeed, it speaks for itself. But I may say that the country which he served has not proved ungrateful, but has shown its ability to reward true ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... say more. His officer's chin dropped on to his breast. "We are dead men," he muttered. "Why has he come hither? We have no gold, no treasure-ships. He will burn the place over our heads." The man continued muttering to himself and fingering the buckle ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... train wagons might be expected any moment. The electric lights were blazing. All the clerks stood expectant, the porters were by the door, the trim, uniformed bell-boys were all in waiting line, the register clerk stood fingering the leaves of the register with a gracious air. A noise is heard outside, the big door opens, there is a rush forward, and four people flock in a man in a linen duster, a stout woman, a lad of ten, a smartly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... head and stared into the fire, fingering his moustache the while. From the far side of the bivouac the voice of Corbet-Nolan, senior subaltern of B company, uplifted itself in an ancient and much appreciated song of sentiment, the ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... upon the rangers was amusing; their kindly airs of good-natured protection vanished; Mount gazed wildly at me; Tim Murphy, perfectly convinced yet unable to utter a word, saluted and marched off, while Elerson and the Weasel stood open-mouthed, fingering their rifles until the men began to fall in silently, and I put up Elsin and mounted my roan, motioning Murphy and Jack Mount ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... Cassius of Parma, in a letter, taxes Augustus with being the son not only of a baker, but a usurer. These are his words: "Thou art a lump of thy mother's meal, which a money-changer of Nerulum taking from the newest bake-house of Aricia, kneaded into some shape, with his hands all discoloured by the fingering of money." ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... man sometimes paused in his work, fingering the pen unconsciously, as men do who hold it all day long, and thinking of Gloria with an expression of horror and suffering in his eyes. But he, the real Paul Griggs, never thought of her. The link was broken, the thread that had carried the message of dead love between him and ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... your ally would draw up the rope, untie it from the hook, shut the window, snib it on the inside, and get away in the way that he originally came. As a minor point it may be noted," he continued, fingering the rope, "that our wooden-legged friend, though a fair climber, was not a professional sailor. His hands were far from horny. My lens discloses more than one blood-mark, especially towards the end of the rope, from which I gather that he slipped ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reached over, took up his opponent's dice box, and rattled it, and appeared inspecting and fingering the tali.[105] "You have won your throws fairly," he said, handing it back. "Now let us invoke the decision of Fortune once more. A libation to the Genius of Good Luck!" And instead of spilling out a few drops only, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... cumbersome young man, stood by nervously fingering his eyeglass. For the first time he felt that the clerk was better than a confounded dog, after all. He surprised every one, his wife most of all, by coolly interfering, not particularly in defence of the clerk but in behalf ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the hall frightened nearly to death. What mad scheme had she entered upon? Had she strength enough to carry it through? The three servants were terrified also, their eyes rolling in their sockets, their hands nervously fingering their weapons. Suddenly another voice, Caesar's, broke through the turmoil, reaching even the ear of the desperate man on the other side of the heavy mahogany door. ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... up straight and keep their hands in their laps when not occupied with eating, is very hard for a child, but should be insisted upon in order to prevent a careless attitude that all too readily degenerates into flopping this way and that, and into fingering whatever is in reach. He must not be allowed to warm his hands on his plate, or drum on the table, or screw his napkin into a rope or make marks on the tablecloth. If he shows talent as an artist, give him pencils ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... room, on the ground floor, Father Dan sat by the fire, fingering his beads and listening to every sound that came from my mother's room, which was immediately overhead. My father himself, with his heavy step that made the house tremble, was tramping to and fro, from the window to the ingle, from the ingle to the opposite wall. Sometimes Aunt Bridget ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... face, but he advanced to lend his aid to the lad, Fayette, and succeeded in getting the parts of the door so far into place that they would prevent any damage by rain, except in case of severe storm. The broken lock was, of course, useless, and as the mill lad saw the cripple fingering it, he remarked:— ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... line, but other ways. They are always being persecuted, and harassed, and picked at. Whereas the pork-fed man, it seems to me, sort of hankers to be picked at. It gives him a good chance to slap somebody slonchways. He feels better after he has seen his persecutors go away with a cut lip, and fingering of their teeth to see ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... closed volume. It is remarkable that in none of the many woodcuts in which he has been handed down to us do we see him reading; he is always meditating on something he has just read. Occasionally, he is fingering a portfolio of engravings, or leaning aside to examine severely a globe of the world. That is the nearest he ever gets to physical activity. In him we see the static embodiment of perfect wisdom and perfect righteousness. We take him at his own valuation, humbly. Yet we have ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... such thin clothing as this out there in those cold forests?" she asked, fingering ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of frosty humour in his eye as he said this, and in the silence which followed I could hear him chuckling to himself, and tasting the words over again as though they were good wine. I sat fingering my pistol and waiting for him to speak again. When he did so, it was with another dry chuckle and a long puff ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... began to grind herrings and broth; first of all, all the dishes full, then all the tubs full, and so on till the kitchen floor was quite covered. Then the man twisted and twirled at the quern to get it to stop, but for all his twisting and fingering the quern went on grinding, and in a little while the broth rose so high that the man was like to drown. So he threw open the kitchen door and ran into the parlour, but it wasn't long before the quern had ground the parlour full too, and it was only at the risk of his life ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... clear, and muddy water, too, The long-billed gentleman fishes; Our pious gentlemen we view Fingering in devils' dishes. ...
— Faust • Goethe
... the length of the room, frowning. Her hesitation puzzled him; he failed to trace its origin and fretted against a barrier that he felt but could not see. She sat silent, looking at him in a distressed fashion and restlessly fingering Lady Richard's invitation. She was no less troubled than he and almost as puzzled; for the feeling that held her back even while she wanted to go forward was vague, formless, empty of anything definite enough to lay hold of and bring forward as the plea that justified ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... his projector controls went dead beneath his hands. Finding his communicator screens likewise lifeless, he slipped to the floor and wriggled to the room of the Chief Power Officer, where he found Wixill idly fingering his controls. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... the Sea-goddess Benten and of Kwannon-Sama, seated on summits of mountains forming the upper part of miniature landscapes made of some unfamiliar composition, and beautifully coloured; the whole being protected from careless fingering by strong wire nettings stretched across the front of the little shrines containing the panorama. Benten has eight arms: two of her hands are joined in prayer; the others, extended above her, hold different objects -a sword, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... after bringing his glasses to bear upon the ill-starred Hun. "He nearly had me, though," he soliloquised, tentatively fingering the double ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... green and flowery, sleeping in loveliness, have been unheaved, and piled in somber, jagged masses, against the sky, by the fingering of an earthquake; and gentle, loving, trusting hearts, over whose altars brooded the white-winged messengers of God's peace, have been as suddenly transformed by a manifestation of selfishness and injustice, into gloomy haunts ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... . . yes," the other answered, absently fingering some loose sheets of manuscript and ignoring the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... meeting. He always found her seated at a little table of some West Indian wood, and engaged in marking the linen of her trousseau. Angelique never spoke first on the subject of religion. If the young lawyer amused himself with fingering the handsome rosary that she kept in a little green velvet bag, if he laughed as he looked at a relic such as usually is attached to this means of grace, Angelique would gently take the rosary out of his hands and replace it in the bag ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... held prisoner with his arms trussed behind him. On her other hand were gathered the rest of the Portuguese, very sullen and with dark looks whenever she turned from them to Saint Aubyn and from their language to the English. He, I could see, was perplexed, and stood fingering his beard: but his face brightened as he came a ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... wonderful day. It was not only just body-sleepiness: the kind you get after a long walk or a long play day. It was mind-sleepiness—Dickie had gone through so much in the last thirty-six hours that his poor little brain felt quite worn out. He fell asleep among the straw, fingering the clasp-knife in his pocket, and thinking how smartly he would cut the ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... to shout the insult so that all might hear, but his parched throat refused him service, his trembling hand sought the scattered cards upon the table, he collected them together, quickly, nervously, fingering them with feverish energy, then he hurled them at the man opposite, whilst with a final effort he ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... successful. Dukes and princes consulted him on the make of their coats, and discussed tailors with him with as much solemnity as divines might dispute on a mystery of religion. Brummell did not spare them. 'Bedford,' said he, to the duke of that name, fingering a new garment which his grace had submitted to his inspection, 'do you call this thing a coat?' Again, meeting a noble acquaintance who wore shoes in the morning, he stopped and asked him what he had got upon his feet. 'Oh! shoes are they,' quoth he, with a well bred sneer, 'I thought ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... parade, and Charles, weary, perspiring, and wearing the abhorred silk hat, entered the box-office of the Opera House on Cleveland Avenue. Sitting in the treasurer's seat at the window he saw a sturdy lad fingering a pile of silver dollars. He slipped them in and out with an amazing dexterity. Hearing a noise, he looked up and beheld young Frohman with the tile tilted back on ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... a kind of sob, and looked appealingly at Del Fortis, who, fingering the crucifix he ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... I brought it, and began fingering it aimlessly, giving me a disagreeable feeling of being in the way; and as I turned and ran up the stairs, he went into the drawing-room. He wasn't there but a minute or two,—before I reached the second floor I heard the front door close ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... for handling the heads of children; when, softly approaching a group from behind, he would, with his bright, quiet smile, lay slender, bony fingers upon a close-cropped little poll; with the result that the children, not relishing such fingering, would take alarm at the same, and, bolting to a discreet distance, thence abuse the idiot, put out their tongues at him, and drawl ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... up his hat and stood fingering the rim, trying to make up his mind whether he should force the truth upon her then or obey orders and wait. The training ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Franklin, thoughtfully, as he sat idly fingering the lump of clay that lay between his feet. "Just think, we are taking' away from these people everything in the world they had. They were happy as we are—happier, perhaps—and they had their little ambitions, the same as we have ours. We are driving them away from their old country, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... wheeled an easy-chair up towards the fire and placed by its side a small table on which were some illustrated papers. Then, with a little bow, he disappeared through the inner door. Major Thomson, who had been fingering the Sketch, laid it down the moment the door was closed. He leaned forward, his face a little strained. He had the air of listening intently. After a brief absence ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... elect him if he could be nominated. And Arba Spinney's methods may be known from the fact that once he got enough votes to make him a State Senator by asking his auditors at each rally to feel of the lumps in the corners of their ready-made vests. A man who is fingering the sheddings of shoddy feels like voting for the candidate who declares that he will make a sheep a respectable member of ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
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