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More "Knack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slack-water. The steamers pick their way carefully; we do not give them as wide a berth as formerly, for the wakes they turn are no longer savage—but wakes, even when sent out by stern-wheelers at full speed, now give us little trouble; it did not take long to learn the knack of "taking" them. Whether you meet them at right angles, or in the trough, there is the same delicious sensation of rising and falling on the long swells—there is no danger, so long as you are outside the line of foaming breakers; within those, you may ship water, which is not desirable when ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... the boiler slid off and fell to the pavement with a noise that nearly caused a runaway, and brought the hot-cheeked William much derisory attention from a passing street-car. However, he presently caught the knack of keeping it in position, and ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... conversation which was the cause of this narrative. There had been news of the return of one Lord Denbeigh to Warwickshire—by report as wild a cavalier as ever fought, and a godless body to boot. Marian, who, as I have said, had always a certain knack for ghost stories and the like, froze me with her accounts o' this wild lord's ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... childhood; and, certainly, the figures are more intricate than the cotillion. Some of the steps resemble the Scotch reel or barn dance, especially when the dancers beat time with their heels, and we certainly think the swinging measure of the mazurka is often more knack ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... eight-mile line of guns accurately trained the day before, enemy guns, trained with lesser accuracy, did their best to inflict an equal punishment. The effect was a combination of the solemnity and the littleness of man which defies every knack of human ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... if she be a woman who insists, as I do, upon her indefeasible right to sing bass. I know that it helps things along for a woman to look after a man's linen and buttons, and do his fine work generally, because she seems to have a kind of natural knack at the business. I am aware that it is exceedingly pleasant to hear a woman sing treble, if she sings it well, but I am talking, be it remembered, of woman's right to sing bass. Let us stick to ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... financial mystery; he was in and out of offices, always purposeful, always in a hurry, but always with sufficient time to observe the strictest niceties of polite behavior. It was a part of his plan to create an atmosphere of his own, to emphasize his knack for quick, decisive, well-calculated action. The money he received from Coverly enabled him to maintain the posture he had assumed; he spent it with his usual prodigality, receiving little direct benefit, but making each dollar look ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... won't be familiar with us; low company in a tap-room will." And he certainly proved the truth of his own words. The like of him for making intimate friends of total strangers at the shortest notice I have never met with before or since. Cautious as the Scotch are, Mr. Dark seemed to have the knack of twisting them round his finger as he pleased. He varied his way artfully with different men, but there were three standing opinions of his which he made a point of expressing in all varieties of company while we were in Scotland. In the first ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... altar of which hangs a picture by West. I never could look at it long enough to make out its design; for this artist (though it pains me to say it of so respectable a countryman) had a gift of frigidity, a knack of grinding ice into his paint, a power of stupefying the spectator's perceptions and quelling his sympathy, beyond any other limner that ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of conscience, I seize this opportunity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... He can make all the letters separately, and he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on that much, under me; but he can't put them together. He's too old to acquire the knack ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... that he has an artistic rule over his 'accidents,' for 'surprises' have a wonderful knack of falling into the general plan of his life, as though but waited for. Our first meeting with him was a singular instance of this. I say 'our,' for Narcissus and I chanced to be walking a holiday together at the time. It fell on this wise. At Tewkesbury ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... of the Moral-Plays had vigour enough, it appears, to propagate themselves into the drama of comedy and tragedy after the main body of them had been withdrawn. An apt instance of this is furnished in A Knack to know a Knave, entered at the Stationers' in 1593, but written several years before. It was printed in 1594, the title-page stating that it had been "acted sundry times by Edward Alleyn and his company," ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... compared with the simple and stately facts. Who could have imagined such a heart-break as that? Yet it went along with the fulfillment of everyday duty and made no more noise than a grave under foot. I doubt if fiction will ever get the knack of such things." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to cook and have a natural knack for it. Others hate it. If you are one of the former, select a propitious moment to suggest that you will cook, if the rest will wash the dishes and supply the wood and water. Thus you will get first crack at the fire in the chill of morning; and at night you can squat ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... if I carry it, as there is, I trust, much hope I shall, Mr. Gibson says there will be funds to divide 6s. in the pound, without counting upon getting anything from Constable or Hurst, but sheer hard cash of my own. Such another pull is possible, especially if Boney succeeds, and the rogue had a knack at success. Such another, I say, and we touch ground I believe, for surely Constable, Robinson, etc., must pay something; the struggle is worth ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Spain, whose huge battalions, in close order, like so many towers, but towers that could repair their breaches, remained unshaken amidst all the rest of the rout, and delivered their fire on all sides. Thrice the young conqueror tried to break these fearless warriors; thrice he was driven knack by the valiant Count of Fuentes, who was seen carried about in his chair, and, in spite of his infirmities, showing that a warrior's soul is mistress of the body it animates. But yield they must: in vain through ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... used to put it in his peppery reproof, I always did have a knack of tumbling head first the instant an opportunity offered. This time I had gone in heels and all, and now came up in as fine a confusion as any bashful bumpkin ever displayed before his lady. Frances Sutherland had regained her composure and came to my rescue with ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... white men try it over and over again, and I have tried it myself, but it ain't no manner of good. The Almighty has given us a lot of knowledge that he has not given to these black fellows, but he has balanced it up by giving them the knack of lighting a fire which he has not given to us. I never heard of a white man who could ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... parenco. Kiss kisi. Kitchen kuirejo. Kitchen-garden legoma gxardeno. Kitchen-gardener legomgxardenisto. Kitchen-jack turnrostilo. Kitchen utensils kuirilaro. Kite (bird) milvo. Kite (toy) flugludilo. Knack lerteco. Knacker defelisto. Knapsack tornistro. Knave fripono. Knave (cards) lakeo. Knavery friponeco. Knead knedi. Kneading-trough knedujo. Knee genuo. Kneecap genuosto. Kneel genufleksi. Knell ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... in a few words, and described her as if she had been some knick-knack for sale at an auction. Her hair came low on her forehead like a golden net, her skin was dazzlingly white, while her bright eyes threw out glances that were like those flashes of summer lightning which dart across the sky on a calm night ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... moment there are said to be a lot o' slaves ready for shipment and only waitin' till the 'Firefly' is out of the way. More than this my friend could not tell, so that's w'y I went to excogitate.—I beg parding, sir, for being so long wi' my yarn, but I ain't got the knack o' cuttin' it short, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... And moreover, I never paid a dollar for any man's vote and never promised one. There are some ways of doing a thing that are as good as others which other people don't happen to think about, or don't have the knack of succeeding in, if they do happen to think of them. My dear sir, I am obliged to knock some of your expenses in the head—for never a cent was paid a Congressman or Senator on the part of ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... with India. It is an able piece of descriptive writing. It is marked by a conscious and deliberate resolve that the "effect" shall be made. It shows us the Indian city from a high distance, as it appeared to an observer with a knack for vividly delivering his impressions. It is in no sense an inspired wrestle with the reality of India; and in that it is typical. Mr Kipling has never claimed to grasp or interpret his Indian theme. He has stood away almost ostentatiously from ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... now, with a clear ripple of joyousness, at some passing quip between our host and sharp-tongued Lady Berenicia, both of whom employed pretty liberally their Irish knack of saying witty, biting things. The sound came strangely to my ears, as if it were some other ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... mastic dust is required to produce a nice frosting is only to be determined by practice. The way to obtain the knack is to frost a few scraps to "get your hand in." Nitric acid of full strength is used, dipping the piece into a shallow dish for a few seconds. A good-sized soup plate would answer very nicely for frosting the bottom plate, which, it will be ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... business of designing the latter, then she'd have to set about learning, in a systematic way, to paint them; find out the proper way to begin, and take her time about it. Her two weeks at the academy had proved that it wasn't a knack that she could pick up casually. But there were books on costumes, she knew; histories of clothes, that went as far back as any sort of histories, with marvelous colored plates which gave you all the details. Bertie Willis had told her all about that ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral. Of all incumbents of that high office, Robert Southey had the most notable knack at drugging the Samson of public joy and cutting his hair to the quick; and he had an artistic color-sense which enabled him so to blacken a public grief as to give it the aspect ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... question of knack," Jimphy continued. "You get into the way of it and you can't stop. Sometimes a tune gets into my head and I have to keep on humming it or whistling it. I'm not what you'd call a sentimental fellow at all, but that song ... you ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... He took me into his den while he rummaged through his books to find some which would be acceptable to me—'May as well give 'em away before it's too late, ye know'—and then he settled back in his easy chair to puff at a pipe. I must note down one of his phrases which tickled me—he has such a knack for the proverbial and the epigrammatic. 'He's cut his cloth, he can wear his breeches,' he said of a certain scapegrace. He chuckled over the Suffolk phrase 'a chance child,' for a bastard (alluding to one such of his acquaintance ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... of a peculiar knack of jerking the date-stone, which makes it strike with great force: I never saw this "Inwa" practised, but it reminds me of the water splashing with one hand in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... out pretty shapes in thin cardboard with the point of a penknife. But when, at his suggestion, Brotteaux gave him some string and a bodkin, he showed himself very apt in endowing with motion the little creatures he had failed to make and teaching them to dance. He had a happy knack, by way of trying them afterwards, of making them each execute three or four steps of a gavotte, and when they rewarded his pains, a smile would flicker ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... late when Wilson reached Hilda's apartment on this particular December afternoon, and he found her alone. She sent for fresh tea and made him comfortable, as she had such a knack of making ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... look back upon it is really impossible for me to be much affected by the passing wave of dissatisfaction with Mr. Balfour. Men of first-rate ability and character are rare. Still rarer are men who, having those qualities, also have the knack of compelling the attention and respect even of a hostile House of Commons. When a party possesses a leader with all these gifts, it is not likely to change him in ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... of this county, sir," the old gentleman said, smiling at the man's knack of mimicry. "My home, Arden, is but a few ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... one goat can jump another can follow, as the Kaffirs say, how much more is this the case when an animal so active and so vigorous as the lion is concerned! And now came the further question, how were we to beguile the lioness to return? Lions are animals that have a strange knack of appearing when they are not wanted, and keeping studiously out of the way when their presence is required. Of course it was possible that if she had found Jim-Jim to her liking she would come back to see if there were any more of his kind about, but still ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... after him and fetched him back. You have no idea how full of fun he was. Poor Peter! with all his faults I could not help liking him, for he was charming at times. He could set you off into a fit of laughter with a word. He had a knack of his own for springing a joke upon you in the most unexpected way. I shall never forget the evening when they came to tell me that he had been found dead on the road to Langoat. I went and had ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... of man was Zachary? He was eminently sensible and conciliatory; he contrived to make northern barbarians hear reason in a way which puts him high among that section of the early popes who had the knack of managing uneducated swordsmen. He kept the peace in Italy to an extent which historians mention with admiration. Even Bale, that Maharajah of pope-haters, allows himself to quote in favor of Zachary, that "multa ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... our town laid in ruins; yet I truly believe the English rule would be a benefit to this distracted realm. Their own colonies, if report speaks truth, are far more flourishing and strong than any France has ever planted. You have the knack of it, you Britons. Sometimes I doubt whether we shall ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... imply that it should be unfinished, but that, when the painter has set down what the imagination grasped in one view, he shall stop, no matter where, and not attempt to eke out the deficiency by formula or by knack of fingers. Wherever the inspiration leaves him, there is an end of the picture. Beyond that we get only his personalities; no skill, no earnestness of intention, etc., can avail him; he is only mystifying himself or us. At these points ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Scarron or Moliere," said De Malfort. "I have heard more wit in one evening at Scarron's than in a week at Whitehall. Wit in France has its basis in thought and erudition. Here it is the sparkle and froth of empty minds, a trick of speech, a knack of saying brutal things under a pretence of humour, varnishing real impertinence with mock wit. I have heard Rowley laugh at insolences which, addressed to Louis, would have ensured the speaker a year in ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... required in dipping these rushes in the scalding fat or grease; but this knack also is to be attained by practice. The careful wife of an industrious Hampshire labourer obtains all her fat for nothing; for she saves the scumrnings of her bacon-pot for this use; and, if the grease abounds with salt, she causes the salt to precipitate ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... you ought. Besides, the path which looks attractive, and tempts to the indulgence of many appetites and habits which a Christian man must rigidly subdue, does not continue so attractive. Earthly pleasures have a strange knack of losing their charm, and, at the same time, increasing their hold, with familiarity. Many a man who has plunged into some kind of dissipation because of the titillation of his senses which he found in it, discovers that the titillation diminishes and the tyranny grows; and that when ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... grace and humor and freshness,—such refined humor it is, too, and so evidently the work of a gentleman. What a happy knack he has of giving the taste of a landscape, or any ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... 1] laughing with one another, flinging their little jokes about the table, and expecting that the Doctor might, as was often his wont, set some ponderous old English joke trundling round among the breakfast cups; eating the corn-cakes which crusty Hannah, with the aboriginal part of her, had a knack of making in a peculiar and exquisite fashion. But there was an empty chair at table; one cup, one little jug of milk, and another of pure water, with no guest to ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with whom life, for twenty-five years, had dealt kindly. He had perfect health, an income more than sufficient for his needs, a profession which interested without monopolizing him, a thoroughly contented disposition, and the happy knack of ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... it is a woman; good looking, possessing the knack of dressing smartly, capable and efficient, and less than 40 years old. For six years she had been head bookkeeper in Marbury Hall, an apartment hotel of the best class, at 164 West Seventy-fourth Street. For more than two years of that time, according to the prosecuting ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... weapons which seemed to possess personal skill and ferocity. Later, workmen found that certain tools had a knack of fitting smoothly in the hand—seeming even to divine the grain of the wood they worked on. The individual characteristics of violins were notorious, so that a violin which sang joyously under ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... charge of the refreshments. The duchess of Snarleyow is dressing a doll that is to be named by Senator Defew and raffled at five dollars a guess. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews is to take entire control of the fancy knick-knack table, where we shall sell gold match-boxes, solid silver automobile head-lights, cigar-cutters, cocktail-shakers, and other necessities of life among the select. I don't see how the thing ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Cop! Her cooking knack Would conquer fifty Catos— The Queen of tarts, and tuck, and tack, And cream, and ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... The type is not on the whole so fine as the Egyptian, but it is not so heavy as that of the Chaldaeans in the time of Gudea. The Theban artists have represented it in their battle-scenes, and while individualising every soldier or Asiatic prisoner with a happy knack so as to avoid monotony, they have with much intelligence impressed upon all of them the marks of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... experience of Vooda's persuasive tongue and knack of casuistry, did not wish to argue the point—knowing, as he did full well, the object of Vooda's visit—and at once made up his mind that he would not see ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... the wood-cutter was less grieved than his wife, but she browbeat him, and he was of the same opinion as many other people, who like a woman to have the knack of saying the right thing, but not the trick of being always ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... the book, Chesterton joyously refutes a few anti-Christian arguments by means of his extraordinary knack of seeing the large and obvious, and therefore generally overlooked things. He believes in Christianity because he is a rationalist, and the evidence in its favour has convinced him. The arguments with which he deals are these. That men ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... choice of articles, apart from their usefulness, is an appetising occupation, and to exchange bald, uniform shillings for a fine big, figurative knick-knack, such as a windmill, a gross of green spectacles, or a cocked hat, gives us a direct and emphatic sense of gain. We have had many shillings before, as good as these; but this is the first time we have possessed a windmill. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Nick learned such little tricks of cap and cloak as a lady's page need have, the carriage best fitted for his place, and how to come into a room where great folks were. Moreover, how to back out again, bowing, and not fall over the stools—which was no little art, until Nick caught the knack of peeping slyly between his ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... their chief interest to the English newspapers. They are allowed to gossip about everything, and the writers have the knack of making the merest trifles seem amusing. Happy is the nation where anything may ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... invariably have the largest following and will possess the greatest amount of influence over his fellows. The fact cannot be disputed that men of great brilliancy of intellect, without tact, have been distanced by others far less talented, who possessed the knack of getting near to the masses with the object in view to lead and control them. A military commander who knows how to muster and marshal his men so as to make them most effective when a battle is pending, will be unquestionably successful in ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... flying eagle with one stroke of my pen, but I never could do all this. And yet I thought myself a fine fellow, I warrant you. And these sums! why man! I must make you my agent. I need one, I'm sure; for though I get an accountant every two or three years to do up my books, they somehow have the knack of getting wrong again. Those quarries, Mrs. Browne, which every one says are so valuable, and for the stone out of which receive orders amounting to hundreds of pounds, what d'ye think was the profit I made last ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... could see just that in the Legion, if everyone will work for just that—better citizenship—the Legion's aim will be realized in its deepest and truest sense. Bishop Brent has a knack of hitting the nail on the head with such force that the sparks fly and by their light comes insight—ask anyone from out Manila-way if it isn't so. The short address was greeted with thunderous applause. The newly born Legion knew ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... converted into his popular drama, The Castle Spectre. This play was staged in 1798, and was reconverted by Miss Sarah Wilkinson in 1820 into a romance. Lewis spreads his banquet with a lavish hand, and crudities and absurdities abound, but he has a knack of choosing situations well adapted for stage effect. The play, aptly described by Coleridge as a "peccant thing of Noise, Froth and Impermanence,"[45] would offer a happy hunting ground to those who delight ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... la Duchesse drily, "time has a knack now and then of flying faster than we wish. Well, my dear, so long as this day brings you happiness, the old folk who stay at home have ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... structure. He maintains that the turning-point of good or bad Latinity is, not idiom, as Mr. White says, but structure. Then Mr. Black, the father, is led on to speak of himself, and of his youthful studies; and he ends by giving Harry a history of his own search after the knack of writing Latin. I do not see quite how this is to the point of Mr. White's paper, which cannot be said to contradict Mr. Black's narrative; but for this very reason, I may consistently quote it, for from a different ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Indiarubber Man when the corporal had withdrawn. "Really, Phillips has a knack of disclosing great truths as if they were the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... smile was the most engaging part of him; it had the knack of disarming the most wrathful. It had served him many a time in the hour of retribution, and he never scrupled to make use of it. It was quite his most ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... and the best got up gig in that part of the country; but it was Mr. Mulready's manner which above all had raised him to his present position in the esteem of the good people of Marsden. He had the knack of adapting himself to the ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... that he was a carpenter by trade. During the evening he was much surprised to meet Cox at the tavern. Fox was a genial fellow, and, after a paying day's work always made himself agreeable to those whom he met at the tavern where he put up. He had the knack of getting easily acquainted, and soon was on the best of terms with Cox and his friends. He did not force the acquaintance, but during the evening paid much more attention to Cox's friends than ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... hop-o'-my-thumb dandy, who wore gold chains and his collars turned down, should spoil the trade and draw portraits for nothing! Why did none of the young men come to Scowler? Scowler was obliged to own that Mr. Newcome had considerable talent, and a good knack at catching a likeness. He could not paint a bit, to be sure, but his heads in black-and-white were really tolerable; his sketches of horses very vigorous and lifelike. Mr. Gandish said if Clive would come for three or four years into his academy he could make something ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... knowledge he might put forth would prove of very slight profit to him, as author. Writing of his replies given to certain mathematical professors, who had sent him problems for solution, he remarks that, although he may have a happy knack of dispatching with rapidity any work begun, he always begins too late. In his fifty-eighth year he answered one of these queries, involving three very difficult problems, within seven days; a feat which he judges to be a marvel: but what profit will it bring him now? ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... was a fellow who had the most singularly ingenious knack of doing everything the wrong way. He grew up in his humble Irish home full of mischief to the eyes of every one save his admiring mother. But, to do him justice, he never meant harm in the course of his life, and he was most anxious to offer his services on every occasion to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... years, it seems, Have the happiest knack at solving dreams, I shall leave to my ancient feminine friends Of the Standard to say ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... as he lit an excellent cigar, and puffed the faint blue rings of smoke out into the clear moonlit atmosphere, he was in a very agreeable frame of mind. He was crafty and clever in his way,—one of those to whom the Yankee term "cute" would apply in its fullest sense,—and he had the happy knack of forgetting his own mistakes and follies, and excusing his own sins with as much ease as though he were one of the "blood-royal" of nations. Vices he had in plenty in common with most men,—except that his particular form of licentiousness ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... country, and Tuck so far forgave my rudeness to him as to come with us to carry the basket.—Oh, yes, indeed, I am becoming thoroughly domesticated on Earth. And, my dear, these humans are docility itself when you once acquire the knack of making them do exactly as you wish, which is as easy as falling off a log.—A log is the external evidence of a pre-existent tree, cylindrical in form, and though often sticky, not sufficiently so ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... with the same stale rhetoric about closer fellowship and the higher life. No one ever approximately equalled Bernard Shaw in the power of finding really fresh and personal arguments for these recent schemes and creeds. No one ever came within a mile of him in the knack of actually producing a new argument for a new philosophy. I give two instances to cover the kind of thing I mean. Bernard Shaw (being honestly eager to put himself on the modern side in everything) put himself ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... happenings have the knack of settling down into the commonplace,—and so in due course the days at the Palazzo d'Oro went on tranquilly,—Manella being established there and known as "la bella Signora Seaton" by the natives of the little surrounding villages, ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... and fairly retentive memories, it is easy for the teacher, especially if he is a strict disciplinarian, to make his pupils retain the greater part of what they have been taught. To skim off and give back to the teacher (or examiner) portions of the floating films of information, is a knack which comes with practice, and which the average child easily acquires. The teacher will, of course, demand that his school shall be examined on a clearly-defined syllabus; and the examiner, in his own interest, will gladly comply with this demand. The examiner will go further ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... at boarding school who always sent him the nicest presents for Christmas. He had a knack of knowing what a boy wanted, and this football was ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... Rogers Clark had long resided in Kentucky, he and two companions discovered a camp of some forty new-comers actually starving, though buffalo were plenty. Clark and his friends speedily relieved their necessities by killing fourteen of the great beasts; for when once the hunters had found out the knack, the buffalo were easier slaughtered than any ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... products and the themes of a symphony may certainly be considered its children. The public often seems to have slight idea of the sanctity and mystery of a musical idea. Composers are considered people with a kind of "knack" in writing down notes. In reality, a musical idea is as wonderful a thing as we can conceive—a miracle of life and yet intangible, ethereal. The composer apparently creates something out of nothing, pure fancy being wrought into terms of communication. ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... enough to possess the necessary knack will soon be in request as jockey at the forthcoming meeting, when, if he should happen to secure a win, the confidence it immediately gives him does more than any other thing to transform him into a really ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... day as he vish'd at the brook, He flung up, wi' a quick-handed knack, His long line, an' his high-vleen hook Wer a-hitch'd in zome briars at his back. Then he zwore at the brembles, an' prick'd His beaere hand, as he pull'd the hook free; An' ageaen, in a rage, as he kick'd At ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... excellent counsel. One kindly advised him to avoid the ludicrous; another to shun the pathetic; a third assured him that he was tolerable at description, but cautioned him to leave narrative alone; while a fourth declared that he had a very pretty knack at turning a story, and was really entertaining when in a pensive mood, but was grievously mistaken if he imagined himself to possess ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... and very deliberate in all situations, and his reports were of the utmost value. He never appeared to want anything in the way of personal comfort, was quite indifferent in any weather as to whether he slept on a bed or on the ground, and had a happy knack of seeming delighted to start on any mission however difficult and dangerous, or for any place however distant, with nothing but the clothes ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... know what is doing in the art world, who is painting what, and why, then get yourself invited to tea—China tea only. The gathering is picturesque, for the model has, of course, the knack of the effective pose, not only professionally but socially. It is a beautiful club, and it is one more answer to the eternal question Why Girls Don't Marry. With a Models' Club, the Four Arts Club, the Mary Curzon Hotel, and the Lyceum Club, why ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... to dine on Henry's wine and L.F. Austin's wit. This dear, brilliant man, now dead, acted for many years as Henry's secretary, and one of his gifts was the happy knack of hitting off people's peculiarities in rhyme. This dreadful Christmas dinner at Pittsburg was enlivened by a collection of such rhymes, which Mr. Austin called a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... 'the art of behaving in society,' 'the science of human happiness,' were various modes of expressing the final end of conduct.[5] Sokrates clearly indicated the difference between an unscientific and a scientific art; the one is an incommunicable knack or dexterity, the other is ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... livin'," said Doane. "He can ketch more fish than any other two men in the place—allers seemed to kind o' hev a knack o' whistlin' 'em right into the boat. And then Nelson Briggs, that settled up his mother's estate, allows he 's got over a hundred and ten dollars for him, after payin' debts and all probate expenses. That and the place is all he needs to ...
— The Village Convict - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... truth, Balzac had a knack of presuming that something he intended doing was already done. One notorious example was the white horse he asserted, in presence of a number of guests assembled in Madame de Girardin's drawing-room, had been given by him to Jules Sandeau. The animal in ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... to take his threat seriously, and more than any man I ever met he seemed to possess the knack of falling out of mind. One could forget him more swiftly than the birds forget a false alarm. I don't believe any of us thought of him again until ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... accidentally disregards or ignores its significance. Consider, for example, what an advertising campaign can do with a product's actual specifications. Compare {GIGO}; see also {SNAFU principle}. 2. James Parry , a Usenetter infamous for various surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for joining any thread in which his nom de ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... lived and died something more than two centuries ago; but the Tregeagle or Tergagle of legend belongs to folk-lore rather than to modern social life. Very old ideas and superstitions have in some manner become attached to a recent name; tradition has a knack of bringing forward its dates; stories of immemorial antiquity are related as though they were the experience of the narrator's father or grandfather, and are modernised to suit that supposition. Legend never sticks at absurdity or anachronism. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... have been amusing to watch a small sleigh being steered by a novice, with fat individuals sitting on the top of him, trying to avoid the young trees, usually without any success. Unfortunately for me I had a nasty knack of always being in the worst crashes. It is impossible to find a more effective way of destroying boots than continually steering with one's feet. Other people displayed their extensive knowledge of winter sports by ski-ing, or rather lying on their backs, unintentionally waving their skis in ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... villainous looking fellow, due in part to the squint of his eyes that set them at different angles. But he turned out a thoroughly capable man with a knack of getting out of the men all that was ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... a knack of saying what I don't mean," he remarked, rousing himself. "I beg your pardon for this and every other rude speech that I may make, Elizabeth; and ask you to understand that I am only translating my discontent with myself into words when ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... recollected that ten years before, when I went up to Maine to visit my sister, I'd rented the place, just as it stood, to folks of the name of Marchant, a fine couple that didn't look beyond each other unless 'twas at their son. In past times my grandmother had an old-country knack of raising healing herbs and all sorts of sweet-smelling things, along with farm truck, so that folks came from all about to buy them and doctors too, for such things weren't sold so much in shops in those days as they are now, and ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... no further; many of that sort are here and there dispersed up and down this book, either borrowed or by imitation. Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which is only a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, or that good which ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... thick and half an inch wide, at the ends. The Indian bow was made of wood, and of mountain-goat horns, or of solid bones, glued together. The wooden bow frequently was strengthened by having hide or sinew glued along the back. Until they learned the knack of it, few white men ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... that blind and accidental Greek goddess, who bore the horn of Amalthea and plentifully endowed her followers with a wealth of language and other much-coveted gifts, but not with the most desirable knack at disposing ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... and whiskers," says Tom Smart (Tom sometimes had an unpleasant knack of swearing)—"damn my straps and whiskers," says Tom, "if this ain't ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... really industrious person, but a bilious temperament like Ardessa's couldn't make even a feeble stand against such willingness. Ardessa had grown soft and had lost the knack of turning out work. Sometimes, in her importance and serenity, she shivered. What if O'Mally should die, and she were thrust out into the world to work in competition with the brazen, competent young women she saw about her everywhere? She believed herself indispensable, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... enjoyed simultaneously by the greatest number. Its effect is well described in Margaret Fuller's private journal: "I felt raised above all care, all pain, all fear, and every taint of vulgarity was washed out of the world." I think this is an extremely happy expression. Female writers sometimes have a knack of getting at the heart of a problem by instinct, more easily than men with their superior reasoning powers. "Every taint of vulgarity washed out of the world by music." That is precisely wherein the moral power of music lies; for vulgarity is the twin sister ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... doubts if the "ultra-precious" school really pleases the child; and if he refuse the jam the powder is obviously refused also. One who makes pictures for children, like one who writes them stories, should have the knack of entertaining them without any appearance of condescension in so doing. They will accept any detail that is related to the incident, but are keenly alive to discrepancies of detail or action that clash with the narrative. As they do not demand ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... raising small fruits and berries, and even maintaining a hen roost. Some people (I would I could honestly include myself) have a gift for making things grow and getting crops that are worth the work that has gone into them. Likewise there is such a thing as possessing a knack with that unresponsive and perverse creature, the hen. Possibly good gardening and an egg-producing hen-yard are the result of willingness to take infinite pains but, out of my disappointments and half ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... a young woman who had a knack of getting passes through the lines, and the three girls exchanged looks as knowing as they ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... you've a knack of getting your own way: But, tripe and trotters, you can look on him, And still say that? Ay, you're his grandson, surely— All Barrasford, with not a dash of Haggard, No drop of the wild colt's blood. Ewe's milk you'd bleed If your nose were tapped. Who'd ever guess my ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... boys at Montreal, Shag a little shy at first amidst all the grandeur and wealth of Hal's home, but covering that shyness with a quiet dignity that sat very well on his young shoulders. With a wonderful knack of delicacy, Hal would smooth out any threatened difficulty for the Indian boy—little table entanglements, such as new dishes or unaccustomed foods. But Shag was at times surprisingly outspoken, and the first night at dinner seemingly won Sir George's heart by remarking when ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... hadn't thought of doing it for a permanency. But just for a bit of adventure, if the chance should offer while I'm in the notion. I believe I'd take it. I haven't ridden a cow-pony for fourteen years, but I don't believe I've lost the knack of it." ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... a mere knack, little more than a proof that one had an elegant scholar for one's tutor, as I certainly had. But it is by special grace that a real scholar can send forth another real scholar, and a Kennedy produce a Munro. But to return to the more interesting question of half holidays; I declare that ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all right. But that's because he's one of those men who have the knack of taking an interest in everything they turn their hands to, and doing it well. But his two passions are Chinese art and women," ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... Elasticity of a Fabric. The old-fashioned plan of testing cloth by tearing it by the hand is unreliable, because tearing frequently requires only a certain skilled knack whereby the best material can be pulled in two. In this way an experienced man may tell good from bad cloth, but he cannot determine slight differences in quality, because he has exerted his strength so often that his capacity to distinguish ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... drop into the cozy lodgings over Bemerton's second-hand bookstore for a drifting, delightful talk with a man of wide reading, who has travelled in unexpected places, who has an original way of looking at life, and a happy knack of expressing what is seen. There are few books which so perfectly suggest without apparent effort a charmingly ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... that the others, the wise business men, threw there and with the town's worst drunkard and half a dozen mistreated, misborn, misunderstood boys he's playing the business game and winning. He's got the knack of making his help feel like partners and he's so square and sensible in his dealings with them that they are all ready to die for him. Now if that isn't the greatest kind of a business ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... is involved. Looking to the way in which character is made, as coral reefs are built up, by a multitude of tiny creatures whose united labours are strong enough to breast the ocean; looking to the mysterious way in which the greatest events in our lives have the knack of growing out of the smallest; looking to the power of habit to make any action of the mind almost instinctive: it is of far more importance that we should become accustomed to apply this precept of seeking guidance from God to the million trifles than to the two or ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... require professional skill," said Patty. "Only good taste and a,—a sort of knack at bows ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... was out of the question in such weather; the only thing possible was to hope for a shift of wind before she got too far out, or a break in the weather. Neither of these events was probable, as all frequenters of South New Zealand know, bad weather having there an unhappy knack of being as persistent ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... lying only, and, which is of something a lower form, obstinacy, are the faults which are to be severely whipped out of them, both in their infancy and in their progress, otherwise they grow up and increase with them; and after a tongue has once got the knack of lying, 'tis not to be imagined how impossible it is to reclaim it whence it comes to pass that we see some, who are otherwise very honest men, so subject and enslaved to this vice. I have an honest lad to my tailor, whom I never knew guilty of one truth, no, not ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... knack of getting up little stories of the town—not exactly news stories, but little odd bits that made people smile without rancour when they saw their names in the quaintly turned items. One day he wrote up a story of a little boy whose mother asked him where he got a dollar that he was flourishing ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... Prince Rupert's aid-de-camp, who died at Naseby manfully in his harness—now, contrasting strangely with the elaborately powdered peruke and delicate lace ruffles of Beau Livingstone, the gallant, with the whitest hand, the softest voice, the neatest knack at a sonnet, and the deadliest rapier at the court of good Queen Anne. Nay, you could trace it in the features of many a fair Edith and Alice, half counteracting the magnetic ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... John, "we were at school together, and I generally had the knack of getting on better than you, and making a ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... the bar," says Johnson, "and knowing himself in no great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence. 'He has,' said Curll, 'a knack at versifying; but in prose I think myself a match for him.' When the Orders of the House were examined, none of them appeared to have been infringed: Curll went away triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy." The fact, not mentioned ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... how the most trivial actions have a strange knack of all at once leading on to large results, beyond what could have been expected. A man shifts his seat in a railway carriage, from some passing whim, and five minutes afterwards there comes a collision, and the bench ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... so thickly right down to the water's edge that close inshore we were completely becalmed; and, thus sheltered, our sense of hearing helped us somewhat despite the deep roar of the gale overhead, while we quickly caught the knack of steering along the outer edge of the narrow belt of calm, in this way avoiding to a great extent the difficulties and petty mishaps that had at first so seriously ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... Let us ever remember that the imagination also has its products and the themes of a symphony may certainly be considered its children. The public often seems to have slight idea of the sanctity and mystery of a musical idea. Composers are considered people with a kind of "knack" in writing down notes. In reality, a musical idea is as wonderful a thing as we can conceive—a miracle of life and yet intangible, ethereal. The composer apparently creates something out of nothing, pure fancy being wrought into ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... well, but in Mr. Crawford's reading there was a variety of excellence beyond what she had ever met with. The King, the Queen, Buckingham, Wolsey, Cromwell, all were given in turn; for with the happiest knack, the happiest power of jumping and guessing, he could always alight at will on the best scene, or the best speeches of each; and whether it were dignity, or pride, or tenderness, or remorse, or whatever were to be expressed, he could do it with equal beauty. It ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... found that he could gather up almost as many coins as Benny had in his best day. Joe had acquired the knack of opening his mouth under water without swallowing any of the liquid. Then came an ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... Indian blood in her veins ran wild, And a Saxon father called her child; Women feared her, and men soon found When they trod on forbidden ground. Ride! there's never a cayuse knew Saddle slip of her; pistols, too, Seemed to learn in her hands a knack How to travel a dead-sure track. Something in both alike maybe, Something kindred in ancestry, Some warm touch of an ancient pride Drew my feet to her willing side. My comrade, she, in the Touchwood Camp, To ride, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... afloat that your adversary has an ugly knack of pulling the trigger half a second too soon," whispered Jack's second, "so I am going ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... major being wheeled down in an easy-chair and superintending his riding. As these horses had little to do and were full of spirit, Vincent's powers were often taxed to the utmost, and he had many falls; but the soil was light, and he had learned the knack of falling easily, and from constant practice was able at the age of fourteen to stick on firmly even without a saddle, and was absolutely fearless as ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... sometimes thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist upon it. For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so: until I was heavily punished for this pride, by finding that many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such pleasant language—if indeed it ever were mine—is passing ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... "You have a knack for hard questions," he said with a smile. Then he paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. At length, he continued, "The Canitaurs have a profound respect for all that has gone before us, we honor the traditions of our ancestors and revere their ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... dressmaker. She is going to teach me to sew. She says I have quite a knack. I'm through with the farm. There ain't any end to the work on a farm, and always so much trouble happens. I'm going to ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... special problem before it was worked out. His large, tolerant intelligence was often as unorderly as his papers and accounts. He was a wonderful colonial Jack-of-all-trades; with a range of suggestion, a resourcefulness, a knack of assimilation, a cosmopolitan many-sidedness, which has left us perpetually his debtors. Under different surroundings, and disciplined by a more severe and orderly training, Franklin might easily have developed the very highest order of professional scientific achievement. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... good books, but by inducing certain people to say that her books were good. She did work hard at what she wrote,—hard enough at any rate to cover her pages quickly; and was, by nature, a clever woman. She could write after a glib, commonplace, sprightly fashion, and had already acquired the knack of spreading all she knew very thin, so that it might cover a vast surface. She had no ambition to write a good book, but was painfully anxious to write a book that the critics should say was good. Had Mr Broune, in his closet, told her that her ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... winning a better living than the stubborn soil alone would yield. Children growing up knew that if a boy could ride or fight or do any sort of work especially well, his lord would have use for him; if a girl could spin, weave, sew or had a knack with poultry, her lady would have a place for her. The country folk hereabouts had grown proud of belonging to ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Old Man's knack with the youthful-enthusiasm approach was contagious. For the moment Ben caught it and he felt pretty good about the coming night's work. He and Betty together would put the deal over. That would ...
— The Real Hard Sell • William W Stuart
... cannot help you to draw, remember that it differs from common drawing only by the difficulties it has to encounter. You perhaps have got into a careless habit of thinking that engraving is a mere business, easy enough when one has got into the knack of it. On the contrary, it is a form of drawing more difficult than common drawing, by exactly so much as it is more difficult to cut steel than to move the pencil over paper. It is true that there are certain mechanical aids and methods which reduce it at ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... told such stories as we could remember, either of fiction or truth. Had poor Dick Tillard been alive and with us, his fund of yarns would have been invaluable. We frequently spoke of him, and mourned his loss. Mudge had seen a good deal of service, but he had not the happy knack of describing what had happened to him in the graphic, racy way poor Dick had of spinning a yarn. Mudge had been with Lord Cochrane during the war, and had taken part in some of his most gallant adventures. He was with him on board the Pallas when her ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... for horseback riding. Nell could not contain herself for joy, while Stas, although he thought that whoever owned a genuine short rifle ought to possess a corresponding dignity, could not restrain himself, and selecting the time when no one was about, walked around the tent on his hands. This knack, taught to him at the Port Said school, he possessed to a surprising degree and with it often amused Nell, who, besides, sincerely ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... distressed. Feng Tzu-ying then explained that he knew a young doctor who had made a study of his profession, Chang by surname, and Yu-shih by name, whose learning was profound to a degree; who was besides most proficient in the principles of medicine, and had the knack of discriminating whether a patient would live or die; that this year he had come to the capital to purchase an official rank for his son, and that he was now living with him in his house. In view of these circumstances, not knowing but that if, perchance, the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... more details, the more swag: bearers, mutes, candles, prayers —everything counts; and if the bereaved don't buy prayers enough you mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your bill shows up all right. And he had a good knack at getting in the complimentary thing here and there about a knight that was likely to advertise—no, I mean a knight that had influence; and he also had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept door for a pious hermit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to have the knack of getting their wishes granted. Jack is one of that ilk. Just as he made the remark, Davenport sauntered in and, finding out what was going on, volunteered to tell a ghost story himself—something that had happened to his grandmother, or maybe it was his great-aunt; ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... when the Ten Hundred arouse within themselves by their own exertions a shy, deep pride of their Regiment. It is a characteristic happy knack of the boys to give their very best during parades before the G.O.C., and that was undoubtedly a strong factor in building up the Battalion's fame at ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... evinces, in our opinion, no comic talent. The poet, accustomed to stilts, moves awkwardly in a species of the drama the first requisites of which are ease and sweetness. Scarron, who only understood burlesque, has displayed this talent or knack in several comedies taken from the Spanish, of which two, Jodelle, or the Servant turned Master, and Don Japhet of Armenia, have till within these few years been occasionally acted as carnival farces, and have always been very successful. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... said Doane. "He can ketch more fish than any other two men in the place—allers seemed to kind o' hev a knack o' whistlin' 'em right into the boat. And then Nelson Briggs, that settled up his mother's estate, allows he 's got over a hundred and ten dollars for him, after payin' debts and all probate expenses. That and the place is all he needs to ...
— The Village Convict - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... yourself, Mr. Stewart," said Robin; and taking up the variations from the beginning, he worked them throughout to so new a purpose, with such ingenuity and sentiment, and with so odd a fancy and so quick a knack in the grace-notes, that I was amazed ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her best white apron, stiff with starch, her lace collar, and her hair in her best imitation of the way Margaret had fixed it, although it must be confessed she hadn't quite caught the knack of arrangement yet. But the one great difference Margaret noticed in the old woman was the illuminating smile on her face. Mom Wallis had learned how to let the glory gleam through all the hard sordidness ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... discovered, I have most certainly lost from my pocket the new cambric kerchief which I deposited therein a little before dinner, scarcely a week has passed without some part of my goods and chattels being returned missing. Gloves, muffs, parasols, reticules, have each of them a provoking knack of falling from my hands; boas glide from my neck, rings slip from my fingers, the bow has vanished from my cap, the veil from my bonnet, the sandal from my foot, the brooch from my collar, and the collar from my brooch. The trinket which I liked best, a jewelled ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... that I have laid the foundation for a study of Oriental languages, if I have time and opportunity that may be fairly given to them. Think what one hour a day is, and the pleasure to me is very great, and I feel that I have a knack rather (if I may say so) of laying hold of these things. Don't mention ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stroll together on Blackheath; and while my uncle was enjoying a nap on a grassy knoll, my father made a sketch of him, which I still preserve. Being of a most cheerful disposition, and having a great knack of detailing the incidents of his adventurous life, he became a great favourite with the resident officers of the Hospital; and was always regarded by them as real good company. He ended his days there in peace and comfort, in 1819, at ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... believe that the departing of that first Summer was a sad matter to him. He had done his best, you see, and a whole new world of trying had been thrown open to him. And really he was beginning to get the knack of that kind of weaving. And she was a fine big apple-cheeked ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... end of a leg wire in the bottom of the foot and pass it up along the back of the bone between it and the skin. A considerable knack is necessary to do this successfully and some force must be used. Passing the heel joint is difficult but having done this and emerged inside the skin continue to pass it until it is a little longer than the ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... kind to him; and if Mrs. Shaw's secrets must be told, it was because Phoebe was so unchangeably and increasingly kind to him, that she sent the pretty maid (who had a knack of knowing her own mind about ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... it excellent in its way, but assuredly not of the first order. The one name will always be associated with admirably humorous performances, while the other will continue to shine resplendent on the roll of writers of sea-songs. But work of that sort is a matter of knack rather than of inspiration, and 'poetry' is a word hardly to be mentioned in remote connection with it. Very different are the circumstances when we come to the children of Samuel Taylor Coleridge—to Hartley and to Sara, and to Hartley in particular. Sara ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... died a year ago." "The same." He searches all the shop in vain. "Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane, I sent them with a load of books Last Monday to the pastrycook's. To fancy they could live a year! I find you're but a stranger here. The Dean was famous in his time, And had a kind of knack at rhyme. His way of writing now is past, The town has got ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... a little knack and a few odd tools, can rig up various contrivances which will be a source of pleasure to himself and oftentimes can be sold, to less ingenious boys, for a snug little sum. Any tool a boy can obtain is apt to be of use to him, chisel, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... I have no more knack for wearing costumes and masks, and I could not ask human beings to accept me as I am, either inside or out. Any reality is like a row of knives and each minute drags me ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... amusing; they put on grave, philosophic faces, and mimic the savans to the life; if the noble president, thinking he is doing the polite thing, points out to them a poet, for example, or a professor, they have a knack of elevating the shoulders, looking at the man with a pitying air, and whispering the words "poor beast," with a tone and manner quite inimitable. Indeed this is one of the few clever things they do, and on or off the stage we have never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... unconsciously to themselves, tools in the hands of their servants, the latter being permitted a freedom of speech that would never have been tolerated in equals. Such servants have always had the knack of making themselves indispensable, while preserving an outward appearance of the deepest humility; and thus it has often come to pass that a lord has been made to discharge a shaft aimed by his ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... character is made, as coral reefs are built up, by a multitude of tiny creatures whose united labours are strong enough to breast the ocean; looking to the mysterious way in which the greatest events in our lives have the knack of growing out of the smallest; looking to the power of habit to make any action of the mind almost instinctive: it is of far more importance that we should become accustomed to apply this precept of seeking guidance from God to the million trifles than to the two or ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was faithful to the article Paris. In his close relation to the caprices of humanity, the varied paths of commerce had enabled him to observe the windings of the heart of man. He had learned the secret of persuasive eloquence, the knack of loosening the tightest purse-strings, the art of rousing desire in the souls of husbands, wives, children, and servants; and what is more, he knew how to satisfy it. No one had greater faculty than he ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... off to town—I mean, London, my dear—and the Continent, with a tutor. Joseph—well, I believe I have never fully understood what became of Joseph during the four years I was away, but I suppose he amused himself. He has a knack of doing that I never had, except when I am in the country. Well, this tutor wasn't a bad sort of a fellow and at first we got on splendidly, living in town in chambers, going to the plays and the opera, and dining all over, just wherever ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... will pass them and proceed. You have heard of the sins of his youth, of his apprenticeship, and how he set up, and married, and what a life he hath led his wife; and now I will tell you some more of his pranks. He had the very knack for knavery; had he, as I said before, been bound to serve an apprenticeship to all these things, he could not have been more cunning, he could not have been ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... couple of sich chaps to you? You could knack their 'eads together like you ded by Micah ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... good knack of catching his rainbows, anyhow," answered Hallam; "and you'd better not let the idea get away with you that he isn't a force to be reckoned with. He's young yet, and very new to business, but you remember it was he who first suggested the Through ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... mentions other beauties of his favorite verse,—the opportunities for variation by double rhyme and by occasionally dropping a syllable, and the correspondence between the length of line and our natural intervals between punctuation,—but gives as his final excuse for using it his "better knack at this 'false gallop' of verse." The argument is ingenious enough, but his analysis of heroic verse has only a limited application, and his last reason probably was, as he was candid enough to admit, the most weighty. George Ellis replied to his defence thus: "I don't think, after all the eloquence ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... luxe of the views of everybody else. But his wife had made that discovery long ago. He smiled at the views of everybody else: his own were put forth as something choice and superior. He had the happy knack of being bourgeois with the air of an artist. If one could picture one's grocer weighing out sugar in a Spanish cloak and brigand's hat, it would afford an excellent symbol of his spiritual estate. To be perfectly commonplace in a brilliantly ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... cajole, and persuade. He should 'prentice himself at fourteen And practise from morning to e'en; And when he's of age, If he will, I'll engage, He may capture the heart of a queen! It is purely a matter of skill, Which all may attain if they will: But every Jack He must study the knack If he wants to make ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... act was that of Alexander Weyer, who, either by superior strength or by a peculiar knack, could hold a nail between the middle fingers of his right hand with the head against the palm, and drive it through a one-inch board. But since this act did not get him very far either on the road to fame, or toward the big money—he turned to magic and finally became one of the ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... Voyages, "for the story" and enjoy them hugely. This means that Swift had either learnt from Defoe or—and considering those earlier productions of his own much more probably—had independently developed the knack of absorbing the reader—the knack of telling a story. But of course there is in one sense much more, and in another much less, than a story in Gulliver: and the finest things in it are independent of story, though (and ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... for boys and girls deal with life aboard submarine torpedo boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, and possess, in addition to the author's surpassing knack of storytelling, a great educational value for all ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... hand in humorous deprecation. "Easy. It's the simplest thing I do. It isn't difficult if you have a knack for it." ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... had none to give; the knack of putting guineas together had never belonged to him; but how willingly, with what a foolish easiness, with what happy alacrity, would he have abandoned the half of his income for all time to come, could he by so doing have quietly dispelled the ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... what an advertising campaign can do with a product's actual specifications. Compare {GIGO}; see also {SNAFU principle}. 2. James Parry , a Usenetter infamous for various surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for joining any thread in which his nom ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... standing by the stove, turning the bacon in its sizzling grease, with a knack which told of much experience in camp cookery. The face which the lean and grizzled plainsman turned toward his friend was seamed by a thousand tiny wrinkles in the leathery skin, the result of years of exposure to all kinds ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... only, and, which is of something a lower form, obstinacy, are the faults which are to be severely whipped out of them, both in their infancy and in their progress, otherwise they grow up and increase with them; and after a tongue has once got the knack of lying, 'tis not to be imagined how impossible it is to reclaim it whence it comes to pass that we see some, who are otherwise very honest men, so subject and enslaved to this vice. I have an honest lad to my ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... conclusion they were more numerous than was suspected—became in his presence topics outside the radius of cultivated consideration: one felt ashamed of having introduced them. His own subjects—they were few but exclusive—he had the knack of elevating into intellectual tests: one felt ashamed, reflecting how little one knew about them. Whether he really did possess a charm of manner, or whether the sense of his superiority with which he had imbued me it was that made any condescension he paid me a thing ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... have mentioned, that I dressed myself in a rich white satin night-gown, that had been my good lady's, and my best head-clothes, etc. I have got such a knack of writing, that when I am by myself, I cannot sit without a pen in my hand.—But I am now called to breakfast. I suppose the gentlemen are come.—Now, courage, Pamela! Remember thou art upon thy good behaviour!—Fie upon it! my heart begins to flutter ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... ridicule of his brother at the spiritual-mindedness of Don Luis having thus come to naught, and recognizing also that he would not play a very dignified role in the village, where every one would say he had a poor knack at turning out saints—declined to be present, giving his occupations as an excuse; although he sent his blessing, and a magnificent pair of ear-rings as a present ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... he drew closer. Beasley always had a knack of so blending truth with his personal venom that it stung far more than downright insult. He wondered what the Padre's generosity had been, and wherein lay its connection with their present purpose. The explanation was not ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... was accompanied. We cannot here avoid remarking, that this conjecture would have been better founded had Sophia lived ten years in the air of Grosvenor Square, where young ladies do learn a wonderful knack of rallying and playing with that passion, which is a mighty serious thing in woods and groves an ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... breaking hemp. He soon had the knack of that: his muscles were toughened already. He learned what it was sometimes to eat his dinner in the fields, warming it, maybe, on the coals of a stump set on fire near his brake; to bale his hemp at nightfall ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... taken Ben for my valet. He looks quite a gentleman when dressed in his Sunday clothes, and his Scotch shrewdness serves us many a good turn. He has the knack of arresting any little advantages floating on the stream of travel, and securing them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... gay that old, dull tasks Were furbished up to seem like rituals. She baked and brewed as one who only asks The right to serve. Her daily manuals Of prayer were duties, and her festivals When Theodore praised some dish, or frankly said She had a knack in making ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... heart-strings. She made the house ring with her shouts and her healthy glee. She toddled over everything without restraint; tumbled over Chinese tea-poys and Japan idols; upset the alabaster Graces in the best parlor, and pulled every knick-knack out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... smile when I tell you I think myself the only woman in the world who could live with a brother's wife and make a real friend of her—partly from a knack I know I have of looking into people's real characters and never expecting them to act out of it. Never expecting another to do as I would in the same case. I do not expect you or want you to be otherwise than you are. I love you for ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... the lawyer was rather severe and austere. He was a good deal of an aristocrat. While he did not seek to repel people, he had little of the knack of drawing people to him in ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... never made a guinea by his work as a barrister, and was beginning to doubt of himself whether he ever would do so. Not, as he knew well, that guineas are generally made with ease by barristers of four years' standing, but because, as he said to his friends, he did not see his way to the knack of it. He did not know an attorney in the world, and could not conceive how any attorney should ever be induced to apply to him for legal aid. He had done his work of learning his trade about as well as other young men, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... amazing and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent speech ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... at the zenith of his political career. He was one of those men not infrequently observed in public life, who, without conspicuous ability, have a certain knack for the management of men, and are able to acquire influence and even a certain degree of fame by personal skill in manipulating patronage, smoothing away difficulties, and making things easy. Nature had not only endowed him with a genius ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... a bad man, be Black Jarge when 'e's took, for 'e 'ave a knack, d'ye see, of takin' 'old o' the one nighest to un, and a-heavin' of un over ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... while he sat a great brown charger calmly in their midst and gave them not too many orders, but here and there a word of praise, and once or twice a trumpet shout of encouragement. He seemed to own the knack of being wherever the fight was fiercest. His mere presence seemed better than a hundred men when the phalanx ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... shall have to cut you up into parcels," said the doctor one day: "there is not enough of you to go round. You have a marvellous knack at making sick people like you. Did you really ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... an angle of about forty-five degrees, and it howled like a panic-stricken dragon—Joe was getting his metaphors mixed by this time—and it swung and wobbled and slowly gained altitude, and then suddenly it seemed to get the knack of what it was supposed to do. It started to circle around, and then it began abruptly to climb skyward. Until it began to climb it looked heavy and clumsy and wholly unimpressive. But when it climbed, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... is happy, there is no doubt of that; he is the happiest person in the family, by all odds; but then I think he has a natural knack at being happy; it is impossible for anything to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... his life. It wa'n't what you'd call thrillin'. All there was to it was that Hermy was a double orphan who'd been brought up in Bridgeport, Conn., by an uncle who was a dancin' professor. The only thing that saved Hermy from a bench in the brass works was his knack for poundin' out twosteps and waltzes on the piano; but at that it seems he was such a soft head he couldn't keep from watchin' the girls on the floor and striking wrong notes. Then there was trouble with uncle. Snick didn't get the full details ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... said Boone with a smile. "I never was able to get the knack. You will have to be the leader now. We can go down this stream five or six miles, perhaps more, before we strike ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... "I have a knack of saying what I don't mean," he remarked, rousing himself. "I beg your pardon for this and every other rude speech that I may make, Elizabeth; and ask you to understand that I am only translating my discontent with myself into words when ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... could not help admiring No. 1 for the confidence with which he disported himself among the Greek aorists, in the labyrinths of which I myself often went astray, and for the knack he had of solving mathematical problems. He was, moreover, very widely read in belles lettres, and had almost a grown-up man's taste with regard to books at a time when I still continued to admire P.P.'s [Footnote: P.P. was ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... with human beings,' 'the art of behaving in society,' 'the science of human happiness,' were various modes of expressing the final end of conduct.[5] Sokrates clearly indicated the difference between an unscientific and a scientific art; the one is an incommunicable knack or dexterity, the other is founded ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... acquired the knack, Bob remounted and was soon at the ranch, where he turned his pony into the corral and carried his ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... of his knack for surprises," muttered Danny. "And if we, who know his old tricks, can't fathom him at all, what are the other seven of us going ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... concert last night, songs, interspersed with the maddest, most whimsical patter, step-dances, ventriloquism, recitations. He kept us in roars for a long time. Blended with the simplicity of a baby, he has the wisdom of the serpent, and has the knack of getting hold of odd delicacies, with which he regales the ward. He is perfectly well, by the way, but when the doctor comes round he assumes a convincing air of semi-convalescence, and refers darkly to his old wound. The doctor is not in the least taken ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... here, Nan,' he said—the others were a long way ahead, and he could scold her as he liked. 'You may have some strong points—wisdom, perhaps—and a capacity for extracting money out of people for lifeboats—and a knack of boxing the ears of small boys whom you find shying stones at sparrows—I say you may have your strong points; but flippancy isn't one of them. And this is ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... be a doubt about it? No! "Schelim, King of the Hills, and his four sons," was one of Aunt Judy's very, very, very, best inventions. But they had the happy knack of always thinking so of the last ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle say, "It will do—it must do! I see it in the eyes of them!" This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon: for that duke has a more particular knack than any one now living in discovering the taste of the publick. He was quite right in this, as usual: the good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause.' Spence's Anec. p. 159. See The Dundad, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... me that it ought to be far less pessimistic than it is, also, about what we can do in the way of schools and social life in civilisation and about civilisation's way of doing business. Is our little knack of Christianity (I find myself wondering) quite worthy of all this attention it is getting from The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions? Why should it approve of civilisation with a rush? Does any one really suppose that it is really time to pat it on the back—yet?—to spend ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... lamps of the piazza. Those marble countenances were placid with an eternal youth, beneath the same stars that had embellished irrevocable nights, that recalled some excursions into an enchanted world, some romantic gestures the knack for which ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dear sir," said Hilderman cheerily. "You scientist fellows have a knack of making your difficulties a little greater than they really are, in order to get more credit for surmounting them. I know your little ways. I'm an American, you know, professor; you can't get ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... find already the adjective rum meaning good, fine,—a word that has crept into general use among the lower classes in London, without ever gaining promotion. The fate of new words in this respect is curious. Often, if they are convenient, or have knack of lodging easily in the memory, they work slowly upward. The Scotch word flunky is a case in point. Our first knowledge of it in print is from Fergusson's Poems. Burns advertised it more widely, and Carlyle seems fairly to have transplanted it into the English of the day. As we believe its origin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... opinion that a miracle had enabled the writer of the famous Army and Navy and other series to resume his pen for the volume in hand. Mr. Stratemeyer has acquired in a wonderfully successful degree the knack of writing an interesting educational story which will appeal to the young people, and the plan of his trio of books as outlined cannot fail to prove both interesting and ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... "candy store." He had had a few years at the public school, and a few months at a business college, to which he went at night, after work hours. He had been "up against it good and plenty," he told them. He seemed, however, to have had a knack of making friends and of giving them "a boost along" when such a chance was possible. Both of his listeners realised that a good many people had liked him, and the reason was apparent enough ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... they—it comes to to same thing—have the fiend's own knack of discovering a man's weak place. I confess I rather go out of my way to conciliate Number Five study. It may be soft, but so far, I believe, I am the only man here whom they haven't maddened ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... and in ill-health. A few years later his mother died, but his sister, an ineffectual neurasthenic, remained on his hands. His own health gave out, and he had to go away for six months, and work harder than ever when he came back. He had no knack for business, no head for figures, no dimmest insight into the mysteries of commerce. He wanted to travel and write—those were his inmost longings. And as the years dragged on, and he neared middle-age without making any more money, or acquiring any firmer health, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... back to her seat, hard by a group to which Endymion was discoursing at large. Endymion's was a mellow voice, of rich compass, and he had a knack of compelling the attention of all persons within range. He preferred this to addressing anyone in particular, and his eye sought and found, and gathered by instinct, the last loiterer without the ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... harangues, often prepared for them by outside hacks, their own colleagues soon taught them that such methods were no longer likely to pay even for purposes of advertisement. The majority quickly acquired a knack of suppressing wind-bags and bores quietly and effectively. The Act of 1919 reserved to Government the appointment of the President of the Assembly for the first four years, after which he will be chosen by the Assembly itself. Not even the House of Commons could treat the Chair with more unfailing ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... put the measure through myself? Yes, sir, I did that little thing. And moreover, I never paid a dollar for any man's vote and never promised one. There are some ways of doing a thing that are as good as others which other people don't happen to think about, or don't have the knack of succeeding in, if they do happen to think of them. My dear sir, I am obliged to knock some of your expenses in the head—for never a cent was paid a Congressman or Senator on the part ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... has the knack of hymn-writing, and the translations from the Greek which he has published in this book will be a welcome ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... you can possibly imagine. She manages the whole house; our servants would do anything for her, and the children love her so much that it is a pleasure to them to obey her. She has that wonderful and invaluable knack in a woman, she never teases or worries; she just contrives to turn people round her little finger, without their knowing anything about it themselves. But now don't let us talk any more about Effie and me. I want to hear your news. How is ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... worked all day, striving earnestly to catch the knack of the needle, and emulating the tireless industry of the Sister, who worked thus during daylight that she might pursue her mission of mercy and succour at night. Thus passed some days, and then Jessica's blood grew restless; the narrow room seemed to her stifling and unendurable, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... humoring their caprices. Their complaints were more potent than the suggestions of ministers, or the remonstrances of judges. In idle frivolities his time was passed, neglectful of the great interests which were intrusted to him to guard; and the only attainment of which he was proud was a knack of making tarts and bon-bons, with which he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... and two companions discovered a camp of some forty new-comers actually starving, though buffalo were plenty. Clark and his friends speedily relieved their necessities by killing fourteen of the great beasts; for when once the hunters had found out the knack, the buffalo were easier slaughtered ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... hardly know when to stop. The fit, indeed, seldom comes upon me; but when it does, though I sit down with a design to be short, yet my letter insensibly slides into length, and swells perhaps into an enormous size. I know not how it happens, but on such occasions I have a knack of throwing myself out on paper that I cannot readily get the better of. It is a sign, however, that I more than barely esteem the person I write to, as I have constantly experienced that my hand but illy performs ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... fine about people. His instinct was to be a scholar and a hermit. But she loved people, she simply couldn't be happy without them, and (wasn't it fun?) she had had her way, and now John liked people almost as much as she did. And he had a knack of putting life and ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... about her to console her, but she wept so that, for all my seventeen years and pride of manhood, it set me weeping also, and with such a hiccoughing noise, since I had not a woman's knack of quiet tears, that it finally turned her ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... has attracted world-wide notice from experts. Meanwhile his imagination enabled him to understand the exact extent of a novice's ignorance, the precise details which I did not know and must know, the essential apparatus I had to be shown the knack of, before he fled to ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... misunderstanding on the other. It is always hard enough to manage such elements, but let them get out of hand and a miracle is needed for salvation. Also you have to find the miracle, and I composed myself to search for it in the little things, the natural things of the situation. They have a knack of conducting you to the heart of a problem, if you will only have simple faith and follow them, and be not ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... at one another's houses on Sunday nights, was not of common things. One of my uncles was a merchant, another a doctor; my father was a portrait-painter by profession, and a sign-painter by practice. I suppose that's where I got my knack, such as it is. The merchant was an invalid, rather, though he kept about his business, and our people merely recognized him as being out of health. He was what we could call, for that day and region—the Middle West of the early fifties—a man of unusual refinement. I suppose this was ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... a brief moment call to your mind ROLAND PRETTYMAN. Upon my soul, I think ROLAND the most empty-headed fribble, the most affected coxcomb, and the most conceited noodle in the whole world. He was decently good-looking once, and he had a pretty knack of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... to him attentively; then said he supposed Mrs. Blyth must be fond of curiosities, and all sorts of "knick-knack things from foreign parts." Young Thorpe not only answered the question in the affirmative, but added, as a private expression of his own opinion, that he believed these said curiosities and "knick-knacks" had helped, in their way, to keep her alive by keeping her amused. From this, he digressed ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... a most worthy man, truthful, honest, temperate, and, I need not say, frugal; and he had no bad habits, —perhaps he never had energy enough to acquire any. Nor did he lack the knack of the Yankee race. He could make a shoe, or build a house, or doctor a cow; but it never seemed to him, in this brief existence, worth while to do any of these things. He was an excellent angler, but he rarely fished; partly because of the shortness of days, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had a decided knack for this sort of work. He assailed it with vigor, making a heap of life preservers, and over these placing Miss Butler, head downward. Then Farley took vigorous charge of the work of "rolling" out the water that Miss Butler must ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... boisterous afternoon, chatting cosily, and waiting for tea to come up. Between Clara and Gladys there seemed to be a peculiar understanding, although Mr. Fordyce's elder daughter was not the favourite of the family. Her manner was too stiff, and she had a knack at times of saying rather sharp, disagreeable things. But not to Gladys Graham. In these few days they had become united in the bonds of a love which was to stand all tests. Clara was sitting on a low chair, Gladys kneeling by her side, with her arm on her knee. So sitting, they presented a contrast, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... he said. "I seemed to have had the knack to-night of constantly annoying you. So ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... rider, but his sister had more of a natural knack with ponies, and often bested him in a race. He too, now swung a leg over the saddle and mounted. With Mike in the lead, and several of the Yaquis bringing up in the rear as a guard against a retreat on the part of the captives, they were urged forward out of the rocky defile ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... accretions of years of fairyland-dwelling and nonsense-sharing,—these cannot understand the perplexity of one to whom the gift and the opportunity have not "come natural." But there are many who can understand it, personally and all too well. To these, the teachers who have not a knack for story-telling, who feel as shy as their own youngest scholar at the thought of it, who do not know where the good stories are, or which ones are easy to tell, it is my earnest hope that the following pages will bring something definite and practical ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... Councils of putting long strings of questions and moving impracticable resolutions in sonorous harangues, often prepared for them by outside hacks, their own colleagues soon taught them that such methods were no longer likely to pay even for purposes of advertisement. The majority quickly acquired a knack of suppressing wind-bags and bores quietly and effectively. The Act of 1919 reserved to Government the appointment of the President of the Assembly for the first four years, after which he will be chosen by the Assembly ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... he, or they—it comes to to same thing—have the fiend's own knack of discovering a man's weak place. I confess I rather go out of my way to conciliate Number Five study. It may be soft, but so far, I believe, I am the only man here whom they ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Ridley—"Where's there's fog he'd a made it foggier, and where's there's no understandin' he'd a made it less understandable. I daresay he'd a bin Prime Minister in no time- -he's just the sort. They likes a good old muddler for that work— someone as has the knack o' addlin' the people's brains an' makin' them see a straight line as though'twere crooked. It keeps things quiet an' yet worrity-like—first up, then down—this way, then that way, an' never nothin' certain, but plenty o' big words rantin' ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... still; and now, when once more in full blossom, all his fair friends were ready to pet him as of old. The form in which their kindness pleased him best—because it was most to his advantage—was in making much of Mrs. Purling. Great people have the knack of putting those whom they patronise on the very best terms with themselves; and Mrs. Purling was so convinced of her success as a leader of fashion that she would have asked for a peerage in her own right, taking for arms three pills proper upon a silver ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... interrupted Mr. Jones, with a contemptuous wave of the hand: it is a science that can only be learned by practice. You know that my grandfather was a doctor, but you havent got a drop of medical blood in your veins. These kind of things run in families. All my family by my fathers side had a knack at physic. There was my uncle that was killed at Brandywinehe died as easy again as any other man the regiment, just from knowing how to hold his breath naturally. Few men know how ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... lost any of his knack for surprises," muttered Danny. "And if we, who know his old tricks, can't fathom him at all, what are the other seven of us going ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... warm-hearted manner to disarm their shyness they were perfectly natural, and enjoyed themselves as entirely as if they were at a dormitory tea or a sorority supper. The best part about Mrs. Clark was that she had the happy knack of forgetting her age and throwing herself back into the mental environment of sixteen. She was certainly not a stiff hostess; indeed her treatment of her guests was less conventional than that adopted by Rachel Moseley at the prefects' parties; she laughed and chatted and asked questions ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... boldly and continuously outlining the course of historical events, has the knack of seizing upon incidents which reveal the true character of historical personages. These histories are attractive as romance and possess a peculiar power of impressing the memory, being written from a Christian standpoint they are very desirable ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... could have done it easily," the Colonel declared, "only unfortunately there don't seem to have been any women about. Why, I've seen it done in Korea with a turn of the wrist. It's all knack." ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... run errands, he had swept out a "candy store." He had had a few years at the public school, and a few months at a business college, to which he went at night, after work hours. He had been "up against it good and plenty," he told them. He seemed, however, to have had a knack of making friends and of giving them "a boost along" when such a chance was possible. Both of his listeners realised that a good many people had liked him, and the reason was apparent ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... at fourteen And practise from morning to e'en; And when he's of age, If he will, I'll engage, He may capture the heart of a queen! It is purely a matter of skill, Which all may attain if they will: But every Jack He must study the knack If he wants to ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... diabolical, mysterious and incessantly exciting business it is, covering the gamut of private emotions and international complications. In such narratives I demand three things: the first, that my author should combine a graphic (and grammatical) style with the professional knack of imparting an air of probability to his tale; the second, that things should go all wrong in the beginning and come all right in the end; the third, that if any German schemers are involved these should be eventually outwitted. Mr. SAVILE ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... is! Mr. Pelz took me down to the projection-room to see its first showing, and I give you my word I said to him and Sol—didn't I, Roody?—'That picture is a fortune.' And never in my life did I fail to pick a winner—did I, Roody? I got a knack for it. Mr. Feist, have you ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... and too sour for a luxury afterward. But nothing is more nutritious. When solely used, however, it produces acrid humors, a fact which sufficiently accounts for the humorous character of the Kanakas. I think there must be as much of a knack in handling poi as there is in eating with chopsticks. The forefinger is thrust into the mess and stirred quickly round several times and drawn as quickly out, thickly coated, just as it it were poulticed; the head is thrown back, the finger inserted in the mouth and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us," said the Rector, quietly. Like many men who take life easily, he had the knack of saying a home truth occasionally to those who felt themselves virtuously out of temper. Sir James took out his handkerchief and began to bite ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... snipe and cock, was driven almost frantic by the ruffed grouse; Voucher did better for a day or two, and then lost the knack; Marion Page attended to business in her cool and thorough style, and her average on the gun-room books was excellent, and was also adorned with ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... full of grace and humor and freshness,—such refined humor it is, too, and so evidently the work of a gentleman. What a happy knack he has of giving the taste of a landscape, or any out-door impression, in ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... Deacon Trott; "but there is a great deal, Brother Tilton, in the method of presenting a contribution-box. It is a knack that comes by nature, or not ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... It is an able piece of descriptive writing. It is marked by a conscious and deliberate resolve that the "effect" shall be made. It shows us the Indian city from a high distance, as it appeared to an observer with a knack for vividly delivering his impressions. It is in no sense an inspired wrestle with the reality of India; and in that it is typical. Mr Kipling has never claimed to grasp or interpret his Indian theme. He has stood away almost ostentatiously from the ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... keenly developed, languages—or, in fact, anything else—can be learnt with amazing facility. The "knack" of learning languages is only due to observation; the greatest scientific discoveries have been due to mere observation; the greatest commercial enterprises are based on the practical results of observation. But it is astounding how few people do really observe, not only carefully, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... quite unconsciously and methodically making mental notes of his friend's gestures and expressions for future use. "The old boy's in earnest for once," he thought; and congratulated himself anew that he himself was no genius, merely a person with a knack for imitation, and a habit of keeping his finger on the pulse of the public. It puzzled him that a man who knew his own weaknesses so thoroughly should make no effort to deny or conquer them. Channing seemed to observe his ego as casually as if it belonged to a stranger; and with ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... suppose, but he's just as good as the real. He's a natural knack at putting bones in their places, and all that sort of thing. There was a man broke his leg horribly at Thirlwall the other day, and Gibson was out of the way, and Marshchalk set it, and did it famously, they said. So go, Ellen, and bring us word ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... some skill in managing the minds of crowds; it is a mere knack, like any other; it belongs to no particular character or culture. Arnold of Brescia had it, and so had Masaniello. Lamartine had it, and so ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... to me, 'I never heard any thing from him in company that was at all striking; and depend upon it, Sir, it is when you come close to a man in conversation, that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a speech in a publick assembly is a knack. Now I honour Thurlow, Sir; Thurlow is a fine fellow; he fairly ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... is making money for Billy. He's picked out of the very gutters all the human waste and rubbish that the others, the wise business men, threw there and with the town's worst drunkard and half a dozen mistreated, misborn, misunderstood boys he's playing the business game and winning. He's got the knack of making his help feel like partners and he's so square and sensible in his dealings with them that they are all ready to die for him. Now if that isn't the greatest kind of a business gift ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... particular...? What you call contempt, madam—supposing I did feel anything like it—would, after all, be nothing but disguised envy. Or do you think I lack the desire to conduct my life as I see most other people conducting theirs? I simply haven't the knack. If I am to be frank, madam—the deepest yearning of all within me is just to be a rogue: a fellow who can dissemble, seduce, sneer, make his way over dead bodies. But thanks to a certain shortcoming in my temperament, ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... language and appetite by which good men are known; but he had a gift of civic virtue—important in a wicked world, and of unusual importance in Viking. He had neither self-consciousness nor fear; and while not possessed of absolute tact in a social way, he had a knack of doing the right thing bluntly, or the wrong thing with an air of rightness. He envied no man, he coveted nothing; had once or twice made other men's fortunes by prospecting, but was poor himself. And in all he was content, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... father took me out of the medical school to put me into the ministry. I had a knack for doctoring. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... so certain of that, Digby," answered Captain Brine. "But if she is not an enemy, she is the Diamond frigate, commanded by Sir Sydney Smith. He has a wonderful knack of disguising his ship. I have known him to deceive the French themselves, and quietly to sail under a battery, look into a port, and be out again before he was suspected. He delights in such sort of work, and is not over bashful in describing afterwards what he has done. We shall soon, however, ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... For inquisitions taught by Spain, Of which the Christian world complain." Dick, we agree—all's true thou'st said, As that my Muse is yet a maid. But, if I may with freedom talk, All this is foreign to thy walk: Thy genius has perhaps a knack At trudging in a beaten track, But is for state affairs as fit As mine for politics and wit. Then let us both in time grow wise, Nor higher than our talents rise; To some snug cellar let's repair, From duns and debts, and drown ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... splendid—a dark green cloth which set off his straight form; the leather jacket, which made him look like some craftsman; the jaunty cap, which emphasized the high cheek-bones in the lean face. Both his face and his figure being spare, he promised energy. He had the knack of making a sensation whenever he appeared. Only a few among mortals are gifted that way. Most of us have to get our own slippers and light our own cigars. But he was able to convey the idea that it was a privilege to serve him. The busy superintendent ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... he exclaimed, swerving the plane in a long, ascending spiral. All the art, the knack of flight came back to him, at the touch of the wheel, as readily as swimming to an expert in the water. Fear? The thought no more occurred to him than ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... edge and a long handle. When placed in the head of the screw, to drive in, it should be turned from left to right, and in taking out, from right to left. There is a particular way of getting out a screw, which is only to be learned by a little practice. The knack consists in combining with nicety the pressure on the screw-head and the turning of the driver. The young carpenter will now and then find a very stubborn screw and fancy it quite impossible to get ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... furbished up to seem like rituals. She baked and brewed as one who only asks The right to serve. Her daily manuals Of prayer were duties, and her festivals When Theodore praised some dish, or frankly said She had a knack in making up ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... them their danger.' 'So I did,' he replied, 'but I seemed to them as one that mocked.' Now, this of talking, and, especially, of talking about religious things to children, is one of the most difficult things in the world,—that is, to do it well. Some people have the happy knack of talking to their own and to other people's children so as always to interest and impress them. But such happy people are few. Most people talk at their children whenever they begin to talk to them, and thus, without knowing it, they nauseate their children with their ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... the most varied meters. He never, like Zorrilla, produces the effect of careless improvisation. In the matter of poetic form Espronceda has been the chief inspiration of Spanish poets down to the advent of Rubn Daro. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, with his happy knack of hitting off an author's characteristics in a phrase, says: "He still stirs us with his elemental force, his resonant musical potency of phrase, his communicative ardor for ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... sickness which I have so often seen shown by strong men. The skipper said: "We'll heave her to again. You'd better get below. Your pluck's all right, but an unlucky one might catch you, and you ain't got the knack of watching for an extra drop o' water ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... the acquaintance of the Abbe Galiani, the secretary of the Neapolitan Embassy. He was a brother to the Marquis de Galiani, of whom I shall speak when we come to my Italian travels. The Abbe Galiani was a man of wit. He had a knack of making the most serious subjects appear comic; and being a good talker, speaking French with the ineradicable Neapolitan accent, he was a favourite in every circle he cared to enter. The Abbe ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... cast iron kettles sunk in a sort of well in the floor—with a handy water bucket for quenching fires. Whatever the floor, eternal vigilance was the price of safe bacon—you looked at the smokehouse fires first thing in the morning and last at night. They were put out at sundown, but had a knack of burning again from some hidden seed of live coal. Morning smoke could not well be too thick, provided it smelled right—keen and clean, reminiscent of sylvan fragrance—a thick, acrid smoke that set you sneezing and coughing, was "most tolerable and not to be endured." It was not well to leave ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... of what was before him, the boiler slid off and fell to the pavement with a noise that nearly caused a runaway, and brought the hot-cheeked William much derisory attention from a passing street-car. However, he presently caught the knack of keeping it in position, and it fell ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... thatched and top-knotted, O reckless Stack! Of wives that to the Wind have been allotted There is no lack; You've spurned my love as though I were a worm; But next September when I see thy form, I'll woo thee with an equinoctial storm! I have that knack!' ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... in every respect, a most worthy man, truthful, honest, temperate, and, I need not say, frugal; and he had no bad habits, —perhaps he never had energy enough to acquire any. Nor did he lack the knack of the Yankee race. He could make a shoe, or build a house, or doctor a cow; but it never seemed to him, in this brief existence, worth while to do any of these things. He was an excellent angler, but he rarely fished; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... different laws; he makes his will in other terms, is otherwise divorced and married; his eyes are not at home in an English landscape or with English houses; his ear continues to remark the English speech; and even though his tongue acquire the Southern knack, he will still have a strong Scotch ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carefully; we do not give them as wide a berth as formerly, for the wakes they turn are no longer savage—but wakes, even when sent out by stern-wheelers at full speed, now give us little trouble; it did not take long to learn the knack of "taking" them. Whether you meet them at right angles, or in the trough, there is the same delicious sensation of rising and falling on the long swells—there is no danger, so long as you are outside the ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... taken command of the small army which was now operating from the north along the railway line with Mafeking for its objective. Plumer is an officer of considerable experience in African warfare, a small, quiet, resolute man, with a knack of gently enforcing discipline upon the very rough material with which he had to deal. With his weak force—which never exceeded a thousand men, and was usually from six to seven hundred—he had to keep the long line behind him open, build up the ruined railway in ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... soul. And every time he returned home he was more restless. So the Boones moved from place to place and each time others went along with them. Daniel had a knack of leadership, but no sooner would everyone be settled around him than he'd pack up and go to another place. Daniel couldn't be crowded. He had to have elbow room no matter where he had ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... Sex. The Lady Blast, you must understand, has such a particular Malignity in her Whisper, that it blights like an Easterly Wind, and withers every Reputation that it breathes upon. She has a particular Knack at making private Weddings, and last Winter married above five Women of Quality to their Footmen. Her Whisper can make an innocent young Woman big with Child, or fill an healthful young Fellow with Distempers that are not to be named. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... same noise but louder, and saw the leaves shaking as if caused by the motion of some heavy animal which moved off to an adjoining tree. I immediately shouted for all of them to come up and try and get a view, so as to allow me to have a shot. This was not an easy matter, as the Mias had a knack of selecting places with dense foliage beneath. Very soon, however, one of the Dyaks called me and pointed upwards, and on looking I saw a great red hairy body and a huge black face gazing down from a great height, as if wanting to know what was making such a disturbance ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... may call a knack! How well she looks at her work, and with that cheerful, friendly face! Everything that she touches is well done;—everything improves and flourishes under her eye. If she were only not so violent and passionate!—but it is not in her heart, there never was a better heart than hers. Men and ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... medal," he said. "It's all in the drill—every man knowing what he has to do, and doing it at the proper moment. I'd give something if I had Dick's knack in ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... vehement and overpowering method he possessed great practical gifts. He had the knack of unraveling accounts, and while not technically skilled in bookkeeping, had a general and accurate knowledge which gave him prestige, whether in intricate civil or criminal cases. He was a rash talker, but the safest of counselors, and practiced his profession with the greatest ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... I don't know that Shakespeare's doggerel is much better than Tusser's doggerel. It is something that, swimming in such a brave company, he should keep his head above water; and something more that in one other point Tusser can vie with the foremost. His knack of christening his personages with ad hoc names recalls Shakespeare's, which, with its Dick the Carter and Marian's nose, was of the same kind and degree. Here is an example, where he wishes to instil the value of hedge-mending. If you let your ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... do I. Odd, isn't it, what a knack women have for taking care of sick folks?" and Charlie fell a-musing over ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... worked with him were aware of one peculiarity which by its prominence cast others into the shade. He possessed a very useful gift rarely given to men—the gift of intuition. It was dangerous to think when the eyes of the Vicomte d'Audierne were upon one's face. He had a knack of knowing one's thoughts before they were even formulated. He looked grave—almost distressed—on this occasion, because he knew something of which Hilda herself was ignorant. He knew that she was engaged to be married to one man ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the infallible knack of adjusting his makeup, not always himself—to any occasion from which he could extract profitable publicity, or upon which he could do some charming thing for somebody else. He is reputed once to have worn overalls among a gang of timber-jammers, but he felt rather ridiculous ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... up to Jack, and had left Tom far behind. The same talent which had induced him to mend his ragged clothes, made him do, with rapidity and neatness, everything else he undertook, while he showed a peculiar knack of being quick at understanding and executing the orders ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... novels of the world,' the probabilities tell heavily against it. On the other hand, an isolated novel makes a good stick to beat the age. It is fairly certain to have something sufficiently unique about it to be useful for the purpose. Even its blemishes have a knack of being sui generis. To elevate it is, therefore, bound to imply the diminution of ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Christian Missions, and a magazine paper on the history of the game of bumblepuppy. I am now just beginning a novel of society life. Versatility is the very foundation of success. If it hadn't been for my knack of doing all sorts of things I never should have succeeded as ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... at the ends. The Indian bow was made of wood, and of mountain-goat horns, or of solid bones, glued together. The wooden bow frequently was strengthened by having hide or sinew glued along the back. Until they learned the knack of it, few white men ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... than the modern jockeys, although he had in a measure conformed to the crouching seat. Alan's friends wondered why he stuck to Tommy, some of them considered he was getting past it, but Alan had a knack of keeping to old hands who had done him good service. In business this caused many a split with the ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... best conversationalists of the day. Conversation is a queer thing; so many people talk without having anything to say; others have a great deal to say and never say it. Chesterton can undoubtedly talk well; he has a knack of finding subjects suitable to the company; though he does not talk very much of things of the day; he is naturally mostly interested in books. Given a kindred soul the two will talk and laugh ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... not long suffered to enjoy. The curate happened that day to dine with him: his visits, indeed, were more properly to the aunt than the nephew; and many of the intelligent ladies in the parish, who, like some very great philosophers, have the happy knack at accounting for everything, gave out that there was a particular attachment between them, which wanted only to be matured by some more years of courtship to end in the tenderest connection. In this conclusion, indeed, supposing the premises to have ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... The art of conversing these French people carry to great perfection. It is not frivolous, though it is light and sparkling; it is still less argumentative, but it has the knack of bringing out different opinions and different views of them. We pity the French for their want of political liberty, but the social freedom they enjoy is some compensation.—— But what interested me still ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... proceedings. Oh! they were very simple: first of all a glance, then a smile, then a slight sign with the head, which meant: 'Are you coming up?' But it was so slight, so vague, so discreet, that it required a great deal of knack to succeed as she did. And I asked myself: 'I wonder if I could do that little movement, from below upwards, which was at the same time bold and pretty, as well as she does,' for her gesture was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... envelope, addressed to herself, and found a valentine quite as beautiful as Marjorie's and almost exactly like it. It was from her father, and as Mr. Spencer didn't have the knack of rhyming as well as Mr. Maynard, he had written ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... in the United States Senate some of my remarks on the curse of civil service, and, though he didn't agree with me altogether, I noticed that our ideas are alike in some things, and we both have the knack of puttin' things strong, only he put on more frills ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... was home, she sang snatches from the operas, danced with imaginary partners, rehearsed parts of private theatricals and dreamed of conquests. She had also learned the knack of dressing her hair which, when done in the grand manner, isn't far from being a talent. Pulled down on one side, with a pin or two adjusted, she was a dashing young duchess who rode to hounds and made the old duke's eyes pop out. Or she could dip it over her ears, change a few pins again and—lo!—she ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... however, might be improved, and many of your notions remind me of Aristotle. That philosopher was one of my most intimate acquaintances. I liked him as much for his terrible ill temper, as for his happy knack at making a blunder. There is only one solid truth in all that he has written, and for that I gave him the hint out of pure compassion for his absurdity. I suppose, Pierre Bon-Bon, you very well know to what divine moral truth I ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... force, or light, or weight, or care; Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong; Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line; Then polish all with so much life and ease, You think 'tis nature, and a knack to please; But ease in writing flows from art, not chance, As those move easiest ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... for though as a parson he was essentially a kindly, easy man, to whom humbug was odious, and who dealt little in the austerities of clerical denunciation, still he had his face of pulpit sorrow for the sins of the people—what I may perhaps call his clerical knack of gentle condemnation—and could therefore assume a solemn look, and a little saddened motion of his head, with more ease than people who are not often called upon ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... hard to have a better knack at lying than thou hast already. Hast gotten the weather into thy lodgings? When didst flit ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... sensible, my Lord, how far the Word Farce might have offended some, whose Titles of Honour, a Knack in dressing, or his Art in writing a Billet Doux, had been his chiefest Talent, and who, without considering the Intent, Character, or Nature of the thing, wou'd have cry'd out upon the Language, and have damn'd it (because the Persons in it did not all ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... heirs unknown descends th' unguarded store, Or wanders, Heaven-directed, to the poor. Pictures like these, dear Madam, to design, Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line; Some wandering touches, some reflected light, Some flying stroke alone can hit them right: For how should equal colours do the knack? Chameleons who can paint in white and black? 'Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot'— Nature in her then erred not, but forgot. 'With every pleasing, every prudent part, Say, what can Chloe want?'—She wants a heart. She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought; But ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... carrying; you will see fields of it presently, some of it bursting into fluffy pods, for cotton growing is one of the most extensive and profitable of Egyptian industries. The twigs and branches are used as fuel by the people, who have a happy knack of ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... into her own private room, where we could consume her excellent cheer in peace and quietness. This favour was due, I think, to a little sly manoeuvring and a few whispered words from Saxon, who amongst other accomplishments which he had picked up during his chequered career had a pleasing knack of establishing friendly relations with the fair sex, irrespective of age, size, or character. Gentle and simple, Church and Dissent, Whig and Tory, if they did but wear a petticoat our comrade never failed, in spite of his fifty years, to make ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... song aright, For fear I'd tire your patience You'll see O'Ryan any night, Amid the constellations. And Venus follows in his track Till Mars grows jealous raally, But, faith, he fears the Irish knack Of ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... visited him at Newgate, wrote his life, and had the highwayman, standing under the gallows, send for a copy and deliver it as his "last speech and dying confession." There is a certain breadth and originality in this stroke, hardly to be paralleled in modern journalism. Defoe had the knack of singling out from the mass of passing events whatever would be likely to interest the public. He brought out an account in some newspaper, and if successful, made the occurrence the subject of a longer article in pamphlet or book form. He was always on the lookout for matter, which ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... a really industrious person, but a bilious temperament like Ardessa's couldn't make even a feeble stand against such willingness. Ardessa had grown soft and had lost the knack of turning out work. Sometimes, in her importance and serenity, she shivered. What if O'Mally should die, and she were thrust out into the world to work in competition with the brazen, competent young ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... haven't lost the knack of understanding those I once understood. Not that it needed anything of the sort. Man, you were admirably straight—and gentle, too—you that used to be intolerant. You mustn't think, though, that I'm convinced; I can't afford ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... are hard to reconcile and my friend's husband had developed a nasty knack of throwing his dinner in the fire whenever it displeased him, a habit ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... horror' lest the pic-nic day should be rainy? Did that ensure its being fine? Was not I extremely anxious to catch the express train yesterday, and did not I miss it? Does not every child of ten years old know, that this is a world in which things have a wonderful knack of falling out just in the way least wished for? If I were an infidel, I should believe that some spiteful imp of the perverse had the guidance of the affairs of humanity. I know better than that: but for my knowledge ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the cavalry regiments that have lately trooped through our cities from various States of the Union, on their way to the banks of the Potomac, must in candor, if with reluctance, acknowledge that we are not just yet a nation of horsemen. That our troopers have got a knack of 'sticking on' we will admit; but there are ways of fulfilling that necessary condition with more ease to the horse, more grace in the action, and more certainty of being able to use the weapons with precision, than the present very unartistic method common to horsemen generally ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... resided in Kentucky, he and two companions discovered a camp of some forty new-comers actually starving, though buffalo were plenty. Clark and his friends speedily relieved their necessities by killing fourteen of the great beasts; for when once the hunters had found out the knack, the buffalo were easier slaughtered than ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... moving," said Psmith. "I have several rather profound observations on life to make and I can't make them without an audience. Soliloquy is a knack. Hamlet had got it, but probably only after years of patient practice. Personally, I need some one to listen when I talk. I like to feel that I am doing good. You stay where you are—don't interrupt ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... at his tongue's end all the platitudes of the socialist and possesses the knack of picking platitude and imperfect statistic to fit his theories, whenever ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... of the wind, the bush and trees growing so thickly right down to the water's edge that close inshore we were completely becalmed; and, thus sheltered, our sense of hearing helped us somewhat despite the deep roar of the gale overhead, while we quickly caught the knack of steering along the outer edge of the narrow belt of calm, in this way avoiding to a great extent the difficulties and petty mishaps that had at first so seriously hampered ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... right to them, based upon her need—particularly if she be a woman who insists, as I do, upon her indefeasible right to sing bass. I know that it helps things along for a woman to look after a man's linen and buttons, and do his fine work generally, because she seems to have a kind of natural knack at the business. I am aware that it is exceedingly pleasant to hear a woman sing treble, if she sings it well, but I am talking, be it remembered, of woman's right to sing bass. Let us ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... all summer long. He was a powerful man physically and turned off his work with a ready knack which left him free to think. All day as he moved to and fro in the rustling corn rows, he thought, and with his thinking, his powers expanded. He had the ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... poetic—essentially a prosaic, and in many or most hands an unimaginative, form of art; but for this very reason, that it demands nothing of its average practitioner but a keen eye for facts, great and small, and a knack of graphically recording them, it has become a far more commonly and successfully cultivated form of art than any other. As to the question who are its practitioners, it would, of course, be the merest dogmatism to commit one's self to any ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... before I advise. Bring out every rag you 've got, and we 'll see what can be done," said Polly, looking as if she enjoyed the prospect, for she had a great deal of that feminine faculty which we call "knack," and much practice had ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You have an unhappy knack of separating yourself from every one. Look at your Uncle James. He ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... love Lily and none but her. He looked round the room, considering how he could get away. Frank was talking business. He would not disturb him. No doubt Thigh was concocting some swindle, but he (Mike) knew nothing of business; he had a knack of turning the king at ecarte, but was nowhere once bills and the cooking of accounts were introduced. Should he post the letter? That was the question, and it played in his ears like an electric bell. Here was ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... three o'clock's happiness in the 'extraordinary mesmeric discourse' of one's friend. All this, and the rest of the serene and happy inspired daily life which a piece of 'unpunctuality' can ruin, and to which the guardian 'angel' brings as crowning qualification the knack of poking the fire adroitly—of this—what can one say but that—no, best hold one's tongue and read the 'Lyrical Ballads' with finger in ear. Did not Shelley say long ago 'He had no more imagination than a pint-pot'—though in those days he used to walk about ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... dipping these rushes in the scalding fat or grease; but this knack also is to be attained by practice. The careful wife of an industrious Hampshire labourer obtains all her fat for nothing; for she saves the scumrnings of her bacon-pot for this use; and, if the grease abounds with salt, she causes the salt to precipitate ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... example, what an advertising campaign can do with a product's actual specifications. Compare {GIGO}; see also {SNAFU principle}. 2. James Parry , a Usenetter infamous for various surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for joining any thread in which his nom de ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... put forth would prove of very slight profit to him, as author. Writing of his replies given to certain mathematical professors, who had sent him problems for solution, he remarks that, although he may have a happy knack of dispatching with rapidity any work begun, he always begins too late. In his fifty-eighth year he answered one of these queries, involving three very difficult problems, within seven days; a feat which he judges to be a marvel: but what profit ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... had the knack of finding things. When my father used to send me into the library to fetch a book, or my mother into her dressing-room to fetch her scissors, I could never find them. I looked for it everywhere, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... men is attracted by the qualities of execution which the work displays, and he is delighted by what he calls the "actual beauty" of the painting. With eyes close to the canvas he notes the way Millet has handled his materials, his drawing, his color, his surfaces and edges, all the knack of the brush-work, recognizing in his examination of the workmanship of the picture that though Millet was a very great artist, he was not a great painter, that the reach of his ideas was not equaled by his technical skill. Then as the beholder stands ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... then, my lad. It's just the knack of it, that's all. Get that, and you'll hit one every time. Won't ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... more settled weather, and Mr. Jones told us to lose no time in uncovering our Antwerp raspberries. They had been bent down close to the ground the previous winter and covered with earth. To remove this without breaking the canes, required careful and skilful work. We soon acquired the knack, however, of pushing and throwing aside the soil, then lifting the canes gently through what remained, ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... fruitfulness of intellect were ever reached without this generous faculty of idealisation, which Pattison, here and always, viewed with such icy coldness. Napoleon used to say that what was most fatal to a general was a knack of combining objects into pictures. A good officer, he said, never makes pictures; he sees objects, as through a field-glass, exactly as they are. In the art of war let us take Napoleon's word for ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... Violette has a never-to-be-forgotten grief, but what a kind and grateful glance she gives her husband! Could anything be more touching than Louise Gerard, that excellent old maid, the life of the house, who has the knack of making pleasing order and elegant comfort reign in the house, while she surrounds her mother, the paralytic Grandmother Gerard, with every care? Truly, Amedee has arranged his life well. He loves and is loved: he has procured for mind and body valuable and certain customs. He ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... grimy a craft, and fenced himself behind his dignity. But Kettle put forth his persuasive powers; he did not hit the man, he merely talked; and under the merciless lash of that vinegary little tongue, Balliot repented him of his stubbornness, and set himself to acquire the elementary knack of engine nursing ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... for a French interview which lay ahead, and Miss Farnborough, laying down her book, had listened with smiling interest. Then the Englishwoman left the room, and Miss Farnborough had said, "You did that very cleverly; very cleverly indeed! You have a very happy knack of putting things simply and forcibly. I've noticed it more than once. Have you ever ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... as we are, you and I must do it, Bigot. Zounds! I learned to dig and delve when I was a stripling at Charlebourg, and in the trenches at Louisbourg, and I have not yet forgotten the knack of it! But where to get spades, Bigot; you are master here and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... having decided this, work straight on, using nature to support your original impression, but don't be led off by a fresh scheme because others strike you as you go along. New schemes will do so, of course, and every new one has a knack of looking better than your original one. But it is not often that this is so; the fact that they are new makes them appear to greater advantage than the original scheme to which you have got accustomed. So that it is not only in working away from nature that the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... like that!" she said, with gay imperiousness. "You pale-eyed folk have a horrible knack of making one feel as if one is under a microscope. Your worthy uncle is just the same. If I weren't so deeply in love with him, I might resent it. But Nick is a privileged person, isn't he, wherever ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... a grave suspicion afloat that your adversary has an ugly knack of pulling the trigger half a second too soon," whispered Jack's second, "so I am going to give him ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Croly, her husband, long a newspaper man of admitted power and executive force, Mrs. Croly was a constant help, as he too was to her. From him she learned not a little of her topical discernment and technical knack. He was never afraid of ability in whomever found, and he rejoiced that the sex of his wife, and the novel fact that she was the first woman in America to write daily for publication, gave to her and her subjects a vogue he and his could not command ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... good- looking—nay, handsome; she had the manners which Mrs. Furze knew that she herself lacked, and Charlie Colston, aged twenty-eight, was still disengaged. It was Mrs. Furze's way when she proposed anything to herself, to take no account of any obstacles, and she had the most wonderful knack of belittling and even transmuting all moral objections. Mr. Charlie Colston was a well-known figure in Eastthorpe. He was an only son, about five feet eleven inches high, thin, unsteady on his legs, smooth-faced, unwholesome, and silly. He had been ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... the wonder of the world. America seems to have the knack of taking hold of old stuff and turning it into something full of pep and punch. You remember a play called Hamlet? No? Well, there is a scene in it, rather an impressive scene, where a man chats with his father's ghost. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... seconded by Gregory, who always enjoyed the social parties that his sister had a peculiar knack in getting up ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the knack of making friends with any one, but I am more reserved and ideal in nature, so I simply cannot accommodate myself to such people and ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... were good. She did work hard at what she wrote,—hard enough at any rate to cover her pages quickly; and was, by nature, a clever woman. She could write after a glib, commonplace, sprightly fashion, and had already acquired the knack of spreading all she knew very thin, so that it might cover a vast surface. She had no ambition to write a good book, but was painfully anxious to write a book that the critics should say was good. Had Mr Broune, in his closet, told her ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... the Moral-Plays had vigour enough, it appears, to propagate themselves into the drama of comedy and tragedy after the main body of them had been withdrawn. An apt instance of this is furnished in A Knack to know a Knave, entered at the Stationers' in 1593, but written several years before. It was printed in 1594, the title-page stating that it had been "acted sundry times by Edward Alleyn and his company," and that it contained "Kempe's applauded ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... about; then mother and father were coming home in the evening, after having been away a fortnight, and, though on the whole I had got on quite nicely with the housekeeping, it would be a relief to be able to consult mother again. Things have a knack of not going so smoothly when mothers are away, as I ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... deed. She had known George Denham since he was a little boy in short clothes; and while she approved of him, and had a sort of motherly affection for him, she was disposed to be critical, as are most women who have the knack ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... looked up. I had news that some of my Yankee speculations were turning out well, and I unexpectedly found myself a man of means again. Rimbolt, who certainly has the knack of making ill-timed suggestions, proposed that that would be a good opportunity for making good what properly belonged to my ward. I urged in vain that my ward was lost, and that the money properly ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... was rather shabby. So much liquor had been spilled on the billiard table that the balls stuck to it. Once the game got started though, Lantier recovered his good humor and began to flaunt his extraordinary knack with a cue. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... ammunition, and three small cannon. Besides his original party he took an Indian boy and a dog, the latter proving by no means the least useful member of the company. He found at the junction of the American and Sacramento rivers the location that appealed to him, and there he established himself. His knack with the Indians soon enlisted their services. He seems to have been able to keep his agreements with them and at the same time to maintain rigid discipline ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... murder having been committed was known to the man who wrote a letter and blotted it on the sheet which has been before the court. That man also, as it was clear to us an hour ago, directed a certain envelope which you have also seen. I may add that Mr. Taynton had, as I knew, an extraordinary knack of imitating handwritings; I have seen him write a signature that I could have sworn was mine. But he has used that gift ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... slenderly, and which have a great knack of upsetting,—a circumstance which renders it necessary for the occupant to sit like a statue; the slightest movement of the body, or even of the head or arm, draws upon you ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... child; that is, in the "one-two-three" style with accelerated motion. Neither did I depend upon mere brilliancy of technique, a trick by which children often surprise their listeners; but I always tried to interpret a piece of music; I always played with feeling. Very early I acquired that knack of using the pedals, which makes the piano a sympathetic, singing instrument, quite a different thing from the source of hard or blurred sounds it so generally is. I think this was due not entirely to natural ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... down fast enough, and they in spite say things about her, the discredit of which extends to our ladies generally—in short, she exposes the country before foreigners. Then for the natives, she catches some poor boy just loose upon the world, dances with, flatters him—for she has a knack of flattering people without seeming to do so, especially by always appearing to take an interest in what is said to her,—keeps him dangling about her for a while; then some day he says or does something to make a fool of himself, and she ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... my dear Lady Laura, a worn-out old bookworm, with no better idea of enjoyment than a good fire and a favourite author," he said; "and I really feel myself quite unfitted for civilised society. But you have a knack at commanding, and to hear is to obey; so if you insist upon it, and will pardon my ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... in my position, I imagine, would have pondered all the rest of the evening without getting a bite, but we Woosters have an uncanny knack of going straight to the heart of things, and I don't suppose it was much more than ten minutes after I had started pondering before I saw ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
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