"Dexterous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with my father, who at first seemed to listen to me as if I had been talking of an excursion to the moon. But I threw in a dexterous dose of the old Greek Cleruchioe cited by Trevanion, which set him off full trot on his hobby, till after a short excursion to Euboea and the Chersonese, he was fairly lost amidst the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor. I then gradually and artfully decoyed ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Cathay, and beyond them again of lands as yet unknown. At the very least he could go to Brittany, to the forest of Brocheliaunde, where (so all men said) fairies might be seen bathing in the fountains, and possibly be won and wedded by a bold and dexterous knight after the fashion of Sir Gruelan. [Footnote: Wace, author of the "Roman de Rou," went to Brittany a generation later, to see those same fairies: but had no sport; and sang,— "Fol i alai, fol m'en revins; Folie ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... pleasant; and Lamb thought well to modify it, so as to diminish the gravity of the secret of which the malicious friend was possessed. There is nothing but what is sweet and attractive in the little comedy of The Frank Courtship, and it might well be commended to the dexterous and sympathetic hand ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... account your Excellence gives of your negotiation is very acceptable here, as is also your dexterous management thereof. The paper you were pleased to send to me shall be represented to the Council; and your Excellence may be assured that a due care will be taken of that business, as well for justice' sake as that your present business be not hindered by ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... with Philip Sidney and corresponding with Gabriel Harvey about classical metres and English rimes; the shepherd poet, Colin Clout, delicately fashioning his innocent pastorals, his love complaints, or his dexterous panegyrics or satires; the courtier, aspiring to shine in the train of Leicester before the eyes of the great queen,—found himself transplanted into a wild and turbulent savagery, where the elements of civil society hardly existed, and which had the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... naturalisation of a title-page, nor the dexterous corruption of the year in which a work was honestly produced, should avail to eliminate "the stock in hand," res ad Triarios rediit—there is but one contrivance left. This is, to give to the ill-fated hoard another name; in the hope that a proverb properly belonging to a rose may be superabundantly ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... not to be true. The first copy of Pope's books, with those of Fenton, are to be seen in the Museum. The parts of Pope are less interlined than the "Iliad," and the latter books of the "Iliad" less than the former. He grew dexterous by practice, and every sheet enabled him to write the next with more facility. The books of Fenton have very few alterations by the hand of Pope. Those of Broome have not been found, but Pope complained, as it is reported, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... would or no,' said Finn, tapping on the door. Being told to come in, he opened it; and on this trivial but dexterous pretext we invaded the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... certainly foreign to his former habits and views, merits great applause, and will I doubt not, procure that approbation from Congress, which will be to him a grateful reward for his zealous and dexterous exertions to promote the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... a secret committee of the clergy. So that briefly, Lord Aberdeen, whilst restraining the popular courts, gives to them a true popular authority; and the Non-intrusionists, whilst seeming to set up a democratic idol, do in fact, by dexterous ventriloquism, throw their own all-potential ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... had a daughter of nine years old, a child of toward parts for her age, very dexterous at her needle, and skilful in dressing her baby. Her mother and she contrived to fit up the baby's cradle for me against night. The cradle was put into a small drawer cabinet, and the drawer placed upon a hanging shelf for fear of the rats. This was my bed all the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... we reached the highroad, Bill's dexterous hand laid the six horses back on their haunches, and the stage stopped with a jerk. For there, on a little eminence beside the road, stood Miggles, her hair flying, her eyes sparkling, her white handkerchief waving, and her white teeth flashing a last "good-by." We ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... in its very sound. The word is used by vast numbers of people to express their highest ideal of manliness, which is "real grit." It is impossible for anybody to acquire the reputation it confers by the most dexterous mimicry of its outside expressions; for a swift analysis, which drives directly to the heart of the man, instantly detects the impostor behind the braggart, and curtly declares him to lack "the true grit." The word is so close to the thing it names, has so much pith and point, is so tart ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... thought, catching the tinkle of bells, and lifting his head. Forty paces from him a carriage with four horses harnessed abreast was driving towards him along the grassy road on which he was walking. The shaft-horses were tilted against the shafts by the ruts, but the dexterous driver sitting on the box held the shaft over the ruts, so that the wheels ran on the smooth part ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... In the height of his good-humour, meeting a common beggar upon the road who was no conjurer, as he went to relieve him he found his pocket was picked; that being a kind of palmistry at which this race of vermin are very dexterous. ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... spoke the young man smiled. His eyes shone straight into the barrister's. With a quick, dexterous movement of his right hand he pointed to ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... boys were sent out with these lean and galled animals to carry sand or coals about the neighboring towns. Both sand and coals were often stolen before they got them to sell; or if not, they always took care to cheat in selling them. By long practice in this art, they grew so dexterous that they could give a pretty good guess how large a coal they could crib out of every bag before the buyer would be likely ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... Steal!—to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children, disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own. Sneer. But your present work is a sacrifice to Melpomene, and he, you know, never— Sir Fret. That's no security: a dexterous plagiarist may do anything. Why, sir, for aught I know, he might take out some of the best things in my tragedy, and put them into his own comedy. Sneer. That might be done, I dare be sworn. Sir ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... these seemed made to give pleasure and occupation for the boy's thoughts, and he had an intelligent mind; many great talents lay dormant in him. How readily he remembered stories and songs that he heard, and how dexterous he was with his fingers! With stones and mussel-shells he could put together pictures and ships with which one could decorate the room; and he could make wonderful things from a stick, his foster-mother said, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... he had taken. With this view be returned the salute, and raised such a clatter about the squire's pate, that one who had heard without seeing the application, would have taken the sound for that of a salt-box, in the hand of a dexterous merry-andrew, belonging to one of the booths at Bartholomew-fair. Neither was this salutation confined to his head: his shoulders, arms, thighs, ankles, and ribs, were visited with amazing rapidity, while Tom Pipes sounded ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... old lady Meeker, who lived next the vacant lot on Southern Avenue, where the boys gathered occasionally on their way from school for a game of marbles or to play split-top on one of the loose, decayed fence planks. Never did a glassy go spinning from the big dirt ring through a dexterous shot, or a soft, evenly grained top split cleanly to the spear head amid the proper shouts of approval than her fretful, piercing voice put an end to further fun. Such goings-on made her head ache, she averred ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... With a dexterous movement of her fingers Carmencita fastened the buttons of her coat and pulled her hat down on her head. "I'm going back to Mother McNeil's," she said, presently, and the large and half-worn rubbers which she had tied on over her shoes were looked at speculatively. "The Damanarkist ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... and ready for action, Big Medicine shook the loop out, glanced around, and saw that Andy, Pink and Cal Emmett were also ready, and, with a dexterous flip, settled the noose neatly over the iron pin that thrust up through the end of the ridge-pole in front. Andy's loop sank neatly over it a second later, and the two wheeled and dashed away together, with Pink and Irish duplicating ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... that Maignan and La Trape were at hand if he should attempt anything, I went back to my place, and sitting down by De Vic began to watch that strange game; while Mademoiselle's laughter and Madame de Lude's gibes floated across the court, and mingled with the eager applause and more dexterous criticisms of the courtiers. The light was beginning to sink, and for this reason, perhaps, no one perceived the Spaniard's pallor; but De Vic, after a rally or two, remarked that he was not ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... opened fire first—a single ball from the dexterous band of General Harris taking General Ames in the very pit of his stomach. A cheer went up from Fort Slatter. In an instant the air was thick with flying missiles, in the midst of which we dimly descried the storming parties sweeping up the ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... worth noting that the whole beauty arises from the dexterous placing of the dissyllable "graces," and the trisyllable "entangle," exactly where they ought to be among the monosyllables of the rest. The madrigals "Love guards the roses of thy lips," "My Phillis hath the morning sun," and "Love in my bosom like a bee" are simply unsurpassed for sugared ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Kathie began to plait most diligently, and Laura, finding a bit of blue ribbon somewhere about her dress, tied the end of the long braid with it. The elf watched them closely—his little black beady eyes following every movement of Kathie's dexterous fingers, while Laura held the flax. When it was finished, Laura proposed fastening it in the elf's cap as the easiest way for him to wear it, and then when he chose he could lay it aside. This suited exactly, and the little furry rabbit's head was soon adorned with ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... I had met previously and presently I rounded up two or three fellows with whom I had been fairly intimate at one time or another on hunting expeditions and at continental watering-places. I made them introduce me to different sets. Dexterous maneuvering obtained me invitations to afternoon teas and at-homes in the same circle frequented ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... as a happy phrase, but he discarded it. To make the situation more awkward, Mr Kay did not observe him at first, being occupied in assailing a riotous fag at the other end of the table, that youth having succeeded, by a dexterous drive in the ribs, in making a friend of his spill half a cup of coffee. Kennedy did not know whether to sit down without a word or to remain standing until Mr Kay had time to attend to him. He would have ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... tintless drink of exceeding potency, above proof. The Australian shook his head. But he laughed under his neat moustache as he turned away, and the bar-tender concluded to carry his joke through. He dealt out the drinks to their respective owners, and with a dexterous sweep of a shirt-sleeved arm brought the innocent-seeming carafe and a gleaming, polished tumbler immediately before the square-faced hulking doctor with the queer blue eyes, whose pretty bride of three days was waiting for him in ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a feminine low laugh, Yet did not stay her dexterous hand: "Now tell me of those days," she said, "When time ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... 1880 with the founding of the first De Beers Company, named after a Boer who had owned the land on which the mine lay. It culminated in 1887 in the battle with Barnato,[62] his most dangerous competitor, when by dexterous purchasing of shares in his rival's company Rhodes forced him into a final scheme of amalgamation. In 1888 was founded the great corporation of De Beers Consolidated mines. The masterful will of Rhodes dictated the terms of the Trust deed, giving very ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... delicate snakes seem literally strangling each other in terrified struggle to escape from the Medusa brain. The hue which violent death always brings with it is in the features: features singularly massive and grand, as we catch them inverted, in a dexterous foreshortening, sloping upwards, almost sliding down upon us, crown foremost, like a great calm stone against which the wave of serpents breaks. But it is a subject that may well be left to the beautiful ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... arena; but the sagacious bull kept retreating as his enemy advanced, in order to render escape more difficult, and his vengeance certain. At length he rushed on the cavalier with such fury and overwhelming force, that both picador and horse rolled on the ground: unluckily, the man not being very dexterous, could seek no protection from the horse, but lay exposed to the fury ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... policy, there is a synagog of Jews permitted here—as in other places of Italy—under the pope's nose, but they go with a mark of distinction in their hats; they are tolerated for advantage of commerce, wherein the Jews are wonderful dexterous—tho most of them be only brokers and Lombardeers; and they are held to be here as the cynic ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... as she was kind about it. This evening she seemed to have surpassed herself, as I judged by the admiring exclamations of our younger sister Phillis—a good little maid, who stood behind my chair with combs and pins in her hand as Fatima's aide-de-camp. Finally, the dexterous fingers interwove some sprays of ivy with the hair, and added white ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a dexterous skill, removed the fastenings of a shutter, and then the window yielded readily to his touch. He stepped inside; Arch followed. All was quiet, save the heavy ticking of the old clock on the hall stairs. Up the thickly carpeted ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... which Johnson intensely appreciated. His talk was not of the encyclopaedia variety, like that of some more modern celebrities; but it was full of apposite illustrations and unrivalled in keen argument, rapid flashes of wit and humour, scornful retort and dexterous sophistry. Sometimes he would fell his adversary at a blow; his sword, as Boswell said, would be through your body in an instant without preliminary flourishes; and in the excitement of talking for victory, he would ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... ready-handed. Civility seems part of the national character of Highlanders. Every chieftain is a monarch, and politeness, the natural product of royal government, is diffused from the laird through the whole clan. But they are not commonly dexterous: their narrowness of life confines them to a few operations, and they are accustomed to endure little wants more than to ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... French troops at Rome, for instance; and it visits offences with temporal punishment,—banishment, the galleys, the carabine, and guillotine. In its most modified form, and as viewed under the glosses of the most dexterous of its modern commentators and apologists, it vests the Pope in a DIRECTING POWER, according to which he can declare null all constitutions, laws, tribunals, decisions, oaths, and causes contrary to good morals, in other words, contrary to the ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Yuen-min-yuen I found a number of Chinese workmen busily employed in breaking open the packages, some in one place and some in another, to the no little danger of the globes, clocks, glass lustres, and such like frangible articles, many of which must inevitably have suffered under less careful and dexterous hands than those of the Chinese. As it was intended they should be placed in one large room, the great hall in which the Emperor gives audience to his ministers, the first operation was to move them all thither, and carefully to unpack them; and we had ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... would have been burnt at the stake; and the worst possible person for Berwin to have in his house. Had he known of her lying and prating she would not have remained an hour under his roof; but Mrs. Kebby was cunning enough to steer clear of such a danger in the most dexterous manner. She had a firm idea that Berwin had, in her own emphatic phrase, "done something" for which he was wanted by the police, and was always on the look out to learn the secret of his isolated life, in order to betray him, or blackmail him, or get him in some way under ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... By a dexterous movement he extricated himself from the grasp of the three who were holding him, and felled a ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... out. To such surveillance Mr. Coleridge cheerfully acceded, in order to show the promptitude with which he seconded the efforts of his friends. It has been stated that every precaution was unavailing. By some unknown means and dexterous contrivances Mr. C. afterward confessed that he still ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... regained her balance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water; her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved her from ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the wife of a man, who was familiarly known by the name of "Blue Beard," his proper name being Henry Lewey. For a long time, although a slave himself, he was one of the most dexterous managers in the Underground Rail Road agency in Norfolk. No single chapter in this work could be more interesting than a chapter of his exploits ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... window of a house and forced his way through the crowd, roughly knocking from under them the feet of two or three ruffians who opposed him. He reproached the crowd, he berated them, he handled them fiercely. By a dexterous strength he caught the little gentleman up in his arms, and, driving straight on to the open door of the smithy, placed him inside, then blocked the passage ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... work of women, since they are recognized as quicker and more dexterous in most work with the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... to bed, proud of this triumph, and was awakened next morning by a challenge. He took for his second Giles Rawlings, a man of intrigue, and a deep player. Howard took Dillon, who was dexterous and brave, much of a gentleman, and, unfortunately, an intimate ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... load; but Oscar kept his seat, and compelled them to go on. For a few minutes, he rode along very quietly, although his span of youngsters, who were continually muttering to themselves, did not seem to enjoy the sport as well as he did. But, by a dexterous movement, they soon balanced the debtor and creditor account. Giving the sled a sudden jerk and lurch, in one of the sloppiest places they had met with, their lazy passenger was thrown backward into the mud, and imprinted a full length picture of himself in the yielding material. ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... with his usual magic insight, saw long ago whither our over-refined gentry were tending; and in one of his finest books he shows how a little dexterous slang may dwarf a noble deed. Nevil Beauchamp was under a tremendous fire with his men: he wanted to carry a wounded soldier out of action, but the soldier wished his adored officer to be saved. At the finish the two men arrived safely in their ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... personages with an intimate familiarity. He wrote verses in excellent couplets of the eighteenth century manner, and strung together fantastic rhymes as a mode of aiding his boy in tasks which tried the memory. He was a dexterous draughtsman, and of his amateur handiwork in portraiture and caricature—sometimes produced, as it were, instinctively, with a result that was unforeseen—much remains to prove his keen eye and his skill with the pencil. Besides the curious ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... that he would have struck her, but by a dexterous twist of her body and a pull upon the tree she jerked the boat so that he lost his balance, not entirely, but enough to make him right himself with care and sit down again, realising for the time being that it was she who was mistress of this ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... between S. and that pearl C. H.! Caroline, I fancy, is the soul of conscientious punctuality and nice exactitude. She would precisely suit the domestic habits of a certain fastidious kinsman of mine—so delicate, dexterous, quaint, quick, quiet—all done to a minute, all arranged to a strawbreadth. She would suit Robert. But what could I do with anything so nearly faultless? She is my equal, poor as myself. She is certainly pretty: a little Raffaelle head hers—Raffaelle in feature, quite English ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... which he leisurely feeds. In riding by places where a herd has recently halted, I have sometimes seen the bark peeled curiously off the twigs, as though it had been done in mere dalliance. In the same way in eating grass the elephant selects a tussac which he draws from the ground by a dexterous twist of his trunk, and nothing can be more graceful than the ease with which, before conveying it to his mouth, he beats the earth from its roots by striking it gently upon his fore-leg. A coco-nut he first rolls under foot, to detach the strong outer bark, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... edge of her bed and stood upright, her white silk nightgown falling symmetrically round her small figure. With a dexterous movement she loosened the knot into which she had twisted her hair for the night, and it fell in a sinuous coil like a golden snake from head to knee. ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... peculiar to their species. They had nearly passed him when there was a sudden hitch in the procession. From where he stood he could see that a projecting plank had struck a pile of chips and become partly imbedded in it. To run to the obstruction and, with a few dexterous strokes and the leverage of his stout stick, dislodge the plank was the work not only of the moment but of an evidently energetic hand. The teamster looked back and merely nodded his appreciation, and with a "Gee up! Out of that, now!" the ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... his powers had soon begun to fail, while, though panting heavily, thickset, sturdy, bulldog like Tom had plenty of force left in him still, the result being that Pete's effort to lift and throw him proved a failure, ending in a dexterous wrench throwing him off his balance, and another sending him down with his adversary ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... expressed) on the wrong side, we conceive ourselves such of course, except our title be disproved by positive evidence to the contrary. And we are so slow in giving ear to what conscience urges to us on this side; so dexterous in justifying what is clearly wrong, in palliating what we cannot justify, in magnifying the merit of what is fairly commendable, in flattering ourselves that our habits of vice are only occasional acts, and in multiplying our single acts into habits ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... and immediately down came the curling lashes again, while with dexterous white fingers she began to transform the ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... certainly it fails of its effect. In every case we are conscious that the subject itself is not brought immediately before us, but that we view it through the medium of a different way of thinking. When, however, by a dexterous manoeuvre, the poet allows us an occasional glance at the less brilliant reverse of the medal, then he makes, as it were, a sort of secret understanding with the select circle of the more intelligent of his readers or spectators; he shows them that he had previously seen and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... with the dispute, and swore his accustomed vengeance against his stepfather. Such feelings, Wood, with a dexterous malice, would never let rest; it was his joy, at first quite a disinterested one, to goad Catherine and to frighten Hayes: though, in truth, that unfortunate creature had no occasion for incitements from without to keep up the dreadful state of terror and depression into which ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... William the marshal first identified the English monarchy with the principles wrested from John at Runnymede. In the years that immediately followed, it might well seem that the act of 1297, like the submission of John, was only a temporary expedient of a dexterous statecraft which consented with the lips but not with the heart. But in later times, when the details of the struggle were forgotten and the noise of the battle over, the event stood out in its full significance. Edward had been willing to take the people into partnership with him when he ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... offering them the hospitality of the chaise. What a grand stranger, truly! A regal caress of Henriette's fingers in the handclasp. Most patronizing (or was it odious familiarity?) his dainty touch of her bare arms; the jeweled hand that toyed with her ringlets; the dexterous move as if to encircle her waist; the playing—in the airiest, most fluttering manner imaginable—with the lace that draped her adorable ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... whom Mr. Lee, one of his biographers, conjectures was Mist, the proprietor of Mist's Journal, with whom Defoe had been associated in business. Other biographers seem to think that Defoe was merely hiding from the pursuit of his creditors, and dodging in his old dexterous manner the obligation of making over property to his daughter Hannah, who was married to Baker. For two years he was homeless and fugitive; it is not asserted, however, that he was in actual distress at the time of his death. He died in a lodging in a then respectable neighborhood called ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... end. These eggs are delicious eating, far surpassing those of the domestic hen. The height of laying is about the first of June, when the people of the neighborhood go to the marshes an egging, as it is so called. So abundant are the nests of this species, and so dexterous some persons at finding them, that one hundred dozen of eggs have been collected by one man in a day. At this time the crows, the minx, and the foxes, come in for their share, but, not content with the eggs, these last often seize and devour the parents ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... these storms may be attributed to want of experience, and consequent lack of preparation to meet and contend with them. I have employed many men of all nationalities in teaming long distances on the prairie frontier in the winter season, and while the American is always reliable and dexterous in emergencies, I have found the French Canadian always the best equipped for winter prairie work, in his knowledge in this line that can only be gained by experience. His ancestors served the early fur companies from ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... gained them the name of the Junto. Russell, as yet the most prominent of these, was the victor of La Hogue; John Somers was an advocate who had sprung into fame by his defence of the Seven Bishops; Lord Wharton was known as the most dexterous and unscrupulous of party managers; and Montague was fast making a reputation as the ablest of English financiers. In spite of such considerations however it is doubtful whether William would have thrown himself into the hands of a purely Whig Ministry ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... warrant him in believing more firmly than ever that she could not resist his influence so long as he was at her side. They ran on together in talk about the drawing, until he felt that he might risk another approach, and his way of doing it was almost too easy and dexterous. ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... cousins with Mrs. Deborah's mother; and as that good lady happened to have borne the very general, almost universal, name of Smith, which is next to anonymous, even John Stokes could not dislodge him from that entrenchment But he was not always so dexterous. Cunning in him lacked the crowning perfection of hiding itself under the appearance of honesty. His art never looked like nature. It stared you in the face, and could not deceive the dullest observer. His very flattery had a tone of falseness that affronted the person flattered; ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... morning on a corner of the table, watching with great interest his aunt's dexterous use ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... six people assembled in the tiny pink parlor of Mrs. Jasher at the hour of seven o'clock. It required dexterous management to seat the whole company in the dining room, which was only a trifle larger than the parlor. However, Mrs. Jasher contrived to place them round her hospitable board in, a fairly comfortable ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... spies upon the other! The most profligate principles of Machiavel sink into obscurity when contrasted with the Imperial Espionage of Napoleon. When no longer moving squadrons in the tented field—whole armies, like so many pieces of chess in the hands of a dexterous player—he sat upon his throne, reclined upon his lounge or smoked in his bath, organized and moved the most difficult and dangerous forces in the world—an army ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... is the only sane view of the situation. Therefore, when Mr. W. D. Howells, in his dexterous little book on "Criticism and Fiction," pleads engagingly for realism as the only valid method for the modern novelist, and when Stevenson, in many an alluring essay, blows blasts upon the trumpet of romance, and challenges the realists to show excuse for their ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... they picked up of either art by their own industry and intelligence, nearly doubled the happiness of their daily lives. But in vain had "the first masters" made my cousins glib in chromatic passages, and dexterous with tricks of effects in colours and crayons. They played duets after dinner, and Aunt Maria sometimes showed off the water-colour copies of their school-room days, which, indeed, they now and then recopied for bazaars; but for their own pleasure they never touched a note ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the generous host, the mammoth turkey grew beautifully less. His was the glory to vie with guests in the dexterous use of knife and fork, until delicious pie, pudding, and fruit ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... hinted, & may be the movement in order suddenly to bring on the Election before the People are prepared for it. We are to suppose that an Attempt will be made to purchase the Votes of the whole Kingdom. This will require much Time and dexterous Management. The Ministry have in a great Measure lost the Influence of London and other great Corporations as well as that of the East India Company by their late Treatment of that powerful Body, whom Lord North now finds it necessary to coax and pascify. They will therefore ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... the general impression that logic is concerned with words and not with things. There is a vague belief that by skilfully linking syllogisms you can form a chain sufficiently strong to cross the profoundest abyss, and which will need no test of observation and verification. A dexterous performer, it is supposed, might pass from one extremity of the universe to the other without ever touching ground; and people do not observe that the refusal to draw an inference may be just as great a proof of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... admitted to his confidence were men taciturn and impenetrable as himself. Burnet was the only exception. He was notoriously garrulous and indiscreet. Yet circumstances had made it necessary to trust him; and he would doubtless, under the dexterous management of Halifax, have poured out secrets as fast as words. William knew this well, and, when he was informed that Halifax was asking for the Doctor, could not refrain from exclaiming, "If they get together there will be fine tattling." Burnet was forbidden to see the Commissioners in private; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... amber mouth-piece to our submissive lips. The smoke we inhale has an odor of roses; and as the pipe bubbles with our breathing, we feel that the dews of sweat gather heavily upon us. The attendant now reappears, kneels beside us, and gently kneads us with dexterous hands. Although no anatomist, he knows every muscle and sinew whose suppleness gives ease to the body, and so moulds and manipulates them that we lose the rigidity of our mechanism, and become plastic in his hands. He turns us upon our face, repeats ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... his master's head, a few days later, with a couple of hair-brushes, and these he used in the most dexterous manner; and the results were wonderfully different from those produced by the people who brushed one's boyish hair in ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... mastery of brush and colour in one direction—tone and effect. A Japanese drawing of a bird or a fish may show it equally in another—character and form. A bit of Oriental porcelain or Persian tile may show the same dexterous charm and full-brush feeling exercised in ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... smoke of their try-pots darkened the waters of Baffin Bay, Guinea, and Brazil. It was they who inspired Edmund Burke's familiar eulogy: "No sea but is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not a witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of England ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people—a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle and not yet hardened into the ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... Clever are they—they have dexterous fingers: what doth MY simplicity pretend to beside their multiplicity! All threading and knitting and weaving do their fingers understand: thus do they make the hose ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with her wheresoever she went, she bore those influences into Caleb Plummer's home, heaped up and running over. The Blind Girl's love for her, and trust in her, and gratitude to her; her own good busy way of setting Bertha's thanks aside; her dexterous little arts for filling up each moment of the visit in doing something useful to the house, and really working hard while feigning to make holiday; her bountiful provision of those standing delicacies, the Veal and Ham Pie and the bottles of ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... to the iron restraints of civilisation. Finally, the public of that day always chose to veil and confuse the furtive voluptuousness of the time by moral disquisition, and a light and busy meddling with the insoluble perplexities of philosophy. Here too the dexterous Raynal knew how to please the fancies of his patrons, and whether Diderot was or was not the writer of those pages of moral sophism and paradox, there is something in them which incessantly reminds us of his Supplement to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... members of the force, who am I—who are we, dear sir—to affect a nicety about the tools employed? You might, perhaps, expect us to attack the Queen, the sinister Gladstone, the rigid Derby, or the dexterous Granville; but there you would be in error. Our appeal is to the body of the people; it is these that we would touch and interest. Now, sir, have ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... countryside. The nimble fingered Ann Rutledge—a daughter of the tavern folk—had sat beside her. Ann was a slender, good-looking girl of seventeen with blue eyes and a rich crown of auburn hair and a fair skin well browned by the sunlight. She was the most dexterous needle worker in New Salem. It was Mrs. Peter Lukins, a very lean, red haired woman with only one eye which missed no matrimonial prospect—who put the ball in play so ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... the door and King Alfonso rose and answered. He returned with odd looking implements in his hands which I soon discovered to be an enormous silver cocktail shaker and two goblets. After a dexterous shake, the King poured out two large cocktails, saying, "I understand that you American gentlemen always drink in ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... deviated from his first regularity, and unhappily mingling among young men busy in dissipating the gains of their fathers' industry, he forgot the precepts of Candidus, spent the evening in parties of pleasure, and the morning in expedients to support his riots. He was, however, dexterous and active in business: and his master, being secured against any consequences of dishonesty, was very little solicitous to inspect his manners, or to inquire how he passed those hours, which were not immediately devoted to the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... in the presence of his mistress, he gave secret orders to the fishermen to dive under water and put fishes that had been already taken upon his hooks, and these he drew in so fast that the Egyptian perceived it. But feigning great admiration, she told everybody how dexterous Antony was, and invited them next day to come and see him again. So when a number of them had come on board the fishing boats, as soon as he had let down his hook, one of her servants was beforehand with his divers and fixed upon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... "Hast thou been in the wars again?" for Edred was something famed for getting hard knocks and ugly scratches in his mimic encounters with his more skilled and dexterous brothers. "Why, boy, but this is a worse business than usual. I am sorry for it, for I had something purposed to take thee with me to Windsor on the next morrow, as well as Bertram, and show thee to the king, and give thee ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... direction, was like a clean but highly sensitised plate. And partly because of her previous entire ignorance, partly because of her extreme receptiveness, she soon outstripped her comrades, and before long, was one of the most skilful improvisers of the group: a dexterous theorist: a wicked little ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... convincing enough in its purport and setting, but purged of the languors and fatuities of actual commonplace conversation. It is an enjoyment like that to be obtained from a brilliant exhibition of fencing, clean and dexterous, to assist at the talking bouts of David Balfour and Miss Grant, Captain Nares and Mr. Dodd, Alexander Mackellar and the Master of Ballantrae, Prince Otto and Sir John Crabtree, or those wholly admirable pieces of special pleading to be found in A Lodging for the Night and The Sire ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... ordinary forms of telescopes with large lens, not with large mirror.] However, accumulating infirmities and eventually death prevented Sir William Herschel from applying his plan, which 'evinced the most profound research in optical science, and the most dexterous ingenuity in mechanical contrivance. But his son, Sir John Herschel, nursed and cradled in the observatory, and a practical astronomer from his boyhood, determined upon testing it at whatever cost. Within two years of ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... emerging from among the bluffs. There were about sixty of them; fine martial-looking fellows, painted and arrayed for war, and mounted on horses decked out with all kinds of wild trappings. They came prancing along in gallant style, with many wild and dexterous evolutions, for none can surpass them in horsemanship; and their bright colors, and flaunting and fantastic embellishments, glaring and sparkling in the morning sunshine, gave them really ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... grace. Poor Joseph could hardly rise from his chair; the parson was employed in wiping the blood from his eyes, which had entirely blinded him; and the landlord was but just beginning to stir; whilst Mrs Slipslop, holding down the landlady's face with her left hand, made so dexterous an use of her right, that the poor woman began to roar, in a key which alarmed all the ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... indignant at it. The high Philippist party sneers at and despises it; the Republicans hate it: it seems a joke against THEM. Why continue it?—If there be anything sacred in the name and idea of loyalty, why renew this fete? It only shows how a rightful monarch was hurled from his throne, and a dexterous usurper stole his precious diadem. If there be anything noble in the memory of a day, when citizens, unused to war, rose against practised veterans, and, armed with the strength of their cause, overthrew them, why speak of it now? or renew the bitter recollections of the bootless ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... through such a person, whether forgetful of his author, or hurried by his scribe, it is more than probable you may hear what Heaven knows to be best for you; and extremely improbable you should take the least harm,—while by a careful and cunning master in the literary art, reticent of his doubts, and dexterous in his sayings, any number of prejudices or errors might be proposed to you acceptably, or even fastened in you fatally, though all the while you were not the least required to confide in ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... to fame by the name of Elpideus, sometimes confused with Elpidius Rusticus. He was both a deacon of the church and a skilled surgeon, and was very favorably mentioned by St. Ennodius as a person of fine culture. He was sufficiently dexterous and skilful to heal the Gothic ruler, Theodoric, of a grievous illness.[18] Salverte gives us additional examples: "Richard Fitz-Nigel, who died Bishop of London, in 1198, had been apothecary to Henry II. The celebrated ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... obedient;' and then, with a kick and a flourish altogether indescribable, he drew to the side of the path to let us pass, which we did perfectly shouting with laughter, which broke out again every time we looked at each other and stopped to take breath—so sudden, grotesque, uncouth, and yet dexterous a gambado never came into the brain or out of the limbs of ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... full length on his back, and again stretched by his side, until regaining a djerrid he becomes in turn the assailant. In this rough sport only the greatest agility and suppleness of limbs, combined with extraordinary physical strength, can secure the palm, while the less dexterous combatants may not escape without the ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... face—he looked like a satyr—was almost on hers. She freed herself once more with a dexterous twisting motion of her supple body, leaped to the front of the carriage and pounded on the window behind ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... little doubt the dexterous and spirited old lady gave Louise sound advice, and had she acted under her holy influence, her name would have become a monument of noblemindedness, a lesson, in fact, against striking a vicious, cowardly ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman |
