"Poker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... admitted now that there was no more escape, but he lay and detested the grind of the real-estate business, and disliked his family, and disliked himself for disliking them. The evening before, he had played poker at Vergil Gunch's till midnight, and after such holidays he was irritable before breakfast. It may have been the tremendous home-brewed beer of the prohibition-era and the cigars to which that beer enticed him; it may have been resentment of return from this ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Preachers, to make their hearers understand the Bible, so that the man who does not teach as well as preach has not done all that he has been called to do. That is the best kind of Preacher, who not only stirs up the people like a poker, but puts fuel on at the ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... Maximilian Harden said, the Germans think of us as a land of dollars, trusts and corruption; and other nations think of us as devotees of the cocktail and of poker. Their school boys dream of fighting Indians in Pittsburg and hunting buffalo in ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... laughed, seized the poker, and rapped three times on the floor. A voice from the kitchen ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... simulacrum of a market was ruled by the real markets outside, so that we might experience the course and vicissitude of prices. We must keep books, and our ledgers were overhauled at the month's end by the principal or his assistants. To add a spice of verisimilitude, "college paper" (like poker chips) had an actual marketable value. It was bought for each pupil by anxious parents and guardians at the rate of one cent for the dollar. The same pupil, when his education was complete, resold, at the same figure, so much as was left him to the college; and even ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... discussions, especially our discussions about the relations of the sexes. Casting my eye round the room, I notice an object which is often mentioned in the higher and subtler of these debates about the sexes: I mean a poker. I will take a poker and think about it; first forwards and then backwards; and so, perhaps, show ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... a short pelisse of slate-blue stiff silk, lined with squirrel, and a jupe of deep red foreign crepe, lined with ermine. Resplendent with pearl-powder and with cosmetics, she sat in there, stately and majestic, with a small brass poker in her hands, with which she was stirring the ashes of the hand-stove. P'ing Erh stood by the side of the couch, holding a very small lacquered tea-tray. In this tray was a small tea-cup with a cover. Lady Feng neither ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... and seizing the poker from the hearth ran at it to kill it. Before, however, he could strike it, the rat, with a squeak that sounded like the concentration of hate, jumped upon the floor, and, running up the rope of the alarm bell, disappeared in the ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... slipped silently from the room, was aware that Hannah meditated a vigorous attack upon her midnight visitors. She took the long kitchen poker in her hand, shook it with a grim smile, and thrust the end of it into the heart ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... bed nor blanket; no chairs, benches, nor tables; no table-ware nor cooking utensils; not even shovel, poker, or coal-scoop; most of us were in a sorry plight. The little stoves, heated white-hot, would have been entirely inadequate to warm those rooms; but the coal was miserably deficient in quality as well as quantity. ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... strangers. The first lieutenant, Mr Horrocks, a red-faced man, with curly whiskers, and as stiff as a poker, had not much the cut of a naval officer; while the second lieutenant, Mr Lascelles, who was delicate, refined, young, and good-looking, offered ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... We had all our band instruments smashed and the windows of our Garrison as well, and one man, madly infuriated against us, heated a poker red hot and threw it into the hall amongst the congregation. We lived in danger to limb and life, but had the overshadowing presence ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... Reeves, with Blister Haines rolling between them, impartially sampled the goods at Dolan's and at Mollie Gillespie's. They had tried their hand at faro, with unfortunate results, and they had sat in for a short session at a poker game where Dud had put too much faith in a ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... Why, it was 'most all kicks when it warn't pots. Old woman never kicked me; but when she'd had a drop, and couldn't get no more, she was allus cross, and then she'd hit you with what come first—pewter pot, poker, anything, if you didn't get ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... been lying down after luncheon. She had given herself this little rest because she knew that Raygan was going to play poker in the smoking-room. She had learned bridge—though cards bored her—just as she had learned tennis and golf and all sorts of eccentric dances, in order to be popular, to be in the swim, to do just what the fashionable people ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... Dunham. "Read a good deal. Play some poker or bridge. Walk. But sleep is the chief amusement. Eight hours used to be enough for me. Now I can do ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... infinite superiority. "There are as rich as Jews, and one of the greatest houses in India. Old Mr. Errington bought a fine place in the country lately, and this young man—I'm sure I don't know if he is young; he is as grave as a judge and as stiff as a poker—at all events he is an only son. I met him at the Burnett's yesterday. Well, he seemed to know Mr. Liddell's name quite well. Colonel Ormonde pricked up his ears too when I said you had gone to see him. It is a great advantage to have a rich old ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... house, then, I suppose"—he was so evidently squirming that Kate meanly enjoyed his discomfort—"you might call me that. It would all depend on whether the one telling it liked me or didn't like me. I haven't been in Tenison's rooms for months, nor played but one game of poker." ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... know," said Cal Davidson; "every fellow plays his own system. There's something in what you say about women having a good poker face so far as tellin' what they think about a man is concerned—yes. Frinstance, how much did Helena know I knew, or know you knew or thought you knew—well, you get me? But the trouble with you is, you ain't romantic in your temperament ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... Alarmed by the forcing of the door, and only too well aware of what it portended, Trim made for the stairs, where, turning upon his pursuers, he struck repeatedly and savagely at the midshipman, who headed them, with a red-hot poker which he had snatched out of the fire at the moment of his flight. He was, however, quickly overpowered, disarmed and dragged back into the lower room, where his captors threw him violently to the floor and with their hangers took effective measures ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... RED-HOT POKER.—This flower suggests that you are likely to bring yourself within the range of unpleasant criticism by your ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... his bread and meat, backed away from the table, keeping himself between the girl and whatever her object was. Noticing this, a real terror seized upon Priscilla and she darted in the opposite direction, reached the hearth, and was bending toward a heavy poker which lay there, before she herself could have explained her motive. Jerry-Jo was alert. Tossing his food upon the table as he strode forward, he gripped ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... turbulent life of the border country. Dark-skinned Mexicans rubbed shoulders with range riders baked almost as brown by the relentless sun. Pima Indians and Chinamen and negroes crowded round the faro and dice tables. Games of monte and chuckaluck had their devotees, as had also roulette and poker. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... Charette," said Chapeau. "I saw M. Charette on horseback once, and he carries himself as though he had swallowed a poker; and this gentleman twists himself ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... youngsters, for the Major was too apt to look coldly upon billiard-balls and cigars; he had seen cannon-balls and linstocks. He had also, to tell the truth, swallowed a good bit of the mess-room poker, which made it as impossible for Major Hoskyns to descend to an ungentlemanlike word or action as to brush his own trousers ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... for breakfast?—will undergrads look 'spry?'—will they 'voice' public opinion? . . . I forbear: my American vocabulary is limited. Outre mer, outres moeurs, as Mr. Walkley might say in some guarded allusion to Paul Bourget. . . . I shall be sorry to see poker take the place of roulette, and the Christ Church meadows turned into a ranch for priggish cowboys, or Addison's Walk re-named the Cake Walk. But no, I believe Mr. Rhodes, if there was just a touch of malice in his testament, realised that Oxford manners were stronger ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... that it was too little. He had formed an intimacy with Reginald Ward, a young man from New York, who was boarding at the hotel, and with him he used to play pool, which he found rather an expensive game; and still worse, he played poker with him in his own room, locking the door carefully, as this game was not looked upon with favor in Lakeville. The young man from the city was much sharper than the country boy, and steadily won his money till Percy found himself in debt to him in the sum of ten dollars. For this ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... took up the poker. She was very slow of speech in those days, but it was a grand relief to know that she could speak at all, and break the silence which had held her for weeks and months after the stroke of paralysis which had seized her on that dreadful ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the playing of whist, domino, or poker are often given by bachelors at their apartments or residences. In apartments this class of entertainment is only for men. Women should not go to bachelors' apartments except for luncheon, dinner, or supper. In a bachelor's house, however, any entertainment ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... been directed to guard the door, while the lieutenant and Gerald, with the rest, rushed along a narrow passage, at the end of which another female, a stout, sturdy-looking Amazon, appeared with a light in one hand and a poker ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... ordered a case of Pabst beer, which sells, by the way, at four dollars and sixty cents a bottle in American gold, and several boxes of our National Biscuit Company's products, and then began on a game, which resembles our poker. They played till midnight, when they took a recess of half an hour, during which large quantities of the warm beer and many crackers were consumed. Then, properly nourished, they resumed the game, which lasted until six o'clock the next morning. This was ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... occupant, with the view of ascertaining whether he would be a safe person to intrude on under the circumstances. He was seated on a low, three-cornered oak seat, with his back to the window, steadying a furze fagot on the fire with the poker. The fagot blazed and crackled, and roared up the chimney, sending out the bright flickering light which had attracted them, and forming a glorious top to the glowing clear fire of wood embers beneath, into which was inserted a long, funnel-shaped tin, out of which the figure helped ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... dressing his child like a shabby little Irish girl. He says that he who provideth not for those of his own household is worse than a heathen. That's perfectly true. And he would like to know what Brother Peck does with his money, anyway. He would like to insinuate that he loses it at poker, I guess; at any rate, he can't find out whom he gives it to, and he certainly doesn't ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... the money. About a tenth of what he had won—not even enough to open a cheap poker den, let alone bribe ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... all snobs, Billie, just because some of their ways are different from yours. I have a sister who can play a stiff game of poker and ride as well as you. Edna spends most of her time out in the open, and nothing feazes her. You would get on beautifully with her and I thought perhaps you would let me ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... to her that there was such a place as indoors. She took her face from the window. The room was dark and cheerless; and Ellen felt stiff and chilly. However, she made her way to the fire, and having found the poker, she applied it gently to the Liverpool coal with such good effect that a bright ruddy blaze sprang up and lighted the whole room. Ellen smiled at the result of her experiment. "That is something like," said she to herself; "who says I can't poke the fire? ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... poker and the hand had been dealt from the burning deck was a corker; so, as he didn't want to lose any chances, he—but ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... screechin'. We always said, 'somebody is gwine to die!' Honey, you don't hear it now and it's good you don't fur it would skeer you to death nearly. It sounded so mo'nful like and we'd put the poker or the shovel in the fire and that always run him away; it burned his tongue out and he couldn't holler no more. If they'd let us go out lak we always wanted to, Ah don't 'spects we'd a-done it, 'cause we wuz too skeered. Lawdy, chile, them wuz tryin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... mainly to embarrass Germany, to glorify the young Russian Emperor, and to put Germany and nations which Russia dislikes into a false position. To this I answered, "If this be the case, why not trump the Russian trick? or, as the poker-players say, 'Go them one better,' take them at their word, support a good tribunal of arbitration more efficient even than the Russians have dared to propose; let your sovereign throw himself heartily into the movement ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... have cut the ring in two than it should be given to the hated child: but, on the other hand, she did not care to offend Laura Level, who possessed inconveniently independent opinions, and did not shrink from proclaiming them. Seizing the poker, she stirred the fire, and ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in tea. Though the quality of the beverage was weak, our loyalty had never been stronger. When extra dull our home-made band played some rousing selection; my special instrument required much skill, and consisted of the dustbin lid and a poker. The climax was reached one day when the sentry entered with a paper from the canteen, announcing that the British claimed to have shot down two Zeppelins in flames ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... with the plan, and hastened to find,—one, a little hatchet, and the other a gimlet. Even Amanda armed herself with a poker. ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... up with no more irritation than a butler; the man sits down with no more embarrassment than a guest. This is the cool affirmation of inferiority, as in the case of the sabre and the tradesmen. "Thou goest with women; forget not thy whip," said Nietzsche. It will be observed that he does not say "poker," which might come more naturally to the mind of a more common or Christian wife-beater. But, then, a poker is a part of domesticity, and might be used by the wife as well as the husband. In fact, it often is. The sword and the whip are ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... been taught to develop his individuality to the highest possible degree. At eight, just before the croup attack—though he did not know his alphabet or how to tell time and had never been cuddled or rocked to sleep with nursery jingles as soothing mental food—he could play quite a shrewd game of poker and drive a bug roadster. Beatrice, in talking over the child problem with Trudy, decided that if she ever had a son she, too, would develop the poker shark in him rather than the admirer of Santa Claus and ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Castle you may see the identical four-posted bedstead—a very creditable piece of cabinet-makery—in which King Malcolm was murdered a thousand years ago. But genuine articles of furniture so old as the editio princeps are very rare. If we should highly esteem a poker, a stool, a drinking-can, of that age, is there not something worthy of observance, as indicating the social condition of the age, in those venerable pages, made to look as like the handwriting of their day as ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Honorable Montague Pelham, a young gentleman of the best family. When we arrived at Mrs. Delaporte's rooms, however, it transpired that Mr. Bundercombe was wholly ignorant of chemin de fer, and the game was accordingly changed to poker. ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stone hall hung all over with rusty armor, and seated on a great stone chair, snoring so loudly that all the steel helmets rattled, was a Knight. The tallest and crossest of the Pokes rushed at him with a long poker, giving him such a shove that he sprawled to ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... brightened in such evident relief that he turned to her suddenly and said almost regretfully, as a generous adversary might speak to one whom he hopelessly outclasses: "Madam, I hear you are fond of gambling. You should study the game of poker, which teaches us to hide our feelings. Now then," he walked back quickly to the desk, "I want you to ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... more businesslike after it, and money matters work better. And then, you see, if you have rows, and he turns you out of doors, you can get the law to protect you, which you can't otherwise, unless he half-runs you through with a knife, or cracks your noddle with a poker. And if he bolts away from you—I say it friendly, as woman to woman, for there's never any knowing what a man med do—you'll have the sticks o' furniture, and won't be looked upon as a thief. I shall marry my man ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... last flaming fragment with the poker. When it had expired she turned to the guilty circle. "Who took my papers from ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... wanting some womanly attentions, the stage-driver assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile House from the lady barkeeper. The phrase tickled all my after-dinner-coffee sense of humor into an anticipation of Poker Flat. The stage-driver proved himself really right, though you are not to suppose from this that Jimville had no conventions and no caste. They work out these things in the personal equation largely. ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... the cottage for safety, and plunged into the door, and finding the young bride in possession, cleaning out the leaves, attacked her with great fury. Not being able to get her rifle, she defended herself with a club that had been cut for a fire poker. At length giving the bear a lucky blow, she seized her rifle and leaped out the cottage door, and only had time to bring it to her face before the young bear leaped out after her. Her rifle was quickly brought to bear upon him. A flash and a report, ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... as you're such a courageous young man," he said, "we'll test you. I am carrying quite a roll with me. It's a little habit I have. I might accidentally drop into a good warm poker game and need it. What was that highest figure you named? Did you say ten thousand dollars? I believe I have something like that right here. We'll make it ten thousand. Will you call the proprietor of the hotel, McCann? I think ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... Deuce was an undersized, scrawny specimen of the genus which is popularly known as "tinhorn," a sort of free-lance gambler, usually to be found sitting in at a poker-game. The engineer was ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... engagement at the club and a place bespoken in a quiet poker game afterward, squirmed in his chair and cursed Wyat Carp silently. Finally, with a last rhetorical flourish, Mr. Carp quite suddenly ended. He sat down amid a murmur ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... six tables with layouts for games of chance. Faro, "klondike," roulette, stud-poker, almost anything possibly to be desired was there. All were in full blast. Three deep the men were gathered about the wheel and the "tiger." Gold money in stacks stood at every dealer's hand. Bostwick had never seen so much metal currency in all ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... this reply, fetched a copper poker, and, while beating on the hand-stove, she laughingly said: "I shall go on tattooing. Now mind if when the drumming ceases, you haven't accomplished your task, you'll have to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... sitting in a chair, sit up straight, head back, chin in. If you are walking or standing, the same rule should apply. The more nearly you can assume the position which is sometimes criticized by the sarcastic statement that "He looks as though he had swallowed a poker," the more nearly you will approximate ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... there was talk in the town. By sundown everybody knew there had been trouble between Harboro and Fectnor, and men who dropped into the Maverick for a game of high-five or poker had their attention called to an unclaimed blue-serge coat hanging from ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... one continued scene of drunkenness, gambling, brawling and fighting, so long as the money and credit of the trappers last. Seated Indian fashion around the fires, with a blanket spread before them, groups are seen with their 'decks' of cards playing at 'euchre,' 'poker,' and 'seven-up,' the regular mountain games. The stakes are beaver, which is here current coin; and when the fur is gone, their horses, mules, rifles and shirts, hunting packs and breeches are staked. Daring ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... did. So I did," answered the professor sharply. " I often find myself liking that kind of a boy in college. Don't I know them-those lads with their beer and their poker games in the dead of the night with a towel hung over the keyhole. Their habits are often vicious enough, but something remains in them through it all and they may go away and do great things. This happens. We know it. It happens with confusing insistence. It destroys ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... [beside herself] Wheres the poker? She rushes to the fireplace; seizes the poker; and makes for Hotchkiss, who flies to the study door. The Bishop enters just then and finds himself between them, narrowly escaping a ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... life, Without some small attempt at strife, Our nature will not grovel; One impulse hadd both man and dame, He seized the tongs—she did the same, Leaving the ruffian, if he came, The poker and the shovel. Suppose the couple standing so, When rushing footsteps from below Made pulses fast and fervent; And first burst in the frantic cat, All steaming like a brewer's rat, And then—as white as my cravat— Poor Mary May, the servant! Lord, how the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... there are men who have come there to escape restraint. Cutter was one of the "fast set" of Black Hawk business men. He was an inveterate gambler, though a poor loser. When we saw a light burning in his office late at night, we knew that a game of poker was going on. Cutter boasted that he never drank anything stronger than sherry, and he said he got his start in life by saving the money that other young men spent for cigars. He was full of moral maxims for ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... raced the two men, and into the kitchen. There they found Patty standing on a side table, armed with a long poker, while Mona danced about on the large table, brandishing a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. Patty was in paroxysms of laughter at Mona's antics, but Mona herself was in terror of her life, and yelled ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... a large covered market basket, a fish bag with a skewer through the top, and a small japanese basket, with a lid which was kept in place by the poker and ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... independence about it than he had in years. The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the first Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he had committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the Everards' to go shooting ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... left in the kitchen; I seized the poker, and we all proceeded cautiously along the passage, and down-stairs. Poor Mrs Nutt, as pale as death, and scarcely able to stand, was waiting for us, with the servant girl. But it was with the greatest difficulty we could get her to listen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... man of convivial habits, and used to poke considerable fun at me because I would not drink or play poker. At the time when the select committee was to meet in Memphis, the home of Senator Harris, the prominent business men of that place waited on him and told him they understood a very eminent committee was coming there in a few days, and they would ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... to-night for whom he had always held particular detestation. His name was Nicolas Doremus. He was a broker in a small way, but Ruyler guessed that he made the best part of his income at bridge, possibly poker. He lived with two other men in a handsome apartment in one of the new buildings that were changing the old skyline of San Francisco. His dancing teas and suppers were admirably appointed and the most exclusive ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... into a muddy yard. Inside was one of those taverns you will find in the suburbs of large cities, haunts of the lowest vice. This one was a smoky frame, standing on piles over an open space where hogs were rooting. Half a dozen drunken Irishmen were playing poker with a pack of greasy cards in an out-house. He led her up the rickety ladder to the one room, where a flaring tallow-dip threw a saffron glare into the darkness. A putrid odour met them at the door. She ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... were six of us. Mainly we smoked. Sometimes we played hearts and at other times poker—on credit, you know—credit. And when we had the materials and got something to do, we worked. Did you ever see these beautiful red and green designs that surround ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... the crowd drifted back to the tables; friendly games of coon-can sprang up; stud poker was resumed; and a crew of railroad men, off duty, looked out at the sluicing waters and idly wondered whether the track would go out—the usual thing in Arizona. After the first delirium of joy at seeing ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... you what faith he had in his glorious star, and, also, what sanction he had for that faith. He was a youngster at the time—I had just met him—when he went into a poker game at Wailuku. There was a big German in it, Schultz his name was, and he played a brutal, domineering game. He had had a run of luck as well, and he was quite insufferable, when Lyte Gregory dropped in and took a hand. ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... genius a bishop! or a lord chancellor!—the world would be turned topsy-turvy! You see that you are quite astonished that a genius can be even a county magistrate, and know the difference between a spade and a poker! In fact, a genius is supposed to be the most ignorant, impracticable, good-for-nothing, do-nothing sort of thing that ever walked upon two legs. Well, when I began life I took excellent care that nobody should take me for a genius; and it is only within the last year or two ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... quarters, where they messed apart, and helped Tamada, the cook, in the galley with his pots and dishes. But now there was no work in prospect for the hunters, and they lounged on deck or in the 'midship quarters, spinning yarns or playing poker. They were after gold this ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... wish it, I read his correspondence, while he absently twirled the poker in his hands, and gnashed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... play bridge, he did not care for music, for books, for pictures. He played poker, and sometimes tennis, and often golf; a selfish, solitary game of golf, in which he cared only for his own play and his own score, and paid no attention to ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... little shack camp, away up in the Sierra Nevadas, called Hell's Elbow. Here we struggled and starved for perhaps a year. Finally, in utter desperation, Walcott married the daughter of a Mexican gambler, who ran an eating house and a poker joint. With them we lived from hand to mouth in a wild God-forsaken way for several years. After a time the woman began to take a strange fancy to me. Walcott finally noticed it, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... commenced experimenting on his own account. Obtaining a room in his father's house for the purpose, he began by constructing a cylinder electric machine in a very primitive way. A glass tube served for the cylinder; a poker hung up by silk threads, as in the very oldest forms of electric machine, was the prime conductor; and for a Leyden jar he went back to the old historical jar of Cunaeus, and used a bottle half filled with water, standing in an outer ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... ideas on detergents, suggested we make black plastic discs, like poker chips but thinner and as cheap as possible, to scatter on a snowy sidewalk where they would pick up extra heat from the sun and melt the snow more rapidly. Afterward one would sweep up ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... which, it will be remembered, was unhoused when we set sail, and as I had no means of housing it, there it had stood, bristling alike at fair weather and foul all the voyage. I took care to grease its mouth well, and before leaving the fore part of the ship, thrust the poker into ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... By the poker, I'm boilin' with passion Whin I think of the laws that they make; At a fair the bhoys heads ye can't smash in, Nor get dacently dhrunk at a wake. There's only twelve pince in a shillin', And not more than two pints in a quart, Onless you are cliver at fillin', And can make it hould ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... way, ma'am. I was a comin' hup stairs, when I met the hold lady a tearin' down like a mad cat. She looked kind o' awful. I never saw anybody out of an 'ospital look that way in all my life before. She 'eld an hiron poker in 'er 'and. As my young lady—" and he looked towards Blanche—"was in the 'all, I didn't think it safe for 'er if I let the hold woman go down. So I just stood in 'er way, and put my harms across the stairs ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... Imogene." So, on this occasion, when Clarissa Green snatched at the rose-cakes which formed the staple of the feast, Lota looked very sharply at Stella, and said, "Don't let me ever see you do so, Stella, or I shall have to slap your little hands." Stella heeded the warning, and sat upright as a poker and perfectly still. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Montez. "I must," he says, "have had a great moral influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or a book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, or other deadly weapon.... I always had a strange and great respect for her singular talents. There were few, indeed, if any there, were, who really knew the depths of that wild ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of great exertion, and with the assistance of Wild Bill and the poker, the cover of the box was wrenched off, and the contents ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... smiling. Life being short, he usually called her Ame when they were alone together. "Or I'll catch you one in the eye with the poker." ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... gritty, proof. adamant, adamantine, adamantean^; concrete, stony, granitic, calculous, lithic^, vitreous; horny, corneous^; bony; osseous, ossific^; cartilaginous; hard as a rock &c n.; stiff as buckram, stiff as a poker; stiff as starch, stiff ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... attitude of the prisoners. As a French officer approached the German soldier, true to his years of iron discipline, leaped to his feet and stood rigid as a poker through the talk, but never the raising of a hand to cap, never the salute ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... back in the opposite direction with everybody giving her plenty of room. I heard afterward that some citizens went miles out of their way in order to give her room. Emily's snout is aimed straight up as though she's craving air, and her tail is standing straight out behind, stiff as a poker except that about every few seconds a painful quiver runs through it from the end that's nearest Emily to the end that's furtherest away from her. Windy is hoofing it along about fifty feet back of her, uttering soothing remarks and entreating her to listen to ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and called, but still ineffectually. The door was locked, and an application of the housekeeper's key proved that the tenant's key had been left in the lock inside. Mrs. Clayton's conviction that "something had happened" became distressing, and in the end Hewitt pried open the door with a small poker. ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... help you. Reading the Riot Act and then assaulting them with a poker is not the best way of getting the Bailiffs out of a house. Try gentle persuasion. If you have recently had a case of black typhus in the house, you might mention the fact to them, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... handled, too, the poker used to such good purpose by Geoffrey Crayon. The muse had fled, the fire was out, and the poker rusty, yet a pleasant influence lingered even in that cold little room, and seemed to lend a transient glow to the poker under the influence ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... dog that thought of it," she added, and she would have stooped down to pat the toy dog, with its red morocco collar, but she was so high up that she found it a difficult matter to bend down. "I am as stiff as a poker," said she. ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... most of the posing, until the poor beast's front legs and paws were weary with standing so long. Moreover, the hair was all worn off his body at the place where he had to sit on the hard wooden floor. He must do all this, on penalty of being punched with a red hot poker, if he refused. A charcoal furnace and long andirons were kept near by, and these were attended to by a Dutch boy. Or, it might be that the whole family of lions were not allowed to have any dinner ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... Lobster to lie still and be cooked. But this he was by no means inclined to do; and no sooner did she place him on the heated bars, than he made his way off in the quickest possible time. Then she caught hold of him with the tongs, restored him to his proper position on the gridiron, and with poker and tongs strove to hold ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... intimidated by blows and enervated by taming. He punished for sensibility; he rewarded meanness; he encouraged vice; he made the child wait on him at table, sometimes striking him on the face with a knotted towel, sometimes raising the poker and threatening to strike him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... walked in, took a seat before the fire, placed her bag and an old hat-box on the floor by her side and for a moment looked around the room, noticing everything. Then she took up the poker, commenced poking the fire, as if she wanted more heat to enable her to explain the chief object of her visit. The heat is now up to the degree required, the poker is laid aside, the old hat-box is in her lap, and aunt Mary is ready to talk business. Opening the box, she said to Mrs. R., "Sister, ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889 • Various
... wife! In the presence of God she and I have been made one, and even man's ordinances have not dared to separate us. Mr. Finn, as the husband of Lady Laura Kennedy, I desire that you abstain from seeking her presence." As he said this he rose from his chair, and took the poker in his hand. The chair in which he was sitting was placed upon the rug, and it might be that the fire required his attention. As he stood bending down, with the poker in his right hand, with his eye still fixed on his guest's face, his purpose was doubtful. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... from the bowl of the pipe, grey smoke from between his lips. Emmy looked again at the clock. She had the listening air of one who awaits a bewildering event. Once she shivered, and bent to the fire, raking among the red tumbling small coal with the bent kitchen poker. Jenny began to whistle again, and Emmy impatiently wriggled her shoulders, jarred by the noise. Suddenly she could bear no longer the whistle that pierced her thoughts and distracted her attention, but went out to ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... gone back to the fields again. All the idlers had fled to the cafes, and as the deputy walked smartly by in front of these, warm waves of air came out upon him through the windows, with the clatter of poker chips, the noise of billiard balls, and the uproar of ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... feathers, and put burned cork to her nose till she had a black mustache; and one boy brought a red-hot poker, which he said he had heard was a good thing, though he did not quite ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... nobody else would ever know his guilt, the thought of the burglar going off quite unmolested with his property was intolerable. Even if he could not summon up enough courage to get downstairs with his life and a poker in his hand, he must at least give them a good fright. They had frightened him, and so he would frighten them. They should not have it all their own way, and if he decided not to attack them (or him) single-handed, he could at ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Wife when they were over boiled. And the Deposition against Dorothy Dolittle runs in these Words; That she had so far usuped the Dominion of the Coalfire, (the Stirring whereof her Husband claimed to himself) that by her good Will she never would suffer the Poker out ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Sometimes there are black and blue marks on his hands where he says she strikes him. Once there was a small burned place on both his lips. I asked him about it, and he said "Mamma." One of the boys told me that he talked too much and she put the hot poker on his lips. I have heard that this man intends taking the boy back to China in a year or two, fearing that in this county he will lose him. They are bad ...
— The American Missionary, October, 1890, Vol. XLIV., No. 10 • Various
... and put it into the fire, watched it until it was reduced to ashes, then beat the ashes down with a poker. ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... but we must be careful. They are sure to be in mischief, so I will just run out and catch them at it. Then won't I let you see their pretty little arses well slapped; and it will make your cock stand—like a fine poker as it is. I generally have a family slapping after dinner on Sundays, it makes Peter so randy to see their little cunts and rosy red arses! Then I do get a rare rogering I can tell you, but not so ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... in old Justo Valdos's gambling house. There was a poker game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There was a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the smoke had cleared away it was found that the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... dragons yet. A flame broke out from one of the towers and licked the feet of a reclining archer; he did not stir. And now the alien standard was out of sight directly underneath. Mr. Sladden broke the panes of the wonderful window and wrenched away with a poker the lead that held them. Just as the glass broke he saw a banner covered with golden dragons fluttering still, and then as he drew back to hurl the poker there came to him the scent of mysterious spices, and there ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... with an environment even so unexacting as this. And his son, perhaps his grandson, will become what you call broke; will from lack of pressure to learn some useful art, and from spending only, become useless and helpless. For besides drink, there is gambling. He plays what you say, the game of poker, this Bines. You see the gentleman, rounded gracefully in front, who has much the air of seeming to stand behind himself,—he drinks whiskey at my far right, yes? He is of a rich trust, the magnate-director as you say, and plays at cards nightly with our ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... thither by all his judges, he ordered his conduct with considerable circumspection, but as he had never been known to do an honest day's work at any industry sanctioned by the stern local code of morality except draw poker he was still an object of suspicion. Indeed, it was conjectured that he was the author of the many daring depredations that had recently been committed with pan and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... waited openly to hear them confirmed or denied; he gave her advice; he told her everything he had ever heard about Manley, or had seen or knew from some other source; everything, that is, save what was good. The sums he had lost at poker, or had borrowed; the debts he owed to the merchants; the reputation he had for "talking big and doing little;" the trouble he had had with this man and that man; and what he did not know for a certainty he guessed at, and so ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... of profit and pleasure in the city by the Golden Gate and he explored any that offered entertainment—those that led to tables green as grass under the blaze of electric lights, those that led to the poker game behind Soledad Lanza's pink-fronted restaurant, those that led up alleys to dark, secretive doors, and that which led to Pancha's ugly ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... there, Father—there's no need to bluster in this fashion. Take up the poker and go and break into the door quiet and decent, like anyone else would do. And girls—off for your bonnets ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... equivalent to a victory for us. Three months of sharp work had convinced us that a change from Johnston's methods to those which Hood was likely to employ, was, in homely phrase, to have our enemy grasp the hot end of the poker. We knew that we should be kept on the alert and must be watchful; but we were confident that a system of aggression and a succession of attacks would soon destroy the Confederate army. Of course Hood did not mean to assault solidly built intrenchments; but we knew that we could make good ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... to have seen his face when he read it. He made a jump for the door, but I got there fust and downstairs in a tumble, and fell in a heap at the foot with everything he could lay his hands on comin' after me—tongs, shovel, and poker. ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the thief continued. "Many of us protected the victims during this pogrom. Our friend, called Sesoi the Great—you have just seen him, gentlemen—was then lodging with a Jewish braid-maker on the Moldavanka. With a poker in his hands he defended his landlord from a great horde of assassins. It is true, Sesoi the Great is a man of enormous physical strength, and this is well known to many of the inhabitants of the Moldavanka. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... poker until half-past four, which is the "chic" hour for the promenade to the head of the island. Rouletabille had directed Matrena to start exactly at a quarter to five. He appeared in the meantime, announcing that he had just interviewed the mayor of St. Petersburg, which ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... oath. 'He didn't know what to say. Same, sir, if he wasn't as mute as a poker. But you know what a good ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... something both new and good. Within the space of some fifty pages, he has painted a series of pictures which will last as long as anything in the fifty thousand pages of Dickens. Taking "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" as perhaps the most nearly perfect of the tales, as well as the most truly representative of the writer's powers, let us try to guess its secret. In the first place, it is very short,—a single episode, succinctly and eloquently ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne |
