"Poking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was over, she walked very fast; her heart was waking into hunger, and she feared he might be gone. But he was there, sitting on the steps beside Phoebe, and when the gate swung open, they did not hear. Phoebe's eyes were dropped, and she was poking her parasol into the moss-encrusted path; the doctor was looking into her face, and speaking quite eagerly. He heard Dorcas first, and sprang up. His eyes were so bright and forceful in the momentary gleam of meeting hers, that she looked aside, and tried to ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... been otherwise? What can keep an Irishman down in the ditch when bullets are flying in air, "murmuring dirges" and "shells are shrieking requiems?" You may readily imagine an Irishman on the firing line, poking his head above the ground, exclaiming: "Did yez see that? And where did that Dago pill come from now? Shure it spoke Spanish, but it did not hit me ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... caught sight of Boris Grogoff. I had been on the watch for him. I had thought it very likely that he would be there. Well, there he was, at the back of the crowd, listening with a contemptuous sneer on his face, and a long golden curl poking out from under ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the bridle; and Pegasus darted down aslant, as swift as the flight of an arrow, right towards the Chimaera's threefold head, which, all this time, was poking itself as high as it could into the air. As he came within arm's length, Bellerophon made a cut at the monster, but was carried onward by his steed, before he could see whether the blow had been successful. Pegasus continued his ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... found in these cases of bony tumification of the vascular tissue of the mouth; but you must resist it, ma'am, as their life depends upon it." And with that Dr. Peppercorn glared gloomily on the young ducks, who were stealthily poking the objectionable little spoon-bills out ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... lord,' said Melmotte. 'I'll show your lordship the way.' The Marquis did not speak to his son, but poked at him with his stick, as though poking him out of the door. So instigated, Nidderdale followed the financier, and the gouty old ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... (again poking me), "Massive and concrete." So I said boldly, as if I had originated it, and must beg to insist upon ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... "Little beasts!" said Eileen, poking viciously at the Poms with her umbrella. "I don't know how you endure them, Cousin Mary; I can hardly tell which is the worst, ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... bothered his head very much as to what was going on in the Seven Isles group till he learned from some talk in Mintok or Palembang, I suppose, that there was a pretty girl living there. Curiosity, I presume, caused him to go poking around that way, and then, after he had once seen Freya, he made a practice of calling at the group whenever he found himself within half a day's ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... cowered behind them, and so long as she was successful in shielding him, her wrath smouldered—but powerfully. At length one of the bigger boys, creeping slyly up behind the front row of smaller ones, succeeded in poking a piece of iron rod past her, and drawing a cry from the laird. Out blazed the lurking flame. The boy had risen, and was now attempting to prosecute like an ape, what he had commenced like a snake. Inspired by the God of armies—the Lord ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... and by the dim lantern light recognized Cupido—the barber—a sarcastic fellow, with curly side-whiskers and an aquiline nose, who took great pleasure in poking fun at the barbarous, unshakable ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... not unlike the Turkish nargileh, except that it has a straight stem instead of a coiled tube), and swallowing glasses of raw arrack every few minutes; they furthermore amuse themselves by trying to induce me to follow their noble example, and in poking fun at another young man because his conscientious scruples regarding the Mohammedan injunction against intoxicants forbids him indulging with them. About eight o'clock the Khan becomes a trifle sentimental and very patriotic. Producing a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... buckler are disused.' In The Two Angry Women of Abingdon, a comedy, printed in 1599, we have a pathetic complaint: 'Sword and buckler fight begins to grow out of use. I am sorry for it; I shall never see good manhood again. If it be once gone, this poking fight of rapier and dagger will come up; then a tall man and a good sword and buckler man will be spitted like a cat or rabbit.' But the rapier had upon the Continent long superseded, in private duel, the use of sword and shield. The masters of the noble science of defence were chiefly Italians. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... for the specimen in which they were just then interested continued his course entirely unconcerned. Soon, however, he seemed to feel fatigue, for he drew his feet and head within his shell, which he tightly closed, and after that no poking or prodding had the desired effect. "I suspect we must depend on shank's mares for a time," said Bearwarden, cheerfully, as they scrambled down. "We can now see," said Cortlandt, "why our friend was so unconcerned, since he has but ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... off Granny's knees and was poking about in every corner, delighted at finding all sorts of things which he ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... impartial judges we have no other course before us than to wish Henry luck and bid him go to it. But Jill, who had not seen the opening stages of the affair, thought far otherwise. She merely saw in Henry a great brute of a man poking at a defenceless bird with ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... forgotten, you little goose—that his convert was a rich man. His mind would have dwelt on the chapel, or the mission, or the infant school, in want of funds; and—with no more abominable object in view than I have, at this moment, in poking the fire—he would have ended in producing his modest subscription list and would have betrayed himself (just as our odious Benwell will betray himself) by the two amiable little words, Please contribute. Is there ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... exclaimed Kittie, slamming the stove door open, and poking in among the ashes and cinders with wrathful haste, "if this abominable fire hasn't gone out; I never did in all my life! burnt up a bushel of kindling, too, dear me; water in the tea-kettle stone cold, not a blessed thing cooking; ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... began to think that it might be advisable to get outside the house before I chanced to be seen. So, having got through the window with Patch in my arms, I shut it again and was going round to the front when I saw that the terrier was poking his muzzle into every nook and corner, as if in ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... young people, that sometimes one little thing can make even a 'dowdy' girl popular—then, if she has the right stuff in her, she can be a leader. What is it starts you all wearing these little black belts round your waists, or this mousetrap," poking the puffs of pretty silk hair that hid her ears; "it's a psychology that's beyond most of us! Maybe my Jerry will set a ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... about to speak; but recollecting what he had said to Mr. Thorpe, contented himself with poking the fire. The book in question was a certain romance, entitled "Jack and the Bean Stalk," adorned with illustrations in the freest ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... that I was going to have a busy time of it. Until that evening I can truthfully say that I never knew what nervousness was; but scarcely had I entered the station when I felt suddenly depressed. I attributed the feeling to heat, and tried to pull myself together by poking fun at Herbert, whom I accused of wilfully keeping the trains late in order to shirk handling them. Every night Herbert gave me a written account of the trains handled during the day, and especially drew my attention to any crossing orders that had to be attended to. As Herbert was leaving the ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... about her. I suppose he has gone on gradually building up an imaginary structure of life and adventure for her, but he has given me the strangest information! Only yesterday week, when we were "making up" "The Poor Travellers," as I sat meditatively poking the office fire, I said to him, "Wills, have you got that Miss Berwick's proof back, of the little sailor's song?" "No," he said. "Well, but why not?" I asked him. "Why, you know," he answered, "as I have often told you before, she don't live at the place to which her letters are ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... fire. My fingers were all thumbs. I jammed a shell into the receiver. My last chance had fled! But Copple's big, brown, swift hands fed shells to his magazine as ears of corn go to a grinder. He had a way of poking the base of a shell straight down into the receiver and making it snap forward and down. Then he fired five more shots as swiftly as he had reloaded. Some of these hit close to our quarry. The old grizzly slowed up, and looked across, and wagged his ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... of the day, found a good deal of pleasure in poking fun at woman's use of dress and ornaments as bait for entrapping lovers, and many a squib expressing this theory appeared in the newspapers. These cynical notes no more represented the general opinion ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Point of Pines, I'd like to know?" demanded Katherine. "There was the point of a pine poking me in the back all the while. If you'd been up in that pine you would have appreciated the point. And if we couldn't get down again we would have had ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... observed Miss Pritty, with a good-natured smile, for even she could see that the Irishman was poking fun at her; "but how ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Thus clad, she peered out into the tent, went to the ha-ha, and satisfied herself that at any rate the youngsters were amusing themselves, spoke a word to Mrs. Greenacre over the ditch, and took one look at the quintain. Three or four young farmers were turning the machine round and round and poking at the bag of flour in a manner not at all intended by the inventor of the game; but no mounted sportsmen were there. Miss Thorne looked at her watch. It was only fifteen minutes past twelve, and it was understood that Harry Greenacre was not to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the sugarcane field and he disappears into the narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and nearer and my ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... fighting before more than twenty cities he was only once wounded—escaped scot-free, though one of his bodyguard got a bullet in his chest. With all possible haste the poor fellow was taken back to the doctor's boat, and the surgeon began poking his fingers into the wound to find the ball. It was not a pleasant operation for the guardsman, and he made some grimaces, much to the amusement of several of his companions, who stood on the bank and jeered at his lack of courage. Those ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... this at the time. He told it, however, afterwards to his master, a hunting man; and, on a subsequent occasion, when the same incident occurred again, one of the whips dismounted and went into the water, and, poking about the roots of the willows, dislodged Reynard, concealed under the hollow bank, and immersed under water, except his nose and mouth, by which he was hanging suspended from a fang of the tree roots. Surely Reynard’s clever ruse deserved ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... as well get along," said Ransom discontentedly. "There is no occasion that we should keep poking on ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... Cassy, poking her head in at him, threw him a kiss and returned to the Tamburini with whom, a little later, she was praying among the worshippers that thread the sacred and silent way where ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... fireman's window again. The headlight was now entirely snowed in and the big black machine was poking her nose into the night at the rate of a ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... woman stepped briskly up, and poking her head between us, said, at the highest pitch of her cracked voice,—"Yes, it is good; it was made this morning express-ly for ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... feel things poking into my back before I landed; I always get the creeps when there's death around, and that last sound had been just that—somebody's last sound. I knew somebody was going to kill me before I could find the switch. Then ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... in my position would have been doing—wishing to Heaven I knew what to do!" said Peter, still poking vigorously at ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the party at Villa Beau Sejour. Madame was delighted to receive him, but Claire Gifford told her mother resentfully that she considered Mr Judge's behaviour "very cool." How did he know that it would be pleasant for them to have him poking about ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... happened naturally enough that for a moment Helen and Van Shaw were left together. The crowd of tourists, curious, chattering, laughing, careless, flowed up the trail past them and began scattering over the village seeking curios and poking their heads into the doors of the little houses. The sun flamed out in a clear blue sky, the grey rock turned red under its hot stroke, and Helen, who lay restfully on her litter which had been placed on top of one of the kivas, indulged her romance loving spirit to the ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... with the Colonel. Freed from money cares, praised for his generalship in the cotton corner, able to entertain sumptuously, he was again a Southern gentleman of the older school, and so in his envied element. Yet today he frowned as he stood poking absently with his ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... creature,' said the lively lady, poking the peer with her parasol; 'I won't have you talk so. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... tempt me," muttered the little old woman, poking her nose under the other cover, however, all the same. "I felt rather a fancy for one, but I'm afraid a cutlet would be rather too heavy in the evening. I'd rather have something, too, that ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery of some little interest. Poking and burrowing into the heaped-up rubbish in the corner, unfolding one and another document, and reading the names of vessels that had long ago foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants never heard of now on 'Change, nor very readily decipherable ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of poking fun, Mr Dean, sir," said Buck, turning to the boys. "Rum chap, ain't he? He's got a lot of comic in him sometimes. He do make me laugh. No, Dan, mate, you stick to the spade; you don't have so far to stoop as I should, and I shouldn't like you to get a crick in your back by heaving up them ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... cannot count those endless vials on the mantlepiece with any hope of making a variation in their numbers. You have counted your spiders: your Bastile is exhausted. You sit and deliberately curse your hard exile from all familiar sights and sounds. Old Ranking poking in his head unexpectedly would just now be as good to you as Grimaldi. Any thing to deliver you from this intolerable weight of Ennui. You are too ill to shake it off: not ill enough to submit to it, and to lie down as a lamb under it. The Tyranny of Sickness is nothing to the Cruelty of Convalescence: ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to hear her talk in unexcited hours. Turning over my books one day, she said, 'You can never be either a poet or a painter, or a Mozart or a philosopher, Hermione? what is the use of all your labour and poking?' What could I say? I felt myself colour up, and I laughed out, 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity!' Yet certainly God has set before us the things of earth in order that we may admire ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... Bee would get up if she knew Cousin Edith were poking about downstairs," thought Gwen. "I know I ought to stay—but I can't, I can't! It means so much to pass that exam. It would be horrid to stop at home, too, with Bee in bed directing everything. If she were going away, and would leave me to it, I shouldn't mind. It's not the ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... "Mother!" he cried, poking his head out to the shady front veranda where his mother and aunt sat sewing, "Hal's going to the commons; may ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... any attention to old Mr. Crow. Nobody made room for him. He had to take a back seat on a limb that was crowded with boisterous young fellows, who kept pushing and poking one ...
— The Tale of Old Mr. Crow • Arthur Scott Bailey
... out second, and saw a spectacle of haggard faces, shouting menaces and pleadings; I saw hands waved wildly, one or two fists clenched; I saw the police, shoving against the mass, poking with their sticks, none too gently. A poor devil in a waiter's costume stretched out his arms to me, yelling in a foreign dialect: "You take de food from my babies!" The next moment the club of a policeman came down on his head, crack. I heard Mary scream ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... care much for it at fust, but he didn't raise no objection; and when the gal got up to go he stopped the bus for 'er by poking the driver in the back, and they all got off together. Ted went fust to break her fall, in case the bus started off too sudden, and Charlie 'elped her down behind by catching hold of a lace collar she was wearing. When ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... indignant denial; unable to endure the double accusation of being a child,—she, a girl in her fourteenth year,—and of "poking." But Imogen walked away quite unconcernedly, and Jeannie Hadden followed her. These two, as nearest in age, were growing intimate. Ginevra was almost too ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... has disappeared—vanished! Who could have taken away their door? Terror seizes them; they ask each other if they have become demented; and dreading the ridicule which would be cast upon honest citizens who could not find their own street-door, they grope about for more than an hour, feeling, poking, inspecting, measuring; but alas! there is no door; there is nothing but a wall, an unknown wall, an implacable wall, a desperate wall! At length, terror completely overpowers them; they utter loud cries, and call lustily ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... damp feet, collecting merrily round the smoky fire, with little jets of flame shooting up and flashing out on the six couples! Sam Winnington in his silk stockings and points neatly trussed at the knee, was on all-fours poking the blue and red potatoes into the glowing holes. Another man with rough waggishness suddenly stirred the fire with an oak branch, and sent a shower of sparks like rockets into the dark blue sky, but ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... up over stupid papers till morning, and departed, bowing coldly to Lisa (he had not expected that she would ask him to wait so long for an answer to his offer, and he was cross with her for it). Lavretsky followed him. They parted at the gate. Panshin walked his! coachman by poking him in the neck with the end of his stick, took his seat in the carriage and rolled away. Lavretsky did not want to go home. He walked away from the town into the open country. The night was still and clear, though there was no moon. Lavretsky rambled a long time over the dewy grass. He came ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Fancy there being a train from Frinton after ten! So of course I brought Miss Foley along. Oh! It was vehy interesting. Vehy interesting. You see we had to think of the police. I didn't want the police coming poking round my house. It would never do, in a little place like Moze. I should never hear the last of it. So I—I thought of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... clear, winter evening, the east wind piping its sharp sibilant ditty in the bare shorn hedges, and poking its sharp fingers into the sides of well broad-clothed men by the way of passing jest, Mr. Spires, a great manufacturer of Stockington, driving in his gig some seven miles from the town, passed a poor woman with a stout child on her back. The large ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... dog, ran up and down the shore of the lake, poking his nose in among the bushes here and there, barking ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... of the swordsman's weapon; in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant. But, after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the clubman refined ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... to learn—though perhaps the lesson little availed her—that to get smoothly through this world it is necessary to be supple as well as strong; and though, up to a certain point, man or woman may force the way by poking umbrellas into people's ribs and treading mercilessly upon people's toes, yet the endurance of ribs and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... With thick, black veins, wherethrough the must is soaking, Nods his dull forehead with deep sleep belated; His eyes are wine-inflamed, and red, and smoking: Bold Maenads goad the ass so sorely weighted, With stinging thyrsi; he sways feebly poking The mane with bloated fingers; Fauns behind him, E'en as he falls, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Too much red tape, habeas corpus and that sort of thing. What we want is to see that nobody bolts; the nearest we could get to it would be to collect the company and count them, so to speak. Nobody's left lately, except that lawyer who was poking about ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... grew fiercer, and James went to the door to see what was the matter. Squire Clamp was the luckless man. The dog had seized his coat-tail, and had pulled it forward, so that he stood face to face with the Squire, who was vainly trying to free himself by poking at his adversary with a great baggy umbrella. James sent away the dog with a reprimand, but laughed as he followed the angry man into the house. He always cited this afterwards as a new proof of the sagacity of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... "There, Fan, you're poking fun now. Wait till I get through. Only for Tom, you would have found me at Ten Mile Gulch, hanging by the neck to the limb of that tree just in front ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Pettigrew kept on poking at the goat in a timid yet cross way, he sprang forward, crying out to his trusty followers, 'Stand ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... turns jumping until they were tired, and they went about poking their little fingers and noses into whatever they could find to examine. Sister's investigations ended sadly enough, for she succeeded in pulling down a tray of butterflies that Jimmie was mounting (he had thought the gymnasium a safe place to keep them out of everyone's ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence
... bush at one side and looked at the boys. A small pot was hanging over one of the fires; in it potatoes were cooking. Pavlusha was looking after them, and on his knees he was trying them by poking a splinter of wood into the boiling water. Fedya was lying leaning on his elbow, and smoothing out the skirts of his coat. Ilyusha was sitting beside Kostya, and still kept blinking constrainedly. Kostya's head drooped despondently, and he looked away into the distance. Vanya did not stir ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... had left her, but the spell of her tense gaze had broken. She had laid her head upon the table to weep, and had not raised it all these hours. The night wind soughed into the room through the open window, drifting a piece of paper about the floor, poking into the gloom of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... out to be a very disappointing person—a little wizened old gentleman with a cold in his head, a red nose and a comforter round his neck, whistling o'er the furrow'd land or crooning to himself as he goes aimlessly along the streets, poking his way about and loitering continually ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... dear Linda, it is your duty to be a good deal with your cousin. You are too fond of poking holes in others; you are a little hard upon your sister Molly. I do not wish to excuse Molly; but it is not your place as her younger sister to, as it were, rejoice in her ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... he did that evening was to revisit the garret, but the slipper had gone. Cecilia had been there and had found it carefully folded up in the drawer. She pulled it out, snipped and tore it into fifty pieces, carried them downstairs, threw them on the dining-room fire, sat down before it, poking them further and further into the flames, and watched them till every vestige had vanished. Frank did not like to make any inquiries; Cecilia made none, and thence-forward no trace existed at Waltham Lodge ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... spacemen had felt it too. The realization of this raised Brion's spirits a bit as he searched through the rubble for anything useful. He recognized part of a wall still standing as a corner of the laboratory. Poking through the ruins, he unearthed broken instruments and a single, battered case that had barely missed destruction. Inside was the binocular microscope, the right tube bent, its lenses cracked and obscured. The left eyepiece still seemed to be functioning. Brion carefully ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... waited until I was relieved by Carlos; then, instead of lying down, rifle in hand I crept towards the point whence the sound proceeded, when I saw a tall bird standing in the water, every now and then darting forward, poking his long bill amid the reeds which grew around. I should at once have shot it; but I knew that, if I did so, I should be unable to pick it up without the risk of being caught by an alligator. Thinking that ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... Bess. "Now we can't have any fun on the raft. Those men will be in our way. What do you suppose they are poking around there in the water ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... a cross-bar, stuck in pegs, inserted a bridge, and played a sweet tuneful thing that made an old harper like me quite envious. Even at night, Maia was saying, he does not stay in Heaven; he goes down poking his nose into Hades— on a thieves' errand, no doubt. Then he has a pair of wings, and he has made himself a magic wand, which he uses for marshalling souls— convoying the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... along in front of her into the parlor, and motioned her to a seat. "Mrs. North," he said, his face red, his eye hard, "some jack-donkeys have been poking their noses (of course they're ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... and many-colored robe, he took staff in hand, and moved pretty vigorously to the head of the staircase. As it was somewhat steep, and but dimly lighted, he began cautiously to descend, putting his left hand on the banister, and poking down his long stick to assist him in making sure of the successive steps; and thus he became a living illustration of the accuracy of Scripture, where it describes the aged as being "afraid of that ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pursued the girl, poking the ground with her sunshade as she walked, 'there's somebody else. And that's one of the things I want to tell you about. He has about three hundred a year. It isn't much, of course; but I suppose Mr. Higgins would give me something. And yet I'm sure it won't ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... get all wet," objected Hilda, "besides, it's so cold, Cricket," and she drew back further up on the beach, and stood poking her toes ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... me were Joe Hargraves, gadgeting for mineral deposits, and Ed Reiss, hopefully on the lookout for anything alive. The Lucky Pierre was back of us, her body out of sight behind a low black ridge, only her gleaming nose poking above like a porpoise coming up for air. When I looked back, I could see, along the jagged rim of the ridge, the busy reflected flickerings of the bubble-camp the techs were throwing together. Otherwise all was black, except for ...
— Zen • Jerome Bixby
... the Turner boys and the Dickey boy is three of 'em," said the old man, "and Henderson's own boy, Davy—poor leetle feller!—and Buddy Hopper, and the Adams boy. They had a couple of guns, and they was all in this boat of Hopper's, poking round the marsh, and it began to look like rain, and got dark. Well, she was shipping a little water, and Hopper and Adams wanted to tie her to the edge and walk up over the marsh, but the other ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... exclaimed, "I've always been drawn toward that kind of life. A musket will be a little heavier than a gun, that's all; then I shall see different countries, and that will change my ideas." He tried to appear facetious, poking around the kitchen, and teasing the magpie, which was following his footsteps with inquisitive anxiety. Finally, he went up to the old man Vincart, who was lying stretched out in his picture-lined niche. He took the flabby hand of the paralytic old man, pressed it gently and endeavored ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... keeps poking with his elbows. Keep your hands to yourself! Though you are a head constable, you have no sort of right to make free with ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Heaving, sinking, creeping; Hid in corners crooning; Splitting, poking, leaping, Gathering, towering, swooning. When we're lurking, Yet we're working, For our labour we must do, Shadow men, as well as you. Flicker, flacker, fling, ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... to be pirates or smugglers or what?" Greg asked, poking in the corner where he keeps his ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... little boys were perfectly happy, and ate of all the kinds of cake. Two of the Tremletts would stand while they were eating, because they were afraid of the ants and the spiders that seemed to be crawling round. And Elizabeth Eliza had to keep poking with a fern-leaf to drive the insects out of the plates. The lady from Philadelphia was made comfortable with the cushions and shawls, leaning against a rock. Mrs. Peterkin wondered if she forgot she had ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... they had been driven to the last gasp, and as if they had never been rubbed down in their lives; their bones starting through their skin; one lame, the other blind; one with a raw back, the other with a galled breast; one with his neck poking down over his collar, and the other with his head dragged forward by a bit of a broken bridle, held at arm's length by a man dressed like a mad beggar, in half a hat and half a wig, both awry in opposite directions; a long tattered great-coat, tied round ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... which he had obtained, that Mme. Chantelouve would not leave him panting this night, moderated him. Now that his uncertainty was at an end, he no longer vibrated with the almost painful acuity which hitherto her malignant delays had provoked. He soothed himself by poking the fire. His mind was still full of her, but plethoric, content. When his thoughts stirred at all it was, at the very most, to revolve the question, "How shall I go about it, when the time comes, so as not to be ridiculous?" This question, which had so harassed him the other ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... stories of semi- repentant prostitutes beside that pathetic passage, which shears down into the very soul—penetrates to the profoundest depths of the sacred Lake of Tears! And yet this ultra-orthodox age—which would suppress the ICONOCLAST if it could for poking fun at Poll Parrot preachers—has not become crazed over Mary Magdalen— has not so much as named a canal-boat or ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and I were passing away the time between shearings, and we were having a sort of fishing and shooting loaf down the river in a boat arrangement that Jake had made out of boards and tarred canvas. We called her the Jolly Coffin. We were just poking up the bank in the slack water, a few hundred yards below the billabong, when Jake said, 'Why, there's a horse or something in the river.' Then he shouted, 'No, by God, it's a man,' and we poked the Coffin ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... stick, for some charred nothing she would cheat the Spoiler of, there was a dangerous quality in Pintal's look, as, with folded arms and vacant eyes, he seemed to stare upon, yet not to see, the shocking scene. Presently the woman, poking with the stick, found something under the ashes. With her naked hands she greedily dug it out;—it was a tin shaving-case. Another moment, and Pintal had snatched it from her grasp, torn it open, and had a naked razor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... brought that sour-faced shrew, who walks about the house all day repeating the rosary and poking her long nose into what does not belong to her. But I am not afraid of the Signor Giovanni. I will tell the housekeeper that your mantle has been stolen, and all the women's belongings shall be searched before dinner, and we shall ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... the bed, and there is Cat poking daintily with his paw at Brownie. The salamander is dead. Ben grabs the broom and bashes Cat. Cat hisses and skids down the hall. "That rotten cat! I wish I could kill him! What'd you ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... idea of adding, "dote upon you." But, happening to meet the half-closed eye, as it twinkled upon him over the turned-up collar of the cape, which was within an ace of poking it out, he felt it such an unlikely part and parcel of anything to be doted on, that he substituted, "that she don't ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... them black sarpents yander poking out their tongues at us? I won't go till I wear out this pole on 'em. Ha! ha! ha! I thought you hadn't spunk enough to gallup through 'em on your own accord," said Sneak, looking at the pony, and knowing that he would follow the steed always, ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... quality, which fact he has just proven to the editor's entire satisfaction. And that old Mrs. Gastit is feeling very poorly, and Pete Parson, while working on his automobile the other night, contributed a forefinger to the cause of gasoline by poking around in the cogs while ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... all my physical forces at their highest. My cock stood from morning till night, not a woman passed me, young or old, without my desiring them. I thought of nothing else, and to this perhaps is due the variety of poking I got. Luck usually falls to those who look ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... above one was suspended a Panama hat which Barren often wore when painting. Something moved suddenly, and, looking upon the stone floor, she saw a rat-trap with a live rat in it. The beast was running as far as it could this way and that, poking its nose up and trying the roof of its prison. She noticed its snout was raw from thrusting between the wire, and she wished she could get in to kill it. She did not know that it was a mother rat with young ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... return to his own trestle. She found another shaving within reach of her parasol, and began poking that with it, and trying to follow it through its folds. Corey watched ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... danger they abandoned the wild notion, Finding it easy for a Frog to jog On with a kind King Log. But in the fulness of the time, there came A would-be monarch—Legion his fit name; A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated, Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated; A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature, A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature. This new King Stork, With a fierce, fussy appetite for work; Not satisfied with fixing like a vice Authority on Town and Country Mice, Tried to extend his sway to pools and bogs, And rule the Frogs! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... know what you call a good thing, you old fluter. I'm obliged to sit on my hip bones—I can't go to a lecture—all the tutors think I am poking fun at them, and put me on directly. I haven't been able to go to lecture these ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... gay with the men drying their clothes and cooking their dinner, the centre of an interested throng of village folk. I sat among them on a low bench by the fire, watching the fun. Every one was heedful of my comfort, poking the fire, bringing a fan to screen my face from the heat, drying my shoes, rubbing Jack. The thoughtfulness and good will of my men during all the journey were unfailing, and I never found that friendliness on my part diminished in any way ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... accordingly concluded; we took our purse and counted out 700 sapeks to the merchant, who counted them over himself, under our very eyes, pronounced the amount correct, and once more laid the coin before us. He then called out to his companion, who was poking about in the court-yard: "Here, I have sold these capital boots for 700 sapeks." "Nonsense," cried the other; "700 sapeks! I wont hear of such a thing!" "Very well," said we; "come, take your boots, and be off with you!" He was off, and so quickly, that we thought it expedient ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... tell you so?" cried Guerbet, poking the justice of the peace. "I knew he would find some pretty girl at Socquard's,—there he is, putting her ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... they sounded the depth and prodded in the muddy bed to find the treasure chest. It had sunk no more than eight feet below the surface, as the tide then stood, which was not much over the head of a tall man. The end of a pole struck something solid, after considerable poking about. It was not rough, like a sunken log, and further investigation with the poles convinced them that they were thumping the lid of ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... dressed—one of them wounded severely in the hand, both radiating a sort of furious horror. Waving aside Wessel's ready miscomprehension, they pushed by him into the room and with their swords went through the business of poking carefully into all suspected dark spots in the room, further extending their ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
