"Adroit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to bar their way, and the major changed the line of march sharply to the right, sweeping along by the side of the force through which they had just cut their way, the musketeers on the flank firing into them as they passed. The movement was an adroit one, for in the gathering darkness the enemy in front would not be able to distinguish friends from foes, or to perceive the nature of the movement. For a few minutes they were unmolested, then the course was again changed, and Charlie ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... seeing me, though I catch a glimpse of his manly features through the oval glass of his chaise, as he drives by, a surgeon of skill and standing, so friendly, so modest, so tenderhearted in all his ways, that, if he had not approved himself at once adroit and firm, one would have said he was of too kindly a mould to be the minister of pain, even if he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... thing of bringing city loan to par could be done. He made an arrangement at that time with Mr. Stener, the details of which you have heard from Mr. Stener himself, the result of which was that a large amount of city loan was turned over to Mr. Cowperwood by Mr. Stener for sale, and by adroit manipulation—methods of buying and selling which need not be gone into here, but which are perfectly sane and legitimate in the world in which Mr. Cowperwood operated, did bring that loan to par, and kept it there year after year as you have all ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... assigned to each their posts, reserving to his own countrymen the management of the arblasts, or crossbows, and of the military engines which were contrived by the proud Normans, and were incomprehensible to the ignorant English, or, more properly, Anglo-Saxons, of the period, but which his more adroit countrymen managed with great address. The jealousies entertained by both the Normans and English, at being placed under the temporary command of a Fleming, gradually yielded to the military and mechanical skill which he displayed, as well as to a sense of the emergency, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... manner in which he adapted his tactics to the nature of the army and the situation of the country, instead of adhering with bigotry to the systems of Europe. His instructions were appreciated by all. The officers received them gladly and conformed to them. The men soon became active and adroit. The army gradually acquired a proper organization, and began to operate, like a great machine; and Washington found in the baron an intelligent, disinterested, truthful coadjutor, well worthy of the badge he wore of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... her, Gus "talked foolishly": in one of these, no doubt, the fatal word had slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually adroit enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs irrationally ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... this is the son of a nurse who belonged to us and we left him when he was a little one. I saw him to-day and his mother said to me, 'Take him with thee;' so this morning I brought him that he might be a servant to the king, for that he is an adroit youth and a clever." Then the king fared on, he and his company, and with them the Eunuch and the youth, who questioned his companion of Bahluwan and his dealing with his subjects, and he replied, saying, "As thy head liveth, O my lord the king, the folk are in sore ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... but his fourth hit the ball, and drove it across the road. "As gude as a better," quoth the orphan boy, and bade BULGER propel the tiny sphere in the direction of a neighbouring rivulet. Into this affluent of the main, BULGER finally hit the ball; but an adroit lad of nine stamped it into the mud, while pretending to look for it, and BULGER had to put down another. When he got within putting range, he hit his ball careering back and forward over the hole, and, "Eh, man," quoth the orphan boy, "if ye could ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... indifferently, which injured my egotism. But I was too adroit to show it. I still demurred with mock modesty. Penton would ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... go to him," he said, snatching the clock suddenly from my hands. And I had never intended to let the property get out of my possession again! This man was adroit; he might be one too many for me after all, if I betrayed the slightest doubt of him, or made anything like a scene. He was fidgeting with something in the right pocket of his snuffy, old greatcoat too—perhaps there was a pistol there—I was almost ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and the disposition of the people allow democratic institutions to subsist, they never display a regular and methodical system of government. Democratic liberty is far from accomplishing all the projects it undertakes, with the skill of an adroit despotism. It frequently abandons them before they have borne their fruits, or risks them when the consequences may prove dangerous; but in the end it produces more than any absolute government, and if it do fewer things well, it does a greater number ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... an adroit knife; but, under the extraordinary pressure of this bountiful repast, Rutherford Berry easily outdistanced him. He consumed such unlimited amounts that he gained the audible displeasure ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 'Let us, O father, by means of trusted and skilful and adroit Brahmanas, seek to produce dissensions between the sons of Kunti and Madri. Or, let king Drupada and his sons, and all his ministers of state, be plied with presents of large wealth, so that they may abandon the cause of Yudhishthira, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... with the Dean he had been appointed to a post in the Cathedral, sat down to it too; and Rosamund and Dion looked in to congratulate Mr. Thrush, and to tell him how delighted they were with his bearing in the procession and his delicately adroit manipulation of his wand. Mr. Thrush received their earnest congratulations with the quiet dignity of one who felt that they did not spring from exaggeration of sentiment. Like all great artists he knew when ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so often before in this play and in that. And now and again even in his later novels we discover that Daudet has needlessly achieved the adroit arrangement of events so useful in the theatre and not requisite in the library. In "The Nabob," for example, it is the "long arm of coincidence" that brings Paul de Gery to the inn on the Riviera, and to the very ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... squadron under command of Captain Perry having met the British squadron of superior force, a sanguinary conflict ended in the capture of the whole. The conduct of that officer, adroit as it was daring, and which was so well seconded by his comrades, justly entitles them to the admiration and gratitude of their country, and will fill an early page in its naval annals with ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... among the part-shams, part-enthusiasms of Hadrian's 'sumptuous' character. Spartian's account of the consecration, and his hint that Hadrian composed the oracles delivered at his favourite's tomb; Arrian's letter to the Emperor describing the island Leuke and flattering him by an adroit comparison with Achilles; the poem by Pancrates mentioned in the 'Deipnosophistae,' which furnished the myth of a new lotos dedicated to Antinous; the invention of the star, and Hadrian's conversations with his courtiers on this ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... piano. They seemed to think that the General, once accustomed to their sweetness and animation, could not do without it, and that their society would become indispensable to him. They mingled, too, with their adroit manoeuvres, familiar and delicate attentions, likely to touch an old man. They sat on his knees like children, played gently with his moustache, and arranged in the latest style the military knot of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... length, to his delight, Pomander saw another coach before him with a gold-laced black slave behind it. The coach stopped; and the slave came to the door. The shop in question was a few hundred yards distant. The adroit Sir Charles not only stopped but turned his coach, and let the horses crawl back toward London; he also flogged the side panels to draw the attention of Mr. Vane. That gentleman looked through the little circular window at the back of the vehicle, and saw a ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... chill which he had felt before in the presence of this man assailed Prescott again. He was wholly within his power, and metaphorically, he could be broken on the wheel if the adroit and ruthless Secretary wished it. He bit his dry lip, but said nothing, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... to him for making things so easy, and for covering her own ill-disguised embarrassment by this adroit show ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... consisted of thirty men. The shed was closed on all sides and only one opening left, to which the natives crowded with the wares they wished to exchange. The only trouble they had was in keeping an eye upon everything that was brought on shore, for "there are no more adroit sharpers in Europe than these folks." Following a laudable custom, now becoming general, Bougainville presented the chief of this settlement with a pair of turkeys, and ducks and drakes, and then cleared a piece of land, where ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... gone to the Dingle in person, and, by adroit use of the divinity which hedges a detective, had persuaded a keeper to lead him to the tree where, as Mr Stokes had said, the ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... following night Merton was fortunate or adroit enough to find himself seated beside Mrs. Brown-Smith in a conservatory at a party given by the Montenegrin Ambassador. Other occupants of the fairy-like bower of blossoms, musical with all the singing of the innumerable fountains, could not but know (however ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... brilliant scarf round his neck, stood at the door of his tent, holding an empty glass in one jewelled hand, and with the other twirling a long and silken moustache. Handsome, graceful, and thoroughly inured to the public gaze, he fronted a small circle of gapers like an actor adroit to make the best of himself, and his tongue wagged fast enough to wag a man's leg off. At a casual glance he might have been taken for thirty, but his age was fifty and more—if you could catch him in the morning before he had ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... much more intensely does love enthrall us when it is brought so near us that we and it are made almost inseparable! I say, then, that after such an adventure, never afore willed or even thought of by me, not once, but many times did fortune and our adroit stratagems bring us good cheer and consolation, not indeed screened entirely from danger, for which I cared less than for the passing of the fleeing wind. But while the time was being spent in such joyous fashion—and that it was joyous, Love, who alone may bear witness ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Friedrich Wilhelm selects another; "sends deal boxes along with him," to bring home what cash there is. This one's name is Nussler; an expectant Prussian Official, an adroit man, whom we shall meet again doing work. He has the nine shillings a day, without hair-powder or blacking, while employed here; at Berlin no constant salary whatever,—had to "borrow 75 pounds for outfit on this business;"—does a great deal of work without wages, in hope of effective promotion ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the Duchy of Lackeverything," replied La Mothe, bowing with an equal gravity, and at the adroit parrying of a difficult question the smile crept down from Ursula de Vesc's eyes until it loosened the hard lines of the mouth, and bent them to that Cupid's bow La Mothe so much desired to see. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... abrupt and adroit decisiveness had Meyer Isaacson acted, so swift and cunning had been his physical carrying out of his sudden resolve—a resolve, perhaps, determined by her frigid malice—that for a moment Mrs. Armine lost all command of her powers—even, so it seemed, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... entire group, was silent, almost surly. He submitted without comment to being ensconced in the great chintz-covered chair. He even swallowed, under protest, the various pills and potions which Dr. Cricket presented to him at intervals; but the most adroit questioning on the part of Miss Standish failed to elicit any information as to his sensations or emotions, past or present. Brady, who understood his friend better than all the rest, strove to shelter him by talking longer and laughing louder than usual; ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... because they are filled with acaridae and other hurtful insects. In the time of great drought the mules gnaw even the thorny cactus* in order to imbibe its cooling juice, and draw it forth as from a vegetable fountain. (* The asses are particularly adroit in extracting the moisture contained in the Cactus melocatus. They push aside the thorns with their hoofs; but sometimes lame themselves in performing this feat.) During the great inundations these same ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... thrown away; if the actor's face cannot be seen, his acting, of necessity, goes for little or nothing. Even in our own days of triumphant stage illusion, it must be owned that the presentment of Banquo's ghost still remains incomplete and unsatisfactory; but where such adroit managers as Mr. Macready, Mr. Charles Kean, and Mr. Phelps (to name no more) have failed, it seems vain to hope for success. Pictorially, Banquo's ghost has fared better, as all who are acquainted with Mr. Maclise's "Macbeth" will ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... considered herself as free from all scruple, and thought of nothing further than paying him back blow for blow. Her old duel with the Cardinal thus once more renewed, she formed in London, with the aid of the Duke de Vendome, La Vieuville, and La Valette, a faction of active and adroit emigrants, who, leaning on the Earl of Holland, then one of the chiefs of the Royalist party and a general in the army of Charles of England; upon Lord Montagu, an ardent Papist and intimate adviser of Queen Henrietta Maria; upon Digby and ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... food; there was something of both ecstasy and anguish in serving her needs, in establishing her comfort. She talked little and always so that I stood at a distance from her, fenced apart by little graceful formalities, groping hopelessly and vainly towards her through the clever mesh of her adroit speech and skilful remoteness. I was already fifteen years in the country, and fifteen years her inferior in those civilized dexterities. But she thanked me ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... larger towns of the "great west." Yes, and from other sources are individuals of that mixed band. I recognise the Teutonic type—the fair hair and whitish-yellow moustache of the German, the florid Englishman, the staid Scot, and his contrast the noisy Hibernian; both equally brave. I behold the adroit and nimble Frenchman, full of laugh and chatter, the stanch soldierly Swiss, and the moustached exile of Poland, dark, sombre, and silent. What a study for an ethnologist is that band of odd-looking ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... female named Thais. Alexander made her his favorite and companion, though she was not his wife. Thais did all in her power to captivate and please Alexander during the feast by her vivacity, her wit, her adroit attentions to him, and the display of her charms, and at length, when he himself, as well as the other guests, were excited with wine, she asked him to allow her to have the pleasure of going herself and setting fire, with her own hands, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... carry the world before him as a shop, keeper. Extremely civil, attentive to watch opportunities Of obliging, and assiduous to make use of them—skilful in discovering the taste or turn of mind of his Customers, and adroit in Putting in their way just such temptations as they are least able to withstand. Mrs. Thrale, at the same time that she sees his management and contrivance, so much admires his sagacity and dexterity, that, though open-eyed, she is as easily wrought upon to part with her money, as ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... as his dear brother Samuel, was not slow to say a word against him when opportunity offered. To speak the truth, Samuel was a cunning boy, and those even who loved him best could not but own that for one so young, he was too adroit in choosing his words, and too skilled in ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... was apparently diverting to her daughter. Rhoda had been accustomed to see Tom play a hundred sly tricks over this sociable meal, a favourite one being to balance a large morsel on the back of her right hand, and with an adroit little tap from the left send it flying into the mouth stretched wide to receive it, and it tickled her immensely to witness this sudden fit of decorum. She sat and chuckled, and Mrs Chester sat and wondered, until Tom politely declined a third cup of tea, and was ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... turf. The crash of the guns was now distinctly louder and far ahead they saw wisps of smoke floating above the trees. John was sure that the German batteries were there, but he was equally sure that even had he glasses he could not have seen them. They would certainly be masked in some adroit fashion. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the click of a rifle brought her to her senses. Towards the end of August the amount of looting became serious. On the other side of the river was a big camp, where troops were sent to refit and rest. Here the thieves played many cunning tricks and there was some killing. They were adroit in stampeding horses and in the confusion that followed making off with several. The sentries were not allowed to load their rifles, as promiscuous firing was a source of danger to the occupants of the tents, which were ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... J. Lawrence in The Elizabethan Playhouse and other Studies (First Series) aptly writes: 'No dramatist of the time had a better sense of the theatre than Mrs. Behn, and none made more adroit employment of the balconies.' He then cites the scene of Angelica, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... to fidget, adieu to all hope of peace for her companions. Once she began to ask questions, it was safe to predict that she would go on until despair seized those who were obliged to answer. Pixie recognised signs of the coming attack, and managed an adroit change of places which would leave Mrs Wallace free to enjoy the afternoon, and punctually at ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... am sorry to say, of the way in which a naturally amiable and considerate householder might be expected to listen to the arguments of an adroit and accomplished burglar showing cause why he should be locked into the plate-closet to protect him ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... to get his measure, read "Youth" or "Falk" or "Heart of Darkness," and then try to read the best of Kipling. I think you will come to some understanding, by that simple experiment, of the difference between an adroit artisan's bag of tricks and the lofty sincerity and passion of a ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... any other respect a remarkable man. He had come to the post by adroit management of a miscellaneous community, comprising British, Dutch, and Kaffirs. He was personally incorruptible, and he played the game according to the rules. He would have called himself, and so far as his opportunities admitted, he was, a constitutional statesman, justly proud of the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... auditors of the empress. They quaked as they thought how they had voted, and their awe-stricken faces were pallid with fright. Uhlefeld and Bartenstein exchanged glances of amazement and dismay; while the other nobles, like adroit courtiers, fixed their looks, with awakening admiration, upon Kaunitz, in whom their experienced eyes were just discovering the rising luminary ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... that soon after her father's death Nadyezhda Lvovna had married one Kandurin, a bachelor of law, not wealthy, but adroit, who had come on a visit to the neighbourhood. She married him not from love, but because she was touched by the love of the legal gentleman who, so it was said, had cleverly played the love-sick swain. At the time I am describing, Kandurin was for some reason living in Cairo, and ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... once confessed in print that he always studied the idiosyncrasies of his "subject" as carefully as another sort of collector studies the plan of the house to which he meditates a midnight visit. We were assured that with skillful preparation and adroit approach an autograph could be extracted from anybody. According to the revelations of the writer, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, and Mr. Gladstone had their respective point of easy access—their one unfastened door or window, metaphorically ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... seemingly by way of a tour de force, and with no essential interest in such subject, alien as it was from the pride of health which is characteristic of the gymnastic life, with the expression of physical pain, in Philoctetes, for instance. The adroit, the swift, the strong, in full and free exercise of their gifts, to the delight of others and of themselves, though their sculptural record has for the most part perished, are specified in ancient ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... control you, foolish girl. Be obedient and adroit as you have been, and this blue-eyed girl shall be swept from ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... MILWARD'S clever careful method made the Colonel a very live and plausible figure. Some of his intimate touches were exceedingly adroit. The authors deserve a fair share of the credit. Indeed there was throughout a suggestion of clever characterisation conspicuously above the average of this genre. Penelope was an excellently developed part, rendered with unexpectedly mature skill by Miss STELLA JESSE. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... when matters were at their worst, there appeared in Poland a young man who claimed to be the murdered Dmitri. His story was that, by means of an adroit substitution, another boy had been killed in his place; that he had escaped; and he claimed the throne of the Ruriks. He strongly resembled the prince he claimed to be, and his identity seemed to be established, also, ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... at the head of the companionway at a critical juncture. As he moved to descend some low, cool-toned retort of Calendar's seemed to enrage his confederate beyond reason. He yelped aloud with wrath, sprang to his feet, knocking over a chair, and leaping back toward the foot of the steps, flashed an adroit hand behind ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the two old gentlemen simultaneously, as Herbert performed a feat in which he seemed to fairly outdo himself. Mr. Lilburn adding, "I feel the old ardor for the sport stir within me at sight o' the lad's adroit movements. At his age I might have ventured to compete with as expert a skater as he. What say you, Cousin Horace, to a match atween the two auld chaps o' ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... was approaching their station, the accomplices of the foiled ruffian, who had seen the whole affray, sunk into the covert; but, what was their mortification to perceive the traveller, though without any true command over his steed, by an adroit use of the broker bridle, so wheel him round as to bring him, in a few leaps, over the very ground of the strife, and before the staggering robber had yet fully arisen from the path. By this manoeuvre he placed himself in advance of the now approaching banditti. Driving his spurs resolutely and ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... false that there is, as is said, a republican faction at present, but it is true that there are partisans of an illegitimate monarchy; now these latter are too adroit not to profit by the occasion, and mingle their voices on the 29th with that of France, to impose on the nation. What will the King do? Will he surrender his ministers to the popular demand? That would be to destroy the power of the State. Will he keep his ministers? They ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... to manipulate his design through Dick Sherwood. Late that afternoon, when Dick, just returned from the city, dropped into, as was his before-dinner custom, the office-study which had been set aside for Larry's use, Larry, after an adroit approach to his ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... Mirouet fortune ('Ursule Mirouet,') a story which gives us one of Balzac's purest women, treats interestingly of mesmerism (and may be read without fear by the young), the siege of Mlle. Cormon's mature affections by her two adroit suitors ('Une Vielle fille'), the intrigues against the peace of the d'Esgrignons and the sublime devotion to their interests of the notary Chesnel ('Le Cabinet des antiques'), and finally the ignoble passions that fought themselves out around the senile Jean Jacques Rouget, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... things? They are indeed things, and things of mighty influence, not only in addresses to the passions and high-wrought feelings of mankind, but in the discussion of legal and political questions also; because a just conclusion is often avoided, or a false one reached, by the adroit substitution of one phrase, or one word, for another. Of this we have, I think, another example ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... attention, Milly, instead of speaking from the window, ran quickly to her across the sodden lawn. And Milly's running was so girlish, simple, and unaffected, that Leonora seemed by means of it to have found her daughter again, the daughter who had disappeared in the adroit and impudent creature of the footlights. She was glad of ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... was dark and musty—no time to light the lamps; but Mr Armitage, the facile, the adroit, a perfect Mercury and old in experience, called in four linkmen waiting by their ladies' empty chairs in ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... his brother George in America. This epistle is, as one might expect, almost entirely concerned with the art of poetry—what else has Keats to write about?—whether from the side of technique, or inspiration. He dwells on the adroit management of open and close vowels—he shows how "the poetry of earth is never dead;" he discusses the need of constant application to work, and how "the genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man." ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... and the officers of a dozen of the shrewdest private detective bureaus are put in possession of the few facts that have been ascertained. In a hundred directions public and private sleuths are set in motion. But their untiring efforts are unavailing. They have to combat a more adroit, more nervy and more intelligent force than they have ever before been ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... idea with much circumstance and considerable ingenuity in an article which he sent to me for publication in The Fortnightly Review. The theme was scabrous; but his treatment of it was scrupulously reserved and adroit and I saw no offence in the paper, and to tell the truth, no great ability in his handling ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... that adroit patrons of the South Carolinian rebellion have a third argument at their service which is no less specious. "All is over," they exclaim, "there is nobody now to sustain, there are no sympathies now to testify; in four days, peace will be made, the new ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... "tactician" is usually applied to military movements, but it has a broader meaning than this; it embodies the idea of a peculiar skill or faculty—a nice perception or discernment which is characterized by adroit planning or management, artfully directed in politics ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... he hated his good helpmate Jenny. And then began that other wonderful process called reconciliation, whereby the wish gradually overcomes scruples through the cunning mean of falsifying their aspects. Whereunto, again, the new mistress contributed in the adroit way of all such wretches—instilling into his ear the moral poison which deadened the apperception of these scruples at the same time that it brought out the advantages of disregarding them. The result of all which was, that Jenny's husband, of whom she had made a slave, for his own good and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... contents. He had a strong suspicion of the letter's purport. Ruth would have reviewed her conduct that night at Sarita Creek, and, with her instinctive cunning, perceived it would alienate Lee. The message doubtless carried an adroit explanation and excuse, ending up with numerous declarations of her affection and hypocritical assertions of her anxiety on his account. Disgust overwhelmed him. He was minded to cast the thing into the stove unread. At last, however, muttering ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... Kaiser, but I did not lose my self-possession. I turned to the Emperor and said, 'Sir, the Queen and I have known each other for a few moments only, but already we have a secret between us!'" The Kaiser was very tickled by my retort ... very tickled ... and the Queen told me afterwards that it was very adroit of me to get out of it like that. She said it was my ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... as the gypsies of Europe. They are wanderers, who live in tents, and are regarded with contempt even by the peasantry. Their women tell fortunes, tattoo, and sell small wares; the men work in iron. They are all adroit thieves, and noted as such. The men may sometimes be seen going round the country with monkeys. In fact, they appear to be in all respects the same people as the gypsies ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... daily interchange of liberties which, with all their passing contentions, so accustom people to each other's humours as to establish the soundest and strongest of all friendships. Walpole had adopted Atlee because he found him useful in a variety of ways. He was adroit, ready-witted, and intelligent; a half-explanation sufficed with him on anything—a mere hint was enough to give him for an interview or a reply. He read people readily, and rarely failed to profit by the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... he's so cursedly fond of building, he invests all his money (and wants us to invest all ours) in houses; and there's one confounded dog of a bricklayer who runs him up terrible bills,—a fellow called 'Cunning Nat,' who is equally adroit in spoiling ground ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sufficiently remarked upon is that the French party made a very adroit use of her. The clerks at Poitiers, while inquiring at great length into her religion and her morals, brought her into evidence. These Poitiers clerks were no monks ignorant of the world; they constituted the Parliament of the lawful King; they were the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... smiled inwardly at my adroit cowardice, and was contemplating the surrounding masses of people, when a new and more mighty hubbub startled me, and presently I heard a buzzing whisper spread throughout the apartment of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... suspected of knowing something—of having business—of his own—and keeping it to himself. A display of friendly interest in his affairs having received no encouragement and various lines of adroit cross-examination having been successfully blocked, Ore City was forced to regard his stubborn reserve as a hostile act for which it was tacitly agreed he should be disciplined. Therefore it withdrew its own confidences and company. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... affairs that did not concern him. And colonial politics and the management of colonial affairs were certainly not his concern. Nevertheless, the horrible grouping together of facts, as the young Seditionist had grouped them for him, their adroit placing together, with the hideous, unavoidable connection between them, upset him tremendously. He sat on in the darkness trying to think, trying to see his way clear, trying to excuse or to justify. He had never thought of these things before, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... joyfully, consenting willingly to have given up to France twenty-three years of the best of my life, all my pains and my little of wealth, and merely to withdraw with the honor which I had when I began to serve her." The persistent hopes of the adroit Italian appeared once more in the postscript of the letter: "I had forgotten to tell you that it was not the way to set me right in the eyes of the people to impress upon their mind that I am the cause of all the evils they suffer, and of all the disorders of the realm, in such sort that my ministry ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... no weapon unused, no vantage-ground unoccupied. The high social standing and reputation of his client were set forth at their best. Every slenderest discrepancy of statement between Salome's witnesses was ingeniously expanded. By learned citation and adroit appliance of the old Spanish laws concerning slaves, he sought to ward off as with a Toledo blade the heavy blows by which Roselius and his colleagues endeavored to lay upon the defendants the burden of proof which the lower court had laid upon Salome. He admitted generously ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... was most adroit, for, as his Bulls had not arrived, he must have known he had no legal status, and that, in default of that, he had to conquer public sympathy. The chapter never doubted that Don Bernardino would place himself entirely in their hands as his Bulls had not arrived. He, however, seems ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... to remember, an article by a distinguished American professor, protesting with great moderation that an important scientific generalization which he published in 1902 had been annexed, without acknowledgment, by a versatile and adroit professor in the University of Berlin—an acquaintance of my own—in the year 1906; and it was not until 1910 that the latter was made to confess his guilt, with much subterfuge ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... know, man? That is the celebrated, the divine Lillie Ellis, the most adroit 'fisher of men' that has ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... artful, scheming, adroit, and dangerous. There are stories without number of him; and I will relate one or two solely because they characterise him, and those to whom they ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... in that unscrupulous age, aroused criticism, but at the same time, with a heroism and greatness of mind which more than once showed higher conceptions of German honor than were held by the Emperor himself or any other prince of the realm. Nevertheless, when, in 1688, this adroit statesman died, he left behind him only an unimportant State, in no way to be reckoned among the powers of Europe. For while his sovereignty extended over about forty-four thousand square miles, these contained only one million three hundred thousand ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... perils of her own situation—of which no doubt the young creature was yet entirely ignorant. Her scruples once overcome by a knowledge of her own danger, she would herself aid in contriving a plan of escape! For such a purpose, Sure-shot was the man—adroit, crafty, courageous. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... states, more used to fatigue, to long marches and rapid evolutions. The brilliance of their success and its long duration are thus explained, for the chiefs of the empire never seem to have had the faintest suspicion of the adroit policy which was afterwards to bind so many conquered peoples to the Roman sceptre. The first necessity for civilized man is security: the hope, or rather the certainty, of enjoying the fruits of his own industry in peace. When ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... years in constant strife with the Crown and the Church? He is very valiant and lion- hearted;—so say the chroniclers, priests though they are;—very skilful and experienced in war whether by land or sea; very adroit, with more sense than any other great lord in France; but restless, factious, and regardless of his word. Brave and bold as the day; full of courtesy and "largesse"; but very hard on the clergy; a ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... Plumston had said to her: "You are beautiful." No one else had ever intimated such a thing. In fact, for five years she had been taunted almost daily because of her lack of all physical charms. Perhaps she could learn the truth about herself by some adroit questioning of the young ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... patron of letters that Maecenas holds his place in popular estimation, but he was much more than this. He had been since Caesar's death the trusty agent and the intimate adviser of Augustus; a hidden hand, directing the most delicate manoeuvres of his master. In adroit resource and suppleness no diplomatist could match him. His acute prevision of events and his penetrating insight into character enabled him to create the circumstances and to mould the men whose combination was necessary to his aims. By the tact and ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... the 'grand style' by daring to be sincere to himself, to the aspect under which human things came to him, to the precise names of precise things. He had a sensitiveness in his soul which perhaps matched the deftness of his fingers, in their adroit, forbidden trade: his soul bent easily from his mother praying in the cloister to the fat Margot drinking in the tavern; he could dream exquisitely over the dead ladies who had once been young, and who had gone like last year's snow, and then turn to the account-book of his ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... "How adroit he is to-night, Jack;" but the General rather pitied the lad, with whom he imagined Kate was playing as ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... The spectators cheered this adroit movement, laughing at the spectacle of the Dutchman hanging face downward on his ropes, and Morgan, sweating in the heat of the fire and sun, exertion and passion, careless of everything, thoughtless of all but his unsatisfied vengeance, straddled ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... rage with him. For as we went we encountered Mistress Barbara on Lord Carford's arm. The quarrel between them seemed past and they were talking merrily together. On the sight of her the Duke left me and ran forward. By an adroit movement he thrust Carford aside and began to ply the lady with most extravagant and high-flown compliments, displaying an excess of devotion which witnessed more admiration than respect. She had treated me as a boy, but she did not tell him that he was a boy, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... conquered Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Turkestan, Spain, Northern Africa, Sicily, and Southern France. Today, 160,000,000 are followers of Mohammed,—a man who began as a humble religious leader, and ended as an adroit politician and powerful general; a man who hid during battles, who often broke faith with friend and foe alike, a charlatan and demagogue of general intellectual incompetency, and a victim ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... between Elpis and a sister of Herod. So, therefore, to calm a tempest, the adroit king had sent his eighth wife to live ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... condition was this reformed branch when father Fray Pedro, procurator of Philipinas, reached Espana, without province, without authority, and without means for cooperation in his urgent affairs. But his brave spirit did not waver; he was adroit and prompt in the management of papers; and he was presented to the king with a brief memorial referring to his commissions. Although his Majesty was not then very well inclined to the Reform, laying aside those considerations, he paid good ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... Mac, while he never rebuked, yet was adroit in warding off temptations to break the Commandments. He began to chuckle as if he had just ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... by persons of adroit cunning. It was maddening. This had ceased to be an adventurous lark. It was to become a fight against weapons whose sole object seemed to be to guard the retreat ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... speak a little inarticulately; and he missed a few details, but by adroit cross questioning his hearers obtained a clear understanding of the whole situation—starting with the rescue of Bug's brother and ending with the events that had ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... of the victim, far from exasperating Thenardier, had calmed him. There existed in him two men, the ferocious man and the adroit man. Up to that moment, in the excess of his triumph in the presence of the prey which had been brought down, and which did not stir, the ferocious man had prevailed; when the victim struggled and tried to resist, the adroit man reappeared and took ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the harvest. The deeper Honey Tone sank into the bogs of chance, the more he resented the introduction of the Wildcat's trained dice. Once, in the run of hard luck, he showed signs of weakening, but the Wildcat was quick to rally him with the adroit tongue ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... Dal laid down her book, but seemingly lost in abstraction, did not deign to look at us. Mrs. Dalrymple, however, did the honors with much politeness, and having by a few adroit and well-put queries ascertained everything concerning our rank and position, seemed perfectly satisfied that our intrusion ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Dexterous, facile, adroit, politic, versatile,—as Lord Palmerston certainly is,—fertile in resources, prompt to seize and use to the utmost every advantage, endowed with unusual popular gifts, and blessed with imperturbable good-humor, it cannot be denied that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... parliamentary interest of the house of Lyndon had been grossly neglected during my wife's minority, and the incapacity of the Earl her father; or, to speak more correctly, it had been smuggled away from the Lyndon family altogether by the adroit old hypocrite of Tiptoff Castle, who acted as most kinsmen and guardians do by their wards and relatives, and robbed them. The Marquess of Tiptoff returned four Members to Parliament: two for the borough of Tippleton, which, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... earthly origin falls away more and ever more; it is ennobled to the life eternal and strives toward it. The experience of such an old age is irreconcilable with evil, and it only makes the means clearer and the skill more adroit victoriously to battle against wickedness. Deterioration through increasing age is simply the fault of our time, and it necessarily results in every place where society is much corrupted. It is not nature which corrupts us—she produces us in ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... creatures, however, and Silvia on rare occasions managed to break parole and make adroit escape from surveillance. Then she would speed to the top of the boundary wall that separated the stable precincts from an alluring alley which was the playground of the plebeian progeny ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... card bore the name Jean Forette; and concerning him Colonel Ashley had secured some information the day before. He had got, by adroit questioning, a certain knowledge of the French chauffeur, and this was now spread out on the card that, in fancy, Colonel Ashley could ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... that at many seasons of the year, not only in frost, when every terrestrial pathway must be unsafe; but in the dry months of summer, the smooth surfaces of the blocks of granite, polished and rounded by so many wheels, were each like a convex mass of ice, and caused unnumbered falls to the less adroit of the equestrian portion of the king's subjects. One of the most zealous advocates of the improvement was the present Sir Peter Laurie, not then elevated to a seat among the Equites, but imbued probably with a foreknowledge of his knighthood, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... his profits, J. Augustus would not have regarded the fight worth while, so accordingly he kept his eyes and his ears open for a handy weapon with which to jab Cappy through that same old rift in his armor—his passion for a large profit through an adroit and ingenious deal in a commodity where even a very modest profit was ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... wiping his eyes, and everybody up and down the street was smiling and saying, "That's Lawyer Ed's laugh. What's he up to now, I wonder?" Jock checked his mirth quickly; it was not seemly to rejoice too heartily over one's own humour, but before the joy of it had left, by an adroit turn, J. P. had sent the conversation into its ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... purloins from me even a handkerchief. Cantabit vacuus—, and I am always sufficiently vacuus. Perhaps it is that I have not a handkerchief worth the stealing. It is your heavy-laden, suspicious, mal-adroit Greenes that the thieves attack. I now found out that the accommodating Boots, who already knew my ways, had taken my travelling gear into a dark recess which was intended to do for a dressing-room, and had there spread my portmanteau open upon some ...
— The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box • Anthony Trollope
... and then a new speaker appeared on the platform, this time evidently a cultivated, thoughtful man and an adroit speaker. The organizers of the evening were unwilling to allow the meeting to retain the impression of Wilhelm's speech, and had placed a clever opponent to follow him, who said clearly and concisely that the speaker ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... babbled on the Castle Rock of Willie Wallace and was only nineteen when he danced without the music; to Simms, alias Gentleman Harry, who showed at Tyburn how a hero could die; to George Barrington, the incomparably witty and adroit—to these a full meed of honour has been paid. Even the coarse and dastardly Freney has achieved, with Thackeray's aid (and Lever's) something of a reputation. But James Hardy Vaux, despite his eloquent bid ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... an excellent knowledge of Scripture and great ingenuity in explaining it on his own side. He was an adroit and skilful disputant, and, considering that he was a foreigner, had a great ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... great apartment hotels. But "Carron, il est tres fin," said my informant; "you know,—'e is var' smart." Carron would learn, by careful inquiry, the name of a resident on an upper floor; then he would appear at the concierge's door, and would mention the name of this resident with such adroit, demure, and absolute confidence that he would be permitted at once to ascend. Once inside, he would go the rounds of the apartments. So he would get five times as much in a day as any of his fellows. A certain amount of the receipts he would yield up to the treasury of the monastery; the rest he ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... Stephens was a conservative. Many of the most pronounced opponents of secession were given places in the public service. Toombs, who received the portfolio of State, though a secessionist, was conspicuously a moderate when compared with Rhett and Yancey. The adroit Benjamin, who became Attorney-General, had few points in common with the great extremists of Alabama and ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... tall, well-proportioned, graceful; his features were clean-cut and expressive of both intelligence and amiability; his manner was cordial and unaffected; his mind was vigorous and his industry unremitting. Furthermore, he was an able lawyer, a fluent orator, a persuasive debater, an adroit parliamentarian. Upon entering the Senate at the early age of thirty-two, he had won prompt recognition by a powerful speech in opposition to the tariff of 1824; and by 1828, when he was reelected, he was known as ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... think I may say the learned counsel did not call Norrish because ..." and then the whole substance of the deposition was given in supposititious form. The judge looked down a minute, and then went off into silent laughter impossible to control at the adroit change of means and persistent gaining of end; barristers all round broke into ripples of laughter unrestrained; a broad smile pervaded the jury box; the only unmoved person was the defendant who proceeded in his grave statement as to what Norrish "might" have been asked. The nature of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... we were discussing that same good dinner, and maintaining a tolerably animated conversation over it, too. My father put a few adroit questions to me relative to my school experiences, which had the effect of "drawing me out," and he listened to all I had to say with just that appearance of friendly interest which is so flattering and encouraging to a youthful talker. ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... stupefied with delight to take advantage of her temporary absence to conduct adroit inquiries at the desk. Indeed, he was drugged with happiness, and sat like a big half-embarrassed, half-dreaming youth, twirling his hat in his hands, pulling off and putting on his gloves, and tracing patterns with his stick on the carpet until she reappeared, and then he ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... with employing the painter largely at Fontainebleau and in Versailles, invested him with the order of St Michael, bestowed on him letters of nobility, and visited him frequently at his work, occasions when there were not wanting adroit courtiers to liken the Grand Monarque to the Emperor Charles V., ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... strange thing! What a strange thing! What a pretty little member, intelligent and adroit, which executes whatever one wills—books, laces, houses, pyramids, locomotives, pastry, or caresses, which last is ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... which they lived was stormed, one White killed at once, the other captured. As the latter stood awaiting execution and consumption, by an extraordinary stroke of fortune a whaling ship ran into the bay. The adroit captive offered, if his life were spared, to decoy his countrymen on shore, so that they could be massacred. The bargain was cheerfully struck; and when an armed boat's crew came rowing to land, the Pakeha, escorted to the seaside by a murderous ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Bassett designated Sylvia in private conversation with her husband, had been planted in Elizabeth House for a purpose. Her relief that Sylvia had not been settled in the Delaware Street residence had been of short duration: Mrs. Bassett saw now that it was only the girl's adroit method of impressing upon Mrs. Owen her humility and altruism. Still Mrs. Bassett was not wholly unhappy. It was something to be near at hand where she could keep track of Sylvia's movements; and the ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... his word, and that the Consulate could not help her would have no time to do so. So, she confined herself to an elaborate letter, written in admirable English and inspired by most noble sentiments. The beauty that was in her face was in her letter in even a greater degree. It was very adroit, too, very ably argued, and the moral appeal was delicate and touching, put with an eloquence at once direct and arresting. The invocation with which the letter ended was, as Kingsley Bey afterwards put ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Phil studied the photo in his hand before returning it. The case of Jimmy Stiles did indeed throw a sidelight upon the character of Nickleby. By adroit questioning he led the founder of the Interprovincial Loan & Savings Company to continue talking of the institution which represented his life's work and in the welfare of which his whole soul was wrapped. Once started in these reminiscences ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... religious differences among his colonists, and the promotion of mutual forbearance among sects. Lord Baltimore may not have been a profound political philosopher nor a prophet of the coming era of religious liberty, but he was an adroit courtier, like his father before him, and he was a man of practical good sense engaged in an enormous land speculation in which his whole fortune was embarked, and he was not in the least disposed to allow his religious predilections to interfere with business. Nothing would have brought speedier ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... afterwards made Chief Secretary. The first night that Lady Waldegrave and Mr. Fortescue appeared at the theatre in Dublin, a wag in the gallery called out, "Which of the four do you like best, my lady?" Instantaneously from the Chief Secretary's box came the adroit reply: "Why, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... dashed off by a modern writer, is only the adroit plagiarism of an old joke, 'But oh, the Latin!' says Heinrich Heine, in describing his boyish sorrows to a lady—'Madame, you can really have no idea of what a mess it is. The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world, if they had been first obliged to learn ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... across the table, gave Peter a swift glance of admiration, which he caught and acknowledged. He was rather exultant himself; certainly he had been adroit. ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Mrs. Lowder, on this occasion, neither threatened nor appealed. Her arms of aggression, her weapons of defence, were presumably close at hand, but she left them untouched and unmentioned, and was in fact so bland that he properly perceived only afterwards how adroit she had been. He properly perceived something else as well, which complicated his case; he shouldn't have known what to call it if he hadn't called it her really imprudent good-nature. Her blandness, in other words, was not mere policy—he wasn't dangerous enough for policy; it was the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... but such a resolution as this would not drive any from our party." One must admit that it would not scare them to death. Mr. Broderick, however, was an honest believer in woman suffrage and later did attempt to secure some recognition for it in the platform. The Republicans sent an agent of adroit address among the suffrage clubs to explain to them how "an endorsement by the political parties would be really a hindrance to their success," and it was charged that this was done with the consent of some ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... "New England" with the date on the other. There was no recognition of England upon this coinage, which was begun in 1652 and kept up for more than thirty years. Such pieces of money used to be called "pine-tree shillings"; but, so far as looks go, the tree might be anything, and an adroit friend of New England once gravely assured the king that it was meant for the royal oak in which his majesty hid himself after ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... suited better if it had been chosen at a rope-factory. Ben knew how to make a loop, and a loop was soon made to his liking; and then the cord was let down slowly and gently, so as not to close the noose before it reached the ground. Guided by the adroit hand of the sailor, the loop at length rested upon the earth, just before the muzzle of the musket; and was then drawn slowly and smoothly along the grass. Fortunately, the barrel did not lie close to the surface, and the cord passed easily underneath it; but Ben was not satisfied until he ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... man hit hard when he talks. Meighen has often been bold both in speech and action. In the Commons last session he paid his respects to Mr. Crerar by calling the National Progressives "a dilapidated annex to the Liberal party." Which adroit play to the gallery with a paradox came back in the shape of a boomerang from a Westerner who called the Government party "an exploded blister." On a previous occasion talking to the boot manufacturers in convention at Quebec he took a leap into the Agrarian trench with this pack of muddled ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... disillusionment would have been his share of the spoils: the revolutionists thought a fine opera of no more importance than did their enemies, and had Richard asked to be set up in his kingdom he would have quickly found the defenders of liberty as adroit in evading him and his claims as any court flunkeys could be. It was well he got away from Dresden also because, as he afterwards said, the court livery had grown too tight for him. He had had a comfortable income, and had he not been Richard Wagner he might have vegetated happily, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... commenced between Uxmoor and Severne, his lordship was adroit enough to contrive that the drag should be in ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... killed at Pierrepont, at the very beginning of the war, but he was already one of the promising figures of his generation. Allard was looked upon as an incipient Admirable Crichton; he was a brilliant scholar, an adroit and multiform athlete, the soul of wit and laughter, the centre of a group of adoring admirers. This sparkling poet was suddenly transformed by the declaration of war into the sternest of soldiers. His poem, called "Demain," created, or rather expressed, the patriotic passion which ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... the conversation, and, soon after, went away. He had been adroit enough to put his questions in the languid way of a man who had no personal curiosity, and was merely ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... players who are adroit at and/or addicted to that game, believe Squash Tennis offers nothing but prolonged "slam bang" rallies and a boring "sameness." Because of the tremendous liveliness of the ball and the apparent ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... past life. She stated that she was the widow of an English gentleman; she had recently come to America, and had but few acquaintances, and still fewer friends; she felt the loneliness of her situation, and admitted that she much desired a friend to counsel and protect her; the adroit adventuress concluded her extemporaneous romance by adroitly insinuating that her income was scarcely ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... was the seldom case. James Holden needed a very adroit lawyer to tell him how and when his rights and privileges as a citizen could be granted, and under what circumstances. From the evidence already at hand, James saw loopholes available in the matter of the legal age of twenty-one. But he also knew that he could not approach ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... canonize her, and her weakness crowns the triumph of her chastity. In depicting the character of Lovelace, the novelist had a difficult task, for to have made him a mere ruffian would have been to ruin the whole purpose of the piece. He is represented as witty, versatile, and adroit, the very type of the unscrupulous gentleman of fashion of the period. He expiates his crimes, at the close of a capital duel, by the hands of Colonel Morden, a relative of the Harlowe family, who has seen Clarissa die. The success of Clarissa, both here and in France, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the doctrine of availability when it nominated Harrison on account of his military reputation. He lived only one month after his inauguration, and Tyler, the Vice President, who succeeded him, reverted to his old political principles, which were Democratic, and broke with the Whigs. By an adroit and steady use of the executive power he effected the annexation of Texas, but the master spirit in this enterprise was Calhoun, his Secretary of State. Polk, his Democratic successor, coveted California and New Mexico, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... hatred. As far back as the commencement of the eighteenth century, Labat, who, with all his personal oddities, was undoubtedly a fine judge of men, declared:—"The mulattoes are as a general rule well made, of good stature, vigorous, strong, adroit, industrious, and daring (hardis) beyond all conception. They have much vivacity, but are given to their pleasures, fickle, proud, deceitful (cachs), wicked, and capable of the greatest crimes." A San Domingo historian, far more prejudiced than Pre Labat, speaks of them "as ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... portion of his discourse, and by adroit digressions he applied the doctrine of his system to feudalism. The poetry—religious and profane—and the abrupt eloquence of that period had a grand opening in this vast theory, wherein the Doctor had amalgamated all the philosophical systems of the ancients, and from which he brought them out ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... are going to say. They are adroit, insinuating, dangerous, all that is quite true. If I had a rich old uncle whose heir I expected to be, I shouldn't introduce one of them into his house. These good creatures are sometimes charged ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... that "most susceptible Chancellor," made a very ingenuous defence of his colleagues. They were the unconscious victims of adroit interviewers, who obtained information from them by a process of extraction so painless that they did not know the value of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... an adroit but sincere courtier, Racine has won the regard of posterity by his life as well as its admiration by his literary genius. As a poet, he was endowed with the purest gift of expression ever granted to a mind imbued with the works of ...
— Esther • Jean Racine |
