"Poker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in that house, from the red woollen curtains to the bright poker, which did not have its part to play for Christmas. Nothing that did not say "Christmas," from Catty's eyes to the very supper-table. Of course, I don't mean the Christmas dinner, when I say supper. Tom could have told you. Somewhere in his paunchy little body he kept ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... after which the experiments suddenly stopped. They had collected fruits and seed-vessels, had studied animalculae through the microscope, and modelled fungi in plasticine. Stencilling, illuminating, painting, and marqueterie each had a brief turn, and were superseded by raffia-plaiting and poker-work. Miss Beasley suggested tentatively that it might be better to concentrate on a single subject, but Miss Gibbs, who loved arguments about education, was well prepared to defend her line ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... relations between two people who talk of getting married. But, in any case, he cannot suffocate you in a cave, for you live in London; and in London it is only an occasional young man about Shoreditch who smashes his sweetheart with a poker when she proposes to marry somebody else. He might, it is true, summon you for breach of promise; but he would prefer not to be laughed at. Come, come, Gerty, get rid of all this nonsense. Tell him frankly the position, and don't come bothering me ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... store, he made his toilet for this little hand at poker. It was a simple preparation. He took his pistol from its holster, examined it, then shoved it between his overalls and his shirt in front, and pulled his waistcoat over it. He might have been combing his hair for all the attention any one paid to this, except myself. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... head, and metaphorically rapped the thrumming fingers of his superior officer. Some commanders would have raged and sent the daring youngster right about in arrest. Major Webb knew just what Field referred to,—knew that the fascinations of pool, "pitch" and poker held just about half his commissioned force at all "off duty" hours of the day or night hanging about the officers' club room at the post trader's; knew, moreover, that while the adjutant never wasted a moment over cards or billiards, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... among games of infinite variety: keno, rondo coolo, poker, faro, roulette, monte, chuck-a-luck, wheels of fortune—advertised, some, by their barkers, but the better class (if there is such a distinction) presided over by remarkably quiet, white-faced, nimble-fingered, steady-eyed gentry in irreproachable ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... record and his own. He had found fault with her—so he mused—HE! And what could he say for himself? When she built her first church what was he doing? Gathering other blase multimillionaires into a Poker Club; defiling his own palace with it; losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of the admiring notoriety it made for him. When she was building her first university, what was he doing? Polluting himself with a gay and dissipated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... core gains the interior of the coil it becomes a veritable electromagnet, as found by Arago, having a north pole at one end and a south pole at the other. Figure 34 illustrates a common poker magnetised in the same way, and supporting nails at both ends. The poker has become the core of the electromagnet. On reversing the direction of the current through the spiral we reverse the poles of the core, for the poker being of soft or wrought iron, does not retain ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... the quickset hedges, as soon as a cherry in swaddling-clothes on my walls. The very leaves on the horse-chestnuts are little snotty-nosed things, that cry and are afraid of the north-wind, and cling to the bough as if old poker was coming to take them away. For my part, I have seen nothing like spring but a chimney-sweeper's garland; and yet I have been three days in the country-and the consequence was, that I was glad to come back to town. I do not wonder that you feel differently; any thing ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... so light as to suggest the idea of burglars. Dysart's spirits rise. The melancholy of a moment since deserts him. He looks round for the poker—that national, universal mode of defence when our castles are ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... by the holy poker! This knocks me out! The next time I'll marry a man, and have somebody around that can appreciate a joke. The Irishman said himself it would ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... have such things some day, I daresay, and set them off better than Miss Granger. She is not a bad-looking young woman—good complexion, fine figure, and so on—but as stiff as a poker." ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... your hat, sir, when you speak to a lady. [Takes up a poker.] And now come on, both of you, cowards! [Rushes at BULKELEY and knocks his hat ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... weather permitting on Monday evenings, and some favored youths of Mr. Sanborn's school would go there to play whist, make poker-sketches, and talk with the ladies; while Mrs. Alcott, who had played with the famous automaton in her younger days, would have a quiet game of chess with some older person in a corner. Louisa usually sat by the fire-place, ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... race-track gambling and add to the profits from faro. We raid the faro joints, and drive gambling into the home, where poker and bridge whist are taught to children who follow their parents' example. We deprive anarchists of free speech by the heavy hand of a police magistrate, and furnish them with a practical instead of a theoretical argument against government. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... and cocked an ear toward the door. A faint hubbub was now percolating through from the receptionist's lobby. It grew louder. Suddenly the door opened, letting in a roaring babble, as Geraldine ... the usually poker-faced secretary ... leaped through and slammed it shut again. Her eyes, behind their thick lenses, were ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy
... good poker players in Port Sandor, but Professor Jan Hartzenbosch is not one of them. The look of disappointment would have been comical if it hadn't been so utterly pathetic. He'd been ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... collected, with the two boys, while the five gentlemen passengers, Jack Handspike, Timbo, and I, busied ourselves in getting up the muskets and ammunition for them and the guns. "We are going to fire," I heard Stanley say, and soon afterwards Timbo appeared with a hot poker from the galley fire, and our guns were discharged in succession. "Dat keep de niggers away," he observed, returning to the galley. I was surprised that Kydd made no inquiry when the guns were fired. As I was going aft I saw a figure come up the companion-hatch. ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... the edge of extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with vivid delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough chess games. When dark came we decided to take the risk, and lit ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... consists in representing things to be either greater or less, better or worse than they really are. Its object is to make the thought more effective by overstating it. Here are some examples:—"He was so tall his head touched the clouds." "He was as thin as a poker." "He was so light that a breath might have blown him away." Most people are liable to overwork this figure. We are all more or less given to exaggeration and some of us do not stop there, but proceed onward to falsehood and downright ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... I had had my punch, and the morale of the garrison was consequently excellent. I jumped out of bed, clutched the poker as I passed the expiring fire, and in a moment was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased by this time—the dark and chill were discouraging; and, guess my horror, when I saw, or thought I saw, a black monster, whether in the ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... very tight clothes, his neck encircled with a collar like a palisade. He had a sharp little face, which was not disagreeable; he smoked enormous cigars and began his drinking early in the day: but his appearance gave no sign of these excesses. As regards euchre and poker and the other distractions of the place he was guilty of none. He evidently understood such games in perfection, for he used to watch the players, and even at moments impartially advise them; but Vogelstein never saw the cards in his hand. He was referred to as ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... wooden foot of the bed was burnt the outline of a face with a funny nose. A child's drawing. That was Philippe's. The nurse had cried at him in a rage, perhaps, and snatched the hot poker with which he drew—and that had made the long rushing burn that flew angrily across the wood from the base of the face's chin. "Oh, you've made it worse!" Philippe must ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... plum : pruno. plumber : plumbisto. plural : multenombro. plush : plusxo. pocket : posxo, enposxigi. pod : sxelo. poem : poemo. poet : poeto. poetry : poezio, versajxo. point : punkto; (cards) poento; (tip) pinto. poison : veneno. poker : fajrinstigilo. pole : stango; (of car) timono; (geog.) poluso. polecat : putoro. police : police, (—"court") jugxejo. policy : politiko. polish : poluri. politics : politiko. pompous : pompa. poodle : pudelo. poor : malricxa, kompatinda. pope : papo. poplar ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... backwoods are not far distant from Wall Street. The farmers of Ohio, the cowboys of Texas, the miners of Nevada, owe allegiance to the same Government, and shape the same speech to their own purpose. Every State is a separate country, and cultivates a separate dialect. Then come baseball, poker, and the racecourse, each with its own metaphors to swell the hoard. And the result is a language of the street and camp, brilliant in colour, multiform in character, which has not a rival in the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... and was irritated because, as he believed, it did not fit him. Mr. Redding undertook to convince him that he was in error, and ventured to assure the Judge that the coat was well made. The Judge instantly seized an iron poker, and commenced an attack on Redding. The blow with the poker was partially warded off—Redding grappled his assailant, when a companion of the Judge drew a Bowie knife, and, but for the interposition and interference of the unfortunate ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... money hidden somewhere, and for its sake had nearly had his throat cut some two years ago: ever since then he carried his head thus. Over his eyes hung grayish eyebrows, and, looked at in profile, only his crooked nose was to be seen. His shadow reminded one of a poker. He denied that he had money, and said that they "only tried to cut his throat out of malice," and from that day he took to collecting rags, and that is why his head was always bent as if incessantly looking on the ground. When he ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... Orange, Henry had been determined, if possible, to obtain possession of the island of Walcheren, which controlled the whole country. "To give him that," said Herle, "would be to turn the hot end of the poker towards themselves, and put the cold part in the King's hand. He had accordingly made a secret offer to William of Orange, through the Princess, of two millions of livres in ready money, or, if he preferred it, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... there are men who have come there to escape restraint. Cutter was one of the "fast set" of Black Hawk business men. He was an inveterate gambler, though a poor loser. When we saw a light burning in his office late at night, we knew that a game of poker was going on. Cutter boasted that he never drank anything stronger than sherry, and he said he got his start in life by saving the money that other young men spent for cigars. He was full of moral maxims for boys. When he came to our house on business, he quoted "Poor Richard's Almanack" ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... you mean? [Jumps up and looks round for something to hit her with] Mind, or I'll give you one with the poker. ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... a good deal. Play some poker or bridge. Walk. But sleep is the chief amusement. Eight hours used to be enough for me. Now I can do ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... Sunday schools or some other religious or reformatory enterprise. These outside activities were no hindrances to either pulpit or pastoral work; and, like that famous English preacher who felt that he could not have too many irons in the fire, I thrust in tongs, shovel, poker and all. The contact with busy life and benevolent labors among the poor supplied material for sermons; for the pastor of a city church must touch life at a great many points. Our domestic experiences in early housekeeping ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... little foot. Then he closed the door softly and walked slowly toward her. She stood like stone, without a quiver; only her eye followed the crooked line of the Cresswell blue blood on his marble forehead as she looked down from her greater height; her hand closed almost caressingly on a rusty poker lying on the stove nearby; and as she sensed the hot breath of him she felt herself purring in ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... best, is only relative. A needle may be a perfect needle, in every respect adapted for the work for which it was made. It is not, however, a microscopic object; under magnifying power it becomes a rough, honeycombed poker, with a ragged hole in the place of the eye. But it was not made to be a microscopic object; and, being adapted to the purpose for which it was made, it may properly be considered a perfect needle. So we are not called to be perfect ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... Reading the Riot Act and then assaulting them with a poker is not the best way of getting the Bailiffs out of a house. Try gentle persuasion. If you have recently had a case of black typhus in the house, you might mention the fact to them, and see what ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... slipped silently from the room, was aware that Hannah meditated a vigorous attack upon her midnight visitors. She took the long kitchen poker in her hand, shook it with a grim smile, and thrust the end of it into the ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... satisfaction on the spot. As Colonel Starbottle rose, the eager crowd drew together, elbowing each other in rapt and ecstatic expectancy. "He can't get even on Bungstarter, onless he allows his sister ran off with a nigger, or that he put up his grandmother at draw poker and lost her," whispered the Quartz Crusher; "kin he?" All ears were alert, particularly the very long and hairy ones just rising above the railing of the speaker's platform; for Jinny, having a feminine distrust of solitude and a fondness for show, had followed ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... sitting in a chair, sit up straight, head back, chin in. If you are walking or standing, the same rule should apply. The more nearly you can assume the position which is sometimes criticized by the sarcastic statement that "He looks as though he had swallowed a poker," the more nearly you will approximate ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... men who pay. He never had such wine in him as I've got. That I'd swear. Ha! ha! I come out for an airing after every act, and there's a whole pitfall of ticketers yelling and tearing, and I chaff my way through and back clean as a red-hot poker." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... months of his residence in England, the author renewed his impressions of Stratford (the grateful landlady of the Red Horse Inn showed him a poker which was locked up among the treasures of her house, on which she had caused to be engraved "Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre"); spent some time at Newstead Abbey; and had the sorrowful pleasure in London of seeing ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... the book, Seth planted himself before Tilly, with the long poker in his hand, saying, as he flourished ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... for a game of small-stake poker, but after the second month they countermanded the standing order for Saturday night musical comedy seats. So often they discovered it was pleasanter to remain at home. Indeed, during these days of household adjustment, as many as four evenings ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... by big mirrors of French plate. The whole of the very large main floor was heavily carpeted. Down the center generally ran two rows of gambling tables offering various games such as faro, keeno, roulette, poker, and the dice games. Beyond these tables, on the opposite side of the room from the bar, were the lounging quarters, with small tables, large easy-chairs, settees, and fireplaces. Decoration was of the most ornate. The ceilings and walls were generally white with a great deal of ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the 23d of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in a settlement ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... village, but we found it was fittingly named after some ugly devils who were hanged there. The first house that we came to on this road was the Mormon Tavern. Here were some men playing cards for money, and two boys, twelve or fourteen years old, playing poker for the same and trying in every way to ape the older gamblers and bet their money as freely and swear as loud as the old sports. All I saw was new and strange to me and became indelibly fixed on my mind. I had never before seen such wicked boys, and the men paid no attention to these ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... of her father and the specksioneer was like that which you may effect any winter's night, when you come into a room where a great lump of coal lies hot and slumbering on the fire; just break it up with a judicious blow from the poker, and the room, late so dark, and dusk, and lone, is full of ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Cramp's "giving out" of the words was like repeated volleys of small-arms in this orthographical battle. Every pupil well knew the pages of two-syllable words beginning, "baker, maker, poker, broker, quaker, shaker" and even the boys rattled these off, grinning the while in a most sheepish fashion at their elder brothers or their women-folk, who beamed in pride upon them until such lists as "food, soup, meat, bread, dough, butter" ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... hole in the window, a person could, by the aid of some instrument, let us say a poker with a hook at the end, grip the ring, pull down, and ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... from the building's top Hear the rattling thunder drop, While the devil upon the roof (If the devil be thunder-proof) Should with poker fiery red Crack the stones, and melt the lead; Drive them down on every skull, While the den of thieves is full; Quite destroy the harpies' nest; How might then our isle be blest! For divines allow that God Sometimes makes the devil his rod; And the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... had a distasteful duty to perform; but that was the last thing he designed to become evident. Like most good business men he nursed a pet superstition or two, and of the number of these the first was that he must in all his dealings present an inscrutable front, like a poker-player's: captains of industry were uniformly like that, Spaulding understood; if they entertained emotions it was strictly in private. Accordingly he armoured himself with a magnificent imperturbability which at times ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... because the "Baby Mine," the name of the little tender, had struck a piece of ice before reaching the town and sprung a leak, wetting all the fireworks. The landlord, however, thought he could touch off one of the rockets anyway, so he seized a large detonator and with a red hot poker tried to see how it would work. Finding the fuse, as he thought, too wet, he threw the rocket on the floor and left the room. Directly after, Paul heard a hissing noise and realized that the landlord had succeeded in leaving a live spark in the fuse. He simply drew the bedclothes around himself ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... in a word, was a true Delcasar and a great man. Had he used his opportunities wisely he might have been a millionaire. But at the age of sixty he owned little besides his house and his wild mountain lands. He drank a good deal and played poker almost every night. Once he had been a famous winner, but in these later years he generally lost. He also formed a partnership with a real estate broker named MacDougall, for the development of his wild lands, and ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... of house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midlands I have visited. In the room downstairs there were a broken-down old squab, two rickety old chairs, and a three-legged table that had to be propped against the wall, and a rusty old poker, with a smoking fire-place. The Gipsy father was a strong man, not over fond of work; he had been in prison once; the mother, a strong Gipsy woman of the old type, marked with small-pox, and plenty of tongue—by the way, I may say I have not ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... third being a simple octagonal. A curious feature is that the distance of the hair from the stick gradually diminishes from 1 in. at the heel to 1/2 in. at the point. It has a slight cambre, but being of snake wood is quite poker-like ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... long since drifted into the smoking-room where the men were christening the voyage with brandy-and-soda and dropping into tentative groups, regardful of future poker games. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... weighing his antagonists. As for the others, they were cool players themselves, but here they had met their master. It was the difference between the amateur and the professional. They played good chancey poker, but the man in the linen coat ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all Europe. What reader is there in the civilised world, who is not the better for the story of the washes which the worthy Dr. Primrose demolished so deliberately with the poker—for the knowledge of the guinea which the Miss Primroses kept unchanged in their pockets—the adventure of the picture of the Vicar's family, which could not be got into the house— and that of the Flamborough family, all painted with oranges in their hands—or for the story of the case of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... a dozen steaks, but that ain't saying you're going to git 'em," he retorted, with a feeble show of aggression. "And 's far as licking me goes—" He stopped to blow warmth upon his fingers, which were numbed with their grasp of the poker. "As for licking me, I guess you'll have to do that on the strength uh bacon and sour-dough biscuits; if you do it at all, which I claim the privilege uh doubting a ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... picture-galleries, at the races, at the flower-shows, at all the 'crushes' and big functions,—in London, in Paris, in New York, in St. Petersburg, in Vienna,—always 'ce cher Roxmouth'—as Aunt Emily said;—money no consideration, distance no object,—always 'ce cher Roxmouth,' stiff as a poker, clean as fresh paint, and apparently as virtuous as an old maid,—with all his aristocratic family looming behind him, and a long ancestry of ghosts in the shadow of time, extending away back to some Saxon 'nobles,' who ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... been given, and the two white scars began to sting as they did after the old Doctor had burned them with that stick of gray caustic, which looked so like a slate pencil, and felt so much like the end of a red-hot poker. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... rest of his dress was only a Westmoreland statesman's robe-de-chambre—that is, his shirt. His figure was displayed to advantage by a candle which he bore in his left hand; in his right he brandished a poker. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... wasn't mad neither; for I expected the time had come for this child to go under. So I let my head fall on my breast, and I pulled the wool hat over my eyes, and thought for the last of the beaver I had trapped, and the buffalo as had taken my lead pills in their livers, and the poker and euchre I'd played at the Rendezvous at Bent's Fort. I felt comfortable as eating fat cow to think I ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... themselves from the group and occupied themselves with writing. Several started a game of stud poker at one of the many tables. Harris wrote a few letters before joining in the play, and as he looked up from time to time he caught many curious glances leveled upon him. Morrow had been busily spreading the tidings that a would-be squatter was among ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... which had already changed hands. One agent had brought in a big steel safe and a tent and was buying coal lands right and left. More young men drifted in from all points of the compass. A tent-hotel was put at the foot of Imboden Hill, and of nights there were under it much poker and song. The lilt of a definite optimism was in every man's step and the light of hope was in every ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... a copper poker, and, while beating on the hand-stove, she laughingly said: "I shall go on tattooing. Now mind if when the drumming ceases, you haven't accomplished your task, you'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... bent knee, and tossed lightly through the upper window of a baker's shop, himself diving a moment later, with a slap of his wand, through the flap of the fishmonger's door, hard by. Next, as on a frozen slide, came the Clown, with red-hot poker, the Pantaloon tripping over his stick, and two Constables wreathed in strings of sausages. The Clown boxed the Pantaloon's ears; the Pantaloon passed on the buffet to the Constables, and all plunged together into the fishmonger's. The Clown emerged running with a stolen ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... it was my duty to warn you before. I mourn every hour I wasted over cards and every dollar I ever won from a comrade more than—much more than—the many hundred dollars I lost in my several years' apprenticeship to poker. It's just about the poorest investment of time a ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... that when he met With the said Spanish Ship he Ordered the aforesaid Jeremiah Hariman to Fire a Gun, he haveing a Hot Poker in his hand, who Refus'd to do it But Instead of that he let go the Main Halliards and lowered the Mainsail, And After the said Briganteen was taken by the Spanish Ship the said Harriman desired to enter ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... committee and Walking Delegate Quigg met McGaw at the ferry on his return from New York. McGaw had Crane's money in his pocket. That night he paid two hundred dollars into the Union, two hundred to his feed-man on an account long overdue, and the balance to Quigg in a poker game in the back room over ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... with a group of ancient dowagers, who delighted in her freshness and healthy vigor and were flattered by her consideration. Mrs. Merrick—for she had been invited—sat in a corner gorgeously robed and stiff as a poker, her eyes devouring the scene. Noting the triumph of Louise she failed to realize she was herself neglected. A single glance sufficed to acquaint Diana with all this, and after a gracious word to her guests here and there she asked Arthur ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... the house-maid, Biddy McNair, With face so red and arms so bare, Who took the poker without a care, And slew the prince of noble air, Who killed the great and terrible bear, That ate the peaches so sweet and rare, That grew in the garden fresh and fair, And married the girl with the golden hair, That lived in ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... kissed my hand with grace like is in a story-book and which made my whole arm act like a poker. Father hugged me with all the energy he hadn't been using on me all my life. It ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... get little Judy a dress over to Louisville? Us old men can all chip in an' it wouldn't amount to mor'n a good nights losin' at poker." ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... knock out your brains if you do not," he replied, lifting from the grate a short, thick poker which lay there. "Do as I bid you at once. You also would be like a tiger if you had fasted for two days, ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... you look up at it, it convinces you all over again," remarked Brown. He picked up the poker, and leaning forward began to ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... occur to you, Fleda, my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, breaking the lumps of coal with the poker, in a very leisurely satisfied kind of a way "Did it ever occur to you to rejoice that you were not born a business man? What a ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... freely given; nevertheless, there seem to be persons left who are willing to listen and fall into the old ways and be trapped, as so many others have been in the past. There is a considerable class, having means and nothing to do, who perhaps might just as well lose their money in poker, railroad or grain speculation as in any other way, for this furnishes about the only source of amusement to them; but, after all, there is no reason why railroads should be managed so exclusively for the amusement of this class. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... design—"Peter A. B. Widener, Butcher." He was constantly joking with his customers and visitors, and in the evening he was accustomed to foregather with a group of well-chosen spirits who had been long famous in Philadelphia as the "all-night poker players." A successful butcher shop in Philadelphia in those days played about the same part in local politics as did the saloon in New York City. Such a station became the headquarters of political gossip and the meeting ground of a political clique; and so Widener, the son of a poor German ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... his chin, bit off a chew of tobacco, stretched himself and said: "Well, I have been lending money all my life, and I don't see why I should stop now. Did you ever hear of anybody paying back borrowed money except in a poker game? I never did. Do people really pay back? I don't know what the custom is over in the part of the country you came from, but the rules are very strict here, and they are not violated very often—they rarely pay back. And they never violate the ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... almost automatically. After a moment he laid down the poker, and drew the chair with her in it close to the fender. Then he picked up the cloak and put it about her shoulders, and finally ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... certain boys is peculiar to certain schools. But I concluded later that it might have a remote and roundabout origin in the old army slang, "a spruce hand" at "brag"—the latter being a variant of the game of poker, and a spruce hand, apparently, one which, held by a bluffer, contained cards of ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... justice, and inflict excessive punishment and place burdens upon human beings which they are unable to bear. One afternoon in the city of Emporia ten tramps were arrested and thrown into the county jail. During the succeeding night one of these persons thrust a poker into the stove, and heating it red hot, made an effort to push the hot iron through the door, thus burning a large hole in the door-casing. The next morning the sheriff, entering the jail, perceiving what this vagrant had done, was displeased, and tried to ascertain which one of the ten was guilty ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... a man of prodigious strength; he could bend a strong iron poker over his arm, and had frequently straightened an ordinary horse-shoe in its cold state with his hands. He could also squeeze the blood from the finger ends of any one who incurred his anger. He was an habitual drunkard, his greatest ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Hartland enumerates the following procedures as having been in use, according to legend, to determine the justice of the suspicion: Flinging the child on a dung-heap; putting in the oven; holding a red-hot shovel before the child's face; heating a poker red-hot to mark a cross on its forehead; heating the tongs red-hot to seize it by the nose; throwing on, or into, the fire; suspending over the fire in a pot; throwing the child naked on the glowing ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... action of hot water, grow soft. She was certain of that. Whether she tested them with the poker, or with her hands or feet, we never knew. I inclined to the last suggestion. The situation was quite marvelous. Here was an alleged worker, in a particular field, asking the wages of skilled labor, and densely ignorant of every detail ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... time for them. The distinction he had enjoyed as the champion poker-player in 2 C. began to wane as his popularity with the ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... slob on that bridge whist thing, plain poker being the only game with cards that ever coaxes my dough from the stocking, but I'll do the advice gag if it ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... heavy iron poker which he found in the cabin, Rosenblatt had battered off the sash and the frame of the window, enlarging the hole till he could get his head and one arm free; but there he stuck fast, watching the creeping flames, shrieking prayers, entreaties, curses, while down upon the slope swayed the two ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... said, the Germans think of us as a land of dollars, trusts and corruption; and other nations think of us as devotees of the cocktail and of poker. Their school boys dream of fighting Indians in Pittsburg and hunting buffalo in the deserts of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... the ledger, the ink, the pen and the money was as exasperating as their taking out had been. Then Jos, always too large for the room, crossed the tiled floor and mended the fire. A poker was more suited to his capacity than a pen. He glanced about him, uncertain and anxious, and then crept to the door near the foot of the stairs and listened. There was no sound; and that was curious. The woman who was bringing into the world the hero's child made ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... the poker room upstairs, that same private room which had seen many a big game in its day between the big cattle kings and mining men of the Southwest, Bucky's host ordered refreshments and then unfolded ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... please! I never could bear a man standing over me, as if he had swallowed a poker. Why did she go off and leave Phil? Where did she go to? I told you I went off on my own hook to that horrid place where they lived, and knocked up the old clergyman and the woman who wanted me to put on ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the hand he placed the roll of papers in the very centre of the glowing fire. Mrs. Luttrell uttered a faint cry, and struggled to rise to her feet, but she had not the strength to do so. Besides, it was too late. With the poker, Dino held down the blazing mass, until nothing but a charred and blackened ruin remained. Then he laid down the poker, and faced Mrs. Luttrell with a ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... which rang clearly and mellowly on your ear, leaving behind it an expression of candor, light-heartedness, and good nature, that could not be mistaken. "It's idle talk to speak about going such a day as this," observed the beetle-browed man, who stirred up the fire with something that passed for a poker, in reply; "and to tell you the truth, upon my credit, Mr. M'Loughlin, I'm not sorry that we happened to meet. You're a man I've a sincere regard for, and always had—and on that account—well have something more to drink." So saying, he stamped upon the floor, which, was exactly over ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... more abject than the union of elaborate and recherche arrangements with an old and obvious point? The clown with the red-hot poker and the string of sausages is all very well in his way. But think of a string of pate de foie gras sausages at a guinea a piece! Think of a red-hot poker cut out of a single ruby! Imagine such fantasticalities of expense with such a tameness and ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... no attempt to speak to Myra alone on the first night aboard, and joined a party of men playing poker in the smoking-room, in ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... question impossible to answer. Of course it is impossible to answer it in terms of ships and guns; but an approximate estimate may be reached by considering the case of a man playing poker who holds a royal straight flush. Such a man would be a fool if he did not back his hand to the limit and get all the benefit possible from it. So will the United States, if she fails to back her hand ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... began to dream; he dreamed that his feet and legs were becoming uncomfortable as a result of Sam Williams's activities with a red-hot poker. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... suggested a game to pass the time until mail arrived, and the well-worn deck was produced. Billy was sitting on my right hand and held cards that ought to have cleaned up, but he seemed to have lost the first instinct of a poker player, and I couldn't refrain from telling him he ought to confine himself to checkers. He whispered to me, "Reg, I can't get that out of my head." ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... Caysar was alive to-day he'd be doin' a lockstep down in Joliet. He was a corner loafer in his youth an' a robber in his old age. He busted into churches, fooled ar-round with other men's wives, curled his hair with a poker an' smelled iv perfumery like a Saturday night car. An' his wife was a suspicyous charackter ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... why you ask such silly questions," retorted the Lefthandiron. "What do we sit on? Why, you might just as well ask a dog what he barks with, or a lion what he eats his breakfast with—and that would be as stupid as the Poker's poem on Sandwiches." ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... Jack Hamlin at draw-poker, over at Wingdam last night," returned the other, pensively, "but I don't calkilate to ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... out, and at one o'clock only a few inveterate poker-players and one or two young fellows who were still "bucking" the roulette wheel remained and, calling one of his men to take charge, Haney nodded to Williams and they ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Poker players may be interested in Mr. Mencken's revelation that "ante" came into our language through ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... "Oh dogs!" said he; "the evil dogs!" He sat down near the door, and commenced sobbing like an aged woman. One observed, "Why don't you attend the sick, and not sit there making such a noise?" He took up the poker and laid it on them, mimicking the voice of the old woman. "Dogs that you are! why do you laugh at me? You know very well that I am so sorry that I am nearly out ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... bridge a bit, and though I don't care for games much, I learned to play pretty well with my morphine-fiend and his mother, so of course I did, and the old gentleman and I played the young couple, and Madam Elton crocheted, sitting up straight as a poker on ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... and heard the low thunder of ninepin balls, and the crash of tumbling pins from those precincts? The little ghost said, Never! It cannot be. But it was. "Have they a billiard-room in the upper story?" I asked myself. "Do the theological professors take a hand at all-fours or poker on weekdays, now and then, and read the secular columns of the 'Boston Recorder' on Sundays?" I was demoralized for the moment, it is plain; but now that I have recovered from the shock, I must say that the fact mentioned seems to show a great advance in common sense ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... kind of you to want to save my old desk, Maurice," jeered his companion; "but I had the misfortune to put the poker through the bottom of it before I called you, so that I'm afraid it really isn't ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... in the open, on the fringes of the Bad Lands, where recognition was to be feared from every passer-by, and where, if caught, he would do well and wisely to use his own automatic upon himself! And he must go deeper still, into the heart of gangland, to reach that room in the basement beneath Poker Joe's gambling hell where the Magpie lived—or, rather, burrowed himself away in those hours that were miserly ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... plunged into the door, and finding the young bride in possession, cleaning out the leaves, attacked her with great fury. Not being able to get her rifle, she defended herself with a club that had been cut for a fire poker. At length giving the bear a lucky blow, she seized her rifle and leaped out the cottage door, and only had time to bring it to her face before the young bear leaped out after her. Her rifle was quickly brought to bear upon him. A flash and a report, and the young bear lay dead at her feet, with ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... is a porter—opened the door, and with my most vexed air I told him how, in pulling out my handkerchief, I had dropped a twenty-franc piece in the drain, and begged him to lend me something to try to get it out. He lent me a poker and took another himself, and we got the money out with no difficulty; I began to jump about as if I were delighted, and begged him to let me treat him to a ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... the 'White Horse Cellar' is, of course, uncomfortable," he writes; "it would be no travellers' room if it were not. It is the right-hand parlour, into which an aspiring kitchen fire-place appears to have walked, accompanied by a rebellious poker, tongs and shovel. It is divided into boxes for the solitary confinement of travellers, and is furnished with a clock, a looking-glass, and a live waiter, which latter article is kept in a small kennel for washing glasses in a corner ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... Amelia took the poker, and amused herself by dashing the coals apart, and watching the flashing, dancing flames. The fire seemed to embrace her whole figure, and threw a rosy shimmer over her wan and fallen cheeks. She gazed deep down into the glowing coals, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Later, at Constantinople, Peter, was suffering from remorse over neglected opportunities, from prickly heat, and from fleas. And it not been for the moving-picture man, and the poker and baccarat at the Cercle Oriental, he would have flung himself into the Bosphorus. In the mornings with the tutor he read ancient history, which he promptly forgot; and for the rest of the hot, dreary day with the moving-picture ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... He snatched the poker from the fire, and the next moment I heard a crashing of glass, but of course I could not see what was going on. Mine was no grand way of fighting, but what was dignity where John was in danger! For the moment I had the advantage, ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... sharply as he spoke, but long sessions at poker in the San Francisco Press Club had taught me how to control my facial muscles, and I never batted an eye. He ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... as the Avalanche," she began the moment she had shut the door behind her and faced the questioning eyes that commanded her to stand and deliver. "He's straight, too, but not so poker-stiff as Mrs. Ramrod. He's got a big haw-haw voice, and scrubs every word he says with a tooth-brush before he says it. His hands are as white—as white; and they're cleaner than Crosby Pemberton's. He's got a tan shirt on, plaited in front, and every time Aunt Anne moves he's up like a jumping-jack ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... tactful way. Let him think we've nothing but his welfare at heart; that we love him too much to stand in his way; that it's breaking our hearts to lose him. Still, if he can better himself we'll have to stand the pain. You're an old poker-player, Mac; you know how to ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... equivalent, for popular purposes, of that appeal to the average which in England is sentimentality. Compare, for instance, the admirable story "Boule de Suif," perhaps the best story which Maupassant ever wrote, with a story of somewhat similar motive—Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." Both stories are pathetic; but the pathos of the American (who had formed himself upon Dickens, and in the English tradition) becomes sentimental, and gets its success by being sentimental; while the pathos of the Frenchman ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... between his lips. Emmy looked again at the clock. She had the listening air of one who awaits a bewildering event. Once she shivered, and bent to the fire, raking among the red tumbling small coal with the bent kitchen poker. Jenny began to whistle again, and Emmy impatiently wriggled her shoulders, jarred by the noise. Suddenly she could bear no longer the whistle that pierced her thoughts and distracted her attention, but went out ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... stones be struck together under the water, they may be heard a mile or two by any one whose head is immersed at that distance, according to an experiment of Dr. Franklin. If the ear be applied to one end of a long beam of timber, the stroke of a pin at the other end becomes sensible; if a poker be suspended in the middle of a garter, each end of which is pressed against the ear, the least percussions on the poker give great sounds. And I am informed by laying the ear on the ground the tread of a horse may be discerned at a great distance in the night. The organs of hearing ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... and I were sitting in a corner at Bowler's when we heard a Greaser—a Mexican, you know—that Parker had refused to play poker with the night before ask who the senorita was that had taken the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... raced the two men, and into the kitchen. There they found Patty standing on a side table, armed with a long poker, while Mona danced about on the large table, brandishing a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. Patty was in paroxysms of laughter at Mona's antics, but Mona herself was in terror of her life, and yelled like a ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... one thing, and Harry another, and at last they gave up guessing. 'Unless,' said Harry, 'it is the fender, or the poker.' ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... and augmented when possible their well-established reputation for recklessness. About the soiled tables the fringe of bleared faces and keen hawk-like eyes was more closely drawn. The dull rattle of poker-chips lasted longer, frequently far into the night, and even after the tardy light of morning had come to the rescue of the ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the first Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he had committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the Everards' to go ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... been found by experiment that, in order to turn 1 lb. of water into vapour, as much heat must be used as is required to melt 5 lbs. of iron; and if you consider for a moment how difficult iron is to melt, and how we can keep an iron poker in a hot fire and yet it remains solid, this will help you to realize how much heat the sun must pour down in order to carry off such a constant supply of vapour from ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... man, tall, of commanding presence and smart clothes. His white mustache was the epitome of close-cropped neatness. When he lost money at poker his brown eyes held exactly the same twinkle as when he won, and it was current among the young men that he had played greatly in his day—great games for great stakes. Sometimes he had made heavy winnings, sometimes he had faced ruin; ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and again, they ain't big enough to fight the outfit, and the quicker they git out the less lead they'll carry under their hides when they do go. What they want to try an' hang on for, beats me. Why, it's like setting into a poker game with a five-cent piece! They ain't got my sympathy. I ain't got any use for a damn fool, no way yuh look ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... to do on board. The few books we had between us were passed round and read over and over again. Some were also sent over from the Wolf for us. Card games of various kinds also helped to pass the time, and the Captain and some of the prisoners held a "poker school" morning, afternoon, and evening in the saloon. But time, nevertheless, dragged very heavily. Some of us had occasionally to carry our mattresses and beds out on to the deck, to hunt for bugs, which were very numerous in some cabins. But the pastime was hardly one ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... burned papers on the top and in the bottom; there lay a bundle of papers on the top that were about half burned, with a piece of pink tape around them; I put on the cover again; they were partly smothered, going out; Mrs. Haggerty had a poker stirring up the papers on the top and underneath, where the ashes were; the bottom of the range was full of burning papers, and Mrs. Haggerty had the poker stirring them up so that they would burn faster; from ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... are wrong about that, of course. Women do not read the love stories in the magazines. They read the poker-game stories and the recipes for cucumber lotion. The love stories are read by fat cigar drummers and little ten-year-old girls. I am not criticising the judgment of editors. They are mostly very fine men, but a man can ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the west, through the hole that served the hut for a chimney, and I rose to go back to Billy Jones. For I dreamed there was a gang of men in a cellar under the very hut I slept in, with a business-like row of wolf-bait bottles at their feet, where they sat squabbling over a poker game. But as I said, it was the waning morning moon that woke me, and the hut was silent as the grave. I picked up the pine-bough bed I had slept on and carried it into the bush with me far enough to throw it down ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones |
