"Pack of cards" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Paulette had shot at on the La Chance road; for there was not a mark on him, and a fool could have told he had just been drowned in Lac Tremblant. There was nothing in his pockets to tell how he had got there: only a single two-dollar bill and a damp pack of cards in a wet leather case. Thompson's solitaire cards! Somehow the things gave me a lump in my throat; I wished I had talked more to Thompson in the long evenings. The letter in my pocket from him was Dudley's, and I did not mention it to Billy. I said I would try ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... excellent coffee, with cream, from our cow. Being milked at night, cream was thus had in the morning. Our mid-day halt was at Wyeth's creek, in the bed of which were numerous boulders of dark, ferruginous sandstone, mingled with others of the red sandstone already mentioned. Here a pack of cards, lying loose on the grass, marked an encampment of our Oregon emigrants; and it was at the close of the day when we made our bivouac in the midst of some well-timbered ravines near the Little Blue, twenty-four miles from our camp of the preceding night. Crossing the next morning a number of ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... tea-tray was taken away, as it was at last, Mr Jonas produced a dirty pack of cards, and entertained the sisters with divers small feats of dexterity: whereof the main purpose of every one was, that you were to decoy somebody into laying a wager with you that you couldn't do it; and were then immediately to win ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... horses and sat down one on either side of a great flat rock. The Bart took a pack of cards out of his tunic, and I had only to see him shuffle to convince me that I had no novice to deal with. We cut, and the deal ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to view the situation quickly, as there were only twenty minutes to go. Hardly had I left the machine than a "whizz-bang" fell and struck the parapet immediately above the ladder, tumbling the whole lot of sandbags down like a pack of cards. ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... out some chairs and took up a pack of cards, threw them aside and took a clean pack off of the mantlepiece. "Now you try first," motioning to Phillipa. "Why I can see by your face there's lots of fortune coming to you. You're the kind of girl men ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... have a game of cards," the friend at last remarked, during a pause in the conversation; at the same time going to his trunk and producing a pack of cards. ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various
... corner close by, three or four young labourers at their mid-day rest have finished their frugal repast of bread and beans, and are now playing eagerly the popular game of zecchinetto with a frayed and grimy pack of cards. Wives or sweethearts watch with anxious faces from a respectful distance, for it is not meet to disturb the lords of creation when they happen to be engaged in a game of chance. What possibilities of farce and tragedy ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... you have sent for a fly! how very thoughtful of you! did you ever forget any thing, I wonder? I was—no—not dreading my drive home; but now I am quite looking forward to it. Why did you not bring a pack of cards? we might have ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... McNally rose and went to the bed, where his bag lay open. He rummaged a moment, then returned with a pack of cards. ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... of the alphabet, provided he can but slip the cards, snap his fingers, and utter the unintelligible jargon of 'presto, passa, largo, mento, cocolorum, yaw' like this Jonas. The moment he comes into company, and takes up a pack of cards, he begins, "I am no common slight-of hand man; the common slight-of-hand men, they turn up the things up their sleeves, and make you believe their fingers deceive your eyes. Now, sir, you shall draw one card, two cards, three cards, ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... their dresses to-day with little ceremony, and hitched them together anyhow. Conny caught up a tambourine and Patty a worn-out pack of cards, and they clattered down the tin-covered back stairs. In the lower hall they came face to face with Miss Jellings, clothed in cool muslin, and in a more affable frame of mind. Patty never held her grudges long; she had ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... other children; I can see her now rushing away from me, her long plaits striking against her waist. But although this was all that passed between us, we both had a feeling as of a mysterious link connecting us. It was delightful to meet. She gave me a pink. She cut a Queen of Hearts out of a pack of cards, and gave it to me; I treasured it for the next five years ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... all needful weapons. And he pulled out his valise, and spread on the table a pair of navy revolvers, a pair of shot-guns, a pair of dueling swords, and a couple of bowie-knives. He offered to serve as second for both parties, and to give the word when to begin. He also took out of his valise a pack of cards and a bottle of poison, telling them that if they wished to avoid carnage they might cut the cards to see which one should take the poison. Then he waited anxiously for their reply. For a little space there ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... of it," replied 'Number One' significantly. "There are a lot of gold coins and dollars scattered about in the bottom of the boat, besides an open bundle containing a collection of watches and other jewellery; and, from the greasy pack of cards lying alongside these, I fancy they must have been playing for the plunder and quarrelled about ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... the long table, laid out as it was for the marriage-feast, into a chaos of splinters, tablecloth, and knives and forks. The Restauration Kueche on the other side was in flames, so was the stable of the hotel to the left rear. In this pleasing situation of affairs George produced a pack of cards and coolly proposed a game of whist. Kuester, de Liefde, and Hyndman joined him; and the game proceeded amidst the crashing of the projectiles. Silberer and myself took counsel together and agreed that the occupation of ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... pack of cards from the chimney-piece, "we can in the mean while have a quiet game ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to understand why these good folk continued to play with yesterday's pack of cards and shuffle them on a threadbare tablecloth, and how it was that they had ceased to dress for themselves or others. He saw the glimmerings of something like a philosophy in the even tenor of their perpetual round, in the calm of their methodical monotony, in their ignorance of the refinements of ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... not hang at all heavily on her hands; there was always an errand or two to be done for auntie, and always a pack of cards and a library book with which to fill the evening. Susan really enjoyed the lazy evenings, after the lazy days. She and Mary Lou spent the first week in April in a flurry of linens and ginghams, making shirtwaists for the season; for ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... the statues of CHARLES VI, and of JANE of Burgundy. The former being struck by a coup de soleil, became deranged in his intellects and imbecile, after having displayed great genius; he is represented with a pack of cards in his hand to denote that they were first invented for that prince's diversion. The latter was Dutchess of BEAUFORT, wife to the Duke, who commanded the English army against Charles VII, and as brother to our Henry IV, was appointed regent of France, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... candle-box can be brought in by two men and a million of property dumped out on a table, an immediate accounting of assets is not difficult. Once their value is fixed by the referee they can be dealt to those interested as easily as a pack of cards. ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... if all the knowledge in the world had flashed into his head quicker than the hand of legerdemain could run the leaves of a pack of cards through its fingers. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... he exclaimed. "We'll kill the time as our cabin-passengers used to kill it at sea." He looked over his shoulder at Mr. Bishopriggs. "Waiter! bring a pack of cards." ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... a single chess-board and a single pack of cards. Sometimes as many as twenty of us would be playing dominoes for love. There were feats of dexterity, puzzles for the intelligence and a regular daily competition to guess the vessel's progress; at twelve o'clock when the result was published ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... a dirty pack of cards; among them I saw a girl who appeared to be very young and very pretty, decently clad, and resembling her companions in no way, except in the harshness of her voice, which was rough and broken as though it had performed the office of public crier. She looked at me closely as though ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... but talked much about whist. We met by chance at Grindelwald, and agreed to climb the Faulhorn together next morning. Half-way up we rested, and I strolled on a little way by myself to gain a view. Returning, I found him with a "Cavendish" in his hand and a pack of cards spread out before him on the ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... Alice, so please your Majesty," said Alice very politely; but she added, to herself, "Why, they're only a pack of cards after all. I ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... It is a colonial expression, meaning that something is prepared with an object. If you 'ready up' a racehorse, you are preparing to lose, or if you 'ready up' a pack of cards, you prepare it for dealing ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... of the youngsters are bad imitations of the sports of the white. Just as their fathers find joy in a greasy, blackened, imperfect pack of cards, throwing them down with significant gestures, but in absolutely perfect ignorance of the rules of any game or capacity to appreciate any number greater than three—so do the children make believe to play cricket ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... everything from roulette to monte, but fortune's wheel had turned steadily against him. It was truly the devil's own luck and no mistake. If only the luck would turn, he would quit the game of chance forever—cast off the ungrateful Dolores, and.... He drew a much-worn pack of cards from his breast pocket and began cutting them with a dexterity acquired through long years ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... a jenny for carding the lace. There was a pack of brown cardboard squares, a pack of cards of lace, a little box of pins, and on the sofa lay a ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... came to diminish the ardor of their combat, the crowd would begin to dwindle away. The judges quick to understand the loss of trade after vainly trying to induce the litigants to new efforts, would gently and suggestively push under their hands a pair of dice boxes or a pack of cards and the dispute would sometimes end upon the throw of a die or ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... much even the better order of them will endure, without a thought of the defensive, when the person afflicting them is protected from satire, we read in Memoirs of a Preceding Age, where the vulgarly tyrannous hostess of a great house of reception shuffled the guests and played them like a pack of cards, with her exact estimate of the strength of each one printed on them: and still this house continued to be the most popular in England; nor did the lady ever appear in print or on the boards as the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said Marmaduke eagerly, and the Giant put him on a shelf of the Earth close to his head. Then Marmaduke took from his pocket a little pack of cards and shuffled them. He explained the rules very carefully—Old Maid it was—and then dealt them to Ping Pong, Sing Song and Ah See, for they joined in the game, and to the Giant. In those thirty-foot fingers ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... myself, and, it being too late now to go to the theatre, I condescended to say—addressing the northwest corner of the ceiling—that "seven up" was a capital game. Upon this hint the Admiral disappeared, and returned shortly with a very dirty pack of cards. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... officers, having a little money hidden about him, bought a pack of cards from an English soldier, and we passed most of our time playing; but it was poor work, for we had nothing to play for. At last, I said to myself, 'Patrick O'Neil, there must be an end of this or your brain will go altogether. It is not worth much at the best of times, or it would ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... their first introduction. I see that Mr. Caton exhibited at one of the meetings of the Archaeological Institute this season a curious little volume of small county maps, numbered so as to serve as a pack of cards (described more fully in the Archaeological Journal for September, 1850, p 306.), and which I regret I did ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... of yarn in the dusty corners; a half-used broom; other heaps of yarn on the old toppling desk covered with dust; a raisin-box, with P. Teagarden done on the lid in bas-relief, half full of ends of cigars, a pack of cards, and a rotten apple. That was all, except an impalpable sense of dust and worn-outness pervading the whole. One thing more, odd enough there: a wire cage, hung on the wall, and in it a miserable pecking chicken, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... purse from his pocket, or to take a lady's watch from her side, without being perceived of any (an excellence in which, without flattery, I am persuaded you have no superior), than to cog a die or to shuffle a pack of cards? Is not as much art, as many excellent qualities, required to make a pimping porter at a common bawdy-house as would enable a man to prostitute his own or his friend's wife or child? Doth it not ask as good a memory, as nimble ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... the pack of cards in a slow, deliberate fashion—and then she uttered a kind of low hoarse cry, and mixed ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... stand badly in need of being killed. Turn your attention to them. But if any trouble should arise between any two of you, come to me. There has been enough of this kind of scandal about us lately, and therefore for the future we will do the thing quietly with a pack of cards, or, if you prefer it, with dice. The man who loses can—go. There is the river, or for choice, his own pistol. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... Alice, so please your Majesty," said Alice boldly, for she thought to herself "why, they're only a pack of cards! I needn't be afraid ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... They knew it from the A, B, C of the dream book to the post-graduate work of projecting from a cabinet the spirits of the dead. As the occasion offered and paid best, they were mind readers, clairvoyants, materializing mediums, test mediums. From them, a pack of cards, a crystal globe, the lines of the human hand, held no secrets. They found lost articles, cast horoscopes, gave advice in affairs of the heart, of business and speculation, uttered warnings of journeys ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... from the inn the timeworn pack of cards, thick with the grease of five years' contact with half-wiped-off tables, started a game ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... continually moved and fingered his increasing chips. The Governor was still looking out of the window, where he could see far up the street, when Wingo won the last hand, which was small. "That ends it, suh, I suppose?" he said to Hewley, letting the pack of cards linger in his grasp. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... of interest that are worth notice. The Clover is one of the plants that claim to be the Shamrock of St. Patrick. This is not a settled point, and at the present day the Woodsorrel is supposed to have the better claim to the honour. But it is certain that the Clover is the "clubs" of the pack of cards. "Clover" is a corruption of "Clava," a club. In England we paint the Clover on our cards and call it "clubs," while in France they have the same figure, but ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... with a groan and turned to his desk, moved by a desperate hope that he could force himself to appreciate the reality of the interests those piled envelopes represented. He seized them feverishly, and began to shuffle them over like a pack of cards. His random glance was arrested by a thin, wavering hand he knew well, scrawled on an envelope that bore the picture and name of a New York hotel. Had he been a student of chirography, he might have read the secret of the enigma that tormented ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... James to his daughter doubtfully. But the Englishman was fingering a pack of cards with seeming nonchalance, and Genevieve met her father's glance with a quiet smile. He shook his head, and went out with ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Richard Jones, and with him went (mounted upon a strong horse) into Wales upon what in the canting dialect is called "the Passing Lay," which in plain English is thus: They get countrymen into an alehouse, under pretence of talking about the sale of cattle, then a pack of cards is found as if by accident, and the two sharpers fall to playing with one another until one offering to lay a great wager on the game, staking the money down, the other shows his hand to the countryman, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... glasses of wine, and a bumper was poured out for my lady. When we retired, she took from her work-drawer an enormous interminable piece of knitting; the young ladies began to play at cribbage with a dirty pack of cards. We had but one candle lighted, but it was in a magnificent old silver candlestick, and after a very few questions from my lady, I had my choice of amusement between a volume of sermons, and a pamphlet on the corn-laws, which Mr. Crawley had ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the trooper turned to the table and snatched the pack of cards from Matthews' hand. He held up one, pointing at its back; snapped it down; pointed at a second, then scattered the pack in ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... "A pack of cards being scattered in the room, if his master have previously selected one of them, the dog will find it out and bring it ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... been only too thankful to repair it, but he could only put the difference between himself and the early evolutionists clearly before his readers at the cost of seeing his own system come tumbling down like a pack of cards; this was more than he could stand, so he buried his face, ostrich-like, in the sand. I know no more pitiable figure in ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... is the same thing. I, too, had my canonical hours, in the quarters of the life-guard: a cigar was the censer; a pack of cards, the hymn-book; and there were never wanting other devotions and exercises of a ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... them and the real things. Especially was this true of the furniture and flowers like that which had been in her apartments. There were great ebony chairs with fantastically marked marble seats, cabinets, and all the furniture necessary for her use. Among these things I noticed on the table a pack of cards and a set of dice, of which she had been very fond, and a chair like the one in which the eunuchs had carried the crippled old Princess about the court, and I said to the young Princess ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... table several respectable members of the Hightown Church, including the parson, were gathered with intense and eager faces playing poker, and behind the parson, with his hands in his pockets, carelessly lounged the doctor's patient, the picture of health and vigor. A disused pack of cards was scattered on the floor, and before the gentle and precise Mrs. Rivers was heaped a pile of beans that would have filled ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dinner, we started with a bedding and a Hookah and a pack of cards and a big lamp. We made the bed (a mattress and a sheet) on a platform on the bank. There were six steps, with risers about 9" each, leading from the platform to the water. Thus we were about 41/2 feet ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... the pistols on the table, the ones I gave you as we came on shore. Side by side, Brutus. The silver mountings look well against the dark mahogany. Do they not cheer you, Jason? And now, Brutus, a pack of cards from the bookshelves. It will be a pretty game, Lawton, as pretty a game as ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... to their feet, and Mrs Forbes stared with gratified amazement. The place was crowded with signs of intellectual labour, and not even a pack of cards was visible. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Felicie had taken from the mantelpiece the pack of cards with which her mother played every night, and was spreading them ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... promptly in his chair, slapped his palm on the waiting pack of cards, and cut for the deal while Vaniman was throwing ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... falls faint—and dreams her ball. Whereupon our authentic magician, coming to his own, lifts a curtain of her queer little mind and gives us an all too short glimpse of the state function, with an h-dropping, strap-hanging King and Queen out of a pack of cards; their disdainful Prince, who is none other, of course, than our policeman done into a bewigged Monsieur Beaucaire; a moody and peremptory Peer, Lord Times; the Censor (black-visored, with an axe); a grotesquely informal Lord Mayor; a bevy of preposterous revue beauties with their caps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... made misdeals, and became generally mixed. His embarrassment was not lessened when Cyn mischievously informed him he had certainly found favor in the eyes of Miss Fishblate—who had called upon her the day before. He dropped the pack of cards he happened to have in his hand at the moment, all over the floor, and then dived so hastily to pick them up that his head came in violent contact with the edge of the table, and for a moment he was ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... of me. You scarcely can sit still. You blame your own rashness, in venturing to spend the afternoon with me: and now you would as soon handle burning coals as a pack of cards in my company.' ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... must have brought a pack of cards along to amuse him," answered Tortillard, in a cunning manner; "it will be a little change for him; he only plays at biting with the rats; in that game he always wins, and in the end ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... silently back to her flowerpot as though she'd forgotten us. Gootes coursed the kitchenfloor like a puzzled yet anxious hound. "Damn it, it's got to be stopped." He halfway extracted his pack of cards, then hastily withdrew his hand as though guarding the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... he said, leaning on the table with a yawn. "Oh, Lord, how tired I am!... but I shall not be able to sleep. I'm actually too tired to sleep. Have you got a pack of cards, Scarlett? or a decent cigar, or a glass of anything, or anything to show me more amusing than that nightmare of an elephant? Oh, I'm sick of the whole business—sick! sick! The stench of the tan-bark never leaves my nostrils except when the odor of fried ham or of that ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Challis came and stood behind him and examined, phrenologically, the bumps on his head, while Miss Vining, seated at his feet, read his palm, and Miss Darrell produced a dream book and a pack of cards, and carefully cast his horoscope. But, except that it transpired that he was going to take a journey, that somebody was going to leave him money, and that a dark lady was coming over the sea to trouble him, nothing particularly exciting was ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... afraid so. I had brought a pack of cards in my pocket, and I thought that, as we were a partie carre, you might have your rubber after all. But I see that the enemy's preparations have gone so far that we cannot risk the presence of a light. And, first of all, we must choose our positions. These ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... extraordinary changes in the sitting-room already noted. Only a few moments before he arrived, she had covertly brought down a piece of music, and put aside the hymn-books, and taken, with a little laugh, a pack of cards from her pocket, which she placed behind the already dismantled vase ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Cribbage differs from all other games by its immense variety of chances. It is played with the full pack of cards, often by four persons, but it is a better game for two. There are also different modes of playing—with five, six, or eight cards; but the best games use those ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... company. As a young lawyer in Kentucky, he was addicted to playing those games of mere chance which alone at that day were styled gambling. He played high and often, as was the custom then all over the world. It was his boast, even in those wild days, that he never played at home, and never had a pack of cards in his house; but when the lawyers and judges were assembled during court sessions, there was much high play among them at the tavern after the day's work was done. In 1806, when Mr. Clay was elected to the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Mexican voyages,—Carmen Viosca had burned candles and prayed; sometimes telling her beads; sometimes murmuring the litanies she knew by heart; sometimes also reading from a prayer-book worn and greasy as a long-used pack of cards. It was particularly stained at one page, a page on which her tears had fallen many a lonely night—a page with a clumsy wood cut representing a celestial lamp, a symbolic radiance, shining through darkness, and on either side a kneeling angel with folded wings. And beneath this rudely wrought ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... ostentatiously broke the seal from a new pack of cards, dexterously spreading them across the table. His hands, Gordon saw, were extraordinarily supple, and emanated a sickly odor of glycerine. His companion's were huge and misshapen, but they, too, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... vehicles were loiterers, with broad gold chains across their chest and half-closed eyes. One of them came up to Lars Peter. "Are you doing anything tonight?" said he. "There's a couple of us here—retired farmers—going to have a jolly evening together. We want a partner." He drew a pack of cards from his breast-pocket, and ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... silent North, they had yet to learn the virtue of filling the long days with small, self-imposed tasks. They had no resources, excepting a couple of dog-eared magazines—of which they knew every word by heart, even to the advertisements—and a pack of cards. There was no zest in the cards, because all their cash had been put into a common fund at the start of the expedition, and ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... annoyed, he had invited friends for that evening, and the orders given had to be attended to. So the man went off into the town and bought the playing-cards, shaking his head as he walked back. "Don't seem much now for a pack of cards," he muttered, "but I'll be bound to say they'll cost the guv'nor a pretty penny. Wonder what he'd say to me if I told him the best thing he could do would be never to make another bet and never to touch a card again. I ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... propose to deal. They must be similar in attitude and size, but no exactness is necessary in either of these respects. Then, by a simple contrivance, I make two pinholes in each of them, to enable me to hang them up one in front of the other, like a pack of cards, upon the same pair of pins, in such a way that the eyes of all the portraits shall be as nearly as possible superimposed; in which case the remainder of the features will also be superimposed nearly enough. These pinholes correspond ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... themselves but lordly, beautiful, brilliant, brave, and wise? We saw four Greeks on donkeys on the road (which is a dust-whirlwind where it is not a puddle); and other four were playing with a dirty pack of cards, at a barrack that English poets have christened the "Half-way House." Does external nature and beauty influence the soul to good? You go about Warwickshire, and fancy that from merely being born ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... inventory of the furniture. In the dining-room she found Jack the footboy collecting shillings from beneath the candlesticks on the card-tables: the two little children were sitting on the floor, the girl playing with a pack of cards, the boy drinking the dregs of a decanter of white wine.—"Poor children! Poor creatures!" said Lucy; "is there nobody ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... he called after her suspiciously. The Girl made no reply. Rance made no movement to follow her, but instead drew a pack of cards from his pocket and began to shuffle them with practiced carelessness. But when a minute had passed and the girl had not returned, he called once more, with growing impatience, to know what ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... one evening Blenkinthrope found his wife sitting in front of a pack of cards, which she ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... the Grail texts, whose attention is mainly occupied with Medieval Literature, may not be familiar with the word Tarot, or aware of its meaning. It is the name given to a pack of cards, seventy-eight in number, of which twenty-two are designated ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... it upon the beauty of the starlit sky, the music of Schubert; nothing was successful. He ended by proposing to Marya Dmitrievna a game of picquet. "What! on such an evening?" she replied feebly. She ordered the cards to be brought in, however. Panshin tore open a new pack of cards with a loud crash, and Lisa and Lavretsky both got up as if by agreement, and went and placed themselves near Marfa Timofyevna. They both felt all at once so happy that they were even a little ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... played a little while—five minutes or so—then rose and strolled over toward the front window. She seated herself, humming softly, by a table there. "Bob's late," she remarked and lazily reached across the table, opened my auction-bridge box, selected a pack of cards, and still humming began to ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... matter of fact, precisely nothing. He wished quietly that the Tr'en had seen fit to give him a pack of cards, or a book, or even a folder of tourist pictures. The Wonders of Tr'en, according to all the advance reports, were likely to be pretty boring, but they'd have been ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... behind a stone-screen in the company of selected persons and officials in brilliant uniforms. There were three special reporters here, to whom an official in a gorgeous green garb, looking very like a figure on a pack of cards, was giving information. John edged nearer to them, and as he did so, he saw that some ceremony was proceeding in ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... were Mrs. Golden's pack of cards for solitaire, her worn, brown Morris-chair, and accretions of the cheap magazines with pretty-girl covers which Mrs. Golden ransacked for love-stories. Mrs. Golden had been reading all the evening before, and pages of newspapers were crumpled in her chair, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... that hand and that same pack of cards on the table till I've had it looked over," said Ronicky Doone. "I've dropped a cold thousand to you, and you're winning it with ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... could be heard a succession of snores, produced by the National Guards, whose stomachs were outlined through the darkness in a confused fashion. On the top of the stove stood an empty bottle and some plates. Three straw chairs were drawn around the table, on which a pack of cards was displayed. A drum, in the middle of the bench, let its strap ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... But Pirate Tom was not to be imposed on by any such feeble tricks. He immediately steered the Lily slap into the nearest bank and tied her up to a tree. Then the three went on shore, with a bottle of rum and a pack of cards, and sat down at a respectful distance to await the progress of events, and to enjoy ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... Hearts were seated on their throne when they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them—all sorts of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards. The Knave was standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard him; and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... on the result, until General Wood, putting up his knife and throwing down his pine stick, drew an old pack of cards from an inside pocket of ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... in regard to dirt. They are certainly more cleanly—one good trait they have learned from association with white people, to counterbalance many vices thus acquired. But never was I more confounded than when an old woman, who brought a pair of fine fur stockings to Captain Baker, asked for a pack of cards in exchange. The captain had brought her to me to act as interpreter for him, but though the word she used sounded familiar to me I could not for the life of me remember what it meant in English until she made motions of dealing cards and said, ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... abomination of half-crown whist; and, indeed, had he been disposed to card-playing, he could not have indulged himself at Trimmerstone, for Mr. Sprout had banished almost all card-playing from the place, so that there was not a pack of cards in the parish, except two or three mutilated well-thumbed packs of quadrille-cards, which were still used by a knot of antiquated spinsters worthy of the good old days of Sacheverel and High Church. Quadrille-cards will not do for whist, for all the eights, nines, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... of the next few days was that my husband might return home, for I knew that at the first moment of his arrival the whole world of make-believe which my father and Alma were setting up around me would tumble about my head like a pack of cards. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the laudable custom of his ancestors, always keeps open house at Christmas. I learned from him that he had killed eight fat hogs for this season, that he had dealt about his chines very liberally amongst his neighbours, and that in particular he had sent a string of hogs-puddings with a pack of cards to every poor family in the parish. 'I have often thought,' says Sir ROGER, 'it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of winter. It is the most dead uncomfortable time of the year, when the poor people would suffer very much from their ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... There was a pack of cards in the house; the women tried to amuse themselves, and failed. Anxiety about Arthur preyed on the spirits of Miss Henley and Mrs. Lewson. Even the maid, who had only seen him during his last visit to London, said she wished to-morrow had come ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... invalid, I must beg your pardon for sermonising. What do you say to a game of ecarte? We must play for love, or we shall excite ourselves, and scandalise Mrs. Lavington's piety.' And the colonel pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket, and seeing that Lancelot was too thoughtful for play, commenced all manner of juggler's tricks, and chuckled over ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... are a strange folk to you, and even among us there are those who shuffle the pack of cards and read the palm when silver has been put upon it, knowing nothing... But some of us ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... roundly—standing on the defensive—that the fat old senora had a false pack of cards always ready in her ample bosom, and had cheated them in the barest manner conceivable; but yet they had no appeal, and were inclined, out of gallantry for the sex, to behave like gentlemen, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... from under his bed a bottle, a cigar, and a pack of cards, "I'm going to have some fun, and do as I used to with the fellows in town. Here's some beer, I got if of the old man at the station, and this cigar; you can pay for 'em or Tommy will, he's got heaps of money and I haven't a cent. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... said the soldier, gleefully, and pulling a pack of cards out of his pocket, he threw them on a chair and went away, returning shortly ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... while I was in Amiens the German aeroplanes came over and bombed the city. Opposite the hospital a three-story house collapsed like a pack of cards, burying seventeen people in its ruins. I saw a French airman bring down one boche by a clever feat. He evidently could not aim upward to his satisfaction, so he turned upside down, and while flying thus, brought down ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... library, whose arrangement had never been completed, irritated him. Helpless in his armchair, he had constantly in sight the books set awry on the shelves propped against each other or lying flat on their sides, like a tumbled pack of cards. This disorder offended him the more when he contrasted it with the perfect order of his religious works, carefully placed on ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... his bunk, and was lying half in it. Now, I thought to myself, he is going to take a little nap before dinner. But no; he came out again at once, holding a tattered old pack of cards in his hand. He went back to his place, and began a quiet and serious game of patience. It did not take long, and was probably not very complicated, but it served its purpose. One could see what a ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... do away with the spider's webs I did, where the shelves were looped with them and smothered. Look at all that came off of that pack of cards. ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... feeling. Here, for example, is a course that I am quite sure, if I pursue it, will land me in evil. Does the drunkard take a glass the less, because he knows that if he goes on he will have a drunkard's liver and die a miserable death? Does the gambler ever take away his hand from the pack of cards or the dice-box, because he knows that play means, in the long run, poverty and disgrace? When a man sets his will upon a certain course, he is like a bull that has started in its rage. Down goes the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... scattered magazines from a small table, and was now seated there, negligently shuffling a pack of cards ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... he was not a particularly fastidious sergeant either, but he preferred a damp towel in his roll to damp clothes on his back. Every man knows the dreary halts in camp when the rain pours outside, or the regiment is held in reserve. For times like these a pack of cards or a book is worth carrying, even if it weighs as much as the plates from which it was printed. At present it is easy to obtain all of the modern classics in volumes small enough to go into the coat-pocket. In Japan, before starting for China, we ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... impotent anger. An expression of gentleness stole over his features. The idea was suggestive. He, too, the proud, the honourable, the upright would steal, and thus punish the world. He looked into his make-up box. It contained bitter defiance, angry scorn, and a card-sharper's pack of cards. He took them out; and thus SONOGUN, the expelled atheist, made ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... agreed that Pa was a wonder, and then they got out a pack of cards and played draw poker awhile. Pa had bad luck, and when the Indian bet a lot of chips, Pa began to look the Indian in the eye, and the Indian began to quail, and Pa put up all the chips he had, to bluff ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... its back legs as he spoke, and I assure you that I was within an ace of going over. Down like a pack of cards came all my dreams as to the grand results which were to spring from my journey to Avonmouth. Yes, Bertie, I am bound to confess it: my first thought was of my own disappointment, and my second of the misfortune of my friends. He had the most diabolical ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the guard house for three days so that, hereafter, a pack of cards will remind you only of a foolish soldier,' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... itself, the attention of Mr. Gabriel Parsons was naturally directed to its inmates. In one of the boxes two men were playing at cribbage with a very dirty pack of cards, some with blue, some with green, and some with red backs—selections from decayed packs. The cribbage board had been long ago formed on the table by some ingenious visitor with the assistance of a pocket-knife and a two-pronged fork, with which the necessary number of holes had been made ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... price in money, for our more convenient support in the service of the public. It is certain that many other schemes have been proposed to me, as a friend offered to show me in a treatise he had writ, which he called, "The whole Art of Life; or, The Introduction to Great Men, illustrated in a Pack of Cards." But being a novice at all manner of play, I declined ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... hencoop, while the rest of the force went gleefully up the line to attend a ball game. I didn't count for much, while the decision in regard to the one who stayed rested in the hands of Fate. It was the manager's own pack of cards I cut. I can recall the look of sophisticated astonishment those rascals wore at my persistent bad luck. I found out afterwards that every mother's son of them had bought his ticket the day before. They had faith in that pack of cards. Most of the town had gone with them; this ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... little picture, of some famous site, town, or temple; and the player should be able to remember the district and province in which the mentioned place is situated. The latest novelty in this line is a pack of cards with pictures upon them of the Russian war vessels; and the player should be able to state what has become of every vessel named,—whether sunk, disabled, or ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... so please your Majesty," said Alice very politely; but she added, to herself, "Why, they're only a pack of cards, after all. I ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... affixed to the table, at convenient distances from each other, to mark distinctly the bets placed on each. Those who wished to play placed the amount they intended to stake on any particular card on the table. The dealer then producing and shuffling a pack of cards, placed them in a box, from which he caused them to slide one by one. He lost when the card equal in points to that on which the stake was set turned up on his right hand; but he won when it was on the left. He faithfully and gravely ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... authenticated speech. Though he courted occasions for renown, he did not seek applause. His position as a Queen's favourite in any case must have brought aversion upon him. Tarleton, as he half acted, half improvised, is said to have shuffled a pack of cards, and pointed at him, standing behind the Queen's chair, an insolent innuendo: 'See, the knave commands the Queen.' The comedian, if the story be true, could reckon upon the support of a vast body of popular malevolence. Still, as a favourite, Ralegh only shared the lot ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... whom lay on heaps of straw, asleep, or, at all events, giving no sign of consciousness; others sat in the corners of the room, huddled close together, and staring with a lazy kind of interest at the visitors; two were astride of some planks, playing with the dirtiest pack of cards that I ever happened to see. There was only one figure in the least military among all these twenty prisoners of war,—a man with a dark, intelligent, moustached face, wearing a shabby cotton uniform, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... him, and moved him so deeply that he frequently vowed to lead a better life; but his pleasures were too tempting, and he fell back again into his old habits. His father presented him with a race-horse and a pack of cards, and he became known among his youthful companions as one of the most fearless riders and the luckiest fellow at cards in the county. The good mother wept and prayed all the more, and the boy hid his cards from her to keep ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... seaman, sir," said the mate. "You can see that if you look at his fingers." He turned out his pockets as he spoke and brought to light a pack of cards, some tarred string, and a ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Division Street lay right before our eyes, and further inquiry was superfluous. Indiman's spirits had risen amazingly. "Why, it's only an elementary exercise," he said, smilingly. "Divide an East Side street by a pack of cards, and the quotient is the Queen of Spades; you simply cannot escape from the conclusion. ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of them. William Bowen did his first steering for me; a mighty good boy, too. Had a Testament in his pocket when he came aboard; in a week's time he had swapped it for a pack of cards. I know ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... but not to wear; I wear a sword, but not to slay, And ever in my bag I bear A pack of cards, ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... convictions that the day might come during his own lifetime when he—a citizen of Suburbia—might have to fight for his own hearthside and suffer the intolerable horrors of war while the roses in his garden were trampled down in mud and blood, and while his own house came clattering down like a pack of cards—the family photographs, the children's toys, the piano which he had bought on the hire system, all the household gods which he worshipped, mixed up in a heap of ruin—as afterwards at Scarborough ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... the door of the horn lanthorn, and produced from his pocket a very dirty old pack of cards, at which ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... to which we were summoned sat three Professors, none of whom acknowledged our salutations. A youngish professor was shuffling a bundle of tickets like a pack of cards; another one, with a star on his frockcoat, was gazing hard at a gymnasium student, who was repeating something at great speed about Charles the Great, and adding to each of his sentences the word nakonetz [ the English colloquialism "you know."] while a third one—an old man in spectacles—proceeded ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... table gathered up a greasy pack of cards. "Yes, it's the Weasel, all right," he said. "I'm glad he obeys orders. I told him not to show his ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... kind of poop, a botanizing shaloot that was travelling around with a tin box on his back, collecting beetles and bird-skins. Poor Thompson! this was how it happened. He was the strongest fellow I ever saw; he could tear a whole pack of cards across with his hands. That man was all muscle. He and I had paddled this botanizing creature across to an island where some marooned fellow had built a hut, and we kept a little whisky in a bunk, and used the ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... way to a cool place on the creek bank a hundred yards distant where they sat down. She then drew out of her pocket a dirty pack of cards and a bar of soap punched with holes to be used as ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... not refuse. Now,' says the hen-wife, 'you must make a bargain, that if you win they must do whatever you command them, and if they win, that you must do whatever they command you to do; this bargain must be made before the assembly, and here is a pack of cards,' says she, 'that I am thinking you ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... says:—'I have wandered through all parts of Spain, and though in many places I have scarcely been able to procure a glass of wine, or a bit of bread, or any of the first conveniences of life, yet I never went through a village so mean and out of the way, in which I could not have purchased a pack of cards.' This was in the middle of the seventeenth century, but I have no doubt it is ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... directions in serving; you just tell the chambermaid that she is to follow the waitress, and pass the sauces and the vegetables. And you have already explained carefully to the latter that she must not deal plates around the table like a pack of cards, or ever take them off in piles either. (That much at least you do know.) You also make it a point above everything that the silver must be very clean; Sigrid seems to understand, and with the optimism ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... clown standing on a platform begirt by noisy cages, and partake in a raffle for a live turkey; but fortunately I am spared the task of carrying it through the Fair, and not wishing to tempt Providence again, I content myself with trying for soap. A pack of cards is spread round a wheel with an index: round goes the wheel, and whoever has the card at which the index stops gets an orange, or if he likes to save up his oranges exchanges them for a box of soap. You get four cards ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... French creature, that had no other Christian employment but making these and suchlike, out of sheep-shanks and marrow bones. I never liked gambling all my life, it being contrary to the Ten Commandments; and mind of putting on the back of the fire the old pack of cards, with the Jack of Trumps among them, that the deboshed journeymen tailors, in the shop with me in the Grassmarket, used to play birkie with when the maister's back was turned. This is the first time I have acknowledged the transaction to a living soul; had they found me out at the time, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... couldn't kick if he got caught in his own trap. You see? Well, this morning the minister and two of the deacons called on Pa, to have a talk with him about his actions in church, on two or three occasions, when he pulled out the pack of cards with his handkerchief, and played the music box, and they had a pretty hot time in the back parlor, and finally they settled it, and were going to sing a hymn, when Pa handed them a little hymn book, and the minister opened it and turned pale and said, 'what's this?' ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... war and we sit still. Not in these days. And if it comes—Good Lord, Hilda, do you know what it means? I can't see the end, only it looks to me like being a fearful smash.... Oh, we shall pull through, but nobody seems to see that our ordinary life will come down like a pack of cards. And what will the poor do? And can't you see the masses of poor souls that will be thrown into the vortex like, like...." He broke off. "I can't find words," he ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable |
