"Shrewdly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... small fault in a maker to vse such wordes and termes as do diminish and abbase the matter he would seeme to set forth, by imparing the dignitie, height vigour or maiestie of the cause he takes in hand, as one that would say king Philip shrewdly harmed the towne of S. Quinaines, when in deede he wanne it and put it to the sacke, and that king Henry the eight made spoiles in Turwin, when as in deede he did more than spoile it, for he caused it to be defaced and razed flat to the ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... imprinted cold kisses on the paving-stones as she put them down and drew them up alternately. The chilling rain was having a good time with her scalp, and toyed soppily with her hair—her own hair. The night-wind shrewdly searched her tattered garments, as if it had suspected her of smuggling. She saw crowds of determined-looking persons grimly ruining themselves in toys and confectionery for the dear ones at home, and she wished she was in a position to ruin a little—just ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... go in the mud,' shrewdly pleaded Owen, setting Honor off laughing at Humfrey's discomfited look ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of lending overmuch credence to the fables of Giannotto, who nowadays styleth himself Giusfredi, for that he is a far greater knave than he deemeth.' So saying, he caused honourably entertain the gentleman and sending privily for the nurse, questioned her shrewdly touching the matter. Now she had heard of the Sicilian revolt and understood Arrighetto to be alive, wherefore, casting off her former fears, she told him everything in order and showed him the reasons that had moved her to do as she ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... merely expressed the opinion of one man, who would have liked to feel himself superior to her and to use her for his own ends. She was not deceived by Livius, or by anybody else. She knew that Livius was keeping watch on her, and how he did it, having shrewdly guessed that a present of eight matched litter- bearers was too extravagant not to mask ulterior designs. She watched him much more artfully than he watched her. Her secret knowledge that he knew her secret was more dangerous ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... this was fatally neglected, either from the spirit of dissension which began to prevail in the allied army, or from the indisposition of the duke of Savoy, who was seized with the small-pox in the midst of this expedition; or, lastly, from his want of sincerity, which was shrewdly suspected. He is said to have maintained a constant correspondence with the court of Versailles, in complaisance to which he retarded the operations of the confederates. Certain it is, he evacuated all his conquests, and about the middle of September quitted the French territories, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... I said, 'But his Majesty must dine.' The Princess is much upset it seems. She was greatly attached to the Prince." He looked at me shrewdly. "She valued the Prince very highly," he added, as though in correction of his ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Mark also testifies of him. But such an example, I trust, will not occur among us, because in the New Testament those who are married are forbidden to be divorced, except in such a case where one [shrewdly] by some stratagem takes away a rich bride from another. But it is not a rare thing with us that one estranges or alienates another's man-servant or maid-servant, or entices them away by flattering ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... was polite, and Henry met him half way. He had nothing to conceal, and he gave him the names of his comrades and himself. Lieutenant Bernal all the time was regarding them shrewdly. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sunrise painted out the woods and revealed barren hilltops which Casey did not know. Because he did not know them, he guessed shrewdly that he was on his way to the wilderness of mountains and sand which lies west of Death Valley. Small chance he had of hearing the shop whistles blow in Las Vegas at noon, as ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... dashed clever idea," he observed shrewdly, "'pon my word, that's bright! That's very bright! I should like to compliment the man who ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... the old man shrewdly. Dan Fowler was 56 years old—and he looked forty. It seemed incredible even to Moss that the man could have done what he had done, and look almost as young and fighting-mad now as he had when he started. Clever old goat, too—but Dan Fowler's last remark opened the hidden ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... wearing Joe's surplice, there was no doubt of that. But, Mrs. Costello wondered, how many of the nuns and girls had noticed it? She looked shrewdly from one group to another, studying the different faces, and worried herself with the fancy that certain undertones and quick glances WERE commenting upon the dress. It was a relief when Marg'ret slipped out ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... and his adherents departed on their flight from Jamestown, when some of the disaffected citizens of the town, seeing the lights in the palace so suddenly extinguished, shrewdly suspected their design. Without staying to ascertain the truth of their suspicions, they hastened with the intelligence to General Bacon, and threw open the gates to the insurgents. Highly elated with the easy victory they had ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... father to suspect and the police to find out," said Helen shrewdly. "Personally, I haven't a doubt that the strike has everything to ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... silent. Evidently he was gathering together the shreds of his courage, as his back stiffened. Willet observed him shrewdly. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... meruit. Poor rich man! he can hardly know anything of public industry in its exertions, or can estimate its compensations when its work is done. I have no doubt of his Grace's readiness in all the calculations of vulgar arithmetic; but I shrewdly suspect that he is little studied in the theory of moral proportions, and has never learned the rule of three in the arithmetic of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... capable of attaining anything,"—who knew no book but his Bible, and that by heart,—who devoted himself soul and body to the cause of his race, without a trace of personal hope or fear,—who laid his plans so shrewdly that they came at last with less warning than any earthquake on the doomed community around,—and who, when that time arrived, took the life of man, woman, and child, without a throb of compunction, a word of exultation, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... in order after a complete success, Lieutenant. Now for to-morrow—here, see this map." Larkin winked shrewdly as Cowan led them over to a detailed wall map. "The lines of departure are here. Our most advanced positions, now, as near as we can tell, are well beyond the Hindenburg Line, with the Hagen Stellung line of defense facing our troops to-morrow. Montfaucon, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... not easy, chiefly for the reason Stannard had shrewdly deduced, that the Robert Camerons took Peter and Bruce Fearing in quite as matter-of-fact a way as they took themselves. Laura even failed to discover that she was ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... been so long coquetting. Oliver had a considerable position in the House, and was, moreover, a rich man. Rich men had not, so far, been common in the advanced section of the party. Lankester, in whom the idealist and the wire-puller were shrewdly mixed, was well aware that the reforms he desired could only be got by extensive organization; and he knew precisely what the money cost of getting them would be. Rich men, therefore, were the indispensable tools of his ideas; and among his own group he who had ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shrewdly setting out their several aims, and illustrative of good moral maxims which wise heathens live by, would (I trow and trust) be somewhat better, more original—ay, and more entertaining, too—than ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... indecision, that is all they can generally do for you!—and well for them and for us, if indeed they are able "to mix the music with our thoughts, and sadden us with heavenly doubts." This writer, from whom I have been reading to you, is not among the first or wisest: he sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and therefore it is easy to find out his full meaning; but with the greater men, you cannot fathom their meaning; they do not even wholly measure it themselves,—it is so wide. Suppose I had asked you, for instance, to seek ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Capulets, had not the publishers foreseen the danger, and escaped in season.' We merely note these facts, as corroborative of a remark or two of our own, in our last issue. . . . 'An Incident in Normandy', we shrewdly suspect, is not 'from the French;' if it be, all that we have to say is, that such pseudo-rhapsodists as the writer could never by any possibility love nature. The thing is altogether over-done. ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... between the comet and pestilence, since the burning of an exhalation must tend to purify rather than to infect the air. In the following year the eloquent Hungarian divine Dudith published a letter in which the theological theory was handled even more shrewdly, for he argued that, if comets were caused by the sins of mortals, they would never be absent from the sky. But these utterances were for the time brushed aside by the theological leaders of thought as shallow ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... whole length of a warrior, a prudish-looking lady, who seemed to have touched the age of desperation, after having very attentively beheld it with her glass for some time, observed to her party, that there was a great deal of indecorum in the picture. Madame S—— very shrewdly whispered in my ear, that the indecorum ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... himself after his manner. He knew that everything would be done which could contribute to annoy and mortify Claudius, and that it would be done in such a way, with such paraphernalia of legal courtesy and mercantile formality, that the unhappy Doctor could not complain. Barker had shrewdly calculated the difficulties Claudius would have to surmount in identifying himself in a strange country, without friends, and against the prejudices of Mr. Screw, his uncle's executor. Moreover, if, after ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... not alone because they could not have as many or as pretty frocks as the other girls, but because they were constantly worried about financial affairs at home. They had both been made the confidantes of their parents to a greater degree than is customary in many families, and Betty shrewdly suspected that Norma had kept her ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... own country good enough for you?" She looked at him shrewdly. She saw the worry in his face; it was too open and too honest to make concealment ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... Tantor an E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T. And so he learned to read. From then on his progress was rapid. With the help of the great dictionary and the active intelligence of a healthy mind endowed by inheritance with more than ordinary reasoning powers he shrewdly guessed at much which he could not really understand, and more often than not his guesses were close to the mark ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... life, exists somewhere on the highlands in the vast, still unexplored interior, and his great ambition is to find them before he dies. This is the wild quest upon which he and his companions have departed, and from which I shrewdly suspect they never will return. One letter only have I received from the old gentleman, dated from a mission station high up the Tana, a river on the east coast, about three hundred miles north ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... shrewdly, and then his gray, red-rimmed eye, with its gleam of steel, caught sight of Jim and the engineer, as they came through the door of the banquet hall. With a roar of wrath he was inside, followed by six of his sailors; then his humor changed as he saw Jim ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... squint at that guide book?" queried Bolt shrewdly as he turned over the contents of a table drawer in search ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... lunch, she asked them to remove to the stoep, and in this request they seemed to find nothing strange. Finally, about five o'clock they went away, much to the relief of their hostess; not, however, before the latter had shrewdly guessed the real object of their visit, which was to find out about myself. Report had reached them that Mafeking was in the hands of the Dutch, that the only survivor of the garrison had escaped in woman's clothes, had been wandering on the veldt for days, and had finally been ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... Eve, who ever heard of wooing going on in a prison? "It is not exactly the thing," said Colonel De Land; "had you not better pay your addresses at the lady's house, like a gentleman?" A guard accompanied the prisoner; but it was shrewdly guessed that he stayed outside, or paid court to the girls in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Bleyer had guessed shrewdly that Kilmeny would drive out to the Jack Pot, put up in the deserted bunk-house till morning, and then haul the ore down to the junction to ship to the smelter on the presumption that it had been taken from the leased property. This was exactly what Jack had ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... I'm not going to any orphan-asylum, Mr. McMasters. I'm going to stay right here at home. And you are not going to get my cove lot," he added shrewdly. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... be able to stop away herself," said Mrs Hankworth, shrewdly, and laughing together, both women went out, disputing amiably as to whether Mrs Crowther would take a seat in the trap and be driven as far as the ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... by his signs, seemed to censure the conduct of his countrymen, and to commiserate the officer, being wonderfully officious to assist in getting him on board the boat: But notwithstanding this behaviour, it was shrewdly suspected that he was an accomplice in the theft, and time fully evinced the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... her own finger bowl a few days and she'll clamor for the simple life," said Kathleen shrewdly. "Oh, what a relief if the Fergusons would adopt Julia, just to keep ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the Eldest said, eying Dodeth shrewdly. "You might not be a human. You might be a snith. You look ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett
... absolutely necessary to devise some expedient; and to the French all means were alike. Some rice had been procured by way of the Elbe and the Rhine. The stocks in the warehouses of the tradesmen of Leipzig were now put in requisition, and sent off to the army; and I shrewdly suspect that no part of them was paid for. These, however, were but small privations; to relieve the general want required no less a miracle than that by which 4000 men were fed with five small loaves. The valuable stores in the city magazine had not yet been discovered. But where is the ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... trace, with but little success, however, till the present generation, I had a cousin who inherited all the family pride. He became a martyr to his devotion to the 'time-honored custom;' for alas! good old Irish whisky is as certainly among the 'things that were,' as are the Irish kings. Some have shrewdly thought that it was the only real Irish king. Well, then, it is owing to this cousin's loyalty to the usurper, or rather pretender, that I am the family chronicler. He was wonderfully ingenious; could ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... days he had often seen the narrow-shouldered man of barely medium height who, to secure his own safety, had had two brothers killed and sent another into exile, but now ruled Egypt shrewdly and prudently, and developed the prosperity of Alexandria with equal energy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the wrinkles, so that she may give to anybody but her own family the benefit of her beauty. There is the ruinously extravagant Pollia, whose passion for jewels and fine clothes runs her deeply into debt, for which, fortunately, her husband is not responsible. There is Canidia, who is shrewdly suspected of having poisoned more than one husband and who has either divorced or been divorced by so many that she has had eight of them in five years, and dates events by them instead of in the regular way by the consulships: "Let me see. That ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... then on which Elizabeth knew she could count; her own ability to keep her head, and the capacity for loyalty of the great bulk of her subjects. If either of those failed her, she would have no one but herself to blame. The former had been shrewdly tested during her sister's reign, when a single false step would have ruined her. The latter had borne the strain even of the Marian persecution—nay, of the alarm engendered by the Spanish marriage, which showed incidentally that fear of domination by a foreign power was the most deeply rooted ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the flag she flies. Then, as the hour drew on when the sun's rim Should burn a sheet of gold to herald him On Ida's snowy crest, lithe as a pard For some lord's pleasuring encaged and barred She paced the hall soft-footed up and down, Lightly and feverishly with quick frown Peered shrewdly this way, that way, like a bird That on the winter grass is aye deterred His food-searching by hint of unknown snare In thicket, holt or bush, or lawn too bare; Anon stopped, lip to finger, while the tide Beat from her heart against her shielded side— Now closely girdled went she like ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... from whom in due time they may be born as infants. It matters not whether the woman be married or unmarried, a matron or a maid, a blooming girl or a withered hag: any woman may conceive directly by the entrance into her of one of these disembodied spirits; but the natives have shrewdly observed that the spirits shew a decided preference for plump young women. Hence when such a damsel is passing near a plot of haunted ground, if she does not wish to become a mother, she will disguise herself as an aged crone and hobble past, saying in ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... FRANKLIN (shrewdly and bluntly). That's true. My father says that all the witches were not hanged on ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... vitality, and freedom; but it is no good substituting one tyranny for another. I was reading the life of a man the other day who simply could not believe that anyone could think a thing wrong and yet do it. His biographer said, very shrewdly, that his sense of sin was as dead as his ear for music—that he did not possess even the common liberty of right and wrong. That's a bad case of atrophy! You must not, of course, be at the mercy of your moods, but you must not be at the mercy of your ethical habits either. Of the ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Shirley's admiration was shrewdly sensed by his host. So after a tactful introduction to the self-absorbed merrymakers, now in all stages of stimulated exuberance, he conducted his guest on a tour ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... to prove that this Ramage belonged to the brotherhood of David Urquhart, Mure of Caldwell, and the rest of them. Where are they gone, those candid inquirers, so full of gentlemanly curiosity, so informative and yet shrewdly human; so practical—think of Urquhart's Turkish Baths—though stuffed with whimsicality and abstractions? Where is the spirit that gave ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the police and coroner arrived. After making a thorough investigation, in which they learned what had been stolen and shrewdly deduced the manner in which the robbery had been accomplished, they departed, taking with them the bodies. They were authorized by Crane to offer a reward of one million dollars for information leading to ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... giant made his den of old; For ere that steep ascent was won, High in his pathway hung the sun, And many a gallant, stayed perforce, 80 Was fain to breathe his faltering horse, And of the trackers of the deer, Scarce half the lessening pack was near; So shrewdly on the mountain side, Had the bold burst their mettle ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... you say so," said the small girl. "Fifteen a bunch," she added quickly, shrewdly increasing by a nickel the regular price of ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... When Allen whipped his head around to look at him, there was barely time to brake the heavier double to avoid a shrewdly planned collision. Halgersen, Nedda had said. He was thick-set, with heavy brows and large jaw. The type Allen had learned to associate with power and endurance ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage
... pay," says Molly after a moment. Faintly and eagerly she speaks, her hand pressing her heart to steady it in against the impulse of hope. "You can pay for that and much more—food and drink and warmth all the days of my life—and without money." Tim shrewdly glances his question, but Molly shakes her head ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fox, on thieving bent, A crafty and an old one, Most shrewdly tracked the pungent scent That eloquently told one That grapes were ripe and grapes were good ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word "artificial." Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... Faed rolled the quid in his cheek. The cards were so thumbed and tattered that by the backs of them each player guessed pretty shrewdly what the other held. Yet they went on playing night after night; the Snipe shrilly blessing or cursing his luck, the Scotsman phlegmatic as ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... this order, issued quietly but in a tone of command that brooked no opposition. Again he glanced shrewdly at the young man, and in the manager's face astonishment and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... worked out distribution together first in the drawing-room floor in Gower Street with my aunt sometimes helping very shrewdly, and then, with a steadily improving type of cigar and older and older whisky, in his smuggery at their first house, the one in Beckenham. Often we worked far into the night sometimes ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... accents of the purser's voice Dick's quick ears caught other and more sinister sounds, to wit, the persistent crackling of the ship's wireless installation, and he very shrewdly suspected that that meant something much more serious and important than "Sparks" swapping good-nights with some other operator—that, in short, it meant nothing less than that most urgent of all wireless ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... Prosopis juliflora, with a tale to tell well worth knowing. When a mesquit seems stunted, it is because its strength is withdrawn for the task of delving to find water; where a tree grows tall with goodly branches, it betokens success in reaching moisture close at hand. Thus in shrewdly reading the landscape a prospector can choose the spot where with least trouble he can sink his well. And plants discover provender in the soil as well as drink. Nearer home than Arizona we have only to ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... had no reason to reproach herself as yet for her choice. He had insisted that she should provide herself with an ample and more stylish wardrobe, and though the invitation had interested her but mildly, the effect of shrewdly-made and neatly fitting garments on her figure had been a revelation. Like the touch of a man's hand, fine raiment had seemed to her hitherto almost repellant, but it was obvious now that anything which enhanced her effectiveness could ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... have every one his friend, was anxious to conciliate him. He accomplished his purpose shrewdly—perhaps cunningly, is not too strong a word to use. Having heard that the gentleman had a very rare and valuable book in his library, he wrote him a very polite and flattering letter, soliciting the loan of it. No man could pen such an ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... of prisoners, as the Rebel guards had an affection for that style of cutlery, which led them to search incoming prisoners, very closely. The fortunate owner of this derived quite a little income of meal by shrewdly loaning it to his knifeless comrades. The shapes that we made for pieces and pawns were necessarily very rude, but they were sufficiently distinct for identification. We blackened one set with pitch pine soot, found a piece of plank that would answer for a board and purchased it from its ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... to be many points of similarity. And yet the similarity of the handling seems to throw into more vigorous relief those personal distinctions which Raeburn was so quick to seize. He was a born painter of portraits. He looked people shrewdly between the eyes, surprised their manners in their face, and had possessed himself of what was essential in their character before they had been many minutes in his studio. What he was so swift to perceive, he conveyed to the canvas almost ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inclined inward listened with the same attention, but with very different feelings—Nigel shocked at such an attack upon authority, and Aylward chuckling as he heard the sentiments of his class so shrewdly expressed. At last the stranger halted his horse outside the "Five Angels" ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he found these papers shrewdly contrived to take human beings at their weakest point, their most unguarded moment; they had the boldness of the juggler who knows the blind spot in the eyes of his spectators. They occupied a field apart from ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the other. Wilmer wondered if she had been glancing up from some flowery screen and read the story of that altered posture. She looked sharply anxious, like a mother whose child is threatened. Jerome shrewdly knew that Marshby's telltale ...
— Different Girls • Various
... sop to Providence, aren't you?" she asked shrewdly. "Throwing bread on the waters! I daresay he angled for it. You're easy, Clay. Give you a good dinner—it was a ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... give me night off t' know what ye were up to. Don't ye know nothin' about ordinances an' laws? An' I wouldn't mind havin' ye tell me why ye threw yer arms around th' lady an' kissed her,"— shrewdly. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... She looked at me shrewdly. "And there's another mysterious thing. Anthony's like a yapping sphinx over it. What were you two talking to Gedge about this ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... if it be all true, a shameful," she said when Margaret had finished. "But how comes it that if Morella desired to force you into marriage, he is now wed to your companion and cousin? What are you keeping back from me?" and she glanced at her shrewdly. ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... Sirdar and his men followed after the Khalifa the dervishes would risk a second battle. They had the legs of us, and would presumably use them to run away, or to harass us if we went after them into the wilderness. Discreetly and shrewdly the Sirdar decided to march his army straight into Omdurman, but six miles distant. We were able to move upon inside lines and over open ground, so that if the Khalifa meant to race us for the place he would have to fight at a disadvantage. The command was issued about ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... up in a bundle in one corner; and last, but by no means least, a large case resting upon a counter, in which were set out a number of swords, daggers, and poniards. There were also three long cases ranged along the base of the side and back walls of the shop, which the two visitors shrewdly suspected contained ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... politics to compensate the loss of their confidence and sympathy, that is at last his best and enduring hope. And so, without leaders or organization—and lacking the resolute heroism of my party friends in Vermont that make their hopeless march over the hills a high and inspiring pilgrimage—he shrewdly measures the occasional agitator, balances his little account with politics, touches up his mule, and jogs down the furrow letting the mad world wag as ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the former being defeated at sea and the latter failing under the city walls. The Avars, having thus shown that they were vulnerable, had to bear an attack on a grand scale made upon them by the Slovenes, this attack being more shrewdly organized than any other transaction in which the Slovenes had as yet engaged. And they still appeared to be reluctant to form even a loosely knit State; they roamed about the Balkans and the adjacent countries to the north-west, seeking for lands that were adapted to their patriarchal ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... something of love, and as much as an honest man may know, of women. He shrewdly suspicioned what she would expect the Knight to be doing. He was sorely tempted to give a fancy picture of Sir Hugh ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... of uncertainty which entered into the probability of quick pursuit, as he had shrewdly divined. It might be some time before the sheriff's predicament was discovered. Meanwhile most of the male population was scouring the vicinity of Imagination Range looking for him, and there would be no one to lead a second posse until the sheriff was liberated. There was nothing ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... shrewdly, "your grandfather knew what he was about when he put in the provision that you were to have twenty-five thousand dollars a year as a salary, so to speak. He was a far-seeing man. He knew that you would have a hard, uphill struggle before you ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... afterwards, when the latter succeeded to the office of his father, Mendez reminded him of the promise, but Don Diego informed him that he had given the office to his uncle Don Bartholomew; he assured him, however, that he should receive something equivalent. Mendez shrewdly replied, that the equivalent had better be given to Don Bartholomew, and the office to himself, according to agreement. The promise, however, remained unperformed, and Diego Mendez unrewarded. He was afterwards engaged on voyages of discovery in vessels of his own, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... seems to have spoken shrewdly when he said you did not like fighting," said a girl ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... first, may be the last, Which is a point, all must agree, Cannot depend on you or me. Fanny, no ghost of common mould, Is not by forms to be controll'd; To keep her state, and show her skill, She never comes but when she will. I wrote and wrote, (perhaps you doubt, And shrewdly, what I wrote about; 790 Believe me, much to my disgrace, I, too, am in the self-same case;) But still I wrote, till Fanny came Impatient, nor could any shame On me with equal justice fall If she had never come at all. An underling, I could not stir Without the ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... "I shrewdly suspect they don't read half what they get. Is it possible any one should go through two sheets of paper filled by our friend the Duchess there? No; their delight is in writing. They sit each at her desk after breakfast, and go on till lunch. There is a little rivalry between them, not expressed ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... out for commendation The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio, by "Jasper Denis Murphy," or the Rev. Charles Robert Maturin. Amid the chaos of horror into which Maturin hurls his readers, Scott shrewdly discerned the spirit and animation which, though often misdirected, pervade his whole work. The story is but a grotesque distortion of life, yet Scott found himself "insensibly involved in the perusal and at times ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... scarecrow, industriously patched all over—came to his assistance, turned over the ponderous code by which the little community were governed, and having rummaged out the law, and the clause under the provisions of which I had been so summarily arrested, handed it to the clerk, who I shrewdly suspected to be nothing more or less than the village barber. He, at the command of the judge, read it aloud for the information of all present, and for my especial admonition. From the contents, it appeared to have been decreed, how long ago I had no means of judging, that, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... going strong in favor of the will—at last O'Connell undertook to cross-examine one of the witnesses. He shrewdly observed that he was particular in swearing several times that "life was in the testator when the will was signed," and that he saw ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... this chamber too great for our purpose? I tell you the time will come when not this room alone but three or four such will be needed for our task. Already I have it in my mind that I will divide even this room into portions, with walls shrewdly placed through its length and breadth, so that each that worketh shall sit as it were in his own chamber and there shall stand one at the door and whosoever cometh, to whatever part of our task his business appertains, he shall forthwith ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... yellow July evening, we say, the thirteenth of the month; eve of the Bastille day,—when 'M. Marat,' four years ago, in the crowd of the Pont Neuf, shrewdly required of that Besenval Hussar-party, which had such friendly dispositions, "to dismount, and give up their arms, then;" and became notable among Patriot men! Four years: what a road he has travelled;—and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... allow Miss Monro to invite Canon Livingstone to the small teas they were in the habit of occasionally giving. Yet he persevered in his calls; about once every fortnight he came, and would sit an hour or more, looking covertly at his watch, as if as Miss Monro shrewdly observed to herself, he did not go away at last because he wished to do so, but because he ought. Sometimes Ellinor was present, sometimes she was away; in this latter case Miss Monro thought she could detect a certain wistful watching of the door every time a noise was ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... shrewdly; he was a man plainly in love with his own importance, and the priest's last words were balm ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... was quite immaterial to Mr. Camp whether he got an answer to his remarks to Hiram, or not. He went on muttering to himself, all through the meal, sometimes commenting upon what the others said at the table—and that quite shrewdly, Hiram noticed; but the other boarders considered him a ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... I suppose so," was the blushing answer. "But how should I know—any more than you do about Paul Ardite?" and she glanced shrewdly ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... The captain glanced shrewdly from one to the other. "I reckon you-alls are thinkin' now of just what I've been studyin' on. You're thinkin' of all them poor innocent birds we've killed to get them feathers. You're thinkin' of them and of the dozens ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... speakers, war is waged on the letters of the alphabet. For instance, thus they say: Presbyter to the Greeks means nothing else than elder; Sacrament, any mystery. On this, as on all other points, St. Thomas shrewdly observes: "In words, we must look not whence they are derived, but to what ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... minister it was deemed wise to look into the colonial situation. [Footnote: See in this Series 'The Great Intendant', chap. I.] Both were surprised and angered by the showing. It appeared that not only had the company neglected its obligations, but that its officers had shrewdly concealed their shortcomings from the royal notice. The great Bourbon therefore acted promptly and with firmness. In a couple of notable royal decrees he read the directors a severe lecture upon their avarice and inaction, took away all the ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... had just spent so recklessly he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his words were, he was shrewdly observing her, for her paleness and the strange light in her eyes gave him a sense of anxiety. He wondered what trouble was ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... conduct of Montgomery Brewster during the year leading up to his twenty-sixth anniversary. He required that the young man should give satisfactory evidence to the executor that he was capable of managing his affairs shrewdly and wisely,—that he possessed the ability to add to the fortune through his own enterprise; that he should come to his twenty-sixth anniversary with a fair name and a record free from anything worse than mild forms of dissipation; that his habits be temperate; that he possess nothing at ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Na, Kirsty"—and Grimond looked shrewdly at her—"I'll no say that Claverhouse isna bound to marry some day or ither, and, of course, in his posseetion it behove him to find a lady of his ain rank and his ain creed. Noo, what I'm tellin' ye is strictly between oorsel's, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... smiles and smiles—and goes her own way. She likes playing with soldiers; partly because they're good company; partly, I'll swear, because she knows it keeps her mother on tenter-hooks. But when it comes to business, she'll choose as shrewdly——" ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... so," said Kaunitz, shrewdly, "then be lenient toward the misguided people. Perhaps mildness may prevail. Belgium is united to a man, and if you enforce your will, you must crush the entire nation. Such extreme measures must be resorted to only when all other ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Dam, upon whose arm she was leaning, was one of the worst products of artificial metropolitan life. He had inherited a name which ancestry had rendered honorable, but which he to the utmost dishonored, and yet so adroitly, so shrewdly respecting fashion's code, though shunning nothing wrong, that he did not lose the entree of the gilded homes of those who called ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... whole days and nights ere they definitely gave him up for lost. He then plunged bravely into the bloody waters, swam about seeking for the monster's retreat, and dived deep. At last, descrying a phosphorescent gleam in the depths, he quickly made his way thither, shrewdly conjecturing that it must be Grendel's hiding place. But on his way thither he was repeatedly obliged to have recourse to his sword to defend himself against the clutches of countless hideous sea monsters which came rushing toward him ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... After a year's experience, I sent Cocoleu away, declaring, and certainly believing, that he was incurable. The fact is, he did not want to be cured. The country-people, who observe carefully and shrewdly, were not taken in; they will tell you, almost to a man, that Cocoleu is bad, but not an idiot. That is the truth. He has found out, that, by exaggerating his imbecility, he could live without work; and he has done it. When he was taken ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... least his usual wisdom and patience. We saw in a previous chapter (p. 33) what the political condition of Ireland was when Burke went there with Hamilton in 1763. The American war had brought about a great change. The king had shrewdly predicted that if America became free Ireland would soon follow the same plan and be a separate state. In fact, along with the American war we had to encounter an Irish war also; but the latter was, as an Irish politician called it at the time, a smothered war. ...
— Burke • John Morley
... wretchedly poor, used to let them have the remainder of "her gentlemen's" dinners at ridiculous prices. The Remonencqs would buy a pound of broken bread, crusts and crumbs, for a farthing, a porringer-full of cold potatoes for something less, and other scraps in proportion. Remonencq shrewdly allowed them to believe that he was not in business on his own account, he worked for Monistrol, the rich shopkeepers preyed upon him, he said, and the Cibots felt sincerely sorry for Remonencq. The velveteen jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, particularly ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... The First President was shrewdly attacked in the House for not being more resolute in speaking to the Queen. Some were for sending him back to demand another audience in the afternoon; and the Duc d'Orleans having said that the Marshals of France were ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... born fanatic, he proceeded to state hopeful conjecture as established fact, thereby doing homage to the spirit of delusion which so conspicuously ruled him even to his inmost thought. But a spell of cold weather in the winter of 1862 struck a little too shrewdly through Pascal's seedy overcoat, causing that tender- hearted subverter of society to cough his life out, with all possible despatch, in the third-floor back of a filthy lodging-house off ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... regulation of signs, one suggestion being that when the name of a shopkeeper or innkeeper lent itself to "an ingenious sign-post" full advantage should be taken of the opportunity. In this connection Addison offered the following explanation of the name of the Ludgate Hill inn, which, it has been shrewdly conjectured by Henry B. Wheatley, was probably intended as a joke. "As for the bell-savage, which is the sign of a savage man standing by a bell, I was formerly very much puzzled upon the conceit of it, till I accidentally fell into the reading of an old romance ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the pantry, the napkin from Agatha, in a flutter in the kitchen, and having returned to the best room, where the tutor awaited the event in some apparent trepidation, I poured my uncle's dram, and measured an hospitable glass for Cather, but with less generous hand, not knowing his capacity, but shrewdly suspecting its inferiority. The glasses glittered invitingly in the light of the fire and lamp, and the red liquor lay glowing within: an attractive draught, no doubt—to warm, upon that windy night, and to appetize for ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... his head to one side and nodded shrewdly. "As far as my experience goes, Captain, it is one of ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... quite recovered from his fatigue, was looking in fine condition. Then, returning to the inn, I ate a substantial breakfast, and, obeying Pillot's injunctions, made no attempt to start till ten o'clock. How shrewdly the little man had judged my enemies' plans was made plain almost at the instant of my passing ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... however, two excellent knife-shops in the Boulevard du Palais, where every description of stiletto may be purchased, where, indeed, the enterprising may buy a knife which will not only go shrewdly into a foe, but come right out on the other side—in front, that is to say, for no true Corsican is so foolish as to stab anywhere but in the back—and, protruding thus, will display some pleasing ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... our names be not so Call vs but wit, and wyll, adde no more thereto, yf thou doest thou were as good no We shall handle you shrewdly ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous
... showman[71]—and the Comstocks are showmen of undoubted skill. They know how to make a victim jump and writhe in the ring; they have a talent for finding victims who are prominent enough to arrest attention; they shrewdly capitalize the fact that the pursuer appears more heroic than the prey, and the further fact that the newspaper reader is impatient of artistic pretensions and glad to see an artist made ridiculous. And behind them there is always the steady pressure of ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... guards were at Whitehall. His son Arran and his brother Dumbarton were both on the other side: Arran had accompanied James to Rochester, and Dumbarton had refused to hold his commission under the Prince of Orange. Athole had more than once coquetted with the Whigs, and his present Jacobitism was shrewdly suspected to be due to the coolness with which his advances had been received: his son Lord Murray, who had married a daughter of Hamilton, had declared for William. These great noblemen had indeed the satisfaction of ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... His mother's happiness in the visit was soon over. She shortly found out that an elderly Scotch lady, one Miss Christie Grant, an aunt of the late Mrs. Daniel Mortimer, was to come in a few days and pay a long visit, and she shrewdly suspected that the attractive widower being afraid to remain alone in his own house, made arrangements to have female visitors to protect him, and hence the invitation to her. But she had to leave Peter at the end of the week, and which of ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... document could not fail to make an effect, but the Norwegian press tried hard to explain away the contents by informing the public of their wonderful discovery, that the document was of no "Constitutional importance", and shrewdly trying to prove that the Crown Prince had no legal right to make known his opinion ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... errand-boys under discussion do not read 'The Egoist' and 'The Master Builder.' It is the custom, particularly among magistrates, to attribute half the crimes of the Metropolis to cheap novelettes. If some grimy urchin runs away with an apple, the magistrate shrewdly points out that the child's knowledge that apples appease hunger is traceable to some curious literary researches. The boys themselves, when penitent, frequently accuse the novelettes with great bitterness, which is only to be expected from young people possessed of no little native ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... that followed, nobody got the better of Jared. There were itching fingers among the neighbours, and sharp wits too in the family itself, but Jared shrewdly held his own. He climbed into the saddle and stuck there. He cajoled when he could, and browbeat when he must. "No, he ain't no fool," said Cousin Jehiel, who had come up from Bainesville, with his eye on a certain harvester ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... which had been by them offered as the Consideration of the purchase." The goods purchased at Cross Creek (now Fayetteville, North Carolina), in which the Louisa Company "had embarked a large amount," met the entire approval of the Indians—the squaw in particular shrewdly examining the goods in the interest of ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... would I use my gift of tact And take a mediatorial line, But shrewdly recognise the fact That this is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... luxurious cushions, his arms folded sternly, his brows knit, and the stout gentleman at his side watched him shrewdly. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... was even worse than that of the academy, and the equipment poorer still. Upon the colonel asking to hear a recitation, the teacher made some excuse and shrewdly requested him to make a few remarks. They could recite, he said, at any time, but an opportunity to hear Colonel French was a privilege ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... his haunches, like a tremendous, overgrown black puppy, with his head tilted to one side, his ears cocked shrewdly, and a twinkle in his little dark eyes; and with one furry forepaw he would pat a thick bunch of grass till the frightened crickets came scurrying out to see what was the matter. Then he would almost fall over himself trying to scoop them all up at once—and while he was ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sky, as the early winter sun was going down in the west. It was a brisk, clear, metallic evening; the long drifts of snow blushed crimson red on their tops, and lay in shades of purple and lilac in the hollows; and the old wintry wind brushed shrewdly along the plain, tingling people's noses, blowing open their cloaks, puffing in the back of their necks, and showing other unmistakable indications that he was getting up steam for ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
