"Skilfully" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where it is lightly pounded with wooden hammers, set in motion by water power. The whole mass falls into wooden boxes attached to a long table, at which sit the negro workers, who separate the coffee from the husk, and put it into flat copper pans. In these it is carefully and skilfully turned about over a slow fire, until desiccation is complete. On the whole, says Madame Ida Pfeiffer, the preparation of the coffee is not laborious, and the harvest much more easily gathered than one ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... being carried home wounded from Boeotia, said to him, "Indeed, you are receiving nice lessons from the Thebans, now that you have taught them how to fight against their will." But their real teacher was not Agesilaus, but those who, seizing fit opportunities, and with due management, skilfully used to let them loose upon their enemies, as men train young mastiffs, and then when they had tasted victory and self-confidence brought them safely back. Of these leaders Pelopidas received the chief credit. From the year in which he was first elected general they never ceased ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... to the letter. The dogs were like imps for cunning; they would hide skilfully at the very sound of a strange footstep, and they would retrieve for miles if necessary. I may say that I have seen them at work, and I earnestly wish that Frank Buckland could ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... Adams, communication was held with the towns throughout Massachusetts. The province was greatly excited, and repeated demands for resignation were made upon the consignees, but they clung to their offices and the hope of profit. Delays were skilfully secured, and the first ship was entered at the customs, after which according to law it must within twenty days either clear for England or land its cargo. The governor was resolved not to grant a clearance, and rejoiced over his opponents. "They find themselves," ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... when the sawyers threw a tree up or down hill; how much small standing timber they tried to fell it through; what consideration held for the cutting of different lengths of log; how the timber was skilfully decked on the skids in such a manner that the pile should not bulge and fall, and so that the scaler could easily determine the opposite ends of the same log;—in short, a thousand and one little details which ordinarily a man learns only as the exigencies arise to call in experience. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... down by the police, but people seemed to expect a faction fight. There was a great force of constabulary in town, and military also. It was pointed out to me how skilfully they were posted, the military entirely out of sight, but in readiness. There were twos and threes here and there, lounging about apparently, but ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... he also confessed the stratagem by which he had secured the presence of Margherita, it was the news of Chigi's approaching marriage which determined Raphael to accede to his request. Though Agostino had worded his allusions to his betrothed so skilfully that they applied with equal fitness to either Imperia or Maria Dovizio, Raphael never doubted that he referred to the latter. The news simply confirmed the suspicions which he had long entertained, and with characteristic magnanimity, he determined to leave Maria the highest ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... needle was a development of its possibilities that no one else, even among his own pupils, has ever equaled. It was much the same with everything else: the burin of the professional engraver he handled so skilfully that it is impossible to tell where the acid or the dry-point work stopped and the reinforcing work of the graver began. When others tried to combine these methods they failed. The hand of Rembrandt was the obedient servant of his ...
— Rembrandt and His Etchings • Louis Arthur Holman
... thousand crowns donated by the Marquis de Gamache, to the founding of a school for Indian children, and a college for French boys. Father Daniel brought down the first pupil from the Huron country, when he returned to Quebec, and the interpreter Nicollet skilfully induced several other Indian families to send hostages to the Jesuit seminary. But the untamed savage drank shyly at the fountain of learning, and Father Le Jeune relates of the dusky scholars that one ran away, two ate themselves to ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... such an insult by slaying the offender; but Diego was too old and feeble to bear arms. When he finally told his son of the wrong, Rodrigo sought out Don Gomez and challenged him to fight. So bravely and skilfully did Rodrigo manage his weapons that he slew his father's enemy. Then he cut off the head and carried it ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... did Pamela, but Pamela was more tolerant and sympathetic and less ill-tempered than Nan, and observed the ways of others with quiet, ironic humour, saying nothing unkind. Pamela, when she didn't like a way of talking—when Rosalind, for instance, was being malicious or indecent or both—would skilfully carry the talk somewhere else. She could be a rapid and good talker, and could tell story after story, lightly and coolly, till danger points were past. Pamela was beautifully bred; she had savoir-faire as well as kindness, and never lost control of herself. These family gatherings ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... Here the banks sloped down more gradually, and Melissy was able to drive up one side, turn her rig so that the horse faced the other way, and draw down into the ditch again in order that the runabout could not be seen from the road. Swiftly and skilfully she obliterated the track she had made in ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... Christianity, that the new Christian elements would find themselves more at home in them than in the terrible vengeance of Lugh, the savage brutality of Conor to Deirdre, or the raging slaughterings of Cuchulain. So much was this the case that a story was skilfully invented which linked in imagination the Fenian cycle to a Christianized Ireland. This story—Oisin in the Land of Youth—is contained in this book. Oisin, or Ossian, the son of Finn, in an enchanted story, lives for 300 years, always ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... Percival, it would be better to try and wake him skilfully, so that he should not suspect that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... this very man who demands this indulgence of Laelius, to whom he is writing, and to whom he is excusing himself, uses this transposition of words, and yet does not fill up and conclude his sentences any the more skilfully. Among others, and especially among the Asiatics, who are perfect slaves to rhythm, you may find many superfluous words inserted, as if on purpose to fill up vacancies in rhythm. There are men also, who through that fault, which originated chiefly with ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... was not to be so imposed on; he took up my Queen and replaced her in the square she had been removed from. All this is done with the same readiness that a common player shews at this game, and I have often engaged with persons, who played neither so expeditiously, nor so skilfully as this Automaton, who yet would have been extremely affronted, if one had compared them to him. You will perhaps expect me to propose some conjectures, as to the means employed to direct this machine in its ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... little reception-hall leading to her dressing-room. He faced her with a sense of dread—apprehensive of some disenchantment. She met him cordially, without the slightest reference to her make-up, which was less offensive than he had feared; but he winced, nevertheless, at the vulgarity of her part so skilfully suggested by paint and powder. She gave him her hand with a frank gesture. "You didn't applaud my scenes to-night," she said, with a smile as enigmatic as the one ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... of Thorgrim good from literary point of view; poor from dramatic ditto. Composer COWEN not possessing dramatic power sufficient for two, cannot supply the want. Sestett and Chorus, end of Act II., skilfully worked up, and received with acclamation. Opera, in a general way, Wagnerish. Orchestration shows the hand of a master, Master COWEN. Local colour good, but too much local colour spoils the Opera. Mr. McGUCKIN is Thorgrim to the life; singing, acting, and make-up admirable. Miss ZELIE DE LUSSAN ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... difficult philosophy of Opinion, and the liberality with which she allowed for the distress of heathen moralists at having the sanction of Custom broken up. Margaret was thus quite occupied with the delight of seeing a great subject skilfully let down into young minds, and the others were no less busy with the subject itself, when Mary started, and said it made her jump to see Sydney bring Fairy close up to the window. Fanny imperiously bade her ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... he said, "that the people who live on the sea make better vessels, and know how to sail them more skilfully. We had a proof of that here at Vevey," (he pronounced the word like v-vais, agreeably to the sounds of the French vowels,) "last summer, which you might like to hear. An English gentleman—they ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... express any opinion as to the details of the bill; but, having during the last twenty-four hours given the most diligent consideration to its general principles, I have no hesitation in pronouncing it a wise, noble, and comprehensive measure, skilfully framed for the healing of great distempers, for the securing at once of the public liberties, and of the public repose, and for the reconciling and knitting together of all the orders ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... boy would be very skilfully stamped into conformity by Lyman Cass and his sallow daughter; but did she detest the plan for this reason? "I must be honest. I mustn't tamper with his future to please my vanity." But she had no sure vision. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... how, "with that delicacy so characteristic of him," Sewall had forbidden the miners from blasting him from his position. The account further stated that the hands of the deceased were arranged in a peculiar fashion; and the description of the arrangement was so skilfully woven in with other matters that at first, or even second, reading one might not see that the position indicated was the ancient one which begins with the thumb at the nose and in many ages has ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and skilfully constructed novel upon a subject of the greatest importance and interest at the present time,—"Trusts" and their consequences. Albion Harding, a successful and immensely ambitious financier, organizes an industrial combination which causes much suffering and disaster, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... truce was agreed upon for one day; but the day after, having protected themselves more skilfully, they again raised their war-cry, and tried on every side to scale the walls. And although the garrison, having stretched cloths before them not to be distinguished, lay concealed within the walls; still, as often as necessity ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... book on the invalid's knees, Brandes took his cue; and the conversation developed into a monologue on the present condition of foreign missions—skilfully inspired by the respectful attention and the brief and ingenious questions ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... his old Acquaintance to a Man, and all his Arts of Life, except the Play of Backgammon, upon which he has more than bore his Charges. Irus has, ever since he came into this Neighbourhood, given all the Intimations, he skilfully could, of being a close Hunks worth Money: No body comes to visit him, he receives no Letters, and tells his Money Morning and Evening. He has, from the publick Papers, a Knowledge of what generally passes, shuns all Discourses of Money, but shrugs his Shoulder ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... which he saw a navigable stream of water, and a valley so beautiful that he called it the Vale of Paradise. The day following, having tacked into a deep gulf, an Indian was seen who, notwithstanding the violence of the wind, was skilfully manoeuvring a light canoe. This Indian was invited to come on board, was loaded with presents by the admiral, and then put on shore again, at one of the harbours of Hispaniola, now called the Puerto de Paz. This kindness tended to attach ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... was not only committed by this same Rodolphe, but that he also deliberately manufactured evidence to shield himself at the expense of Bertrand, the author of the betrayed invention, against whom it seems he had a personal grudge. By the way, he managed skilfully to keep in the background at Bertrand's trial. I fancy he was away on some special mission at the time, and he did not appear. I never saw him before that day at Sandacre Court, and I did not ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... curiously subdued. He was most solicitous for our comfort and his exquisite courtesy had never been more marked. I often think of him now—his big but graceful figure reclining upon the settee, whilst he skilfully rolled his eternal cigarettes and chatted in that peculiar, light voice. Before the memory of Colonel Don Juan Sarmiento Menendez I sometimes stand appalled. If his Maker had but endowed him with other qualities of mind and heart equal to his magnificent courage, then ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... interest in the institution, the scholars and the officers, increased from year to year. Her ability in providing for and securing the comfort of all around her, always conspicuous, was eminently so in times of sickness, whether of more or less severity. On these occasions, besides her power of skilfully ministering to physical comforts, her quiet spirit, knowing where she herself had sought and found consolation, could direct others ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... skilfully—how inspiredly does this Christian poet touch upon each successive holy theme—winging his way through the stainless ether like some dove gliding from tree to tree, and leaving one place of rest only for another equally ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... had dried somewhat in the March winds. It was thought that the enemy movement would take place against the British front in some of the sectors of which there were chalk undulations, through which the rains of winter quickly drained. The Germans skilfully encouraged this idea by making an apparent preliminary attack at Lions, on a five-mile front with rolling gas-clouds and successive waves of infantry. During this feint the veritable offensive movement softly began on Saturday, February 19, 1916, when the enormous masses of hostile artillery ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... was to go to a grand hotel where there were rich people, make the acquaintance of some wealthy lady or gentleman, skilfully manage to rob the unsuspicious individuals of any money they might have with them, and then depart, letting the suspicion fall on some ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... sings out East, dancing with delight. Tom goes in in a twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows, and gets away again before the Slogger can catch his wind, which when he does he rushes with blind fury at Tom, and being skilfully parried and avoided, overreaches himself and falls on his face, amidst terrific cheers from ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... sustained him under the concussion. One by one every chance had vanished: first his private means and then his public prospects; he had lost office, and now he was about to lose parliament. His whole position, so long, and carefully, and skilfully built up, seemed to dissolve and dissipate into insignificant fragments. And now he had to break the situation to his wife. She was to become the unprepared partner of the secret which had gnawed at his heart for years, during which to her his mien had often been ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the trial they manoeuvred very skilfully, bombarding the Convention with petitions from the provinces, and sending a deputation from the insurrectional Commune of Paris, ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... that was what her chaperone concluded as she skilfully concealed her dissatisfaction with a radiant smile. She liked girls to achieve social success when they were under her wing—it was the next best thing to scoring success on her own account. But, it was ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... Josephine insisted on a romantic attachment, and pursued a visionary spouse with all the ardor and obstinacy of first-rate stupidity. Adelaide had the weakness to hate Josephine, the shrewdness to fear Madeline, and the viciousness to despise her mother; she skilfully and diligently devoted herself to the thwarting of the family. Madeline waited, only waited,—with a fierceness so dangerously still that it looked like patience,—hated her insulting bondage, but waited, like Samson ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... a game of boxing, between these two men. So the meeting adjourned to a new barn, with a rough hemlock plank floor, and the contest commenced. After boxing awhile, one of them threw the other upon the floor, and sprang upon him at full length; but the one who was underneath dealt his blows so skilfully, that his opponent soon gave in; and rolling the Holden man out of the way, he jumped up and shouted, 'There, the name is Barre!' and Barre it hasten, to this day. The next day, the man who won this victory had to call on the doctor to extract from his back the hemlock splinters he had received while ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... with the axe's blade, now with its heel Their strokes they at the head or foot address; And these so skilfully and nimbly deal, As needs must shock all credence to express. The Child, that at her brother aims the steel, Who doth his miserable soul possess, Evermore with such caution strikes his blow, That he is deemed ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... other; but Sanza, who was by far the better fencer of the two, once, twice, and again dealt blows which should have cut Banzayemon down, and yet no blood came forth. Sanza, astonished at this, put forth all his strength, and fought so skilfully, that all the bystanders applauded him, and Banzayemon, though he knew his adversary's sword to be blunted, was so terrified that he stumbled and fell. Sanza, brave soldier that he was, scorned to strike a fallen foe, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... confinement. The King, and some of his chiefs, who were at hand, immediately ran for some long grass nets, rolled upon poles, and which were about four feet wide. These they expeditiously unfolded, and then encircling the goat, very skilfully and speedily recaptured him. They have, however, other methods of taking wild animals; on enclosing yam plantations with stakes seven feet high, they place traps at ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... to the hydraulic press. This is certainly the most approved invention that has yet been adopted, and it is simply a Bramah press adjusted for the purpose. It has been in use for about thirty years, though it was, of course, at first less skilfully and scientifically constructed than it is now. In one of the earliest of these presses, the box which contains the seed runs on a tramway in order to facilitate its removal from the heating-kettle, so that each time the bags have ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... is the wide and general event with which John Rolfe is connected. But there is also a narrower, personal happening that has pleased all these centuries. Indian difficulties yet abounded, but Dale, administrator as well as man of Mars, wound his way skilfully through them all. Powhatan brooded to one side, over there at Werowocomoco. Captain Samuel Argall was again in Virginia, having brought over sixty-two colonists in his ship, the Treasurer. A bold and restless man, explorer no less than mariner, he again went trading up the Potomac, and ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... curious animal over, and sure enough, there was a bright, shining Goddess of Liberty, skilfully sunk in ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... in Northbury had fallen in love with Beatrice. She had been very kind to these would-be lovers, and had managed skilfully to get rid of them. No man yet had secured even a ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... tiny kitchenette boasted ice-box, fireless, and a modest collection of electric cooking appliances; in a half-hour Anne had evolved a cream soup, a bit of steak, nearly cubical in proportions, slice of graham bread, a salad of lettuce and tomato with skilfully tossed dressing, a muffin split ready to toast, with the jam and spreader for it, and coffee was dripping into the very latest model of coffee-pots. Anne had never neglected her country appetite, and was a living refutation of the idea that neatness and art may not ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... another man's house to be entrusted to him, he would be able, if he chose, to manage it as skilfully as his own, would he not? since a man who is skilled in carpentry can work as well for another as for himself: and this ought to be equally true of ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... she coolly surveyed the mass of heads before her, caught an admiring glance from George Clayton, and then, with a steady hand unrolled her manuscript and read. Her subject was "The Outward and the Inward Life," and no gray-haired sage ever handled it more skilfully than she. When she finished one universal burst of applause shook the building to its centre, while her name was on every lip as she triumphantly left the room. Just then a distant bell struck the hour of nine, ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... and the lories, inserted a sharp-pointed penknife just through the skin, and then with clever fingers turned the delicate skin back, taking care not to injure the feathers either by the moisture of the bird's flesh or by handling and roughening the plumage, the result being that he skilfully turned the skin inside out after cutting through the legs and wings, cleaning the bones of flesh, and leaving in the skull, after stripping the bird right to ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... Dekker, etc., in the production of others. He does not appear to have been much regarded in his own day, and it was only in the 19th century that his great powers began to be appreciated and expounded by such critics as Lamb and Hazlitt, and in later days Swinburne. The first says, "To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit, this only a Webster can do." W. revels in the horrible, but the touch of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... cut up the cork-trees; the others in velveteen jackets must be sportsmen, poachers, and charcoal-burners living in the passes of the Seille. The poachers knew your father, Miette. They have good firearms, which they handle skilfully. Ah! if all were armed in the same manner! We are short of muskets. See, the labourers have ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... a silence, during which Mrs. Ballinger, with a perfunctory hand, rearranged the skilfully grouped literature at which her distinguished guest had not so much as glanced; then Miss Van Vluyck tartly pronounced: "Well, I can't say that I consider Osric ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... accomplish not so much by instruments as by experiments. For the subtlety of experiments is far greater than that of the sense itself, even when assisted by exquisite instruments; such experiments, I mean, as are skilfully and artificially devised for the express purpose of determining the point in question. To the immediate and proper perception of the sense therefore I do not give much weight; but I contrive that the office ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... These questions had been put to him so skilfully, and at such long intervals of time, that he had totally forgotten them; and yet now, when he recalled his answers, he had to acknowledge that he had confessed his purpose to devote that evening to some ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... rising in the north, it is unnecessary to say much. The history of the Chevalier's successes in the first year, and of his final overthrow at Culloden, is well known. Sir Reginald Wychecombe, like hundreds of others, played his cards so skilfully that he avoided committing himself; and, although he lived and eventually died a suspected man, he escaped forfeitures and attainder. With Sir Wycherly, as the head of his house, he maintained a friendly ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... old school and sincerely abhorred all learning that savored of the gentiles. He therefore peremptorily forbade his son's entertaining such an impious purpose. In this emergency Rabbi Winenki's eloquence was brought into requisition. He skilfully argued away the old man's prejudices and painted in such glowing colors the possibilities of Joseph's future as a physician, that Kierson's scruples were gradually quieted and he gave a reluctant consent. Joseph, having ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Guides', marching 580 miles in twenty-two days, or some other European regiment hastening from some hotbed of fanaticism where it could ill be spared; another day it was a train of siege artillery, skilfully piloted across rivers and past ambushes; lastly, it was the famous moving column led by John Nicholson in person which restored the fortunes of the day. Through June, July, August, and half of September, the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... to act, and in an instant every appointed victim was in the death throes. Five minutes later all were dead—four-and-thirty of them—and not one faintest cry of alarm or of agony had been uttered. Thus skilfully had our work been done. When all was over, the musicians were still playing their stringed instruments and hand-drums, softly now after a great volume of sound that would have overwhelmed any chance scream ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... lobster-salad and ice-cream. There is either some choice music, or a reading of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or a portfolio of photographs and pictures, to enliven the hour and start conversation; and as the people are skilfully chosen with reference to each other, as there is no hurry or heat or confusion, conversation, in its best sense, can bubble up, fresh, genuine, clear, and sparkling as a woodland spring, and one goes away really rested and refreshed. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... He had brought in his own address skilfully enough, and kept his voice sufficiently under control that no tremor betrayed a knowledge of Forbes's vital interest in any mention of that one block ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... them all, but attaching themselves to none. My thoughts,—these are the wantons for me. If the weather be too cold or too wet, I take shelter in the Regency coffee-house. There I amuse myself by looking on while they play chess. Nowhere in the world do they play chess so skilfully as in Paris, and nowhere in Paris as they do at this coffee-house; 'tis here you see Legal the profound, Philidor the subtle, Mayot the solid; here you see the most astounding moves, and listen to the sorriest talk, for if a man may be at once a wit and a great chess-player, like ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... were populous at Thompson, Connecticut, where they skilfully tilled the fields, and where their earthworks, on Fort Hill, provided them with a refuge in case of invasion. Their chief, Quinatisset, had his lodge on the site of the Congregational church in Thompson. They believed that Chargoggagmanchogagog ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... however, that Gordon had to fear was treachery on the part of his own officers and men. Burgevine knew most of them well, and had managed very skilfully to associate his own dismissal from the command of the Ever-Victorious Army with the fact that he was striving for the interests of the men and officers. Consequently he was to a certain extent a martyr in their eyes, and he made the most of this fact in endeavouring ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... and more intricate social organization preclude the South from being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk. Such waste of energy cannot be spared if the South is to catch up with civilization. And as the black third of the land grows in thrift and skill, unless skilfully guided in its larger philosophy, it must more and more brood over the red past and the creeping, crooked present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt and revenge and throws its new-found energies athwart the current of advance. Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and skilfully executed work is a distinct addition to English theological literature. Father Humphrey's style is quiet, methodical, precise, and as clear as the subject admits. Every one will be struck with the air of legal exposition which pervades the book. ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... eye, seized its metal handle, whereupon the mass sagged, tilted, straightened, and then rounded out into a superb Chinese lantern of yellow silk, decorated with black dragons, with only one tear in its entire circumference, and that one Auntie Gossburger darned so skilfully that nobody noticed the hole. This, Felix, after much consideration, swung to the rafter immediately over the throne, so that its mellow light should fall directly on the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to Mildred how the remedies he left should be used. She and Mrs. Jocelyn acted as nurse most of the day, and the patient improved steadily. After her return from the chapel in the afternoon, Mildred found the old German smoking his pipe in quite a placid mood, and she skilfully led him to talk on his favorite theme. He soon became so interested and so confidential that he unlocked a small, closet-like room and showed her his treasures—the telescope and other instruments, Argelander's maps, and many books written by the ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... musician strikes the key-note of a great piece of music, and can skilfully keep it ever sounding its melody through all the changes clear to the end. It has been in my heart to wish that I could do something like that here. If what has come to me has gotten out of me into these pages, there will be found a dominant ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... revolver—without telling him of it. No doubt she didn't wish to alarm anybody, and least of all, her father. What she dreaded took place, and she defended herself. There was a struggle, and she used the revolver skilfully enough to wound the assassin in the hand—which explains the impression on the wall and on the door of the large, blood-stained hand of the man who was searching for a means of exit from the chamber. But she didn't fire soon enough to ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... that the days of him who tries, however skilfully and impartially, to sit upon two stools at once are not happy days, and sometimes threaten to be short ones. And supposing that the Englishmen should win after all—as in his heart he hoped they might—how should he then ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... thirty years ago had never suspected. It had been said at the time that the two offenders had lost the building society's money in gambling and speculation, and there had been grounds for such a belief. But that was not so. Most of the money had been skilfully and carefully put where the two conspirators could lay hands on it as soon as it was wanted, and when the term of imprisonment was over they had nothing to do but take possession of it for their own purposes. They had engineered everything very well—Cotherstone's essentially ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... scene of their labour, therefore there is no necessity for being in a hurry, and there is lots of time for palaver. Every boat has an oracle in it, who speaks with an air of authority. He is a great talker, and a great smoker, and he chats so skilfully, that he enjoys his pipe at the same time, and manages it so as not to interrupt his jabbering. He can smoke, talk, and row at once. He don't smoke fast, for that puts his pipe out by consuming his tobacco; nor row ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Blood, who could not without indignation see themselves compelled to treat with him almost upon equal terms, protected as he was by the favour of the Queen; and he consequently lived in perpetual apprehension of their forming a cabal to effect his ruin. Skilfully, therefore, with a smiling countenance, but an anxious heart, he availed himself of every opportunity to foment the jealousies and hatreds which policy had for a brief while laid to rest. To each and all he appeared zealous ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... good circumstances, and that, although they live with the greatest care, they have barely enough to cover their expenses. Can you imagine, my sister, what happiness it must be to improve the condition of those we love; skilfully to bring about some relief to the modest wants of a virtuous family? And think what grief it is for me to find myself deprived of this great joy through the avarice of a father, and for it to be impossible ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... me! Do not trouble yourself so much. Leave off denying what your looks have often made me understand. Let it suffice that I am content with the subterfuge your love has so skilfully adopted, and that under the figure to which respect has limited it, I am willing to suffer its homage; always provided that its transports, guided by honour, offer only pure ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... the while, or flicking the heads from the mullein stalks by the roadside with its lash, he was thinking how best he might say to her what he had come from the City to say. To lead up to his subject, to guide the conversation, to prepare the right psychological moment skilfully and without apparent effort, were maneuvers in the game that Bennett ignored and despised. He knew only that he loved her, that she was there at his side, that the object of all his desires and hopes was within his reach. Straight ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... morning was bright and sunny, and, after an early breakfast, Mara was in the kitchen, with all the ingredients of the dainties she so skilfully produced, spread out upon the tables. Ella had been asked to come early; her father had escorted her to Mara's residence, and then gone away on ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... have them in possession, and be either conscious or unconscious of their importance. At any rate, Mr. S——'s advice to his client was that he should put an advertisement in the London papers, worded so skilfully that any one who might hold the important documents should understand to what it referred, and no one else. This was accordingly done; and although repeated at intervals for some time, it met with no success. But at last a mysterious answer was sent; to the effect that the deeds were in existence, ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... merely made bald the crown of the head. Indeed the Fijians were too vain of their hair to part with it lightly, and to conceal the loss which custom demanded of them on these occasions they used to wear wigs, some of which were very skilfully made. The practice of cutting off finger-joints in mourning has already been mentioned; one early authority affirms and another denies that joints of the little toes were similarly amputated by the living as a mark of sorrow for the dead. So common was ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... social converse. Among the more prominent portraits is one of my father, who is represented as illustrating some subject he is describing, by drawing it on the part of the table before him, with his finger dipped in toddy. Other marked and well-known characteristics of the members are skilfully introduced in the picture. The artist afterwards sold it to Mr. Horrocks ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... wholly won, and therefore asking no fidelity but that of kind and forbearing thoughts. Do you remember one evening as we sailed along the Rhine—ah! happy, happy hour!—that we heard from the banks a strain of music,—not so skilfully played as to be worth listening to for itself, but, suiting as it did the hour and the scene, we remained silent, that we might hear it the better; and when it died insensibly upon the waters, a certain melancholy stole over us; we felt that a something ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and examined the new ones acutely. Finding one to suit his expected growth, he entered it belly first, and transferred the anemone, by clawing and pulling loose its hold, to the outside of his chosen shell. How skilfully this was done may be judged by the fact that I could not get one free without tearing the cup-like base which fastened it. The anemone assisted in the operation by keeping its tentacles expanded, whereas it withdrew them if any foreign object came near. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... to fly up head to wind until her stem nearly touches a weather danger; the head-yards are then quickly braced abox, and the helm shifted. Thus she makes stern-way until all the sails are full, when she is again skilfully brought to the wind before touching the danger under her lee. Generally speaking, however, it refers to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... his terms skilfully, and every one saw that the bracelet was a gift to Miss Beighton; the acceptance carrying with it the hand and the heart of Commissioner Barr-Saggott. The terms were a St. Leonard's Round—thirty-six shots at sixty yards—under the rules of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the men were on their feet again, and so skilfully had the seconds done their work, that neither looked a jot the worse for what had passed. Wilson led viciously with his left, but misjudged his distance, receiving a smashing counter on the mark in reply which sent him reeling and gasping to the ropes. "Hurrah for the ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... archivolts of the portal and the fourteenth-century rose-window. It, however, contains a very remarkable example of sixteenth-century wood-carving in its massive and elaborate reredos, a portion of which, having been destroyed by fire, has been repaired with plaster, but so skilfully that it is very difficult to perceive where the artistic fraud begins and where ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the effects of the great ice-age, yet populous with human beings so far like ourselves that they were alive to the advantage of a good fire, made handy tools out of stone and wood and bone, painted animals on the walls of their caves, or engraved them on mammoth-ivory, far more skilfully than most of us could do now, and buried their dead in a ceremonial way that points to a belief in a future life. Thus, too, he will learn betimes how to blend the methods and materials of different branches of science. A human skull, let us say, and ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... can get an appetite, and then the author would say, 'Nothing had ever tasted so good as those trout, yanked from the brook and cooked to a turn on the sizzling coals. She looked at the stalwart young man, so skilfully frying the flapjacks, and contrasted him with the effeminate fops she had met on Fifth Avenue.'... But meanwhile, squaw, you'd better tear some good dry twigs ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... precious metal upon your single person, if you are clever enough to stow it and muscular enough to walk lightly under the weight. And a great deal of the yellow stuff, gathered and stored by the mining companies, leaked about this time out of the hiding-places skilfully contrived for it into the pockets of Van Busch and his pals. It is weighty, as well as precious, stuff, and when you inter it, there must be bearers as well as a gravedigger, and when you carry away a great deal of it at a time, confederates must ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... were full of people, and cheerful and energetic labor was in progress. There was an odor of toilsome sweat and leather at the cobbler's, of shavings at the cabinet-maker's; songs were often to be heard, and glimpses could be had of brawny arms with sleeves roiled high, quickly and skilfully making their accustomed movements. Everywhere we were received cheerfully and politely: hardly anywhere did our intrusion into the every-day life of these people call forth that ambition, and desire ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... I am in a hurry to return to the factory. Fulfil your mission skilfully, and I will recompense you largely. But a thought strikes me. The pocket-book must not fall into the hands ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... but he could not avoid answering her questions, for she cross-examined him very skilfully: so much so, that he told her something of what he was suffering, the story of his friendship, and how Olivier had left him. She listened with a pitying ironical smile.... Suddenly ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... small. Only by careful searching could one ascertain where enemy trenches had been. Dotted about over this terrain were the Hun "pill-boxes," concrete shelters in which the enemy had made their last machine gun fight. Whereas at one time they had been skilfully concealed from view, they were now standing stark above the ground which had been torn away from them. Some of the pill-boxes, indeed, had been smashed in by direct hits from the heavies, so deadly had been our gun fire during those ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... of adversity, won the love and respect of Noddy, was not the least of these influences. If the writer has not "moralized," it was because the true life, seen with the living eye, is better than any precept, however skilfully it may be dressed by the rhetorical genius ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... "no," and ran away. But Faith was not in luck this time, for she caught Miss Essie. And Miss Essie in a few minutes got the chance she wanted at Faith. She wouldn't have had it, for Faith ran too well and vanished too skilfully; but a little knot of the boys getting into a knot just in her way and at the wrong time, Faith fell ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... else the matter, and our ribs were sound. Clennam remained until everything possible to be done had been skilfully and promptly done—the poor belated wanderer in a strange land movingly besought that favour of him—and lingered by the bed to which he was in due time removed, until he had fallen into a doze. Even then he wrote a few words for him on his card, with a promise to return to-morrow, and left ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... he will not dare! There is nothing he has not dared!" the priest answered vehemently, the recollection of the scene in the great guard-room of the Louvre, when Tavannes had so skilfully turned the tables on him, instilling venom into his tone. "She who lives with him is the devil's. She has bewitched him with her spells and her Sabbaths! She bears the mark of the Beast on her bosom, and for her the fire is ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... upon this document because its value appears to me not yet to have been properly appreciated. It is indeed partisan; the documents of which we must be most wary are not those whose tendency is manifest, but those where it is skilfully concealed. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... might save our tree from death, and ourselves from despair; it was to make a furrow underground, which would privately conduct a part of the water from the walnut tree to our willow. This undertaking was executed with ardor, but did not immediately succeed—our descent was not skilfully planned—the water did not run, the earth falling in and stopping up the furrow; yet, though all went contrary, nothing discouraged us, 'omnia vincit labor improbus'. We made the bason deeper, to give ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... not knowing where the change will take it. Liberalism is in the air, but genuine liberals are encompassed with all sorts of difficulties especially in combining their liberalism with the devotion to theocratic robes which the imperialist militarists who rule Japan have so skilfully thrown about the Throne and the Government. But what one senses in China from the first moment is the feeling of the all-pervading power of Japan which is working as surely as fate to its unhesitating conclusion—the domination of Chinese ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... stab belonged to a century ago. But, listen Dick! Several days later, when I had a moment in which to remember Ronnie's poor Infant of Prague, I examined it in a good light, and found the place where the hole made by that dagger had been skilfully mended." ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... nothing would be more ill-advised than to show his hand too boldly and offend against her new-found virtue. The better plan would be to second her spiritual aspirations, accept her as 'the fondest of sisters, the truest of friends,' intoxicate her with the ideal, be skilfully platonic and then make her glide imperceptibly from frank sisterly relations to a more passionate friendship, and from thence to the complete surrender of her person. In all probability these transitions would occur very rapidly. It all depended upon a wise ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... appear," smiled Hsiang Ling, "I often handle books with old poems, and read one or two stanzas, whenever I can steal the time; and some among these I find pair most skilfully, while others don't. I have also heard that the first, third and fifth lines are of no consequence; and that the second, fourth and sixth must be clearly distinguished. But I notice that there are in the poetical works ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin |
