"Feeler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breast-plate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... have seen the general before dinner," added the major, using the remark as a "feeler" to induce his companion to inform him what ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... on the jump—and within a few hours. I have orders to take you to sea at once and find the Kennebunk. Our operator is sending out feeler messages for the battleship ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... remark seemed to me a feeler, and I ignored it, and inquired how Lieutenant Helm had got that furlough. (Furlough was our slang for a light wound.) "Oh, he got it mighty fair! Did you see that Yankee lieutenant with the big sabre-cut on his shoulder? Well, your friend yonder gave him that—and got ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... He flecked a feeler at her mind and stiffened. How could a Two—a high Two, at that—be working as an usher? And with her guard down clear to the floor? He ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... insidious, is a safer introduction. The living figures are dressed to imitate plaster-of-Paris, and are so arranged as to form groups, called in the bills "classical;" but for which it would be difficult to find originals. In short, the whole thing is a feeler thrown out to see how far French impudence and French epicureanism in vice may carry themselves. It shall not be our fault if they do not experience an ignominious downfall, and beat a speedy retreat, to the tune of the "Rogue's March," arranged as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... you kindness. Your acquaintances and mine must be separate. Unless, indeed, I run the chances of a court-martial, or unless you and my father would come to Spain.' He threw out this last suggestion as a kind of feeler; and then suddenly made the plunge. 'You don't know how I wish you would. I have a good position—the chance of a better,' continued he, reddening like a girl. 'That Dolores Barbour that I was telling you of, Margaret—I only wish ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... enthusiasm which Strauss and others allow to the credit of the witnesses is undoubtedly designed as a feeler—a mere catering to the views of Christians upon the character of the first Christians. Very good fellows (?) after all. How is that? If one of my neighbors would go into a court room to-morrow and testify under oath that he was with ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... group was gathered in the cellar of Pervyse. An occasional shell was heard in the middle distance, as artillery beyond the Yser threw a lazy feeler over to the railway station. The three women were entertaining a distinguished guest at the evening meal of tinned rabbit and dates. Their visitor was none other than F. Ainslie-Barkleigh, the famous English war-correspondent. He was dressed for the part. He wore high top-boots, whose red leather ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... such an unaesthetic personage as Immanuel Kant enthroned in its centre! Think of german books on religions-philosophie, with the heart's battles translated into conceptual jargon and made dialectic. The most persistent setter of questions, feeler of objections, insister on satisfactions, is the religious life. Yet all its troubles can be treated with absurdly little technicality. The wonder is that, with their way of working philosophy, individual ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... below. In turn it was a sphere, a disk, a pyramid, a pentahedron, a polyhedron. It possessed neither legs, flippers, nor tentacles; but out from its heaving, shrinking body it would send, now from one spot, now from another, an active arm, or feeler, with which it swam, pulled, or pushed. An unlucky invader which one of them touched made few more voluntary movements; for instantly the whole side of the whitish mass bristled with arms. They seized, crushed, killed it, and then ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... escaped the interviewer there was little occasion for her having got it into her head that people were "after" the letters. People had not been after them, inasmuch as they had not heard of them; and Cumnor's fruitless feeler would have been a ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... what I've been looking for for years is somebody who has got the music knack to give me the accompaniment just a quarter of a jump ahead of my voice, see? I can follow like a lamb, but I've got to have that feeler first. It's more than a knack. It's a gift. And you've got it. I know it when I see it. I want to get away from this cabaret thing. There's nothing in it for a man of my talent. I'm gunning for vaudeville. But they won't book me without a tryout. And when they ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the people, who, disagreeing with him, still held him in awe, while they despised the Congress. Even in this strait, the old delusion about the collapse of Federal finance occasionally came up for hopeful discussion; and, from time to time, Mr. Benjamin would put out a feeler about recognition from governments that remembered us less than had we really been behind the great wall ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... was the first to question whether Lubeck would consent. On the 9th of December, 1526, he wrote: "I advocate the treaty, but I doubt much whether Lubeck will not raise objections, for she has wished to have the Baltic to herself." A few days later Gustavus put out a feeler to his Cabinet in the south of Sweden. "So far as we know," he wrote with caution, "our relations with Lubeck and the Vend Cities do not forbid this treaty." By the spring of 1527 he had grown more confident of his position, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... and magnificently splendid results that it would be well for them all to spend the night in preparing to be astonished, for on the morrow they should find themselves overwhelmed with wonder and admiration. And finally, he threw out a cautious feeler with the object of ascertaining whether perchance it had occurred to me that it might be politic on my part to confirm the excellent impression which I had already made by bestowing upon him and his fellow indunas a small—a very small—modicum of the inestimable ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Sylvia, and all women to which he had been used. However, his expression changed directly before the quick look of pretty, childish appeal which the girl gave him. It was Rose's first advance to all men whom she met, her little feeler put out to determine their dispositions towards her. It was quite involuntary. She was unconscious of it, but it was as if she said in so many words, "Do you mean to be kind to me? Don't you like the look ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... just a feeler, but the woman didn't even answer to that. And it was right then that Dave Miller noticed the deep silence ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... complications in the foreign policy which dealt with the frontiers of the north. Such a colony would become the centre of an active trade with the surrounding tribes; though professedly founded in the people's interest, it would rapidly become a mere feeler for extending the operations of the great mercantile class; the growth of Roman trade-interests would necessarily involve a policy of defence and probably of expansion, which would tell heavily on the resources of the State. The success of the government ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the least of it, frankness is not one of her characteristics. I tried to question her about this man. I had seen them together in the Park, talking as intimates. So, when our conversation had reached a friendly stage, I threw out a feeler or two, just to satisfy myself about ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in a searching kind of way, and finally he took George's arm and said confidentially: "George, laddie, do ye ken a place where we can get a wee nippie?" George didn't know whether the inquiry was on the level, or whether it was a sort of "feeler" to find out how he stood on the temperance question. But he decided to "play safety" so he stated promptly that he did not know of such a place in ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... eyes, for those were sightless—white, in sockets as white as scraped bone, and blind. Yet for all this the face, wrinkled as the mask of a lion is drawn in Assyrian sculpture, was alive with rage and terror. One long white feeler touched our bulwarks. Then the face disappeared with the swiftness of a blindworm popping into its burrow, and the next thing that I remember is my own voice in my own ears, saying gravely to the mainmast, 'But the air-bladder ought ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... recognised as a former Montana tough who used to hang around Havre—bronco-buster, cow-puncher, and tin-horn by turns. Many a time I've caught him sizing me up, in Cow Run and elsewhere—mighty hard, too, but he never seemed to be sure of me. Once he did chance a feeler, but I just twirled my moustache, a la Lord Tomnoddy, and bluffed ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... to draw my breath from the sister element of air. I had returned to the West; and while there, wandering in various places, I went to a small town, hardly more than a hamlet, some few hundred miles beyond the Missouri, where the mighty railroad, putting out a long feeler for the future, had halted its great steel branch—sinking like a thunderbolt into the ground for no imaginable reason, and affecting me vaguely with a sense of utmost limits. There a younger friend, five years my junior, in ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... was certain to follow. The Times, while it appears to lead, in reality waits upon public opinion, and hence the accusations of inconsistency and tergiversation so freely lavished upon it. The Times is the printed breath of public opinion. It throws out a feeler, perhaps, though not quite at first, accompanied by some decided expression of opinion, and carefully watches the effect upon the public mind. Should that effect be different to what was expected, The Times knows how to veer ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... — N. touch; tact, taction^, tactility; feeling; palpation, palpability; contrectation^; manipulation; massage. [Organ of touch] hand, finger, forefinger, thumb, paw, feeler, antenna; palpus^. V. touch, feel, handle, finger, thumb, paw, fumble, grope, grabble; twiddle, tweedle; pass the fingers over, run the fingers over; manipulate, wield; throw out a feeler. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... canals! The thing's alive!" Mado hurled himself at the controls as a huge blob of the horrible whiteness broke loose from the main body and wobbled uncertainly toward them. A long feeler reached forth and grasped the errant portion, returning it with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... of cross-ties. They seemed to be in great good-humor, and cracked jokes at each other's expense in the midst of boisterous shouts of laughter. The writer sat next to one of the liveliest talkers in the party; and, after listening and laughing awhile, told the "Tar Baby" story by way of a feeler, the excuse being that some one in the crowd mentioned "Ole Molly Har'." The story was told in a low tone, as if to avoid attracting attention; but the comments of the negro, who was a little past middle age, were loud and frequent. "Dar now!" he would exclaim, ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the Romans," says Dr. Lightfoot, "had a wider popularity than the other letters of Ignatius, both early and late. It appears to have been circulated apart from them, sometimes alone." [71:1] It was put forth as a feeler, to discover how the public would be disposed to entertain such a correspondence; and, in case of its favourable reception, it was intended to open the way for additional Epistles. It was cleverly contrived. It employed the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians as a kind of voucher ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... my readers who recall the extracts I gave above from the Legislative code concerning Women, will readily perceive that the process of introduction by contact requires some care and discretion. Otherwise the angles might inflict on the unwary Feeler irreparable injury. It is essential for the safety of the Feeler that the Felt should stand perfectly still. A start, a fidgety shifting of the position, yes, even a violent sneeze, has been known before now to prove fatal to the incautious, ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... saw a sovereign and a half-crown.) He was not comfortable when he saw me, and I knew I had been a fool to let him know that I spoke Rommany. However, I passed on as if I had not heard a word. The fellow had no doubt been told that I was a tramp, and he put a feeler to find out whether I knew the language of the road. Next day we met very early. I had stayed out all night with some poachers, and I was in The Chequers by half-past seven in the morning. Master Blackey was there also, and we exchanged greetings. He was blotchy ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... of the tide of life, while along the horizon might be seen the dim curtain of smoke, the grim spray which that tide threw up. Gradually, however, as the years passed, the City had thrown out a long brick-feeler here and there, curving, extending, and coalescing, until at last the little cottages had been gripped round by these red tentacles, and had been absorbed to make room for the modern villa. Field by field the estate of old Mr. ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... trafficking of its surrounding world, the main road from Chovensbury to Tidborough, coming from greater cities even than these and proceeding to greater, ran far above it, beyond Northrepps. The main road rather slighted than acknowledged Penny Green by the nerveless and shrunken feeler which, a mile beyond Chovensbury, it ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... if the Poly. put out feeler after feeler to draw him to itself. Only to one thing he would not be drawn. When Booty advised him to join the Poly. Ramblers he stood firm. For some shy or unfathomable reason of his own he refused to become a Poly. Rambler. When it came to the Poly. Ramblers he was adamant. It was one of those ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... limp body of the girl at his feet as he swung his rifle toward the glowing light within the opening jaws. The sucking discs cupped and wrinkled in dread readiness in the fleshy, toothless opening. He emptied the magazine into the head, though he knew this was only a feeler and a feeder for a still more horrible mouth in the monstrous body that rose and fell tremendously in the dark waters beyond. But it was typical of Robert Thorpe that even in the horror and frenzy of the moment he rammed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... she again, and again came the feeler after a smile, the expression of droll sweetness and appeal ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... by inclination, very little of a worker. He is, first, a wanter—a bundle of instincts; second, a feeler—a bundle of emotions; last and least, he is a thinker. What real work he does is done not because he likes it but because it serves one of these first two bundles ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... are really tentacles, used for catching and holding food. We will use a shorter word and call them feelers. They are set in circles round the top of the Anemone, and there are many of them. The Daisy Anemone, for instance, has over seven hundred feelers. Each feeler can be moved from side to side, and can also be tucked away, out of sight and out of danger; but, when hungry, the animal spreads them widely, for, as we shall see, they are the net in which it ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... possible to pen a more severe and pregnant comment on the after-policy of England than that suggested by the italicized lines, written as they were by England's Plenipotentiary—an idea reported to headquarters, not as a feeler, but as a suggestion so absurd that it called for no expression of opinion. But he lived to find that it was not too absurd to be realized; and perhaps, after all, it was written as a warning, and the wise and cool-headed old statesman in his inmost soul had ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... it by repelling every attack, the Boers declining to face the steady fire that was poured upon them whenever they showed themselves. Colonel Hamilton, however, had a firm conviction that the Boer movement against that flank was only a feeler for more determined enterprises to follow, and he accordingly stiffened the defensive lines there by mounting half a field battery in strong earthworks during the night, and sending up bodies of mounted ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... loins broad, and the tail finely formed and only partially covered with hair. The skin is a prime point: it must be covered with hair of a roan, or other fashionable color, and communicate to the hand of the experienced feeler, a peculiar sensation, which it is impossible to describe. With regard to this point, I cannot do better than quote the words of an ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... toast, much to Mr. Bainrothe's discomfiture. He had made the remark as a skillful feeler, and was mortified at my father's ready acquiescence in his plans. Of course, Evelyn and I both saw through the unskillful ruse, and pledged him with hearty malice; but he had yet another shot in reserve, which told ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... at the end of ninety days," replied Marcy, who knew that the question was meant for a "feeler." "If I live I shall do so; and I expect to stay with the schooner as long as she is in ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... and commenced sewing, while her husband continued to hold the newspaper before his face. After some ten minutes of silence, the latter made a remark, as a kind of feeler. This was replied to with what sounded more like a grunt than a ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... wait, because the appropriation had not come. Harry said he had written to hurry up the money and it would be along presently. So the work continued, on Monday. Stone's Landing was making quite a stir in the vicinity, by this time. Sellers threw a lot or two on the market, "as a feeler," and they sold well. He re-clothed his family, laid in a good stock of provisions, and still had money left. He started a bank account, in a small way—and mentioned the deposit casually to friends; and to strangers, too; to everybody, in fact; but not as a new thing—on the contrary, as a matter ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... and said it was wholesome; and went off without seeming in the least dismayed by the intelligence. If Eleanor had ventured that remark as a feeler, she was utterly discomfited. She went about her pretty work of getting the little table ready and acquainting herself with the details of her cupboard arrangements, feeling a little amused at herself, and with many ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... with alternate bands of light brown and white, blending together at the edges. Its arms were fully as slender as its legs, and upon a rather long neck was perched its head — not unlike the head of a man, except that its nose ended in a curling antenna, or "feeler," and its ears from the upper points bore antennae that decorated the sides of its head like two miniature, curling pig tails. It must be admitted that the round, black eyes were rather bulging in appearance; but ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... newspaper out of his pocket, folded to show two columns in their full length, and handed it to Triscoe, who took it with no great eagerness, and began to run his eye over it. "You tell me what you think of that. I've put it out for a kind of a feeler. I got some money in that paper, and I just thought I'd let our people see how a city can be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and I enjoyed the water till, approaching the little island, poor Marguerite, whose timidity always acts as a feeler before her adventuring spirit, began to wonder at our not seeing any inhabitants. I did not listen to her. But when, on landing, the same silence prevailed, I caught the alarm, which was not lessened by the sight of two old men whom we forced out of their wretched hut. Scarcely ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... again. She began a good many of her reflective, suggestive little speeches with that hesitating feeler into the fog of social perplexity she essayed. "They're just as bad up there, now. They all get away to the towns, and the trades, and the stores They won't go into the houses; and they might have ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... things, notwithstanding, Sir Gervaise," he answered; "among others, it tolerates the law of the half-blood. Much depends on the manner in which men view these things; that which seems gold to one, resembling silver in the eyes of another. Now, I dare say,"—this was said as a feeler, and with a smile that might pass for ironical or confiding, as the listener pleased to take it—"Now, I dare say, the clans would tell us that England tolerates an usurper, while her lawful prince was in banishment; though you and I might not ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... both these methods would in many cases be necessary were it not for the inquiry-bringing letter. The inquiry letter is a "feeler"—the advance agent of the selling campaign. It goes broadcast to find and put its finger on the man who is interested or who can be interested, and his reply labels him as the man whom it is worth while for your salesman to see, or, who is ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... darted forth all its feelers and grasped him round the body. He felt himself dragged helplessly towards the capacious maw where he had already seen so many creatures conveyed. "Oh, master, master! help, help!" he shouted at the top of his voice, though a feeler getting round his neck almost ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... bright hopes in my fellow-travellers, who thought they had now come to a country where situations went a-begging. But I am not so sure that the offer was in good faith. Indeed, I am more than half persuaded it was but a feeler to decide ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... turned straight and saw that a fire had caught a bush, blazing higher and higher, while a tiny cricket lay gasping for breath, half-scorched, half-choked, and nigh to its death. Then Rajah Rasalu, soft hearted and stout, put his hand in the fire and snatched it out! And the cricket drew forth a feeler and said: 'Take this, my preserver, 'twill bring you aid; should any thing ever prove troublesome, burn this in the fire and I will come.' Then Rasalu laughed with a great big laugh, 'I thank you, weakling! But none of your chaff! You couldn't ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... (1) Touch % 379. [Sensation of pressure] Touch. — N. touch; tact, taction[obs3], tactility; feeling; palpation, palpability; contrectation[obs3]; manipulation; massage. [Organ of touch] hand, finger, forefinger, thumb, paw, feeler, antenna; palpus[obs3]. V. touch, feel, handle, finger, thumb, paw, fumble, grope, grabble; twiddle, tweedle; pass the fingers over, run the fingers over; manipulate, wield; throw out a feeler. Adj. tactual, tactile; tangible, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... reader knows, require to ask this question, but she put it as a sort of feeler to ascertain how far Billy might be inclined ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... thousand; said it would be selling his daughter if he took any less. Now I knew you couldn't raise that much on any property you have, especially in these hard times—" Geary paused for the fraction of an instant; he had thrown out the last remark as a feeler, to see what Vandover would say; but his chum said nothing, staring vaguely at the opposite wall, merely making a faint sign to show that he understood, closing his eyes and bending his head. "And so," continued the other, "I jewed him down, and what do you ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... nation was wanted to do something—to assist the sovereign in some war, to pay some old debt, to contribute its force and aid in the critical conjuncture of the time. It would not have suited the ante-Tudor kings to have had a fictitious assembly; they would have lost their sole FEELER, their only instrument for discovering national opinion. Nor could they have manufactured such an assembly if they wished. The instrument in that behalf is the centralised executive, and there was then no 'prefet' by whom the opinion of a rural locality ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... The man started excavating with a light miner's pick and a short-handled shovel which he unslung from his back. In half an hour he had opened one tunnel till he could peer into the den hole. Then he unwound a strange instrument from about his waist, a wolfer's "feeler", three strands of wire twisted into a pliable cable ten feet long, the three ends of the strands extending forklike a bare two inches beyond the cable braid at one end. This simple invention eliminates ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... morning just to get around that. The poor girl could hardly make herself talk. She was shaking all over when they arrived. We took a walk around the grounds, alone, and I read her bit by bit—a feeler here, a planted suggestion there, just getting her used to the idea and trying to reassure her. After a while she was smiling. She thought the lagoon was lovely, and by the time we got back to the main building she was laughing, talking ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... calculation—over and above the prized little pleasure it might give him—of ten minutes clear with his host, whom it rarely befell him to see alone. He had a theory of something special to go into, of a plummet to sink or a feeler to put forth; his state of mind in short was diplomatic and anxious. But his hopes had a drop as he crossed the threshold. His precaution had only assured him the company of a stranger, for the person in the room to whom the ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... said Bella Clayton. "She doesn't wish to unpack it, and it will be in her way here, I'm afraid. It might stand in your dressing-room."—This she said as a "feeler," knowing that some gentlemen do not like to be inconvenienced, even ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... politely to himself. "The element of mystery is one of the best drawing cards I know—it's got Needley going strong. Far, far be it from me to tear the veil asunder. I mentioned it only as a feeler." ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... they dread the fall of monarchy in Germany and Austria. Far rather would they make the most abject surrenders to the Kaiser than deal with a renascent Republican Germany. The recent letter of Lord Lansdowne, urging a peace with German imperialism, was but a feeler from the pacifist side of this most un-English, and unhappily most influential, section of our public life. Lord Lansdowne's letter was the letter of a Peer who fears revolution ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... rail fence, blinking at me consideringly. The fence skirted a little trail that led from my back yard down to Calapooia Creek. It seemed trying to push back a fringe of scrubby underbrush which ran down a hillside; a fringe which was, in truth, but a feeler from the great forest of Douglas fir which one saw marching, file upon file, row upon row, back and back to the snows ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... one leer over its spectacles. I guess that look will fix you if you ever get it straight. I've been able to tap, indirectly," Mr. Simmons went on, "the solicitor of your usurping cousin, and he evidently knows something to be in the wind. It seems your elder brother twenty years ago put out a feeler. So you're not to have the glory of even making ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... financial resources of his visitors. They had lived in good circumstances; they were the family of a successful professional man, but, as Conward well knew, many successful professional men had a manner of living that galloped hard on the heels of their income. The only thing was to throw out a feeler. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... a feeler, and Mr Jones paused to observe its effect, but he could scarce refrain from laughter for Billy's eyes and mouth now resembled three extremely round O's with his nose like a fat mark ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... another, and a frightful whirlpool is formed in which the first canoe went and was overturned, and five lives lost. Had I been there, mine would have been the first canoe, for the traders would have made it a point of honour to give me the precedence (although actually to make a feeler of me), while they looked on in safety. The men in charge of Hassani's canoes were so frightened by this accident that they at once resolved to return, though they had arrived in the country of the ivory: they never looked to see whether the canoes could be ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... make me a cup of tea, and do you bring it up here." This was a feeler. If anything was the matter with Anty, Terry would be sure to tell him now; but he only said, "Yis, yer honer," ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... few seconds it lay dormant; then one red feeler shot out, then another, and another, and it began to edge its way across the carpet to the chair. Cleek lay still and waited, his heavy breathing sounding regularly, his head thrown back, his limp hands lying loosely, palms ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... down through an address which she had designed to break the thing gently and by degrees, when the parrot, extending a feeler on its own hook, said "K-r-r-a-a!" behind ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... huge eyes standing out regarding us balefully. The mass was continually changing its outline and, as we watched, a long streamer extended itself from the body toward us. Over and around the flyer the feeler went, while green and red colors played over first one and then another of the huge eyes before us. The feeler wrapped itself around the flyer and we were lifted into the air toward those horrible eyes. We had almost ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various |
