"Poke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of gaming is universal amongst men. Every nation indulges in it to a greater or less extent. Every nation, civilised or savage, has its game, from whist and cribbage at Almacks to "chuck-a-luck" and "poke-stick" upon ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... with long poles, with which to "poke" the fox out of his refuge. Brave and Sport were unceremoniously conducted away from the tree, and ordered to "lie down;" and Frank took hold of the grayhound, intending to restrain him until the fox could get ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... And Jeemsie's poke was brawly lined, There wasna mony couldna' find His cantie hoosie i' the wynd, "The Salutation": For there ye'd get, wi' sang and clink, What some ca'd comfort, wi' a wink, And some that didna care for drink Wad ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob
... was anxious to do the best he could for them, and the Confirmation made a good opportunity; but the boys did not like to be interfered with—it made them shy to be spoken to; and they liked lounging about much better than having to poke into that mind of theirs, which they carried somewhere about them, but did not like to stir up. They had no notion of going to school again—which no one wanted them to do—nor to church, because it was like little boys; and ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... if you make a howling mistake," Collins told them, "that's when you all pull the wires like mad and poke the leader and whirl him around. That always brings down the house. They think he's got a real musical ear and is mad at his ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... development of the West brought him in opposition to a powerful element in his own party. Adams, writing in his diary under date of April 17, 1844, says: "The Western harbor bill was taken up, and the previous question was withdrawn for the homunculus Douglas to poke out a speech in favor of the constitutionality of appropriations for the improvement of Western rivers and harbors. The debate was continued between the conflicting absurdities of the Southern Democracy, which is slavery, and the Western Democracy, which ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... coming in at the window and casting shadows on the sloping whitewashed ceiling; and your guttered candle. What will you try on to-night? A hat, or a dress, or the two-and-eleven-three-farthing blouse? Shift the candle. Show yourself to the looking-glass. A poke here and a pull there—and now put everything away carefully in the box under the bed, and go ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... spied their most particular friend, Dame Elizabeth, coming. She lived a little way out of the village. Nan saw her approaching the gate through the rain and mist, with her great blue umbrella and her long blue double cape and her poke bonnet; and she cried out in the greatest dismay: "O, mother, mother! there is our dear Dame Elizabeth coming; she will have to ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... from his cigarette boxes, and other little pictures that, being held to a strong light, developed additional figures and lettering. He called her "Miss O'Farrell of Page Street" sometimes, and liked to poke her plump little person until she giggled herself ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... present in possession of the field, poke fun at these new-fangled schemes. A parody in Esperanto verse, entitled Lingvo de Molenaar, and sung to the tune of the American song Riding down from Bangor, narrates the fickleness of Pan-Roman and how it ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... and long. A man can outwalk any other animal. After thirty miles, a horse is nowhere and the man is still going, but even fifteen miles leaves the ordinary dog limp and sorry. And then, when every bone in him was aching, a wretched village might poke up at an elbow of the way, and there would be dancing to do and his whole fatuous repertoire to accomplish, while his legs were soft ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... especially became a great favorite. Every one declared there had never been such book agents in the town. "They're such gentlemanly fellows. They don't press anybody to buy. They don't rush about and 'poke their noses where they're not wanted.' They are more like merchants with books to sell." The only person who failed to see the attraction in them was Ed Brann, who was popularly supposed to be engaged to Maud. He grew ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... up, whimpering, "Oh, they didn't do that! They didn't poke fun at my feast, that I ordered so carefully for them! And my little Chinese costume that I was so happy making—I made it secretly, to surprise them. And they've been ridiculing it, all ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... whistle of sheer exuberant joy of life. He intended to surprise the folks by walking down and taking his place with the others when the dinner bell rang. Daisy Ellington would clap her hands and sparkle in her enthusiastic way. Shorty would begin to poke fun at him. Mrs. Seymour would probably just smile in her slow, motherly fashion and see that he got one of the choice steaks. And Ruth—would she flash at him her swift dimpled smile of pleasure? Or would she still be harboring malice toward ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... know those odious little "saas-plates" that figure so largely at boarding-houses, and especially at taverns, into which a strenuous attendant female trowels little dabs, sombre of tint and heterogeneous of composition, which it makes you feel homesick to look at, and into which you poke the elastic coppery tea-spoon with the air of a cat dipping her foot into a wash-tub, —(not that I mean to say anything against them, for, when they are of tinted porcelain or starry many-faceted crystal, and hold clean bright berries, or pale virgin ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... imperial pints. Pit, put. Placads, proclamations. Plack, four pennies (Scots). Plackless, penniless. Plaiden, coarse woolen cloth. Plaister, plaster. Plenish'd, stocked. Pleugh, plew, a plow. Pliskie, a trick. Pliver, a plover. Pock, a poke, a bag, a wallet. Poind, to seize, to distrain, to impound. Poortith, poverty. Pou, to pull. Pouch, pocket. Pouk, to poke. Poupit, pulpit. Pouse, a push. Poussie, a hare (also a cat). Pouther, powther, powder. Pouts, chicks. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... pour Rire" was a caricature (if such a thing were possible) of the English female traveler of that period. Coal-scuttle poke bonnets, short and scanty skirts, huge splay feet arrayed in indescribable shoes and boots, short-waisted tight-fitting spencers, colors which not only swore at each other, but caused all beholders to swear at them—these were the outward and visible signs of the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... slack-jawed. He glanced furtively behind him at Swan, and found that guileless youth ready to poke him in the back with the muzzle of a gun. Lone, he observed, had another. He looked back at Al, whose eyes were ablaze with resentment. With an effort he smiled his disarming, senatorial smile, but Al's next words froze it on ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... read it? There 'twas laid out on the table when I came down to poke up the fire and set the kettle on. There wasn't no name on it, so 'twan't till I'd read it clear through that I knew 'twas for Miss Martha. It said: 'Have gone to Boston to see—er—what's-his-name and Somebody-else and—' Never mind, Bancroft's all I remember, anyhow. But it said you'd gone ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... seven brothers. He would return with their seven heads swinging pitifully from his girdle, and, when he reached the castle gates, he would gnash his teeth through the keyhole with a noise like the grinding together of great rocks, and would poke his head through the fanlight of the door, and say, fee-faw-fum in a voice of such exceeding loudness that the castle would be shaken to ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Friday, and on the Saturday following David did his first startling act—he offered marriage to Hope Marlowe, the only Quaker girl in Framley who had ever dared to discard the poke bonnet even for a day, and who had been publicly reproved for laughing in meeting—for Mistress Hope had a curious, albeit demure and suggestive, sense of humour; she was, in truth, a kind of sacred minuet in grey. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "why should he want to poke his nose in there? I judged him by the way I should feel, supposing it was you being spliced to some other fellow. I'd sooner be at the North or South Pole than have to watch it done, unless I could bounce out with an impediment why you shouldn't lawfully ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... taught you with one word how to cast the figure without fault. This would have brought me great honour and you much profit. I shall be able to make good my reputation; but you will now lose both your honour and your profit. Let then this lesson teach you another time to work, and not to poke fun at your masters." ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... to poke the more distant potatoes toward her with his cane. He could not himself stoop; or, if he did, he could only sit erect again after the method of a ratchet wheel. "I won't do so again, Prudence. I be an onthoughtful critter, ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... said she, after surveying me, in great apparent astonishment, for some moments—"Vell, Monsieur?—and vat den?—vat de matter now? Is it de dance of de Saint itusse dat you ave? If not like me, vat for vy buy de pig in the poke?" ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... horse of another color," replied Mrs. Worthington, bridling and relapsing into injured silence for the period of ten seconds, when she resumed, "I hope they ain't going to poke themselves ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... unties the poke, Which out of it sent such a smoke, As ready was them all to choke, So grievous was the pother; So that the knights each other lost, And stood as still as any post; Tom Thumb nor Tomalin could ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... was somethin' wrong with Grabow too, eh? I s'ppose that's the reason he's livin' in his new house this day.—I wish there'd be somethin' like that wrong with you onct in a while. But if somebody don't pull an' poke at you, you'd grow fast to the ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... frequently poke about the city in the end of afternoon "when the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation." I peer into shop windows, not so much for the wares displayed as for glimpses of the men and women engaged in their disposal. I watch laborers trudging home with the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... hopelessly countrified, he would never betray it. Presently the conversation got to politics, the President, the situation at Albany. Conny, with her negligent manner and her childish treble voice, gave the talk a poke here and there and steered it skilfully, never allowing it to get into serious pools or become mere noise. In one of the shifts Cairy asked Isabelle, "Have you seen ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... want you to know that the fine gentleman who plays cribbage with you at your club to-night will lift the hair off your head down here on the Street to-morrow, because that's the game; and nobody shakes hands with you before giving you the poke that puts you to sleep. There are a lot of old men out in the almshouse just because they trusted too much in human nature; and I wanted to show you how hard and cruel men can be and excuse their piracy on the plea that it is business! I tell you, Matt Peasley, ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... would have given much to be possessed of the opportunity which was now in his power; but many pause on the brink of a crime, who have contemplated it at a distance without scruple. Lord Etherington's first impulse had led him to poke the fire; and he held in his hand the letter which he was more than half tempted to commit, without even breaking the seal, to the fiery element. But, though sufficiently familiarized with guilt, he was not as yet acquainted with it in its basest shapes—he had not yet acted ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... them, and gave an occasional poke with his cold nose to be sure they were there as they drove through the bustling streets of New York to a great house with an ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and nuzzles round among muscles as those horrid old women poke their fingers into the salt-meat on the provision-stalls at the Quincy Market. Vitality, No. 5 or 6, or something or other. Victuality, (organ at epigastrium,) some other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... two-headed tarrier. All we wanted was a live man, to say, 'Here, boys, all together now! You've got your stint, and I've got mine. I'm boss in this shop,—but I can't do the first thing, unless every man pulls his pound. Now, then, my hand is on the throttle, grease the wheels, oil the walves, poke the fires, hook on, and let's yank her through with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... euphony: there was Strongenoff, and Strokonoff, Meknop, Serge Lwow, Arseniew of modern Greece, And Tschitsshakoff, and Roguenoff, and Chokenoff,[378] And others of twelve consonants apiece; And more might be found out, if I could poke enough Into gazettes; but Fame (capricious strumpet), It seems, has got an ear as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... their Jews' market is in full caw. The more complaisant chestnut dandles its sticky knobs. Soon they will be brussels-sprouts, and then they will shake open their fairy umbrellas. So says a child of my acquaintance. The water-lilies already poke their green scrolls above the surface of the pond; a few buttercups venture into the meadows, but daisies are still precious as asparagus. The air is warm as your love's cheek, golden as canary. It is all a-clink and a-glitter, it trills ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... to whistle for his dog, but his breath was too far spent for that. Mustering up all the remaining strength of his lungs, he sent pealing afar through the forest wilds the old familiar battle-cry, "I yi, you dogs!" at the same moment fetching the dam a poke of unusual vigor and directness, which brought her for once sprawling upon her back. But in the act, while yet his whole weight was thrown upon his right foot, one of the cubs, more sturdy than the rest, caught up his left foot by the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... I have something to say to you," said La Cibot. "M. Pons' heirs are about to make a stir; they are capable of giving us a lot of trouble. God knows what might come of it if they send the lawyers here to poke their noses into the affair like hunting-dogs. I cannot get M. Schmucke to sell a few pictures unless you like me well enough to keep the secret—such a secret!—With your head on the block, you must not say where the pictures come ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Arbitt Lodge had that little Marmaduke learned to walk, and then to run, to gaze with admiring eyes on the treasures in the glass cupboards, to play bo-peep behind the thick silken curtains, even in his time faded to a withered-leaf green, to poke his tiny nose into the bowl of pot-pourri on the centre table, which made him sneeze just exactly as—ah! but I am forgetting—never mind, I may as well finish the sentence—just exactly as ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... as an experiment. That's what makes unhappy marriages; at least, that's one thing. There are others too numerous to mention. There's just one reason why a man and a woman should join themselves together in matrimony, and that is love, the love that the poets sing and the rest of us poke fun at, the love that is the nearest thing to Heaven we find on earth." The Doctor sat silent a moment, looking past the girl's grave face into the green blur of the garden. Then he stirred, sighed, and looked at his watch. "Well, well, I must ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... at once, "It's—so much nearer Christmas than it was half an hour ago! Are you sure everything will keep? All those big packages that came yesterday? That humpy one especially? Don't you think you ought to peep? Or poke? Just the teeniest, tiniest little peep or poke? It would be a shame if anything spoiled! A—turkey—or a—or a ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... do to be too proud, Felicity," he remarked, giving her a poke. "You'd better not say too much ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... chambre. In this costume and condition he will dance into Honeyman's apartment, where that meek divine may be sitting with a headache or over a novel or a newspaper; dance up to the fire flapping his robe-tails, poke it, and warm himself there; dance up to the cupboard where his reverence keeps his sherry, and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not come in which she must apprise Alice of Mr Grey's intended visit. As Alice had questioned her at the breakfast table she would say nothing about it then, but waited till the teacups were withdrawn, and till the maid had given her last officious poke to the fire. Then she began. She had Mr Grey's letter in her pocket, and as she prepared herself to speak, she pulled it out and held it on the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... palace. He, the bishop, positively assured Mr Harding that he wanted another resident chaplain,—not a young working chaplain, but a steady, middle-aged chaplain; one who would dine and drink a glass of wine with him, talk about the archdeacon, and poke the fire. The bishop did not positively name all these duties, but he gave Mr Harding to understand that such would be the nature of ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... of the silver threads in the smooth hair under her poke bonnet her dear face was still the face of a child, and never before had it seemed to ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... mouth open, he gits mostly flies. The old birds, with a nest full o' howlin' young ones, might go on, I s'pose, pickin' up grasshoppers till the cows come home, an' feedin' 'em, but they don't. They jest poke 'em out o' the nest, an' larn 'em to fly an' pick up their own livin'; an' that's what makes birds on 'em. They pray mighty hard fur their daily bread, I tell ye, and the way the old birds answer is jest ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... along the river. The dark outlines of strange, wildly-fantastical figures silently move amongst the flames. Sometimes they raise their arms towards the sky, as if in a prayer, sometimes they add fuel to the fires and poke them with long iron pitchforks. The dying flames rise high, creeping and dancing, sputtering with melted human fat and shooting towards the sky whole showers of golden sparks, which are instantly lost in the clouds of ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Mrs. Jellison's mouth twitched, and she threw a sly provocative glance at old Patton, as though she would have liked to poke him in the ribs. But she was not going to help him out; and at last the one male in the company found himself obliged to clear his throat ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the road," said he, "and poke your batons in front of you. Keep a tight hold of that ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... a skinned eel, is Layman, and he winced at that poke at his soft sawder like any thing, and puckered a little about the mouth, but he didn't say nothin', he only bowed. He was a Unitarian preacher once, was Abednego, but he swapt preachin' for politics, and a good trade he made of it too; that's ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... back every farthing honestly." "Charles Hawermann, Charles Hawermann," said Braesig, wiping his eyes, and blowing his imposing nose, "you're—you're an ass! Yes," he continued, shoving his handkerchief into his pocket with an emphatic poke, and holding his nose even more in the air than usual, "you're every bit as great an ass as you used to be!" And then, as if thinking that his friend's thoughts should be led into a new channel, he caught Lina and Mina by the waist-band and put them on Hawermann's knee, saying "There, little ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... affair, isn't it? I think I'll ask first and see if anybody else is going to give in our names. Perhaps Iva or Nesta may. It would be much nicer than seeming to poke ourselves forward." ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... cunnin'a little thing As a hummin'-bird upon the wing, And as liable to poke his nose Jest where folks would least suppose,— And more'n likely build his nest Right in the heart you'd leave unguessed, And live and thrive at your expense— At least, that's MY experience. And old Jeff Thompson often thought, In his se'fish way, that the quiet John Was a ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Mrs. Clover, is to put Polly face to face with you and so get the truth out of her. That we will do, cost what it may. We're not going to have that girl making trouble and disturbance just to please herself. I don't want to poke myself into other people's business, and I'm sure you won't think ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... dance on the oak floors with a brush fastened to his right foot; and, after a rehearsal or two, she made him wait at table. Didn't he bang the things about: and when he brought a lady a dish, and she did not instantly attend, he gave her elbow a poke to attract attention: then she squeaked; and he grinned at her double absurdity in minding a touch, and not minding the real business ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... knows. But I seen a thousand armed men this mornin'. They sure looked bad. You ought to have seen them poke the I.W.W.'s with ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... feasts and weddings. I won't have that sort of thing. I hope I know my duty at my time of life! I certainly sha'n't take lessons from my daughter, or from anybody else. I shall do for my nephew what it is proper to do, and you have no need to poke your nose into it. As for you, Eugenie," he added, facing her, "don't speak of this again, or I'll send you to the Abbaye des Noyers with Nanon, see if I don't; and no later than to-morrow either, if you disobey me! Where is that fellow, has ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... to sling no gun on you as long as you owe me money. I ain't a-goin' to cut the bottom out of m' own money-poke, Chad; you don't need to swivel up in your hide, you ain't ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... books, and which we wish them to assimilate, has been wrought out of human experience, and not brought down miraculously from some remote storehouse of wisdom that is accessible only to the elect. We poke a good deal of fun at book learning nowadays, and there is a pedantic type of book learning that certainly deserves all the ridicule that can be heaped upon it. But it is not wise to carry satire and ridicule too far in ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... trail all cluttered up with folks in here,' thought Howard. 'Wonder who was the last man to poke his fool nose into ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... the whole of the day, Working and toiling without any pay, Only perchance a few mouthfuls of hay, From earliest dawn till late. Held by the horns 'neath this cumbersome yoke, Firmer fixed thus than a "pig in a poke," Feeling the "prong" and the lengthy stick's stroke, Ours, alas, is a ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... burst out; "You hardhearted old ruffian! I come here for sympathy, and the first thing you do is to poke fun at me out of your wretched classics. I've a good mind to clear out and not ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... man, "and I'm here to say that moral force is a grand thing, but in these latitudes when you poke Betsy Jane under the nose of an erring comrade, he sees the truth with much more clearness than otherwise. I stick to the gun—and you can go in hard for ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Vuyning. "Six months old in cut, one inch too long, and half an inch too much lapel. Your hat is plainly dated one year ago, although there's only a sixteenth of an inch lacking in the brim to tell the story. That English poke in your collar is too short by the distance between Troy and London. A plain gold link cuff-button would take all the shine out of those pearl ones with diamond settings. Those tan shoes would be exactly the articles to work into the heart of a Brooklyn ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... bury. A sorry sight it is to rest the eye on, To see a Christian creature graze at Sion, Then homeward, of the saintly pasture full, Rush bellowing, and breathing fire and smoke, At crippled Papistry to butt and poke, Exactly as a skittish Scottish bull Hunts an old woman in a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... got a year's leave of absence from the Navy just to study up some outlandish disease that attacks the sailors in foreign ports. She says why should he take a whole year out of the best part of his life to poke around the huts of dirty heathen to find out the kind of microbe that's eating 'em? He'd ought to think of Barbara and what's eating her heart out. I've taken a great fancy to that girl, and I'd like to give Justin a piece of my mind. It probably ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... heard the Hamelin people Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple; "Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles! Poke out the nests and block up the holes! Consult with carpenters and builders, And leave in our town not even a trace Of the rats!"—when suddenly, up the face Of the Piper perked in the market-place, With a "First, if ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... tire—that would delay her fifteen or twenty minutes. Don't worry, my dear boy. I showed her how to fix a punctured tire all right. It's simple enough—you take the rubber thing they give you and fasten it in that metal thingumbob, glue it up, poke it in, pull it out, pump her up, ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... and "poke" in remnant boxes on the ends of counters in the big department stores, and unearth bits of trimming and of lace with which Godmother, who was clever with her needle and "full of ideas," showed Mary Alice how to put quite ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... I never saw anything so tiresome as you are. Why will you poke your nose in where you're not wanted? You're ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... not be the Chilian, for he would never be making all that disturbance—unless indeed he had gone mad under the stress of being hunted—so it must necessarily be a stray Peruvian soldier. Jim at once sprang to his feet and began to poke about among the bushes with the muzzle of his carbine, as though searching for somebody who might possibly be hidden among them, at the same time turning his back on the approaching man, who was still pushing his way through the bush and singing ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... as a head of asparagus ever presumed to poke itself out of the ground without the especial permission of Ceres, you may conceive what a terrible calamity had here fallen upon the earth. The husbandmen ploughed and planted as usual; but there lay ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... upon a bedstead after he growed up a hard boy-chap—never could get one long enough. When 'a lived in that little small house by the pond, he used to have to leave open his chamber door every night at going to his bed, and let his feet poke ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... uncle; 'I don't want to poke fun at you. I was only going to suggest this. Why don't you go in for real scouting? Learn to play the game properly. It's a wonderful game if you tackle it seriously—splendid sport, and a thousand times more useful, and better fun, than this ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... couldn't wrinkle my forehead and poke out my chin, and grimace at the judges, do you suppose I should ever have been—Class Pug. First ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... mark was The Shepherd's Week (1714), six burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him by Pope, who was then smarting from the praise Philips had received in The Guardian. But if Pope meant Gay to poke his fun at Philips in The Shepherd's Week, he must have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as genuine bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are, to say the least, more true to rustic life than the pastorals either of Philips or of Pope. The Shepherd's Week was followed by Trivia ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... of. Squirrels have an awful vocabulary, but I never knew one that could talk like Blacky. And every time he thought of something new to say he waved his tail at us in a way that was particularly aggravating. You have no idea how other animals poke fun at us because we have no tails, and how sensitive we really are on the subject. They say that it was to hide our lack of tail that we originally got into the habit of sitting up on our haunches whenever ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... To poke fun in an offhand manner at little boys and girls seemed to have been the only conception of humor to be found in the children's books of the period, if we except the "Jests" and the attempts made in a ponderous manner on the title-pages. ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... a stern-eyed folk Who may or may not take a joke; It really isn't safe to poke Light fun at any three-ringed bloke; You may be sorry that you spoke. Their ways are proud; they sport the oak; They are not tame enough to stroke; I greatly dread ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... farthest from the door, standing between the hearth and the wall, and in this the old woman was lying. The child, about eight years, had jumped out of bed, stark naked, and now in this condition was endeavouring with a bit of stick to poke the hot embers together, so as to give out a better heat and light. But Thady was in want of neither, and he therefore desired the boy to get into bed, and upsetting with his foot the little heap which the urchin had so industriously collected together ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... stars and other dangers—when these queer people began to massage each other in turn, to rub and to thump, to slap and knead the limbs and muscles, then, in their intense curiosity, even the children forgot their timidity and crowded round. A pickaninny—the queerest little mite—even ventured to poke a tiny finger into the ribs of one of the three. After that there was a great pow-wow. Mr. Hume, with a man in the palm of each hand, a boy on each shoulder, and a couple hanging from each brawny arm, sent the spectators into shrieks of amusement, and they there and then christened ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... us open the packet and look it through ourselves before we decide. What the devil business is it of anybody else's. He was my brother and your husband. These people weren't even his friends. They've no right to poke their noses into our affairs. You tell them so; sister-in-law. Give me the packet. Come away with me somewhere where we can look it through quietly. I'm fair and straight. It shall be halves, I swear. I say, sister-in-law Agnes, ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fashion. Yet if she had entered before a still audience as Imogene or Cato's daughter, the dress might have seemed right enough: the grace and dignity were in her limbs and neck; and about her simply parted hair and candid eyes the large round poke which was then in the fate of women, seemed no more odd as a head-dress than the gold trencher we call a halo. By the present audience of two persons, no dramatic heroine could have been expected with more interest than Mrs. Casaubon. To Rosamond she was one of those county ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... terrible only in presence. When distant, or supposed to be distant, we can call him hard or tender names, nay, even poke our poor fun at him. Mr. Punch, on one occasion, when he wished to ridicule the useful-information leanings of a certain periodical publication, quoted from its pages the sentence, "Man is mortal," and people were found to grin broadly over the exquisite stroke of humour. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... whispered suddenly from a window. Then, with a last poke at her hair, Miss Letitia admitted the teacher. They spoke their greeting in a half whisper and stood near, waiting timidly ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... called these pale, frightened youths and sobbing maidens to his footstool, gave them each a poke in the ribs with his sceptre (to try whether they were in good flesh or no), and dismissed them with a nod to his guards. But when his eyes rested on Theseus, the king looked at him more attentively, because his ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... years on making an item about the first tomatoes that are served in spring at any dinner or reception, together with the cost per pound of the tomatoes, the town has become used to our attitude and does not buzz with indignation when we poke a risible finger at the homemade costumes of the Plymouth Daughters when they present "The Mikado" to pay for the new pipe-organ. Indeed, so used is the town to our ways that when there was great talk last winter about Mrs. Frelingheysen for serving fresh strawberries over ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... are ze evilest leetle beasts in all ze vorld! Venever you sink you are rid of zem, zere zey are at your elbow. (Brownies laugh again.) Vey steal, zey pinch, zey poke, zey pry, and at night, ven all ze house is still, zey come out, and if you do not keep your eyes ver' wide awake zey vill pinch you till you die—zat is, ven you ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... old mutton bone and a few potatoes go metaphorical miles. The knowledge would be a great comfort to him when his little "darlikins'" feet-of-clay began to show through her silk stockings. As it is, marriage to him is little but a supreme example of buying a pig in a poke, followed by an immediate slump in his own ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... was sadly goaded along. An Arab boy of about the same age was her goad, who was whipping her and goading her along with a sharp piece of wood. Sometimes the young rascal would poke up her person. I could not see this without interfering, although I am afraid to interfere. She had got far behind, and the boy was thus tormenting her like a young imp. I made him take one hand, and I the other. But we could not get her up to the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... ladyship's sister asked them. Mrs. Brent had scolded her and "poked about" her cottage, going into her tiny "wash 'us," and up into her infinitesimal bedroom under the slanting roof, to see that they were kept clean. Miss Vanderpoel showed no disposition to "poke." She sat and listened, and made an inquiry here and there, in a nice voice and with a smile in her eyes. There was some pleasure in relating the whole history of your eighty-three years to a young lady who listened as if she wanted to hear it. So old Mrs. Welden prattled on. About ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the farm any longer. He used to sit in a big cane-bottomed chair close to the fireplace, in winter, and under a big lilac-bush, at the north-east corner of the house, in summer. He kept a stout iron-tipped cane by his side: in the winter, he used it to poke the fire with; in the summer, to rap the hens and chickens which he used to lure round his chair by handfuls of corn and oats. Sometimes he would tap the end of the wooden leg with this cane, and say, laughingly, "Ha! ha! think of a leg like that's being ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... as well as men, the ladies began to find the hinder pokes of their hats uncommon nuisances; and so, in a fit of spleen, one day the Duchess of G——, or some other woman of fashion, cut off this hinder protuberance, and appeared, to the scandal of her neighbours, plus the front poke, minus the back one. This was a daring, free-thinking, revolutionary innovation. Somebody had probably done it at Paris before her; but the startling idea had gone forth—women began to see daylight ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... Three Bears discovered the Enchanted Land where bears may walk without fear of harm, and may safely poke their noses into any man's tent if they choose, from that day, Little Bear ...
— Little Bear at Work and at Play • Frances Margaret Fox
... hymn. Wandering about the earth, he had observed man and found him in all things contemptible, especially in his vanity begotten by what he called "reason"; he, the miserable little cricket, vaingloriously jumping out of the grass in an effort to poke his nose among the stars, then falling back to chirp, had almost taken away from the devil all desire to tempt him to evil doings. "Knowest thou Faust?" asks the Divine Voice; and Mefistofele tells of the philosopher's insatiable thirst ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... quite long enough," said George Cannon, as he stooped to poke the morsel of fire in the old-fashioned grate, which had a hob on either side. On one of these hobs was a glass of milk. Hilda had learnt that day for the first time that at a certain hour every evening George Cannon drank a glass of warm milk, and that this glass of warm milk was an important ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... a friendly snack—at Atkinson's expense; this by an insinuation of the neck out between his own bars and in between those of Atkinson, adjoining. But he doesn't understand the laws of space. Having once fetched his neck around the partition into Atkinson's larder by chancing to poke his head through the end bars, he straightway assumes that what is possible between some bars is possible between all; and wheresoever he may now be standing when prompted by companionable peckishness, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... for a man whose mission it is to wear stuff and a horse-hair wig to 'poke borak' at that venerable and eminently respectable institution—the law, and still worse is it for a practising barrister to actually set to work, even in the most kindly spirit, to criticise the judges, before whom at any moment he may ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... real ideas blotted out. No wonder he hates what he calls destructive criticism, sometimes called by free spirits the elimination of buncombe. "Above all things," says Bagehot, "our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it." [Footnote: The English Constitution, p. 127. D. Appleton & Company, 1914.] For poking about with clear definitions and candid statements serves all high purposes known to man, except the easy conservation of a common will. Poking about, as every ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... contents of the book; likewise hard work and tactful persistence; also, honesty. But opposed against the combination is the bookseller, on guard against overstocking, to some extent a purchaser of a pig in a poke, conscious that one unsold book eats up the profit on five copies ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... crowd—there are seventy-five people in the tramway. They sit in your lap; they stand on your toes; when they wish to pass they simply push you. Everything in silence; they know that silence is golden, and they have the worship of gold. When the conductor wishes your fare he gives you a poke, very serious, without a word. As for the types— but there is only one—they are all variations of the same—the commis-voyageur minus the gaiety. The women are often pretty; you meet the young ones in the streets, in the trains, in search of a ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... force—like Punch and the devil at the two ends of the stick. At last, after she had held me in a corner for half a minute, I made a rush upon her, drove her right to the opposite corner, so that the end of the handle gave her a severe poke in the body, which made her give up the contest, and exclaim as soon as she recovered her breath,—"Oh! you nasty, ungrateful, ungenteel brute! You little viper! Is that the way you treat your mother—and nearly kill her? Oh, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... in a pouch of kit fox with the tail attached, which hung from the front of his girdle like the sporran of a Scotch Highlander. Out of it he drew a roll of birch bark painted with juice of poke-berries. The Tallega spread it on the grass, weighting one end with the turtle-back, as he read, with the children looking ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... Knight, in a note on As You Like It, gives us the description of a dial presented to him by a friend who had picked it "out of a deal of old iron," and which he supposes to be such a one as the "fool i' the forest" drew from his poke, and looked on with lacklustre eye. It is very probable that this species of chronometer is still in common use in the sister kingdom; for my brother mentions to me that, when at school in Ireland some ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... quite useless, mamma," said Gwendolen, coldly. "Governesses don't wear ornaments. You had better get me a gray frieze livery and a straw poke, such as my aunt's ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... us fair arrangement make: A pig in poke you'd neither give nor take; Confront these halves in nature's birth-day suit; To neither, then, will you deceit impute. The project was most thoroughly approved; Like inclination ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... given to thee gratis by one who would enslave thee. Go thy way, O my Brother. And if my words lead thee to Juhannam, why, there will be a great surprise for thee. There thou wilt behold our Maker sitting on a flaming glacier waiting for the like of thee. And he will take thee into his arms and poke thee in the ribs, and together you will laugh and laugh, until that glacier become a garden and thou a flower therein. Go thy way, therefore; be not afraid. And no matter how many tears thou sheddest on this side, thou wilt surely be poked in ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... expect you to, all by yourself, Just," Huge told him. "Poke the end of it down here, and keep a good stiff grip on the butt. Then we'll hold on, and find places to set our feet. Inch by inch, and foot by foot, we'll manage to climb up. You can help a little by keeping ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... ranged in a double line along a spacious, well-aired sleeping-room; some, too young for this, rocked in cosy cradles; but all clean, safe, and happy. What needs it to say whether the good ladies who tended them wore the habit of St. Vincent de Paul, the poke-bonnet of the Puseyite "sister," or the simple garb of unpretending Protestantism? The thing is being done. The most helpless of all our population—the children of the working poor—are being kept from the streets, kept from harm, and trained ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... near them," cautioned Mr. De Vere. "If you breathe too deeply of those fumes, you'll be killed. Get a boat hook, poke them out of the locker, spear them with the sharp point, and thrust them up through ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... be laid to his account is that, in his zeal, he sometimes makes a ring of small holes so continuous as to inadvertently damage the tree by girdling it. The bird, like most others, does not debar himself entirely from fruit diet, but enjoys berries, especially poke-berries. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... you eat them Christmas. They put a little one on the table with an apple in its mouth. And they pick out the fattest turkeys and ducks and geese and chickens; and they go to the smoke-house and punch and poke the hams and things; and the oysters come from the river; and Mammy Malaprop comes up from the gate, where she lives now, and helps make the cakes and the, pies and plum-puddings and beaten biscuits; and Cousin Claudia says when she was a little girl Mammy Malaprop ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... had not heard. Doubtless he felt as heavy as he looked, for the afternoon was warm, and luncheon—well, at any rate, he remained neutral and inactive. Something might happen to divert philosophical inquiry into other channels; a rat might poke its nose above the pond; a big fish might jump; an awfully rare butterfly come dancing; or Maria, as on rare occasions she had been known to do, might stop discussion with a word of power. The chances were in his favour on the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... to come and back me," said Tom to a small school-house boy, who was off like a rocket to Harrowell's, just stopping for a moment to poke his head into the school-house hall, where the lower boys were already at tea, and sing out, "Fight! Tom ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... to poke, to stir with a long instrument, JD. Comb.: pout-staff, anet fastened to two poles, used for poking ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... down. Fire's welly out,' said he, giving it a vigorous poke, as if to turn attention away from himself. He was rather disorderly, to be sure, with a black unshaven beard of several days' growth, making his pale face look yet paler, and a jacket which would have been all ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... my coffee for lunch, in his own little cell, looking out on the olive woods; then he tells me stories of conversions and miracles, and then perhaps we go into the Sacristy and have a reverent little poke out of relics. Fancy a great carved cupboard in a vaulted chamber full of most precious things (the box which the Holy Virgin's veil used to be kept in, to begin with), and leave to rummage in it at will! Things ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... Wheat looks well. Corn is scarce and dear. Twenty-two shillings here, thirty shillings in Amherst. Our blossoms are but just opening. I have begun the demolition of my house, and hope to get through its re-edification in the course of the summer. We shall have the eye of a brick-kiln to poke you into, or an octagon to air you in. Adieu ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... any thing more, nor inclination for them, as I reckon every thing very dear when One has so little time to enjoy it. However, I cannot say but the plates by Rubens do tempt me a little—yet, as I do not care to, buy even Rubens in a poke, I should wish to know if the Alderman would let me see. if it were but one. Would he be persuaded? I would pay for the carriage, though I ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... It would seem as if we had forgotten about the self-interest and selfishness of the modern movement, which is there on all sides to poke its tongue at a mother's devotion to her ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... balloons, and all; loud roared the bulls, hideous, and the crash of wheels, and chaos of confusion drear, resounded far from earth to heaven. And still more fierce in charge the great Lord Whittington, from poke of ermine his famed Grimalkin took. She screamed, and harsh attacked my bulls confounded; lightning-like she darted, and from half the troop their eyes devouring tore. Nor could the riders, crickets throned sublime, escape from rage, from fury less averse than ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... to get one, anyway," said Mrs. Comstock. "I forgot all about bringing anything to put them in. You take a pinch on their wings until I make a poke." ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... that Leonardo de Pourceaugnac is a man to buy a pig in a poke, and that he has not the sense to find out what goes on in the world, and to see if, in marrying, his ...
— Monsieur de Pourceaugnac • Moliere
... alone. Yes, La Couteau has all sorts of tricks to evade the law. And, besides, all the folks of Rougemont close their eyes—they are too much interested in keeping business brisk; and all they fear is that the police may poke their noses into their affairs. Ah! it is all very well for the Government to send inspectors every month, and insist on registers, and the Mayor's signature and the stamp of the Commune; why, it's just as if it did nothing. ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the wind?" Paul asked himself, when he was alone. "Bitter as Stanley is against me, he can't have set on his cousin to hoax and poke fun at me. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting |
