"Skim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... matter of course, were very impatient to take their first lesson in rowing, and to skim over the glassy lake in the splendid barge ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... and let it boil slowly for 10 minutes, and skim well while boiling. Then remove vessel from fire and add 1/2 gill of Brandy to every pint of Shrub. Bottle and cork securely. This drink is served by simply pouring a little of the Syrup into Ice Water, as any drink from Fruit Syrup is ...
— The Ideal Bartender • Tom Bullock
... to the house, filled a bucket with my salad, and started toward the edge of the woods, singing happily as I sped on feet so light and frolicsome that they seemed to skim the ground. How wonderful is ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... forget or forsake us; but the old book is ever the same. What would the old man do without it? And to you who are young I would say—you may re-read, you first must read. Choose worthy books to love. As for those who know no book long enough either to love or despise it—who skim through good and bad alike and forget page ninety-nine while reading page 100, we may simply say to them, in the words of the witty Frenchman, "What a sad old age ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... but she was really too small to be useful. After some days had passed away, she began to wash the cups and saucers, spread the cloth, fold the linen and wipe the table. She went to the milking with Passerose, helped to strain the milk and skim it and wash the marble flag-stones. She was never out of temper, never disobedient and ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... an amusement to me this first evening, scribbling as egotistically as usual about myself and my doings; so you must forgive me, as I know well your kind heart will do. I have managed to skim the newspaper, but had not heart to read all the bloody details. Good God! What will the end be? Perhaps we are too despondent here; but I must think you are too hopeful on your side of the water. I never believed the "canards" of the army of the Potomac ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... she can," quoth he. "She will skim like a bird over the snow; so get into the sleigh, and we will go straight off ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... great height, and then sweeping upward again. Another minute, and I saw a second bird, farther away. I watched the nearer one till it faded from sight, soaring and swooping by turns,—its long, scissors-shaped tail all the while fully spread,—but never coming down, as its habit is said to be, to skim over the surface of the water. There is nothing more beautiful on wings, I believe: a large hawk, with a swallow's grace of form, color, and motion. I saw it once more (four birds) over the St. Mark's River, and counted the sight one of the ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... uncertain way that was noticeable in all the servants of the household when they addressed their master. Loder saw the look and wondered what depth of curiosity it betrayed, how much of insight into the domestic life that he must always be content to skim. For an instant the old resentment against Chilcote tinged his exaltation, but he swept it angrily aside. Without further remark he began ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... but they are all quite low at this time of year. As we stood in one of them to let the horses drink and cool their legs, I saw a huge eel hidden under the shadow of a high overhanging bank, waiting till the evening to come out and feed upon the myriads of flies and little white moths that skim over the surface of ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... by sailors, "mother Carey's chickens." These birds are seldom seen in calm weather, but appear to follow the gale, and when it blows most heavily they are seen in greatest numbers. The colour is brown and white; the size about that of the swallow, whose motions oh the wing they resemble. They skim over the surface of the roughest sea, gliding up and down the undulations with astonishing swiftness. When they observe their prey, they descend flutteringly, and place the feet and the tips of the wings on the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... and Gulf States, where it is very abundant; it is frequent in the Middle States, and only occasionally seen in New England. The wings are exceedingly long; they fly in close flocks, moving simultaneously. They seem to feed as they skim low over the water, the under-mandible grazing or cutting the surface, and thus taking in their food.—Vide Coues's Key to North American ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... let down. When they had drawn the milk they pour it into wooden vessels hollowed out, and they set the blind slaves in order about 6 the vessels and agitate the milk. Then that which comes to the top they skim off, considering it the more valuable part, whereas they esteem that which settles down to be less good than the other. For this reason 7 the Scythians put out the eyes of all whom they catch; for they are not tillers of the ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... have a peculiarly heavy and constrained gait, a rolling, or "slouching" movement, appearing to walk with short, quick steps on the tip of his toes, his hind-feet not being lifted high but appearing to skim the ground, and running with the right shoulder rather advanced, similar to the manner ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... short and weak that flight in the air is denied it. Still it uses them effectually in flapping, which, aided by the beating of its broad webbed feet, upon stout legs set far back on the body, enables it to skim over the surface of the water at the rate of fifteen miles an hour! In its progress, says Darwin, "it makes such a noise and splashing that the effect is exceedingly curious." The great naturalist further states that ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... received her own particular friends, wrote her letters, and read; just then she was engaged in the latter occupation, for the books had come in from the library that day, and she had sat down after luncheon to skim them through before selecting any which seemed worth ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... go to the top in journalism, the big men of power and success and grasp, come through with a contempt for the public which they serve, compared to which the contempt of the public for the newspaper is as skim ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the toiling hand of Care; The panting herds repose: Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air The busy murmur glows! The insect youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring And float amid the liquid noon: Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some show their gaily-gilded trim ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... cavalry were but a squadron. He had one good regiment of foot Chasseurs and two good regiments of marines; and the gunners of his artillery (escaped men from Sedan) were excellent, and the guns were new; but he had for his main body some 20,000 second-skim of the National Guard, the cream from the north having been sent south to the Army of the East under Bourbaki, with whom they were driven ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... not love- letters; just quite ordinary, sensible, telling-the-news, but there was always one little sentence in his which seemed to say more than the words, and to tell me that he cared a great deal. If a stranger had read it, he would not have understood, but I knew what he meant, and I used to skim over the pages until I came to those few words, and they were the ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in a quart of the liquor in which a leg of mutton has been boiled, skim well, and when the vegetables are tender strain them out. Pass the soup through a napkin, boil up, skim thoroughly, and when clear add the contents of a tin of Nelson's Extract ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... the drawbridge flies, Just as it trembled on the rise; Not lighter does the swallow skim Along the smooth lake's level brim: And when Lord Marmion reached his band, He halts, and turns with clenched hand, A shout of loud defiance pours, And shakes his gauntlet at the towers! Sir ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... you've got the matter twisted. It was you interfering with our game. We've been after this man two months. And you ain't going to skim the cream off our hard ...
— The Bradys and the Girl Smuggler - or, Working for the Custom House • Francis W. Doughty
... of my paper on 'Climbing Plants.' I suppose I shall be able to send you a copy in four or five weeks. I think it contains a good deal new and some curious points, but it is so fearfully long, that no one will ever read it. If, however, you do not SKIM through it, you will be an unnatural parent, for ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... walrus hide would be thrown over the front of one of the komatik runners, but even then the dogs would have to run their hardest to preserve a safe distance between them and us, and out on the smooth ice of the bays we would shoot, to skim along with exhilarating swiftness. As we proceeded south we were interested in observing signs of spring. Towards the end of our journey we encountered much ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... of us. I know it came to me. But the perfect steadiness of the balloon won our confidence, and we soon gave ourselves up to the gratification of our enviable position; and enviable indeed it was. For who has not envied the eagle his power to skim the tree-tops, to hover above Niagara, to circle mountain peaks, to poise himself aloft and survey creation, or to mount into the zenith ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... flies before him, never to be caught. These swallows, which we see before us on the Thames, are the just resemblance of his Wit. You may observe how near the water they stoop! how many proffers they make to dip, and yet how seldom they touch it! and when they do, 'tis but the surface! they skim over it, but to catch a gnat, and then mount in ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... table-spoonful of salt. Hang it over a good fire, as early as six o'clock in the morning, if you dine at two. When it has come to a hard boil, and the scum has risen, (which it will do as soon as it has boiled,) skim it well. Do not remove the lid more frequently than is absolutely necessary, as uncovering the pot causes the flavour to evaporate. Then set it on hot coals in the corner, and keep it simmering steadily, adding fresh coals so as ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... handsome rooms in the Rue Saint-Lazare, he alone comprehended the unpublished romance revealed by a garrulous quadrille. People certainly noticed Isaure d'Aldrigger's dancing; but in this present century the cry is 'Skim lightly over the surface, do not lean your weight on it;' so one said (he was a notary's clerk), 'There is a girl that dances uncommonly well;' another (a lady in a turban), 'There is a young lady that ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... who crosses the heath at night bend clown until his face comes on a level with the tufts of grass, and he will see a strange spectacle outline itself against the western sky. Owls with great, round wings skim over the ground, invisible to any one standing upright. Snakes glide about there, lithe, quick, with narrow heads uplifted on swanlike necks. Great turtles crawl slowly forward, hares and water-rats flee before preying beasts, and a fox bounds after a bat, which is chasing mosquitos ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... was only driven at moderate speed. She seemed to skim the placid surface of the sea, which lay beneath. Uncle Prudent and his companion remained in their cabin, so that they did not meet with Robur, who walked about smoking alone or talking to the mate. Only half the screws were working, yet that was enough to keep the apparatus ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... you boil rice in the pot. If rice is used, put in two-thirds of a tea cup. A pound or two of salt pork, boiled with the turkey, improves it. If you wish to make a soup of the liquor in which the turkey is boiled, let it remain until the next day, then skim off the fat. Heat ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... smooth and sparkling sea, is excessively difficult to navigate; its surf looks no more than champagne foam, but a thousand quicksands and shoals lie beneath: there are breakers ahead for more than half the dainty pleasure-boats that skim their hour upon it; and the foundered lie by millions, forgotten, five fathoms deep below. The only safe ballast upon it is gold dust; and if stress of weather come on you, it will swallow you without remorse. Trevenna had ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the golden butterflies skim over, And poise, all fondly, on these lifted lips, Leaving the riches of the sweet red clover For the blue ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... advice, sir, you'll have nothing to do with him. Keep your hand out o' the pot; there's no man can skim boiling lead with his hand and not burn his fingers—but ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a recollection of Peggy's mischievous flight of a few days previously had occurred to him—Mortlake swung the delicate silvery machine about and dashed straight down at the boy and girl standing by the garden gate. So close to their heads did he skim in his desire to show off, that he almost came too low. For one instant it looked as if the machine would be dashed to a premature end, but it recovered buoyancy like a keeled-over racing yacht, and tore upward into the sky at ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... one poem; it is made up of many "short swallow-flights of song that dip their wings in tears and skim away." There are one hundred thirty separate songs in all, held together by the silken thread of love ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... out for another cully; that he would not be fooled so by ever a country mock modesty in England; that he supposed I had left my maidenhead with some hobnail in the country, and was come to dispose of my skim-milk in town" with a volley of the like abuse; which I listened to with more pleasure than ever fond woman did to protestations of love from her darling minion: for, incapable as I was of receiving any addition to my perfect hatred and aversion to him, I looked on this railing, as ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... by the healthy body, and intemperance is a fruitful predisposing cause of consumption. Skim milk is not a suitable food for ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... Montaigne conservative and discreet; Rabelais sought development of all the faculties alike, Montaigne gave preference to the training of the judgment; Rabelais would thoroughly master every branch of human knowledge, Montaigne was content to skim over the sciences. And yet, Montaigne must be recognized as an important factor in education, not only for his own teachings, but because undoubtedly Bacon, Locke, Rousseau, and other apostles of reform were greatly influenced ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... dislike, one pound of resolution, two grains of common sense, two ounces of experience, a large sprig of time, and three quarts of cooling water of consideration. Set them over a gentle fire of love, sweeten it with sugar of forgetfulness, skim it with the spoon of melancholy, put it in the bottom of your heart, cork it with the cork of clean conscience. Let it remain and you will quickly find ease and be restored ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... a moment, Timid Hare got the snowshoes and left the tepee. For a moment she looked about her to see if any other little girl would like to join her in a skim over the fields. But all seemed busy at their games, and even now she was not enough at home with any one of them to ask them to leave their own play and go off with ...
— Timid Hare • Mary Hazelton Wade
... Buckskin Horse was hitched to the surrey; and in the shafts of the buggy stood Hal the Red Roan. And that night the boys particularly wanted to ride behind Teddy. They liked to watch the black stripe that ran down his yellow back skim ahead of them over the road, just like a snake. And they liked the surrey, too. It had a fringe all around the top, and high mudguards, and a whip with a tassel and ribbon on it. But now that the great-aunts were in, Aunt Abby's side ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... me. As I drew a third arrow from my quiver its barb caught in the rawhide, and I swore a soft vicious oath to steady my nerves. Then drawing my bow carefully, lowering my aim and holding like grim death, I shot a beautifully released arrow. It sped over the tops of the dried grass seeming to skim the ground like a bird, and struck the deer full and hard in the chest. It was a welcome thud. The beast leaped, bounded off some thirty yards, staggered, drew back its head and wilted in the hind legs. I had stayed immovable as wood. Seeing him failing, I ran swiftly ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... Boat, or the C.M.B. for short. But the handy man knows it simply as the Scooter. The first scooters were only forty feet long, the next were fifty-five, the last were seventy. Everything about them is made as light as possible; so that they can skim along in about two feet of water at an outside speed of nearly fifty (land) miles an hour. They are really the thinnest of racing shells fitted with the strongest of lightweight engines. They are all ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... pounds of beef add six quarts of cold water and place over the fire. Just before it boils, skim it carefully. Then add two cups of cold water and skim again, repeating this for a third skimming. Allow it to simmer slowly for three hours. Then add the vegetables; eight ounces each of cut up carrots, ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden
... off you can see them. When first melted the sugar is far from pure; you would be astonished at the amount of dirt mixed with it. Many of these impurities boil up to the surface and over and over again we skim them off. But even after that we have to wash the sugar by various processes. After it has been separated, clarified, and filtered it comes out a clear white liquid, and is ready for the vacuum pans, where the water is evaporated and ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment,—but only just a moment,—then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "It's synonymous with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack, perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails in unison and their faces transfigured ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... disconcerting enough in their degree, were to the signboard, when the signboard at last came, as skim milk is to hot brandy. It was the signboard that, more startlingly than anything else, marked the dawn of a new era in St. Luke's Square. Four men spent a day and a half in fixing it; they had ladders, ropes, and pulleys, and two of them dined on the flat lead roof of ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... that Russian mountain, hewn asunder midway, were fitted flush to a Norwegian cliff, beetling precipitately over the whirlpool; then tilt the sledge with its furred inmate over the slope, let it skim with quicker impetus the smoking ice, let it touch that beetling edge, and, leaping from the tangent, let it dart through the air, let it strike the eddying waters, be sucked hurriedly down that hoarse black throat, wind among ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a nice shepherd puppy. It is just as cunning as it can be. There is no school here that I can go to, so I study at home. We have eight cows. I can milk, and I can strain the milk and skim it too. One evening I skimmed ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... me boil the broth and retiredst to rest, thy slave in obedience to thy command took out a suit of clean white clothes and gave it to the boy Abdullah; then kindled the fire and set on the broth. As soon as it was ready I had need to light a lamp so that I might see to skim it, but all the oil was spent, and, learning this I told my want to the slave-boy Abdullah, who advised me to draw somewhat from the jars which stood under the shed. Accordingly, I took a can and went to the first vessel when suddenly I heard ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... was the fertile brain, That bid him onward flee, The Indian moon was on the wane And drooped the hawthorne tree. The light canoe of rounded bark Scarce dared to skim the flood, For they had come with meaning dark To ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... have lived in the world,' she said; after a pause, 'you are a man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach, who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn much do but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they conceive the dignity of the design—the horror of the living fact fades from their memory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember, I think, and are warned and pity. Go, rather, go now, and keep me ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... d'eau, a liquid cup lost in the recesses of the woods, reflecting only a very small portion of the blue heavens above; unknown to man, but always frequented by thousands of delighted and happy insects, and little birds that come there in the great heats of summer to refresh themselves, to skim across the surface, and sip, with head uplifted towards heaven, its pellucid waters. These little springs, lost in the thickness of the mossy turf and the dead leaves, like a gray hair in the dark tresses of some village beauty, which accident or a lover could alone discover, when ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... costly fronts rich with the spoils of kingdoms, and softened with the magic of the midnight beam. The whole city too is poured forth for festival. The people lounge on the quays and cluster on the bridges; the light barks skim along in crowds, just touching the surface of the water, while their bright prows of polished iron gleam in the moonshine, and glitter in the rippling wave. Not a sound that is not graceful: the tinkle of guitars, the sighs of serenaders, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... cold morning, with a skim of snow on the ground, already melting fast before the sun, and destined to be gone in a half hour, fires that had been built anew until they burned brightly, and squaws cooking before them, while warriors, with blankets drawn about their shoulders, sat near and ate. Children ran about, also ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... able to separate best English from merely good English needs a long process of special education, but to recognize bad English one need merely skim through a page of a book, and if a single expression in the left-hand column following can be found (unless purposely quoted in illustration of vulgarity) it is quite certain that the author neither writes best English nor belongs ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... doctrine, and evangelical earnestness, that characterized his subsequent ministrations. He preached not to the fancy, but to the conscience and the heart. He confined not himself to hortatory appeals, nor did he, in any wise, skim over the surface of things; but, as both my notes and recollections of his college sermons assure me, he was apt to handle, and that vigorously, the high topics of theology. He gave us not milk alone, but strong meat. Yet have I seldom known a man so remarkable for making ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... in the same way. We lift an impalpable scale from the surface of the Pyramids. We slip off from the dome of St. Peter's that other imponderable dome which fitted it so closely that it betrays every scratch on the original. We skim off a thin, dry cuticle from the rapids of Niagara, and lay it on our unmoistened paper without breaking a bubble or losing a speck of foam. We steal a landscape from its lawful owners, and defy the charge of dishonesty. We skin the flints by the wayside, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... said our mother, 'what matters it whether the boon which Santa Claus brings be royal English cheddar or fromage de Bricquebec, Vermont sage, or Herkimer County skim-milk? We should be content with whatsoever Santa Glaus bestows, so long as it be cheese, disjoined from all traps whatsoever, unmixed with Paris green, and free from glass, strychnine, and other harmful ingredients. As for myself, I shall be satisfied ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... look at the difference in the size of the pieces! And Aunt Olivia only gives you skim milk. My ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... their riders. The supreme moment came for me when they were exactly opposite the grand stand, full half a mile away—the moment that I remembered from year to year as one of exquisite illusion—for then the horses seemed to lift from the earth as with wings, and to skim over the track like a covey of low-flying birds. The finish was tame to this. Mrs. March and I had our wonted difference of opinion as to which horse had won, and we were rather uncommonly controversial ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... lawful owners. Meanwhile, I dashed forward whithersoever the horse took me. I remember, even amid my panic, what a delight it was to sit astride of so noble a beast, who seemed to scorn my weight, and skim the earth as lightly as if he carried a child. Had it been my own sorry nag I should long since ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... honey vinegar on a quart of bruised raspberries. Let it stand in a closed vessel for three days, and stir occasionally. Strain through flannel without squeezing, and to 1 pint of liquor put 1-1/4 lb. of honey. Boil for ten minutes, skim, and bottle ...
— The Production of Vinegar from Honey • Gerard W Bancks
... said she, 'to live amidst the coral bowers and crystal caverns of the ocean, with my sister nymphs, and listen to the sounding waters above, and to the soft shells of the tritons! and then, after sun-set, to skim on the surface of the waves round wild rocks and along sequestered shores, where, perhaps, some pensive wanderer comes to weep! Then would I soothe his sorrows with my sweet music, and offer him from a shell some of the delicious fruit that hangs ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... who, having watched them till they began to skim in their flight, saw them stop, flap their wings, and drop among some straggling gorse on the hill before them. 'Let's break the covey; we shall bag ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... a long cold winter, but now there were signs everywhere of a curious awakening among the maples. Some were already out in red bloom. The grass had begun to spring up in its soft green, though there were patches of ice in shady places and a broad skim along the edge of the Charles River marsh. But the bay and the harbor were ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... let, and nobody knows anything about them. I took the trouble to go there, I assure you, on my own hook, to see if I could find out something. Toto nearly died of it, didn't you, darling? Not a drop of cream to be had for him, the poor angel; only a little nasty skim milk. But Mr. Tatham has the barbarity to smile," she went on, with a shrill outcry. "Fancy, Toto—the cruelty ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... to whom Guy telegraphed in hot haste, bidding him hunt New York over for the desired shade. Where he found it I never knew, but find it he did, or something approximating to it, a faded, washed-out color, which seemed a cross between wood-ashes and pale skim milk. A sample was sent up for Guy's approval, and then the work commenced again, when order number three came in one of those dainty little billets which used to make Guy's face radiant with happiness. ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... our tiny craft skim. It should be noted here that Aaleck, Jock, and Jeanettie were first to get their education. Scotland was the first country that required all parents, high or low, to educate their children, and ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... hall of Atli yearn: But a little after the noontide is the Niblung host embayed, And betwixt the sheltering nesses the ocean-wind is laid: No whit they brook delaying: but their noblest and their best Toss up the shaven oar-blades, and toil and mock at rest: Full swift they skim the swan-mead till the tall masts quake and reel, And the oaken sea-burgs quiver from bulwark unto keel. It is Gunnar goes the foremost with the tiller in his hand, And beside him standeth Knefrud and laughs on Atli's land: And ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... thing, whate'er its kind, Some lot, some part, some station is assigned The feathered race with pinions skim the air; Not so the mackerel, and still less the bear.... Ah! who has seen the mailed lobster rise, Clap her broad wings, and soaring claim the skies? When did the owl, descending from her bower, Crop, midst the fleecy flocks the tender flower; Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb, In ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... A first-rate city house is a regular sanatorium. The only trouble is, that the little good-for-nothings that come of utterly used-up and worn-out stock, and ought to die, can't die, to save their lives. So they grow up to dilute the vigor of the race with skim-milk vitality. They would have died, like good children, in most average country places; but eight months of shelter in a regulated temperature, in a well-sunned house, in a duly moistened air, with good sidewalks to go about on in all weather, and four months of the cream of summer and the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Who killed him?" Racey allowed his eyes casually to skim the expressionless faces of the men ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... and not as much as by a tremor of the eye-lid did either show how delighted she would have been to sit beside the handsome young man and skim along ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... blood, tends to keep it from tasting strong; it should be turned daily, and, if wanted soon, rubbed. A salting tub may be used, and a cover should fit close. Those who use a good deal of salt will find it well to boil up the pickle, skim, and when cold pour it over meat that has been sprinkled and drained. In some families great loss is sustained by the spoiling of meat. If meat is brought from a distance in warm weather, the butcher should be charged to cover ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... to skim through by doing just as little work as possible. They cut the corners as closely as possible with their lessons, so that they can have time for play. They do that with the work in subtraction, and then, when they get into multiplication or ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... the track, neck and neck on the home-stretch, With nostrils distended and mane froth-flecked, and the neck and the shoulders, Each urged to his best by the cry and the whip and the rein of his rider, Now they skim o'er the waters and fly, side by side, neck and neck, through the meadows, The blue heron flaps from the reeds, and away wings her course up the river: Straight and swift is her flight o'er the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... a dark speck moving rapidly across the prairie toward the ranch house. It seemed to skim the ground and in five minutes had developed into a cow pony and its rider. A quarter of an hour later and the pony proved himself of "calico" variety, while the rider developed into a girl who bestrode her mount as though she were a part ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... felt the novelty of her situation, in landing through a surf, she also experienced a fair proportion of its wild delight. At moments, indeed, her heart was in her mouth, as the bubble of a boat floated on the very crest of a foaming breaker, appearing to skim the water like a swallow, and then she flushed and laughed, as, left by the glancing element, they appeared to linger behind as if ashamed of having been outdone in the headlong race. A few minutes sufficed for this excitement; for though the distance between the cutter and the land considerably ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... live through more than two weeks, as it happened. Almost a month having elapsed since the liniment cake episode, it was high time for her to get into fresh trouble of some sort, little mistakes, such as absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim milk into a basket of yarn balls in the pantry instead of into the pigs' bucket, and walking clean over the edge of the log bridge into the brook while wrapped in imaginative reverie, ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with much vomiting and fever, all milk should be immediately stopped and rice water or barley water substituted. When vomiting ceases and the fever approaches normal and food is desired, begin with boiled skim milk in small amounts, well diluted with cereal water, and do not approach the normal amount of milk for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. In this way the weak digestive organs are not overtaxed and they gradually resume ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... day as we call it—for Granville always saves up his rejected addresses for us to 'decline with thanks' for Wednesdays. There was a good batch of them this day, so Waterford and I took half each. I took a hurried skim through mine, but no 'Ancient and Modern Athletic Sports' were there. I concluded therefore Waterford had it. Granville writes in the corner of each 'd.w.t.,' or 'd.w.t. note,' which means 'declined with thanks' pure and simple, or 'declined with thanks' and a short polite note ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... water boiled and bubbled, and the Mouse King stood close beside the kettle—there was almost danger in it—and he put forth his tail, as the mice do in the dairy, when they skim the cream from a pan of milk, afterwards licking their creamy tails; but his tail only penetrated into the hot steam, and then he sprang ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... unexpectedly, I tell you, in a bit of marshy meadow just at the outlet of the pond. Garry was paddling me along at the top of his pace, after a wing-tipped wood-duck, when up jumped one of the long-billed rascals, and had the impudence to skim across the creek under my very nose—'skeap! skeap!' Well, I dropped him, you may be sure, with a charge, too, of duck shot; and he fell some ten yards over on the meadow; so leaving Garry to pursue the drake, I landed, loaded my gun with No. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... "We hear, Mrs. Skim; and quite agree with you that he knows very little about us and our affairs," answered one of the swallows with a shrill chirp, like a scornful laugh. "We work harder than he does any day. Did he build his own house, I should like ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... said to herself, 'nothing could be pleasanter,' and she was almost sorry when her skim across the sea of glass was over, and she found herself at the foot of ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... an' wither'd hags Tell how wi' you on ragweed nags [ragwort] They skim the muirs an' dizzy crags Wi' wicked speed; And in kirk-yards renew their leagues ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... structure of civilization with its city control of the hinterland, its products and inhabitants, enabled the city-centered oligarchy to accumulate and concentrate wealth and monopolize power, to skim the cream from the available milk, monopolize the cream, distribute the skimmed milk judiciously and thus perpetuate its ascendancy through generations and centuries. During periods of expansion civilized communities ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... fleet of canoes may be seen along the shore, all fashioned alike, high and long beak-like prows and sterns, with lines as fine as those of the breast of a duck. What the mustang is to the Mexican vaquero, the canoe is to these coast Indians. They skim along the shores to fish and hunt and trade, or merely to visit their neighbors, for they are sociable, and have family pride remarkably well developed, meeting often to inquire after each other's health, attend potlatches and dances, and gossip concerning coming ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... understood and applauded. In all countries the middle class presents the public which, fighting the world, and with a good footing in the fight, knows the world best. It may be the most selfish, but that is a question leading us into sophistries. Cultivated men and women, who do not skim the cream of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute and balanced observers. Moliere ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the seat mentioned, and her twin brother began to hoist the mainsail of the Ice Bird. It ran up easily, and caught by the wind the craft began to skim over the surface of the lake like a thing ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... very fond of Shock. She used to give me skim-milk at breakfast, but she gave Shock cream; and she often made me carry him when I went out a-walking. For this reason I hated him, and when we were out of my aunts' hearing I used to pull his tail and his ears ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... almost always inaccessible; to know how to look at them with laboriously-acquired indifference and to practise to take no notice of them, saying to yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred, since merely to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose the unanimous anger of all ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... pursuers were very wrathful, and pretty strong, they caused their canoes to skim over the lake like swallows, and reached the head of the little river not very long after the fugitives had left it. A stern chase, however, is proverbially a long one, and as they overhauled the chase only inch by inch, there seemed little chance of overtaking ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... visionary plains rises the abode of Aneantsic, encircled by choirs of departed chieftains leaping in cadence to the mournful sound of spears as they ring on the shell of the tortoise. Their favourite attendants, long separated from them whilst on earth, are restored again in this ethereal region, and skim freely over the vast level space; now hailing one group of beloved friends, and now another. Mortals newly ushered by death into this world of pure blue sky and boundless meads, see the long-lost objects of their affection advancing across the lawn to ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... color'd feather, Please us as they skim along, But ther charms all put together, Connot equal ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... arrow, against its singled mark, yet so as to glance aloft the same instant, and descend skimming; much as the thin stone, shot with horizontal cast of arm, having touched and torn the surface of the lake, ascends to skim, touch, and tear again. So mingled the feathered multitude in the grim game of war. It was a storm in which the wind was birds, and the sea men. And ever as each bird arrived at the rear of the enemy, it turned, ascended, and sped to the front to ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... tired of self-helpfulness,—the servants as thoroughly as the masters and mistresses. All want the cream of life, without even the trouble of skimming; and the great fight now is, who shall drink the skim-milk, which nobody wants. Work,—honorable toil,—manly, womanly endeavor,—is just what nobody likes; and this is as much a fact in the free North as in ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to the pond, and she imagined he was going to fish; but no, he only unfastened his knapsack and took some small phials and a tin box out of it Then, bending down to the edge of the water, he began to skim its surface cautiously with a ladle and empty the contents into one of his phials. Suddenly a look of delight came into his face, and ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... rather suppose that I may transfer my love of France to him," said Max Emmanuel. "But let us eschew politics, and enjoy the bliss of the hour. To-day la bella Venezia puts forth all her charms. And as the swift gondolas skim over the green waters of the lagoon, so flies my heart toward ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... somewhat gloomy at the end of the discussion; and a heavy silence had fallen on them. Then of a sudden the face of the Terror brightened; and he said with a touch of triumph in his tone: "I've got it; we'll feed them on skim-milk." ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... tearfully Ere the clouds clear fully, Still you skim cheerfully, Swallow, oh! swallow swift! often I sigh For a home Where you roam ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... just went to th' buttery to skim the milk," said she, giving Polly an opportunity to compare ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... carrots and turnips, half and half, in small balls, and add them, with one dozen button onions, a bouquet of sweet herbs, half a saltspoonful of pepper, and a teaspoonful of salt; simmer for one hour; take up the cutlets with a fork, skim out the vegetables, and remove the bouquet; lay the cutlets in a wreath on a hot dish, place the vegetables in the centre, and strain the gravy over all. Green peas, new turnips, or new potatoes, may replace the first named vegetables. ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... knots, or nearly a mile a minute. They were driven by twin screws coupled to twin engines of 350 h.p. each—working at 1350 revolutions per minute. Being of very shallow draught, some 26 inches, these little vessels could skim, hydroplane fashion, over any ordinary mine-field, and a torpedo fired at them would merely pass under their keel. The risk of destruction from shell-fire was also reduced to a minimum by their small size and great speed. Their principal enemies ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... will discover to be a great deal tenderer and more delicate than any calf's liver you ever ate. There is this difference: a deer's liver should be parboiled in order to get rid of a green bitter scum that will rise to the surface and which you must skim off. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... tangent to the surface. Once past whatever this barrier was, they could skim the surface and come back to land on the proper site. They backed the ship farther out into space. They made their thrust with ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... beautiful, clean pig—ain't he just right?" Then he'd grunt his thanks to the company and retire behind the shack for a nap. We used to fair kill ourselves laughing at that darned pig. He had the most wheedlin' squeal, so soft and pleadin'; and he'd look up at you with them skim-milk eyes of his so pitiful, when he wanted a chunk of sugar, that ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... were on a jury trying Cleveland, no want of food or fire should induce him to endorse any such recommendation in regard to that intolerable book. It is, to speak frankly, one of the very few books—one of the still fewer novels—which I have found it practically impossible to read even in the "skim and skip and dip" fashion which should, no doubt, be only practised as a work of necessity (i.e. duty to others) and of mercy (to oneself) on extraordinary occasions, but which nobody but a prig ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... occasionally, and then in the distance, the Alps. Tahoe is from ten to eighteen miles wide, and its mountains shut it in like a wall. Their summits are never free from snow the year round. One thing about it is very strange: it never has even a skim of ice upon its surface, although lakes in the same range of mountains, lying in a lower and warmer temperature, freeze ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... land, Thy fancy, like a magick wand, Forth caird the Elfin race: And now around the fountain's brim In circling dance they gaily skim; And now upon its surface swim, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... good as boys. Artists are always thus young; poets are; but the pilgrim does not lay aside his belt of steel, nor the merchant his pack, to worship the flowers on the fountain's brink. I feel, like Herbert, the weight of "business to be done," but the bird-like particle would skim and sing at these sweet places. It seems strange to leave them; and that we do so, while so fitted to live deeply in them, shows that beauty is the end but not ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the unspeakable comfort it is capable of affording, will agree with me that no other book, ancient or modern, can in the remotest degree be compared to it. Too many people read it merely as a matter of conscience. They skim over a chapter at a time with very little thought or reflection. Even that way may be better than neglecting it altogether, but surely that is not the way a book with consequences so immeasurably ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston |
