"Adroit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... harsh epithets are showered upon the friendly, confiding little creature at our doors; but surely his depredations may be pardoned, for he is industrious at all times and unusually adroit in catching insects, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... of skirmishers, who scoured the burning woods on either side of the highway. The general, often far in advance of the column in his eagerness to overtake the foe, declared that this was the most adroit expedient to which a retreating army could resort, and that it entailed upon him all the disadvantages of a night attack. By slow approaches, and with constant skirmishing, the Federals were driven back to Franklin village, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?" If Douglas should answer, "No," he would alienate Illinois; and if he should answer "Yes," he would alienate the South. In a remarkably adroit manner Douglas answered, "Yes," and delighted his friends in Illinois; but later the effect in the ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... strengthen a precarious position, so that he might throw off all dependence on his chief. The harrier turned against the huntsman; the minister gave him cuts with the whip and caresses, alternately, and set up rivals to him. But des Lupeaulx behaved like an adroit courtier with all competitors; he laid traps into which they fell, and then he did prompt justice upon them. The more he felt himself in danger the more anxious he became for an irremovable position; yet he was compelled to play low; one ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... the adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody those minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly unimportant to the great matter immediately in hand—Stevens ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... of blushing, but he had also the adroit and ready speech that prevents a blush from looking like embarrassment. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the severe and solemn logic of Romilly, in the cool and ready arguments of Scarlett, or the acute and irresistible oratory of Sir William Follett. The education of a lawyer;— his experience as a manager; his art of covering up weak points, his ready and adroit style of speaking;— all serve to make him peculiarly valuable to his own party, and dangerous to an opposition in a deliberative body. But the fact that a man is a lawyer does not advance him in politics so much as ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... bargain. The consequence was that many a reputable party ended with a certain amount of disorder, due solely to the fact that the social instinct was traded upon and used as a basis for money making by an adroit host. From the beginning the young people's clubs had asked for dancing, and nothing was more popular than the increased space for parties offered by the gymnasium, with the chance to serve refreshments in ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... you are going to say. They are adroit, insinuating, dangerous, all that is quite true. If I had a rich old uncle whose heir I expected to be, I shouldn't introduce one of them into his house. These good creatures are sometimes charged with strange commissions. ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... other, whose martial qualities have vanished in the melting pot of time, has developed the defensive traits that come to the aid of all races who can no longer maintain their cause in the tented field. The Greek is the usurer of the East. He wins his way by using his subtle wits, and the less adroit people on whom he preys soon learn to regard him with distrust that often culminates in personal violence in those half-civilized communities where law and order are not maintained with ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... by adroit references and questions, by putting this and that together, that Ray Palmer was in love with the girl; that the old gentleman favored his suit in spite of her poverty, and would willingly have sanctioned an immediate marriage if ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... it. And, of course, I tried to seize him. But the rascal was too quick. He was down and away in an instant. You never saw a thing so daring and adroit. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... object in coming to see her had really been to promote a marriage, in the interests of the Grand Company, between her and Le Gardeur. Her witcheries had been too potent for the man of pleasure. He was himself caught in the net he spread for another. The adroit bird-catching of Angelique was too much for him in the beginning: Bigot's tact and consummate heartlessness with women, might be too much for her in the end. At the present moment he was fairly dazzled with her beauty, spirit, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Dexterous, facile, adroit, politic, versatile,—as Lord Palmerston certainly is,—fertile in resources, prompt to seize and use to the utmost every advantage, endowed with unusual popular gifts, and blessed with imperturbable good-humor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... their nation to possess and enjoy peace, liberty and happiness; but I cannot say that I love these French prisoners. Beside common sailors, there are several officers of the rank of captains, lieutenants, and, I believe, midshipmen; and it is these that are the most adroit gamesters. We have all tried hard to respect them; but there is something in their conduct so much like swindling, that I hardly know what to say of them. When they knew that we had received money for the work we had been allowed to perform, they ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... that all fear of a national uprising is now past," declared a semi-Government organ. "The nation obviously has no leaders competent to execute and direct a crusade in the cause of independence. Whether that lack is due to adroit management on the part of the Japanese or to unpatriotic apathy on the part of the Koreans we cannot ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... his daily errand of duty, not seeing me, though I catch a glimpse of his manly features through the oval glass of his chaise, as he drives by, a surgeon of skill and standing, so friendly, so modest, so tenderhearted in all his ways, that, if he had not approved himself at once adroit and firm, one would have said he was of too kindly a mould to be the minister of pain, even if he were ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... conversation, and, soon after, went away. He had been adroit enough to put his questions in the languid way of a man who had no personal curiosity, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... that the first of these games called for strength, agility and endurance. It was as free from elements of chance as any human contest can be. The victory belonged to the side which counted amongst its numbers those players who were the fleetest runners, the most skilful throwers and the most adroit dodgers. The second was purely a game of chance. If honestly played no other element entered into its composition. The third which we are now about to consider was much more complicated in its rules than either of the others. It closely resembled in some respects ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... contest. Both boys were unusually strong for their ages, and were, in fact, very evenly matched. But at length Tom, by an adroit movement of the foot, tripped his opponent, and came down on top of him. He did not hold him down, for he was fond of fair ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... the duke was adroit. "I am no partisan to the treaties of 1815. But we must avoid ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... with no essential interest in such subject, alien as it was from the pride of health which is characteristic of the gymnastic life, with the expression of physical pain, in Philoctetes, for instance. The adroit, the swift, the strong, in full and free exercise of their gifts, to the delight of others and of themselves, though their sculptural record has for the most part perished, are specified in ancient literary notices as the sculptor's favourite subjects, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... be infallible. He knows nothing of the matter, does not understand the tools he is working with, any one of whom could buy and sell him and simple, clever Morley twenty times over. Both Gladstone and Morley are clever in books, in words, in theories, adepts in debating, smart and adroit in talk. But they know no more of Paddy than the babe unborn. I say nothing of Harcourt and the other understrappers. They'll say anything that suits, whatever it may be. We reckoned them up long since. Cannot the English people see through these nimble twisters and time-servers, this ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... things? They are indeed things, and things of mighty influence, not only in addresses to the passions and high-wrought feelings of mankind, but in the discussion of legal and political questions also; because a just conclusion is often avoided, or a false one reached, by the adroit substitution of one phrase, or one word, for another. Of this we have, I think, another example in the resolutions ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... the fight. And the knight thrust at him, but he was not thereby moved from where he stood. And Peredur spurred his horse, and ran at him wrathfully, furiously, fiercely, desperately, and with mighty rage, and he gave him a thrust, deadly-wounding, severe, furious, adroit and strong, under his jaw, and raised him out of his saddle, and cast him a long way from him. And Peredur went back, and left the horse and the arms with the attendant as before, and he went on foot to ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... tones came as a relief. Capella glared at him now with undisguised hostility, for the barrister's adroit ruse had outwitted him by bringing the lady from the drawing-room, which gave on to the garden and lawn at the ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... give a sumptuous entertainment, and in one way or another induce his guests to pay for it. He was only less adroit in coining excuses than Theodore Hook, and had he lived a century later, we might have a volume full of anecdotes to give of his ways and no means. Meanwhile his unfortunate duchess was living on the charity of friends, while her ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... visit was over, my father disclosed nothing of what had been said between him and General Bonaparte; but I learned later that Bonaparte, without stating his objectives clearly, had sought, by the most adroit cajolements, to win my father over to his side, and that, my father had ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... speech, like a hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with it. He was something strange and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten with this original person because he was not to be caught by their flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their Parisian's grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature only responded to the sonorous vibration ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... himself, assuming with admirable Italian suppleness an expression radiant with joyful emotion. Two streams of flatterers hastened, one toward the King, the other toward the minister; the former group, not less adroit than the second, altho less direct, addrest to the prince thanks which could be heard by the minister, and burned at the feet of the one incense which was destined for the other. As for Richelieu, bestowing a bow on the right and a smile on the left, he stept forward, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... make—paid openly the established freight rates on their products and then received back from the railways a substantial proportion of the charges. The advantage to the favored shipper is obvious. There were other more adroit ways in which the favoritism could be accomplished; but the general principle was the same. It was one important purpose—and effect—of the Hepburn act to close the door to this ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... the horse's rider, my Lady Dunstanwolde, whose way it had been to avoid this man and to thrust him from her path by whatsoever adroit means she could use, on these occasions made no effort to evade him and his glances; in sooth, he knew, though none other did so, that when she fought with her horse she did it with a fierce joy in that he beheld her. 'Twas ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the empress. They quaked as they thought how they had voted, and their awe-stricken faces were pallid with fright. Uhlefeld and Bartenstein exchanged glances of amazement and dismay; while the other nobles, like adroit courtiers, fixed their looks, with awakening admiration, upon Kaunitz, in whom their experienced eyes were just discovering the rising luminary ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... for more; but these subjects, under the adroit handling of Father Jervis, had proved sufficient; and up to the preconcerted moment when Monsignor had uttered the sentence about his study of Mr. Manners' History of Twentieth Century Development which had ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... departure he had never spent a day's furlough at Plassans, his brother having invented a thousand pretexts to keep him at a distance. He was therefore completely ignorant of the adroit manner in which Pierre had got possession of their mother's fortune. Adelaide, with her profound indifference, did not even write to him three times to tell him how she was going on. The silence which generally greeted his numerous requests for money did not awaken the least ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... became yours. Soon nothing was seen but boys playing this game, and the more skilful acquired vast stores of nibs. But in a little while Mr. Watson made up his mind that it was a form of gambling, forbade the game, and confiscated all the nibs in the boys' possession. Philip had been very adroit, and it was with a heavy heart that he gave up his winning; but his fingers itched to play still, and a few days later, on his way to the football field, he went into a shop and bought a pennyworth of J pens. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... early date, and gave rise to the great realistic-nominalistic controversy.[184:5] A large part of the logical discussion in the Platonic dialogues is an outgrowth of the earlier "eristic," a form of disputation in favor with the sophists, and consisting in the adroit use of ambiguity.[184:6] It is natural that in its first conscious self-criticism thought should discover the need of definite terms. The perpetual importance of definition has been largely due to the great prestige ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... scientific truths unless they had supposed them supernaturally imparted, does it follow they would now give up moral truths any more than scientific because they believed them to have no other origin than wise and noble human hearts?" Overlooking the adroit introduction here of scientific truths as having originally been on the same footing with moral truths—for which we do not think there is any sufficient historic evidence—it is competent to reply that the great mass of mankind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... hint that the young man needed looking after, and the adroit host, skilled in managing all kinds of people and in every condition, induced him to return to his room, under the pretence of wishing to taste his fine old brandy, and then kept him there until the lethargic stage set in as the result of his excess. And so an affair, which might have created ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... provision of food; there was something of both ecstasy and anguish in serving her needs, in establishing her comfort. She talked little and always so that I stood at a distance from her, fenced apart by little graceful formalities, groping hopelessly and vainly towards her through the clever mesh of her adroit speech and skilful remoteness. I was already fifteen years in the country, and fifteen years her inferior in those civilized dexterities. But she thanked me very ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... stood at the door of his tent, holding an empty glass in one jewelled hand, and with the other twirling a long and silken moustache. Handsome, graceful, and thoroughly inured to the public gaze, he fronted a small circle of gapers like an actor adroit to make the best of himself, and his tongue wagged fast enough to wag a man's leg off. At a casual glance he might have been taken for thirty, but his age was fifty and more—if you could catch him in the morning before he had put the ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... "Sybil" and "Tancred," he argues with great skill and adroit sophistry that a landed aristocracy is necessary to a progressive civilization. "The common people need an example of refinement in way of manners, art and intellect. Some one must take the lead, and reveal the possibility of life ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... scatters them at adroit intervals, reminding us of the arrangement of voices in an ancient catch, where one voice takes up the phrase another has dropped, and thus seems to give the web of harmony a firmer and ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... we see rushing to the various newspaper offices to countermand their advertisements! What gaps in the columns of the newspapers themselves! Where is the sugary lie—the adroit slander—the scoundrel meanness, masking itself with the usage of patriotism? All, all are vanished, for—the Morning Herald is published ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... manner that betrayed weariness, and looked out upon the ever-turning landscape, he murmured to his wife, "I haven't a doubt in my mind," and nodded significantly at the preoccupied little shape in his arms. His manner with the child was imperceptibly adroit, and very soon her prattle began to be heard. Mary was just turning to offer a gentle check to this rising volubility, when up jumped the little one to a standing posture on the gentleman's knee, and, all unsolicited ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Perth, Angus, Mearns, Mar, Moray, Inverness, and Caithness, where he was confronted by Haco in person, who, for the purpose of meeting the Scottish King, took post in the Norwegian centre. The High Steward, by a dexterous movement, made the enemy's left give way, and instantly, by another adroit manoeuvre, he wheeled back on the rear of Haco's centre, where he found the two warrior Kings desperately engaged. This induced Haco, after exhibiting all the prowess of a brave King and an able commander, to retreat from the field, followed by his left wing, leaving, as has been variously ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... last chorus of Was mir behagt became the first chorus of Man singet mit Freuden, it was expanded to the proportions necessary for a triumphant opening (as distinguished from a cheerful finale) by the adroit insertion of new material between every joint in the design. This material, being new, could not produce the effect of diffuseness that would result from the expansion of the old material already ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... their passing contentions, so accustom people to each other's humours as to establish the soundest and strongest of all friendships. Walpole had adopted Atlee because he found him useful in a variety of ways. He was adroit, ready-witted, and intelligent; a half-explanation sufficed with him on anything—a mere hint was enough to give him for an interview or a reply. He read people readily, and rarely failed to profit by the knowledge. Strange as it may seem, the great blemish ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... declared that "old Alice of Westwell"[6] had sent him to possess the girl. Alice, the spirit admitted, stood guilty of terrible witchcrafts. The demon's word was taken, and Alice seems to have been "arraigned upon this evidence."[7] But, through the justices' adroit management of the trial, the fraud of the accuser was exposed. She confessed herself a pretender and suffered "condign punishment." This case happened within six miles of Scot's home and opened his eyes to the possibility of humbug. In the very same year two pretenders, Agnes ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... appear to contain every stone and jewel mentioned in the Arabian Nights as being to be found in the cave where Aladdin was left by the magician; and it must be allowed that the Popes have been remarkably adroit inchanters in conjuring to Rome all ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... what would have happened had he known that the Brazilian was relating the scene that took place on the bridge, suppressing its prime motive, and twisting it greatly to Hozier's detriment, though with an adroit touch that deprived Iris of any power to resent his words. Indeed, she read her own meaning into Philip's anxiety to reach Pernambuco, whereas San Benavides was striving to instill the belief that she would find excellent friends at Maceio. She was far too loyal-hearted to suspect Philip of a hidden ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... her name: Lorraine. Her friend was a mondaine. She had the social gift, a subtle understanding of things worldly, the glissey mortel n'appuyez jamais attitude toward life. By a touch of flippancy, an adroit turn of mind, she kept the knowing mastery over people which has mystified and delighted in all great hostesses since the days ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... would have escaped the impending disaster by taking ingloriously to their heels. Radisson, with that adroit presence of mind which characterized his entire life, had provided for his followers' safety by landing them on the south shore, where the French could flee across the marsh to the ships if pursued. Then his only thought was how to keep the rivals ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... sudden thought seemed to strike the Indian, for he began to run towards the camp with his foe on his back. But Tim was prepared for that. He untwined one leg, lowered it, and with an adroit twist tripped up the savage, causing him to fall on his face with tremendous violence. Before he could recover, Tim, still covering the mouth and holding tight to the nose, got a knee on the small ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... example, whom we once saw at Hanover, managing a certain contested Heritage for Friedrich Wilhelm; adroit Nussler, though he has yet got no fixed appointment, nor pay except by the job, is urged to build;—second year hence, 1733, occurs the case of Nussler, and is copiously dwelt upon by Busching his biographer: "Build ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... poor creatures were totally unacquainted with every kind of useful labour, it was necessary to give them such work, at first, as was very easy to be performed, and in which the raw materials were of little value; and then, by degrees, as they became more adroit, to employ them in manufacturing ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... by enticing talk and really export fingering of the various parts of the admirable mechanism, Blaine half convinced his superior. More, for by adroit manipulation of a certain lock, with wrench and a pair of tweezers, he readjusted a certain valve hinge in the petrol tank which he had heard Monsieur Cheval grumbling about before. This he did with such dexterous rapidity and ease that ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... their return from Ellis Island to Manhattan much puzzled Vanderlyn. Puffing and blowing from his hurry (which had been less adroit than Vanderlyn's) they met Karrosch on the New York pier, about to start in ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... did not lose my self-possession. I turned to the Emperor and said, 'Sir, the Queen and I have known each other for a few moments only, but already we have a secret between us!'" The Kaiser was very tickled by my retort ... very tickled ... and the Queen told me afterwards that it was very adroit of me to get out of it like that. She said ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... appears as an appeal from without. When it comes in through the door, he leaves by the window; when it blocks up the windows, he escapes by the roof. The more plainly we see it coming, the more surely we flee. It is like those police, representatives of public order and official justice, whom an adroit thief succeeds in evading. Alas! the officer, though he finally collar the thief, can only conduct him to the station, not along the right road. Before man is able to accomplish his duty, he must fall into the hands of another power than ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... every Saturday afternoon and night, carried people outside the Heads, and provided them with lines and bait for six hours' fishing, at the rate of five dollars a person. I am told that some of them (doubtless adroit anglers) made a profit on the transaction. Occasionally he bought wrecks and condemned vessels; these latter (I cannot tell you how) found their way to sea again under aliases, and continued to stem the waves triumphantly enough under the colours of Bolivia or Nicaragua. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... By adroit management he contrived to overhear part of a conversation in which "poudre a canon" was mixed up with the name of Lindslee. He inferred that the blowing up of Lindsley's house was to finish the celebration of the national holiday. Treating Bourdon ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... a few more years. I wonder if I shall be as young-looking as you, Emma?" This was a very adroit thrust on the part of Miss Agatha, but ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... had gone to the Dingle in person, and, by adroit use of the divinity which hedges a detective, had persuaded a keeper to lead him to the tree where, as Mr Stokes had said, the cups ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... hour, during which she skilfully finished the little roses, the silence had not been broken even by a single word. But her thread broke again, and she re-threaded her needle by feeling carefully under the frame, as only an adroit person can do. Then, as she raised her head, she again inhaled with satisfaction the pure, fresh air that came in from ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... Yozhov that Smolin, too, was rich, being the son of a tan-yard proprietor, and that Yozhov himself was the son of a guard at the Court of Exchequer, and very poor. The last was clearly evident by the adroit boy's costume, made of gray fustian and adorned with patches on the knees and elbows; by his pale, hungry-looking face; and, by his small, angular and bony figure. This boy spoke in a metallic alto, elucidating his words with grimaces and gesticulations, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... and Antoinette Westerleigh were as far apart as the poles. What more likely than that the dashing little minx would undertake to rally her lover about Aileen, and that the adroit baronet would worm out of her the information he desired? The letter crystallized my desire to set out at once for Montagu Grange, and from there to take the road with Miss Macleod hotspur for Scotland. It appeared to me that the sooner we were out of England ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... and I worked like horses to get in Mr. Neville for the Exchange Division of Liverpool. We actually won, for by a piece of adroit management we polled a number of votes which would certainly have remained unpolled, and we polled them all for our man, who won by a very small majority, eleven, I think. I would willingly go to Liverpool to undo that work, as I now see how completely I was mistaken in my views of the Irish question. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... was not only often separated from her husband, but she also saw little of her mother, who had retired to her duchy of Angouleme. Louise of Savoy, as mother of the heir-presumptive, was the object of the homage of all adroit and politic courtiers, but she had to behave with circumspection on account of the jealousy of the Queen, Anne of Brittany, whose daughters, Claude and Renee, were debarred by the Salic Law from inheriting ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... this point the rain stops. By an adroit flanking movement you get away without having to buy her ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... in which he sang the national ballads he had learned on his journeys through Italy, Germany, and Russia. At other times, he conversed with the duke upon philosophy and state policy; and he was amazed at the varied information and wisdom of this young man, who seemed an experienced soldier and an adroit diplomat, a profound statesman, and a learned historian. By his dazzling talents, he not only ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... death was a release to Donna Candida. Her family were of Modena, but they had come to live in Milan soon after the execution of Ciro Menotti and his companions. You remember the details of that business? The Duke of Modena, one of the most adroit villains in Europe, had been bitten with the hope of uniting the Italian states under his rule. It was a vision of Italian liberation—of a sort. A few madmen were dazzled by it, and Ciro Menotti was ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... hilarity of forced merriment in public, meet, in our privacies, with anger and fear; reproaching each other for some neglect, and commenting on the frowns of royalty. We need not study to be expert in ceremony, or adroit in flattery. When nature calls, we take our simple food, we rest when she requires relaxation, and when rest is satiety, innocent and useful labour improves our mental and corporeal functions. How pitiable are they, whom necessity ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... sincere to himself, to the aspect under which human things came to him, to the precise names of precise things. He had a sensitiveness in his soul which perhaps matched the deftness of his fingers, in their adroit, forbidden trade: his soul bent easily from his mother praying in the cloister to the fat Margot drinking in the tavern; he could dream exquisitely over the dead ladies who had once been young, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of keys, and he could not distinguish between them. In each case he saw something, he said, like a shadow, but he could not tell what. He could not read one letter of the largest print by means of eyesight; but he was very adroit in reading by touch, in books prepared expressly for the blind, running his fingers over the raised characters with great rapidity, and thus acquiring a perception of them. Whatever trifling degree of vision he possessed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... Schoeman from all authority, declaring Zoutpansberg in a state of blockade, and prohibiting traders from supplying 'the rebels' with ammunition or anything else. This conduct on the part of the new Government under Mr. Pretorius appears to me distinctly adroit. Having taken upon themselves to remodel the entire Constitution of the country, they turn round on the adherents of the older Government, whom, by-the-by, they had not thought it worth while to consult, and promptly ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... of Co. C was with the regiment, just returned from hospital partially recovered from a wound received at Malvern Hill. Joyce was a unique character, small of stature, illiterate, an adroit forager, and, if you didn't know him, you might take him for a mere braggadocio. But such was not the case. He was destitute of fear, or, if he ever experienced the sensation, he overcame it. At Glendale the Colonel ordered the line forward. A soldier ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... never rebuked, yet was adroit in warding off temptations to break the Commandments. He began to chuckle as if he had just heard ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... wandered throughout the newspapers of the world, the story of a famous Russian officer, famous, too, as a great swordsman, who once faced a brown bear robbed of her young, and beat her into insensibility, since his blows were swifter and more adroit than those delivered by her great forearms. In the midst of the battle, some thought of this hard Russian tale drifted through the mind of Hayes, as he dealt blow after blow upon the muzzle of the brute seeking daylight and vengeance upon its opponent. ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... fairest, or the most charming of the group. One wish is common to them all—each wishes to have him as her spouse. One is jealous of another, as if she were already his wife; and all this is because they see him so adroit that in their opinion no mortal man could perform such deeds as he had done. He did so well that when the time came to leave the list, they admitted freely on both sides that no one had equalled the knight with the vermilion shield. All said this, and it was true. But when he left, he allowed ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... right nail on the head, put the saddle on the right horse. take advantage of, make the most of; profit by &c (use) 677; make a hit &c (succeed) 731; make a virtue of necessity; make hay while the sun shines &c (occasion) 134. Adj. skillful, dexterous, adroit, expert, apt, handy, quick, deft, ready, gain; slick, smart &c (active) 682; proficient, good at, up to, at home in, master of, a good hand at, au fait, thoroughbred, masterly, crack, accomplished; conversant &c (knowing) 490. experienced, practiced, skilled, hackneyed; up in, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and admiration for his master became no less. He had the attractiveness of extreme and unscrupulous capability. It gave Ralph the same joy to watch him as he found in looking on at an expert fencer; he was so adroit and strong and ready; mighty and patient in defence, watchful for opportunities of attack and merciless when they came. His admirers scarcely gave a thought to the piteousness of the adversary; they were absorbed ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Majesty. What Majesty and what Ministers he knew not, and did not greatly care—that was not his business. The rotundity of the Hanoverian and the lean darkness of the Stuart were one to him. Both could reward an adroit servant.... His vanity, terribly starved and cribbed in his normal existence, now blossomed like a flower. His muddled head was fairly ravished with delectable pictures. He seemed to be set at a great height above mundane troubles, and to look down on men like a benignant God. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... that wing of the hospital in which he knew the quarters of the young and pretty matron to be situated. Having found her, he put before her so urgent and convincing an appeal for an interview with Mrs. Hading that she went herself to ask that lady to receive him. A clinching factor was an adroit remark about his brother's interest in Druro's chances. He guessed that such a remark repeated would bring him into Marice Hading's presence quicker than anything else, and he was right. Within five minutes, he was in the softly shaded, violet-scented ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... invariably some slight hesitation in the selection of chairs around a tea-table in the open. Nora scored the first point of this singular battle by seizing the padre on one side and her father on the other and pulling them down on the bench. It was adroit in two ways: it put Courtlandt at a safe distance and in nowise offended the younger men, who could find no cause for alarm in the close proximity of her two fathers, the spiritual and the physical. A few moments later Courtlandt saw a smile of malice ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... prince might have been found likewise," said Count Saurau, "and perhaps he may get into our meshes on some other occasion. Your excellency is an adroit hunter." ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... this banquet, a very beautiful and accomplished female named Thais. Alexander made her his favorite and companion, though she was not his wife. Thais did all in her power to captivate and please Alexander during the feast by her vivacity, her wit, her adroit attentions to him, and the display of her charms, and at length, when he himself, as well as the other guests, were excited with wine, she asked him to allow her to have the pleasure of going herself and setting fire, with her own hands, to the ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... advisable precautions against being polluted by our presence. He was a free-thinker in his own way, and a friend of Gulab-Lal-Sing, and so he rejoiced at the idea of showing us how much skillful sophistry and strategical circumspection can be used by adroit Brahmans to avoid the law in some circumstances, while adhering at the same time to its dead letter. Besides, our good-natured, well-favored host evidently desired to obtain a diploma from our Society, being well ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... together the loose fragmentary bits of our knowledge regarding life and society under Nero. A glance at these books shows that they belong to the latest school of nineteenth-century fiction, to a period when careful scholarly accumulation of accessories and adroit adaptation of history have taken the place, not only of convention and clumsy invention, but also of the free untrammelled handling of types and traditions which gave freshness and originality to the simpler ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... repasts, there were races and combats; the remains of the baskets were thrown to the most skilful and the most adroit; then came, diversions ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... scheme has its obvious conveniences for the playwright, and should greatly simplify the difficulties of stage-craft. Those introductory statements which are required to explain the opening conditions and need such adroit handling will no longer be necessary. You just put everybody wise by a series of tableaux parlants. No longer need the author worry about the best way of conveying to his audience the details of any action ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... design through Dick Sherwood. Late that afternoon, when Dick, just returned from the city, dropped into, as was his before-dinner custom, the office-study which had been set aside for Larry's use, Larry, after an adroit ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... bringing him to the ground. A sudden blast of courage came over him. He ran at Drake swiftly and knocked Drake's arm aside; his arms closed about Drake's knees; the big fullback lurched to free himself, twisted his body in an adroit manner and managed to swing Judd about so that the weight of his body landed on his tackler's head. Judd experienced the same sensation that ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... favourite occupation;—the writing of a long letter to his brother George in America. This epistle is, as one might expect, almost entirely concerned with the art of poetry—what else has Keats to write about?—whether from the side of technique, or inspiration. He dwells on the adroit management of open and close vowels—he shows how "the poetry of earth is never dead;" he discusses the need of constant application to work, and how "the genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man." And meanwhile, as fitful strains of song reach him from the distance, ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... and dexterity. Forester used, sometimes, to accompany the gardener's son to the Links,[7] where numbers of people, of different descriptions are frequently seen practising this diversion. Our hero was ambitious of excelling at the game of goff; and, as he was not particularly adroit, he exposed himself, in his first attempts, to the derision of the spectators, and he likewise received several severe blows. Colin laughed at him without mercy; and Forester could not help comparing the rude expressions of his new companion's untutored vanity with the unassuming ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... scheming, adroit, and dangerous. There are stories without number of him; and I will relate one or two solely because they characterise him, and those to whom they ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... repair; its guns in a position to be used with effect; its garrison skilful and efficient; its commander capable and brave. The ship is of the very best character, and in perfect order; the crew disciplined and courageous; its commander skilful and adroit; the wind, and tide, and sea—all as could be desired.[17] The numbers of the garrison and crew are to be no more than requisite, with no unnecessary exposure of human life to swell the lists of the slain. The issue of this contest, unless ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... in Vancouver watched the increase of friendliness between the girl and Vane. Mrs. Nairn and her husband did so with benevolent interest, and it was by Mrs. Nairn's adroit management, which even Evelyn did not often suspect, that they were thrown more and more into each other's company. Jessy Horsfield, however, looked on with bitterness. She was a strong-willed young woman who hitherto had generally contrived to obtain whatever she had ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... this is your adroit and tactful way of suggesting that I should ask her," Mrs. Lenox ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... man to carry the world before him as a shop, keeper. Extremely civil, attentive to watch opportunities Of obliging, and assiduous to make use of them—skilful in discovering the taste or turn of mind of his Customers, and adroit in Putting in their way just such temptations as they are least able to withstand. Mrs. Thrale, at the same time that she sees his management and contrivance, so much admires his sagacity and dexterity, that, though open-eyed, she is as easily wrought upon to part ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... contrary, Jacob, in telling his brother that he had much property, remarked, that God had dealt graciously with him. Here, you see, is a marked case of an appropriation of another's property by a very adroit stratagem, which is fully justified by the Old Testament, and ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... which the President listened to in the matter was that of that adroit Mormon agent, Colonel Thomas L. Kane. Kane's part in the business came out after these appointments were announced, and after the Buffalo (New York) Courier had printed a communication attacking Young's character on the ground of his record both in Illinois and Utah. President Fillmore sent these ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... with the clear, simple, vigorous delineation that Burns, in four couplets, has given us of the ploughman's collie. It is interesting, at first, and then it becomes a little irritating; for when we think of other passages so much more finished and adroit, we cannot help feeling, that with a little more ardour after perfection of form, criticism would have found nothing left for her to censure. A similar mark of precipitate work is the number of adjectives tumultuously heaped together, sometimes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gladness. There I remained, with my arms folded, and bowed as before, until dinner was brought in, and a calabash full of cush-cush was put into my hands to place before the king and his wives. My first attempt at service was not very adroit, for, in my eagerness to do my duty, I tripped over the corner of the mat which served them for a table, and tumbling headlong forward, emptied the calabash of cush-cush which I held in my hand upon the legs of the old king, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... literary novel of the autumn." I cannot be quite sure what this means, but it is probably intended to signify that, in the opinion of Messrs. Hutchinson, Lucas Malet's novel is very special—that is to say, it is not a mere novel. Less adroit publishers than Messrs. Hutchinson might have described it as an "art novel." (Cf. "art furniture," all up Tottenham Court Road.) Some of the most esteemed provincial dailies have a column headed "Literature" on five days of the week, but on the sixth day that column is headed "New Fiction." ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... rest, he had many accomplishments. He was adroit in the killing of all birds and fishes, stags and foxes. He played polo, cricket, racquets, chess, and billiards as well as such things can be played. He was fluent in all modern languages, had a very real talent in water-colour, and was accounted, by those who had ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... This girl was the most glorious creature he had ever known, and the most womanly. Her sex was the very essence of her; she had no need to wear it like a furbelow. She was utterly different from the feminine, adroit women he had known; there was something cool and deep about her like a pool, and withal winged, like the birds that fly over it. She was marvelous—marvelous! he thought. What ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... goblins; other names, some apparently involving thoughts of solitude and danger, follow till the top is reached. The mountain itself might be a god or the seat of a god; it might be a volcano, the home of the dread Pele; and into desert places few would venture but such as were adroit to snare the whispering spirits of the dead. To-day, from the Waoakua or the Waomaukele, the gods have perhaps fled; the descendants of Vancouver's cattle fill them with less ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... curious pamphlets, or brochures, as they call them, which the French political writers make the frequent medium of their discussions, was lately published at Paris, under the title of 'France, Mexico, and the Confederate States.' It is less a discussion of the Mexican question than an adroit appeal, under cover of it, in behalf of the Southern confederacy. It addresses itself to the enthusiastic temperament of Frenchmen, with the specious sophism, underlying its argument, that the South is fighting for ideas, the North for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... point he and the other Whigs were equally wise. Repelling the Democratic charge that they were unpatriotic in denouncing the war, they voted in favor of every measure to sustain, supply, and encourage the soldiers in the field. But their most adroit piece of strategy, now that the war was ended, was in their movement to make General ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... to say in his presence that she should like to establish herself in some business. He approved the plan and paid her a succession of adroit compliments on her capabilities and cited the example of several women he knew who had made or were making their fortunes ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... probity, generally avoid politics, and that the word itself has come to mean something not to be touched without defilement. Consequently, what good men will not touch, bad men will. It is understood that bribery carries the election; and the Presidency is the result of an adroit process of financial engineering. I have myself been shown a handful of bank-notes publicly displayed in the ante-room of a Legislature, and sagaciously told: "That is the logic for legislators." Men think they cannot afford to go to Congress, and send other men to do their duties to the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... riche pour m'epouser avec deux cent mille francs de moins: je suis bien aise de vous les apporter en mariage. Je suis persuadee que la Comtesse et le Marquis ne se haissent pas. Voyons ce que me diront la-dessus Lepine et Lisette, qui vont venir me parler. L'un, est un Gascon froid,[7] mais adroit; Lisette a de l'esprit. Je sais qu'ils ont tous deux la confiance de leurs maitres; je les interesserai a m'instruire, et tout ira bien. ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... reckless troopers and a few hundred Highland thieves, a man whom all sensible people would be regarding as a mad adventurer? Would it not be a stroke of wisdom—the Whigs were a cunning crew, and he recalled that Lord Dundonald was an adroit schemer—to buy the future for herself and her child by selling him and returning to her old allegiance? There was enough reality in this ghost to give it, as it were, a bodily shape, and Graham, who had been flinging himself ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... fragments of stones, and large rocks, attempted to conceal themselves from the researches of the fishermen. These the party in the boat detected by the slightest indications; the twinkling of a fin, the rising of an airbell, was sufficient to point out to these adroit sportsmen in what ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... calculated to meet the case of Tancred. The interview was long, for Tan-cred listened with apparent respect and deference to the individual under whose auspices he had entered the Church of Christ; but the replies to his inquiries, though more adroit than the duke's, were in reality not more satisfactory, and could not, in any way, meet the inexorable logic of Lord Montacute. The bishop was as little able as the duke to indicate the principle on which the present order of things in England was ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... alienists who are prepared to sell their services to the highest bidder. These men are all the more dangerous because, clever students of mental disease and thorough masters of their subject as they are, they are able by adroit qualifications and skilful evasions to make half-truths seem as convincing as whole ones. They ask and receive large sums for their services, and their dishonest testimony must be met and refuted by the evidence ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... assisting him; and no sooner had he got his feet in both stirrups, but without staying for the artist's advice, he turned the peg he had seen him use, when instantly the horse darted into the air, quick as an arrow shot out of a bow by the most adroit archer; and in a few moments the emperor his father and the numerous assembly lost sight of him. Neither horse nor prince were to be seen. The Hindoo, alarmed at what had happened, prostrated himself before ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... was actually engaged to one of the head waiters in the hotel, and there was no difficulty in getting her address. It was 11 Rue de Trajan, Montpellier. All this I jotted down and felt that Holmes himself could not have been more adroit in collecting his facts. ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... perils of her own situation—of which no doubt the young creature was yet entirely ignorant. Her scruples once overcome by a knowledge of her own danger, she would herself aid in contriving a plan of escape! For such a purpose, Sure-shot was the man—adroit, crafty, courageous. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... interviews with the Dean he had been appointed to a post in the Cathedral, sat down to it too; and Rosamund and Dion looked in to congratulate Mr. Thrush, and to tell him how delighted they were with his bearing in the procession and his delicately adroit manipulation of his wand. Mr. Thrush received their earnest congratulations with the quiet dignity of one who felt that they did not spring from exaggeration of sentiment. Like all great artists he knew when he ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... that the future empress was betrothed to a young Alexandrian, and that the tender intercourse between the lovers had not been interrupted during Caracalla's courtship. This had come to Serapion's ears yesterday afternoon, through his adroit assistant Kastor, and he had taken advantage of the information to prepare Caesar during the night for the faithlessness of his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... The crash of the guns was now distinctly louder and far ahead they saw wisps of smoke floating above the trees. John was sure that the German batteries were there, but he was equally sure that even had he glasses he could not have seen them. They would certainly be masked in some adroit fashion. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wielded an adroit knife; but, under the extraordinary pressure of this bountiful repast, Rutherford Berry easily outdistanced him. He consumed such unlimited amounts that he gained the audible ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... thus northward during the whole day, borne on by monstrous waves, preserving always, fortunately, a speed equal to theirs. Twenty times she seemed almost to be submerged by these mountains of water which rose behind her; but the adroit management of the pilot saved her. The passengers were often bathed in spray, but they submitted to it philosophically. Fix cursed it, no doubt; but Aouda, with her eyes fastened upon her protector, whose coolness amazed her, showed herself worthy of him, and bravely weathered ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... for a variety of reasons, LYNCH said. He speculated that CD-ROM publishers are not eager to have their products really hook into wide area networks, because they fear it will make their data suppliers nervous. Moreover, until relatively recently, one had to be rather adroit to run a full TCP/IP stack plus applications on a PC-size machine, whereas nowadays it is becoming easier as PCs grow bigger and faster. LYNCH also speculated that software providers had not heard from their customers ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... they all moved away together. At the hotel, however, he vanished, and it was only after a little adroit persuasion later that Mr. Pym got him to accept an invitation to dine with them in their private room in ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... of safety, he took the sword from between his legs where he had hidden it, and commenced to make passes with it, jeering the while at our men whom he had deceived so easily. This theft, as well as many very adroit ones that they committed, has given these people the name of Ladrones, and is the reason for calling all the islands inhabited by them by the same name. This appellation is easily pardoned as long as they find opportunity ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... Amoureux, which he had only ventured to bring out in a provincial theatre, were grafted on Italian and Spanish comedy. Nothing more original offered to his imagination than the Roman, the Italian, and the Spanish drama; the cunning adroit slave of Terence; the tricking, bustling Gracioso of modern Spain; old fathers, the dupes of some scapegrace, or of their own senile follies, with lovers sighing at cross-purposes. The germ of his future powers may, indeed, be discovered in these two comedies, for insensibly to himself ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Cushman to John Pierce (written while the former was at New Plymouth, in November-December, 1621, on behalf of the MAY-FLOWER Adventurers), that up to that time at least, the Pilgrims had no suspicion of the trick which had been played upon them. For, while too adroit recklessly to open a quarrel with those who could—if they chose —destroy them, the Pilgrims were far too high-minded to stoop to flattery and dissimulation (especially with any one known to have been guilty of treachery toward them), or to ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... create ports wherever nature has forgotten to perform this beneficent office. It is a little extraordinary that the fingers of so many of the great "expounders" turn out to be "thumbs," however, exhibiting clumsiness, rather than that adroit lightness which usually characterizes the dexterity of men who are in the habit of rummaging other people's pockets, for their own especial purposes. It must be somewhat up-hill work to persuade any disinterested and clear-headed man, that a political power to ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... ourselves at table, over our coffee, when the others had left, and fell into conversation. He declined my offered cigar with much courtesy, preferring to smoke little cigarettes of his own making; and really the manufacture was very adroit, and, in its way, a study of the maker's habits. We talked over the usual topics—the bad dinner we had just eaten, the strange-looking company, the discomfort of the ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... resolved to give notice of removal, but he did not. On the contrary, he lost himself to Fan. The girl, glowing with love and anger and at the very climax of her animal beauty, developed that night a subtlety of approach, a method of attack, which baffled and in the end overpowered him. She was adroit enough to make no mention of her rivals; she merely set herself to cause his committal, to bend him to her side. As the romping girl she played round him, indifferent to the warning glances of her mother, her ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... mystery already appeared. I may as well confess abjectly that Mrs. Corvick's unexpected attitude was the final tap on the nail that was to fix, as they say, my luckless idea, convert it into the obsession of which I am for ever conscious. But this only helped me the more to be artful, to be adroit, to allow time to elapse before renewing my suit. There were plenty of speculations for the interval, and one of them was deeply absorbing. Corvick had kept his information from his young friend till after the removal of the last barriers to their intimacy; then he had let the cat out of the ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... childhood there is more history and more philosophy to be fished up than from all the printed volumes in a library. The child is conscious of an interest, not in literature but in life. A taste for the precise, the adroit or the comely in the use of words, comes late; but long before that he has enjoyed in books a delightful dress rehearsal of experience. He is first conscious of this material—I had almost said this practical—pre-occupation; it does not follow that it really came the first. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... always, and almost empirically, relies; on the inexhaustible treasure of their marvellous laws and customs, on their love of peace and order, their devotion to the public weal, and fidelity to the future; on the adroit strength, the earnest disinterestedness, of their character, and, above all, on the untiring devotion with which they fulfil their duty. But the enumeration of such procedures belongs rather to technical treatises on apiculture, and would ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... reference to the old scandal he saw or imagined that he saw her manner change from courteous interest to a somewhat frosty indifference. His pride was pricked by the sense of his blunder. He flattered himself that in his intercourse with men and women he was adroit in retrieving errors, and his instinct warned him that the curtain must not fall upon a scene that left him in discomfiture at the back ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the nails adroit to steal, unclench the spoil, deliver, Lest yet that haunch voluptuous, those tender hands caressant, 10 Should take an ugly print ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... as if she really thought that M. de Nailles could have any ideas but her own. When the adroit Clotilde was at a loss, she was likely to evoke this chimerical notion of her husband's having ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... and means to warlike enterprise under competent management, even if it is not habitually prone to a bellicose temper. Rightly managed, ordinary patriotic sentiment may readily be mobilised for warlike adventure by any reasonably adroit and single-minded body of statesmen,—of which there is abundant illustration. All the peoples of Christendom are possessed of a sufficiently alert sense of nationality, and by tradition and current usage all the national governments of Christendom are warlike establishments, at least in the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... might be sure, the very best advice obtainable at Properley, where there was always a first-rate promptitude of everything fourth-rate; it was disgustingly certain, in short, that she'd proceed. She was sharp and adroit, moreover—distinctly in certain ways a master-hand; how otherwise, with her so limited mere attractiveness, should she have entangled him? He couldn't shut his eyes to the very probable truth that if she should try ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... most shifty, unstable men of his day, he can scarcely be called a politician, for like all agitators, the person he really sought to serve was himself alone. He chopped and changed just as it suited his purpose, and is properly introduced by the artist amongst the most adroit and vigorous of the political ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... with extreme meekness and servility; the only reply she ever hazarded was an adroit one; she would take this opportunity to say, "How much better master do get ever since I took in hand ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... entertainment which few could surpass. The coloring and decorations of her rooms would not be more rich, varied, or in better taste, than the diversity, and yet harmony of the people she would bring together by her adroit selections. She had studied society, and for it she lived, not to make it better, not to elevate its character, and tone down its extravagances, but simply to shine in it, to be talked ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... made my castle in the air a splendid reality, and now that it is finished and furnished, you will, in your magnanimity, leave that house to me. I shall be your heir! You know, my dear Eckert, that the privy councillor is dead, and only the chimney-builder lives; and even the adroit chimney-builder is banished from Berlin, and must remain twenty miles away from his splendid home. But tell me, Eckert, when one of my chimneys smokes, may I not send a messenger to you, will you not promise me to come and put ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... game; for if she is unparalleled in the quickness with which she will follow up a clue and triumphantly announce the mysterious object, after asking eighteen or nineteen questions, Arthur is no less adroit in selecting unusual subjects, and so artfully parrying her questions as to give her the least possible assistance. I often hear them call ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... which emblazons the title-page, where a full-length Baphomet is directing a decolletee Templar-Mistress through the pillars Jakin and Bohaz, there is not a single page in the whole vast compilation which shows any connection between Satanism and Masonry until towards the close, when an adroit tax is levied on the still vaster storehouse of Doctor Bataille. The author tells us clearly enough how adoptive Masonry arose, what rites were instituted, what rituals published, what is contained in these, and it is all ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... you have the same tastes, the same desires in life, and you will certainly have the most agreeable house in Bordeaux. Your wife need only bring her night-cap; all is ready for her. You are fortunate indeed in such a mother-in-law. A woman of intelligence, and very adroit, she will be a great help to you in public life, to which you ought to aspire. Besides, she has sacrificed everything to her daughter, whom she adores, and Natalie will, no doubt, prove a good wife, for she loves her mother. You must soon bring the ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... of looting became serious. On the other side of the river was a big camp, where troops were sent to refit and rest. Here the thieves played many cunning tricks and there was some killing. They were adroit in stampeding horses and in the confusion that followed making off with several. The sentries were not allowed to load their rifles, as promiscuous firing was a source of danger to the occupants of the tents, which were ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... a distinguished American professor, protesting with great moderation that an important scientific generalization which he published in 1902 had been annexed, without acknowledgment, by a versatile and adroit professor in the University of Berlin—an acquaintance of my own—in the year 1906; and it was not until 1910 that the latter was made to confess his guilt, with ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... daily make in our most sober and wary of civilized communities. Unscrupulous in their means, yet really honest in the belief that their objects can be attained, they are at once the rogues and fanatics of Mammon. This person was held to have been fortunate in some adroit speculations in the corn trade, and he was brought too frequently into business with Mainwaring not to be a frequent visitor at the house. In him Lucretia saw the very instrument of her design. She led him on to talk of business as a game, of money ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very welcome, Sir Count, and you, Sir Karl," answered the duke, giving his right hand to Max and familiarly offering me his left. This hard duke had been beaten into a gracious mood by Max's adroit mixture ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... les approches de cette redoutable montagne, quoique peut-etre en choisissant une annee ou il seroit tombe beaucoup de neige, et en prenant le temps ou cette neige seroit encore ferme, quelque chasseur adroit et courageux pourroit ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... exhausted, and their ranks were thinned, Once again a furious assault was made by the whole army, and Titus scaled the walls. The city fell with the loss of forty thousand men on both sides, and Josephus surrendered to the will of God, but was himself spared by the victors by adroit flatteries, in which he predicted the elevation of Vespasian to the throne ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... though he were, and in so far the best of testimony, knew it when he found Luca's blue and white to be "molto utile per la state." We should say that of a white umbrella or suit of flannels; why of earthenware or an adroit strambotto? That marks the cleft, the incurable gulf of difference between a people like the Tuscans with art in their marrow, and our present selves with our touching reliance upon a most unseemly hunger after facts. I suppose I should be stretching ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... in France, Mr. Rob. Morris thought he could make him more useful for his aims by inducing the President of the United States to entrust him with a negotiation with England relative to the Commerce of the two countries. M. Gouv. Morris acquitted himself in this as an adroit man, and with his customary zeal, but despite his address (insinuation) obtained only the vague hope of an advantageous commercial treaty on condition of an Alliance resembling that between France and the United States.... [Mr. Robert Morris] is himself ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... infinite tact did she bring them out, those vanities And trinkets of those girls of bygone days; with what adroit eloquence did she introduce all their foibles and virtues to Felicia! Oh, but she was a fine old gossip, was Margot! She couldn't quite trust herself to touch Octavia's clothes that first day. She plunged wildly ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... therefore determined to marry her to some eligible gentleman as quickly as possible, and to place the heavy responsibility of managing her in the hands of a husband. The stubborn violence of Sir George's nature, the rough side of which had never before been shown to Dorothy, in her became adroit wilfulness of a quality that no masculine mind may compass. But her life had been so entirely undisturbed by opposing influences that her father, firm in the belief that no one in his household would dare to thwart his ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... great, should himself issue contrary orders. A serious crisis, as will be seen, and one that caused his cheeks to burn with fever as he studied the expression of his features and his courtier-like smiles in the bevelled mirrors of his coupe, striving to prepare an adroit entry into the presence,—one of his masterstrokes of amiable impudence which had served him so well with Ahmed and thus far with the French statesman,—the whole accompanied by a rapid beating of the heart and the shivering sensation between the shoulders which precedes decisive ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... chance-acquaintance was going to do. He had not long to wait, for two men in livery came on with a table, arranged in all respects as the conjurer's table had been arranged in the music-hall on Saturday night, and Herr Pauer proceeded to play precisely the tricks the conjurer had played. He was just as adroit and swift and' agile as the original, and the audience stamped ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... as occasion demands it, blind and clear-sighted, adroit and clumsy, stupid and clever, like all those who make their fortune. Never judge me, and try to understand my meaning. You ask who Raoul de Frescas is? I will explain to you; he will soon have an ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... undersell all the rest of the world, is a very safe kind of glory—whether we may not purchase it too dear; especially if we allow education, which ought to be directed to the making of men, to be diverted into a process of manufacturing human tools, wonderfully adroit in the exercise of some technical industry, but good for ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to the policy of impartial non-interference with religious differences among his colonists, and the promotion of mutual forbearance among sects. Lord Baltimore may not have been a profound political philosopher nor a prophet of the coming era of religious liberty, but he was an adroit courtier, like his father before him, and he was a man of practical good sense engaged in an enormous land speculation in which his whole fortune was embarked, and he was not in the least disposed to allow his religious predilections to interfere with business. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... for Rome to-night," I heard my Cousin Tom say (which was an adroit lie indeed, as no one could tell whether I had or no), "and he hath taken his man ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... we did get some swift action, but not exactly what Holmes had expected, sad to relate. To all adroit inquiries on the part of the Earl as to what he had deduced, Holmes returned a smiling and evasive answer during the elaborate luncheon, which proceeded to the end,—when the finger-bowls were ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... this adroit movement was evident. With fifteen thousand men, Jackson had occupied the attention of three major-generals and sixty thousand men, prevented McDowell's junction, alarmed ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... a process to which our forefathers were compelled by their want of drains, and consisted in leaving a house entirely empty for a time, to have the windows opened, the rushes renewed, and to adroit of a general purification. Families who had the means generally "went to ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... he could go to the utmost verge of insult and innuendo, without absolutely crossing the line which separates them from formal observance of propriety; but it cannot be said that the American correspondence in this instance was equally adroit. In replying to Erskine's formal offer of reparation for the "Chesapeake" affair, certain points essential to safeguarding the position of the United States were carefully and properly pointed out; then the reparation, as ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... which made her visit seem perfectly natural, "We are now strangers, but I trust we shall not remain such very long. Indeed, I am already sure that you can help me very much." (This asking help instead of offering it was certainly adroit policy.) "I am a Christian worker in this district. My name is Alice Wetheridge. I am well acquainted with Mrs. Wheaton, and the little she has told me about you has made me wish to know you well; and I trust you will meet me with the spirit in which I come—that ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe |
