"Deftness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... once attacked the tight knots, which proved so hard that he pulled out his pocket-knife, which had not been taken away. But the rope might be useful for escape! So he closed his knife, and with all a sailor's deftness of fingers attacked the knots so successfully that he at last set his legs free, and, coiling up the rope, tucked it beneath ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... somewhat, the roughness of the way was such that most of the time her thoughts were concentrated upon maintaining her seat. She clung to her perch with both hands, and mutely admired Burke Ranger's firm control and deftness. He seemed to know by instinct when to ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... here is no greater than the range of qualities which may be happily and usefully employed in arts and crafts. All branches of the work, however, are alike in demanding a certain degree of artistic sense and deftness of manual touch. An accurate, observant eye is an absolute essential, and, for all but the lowest and most mechanical lines of work, imagination, originality, and an inventive habit of mind make the foundation of success. ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... He bent himself over the table, poised for a stroke, which she saw him execute a second later with a delicacy that thrilled her strangely. Full well did she remember the deftness and the steadiness of those brown hands. Had they not held her up, sustained her, in the greatest crisis of ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... question of deftness of fingers. Effie Hargreaves justified the old proverb, "More haste, less speed", by upsetting her box; and Marjorie Butler got her piles mixed in her agitation. Cicely finished first, and was halfway across the lawn before Nora Proctor overtook her. It was a keen ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... egg-boxes. Why egg-boxes I have never been able to understand, but egg-boxes, according to the prescription of The Amateur, formed the foundation of household existence. With a sufficient supply of egg-boxes, and what The Amateur termed a "natural deftness," no young couple need hesitate to face the furnishing problem. Three egg-boxes made a writing-table; on another egg-box you sat to write; your books were ranged in egg-boxes around you—and ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... handled between thumb and finger twice—once put into the case and once taken out of it—each issue of the paper. No one inexperienced in this delicate work has the slightest conception of the intensity of attention, fixity of eye, deftness of touch, readiness of intelligence, exhaustion of vitality, and destruction of brain and nerve which enters into the daily newspaper from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... Lord, how long! The artistic temperament is not merely artistic perception, with which it is so often confounded. You may be steeped to the lips in that temperament, and yet not be able to arrange flowers with deftness, draw a volute, or strike a true chord. And you may be able to do all these, and yet be dead in heart and cold in brain—a mere curly-wigged poodle doing its clever tricks with dexterity, and obedient to the hand that feeds it. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a kind, careful, obedient maid, who is capable enough to be taught to wash your hair and manicure you with deftness, and who would serve you for respect as well as hire. I think it would be a fine arrangement for you ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the nurse grasped the limb and held it as it was placed, while the doctor took one of the rolls, and, dipping it in the water, unrolled it round and round the leg, with a rapidity and deftness which had, to Constance, a quality of fascination in it. A second wet bandage was wound over the first, then a dry one, and the leg was gently laid back on the litter. "Take his temperature," ordered ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... flipping the cards out with a snap of the wrist, the fingers working rapidly over the pack. Now and then he glanced over to the crowd, as if to enjoy their admiration of his skill. He was showing it now, not so much by the deftness of his cheating as by the openness with ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... the photograph, the likeness of which had fired his heart for many a day. With the patience of the Oriental he stood in the shadow and waited. Sooner or later they would leave the room, and sooner or later, with the deftness of his breed, he would enter. The leopard he had heard about was nowhere to ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... into his kitchen and cooked his supper with all a woman's deftness. His kitchen was always clean, though, to the end of keeping it so, he had discarded one thing or another, not imperatively needed. One day he had made a collection of articles only used in a less primitive ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... Left column or current is in slight pause at Glogau here; but will directly be abreast again. On Tuesday, 27th, Schwerin is within wind of Liegnitz; on Wednesday morning, while the fires are hardly lighted, or the smoke of Liegnitz risen among the Hills, Schwerin has done his feat with the usual deftness: Prussian grenadiers came softly on the sentry, softly as a dream; but with sudden levelling of bayonets, sudden beckoning, "To your Guard-house!"—and there, turn the key upon his poor company and him. Whereupon ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that lingered over their breakfast, loath to make the first move to bring him back into realities; and it was she that had to suggest the need of setting out. But once on his feet, he saddled and packed swiftly, with a deftness born of experience. ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... indeed almost incredible, in the glow of the May afternoon, and amid the hawthorn white of the hedges, the chattering birds that fled before them, the marvellous green of the fields. Helena drove with the deftness of a practised hand, avoiding ruts, ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... practice in the city of Cork, as Emile had said, somewhat under a cloud, and had given up whisky for the absinthe of the cafes, and had not regretted the exchange. He made his examination quickly, handling the girl with a surprising skill and deftness, in spite ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... towards them, and her own self-communings are interwoven with unfaltering skill. All the most complex and baffling shades of the mental life, which in the hands of many latter-day novelists build up characters far too thin and too unconvincing, in the hands of Turgenev are used with deftness and certainty to bring to light that great kingdom which is always lying hidden beneath the surface, beneath the common-place of daily life. In the difficult art of literary perspective, in the effective grouping of contrasts in character and the ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... made good his words. He understood the putting up of tents, his experience in the army being not yet remote. Young Hiram gazed with growing admiration at Yates' deftness and evident knowledge of what he was about, while his contempt for the professor's futile struggle with a spade entangled in ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... and went out of the place. Trigger glanced after him. Virod awed her a little—he was really huge. Moving about among them, he had seemed like a softly padding elephant. And there was an elephant's steady deftness in the way he held out the tiny ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... developed consciousness of method finds an interest evermore renewed in returning again and again to Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue." After his first surprise has been abated, he can enjoy more fully the deftness of the author's art. After he has viewed the play from a stall in the orchestra, he may derive another and a different interest by watching it from the wings. To use a familiar form of words, Jane Austen is the novelist's novelist, Stevenson the writer's ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... (as, indeed, was actually done). He is not only a finer artist than Kipling; he is a quite different kind of artist. Kipling, within his limits, shows a talent of a very high order. He is a craftsman of the utmost deftness. He gets his effects with almost perfect assurance. Moreover, there is a poet in him; he knows how to reach the emotions. But once his stories are stripped down to the bare carcass their emptiness becomes immediately apparent. The ideas in them are not the ideas of a reflective and perspicacious ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... no means the highest. If a joyous elephant should break forth into song, his lay would probably be very much like Whitman's famous "song of myself." It would have just about as much delicacy and deftness and ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... swiftly and smoothly from beginning to end. Whether or not he was a particularly good coroner—and Creighton felt some doubt of that—Merton was certainly expert in the technique of his job. He handled his witnesses capably, with deftness and dispatch, extracting facts from them with the easy grace of a headwaiter pulling corks, and each time a fact popped out he beamed benignly at ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the same time stiff and chic. His footwork was infallible. The intricate and imbecilic steps of the day he performed in flawless sequence. Under his masterly guidance the feet of the least rhythmic were suddenly endowed with deftness and grace. One swayed with him as naturally as with an elemental force. He danced politely and almost wordlessly unless first addressed, according to the code of his kind. His touch was firm, yet remote. The dance concluded, he conducted his partner to her seat, bowed stiffly from the waist, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... upon the jug as it was borne brimming and splashing back to her side. She could not help feeling such housewifely anxiety even amid the tremors of her other acute concern. As Alf knelt he lavishly sprinkled some more water upon Pa's face, and set the jug ready to Emmy's hand, working with a quiet deftness that aroused her watchful admiration. He was here neither clumsy nor rough: if his methods were as primitive as the means at hand his gentle treatment of the senseless body showed him to be adaptable to an emergency. How she loved him! Pride gleamed in Emmy's ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... and lithe and graceful. She might have been Leah's mother, too, for the likeness between them. How often you remind me of her when you laugh or sing, and when you're funny in French; those droll, quick gestures and quaint intonations, that ease and freedom and deftness as you move! And then you become English in a moment, and your big, burly, fair-haired father has come back with his high voice, and his high spirits, and his frank blue eyes, like yours, so ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... goodly number out, and the air resounded with the smack of leather against leather as the pigskin was sent soaring high into the air, to be caught expertly as it descended swiftly toward the earth. A few of the regulars were out, and it was easy even for a stranger to distinguish them by the deftness and quick sureness of their actions. The others sometimes missed hard catches, but these veterans, with clocklike precision, were always in position to make the most difficult catches without even ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... the course to Bill, then went into the cabin. In a minute or less he had searched and obtained clean rags, torn strips from them, found a nearly exhausted bottle of vaseline, coated the rag with it and, with a deftness almost worthy of a surgeon, washed the wound with a quick sopping of gasoline. Then as more blood was flowing, he bound up the shoulder and arm so that the flow stopped and by its coagulation germs were excluded. Whereupon Lucy sought a couch where she lay, ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... found an even more congenial freedom of play here. His knowledge of human nature was so profound that he instinctively touched the right keys, playing on the passions of the common people with a deftness far surpassing in effect the acquired skill of the mere master of oratory. He ordered his arguments and framed their language, so that his readers responded with almost passionate enthusiasm to the call he made upon them. Allied to his gift of intellectual sympathy with his kind ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... gradual decay of a once sound stock, are motives that Ibsen might have developed. But the Norseman would have failed to rival Hawthorne's delicate manipulation of his shadows, and the no less masterly deftness of the ultimate mediation of a dark inheritance through the love of the light-hearted Phoebe for the latest descendant of the Maules. In "The Blithedale Romance" Hawthorne stood for once, perhaps, too near his material to allow the rich atmospheric effects which he prefers, and in spite of the ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... pioneer could have been better blessed. She was not only a handsome woman, but one of remarkable force of character as well as kindness of heart. She was particularly noted for a rare skill in the treatment of illness, and her deftness in handling the surgeon's knife and extracting a poisoned bullet or arrow from a wound had restored to health many a settler when ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... deftness he had extracted a single bill from his pocket and thrust it into the hand ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... to two authors, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. Of the two famous series—the Tatler and the Spectator—for which they were both responsible, Steele must take the first credit; he began them, and though Addison came in and by the deftness and lightness of his writing took the lion's share of their popularity, both the plan and the characters round whom the bulk of the essays in the Spectator came to revolve was the creation of his collaborator. Steele we know very intimately ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... harmony. Indeed, the work is characterized by a certain uncompromisingness and sharpness in its harmonies. The instrumental coloring is prismatic, all the registers of the strings being utilized with great deftness. Exclusive of the theme of the scherzo, which recalls a little overmuch the Teutonic banalities of Mahler's symphonies, the quality of the music is, on the whole, grave and poignant and uplifted. It has ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... then surely Uncle Tobe was to all outward appearances an exception to the rule. Never by word or look or act was he caught gloating over his victims; always he exhibited a merciful swiftness in the dread preliminaries and in the act of execution itself. At the outset he had shown deftness. With frequent practise he grew defter still. He contrived various devices for expediting the proceeding. For instance, after prolonged experiments, conducted in privacy, he evolved a harnesslike arrangement ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... admired. At the 1904 exhibition of the Philadelphia Academy Mrs. Chase exhibited a portrait of children, Constance and Gordon Worcester, of which Arthur Hoeber writes: "She has painted them easily, with deftness and feeling, and apparently caught their character ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... overhanging portico as a carriage dashed up on the other side. The high doors above were flung open and a roll of red cloth dropped from step to step down to the pavement, a couple of footmen placing it with the quick deftness of use until it reached ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... a good deal of company in those long empty days before the potato-digging could begin. They all drew together into a small crowd, and closed in step by step to watch the first meeting between these two notable persons, much admiring the deftness with which old O'Beirne secured it by pronouncing one of the pony's shoes in need of tightening, and the felicitous opening he made by assuring his Reverence that "divil a bit need he be mindin' the delay, because Mr. Polymathers there had enough furrin languages to keep thim all divarted, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... dunces we not to have done the same! Only the other day, an actress was saying that what she was most proud of in her art—next, of course, to having appeared in some provincial pantomime at the age of three—was the deftness with which she contrived, in parts demanding a rapid succession of emotions, to dab her cheeks quite quickly with rouge from the palm of her right hand or powder from the palm of her left. Gracious goodness! why do not we have masks upon the stage? Drama is the presentment ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... of the nineteenth century looked on no more characteristic farmhouse than that where dwelt Diarmid Garland and his brood, on the bank above the swift-running water-race which turned the corn-mill with such deftness that people came from as ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... which he displayed and the deftness with which he worked impressed Mrs. Yorke so much that when he was through she said: "Doctor, I have been wondering how a man like you could be content to settle down in this mountain wilderness. I know many fashionable physicians in cities ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... face devoid of hair except for a pair of bushy, iron-gray eyebrows, beneath which his eyes gleamed as cunningly bright as those of a fox. He answered to the name of Grimshaw; and as he counted bills with the deftness and rapidity of a bank cashier, he also paid a certain amount of attention to the remarks of his companion, who was ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... dinner, now pushed the box across the desk to his son. Jack said that he would "roll one"; he did not care to smoke much. He produced a small package of flake tobacco and a packet of rice paper and with a deftness that was like sleight of hand made a cigarette without spilling a single flake. He had not always chosen the "makings" in place of private stock Havanas, but it seemed ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Edinburgh, who, though labouring under the great disability of being deaf and dumb, has for some years back been an enthusiastic art student, has succeeded in procuring admission for three oil paintings, each of which gives good indication of his deftness and skill in the delineation of nature, and the ardour with which he has followed up his studies. "Hide and Seek" represents some children playing at that game in a hay field. "Largo, the Beach at Low Water" gives us a pretty coast scene, with figures on the beach. ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... produced a string fit for the Sultan's kitchen,—of all the number, Mrs. Laudersdale adding by far the majority,—possibly because her shining prey found destination in the same basket with Mr. Raleigh's,—possibly because, as Helen had intimated, a sudden deftness had bewitched her fingers, so that neither dropping rod nor tangling reel ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... volume, which has all the literary charm and deftness of character drawing that distinguish his novels, Dr. Ebers has told the story of his growth from childhood to maturity, when the loss of his health forced the turbulent student to lead a quieter life, and inclination led him to begin his Egyptian studies, which resulted, first of all, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with gentle deftness removed the victim's faded, threadbare coat, and threw it upon the ground. With the promptness of sudden discovery county detective Ferrett picked it up. He held it distastefully, as one holds a thing infected. To the boys his act ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the ship. From below, fierce flames poured down, blue-white and raging. The silver hull slanted a little. It shifted its line of descent. It came down with a peculiar deftness of handling that Cochrane had not realized before. Its rockets splashed, but the flame did not extend out to the edge of the clearing that had been burned off at first. The rocket-flames, indeed, did not approach ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... reflection in the glass sadly, and sadly went through the practised, mechanical motions of her dressing; smoothing the back of her irreproachable coat, arranging her delicate laces with a deftness no indifference could impair. Yesterday she had had delight in that new garment and in her own appearance. She knew that Majendie admired her for her distinction and refinement. Now she wondered what he could have seen in her—after Lady Cayley. At Lady Cayley's ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... day!' said Cuchulainn; 'I shall not be alive therefrom. Two of equal age we, two of equal deftness, two equal when we meet. O Lugaid, greet him for me; tell him that it is not true valour to come against me; tell him to come to meet me ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... room, one of the four into which the Mess was divided. Like the doctor's quarters, it was at one end of the building, the centre apartment being the officers' anteroom and dining-room. Frank found that his "boy," with the ready deftness of Indian servants, had unpacked his trunks, hung up his clothes and stowed his various belongings about the scantily-furnished room. He had stood Violet's photo on the one rickety table and laid out his Master's white mess uniform on the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... always prepared in this way, as the cavity that remains may be filled with stuffing. Drawing is also necessary when chicken is to be cooked in any other way, as by stewing or frying, but in addition it must be cut up. The procedure in drawing a chicken is simple, but some practice is required before deftness will result. ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... an odd feeling of strangeness in the midst of his own familiar surroundings, smoked his pipe in silence and studied Rose soberly. Why, he asked himself, was he unmoved by a woman who was so attractive? He liked the deftness with which her hands worked the pie dough, the quick way she moved between stove and table, yet mingled with this admiration was a slight but distinct hostility. How can one like and have an aversion to a person at the same time? he pondered. "I suppose," he concluded ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... again in requisition. Each comes armed with a coorpee,—this is a small metal spatula, broad-pointed, with which they dig out the weeds with amazing deftness. Sometimes they may inadvertently take out a single stem of indigo with the weeds: the eye of the mate or Tokedar espies this at once, and the careless coolie is treated to a volley of Hindoo Billingsgate, in which all his relations are abused to the seventh generation. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... fully the sense of extreme orderliness and careful deliberation of their work. Everything is placed where it will be most convenient for use, and this orderliness is preserved throughout the day's work. Their shapely tools and vessels are handled with a deftness that shames our clumsy ways, and everything that they use is kept quite clean. This skilful orderliness is essential to fine craftmanship, and is a ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... gladly relinquishing my place. With a deftness and ease that could only be explained by the fact that the duck was ready and willing to be carved, she removed the legs and then demolished the ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... proofreading was a matter on which he was extremely particular. He was apt to make unreasonable demands on them, not understanding human nature. He wanted them to work quickly and accurately and they were very often slow and careless; they tried his patience more than his servants did. A little deftness on his part when in contact with them, would have made things easier all around. As it was, they received little consideration from him, and gave but little in return. He was so deeply interested in his compositions that he frequently recalled them after ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... no untruth against himself. We think that Cicero of all men may be left to do so—Cicero, who so well understood the use of words, and could use them in his own defence so deftly. I maintain that it has been that very deftness which has done him all the harm. Not one of those letters of the last years would have been written as it is now had Cicero thought, when writing it, that from it would his conduct have been judged after two thousand years. "No," will say my readers, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Three Lovers, of Patricia Quin is done with that simplicity, quiet deftness and inoffensive frankness which is the hallmark of Mr. Swinnerton's fiction. And, coming at last to Nocturne, I fall back cheerfully upon the praise accorded that novel by H. G. Wells in his preface to it. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... the letter was its composition took some little time. The deftness which characterized Persis in most of her work, did not extend to her epistolary efforts. She was still puckering her forehead over the page when Thomas Hardin knocked. The door was ajar and glancing over her shoulder, she called to him ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... but before he was through with his task he often received a sound scolding for his unskilful and bungling style of work. But he in part made up by main strength what he lacked in skill, and after two or three days he acquired considerable deftness in his unwonted labors, and felt the better for them. They counteracted the effects of his literary efforts, or, more correctly, his means of inspiration ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... ingenuity, cleverness, technic, dexterity, proficiency, expertness, facility, deftness, knack. Antonyms: maladroitness, empiricism, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... race to become good and helpful citizens according to Anglo-Saxon ideals, and that, as far as those qualities are concerned which have made the greatness of the United States, the contribution from the Irish element has been inconsiderable. The deftness of the Irishman in political organisation and his lack of desire for individual independence, as a result of which he turns either to the organising of a governing machine or to some form of personal service (in either case merging ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... far down among the warehouses and wharves crowding the approach to the bridge. As she walked, she still asked questions and found that all the dwellers in the Lane were better known by their employments than their real names, how that Glory's deftness with a needle had made her "Take-a-Stitch," and anybody might guess why Jane was called "Posy" or Captain Beck had become the "Singer." Besides, she discovered that this ragged newsboy was as fond and proud of his "Lane" as she was of her avenue, and that if she had any pity to bestow, ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... Dilettante | | The Reckoning | | Expiation | | The Lady's Maid's Bell | | A Venetian Night's Entertainment | | | | "It is, of course, the extraordinary directness with which | | Mrs. Wharton's probe goes to the spot under inspection, the | | deftness with which she is able to bring to the light of day | | what we had hidden even from ourselves, that account for the | | admiration with which we regard her short stories."—London | | Academy. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... times the mill-hands of both sexes were locked up for fear of rows, but in spite of this the locks were broken and the rows were perpetual. When my father turned out the sitting Tory, Sir Graham Montgomery, in 1880, there were high jinks in Peebles. I pinned the Liberal colours, with the deftness of a pick-pocket, to the coat-tails of several of the unsuspecting Tory landlords, who had come from great distances to vote. This delighted the electors, most of whom were feather- stitching up and down the High Street, more familiar with drink ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... belt, and Regnar making a single incision from chin to tail, the body seemed fairly to roll out of the thick, soft blubber coat which adhered to the skin. In less than two minutes Regnar had finished what La Salle had no doubt would take at least a good half hour. With equal deftness the liver was extracted, and a few pounds of meat taken ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... she turned the knob of the Yale lock on the front door and put one foot over the threshold. It was back again in an instant, however; and this time it was no lawful Patsy that flew back through the hall to the mantel-shelf. With the deftness and celerity of a true housebreaker she de-framed the tinker and stuffed the photograph in the pocket of ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... had a motive in asking for Libbie's suitcase. It was much smaller and lighter than any of the others, and he swung it deftly into the rack over the vinegary lady's unsuspecting head. With a deftness, born it must be confessed of previous practice, he balanced the case on the rim so that the first lurch of the train catapulted the thing down squarely on the woman's hat, snapping a shiny, hard black quill ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... recounted her words, lingering especially upon the sweetness of her voice and the searching quality of that last look she had given him. He unsaddled his horse mechanically, and went about his cabin duties with listless deftness. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... who arranged the wounded man's pillows with a gentleness and deftness as only she could, and who gave quiet orders to the old cook in a way that made Richard Travis feel that things were all right, though he could not speak, nor even open his eyes long enough ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the contents of this needle, but if you haven't, will you please trust me? This contains a neurohypnotic. It won't put you under. It will leave you as wide awake as you are now, but it will disconnect your running gear and keep you from blowing a fuse." Then with swift deftness that amazed me, the doctor slid the needle into my arm and let me have the ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... It had been apter to describe Coquelin as the French Jefferson. I never saw Frederic Lemaitre. But, him apart, I have seen all the eccentric comedians, the character actors of the last fifty years, and, in spell power, in precision and deftness of touch, in acute, penetrating, all-embracing and all-embodying intelligence and grasp, I should place Joseph Jefferson easily at ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... saw that one of the cushions was slipping to one side. She replaced it with a deftness of touch natural to her, yet seemingly incongruous with her harum-scarum ways. Then she settled herself with her back against a ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... the violence of fate snatch thee from me, thou half of my soul, how can I, the other half, still linger here?" So wrote the old cynical, worldly, Latin poet of his friend—that poet whom, for all his deftness and grace, we are apt to accuse of a certain mundane heartlessness, though once or twice there flickers up a sharp flame from the comfortable warmth of the pile. Had he the secret hidden in his heart all the time? If one could dream of a nearness like that, which ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... with a little game of poker?" asked Sheeley, lightly running a deck of cards up the length of his arm and reversing them with a deftness that ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... dared to lift his eyes from his task while the hag was watching. But now he stole a swift glance toward the back of the lodge, where the maid, Brown Mink, was reclining, and his dull eyes, like the fuel at his knees, leaped into sudden flame. But, with the deftness of a woman, he kept on putting bits of wood into ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... glanced at the clock. Going on toward five. Still in the absurd hat she got out a panful of potatoes and began to peel them skilfuly, automatically. The seamed and hardened fingers had come honestly by their deftness. They had twirled and peeled pecks—bushels—tons of these brown balls ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... her duties promptly, though not with any special deftness. And first she stooped and picked up the last match her father had dropped upon the strip of carpet ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... a handful of snow with which he began to rub the woman's face. Afterwards he removed her gloves to manipulate her cold hands. He worked swiftly, with the deftness of practice, but the results were slow, and presently he took the rug from the pack he carried and covered her while he felt in Frederic's pockets for the flask he had neglected to return. "Likely there wasn't a drop left when she came ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... into the room, but it was even colder and more cheerless than the darkness. Presently a young Indian girl, whom Mrs. Hall had trained for service, came softly into the room and began to coax the still burning embers of the fire into a blaze. She went about her work with a silent deftness which would have done credit to the best of housemaids, and yet in all her motions there was something of that free natural grace which belongs to her people. When she had done, and was standing for a moment to see if the fire 'drew' properly, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... an extraordinary amount. This was enough to weave twelve linen handkerchiefs. At this time when there were about five or six skeins to a pound of flax, the pay for spinning was sixpence a skein. The Abbe Robin wondered at the deftness of New ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... with the utmost composure, and when she stopped proceeded to divest her of her furs with the deftness of movement ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... with drawn sword at the same instant cutting off his head with a single blow. I was tempted by curiosity, once while on the station, to attend the execution of some ordinary criminals; and I can testify to the deftness and instantaneousness with which one head fell, in the flash of a sword or the twinkling of an eye. I did not care to view the fates of the three others condemned, but it was clear that no judicial death could be more ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... cocoa-nut grove by utilising six growing trees as corners and centre-posts, and binding to these thin horizontal poles, freshly cut down for eaves and ridge. Others formed gables, being fixed by the sailors with their customary deftness, thin rattans being used as binding cords. Then other poles had been bound together for the roof, and over these an abundant thatching of palm leaves had been laid and laced on with rattan till there was a water-tight roof, ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... the boy, "tell Sacas to give me the bowl, and let me pour out the wine as prettily as he if I can, and win your favour." So the king bade the butler hand him the bowl, and Cyrus took it and mixed the wine just as he had seen Sacas do, and then, showing the utmost gravity and the greatest deftness and grace, he brought the goblet to his grandfather and offered it with such an air that his mother and Astyages, too, laughed outright, and then Cyrus burst out laughing also, and flung his arms round his grandfather and kissed him, crying, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... amazed at the deftness with which the young scout prepared the repast; and he lay upon the grass, with his eyes rivetted upon the nimble, noiseless, graceful lad. It puzzled him that the mysterious youth should persistently keep his head averted, and he ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... stilled, and she began to dress the child, with her mother's deftness. "He comes a little early to fodder, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... nor sign of fear, came from Jerry—only choking growls of ferociousness, intermingled with snarls of anger, and a belligerent up-clawing of hind-legs. But a dog, clutched by the neck from the back, can never be a match for two men, gifted with the intelligence and deftness of men, each of them two-handed with four fingers and an opposable ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... girl that he loved, vivid, vital, full of charm. The swift deftness and grace of her movements enticed him. The inflections of her warm, young voice set his pulses throbbing as music sometimes did. An ardent desire of her flooded him. She was the most winsome creature under heaven—but she was not ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... O' CORMAC, AN' TALES OF OTHER MEN'S SONS, by Aldis Dunbar (E.P. Dutton & Company). This collection of fifteen Irish fairy and hero tales, told by a gardener to a little boy, show considerable deftness of fancy, and although the idiom Mr. Dunbar uses is borrowed and not quite convincing, his book seems to me almost as good as those of Seumas ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... are enumerated as showing the genius of true love. We notice the swift, cool-headed deftness of the man, his having at hand the appliances needed, the business-like way in which he goes about his kindness, his readiness to expend his wine and oil, his willingness to do the surgeon's work, his cheerful ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... worst of the whole unpalatable affair was that if he did act in that suggested way, and if he accomplished what he might, with dreadful deftness, be supposed to accomplish, it would be the moment when perhaps he might ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... terrifying. Indeed, to Mrs. Rodney's hawklike gaze, that devoured every visible item of Mary's extremely modest travelling-dress, there was nothing so very wonderful about "the gov'ment from the East." With a deftness compatible only with long practice, Mrs. Rodney now put a foot on the round of an adjoining chair and shoved it towards Mary Carmichael in hospitable pantomime, never once relaxing her continual rocking the meantime. Mary took the chair, and Mrs. Rodney, after freshening up the snuff-brush ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... this juncture, with a discreet knock, Peterby entered, and, having bowed to the scowling Viscount, proceeded to invest Barnabas with polished boots, waistcoat and scarlet coat, and to tie his voluminous cravat, all with that deftness, that swift and silent dexterity which helped to make him the ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... probably made no unfair difference in her case from any other, but so far as he could mould and bend the prison discipline and rules it was his practice not to use a razor for stone-chipping or a cold-chisel for shaving. He therefore put Vivie to tasks co-ordinated with her ability and the deftness of her hands—such as book-binding. She had of course to wear prison dress—a thing of no importance in her eyes—and her cell was like all the cells in that and other British prisons previous to the newest reforms—dark, rather damp, cruelly cold in winter, and disagreeable ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... and wondered indeed at the deftness and abundance of beauty of the work of men who had at last learned to accept life itself as a pleasure, and the satisfaction of the common needs of mankind and the preparation for them, as work fit for the best of the race. I mused silently; but at ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... Morris reached their loft a good hour ahead of the letter-carrier, and when he entered they both made a grab for the mail which he handed them. Morris won out, and as he shuffled the letters with the deftness of long pinochle experience he emitted ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... we older folks were young like you, we did not have the regular, scraggly bits of iron and dainty rubber ball. We played with pieces of stones. I suspect more deftness was needed in handling them than in using the new fashioned pieces. Certainly, in trials than I can remember, I never played the game through without a break; but then I was never half so handy as you are at such things: that, no doubt, ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... you know—well, what he could say was that in the last campaign his articles were widely sought for. He did not know but he had a copy of one. Here his hand dived into the breast-pocket of his coat, with a certain deftness that indicated long habit, and, after depositing on his lap a bundle of well-worn documents, every one of which was glaringly suggestive of certificates and signatures, he concluded he had left it in ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... sheriff of Ellisville, was a heavily built man, sandy-haired, red-mustached, and solid. His legs were bowed and his carriage awkward. He had thick, clumsy-looking fingers, whose appearance belied their deftness. Bill Watson had gone through the Quantrell raid in his time. It was nothing to him when he was to be killed. Such a man is careful in his shooting, because he is careless of being shot, having therefore a vast advantage ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... soft evening was profound. Against the white parapet a small, round table and a cane armchair had been placed. A subdued patter of feet in slippers came up the stairway, and an Arab servant appeared with a tea-tray. He put it down on the table with the precise deftness which Domini had already observed in the Arabs at Robertville, and swiftly vanished. She sat down in the chair and poured out the tea, leaning her left arm ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... profitable; their gang, consisting of forty men, had taken on the work, thanks to the great rush, not by the day but by the amount of work done, by the waggon load. Zavorotny, the head—an enormous, mighty Poltavian—had succeeded with extreme deftness in getting around the owner; a young man, and, to boot, in all probability not very experienced as yet. The owner, it is true, came to his senses later and wanted to change the stipulations; but experienced melon growers ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... things, that in Egypt, as in China and Japan, literary style and mere penmanship and brushwork are to be conceived as inseparable. No doubt the Egyptian scholar was the man who could not only compose a poem, but write it down with a brush. Talent for poetry, deftness in inscribing, and skill in mural painting were probably gifts of the same person. The photoplay goes back to this ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... she did, protest notwithstanding, so that Jeff, returning from his work in the middle of the day, was surprised to find her flushed and animated in the kitchen, clad in one of Granny Grimshaw's aprons, rolling out pastry with the ready deftness ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... peculiar genre of players, in which may be numbered such great virtuosos as Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski, who successively occupied the same professional place formerly illustrated by De Beriot, and the latter of whom recently died. De Beriot's playing was noted for accuracy of intonation, remarkable deftness and facility in bowing, grace, elegance, and piquancy, though he never succeeded in creating the unbounded enthusiasm ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... they kissed ground and did him suit and service and deprecated for him and greeted him with blessings, and each and every of them addressed him in tongue most eloquent and with theme most prevalent. The Prince of True Believers hugely admired them, marvelling at their deftness of address and their sweetness of speech which he had never witnessed in any other; and he was delighted with their beauty and loveliness and their stature and symmetrical grace, and he wondered with extreme wonderment ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... glanced at her mother and hesitated. Then, apparently reading her mother's face, she said, "In a minute, da," and seizing the broom, which was much taller than herself, she began to brush up the crumbs about the table with amazing deftness. This task completed, and the crumbs being thrown into the pig's barrel which stood in the woodshed just outside the door, Jessac set her broom in the corner, hung up the dust-pan on its proper nail behind ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... slight, feminine figure, whom he recognized as the teacher of the past season's local school. She had a pallid face, which she rarely raised, compressed lips, and hands which attracted Gordon by reason of their white deftness, the precise charm of their pointed fingers. During a seemingly interminable grace, pronounced in a rapid sing-song by the circuit rider, Gordon saw her flash her gaze about the table, the room; and its somber, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of Flemish tapestries. It was the Renaissance expressing itself in the wondrous textile art. The weavers were already perfect in their work, no change of drawing could perplex them. But to their deftness with their medium was now added the rich invention of the Italian artists of the Renaissance, at the period of perfection when restraint and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... nothing clownish and furtive about it. It is the gay and frank expression of artists whose humour is too broad for the general; but, as a rule, there is no doubt about the fine quality of their drawings and the deftness of their wit. That is what makes the French print so liked ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... success, the work must be done noiselessly and gracefully. The preparation of all articles is the same for the chafing-dish as for the common stove; but where the mixing is done at the table, as for a rarebit, the recipe takes on an additional flavor, according to the deftness with which ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... ones being the chief of these darling wishes. Picotee wanted looking to badly enough. Sol and Dan required no material help; they had quickly obtained good places of work under a Pimlico builder; for though the brothers scarcely showed as yet the light-fingered deftness of London artizans, the want was in a measure compensated by their painstaking, and employers are far from despising country hands who bring with them strength, industry, and a desire to please. But their ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... She went down to try and get him a mustard plaster, which, with much difficulty, she contrived. Returning in triumph, as Mr. Pickwick did with his recovered watch, she found that he had fallen into a gentle sleep, and was lying with his head buried in the pillows. With much softness and deftness, she quickly drew away the coverings, and, without disturbing him, managed to insinuate the plaster into its proper place. Having done her duty, she then proceeded to lie down, when the sleeping man, moving uneasily, ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... that "every woman is by nature more or less a nurse," but like most sayings it is by no means always true. Many who possess the gentleness and sympathy which are so necessary in nursing the sick, yet lack the ready nerve, deftness, and promptitude. Who has not beheld the sad spectacle of women anxious to help, yet helpless because of their ignorance and want of training? That will be a happy day when a course of training in nursing, though it be but a short one, ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... red, but no professional nurse could have handled a patient with more gentle deftness. The linen was unwound, and Mike for the first time inspected the wound inflicted by Gerald Buxton with his shotgun. Little as the lad knew of such things, he saw the hurt was not serious. With the removal ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... on her knees, though I strove half rudely to prevent her, and was binding up my shoulder with a wonderful deftness of her ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... he watched the deftness with which her hands made a pretty ceremony of pouring tea, he inquired: "Have I seen that ring before—the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... sentinel watching sentinels, a spy upon those that should have spied. And standing so I saw the men, and they saw me; and quickened to the act by the sudden danger, I swung over the first half of the trap which shut the chimney in, and made ready to close the second with all the deftness I ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... Colonel Pyke Pounce, R.E., could stand on the hearthrug with his massy jowl and his determined stomach, and grunt, and rattle the money in his pockets, and grunt again; and if then there could come in the new parlour maid of Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, with her tallness and her deftness and her slight, very slight, insolence of air, and all the five and sixty gazing upon her as haughty but envious patricians gazing upon a slave, and when she had gone swishing out if Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, could tell all the sixty and five of ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... in surgery that day of which he found the benefit more than once before the war was over. He was soon able to apply one of Katharine's lint bandages or dress a wound with a deftness that elicited the commendation not only of the subject of his ministration, but even of the knight of the scalpel himself. Neville, too, evinced no little skill in the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... when Dicky came home from his "impromptu studio party." His mother, whose deftness, efficiency and unexpected tenderness surprised me, arranged a bed for him on the couch in the living room, and I did not hear him ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... lineman has a daredevil way with the women, as have all men whose calling is a hazardous one. Chet was a crack workman. He could shinny up a pole, strap his emergency belt, open his tool kit, wield his pliers with expert deftness, and climb down again in record time. It was his pleasure—and seemingly the pleasure and privilege of all lineman's gangs the world over—to whistle blithely and to call impudently to any passing petticoat that ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... that Long Sin wanted. He started across the rope, which he had stretched from this apartment house to the building across the court, with all the deftness of the ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... to me, and I looked into it with some interest. I knew that Jane was deft with her fingers, but I did not know that she had a special wish to cultivate this deftness or to put it ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... of the dwarf folk, was the father of three sons. Fafnir, the eldest, was gifted with a fearless soul and a powerful arm; Otter, the second, with snare and net, and the power of changing his form at will; and Regin, the youngest, with all wisdom and deftness of hand. To please the avaricious Hreidmar, this youngest son fashioned for him a house lined with glittering gold and flashing gems, and this was guarded by Fafnir, whose fierce glances and AEgis helmet ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... lines, in patient drudgery. It is this fact that those who praise art merely as an imitation constantly forget. There is often as much invention in the way details are expressed by the strokes of pen or brush, as there could be in the grouping of a crowd; the deftness, the economy of the touches, counts for more in the inspiriting effect than the truth of the imitation. A photograph from nature never conveys this, the chief and most fundamental merit of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore |
