"Knuckles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was for the moment forgotten. Mr. Ormond examined the box, turned it over first on one side then on the other, rapped the boards with his knuckles, and at ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... Hubbard, "I know a place down on Park Row where they serve the best pigs' knuckles you ever ate. I used to go there for them when I was on the old Daily News. They cook them just right, and serve a big plate of nice greasy cabbage or sauerkraut with them, and a cup of pretty good coffee. We'll have to go there some time when ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... wildness of his manner and the violence of his speech, he appeared to be acting a part which he had rehearsed beforehand. I was only angry, and stepping forward, I dealt him a very sharp rap with my knuckles on his chest. "Moderate your language, old man," I said; "remember that you are addressing ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... ain't," returned the lad, with the desperation of a cornered rat. "But I got a right to live. And I've lived worse'n a dorg on this bloody schooner. I'm fair striped an' bruised wi' boots an' knuckles an' ends o' rope. I'd 'ave chucked myself ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... his knuckles into his red eyes, and began to whimper. Again it was hard for Tommy! He had followed Clare, thinking to supply what was lacking to him; to do for him what he was not clever enough to do for himself; in short, to make an advantageous partnership ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... straight right. The Nipe moved his head aside, and Stanton's knuckles merely grazed the side of his head, below the lower right eye. One of the Nipe's hands came in in a chopping right hook that took Stanton just below the ribs. Stanton leaped back with a ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Fitzpatrick the Bad Hand nudged me gently with his knuckles, and I nudged Jed Smith, and Jed passed it on, and it went around from one to the other, so we all knew. Somebody was coming! We could hear a stick snap, and a little laugh, off in the timber; it sounded as though ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... her food. Her father was engaged in a long explanation of the misdeeds of a man who had sold him inferior pork, as she folded her napkin, slipped it into her ring, and went back into the store. Here she sat on her stool again, tapping the counter with closed knuckles. Her eyes chanced to fall upon the paper she had thrown down on the floor, and she picked it up and began to read. Pete Coogan, when he had brought it into the store, unknowingly had set big things in motion. He would have been amazed at the ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... only his sudden abstraction and the whitened knuckles of his left hand. She also realised, with a faint prick of anxiety, that he had simply not heard her remark. Was it possible—could Roy be at the back of Aruna's waverings? Would his coming mean fresh complications? Too distracting to be responsible ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... not realize how pugnacious was his pose, but he was leaning toward her with his face quite close, and his eyes were blue points of intensity. His hands, doubled and pressing hard on the table, showed white at the knuckles. ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... into the depths of a buttercup. Hugh John scratched the freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a "pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret, her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking upward in rapt attention. For her there was no joy like that of a story. Only, she was too young to mind letting the tale-teller know it. ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... stood back while she stepped boldly up on the rude stone slab and rapped sharply against the warped and sagging door. A moment they stood thus waiting with no response from within. Once she glanced suspiciously around at him, only to wheel back instantly and once more apply her knuckles to the wood. Before he had conjured up something worth saying the door was partially opened, and a rounded dumpling of a woman, having rosy cheeks, her hair iron-gray, her blue eyes half smiling in uncertain welcome, looked out ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... "Did you give Clewer Head-knuckles?" McTurk echoed. At the twentieth repetition—no boy can stand the torture of one unvarying query, which is the essence ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... still standing at his side. Without changing his attitude he rapped with his knuckles gently twice upon the boards of the stair. She turned towards him with a gasp of the breath. He rapped again twice, fearful lest she should speak to him. She understood that he had given her the signal to go. She turned on her heel and slipped ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... another time-table, threatening again to lose himself completely; and was thrown into the utmost confusion by the touch of the girl's hand, in appeal placed lightly on his own. And had she been observant, she might have seen a second time his knuckles whiten beneath the skin as he asserted his self-control—though this time not over ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Hallowell, Mrs. Marsh, Gaylor, Rainey, Professor Strombergk entered the cabinet. With their knuckles they beat upon its sides. They moved it to and fro. They dropped to their knees, and with their fingers tugged at the carpet upon ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... did not know. The other he recognised at once. It seemed to be the same familiarly shabby black coat which he wore, the same many-stained waistcoat, the identical silk hat, ruffled and rain-spotted. The same pads of flesh hung flaccid from his jaws; the red, cracked knuckles of his hands, well remembered, were enormous still. Only the furrows on the face seemed to be ploughed deeper and wider, and a few more stiff hairs curled over the general ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... intercostals were somewhat sore for a time, on account of a contact with priestly knuckles, doubtless there soon set in a corresponding uneasiness in the region of your conscience. Such shocks are often vigorously alterative ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... arrival and with the advent of tea, he had accomplished what she had fervently wished for the night she had met him—he succeeded, by several easy moves, in isolating her from her aunt, and, notwithstanding her admiration, her desire to tap with her knuckles the metal of her idol and listen for a ring of hollowness, she was alarmed. Yet, perversely, she knew that he would not exhibit his paces before his wife—naturally a disinterested spectator—or before her aunt, who was hardly "intimate" enough. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... concern during the first few years of his life except at such times as his mother grows officious and fussy and insists that they ought to be washed up as far as the regular place for washing a boy's hands, to wit, about midway between the knuckles and the wrist. The fact that one finger is usually in a state of mashedness is no drawback, but a benefit. The presence of a soiled rag around a finger gives to a boy's hand a touch of distinctiveness—singles it out from ordinary unmaimed hands. Its presence has been known ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... discovered from the style of his address, it was none other than the subject of my late reverie with whom I had come in collision. "I don't know whether I have scratched your varnish, as you call it, but I have knocked the skin off my own knuckles against the tree ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the bewildered Max sighed, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, as though hardly knowing whether ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Cut-glass bottles for wines and brandies, Sticks once flourished by bucks and dandies; Deep old glasses they drank enough in, And golden boxes they took their snuff in; Rings that flashed on a gallant's knuckles, Seals and lockets and shining buckles; Watches sadly in need of menders, Blackened firedogs and dinted fenders; Prints and pictures and quaint knick-knackery, Rare old silver and mere gimcrackery— Such was ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... heavily, it turns and jars the brain, and the man who is struck feels as though the man who struck him had opened the top of his skull and taken his brains in his hand and wrenched them as a brakeman wrenches a brake. If you shut your teeth hard, and rap the tip of your chin sharply with your knuckles, you can get an idea of how effective this is when multiplied by an arm and all the muscles of ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... bolt, but with infinite slowness and caution. In so doing they crept into the moonlight. The actual motion was imperceptible, but slowly, slowly, the fingers came out whiter and whiter; but the hand between the main knuckles and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... received the blow just beside the point of his chin; and his eyes seemed to Cashel roll up and fall back into his head with the shock. He drooped forward for a moment, and fell in a heap face downward. Cashel recoiled, wringing his hand to relieve the tingling of his knuckles, and terrified by the thought that he had committed murder. But Wilson presently moved and dispelled that misgiving. Some of Cashel's fury returned as he shook his fist at his prostrate adversary, and, exclaiming, "YOU won't brag much of having seen me ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... trip no brass knuckles. Glove That heavy mailed hand; Your mission now is one of Love And ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... his great bone-rimmed spectacles, and she could see the knuckles of his bony hands, just above the top of the table, fidgeting, fidgeting, fidgeting, till she wondered if there existed another set of fingers in the world which could undo the knots his lean ones made in that tiresome piece ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... me out of the saddle, no doubt in the hope of seeing me trampled to death by the cohort behind me. As I leaned my body forward so as to maintain my seat, and with my arms pulled violently backwards by the rope, the flesh was rubbed off my hands and knuckles by the chain of the handcuffs. In places the bone was exposed; and, of course, every tug brought me into forcible contact with the spikes and inflicted deeper wounds. The cord, though strong, eventually and unexpectedly gave way. The soldier who was pulling at the other end was clumsily ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... hedge on the side of the road opposite the wall, and ran on, sheltered by the hedge, until, to his delight, he plunged headfirst into a stream of water. The fall knocked him out for a moment, but the cold water revived him, and he did not mind the scraped knee and the barked knuckles he owed to the sharp stones in the bed of the little brook. He changed his course at once, following the brook, since in that no telltale ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... Surprised to find the hours so swiftly fly. With hasty knock, or twang of pendent cord. Alarm the drowsy youth from slumb'ring nod; Startled he flies, and stumbles o'er the stairs Erroneous, and with busy knuckles plies His yet clung eyelids, and with stagg'ring reel Enters confused, and muttering asks our wills; When we with liberal hand the score discharge, And homeward each his course with steady step Unerring steers, of ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... a going over. When it took that awful shoot, I lost control of it. Maybe I'm to be discharged for losing control of it, but not"—Freckles sniffled pathetically—-"but not for anything like what he says I done. Why Governor," he went on, ramming his knuckles into his eyes, "I ain't got nothing against him! What'd I take ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... violently that, for a few seconds, he was unable to move. Becoming calmer, he tried the door, and finding it locked, rapped with his knuckles against it. The grocer's wife demanded who was there. But Wyvil, instead of returning an answer, repeated his application. The same demand followed, and in a louder key. Still no answer. A third summons, however, so alarmed Mrs. Bloundel, that, forgetful of her husband's injunctions, she opened ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... boy with the hateful grin, and how Curly Davis had sneered and spat and struck. Suddenly he found himself tingling all over, and pressing a burning forehead against the cool glass, and digging his knuckles into the corner of the sash till they ached. Then he went into the library, and lay down on father's big leather couch, and thought ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... afternoon I opened the outer door of the dining-room in response to the rap of strenuously applied knuckles. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... still decorated with a bruise that young Mosher had planted there. The boxing of Dick & Co., this summer, was real work. It was done with bare knuckles, though, of course, without anger or the desire to do injury. Boxing with bare knuckles was Prescott's own idea for hardening himself and his chums for the rough ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... forward. She saw Raymond's knuckles grow white and hard as his hands gripped the back of his chair. His eyes dilated, and for a moment he could not speak. Finally ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... was raised with the palm of the hand on the chest, the other hung down, a truly fearful weapon, reaching to the crooked knee, and ending in great flattened fingers, that were bent inwards. After the roar the fierce creature lowered itself on to the knuckles of its arms, and seemed as if in another instant it would spring on its foes, still scrambling for a footing, when a piece of mould struck it on the cheek. It made a side-spring at the sooty guide, who nimbly jumped out of reach, and, when it turned, Mr. Hume was on his feet swinging ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... sheet, and her face burned. She could understand now why Jack Barrow had hung up his receiver with a slam. She could picture him reading that suggestive article and gritting his teeth. Her hands clenched till the knuckles stood white under the smooth skin, and then quite abruptly she got up and left the restaurant even while a waiter hurried to take her order. If she had been a man, and versed in profanity, she could have cursed Andrew Bush till his soul shuddered ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... more than fifty; but he had the same, or an exactly similar uniform suit of light-brown clothes,—the same pearl-grey silk stockings,—the same stock, with its silver buckle,—the same plaited cambric ruffles, drawn down over his knuckles in the parlour, but in the counting-house carefully folded back under the sleeves, that they might remain unstained by the ink which he daily consumed;—in a word, the same grave, formal, yet benevolent cast of features, which continued ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... when they buried him the second time. They were letting the coffin down in the grave when they buried him the first time, and he knocked at it on the inside, knock, knock. (Here the old lady rapped on the doorsill with her knuckles—ed.) They drew that coffin up and opened it. How do I know? I was there. I heard it and seen it. They took him out of the coffin and carried him back to his home in the ambulance. He lived about three or ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... voce to my cousin; then we laughed on for at least half an hour. The Pater said to me, "If we only could be longer together, we could discuss the art of musical composition." "In that case," said I, "our discussion would soon come to an end." A famous rap on the knuckles for ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... drive a tenpenny nail square through a lead pipe, pull it out, and say nothing about it. You want to be on hand, too, when the trimmings are put on, and see that they are not too high or low, or fixed so you will bruise your knuckles every time you pull out the drawers or open the cupboard doors. Speaking of cupboards, there's no end to the bother if you don't just camp down in the pantry and stay there till the top shelf is up and the bottom drawer slides in ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... see," he began, speaking rapidly, his hands twisting and untwisting till the knuckles cracked. "Now, let's see. You leave it to me. I know Carter. He's going to be at a stag dinner where I am invited to-morrow ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... tears splashing down upon his rough knuckles. "I really think J. B. misjudged me ... and I haven't any way of making up to him ... except through you.... It's our chance, ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... after he had been taken up in the atmosphere in his airship, Uncle Ezra said nothing. He just sat there in the padded seat, clutching with his hands the rails in so tight a grip that his knuckles showed white. ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... presume, of not disturbing our movements by breathing; and I noticed the same action in a young Orang. The poor little creature was sick, and was amusing itself by trying to kill the flies on the window-panes with its knuckles; this was difficult as the flies buzzed about, and at each attempt the lips were firmly compressed, and at ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... charge of falsehood against Milton, the author has grossly mis-translated a passage in the Defensio pro Pop. Anglicano: and, if that bishop were not dead, I would here take the liberty of rapping his knuckles—were it only for breaking Priscian's head. To return over to the clerical feud against the Long Parliament,—it was a passage in a very pleasing work of this day (Ecclesiastical Biography) which suggested to ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Hillard, but fortunately Merrihew heard the slithering sound of the saber as it left its scabbard. Kitty screamed and O'Mally shouted. Merrihew, with a desperate lunge, stopped the blow. He received a rough cut over the knuckles, but he was not aware of this till the excitement was past. He flung ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... are first cut roughly to size with the mill-board shears, screwed up in the "lying" press. The straight arm of the shears is the one to fix in the press, for if the bent arm be undermost, the knuckles are apt to be severely bruised against the end. A better way of fixing the shears is shown at fig. 45. Any blacksmith will bend the arm of the shears and make the necessary clips. This method saves trouble and considerable wear and tear to the "lying" press. Where a great many ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... approached the great master-lever, protected by its bell of glass. (At least it looked like glass, for it was crystal clear and reflected gleamingly the blue light from the nearby coils). He tapped it experimentally with his knuckles.... ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... pressing his knuckles to his lips, raised out of himself by the accord of voices and the lingering note of melancholy that was in the hour, the note of the ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... the party over in her dream; and as the visionary custard-cups crashed down through one lobe of her brain into another, she gave a start as if an inch of lightning from a quart Leyden jar had jumped into one of her knuckles with ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... swept over the crowd. Bobby gripped his hands so tightly that the knuckles turned white. He resented the intervention of a half-dozen other contestants before Mr. Kincaid should be called; and rolled about in an agony of impatience until his friend stepped ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... The Jam-wagon was bleeding about the knuckles. Several of Locasto's teeth had been loosened, and he spat blood frequently. Otherwise he looked as fit as ever. He pursued his man with savage determination, and seemed resolved to get in a deadly body-blow that would end ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... that moment on a stool. I rapped his knuckles gently with the butt of the revolver to let him ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... staring with wide-open eyes, now at their plates, now at aunt with her fat cheeks and her diamond cross that hung glittering at the end of a gold chain on her enormous breast; they counted the rings that were spitted on her fingers right up to the knuckles; they gazed at her earrings.... As the soup went down, the faces began to shine and mother pulled at her jacket and complained of the dreadful heat. Father pushed up the window and opened the back-door. ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... the table top lightly with his knuckles. Mrs. Folsom looked unabashed. She had produced another ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz
... clenched itself so tightly that the knuckles whitened. 'About Jentham!' he muttered in a low voice, and not looking at the chaplain; ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... and by one means or other laid so about him, after the old fashion of fencing, that to some he beat out their brains, to others he crushed their arms, battered their legs, and bethwacked their sides till their ribs cracked with it. To others again he unjointed the spondyles or knuckles of the neck, disfigured their chaps, gashed their faces, made their cheeks hang flapping on their chin, and so swinged and balammed them that they fell down before him like hay before a mower. To some others he spoiled the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... do you think of it?" demanded Sharpe indignantly, and spread the paper out on the desk before the Boss, thumping it violently with his knuckles. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... rubbed her eyes with her dimpled knuckles, nodded her tangled curls towards her aunt, and, sweetly smiling, murmured, "Mornin'!" to which cheery greeting her ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... his arm under hers, and caressed his hand, and kissed his knuckles, and led him down the bay. "Bubble-bubble-bubble!" says she, imitating him like a baby, though she was none so young. "Bubble-bubble, and a silly old man! We must bury the troll wife, and here is trouble enough, and a vengeance! Horses will sweat for it before she comes to Skalaholt; ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tongue, little plague," cried Elizabeth, rapping her knuckles with her stick, "and behave thyself, or theaw shanna go out to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... who had knocked,—showing that the knock was of more importance than it would have been had it been struck by the knuckles of the footman in livery. "If you please, sir, the Duke of St ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... country's honour. There is a strong popular feeling against any encroachments by the Russian Bear. Our young officers are ever eager for a chance to distinguish themselves, and our men," she added gaily, "have fists all knuckles, always doubled ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... a happy looking set of boys, and many of their cheeks were stained with tears and begrimed with dirt from the knuckles which had been used to wipe them away; for there was in the year 1807 but one known method of instilling instruction into the youthful mind, namely, the cane, and one of the chief qualifications of a schoolmaster was to be able to hit hard ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... leader of a party that he had as general of an army, for nobody would have forced him to fight the battle of Salamanca or Vittoria if he had not fancied it himself. The effect, however, has been this: the House of Lords has had a rap on the knuckles from the King, their legislative functions are practically in abeyance, and his Majesty is more tied than ever to his Ministers. The House of Lords is paralysed; it exists upon sufferance, and cannot venture to throw out or materially alter any Bill ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Brett, R.A., now in the National Gallery at Millbank, made a stir when first exhibited at the Academy. It shows the sea. Whistler walked into a wave of adulation one day during the exhibition, and, affecting to "knock" with his knuckles, said sardonically: "Ha! Ha! Tin! If you threw a stone on to this it would ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... row of French windows stood open; but flexible green sun-blinds hid the rooms from view. The front door was a French window, too, differing from the rest only in its size. There was neither bell nor knocker. While he was rapping with the knuckles on the panel, one of the blinds was pushed aside ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... He put his knuckles close to the key, and sparks of fire came flying to his hand. He was wild with delight. The sparks of fire were electricity; he had drawn ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... first," said Grant doggedly. His knuckles were bleeding and his forearms were sore from the treatment he had received from Sam's boots. The pain made him angry and more determined than ever to accomplish ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... handkerchief into Mrs. Carroll's lap, with a look of relief that repaid him fourfold for the trials he was about to undergo. They went merrily away together, leaving Aunt Pen to wish that it was according to the laws of etiquette to rap officious gentlemen over the knuckles, when they introduce their fingers into private pies without permission from the chief cook. How the dance went Debby hardly knew, for the conversation fell upon books, and in the interest of her favorite ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... people are accustomed to repeat a rhyme: the Icelander has a different mode of calculation. He closes his fist, calls his first knuckle January, the depression before the next knuckle February, when he arrives at the end, beginning again; thus the months that fall upon the knuckles, are those containing thirty-one days, a somewhat ingenious mode of assisting ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... come and stood moodily at the front gate. The hot and resentful blood still tinged in his cheek. He looked at his knuckles—they were cut and swollen where he had struck the boy who had jeered him. It hurt him, but he only ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... her slender fingers with their dimpled knuckles, daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the cracked blue-and-white china teacup which did service for a sugar-basin, unhesitatingly agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester seemed to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Josh, thrusting his tousled head out from the curtains of the big launch, and digging his knuckles into his eyes. "Say, have you been awake all night? Don't ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... full on the nose of the nearer assailant and knocked him backwards over a sprawling chair. Then turning attention to the other, he was barely in time to duck an uppercut—and out of the corners of his eyes caught the glint of brass-knuckles on the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... of his box. His suit looked like blue skin. He walked with grandeur down the alley between the rows of coops. Stopping in front of his friend's door, he rapped on it with passionate knuckles. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... confounded with another eccentric Bohemian, James Allen, brother to the Sheriff of Suffolk, who wrote under the inspiration of the West Indian muses—sugar, rum and lemon-juice—who "wore ruffles—and they hung in tatters about his knuckles." ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... and quick between her parted lips to the rapid heaving of her bosom. The Louchoux girl's eyes seemed fairly to blaze with hate. The fingers of her hand dug into the wooden back of her chair until the knuckles whitened. She leaned far forward and, pointing directly into the face of the man, opened her lips to speak. It was then Lapierre's gaze wavered, for in that moment he realized that for him the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... do the spirits of evil snatch their prey Almost out of the very hand of God; And day by day their power is more and more, And men and women leave old paths, for pride Comes knocking with thin knuckles on the heart. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... your compositor has "misused the queen's press most damnably" in the quotation from Coriolanus prefixed to the second canto, where he converts the "Great Toe of the Assembly" into its "Great Foe." Rap his knuckles with your crutch, old Gentleman; and tell him, too, that the "Shawstone's party" he speaks of was a very jolly symposium, given by a very hearty fellow of the name of "Rawstorne," whose cognomen stands sic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... places, and well did every youngster know that did he not conduct himself in the sanctuary with becoming propriety, the cane the elder carried would likely come rapping down smartly on his unrighteous knuckles. J. P. Thornton's welcome was kindly but stately. He had grown stout and slightly pompous-looking during the passing years, and his fine, well-dressed figure lent quite an air of dignity to the whole church. But Lawyer Ed, ushering a stranger into the church, was a heart-warming sight. He seemed ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... cussed Aleck for repeating the epithet in the bunk house, and he had tried to lick Bud Norris, and had failed. He blamed Mary V for his skinned knuckles and the cut on his lip, and for all his other troubles. Johnny did not know about the coat, though he had it on; and if he had known, I doubt whether it would have softened his mood. He was a terribly ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... later I learned that the late foreman had left town nursing a black eye and a cut on one cheek such as might have been made by a set of red knuckles backed by an arm the size of a ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... pallor. Literally, it's a magnificent yellow. His skin is of just the hue and apparent texture of some old crumpled Oriental scroll. I know a dozen painters who would give more than they have to arrive at the exact "tone" of his thick-veined, bloodless hands, his polished ivory knuckles. His eyes are circled with red, but in the battered little setting of their orbits they have the lustre of old sapphires. His nose, owing to the falling away of other portions of his face, has assumed a grotesque, unnatural prominence; it describes ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... his knuckles, closed "Dombey & Son" for the night, and went to bed, turning his thoughts to the row of tiny stockings that hung from the mantelpiece downstairs—for Phoebe had put to use all that she could find—and then let them drift on through space to an apartment ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... the gang waylay the unwary traveller, enter into conversation with him, and have him suddenly seized, when the superior throws his own linen girdle round the victim's neck and strangles him, pressing the knuckles against the spine. Taking off his own, he passed it round my arm, and showed me the turn as coolly as a sailor once taught me the hangman's knot. The Thug is of any caste, and from any part of India. The profession have particular ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... jumped down off the knob of the andiron, and skipping briskly across the room to the big Dutch clock, rapped sharply on the front of the case with his knuckles, when, to Davy's amazement, the great thing fell over on its face upon the floor as softly as if it had been a feather-bed. Davy now saw that, instead of being full of weights and brass wheels and curious works, as he had always supposed, the clock was really a sort ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... around her shoulder. His face twitched. Emma said in a low voice: "I help Miss Maria wean 'im, en he bit me on de knuckles wid 'is fust toofs. Nevuh had no trouble wid 'im, 'cept to dust 'is britches wunst in a w'ile. Ah, Lawd! I sho did love dat chile! Use to rake chips for de wash-pot fire, en sit roun' en wait for ole ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... said his superior, sternly. "Don't you see I'm quiet?" and he twisted his knuckles viciously into Leander's throat. "If you call out ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... of cards they were; and so many dirt-spots on them, that it required a fellow with sharp eyes to make out the dirt from the Clubs and Spades. However, we got on somehow. When one was ready to play, he knocked the table with his knuckles, as a signal to the other; and for hours and hours we shuffled and dealt and knocked until it was late in the night, which I ought to have told you was Saturday night. At last, just as we ended a game, and when we were listening if a boat was coming, before ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... a daughter!' There was silence for so long that the Doctor began to be anxious. Squire Norman sat quite still; his right hand resting on the writing-table before him became clenched so hard that the knuckles looked white and the veins red. After a long slow breath ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... quantity of jingling golden ornaments hanging from a chatelaine at her waist, a gold crown on the handle of her lorgnette, and so many rings on her long pink fingers that they bulge over her knuckles. Her nails are manicured to appear almost crimson, her teeth are shining white under her curved lips, that look capable of bitter sayings ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... gintlemen an' their frind—the old schamer!' Here a tremendous blow was lodged (in pantomime) under the captain's ribs. 'Sure, of coorse, they can't be up to his thricks, an' he an ould sojer!' And here Andy let fly vivaciously beneath his unconscious adversary's left ear, restraining the knuckles within about half an inch of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... "I don't want to break such a butterfly as you upon the wheel, but—how do you like that?" He drew a cane from behind his back, and brought it down sharply on Elgood's knuckles, who, turning very white, sat down and scrawled his name hastily on the paper; but no sooner had he done it than, looking up, he caught Charlie's pitying glance upon him, and running the pencil through his signature, said no more, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... his knuckles. He looked weak. But he persisted, "No, you'll get over this scrap with our friend. By the way, I'll put the deputy onto him, in the next town. He'll never get out of the county. When you forget him—— Oh no, you can go on fine. You're a good steady driver, and the road's perfectly ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... fear seized him. Taking his hands from before his face he wrung them so hard that the knuckles fairly cracked. "Up to this we've managed to scratch along pretty well, because Katrina, has been free to go out and work, the same as myself, but now she'll have to sit at home and take care ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... ivory; out of the shinbones and other big bones they cut knife and toothbrush handles, and mouthpieces for pipes; out of the hoofs they cut hairpins and buttons, before they made the rest into glue. From such things as feet, knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews came such strange and unlikely products as gelatin, isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking, and bone oil. They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a "wool pullery" for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs of the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... dreamed he was dead, and on his way to heaven. When he got there, he knocked loudly at the door. "I wonder," said he to himself, "that they have no knocker on the door,—-one knocks one's knuckles sore." The apostle Peter opened the door, and wanted to see who demanded admission so noisily. "Ah, it's you, Master Pfriem;" said he, "well, I'll let you in, but I warn you that you must give up that habit of yours, and find fault with nothing you see ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... the work was completed; and, flushed and tired, with her fingers bruised from frequent miscalculated blows from the hammer, and her knuckles rubbed and tingling, she paused to admire the result of her toil. The carpeting was a curious piece of patchwork certainly, but the children were delighted ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... burned like acid down his throat into his middle, there to mix uncomfortably with the viands he had eaten. Weeks' thin face looked very white, and Dane noticed with malicious enjoyment, that Ali had an unobtrusive grip on the table which made his knuckles stand out in polished knobs—proving that there were things which could upset the ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... footfall without; rap, rap, rap, on the door; no timid, faltering knock, but a firm application of somebody's knuckles! ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... when the red-nosed man having finished, pulled his worn gloves on, thereby thrusting his fingers through the broken tops till the knuckles were disclosed ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... book's been all round the trade. I've had it before. The man will never come to the front. He'll take to inn-keeping, and that will finish him off." That's what he said, and he seemed to be speaking of me. Some one was knocking at the door of the room—tentative knocks of rather flabby knuckles. It was one of those sounds that one does not notice immediately. The man might have been knocking for ten minutes. It happened to be Lea's employer, the publisher of my first book. He opened the door at last, and came in ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... lieutenant's cutlass broke short off at the hilt. Then Blackbeard would have finished him off handsomely, only up steps one of the lieutenant's men and fetches him a great slash over the neck, so that the lieutenant came off with no more hurt than a cut across the knuckles. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... way! Give him knuckles, and break his back, my boy!' cried the soldiers; 'none of their steel ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... treatment to capture unoffending aboriginals, we did not do so without a certain amount of risk to ourselves; personally I would far sooner lie down all night chained by the ankle to a tree, than have my head and knuckles laid bare by blows from ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... beating of its wings, So my soul... emptied of the known you... utterly... Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song You might have been.... 'Twas a great night... With never a waste look over a shoulder Curved to the crook of the wind... And a great word we threw For memory to play knuckles with... A word the waters of the world have washed, Leaving it stark and without smell... A world that rattles well in ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... hitherto untouched string within her heart, and with resistless power twanged it so that the vibration of it shook her entire being, and left her quivering and breathless, the tears in her eyes, her hands clasped till the knuckles whitened. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... the railing was very gorgeously attired with chains, jewellery, and waistcoats, which the illumination from the house lighted up to great advantage; his boots were shiny; he had brass buttons to his coat, and large white wristbands over his knuckles; and indeed looked so grand, that X imagined he beheld a member of parliament, or a person of consideration before him. Whatever his rank, however, the M.P., or person of consideration, was considerably excited by wine; for he lurched ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... through the red haze that was blinding him. He only knew he was fighting desperately, viciously, and against impossible odds. The satisfying crunch of his left fist against a leering green-bronze face was followed by an excruciating pain as one of his knuckles was driven back. Hardly knowing he had pressed the release of the ray, he was mildly astonished to see that two of the guards were enveloped in the blue vapor. Scintillant tiny sunbursts within the blue. Two less of those devils! His pistol was empty and he flung it into a grinning face; ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... mood, then he reached the door, and knocked. The sound echoed through the house, for Fred had laid his knuckles rather heavily on the upper panel of the double ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... for combat. Joe instinctively tried to batter his enemy with his own pistol, instead of pushing the muzzle against the man's body and pulling the trigger. He struck a flailing blow, and his hand and the weapon struck a metal brace. The blow cut his knuckles and paralyzed his fingers. Despairingly he felt the pistol slipping from his grasp. Then his assailant brought up his knee viciously, but it hit Joe's thigh instead of his groin, and Joe flung his weight furiously forward and they toppled to the ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... down from his chair. Melchior roughly put him back, and knocked his knuckles against the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... tattooed only on the arms. This tattoo begins close back of the knuckles on the back of the hands, and, as soon as it reaches the wrist, entirely encircles the arms to above the elbows. Still above this there is frequently a separate design on the outside of the arm; it is often the figure of a man with ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... spread In threatening guise above your head. Ah! why did you not start before She reached the porch and closed the door? Simpleton! will you never learn That girls and time will not return; Of each you should have made the most; Once gone, they are forever lost. In vain your knuckles knock your brow, In vain will you remember how Like a slim brook the gamesome maid Sparkled, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... knotted together, were about twenty feet long, so I had to reckon on a clear drop of something over thirty feet. The poker and shutter held splendidly firm, and I found little difficulty in lowering myself, though I barked my knuckles most unpleasantly on the rough stucco of the wall. As I reached the extremity of my rope I glanced downward. The red splash of the eiderdown, just visible in the light from the adjoining window, seemed to be a ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... young gentleman had read them down town, for he shoved them aside. Then he dropped an elbow on the table, rested his chin against his knuckles, and gazed fiercely at the inoffensive ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Knuckles quavered at the door. She straightened herself, turned, and called out definitely, "Come in." Mrs. Benson stood before her, vast, massive, black-gowned, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... was opposite to me, when, as I approached, I heard a sweet but tremulous voice singing a melancholy air, which I have never since heard anywhere; the same voice repeated the romance to which I was listening several times. When it had entirely ceased I profited by the silence to tap with my knuckles against the door, but so feeble was the signal, that even Henriette, who was close behind me, could not hear it. She begged I would permit her to ring a bell which hung near us; and, having done so, a step was ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... that she was being flattered, and she was immensely enjoying it. She became more animated, and the peculiar sparkle of her face more spirited. "Oh, that's old Reinhardt, my music teacher. He would take all the skin off my knuckles if I played a Bach gigue the least bit like that Arlesienne Minuet. He doesn't approve of Bizet very much, anyhow. He's ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... they who will miss him most, but rather the far greater number who never "made a hit," but set off like the rest to do it and fell by the way. He was of so sympathetic a nature, he understood so well the dismalness to them of being "failures," that he saw them as children with their knuckles to their eyes, and then he sat back cross-legged on his chair with his knuckles, as it were, to his eyes, and life had lost its flavor for him until he invented a scheme ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... not however, that the full-grown man is not liable to be checked, reprimanded and rebuked, even as the schoolboy is. He has his wife to read him lectures, and rap his knuckles; he has his master, his landlord, or the mayor of his village, to tell him of his duty in an imperious style, and in measured sentences; if he is a member of a legislature, even there he receives his lessons, and is ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin |
