"Pack of cards" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I came to half a dozen of the boys trying to while the time away with a pack of cards. Having an armful of Testaments, I proposed to make an exchange. This was readily agreed to, as each of them had left his home with one, but had lost it in battle or storm. I gave them advice to commit at least ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... rubber band in a pack of cards; take any other card from the pack and show it to the audience in such a way that you do not see and know the card shown. Return the card to the pack, but be sure and place it between the cards tied together with the rubber band. Grasp the pack between your thumb and finger ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... without comment, for the whole thing is a hoax. The Illinois Experiment Station has never owned a chicken. These "Illinois" experiments were planned and executed in a few minutes of the writer's spare time. The basis of the experiments was a pack of cards containing the individual records of the Maine Experiment Station hens, shuffling the cards and averaging the desired number of records as they come in the pack, made the distinction between ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... their first introduction. I see that Mr. Caton exhibited at one of the meetings of the Archaeological Institute this season a curious little volume of small county maps, numbered so as to serve as a pack of cards (described more fully in the Archaeological Journal for September, 1850, p 306.), and which I regret ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... his bunk, and was lying half in it. Now, I thought to myself, he is going to take a little nap before dinner. But no; he came out again at once, holding a tattered old pack of cards in his hand. He went back to his place, and began a quiet and serious game of patience. It did not take long, and was probably not very complicated, but it served its purpose. One could see what a pleasure it was to him whenever a card came in its right place. Finally, all ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... impulsive, especially after a few of them have been killed. His equipment had been stolen. The naked horse and the naked man, bathed in the light of a gray dawn, that was all—except that here and there fluttered bits of paper that had once been a pack of cards. The clay slab was carved deeply—a man can do much of that sort of thing with two hours to waste. Most of the decorative effects were arrows, or hearts, or brands, but in one corner were the words, "passing the love of woman," which ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... soon to be made that the place was very much altered since Dryden's time. The change had been for the worse. "Where you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires in the hands of every man you met, you now have only a pack of cards; and instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the truth of the game." This is all confirmed by that traveller who took notes in London in 1722, and found there was playing at ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Alice, so please your Majesty," said Alice boldly, for she thought to herself "why, they're only a pack of cards! I ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... a representation of a gypsy fortune teller, in a rude tent, in front of which is burning a small fire. She is seated on the ground, and holds a pack of cards in her right hand; her left is pointed upward. Her head is turned towards a young and beautiful girl, who is stooping at her side, gazing with earnestness on the cards. The tent should be five feet high, four feet wide at ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... talk like that, Kalonay," he said, "you make me feel like Alice in the court-room with the Kings and Queens around her. A dozen times this afternoon I've felt like saying, 'After all, they are only a pack of cards.'" ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... dark Sussex peasant, only a little leaner." He does not say: "See these wild sons of the desert! How they must hate the new artificial life around them!" Contrariwise, he says: "See those four Mohammedans playing cards with a French pack of cards and drinking liqueurs in the cafe! See! they have ordered ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... dozens scattered over the floor. It was a mortgage note made out to the bank by a miner. He collected the others. Evidently the bandits had torn off the rubber, glanced over one or two to see if they had any cash value, and tossed the package into the air as a disgusted gambler does a pack of cards. ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... the same thing. I, too, had my canonical hours, in the quarters of the life-guard: a cigar was the censer; a pack of cards, the hymn-book; and there were never wanting other devotions and exercises of a more or ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... Neapolitan nurse, who was predicting future events from a pack of cards, dropped them and peered out. But the noise in the second tilted wagon was especially confused, for there the gay shouts of the boy choir, only half of whom were on horseback, mingled with the loud talking ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... let his finger lie on her wrist; and, back again in the outer room, he bit nervously at his little-finger nail—an old trick of his when in a quandary. He had curtly refused a game of bezique; so Rogers had produced a pack of cards from his own pocket—soiled, frayed cards, which had likely done service on many a similar occasion—and was whiling the time away with solitaire. To sit there watching his slow manipulation of the cards, his patent intentness on the game; to listen any longer to the accursed din of the gnats ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... known, and properly noted, that a pack of cards was formerly called a deck; but it should be added that the term is still commonly used in Ireland, and from being made use of in the famed song of "De Night before ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... he couldn't kick if he got caught in his own trap. You see? Well, this morning the minister and two of the deacons called on Pa, to have a talk with him about his actions in church, on two or three occasions, when he pulled out the pack of cards with his handkerchief, and played the music box, and they had a pretty hot time in the back parlor, and finally they settled it, and were going to sing a hymn, when Pa handed them a little hymn book, and the minister opened it and turned pale and said, 'what's this?' and they ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... it began to dawn on her that there was another side to this feverish devotion to work. Jack took a load of yams to Apia, and came back with fifteen silver dollars and a bolt of print for a dress. He went again, and returned with a sewing machine, a pack of cards, and a bottle of trade scent; still another trip, and lo! he towed behind him a fine new boat with Fetuao painted on the stern. Then she at last succumbed to the fascination of the white way. Paga! There were dollars in the ground, and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... sovereignty' and of the divine quality of the rights derived from universal suffrage as contrasted with rights derived from inheritance, or, for that matter, with rights derived from a dice-box or the shuffling of a pack of cards? Considering what the usual origin is of 'tactical necessities' in politics, and what forces determine political 'combinations of all sorts,' is it going too far to say that the odds, so far as public interests are concerned, are ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... dirty pack of cards. Among them was a girl who appeared to be very young and very pretty, was decently clad, and resembled her companions in no way, except in the harshness of her voice, which was as rough and broken as if it had performed the office of public crier. She looked ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... ghost could not have been taken and hanged on my account, and the consideration that he could be, and the dread that he would be, were no small addition to my horrors. When he was not asleep, or playing a complicated kind of Patience with a ragged pack of cards of his own,—a game that I never saw before or since, and in which he recorded his winnings by sticking his jackknife into the table,—when he was not engaged in either of these pursuits, he would ask me to read to him,—"Foreign ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... kerosene-lamps from the cupboard made the cabin seem actually cheerful. Percy dug into one of his suit-cases and produced a pack of cards. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... Peanuts, cigars, a pack of cards, and a bowie-knife! Imagine yourself, teacher, to be seated before your orderly and courteous class of boys next Sunday morning and find them transformed into beings represented by such surroundings as these! It was Mrs. Partridge's experience. How fascinating ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... fertilised by a sperm-cell, and the changes involved in and preparatory to this fertilisation may make new permutations and combinations of the living items and hereditary qualities not only possible but necessary. It is something like shuffling a pack of cards, but the cards are living. As to the changes wrought on the body during its lifetime by peculiarities in nurture, habits, and surroundings, these dents or modifications are often very important for the individual, but it does not follow that they are directly important for the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... down here too long yourself," he said. "You'll be having tropic choler next. I tell you, you must think of them as children: they're a pack of cards." ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... outside, he would find the money. You see, the message has arrived. After all these years the sea has given up its secret. Marsine will return to Spain with an unlimited credit behind him. The House of Brangaza will crumble up like a pack of cards." ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... can't I think of it? They played it—if I had a pack of cards I would show you what I mean. You could name ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... day this week?" he responds "Willingly; I have not a most pleasure in the world. There is some game on they cantons." Proceeding from "game" to "gaming" we soon run aground upon the word "jeu," which as we know does duty in French both for a game and a pack of cards. "At what pack will you that we does play?" "To the cards." Of course this is "A quel Jeu voulez vous que nous Jouions?" "Aux cartes;" and further on "This time I have a great deal pack," "Cette fois ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... exaltation, almost gratitude. Betty's heart beat fast. He had forced her to love him, and such maidens as Betty Ives when they give love at last, give life itself. Dame Rachel glanced from one to another, then she rose quickly, and from a dark corner of the room produced a pack of cards. "Come, fair lady and noble gentleman," she said, with a touch of the professional whine in her voice. "Will you hear your fortunes? Cross the old gipsy's hand with silver, my pretty dears, and you shall hear ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... ones made of rough planks. There was a funny-looking table made of an inverted coffee box with legs of two-by-four, and littered with a charactertistic collection of bachelor trinkets. There was a glass lamp with a badly smoked chimney, a pack of cards, a sack of smoking tobacco and a box of matches. There was a tin box with spools of very coarse thread, some equally coarse needles and a pair of scissors. There was also— and Miss Whitmore gasped when she saw it—a pile of much-read ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... the street, falls faint—and dreams her ball. Whereupon our authentic magician, coming to his own, lifts a curtain of her queer little mind and gives us an all too short glimpse of the state function, with an h-dropping, strap-hanging King and Queen out of a pack of cards; their disdainful Prince, who is none other, of course, than our policeman done into a bewigged Monsieur Beaucaire; a moody and peremptory Peer, Lord Times; the Censor (black-visored, with an axe); a grotesquely informal Lord Mayor; a bevy of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... scraped chairs to the table and from a drawer took a dirty pack of cards and a homemade cribbage board, with headless matches for markers. The third took from his pocket a folded newspaper and sat down at the window opposite Hiram. He at once began reading, and seemed ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... Badge bade Mary take a seat at the table. Then she drawed the blind, and lighted a lamp; and then she fetched out a pack of cards and her seeing-crystal. 'Twas all done awful solemn, and Mary Tuckett without a doubt felt terrible skeered even afore t'other began. Then Mrs. Badge poured a drop of ink into her crystal—some said 'twas only the broken bottom of an old ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... as if fascinated, to the deadly, sputtering fuse. Soon came the dull, muffled roar of an explosion. The walls of the building sagged outwards, the roof caved in, and the whole structure seemed to collapse like a pack of cards, amid a ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... thirty or forty trees, bending others to the ground like reeds. It was an awful sight to see the tall forest rocking and bowing before the fury of the storm, and with the great trunks falling one after the other, as if they had been a pack of cards thrown down by a breath. Fortunately for us the current of the wind merely passed over our open clearing, doing us no further damage than uprooting three big pine-trees on the ridge above the lake. But in the direction of our neighbour ——— it did great mischief, destroying ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... was capering this way about the room, he knocked down his hat, and with it a pack of cards he put into it before leaving home, for he was mighty fond of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... fetch a little table, she produced a pack of cards. She spread them out and she expounded. He was a quick study. By the time Mr Ffolliot came to take Mary's place he knew all the suits. By the time Mr Ffolliot had thoroughly confused him by a learned disquisition on the principles of bridge, Lady ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... "A pack of cards being scattered in the room, if his master have previously selected one of them, the dog will find it out and bring it ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... images, which rose and fell by a logic of their own. It was extraordinary the things she remembered. Now that she was in the secret, now that she knew something that so much concerned her and the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt to play whist with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things, their mutual relations, their meaning, and for the most part their horror, rose before her with a kind of architectural vastness. She remembered a thousand trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... kinsman requested her to hold her jaw, and to bring the board if she was going to play, or to say as much if she wasn't. Urged by this gentle reminder, Mrs. Tadman immediately produced a somewhat dingy-looking pack of cards and a queer little ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... and a single pack of cards. Sometimes as many as twenty of us would be playing dominoes for love. There were feats of dexterity, puzzles for the intelligence and a regular daily competition to guess the vessel's progress; at twelve ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... which we were summoned sat three Professors, none of whom acknowledged our salutations. A youngish professor was shuffling a bundle of tickets like a pack of cards; another one, with a star on his frockcoat, was gazing hard at a gymnasium student, who was repeating something at great speed about Charles the Great, and adding to each of his sentences the word nakonetz [ the English colloquialism ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... their sofas, and even the servants crowded into the room. All pressed round Hermann. The other players left off punting, impatient to see how it would end. Hermann stood at the table, and prepared to play alone against the pale, but still smiling Chekalinsky. Each opened a pack of cards. Chekalinsky shuffled. Hermann took a card and covered it with a pile of bank-notes. It was like a duel. Deep ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the Fans are thus discharged, the Word of Command in course is to ground their Fans. This teaches a Lady to quit her Fan gracefully, when she throws it aside in order to take up a Pack of Cards, adjust a Curl of Hair, replace a falling Pin, or apply her self to any other Matter of Importance. This Part of the Exercise, as it only consists in tossing a Fan with an Air upon a long Table (which stands by for that Purpose) may ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the birds to gunfire and desolation. One day on the Carso he had been near the newly captured Austrian trenches, and suddenly from amidst a scattered mass of Austrian bodies a quail had risen that had struck him as odd, and so too had the sight of a pack of cards and a wine flask on some newly-made graves. The ordinary life was ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... a common seaman, sir," said the mate. "You can see that if you look at his fingers." He turned out his pockets as he spoke and brought to light a pack of cards, some tarred string, and a bundle of ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... throat—a little spasm as he choked, and released his lips for a moment. Then the bottle slid from his nerveless fingers to the floor, and the liquor oozed away in a little brown stream; even Trent dropped his pack of cards and sprang up startled. For bending down under the sloping roof was a European, to all appearance an Englishman, in linen clothes and white hat. It was the man ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... windows? Let's see—it's red fours, black fives up?" remarked Tom, as he prepared the pack of cards for playing. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... was shut to give room to sit round the table, and an old pack of cards was produced. Every one was to play except the two smallest, who were really too little to grasp a card; Kalle wanted, indeed, to have them too, but it could not be managed. They played beggar-my-neighbor and Black Peter. Grandmother's cards had to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of the youngsters are bad imitations of the sports of the white. Just as their fathers find joy in a greasy, blackened, imperfect pack of cards, throwing them down with significant gestures, but in absolutely perfect ignorance of the rules of any game or capacity to appreciate any number greater than three—so do the children make believe to play cricket with a ball worlds away from a sphere (for it is none other than a pandanus ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... exceedingly dirty pack of cards; which had probably been used five hundred times, on similar duty. She next caused Mr. Worden to cut these cards; when a close and musing examination succeeded. All this time, not a syllable was said; though we were ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the door of the horn lanthorn, and produced from his pocket a very dirty old pack of cards, at which ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... jenny for carding the lace. There was a pack of brown cardboard squares, a pack of cards of lace, a little box of pins, and on the sofa lay ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... must have brought a pack of cards along to amuse him," answered Tortillard, in a cunning manner; "it will be a little change for him; he only plays at biting with the rats; in that game he always wins, and in the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Mrs. Fairchild took a desperate resolution, "Why should not we call first? We'll never get acquainted in this way," which declaration Mr. Fairchild could not deny. And so she dressed one morning in her finest and drove round with a pack of cards. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... the door of the billiard-room, as if he had seen a snake in his path. All alone with the billiards, the bare little tables, and a lot of untenanted chairs, Mr. Secretary Ricardo sat near the wall, performing with lightning rapidity something that looked like tricks with his own personal pack of cards, which he always carried about in his pocket. Schomberg would have backed out quietly if Ricardo had not turned his head. Having been seen, the hotel-keeper elected to walk in as the lesser risk of the two. The consciousness of his inwardly abject attitude towards these men ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... They must be similar in attitude and size, but no exactness is necessary in either of these respects. Then, by a simple contrivance, I make two pinholes in each of them, to enable me to hang them up one in front of the other, like a pack of cards, upon the same pair of pins, in such a way that the eyes of all the portraits shall be as nearly as possible superimposed; in which case the remainder of the features will also be superimposed nearly enough. These pinholes correspond to what are technically known to printers as "register marks." ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... to set eyes on Hop Wah, who was sitting at a table, showing half a dozen miners some tricks with a pack of cards. ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... down the paper with a groan and turned to his desk, moved by a desperate hope that he could force himself to appreciate the reality of the interests those piled envelopes represented. He seized them feverishly, and began to shuffle them over like a pack of cards. His random glance was arrested by a thin, wavering hand he knew well, scrawled on an envelope that bore the picture and name of a New York hotel. Had he been a student of chirography, he might have read the secret of the enigma that tormented ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the beauty of the starlit sky, the music of Schubert; nothing was successful. He ended by proposing to Marya Dmitrievna a game of picquet. "What! on such an evening?" she replied feebly. She ordered the cards to be brought in, however. Panshin tore open a new pack of cards with a loud crash, and Lisa and Lavretsky both got up as if by agreement, and went and placed themselves near Marfa Timofyevna. They both felt all at once so happy that they were even a little afraid of remaining alone together, and at the same time they both ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... "Belinda Mary must be rather a weird little animal—the Lord forgive me for speaking so about my betters! If heredity counts for anything she ought to be something between a head waiter and a pack of cards. ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... considered a very able assembly. The Civil War had brought the most illustrious men of the nation to the surface, and their acquaintance leaves a pleasant memory. When I look over their photographs, now it is like shuffling an old pack of cards which have been played out,—they have nearly all gone to the Upper Chamber,—in this world or the next. Grow and Holman are the only ones in the House now. Thaddeus Stevens was the leader of the House, and treated me with the most distinguished consideration,—even ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... him now. The stifled groans of ruined players, as they passed out, their mute imprecations, their stupefied faces, found him impassive. He was the spirit of Play incarnate. If the young man had noticed this sorry Cerberus, perhaps he would have said, "There is only a pack of cards in that heart ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... led the way to his quarters, where he produced a table, chairs and a pack of cards. The four men ranged themselves ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... was annoyed, he had invited friends for that evening, and the orders given had to be attended to. So the man went off into the town and bought the playing-cards, shaking his head as he walked back. "Don't seem much now for a pack of cards," he muttered, "but I'll be bound to say they'll cost the guv'nor a pretty penny. Wonder what he'd say to me if I told him the best thing he could do would be never to make another bet and never to touch a card again. I know—he'd ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... who are near enough to boxing-day to know that silver on the tongue is necessary to charm silver from the pocket. The Captain has sent to learn if any consignments are for him, to ask the loan of a pack of cards, and Victoria's company to spend the evening at the Albert—which invitation ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... word they went upon that platform, shaped like an altar, and Pierre at once drew out a pack of cards, shuffling them with his mittened hands. Then he knelt down and said, as he laid out the cards one by one till there were thirty: "Whoever gets the ace of hearts first, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he made the acquaintance of the gossoon Murtagh, who taught him Irish in return for a pack of cards. In the course of his wanderings with his father's regiment he develops into a well-grown and well-favoured lad, a shrewd walker and a bold rider. "People may talk of first love—it is a very agreeable event, I dare say—but give me the flush, the triumph, and glorious ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... a bottle of whisky, the cork drawn and loose in the bottle, and a few dirty Scotch one pound notes; and, oh! has Mrs. Bower a pack of cards?' ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... seating herself in a cane arm-chair, which appeared to be her headquarters. In it she kept her handkerchief, snuffbox, knitting, half-peeled vegetables, spectacles, calendar, a bit of livery gold lace just begun, a greasy pack of cards, and two volumes of novels, all stuck into the hollow of the back. This article of furniture, in which the old creature was floating down the river of life, was not unlike the encyclopedic bag which a woman carries with her when she travels; in which may be found a compendium of her household ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... firmly. "I am a Methodist! I guess I can start off on a short tower, without takin' a pack of cards with me. And if I had 'em right here in my pocket, or a set of dominoes, I shouldn't expect to take up the time of the President of the United States a playin' games at this time of the day." Says I in deep tones, "I am a carrien' errents to the President that the ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... however, made inventive by necessity, Gamelin had conceived a new and happy thought, as he at any rate believed,—an idea that was to make the print-seller's fortune, and the engraver's and his own to boot. This was a "patriotic" pack of cards, where for the kings and queens and knaves of the old style he meant to substitute figures of Genius, of Liberty, of Equality and the like. He had already sketched out all his designs, had finished several and was eager to pass on to Desmahis such ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... of CHARLES VI, and of JANE of Burgundy. The former being struck by a coup de soleil, became deranged in his intellects and imbecile, after having displayed great genius; he is represented with a pack of cards in his hand to denote that they were first invented for that prince's diversion. The latter was Dutchess of BEAUFORT, wife to the Duke, who commanded the English army against Charles VII, and as brother to our Henry IV, was appointed ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... a little money hidden about him, bought a pack of cards from an English soldier, and we passed most of our time playing; but it was poor work, for we had nothing to play for. At last, I said to myself, 'Patrick O'Neil, there must be an end of this or your brain will go ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... when Mr. Dunover chose to retire to rest, and I also retreated to take down memorandums of what I had learned, in order to add another narrative to those which it had been my chief amusement to collect, and to write out in detail. The two young men ordered a broiled bone, Madeira negus, and a pack of cards, and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... into them as he passed along, with great curiosity and interest. Here, four or five great hulking fellows, just visible through a cloud of tobacco smoke, were engaged in noisy and riotous conversation over half-emptied pots of beer, or playing at all-fours with a very greasy pack of cards. In the adjoining room, some solitary tenant might be seen poring, by the light of a feeble tallow candle, over a bundle of soiled and tattered papers, yellow with dust and dropping to pieces from age, writing, for the hundredth ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... misdeals, and became generally mixed. His embarrassment was not lessened when Cyn mischievously informed him he had certainly found favor in the eyes of Miss Fishblate—who had called upon her the day before. He dropped the pack of cards he happened to have in his hand at the moment, all over the floor, and then dived so hastily to pick them up that his head came in violent contact with the edge of the table, and for a moment ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... and continually moved and fingered his increasing chips. The Governor was still looking out of the window, where he could see far up the street, when Wingo won the last hand, which was small. "That ends it, suh, I suppose?" he said to Hewley, letting the pack of cards linger in his grasp. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... when he—a citizen of Suburbia—might have to fight for his own hearthside and suffer the intolerable horrors of war while the roses in his garden were trampled down in mud and blood, and while his own house came clattering down like a pack of cards—the family photographs, the children's toys, the piano which he had bought on the hire system, all the household gods which he worshipped, mixed up in a heap of ruin—as afterwards at Scarborough and Hartlepool, Ipswich, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... as we were left alone, the gipsy produced, out of her chest, a pack of cards, bearing signs of constant usage, a magnet, a dried chameleon, and a few other indispensable adjuncts of her art. Then she bade me cross my left hand with a silver coin, and the magic ceremonies duly began. It is ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... little glasses of wine, and a bumper was poured out for my lady. When we retired, she took from her work-drawer an enormous interminable piece of knitting; the young ladies began to play at cribbage with a dirty pack of cards. We had but one candle lighted, but it was in a magnificent old silver candlestick, and after a very few questions from my lady, I had my choice of amusement between a volume of sermons, and a pamphlet on the corn-laws, which ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... afternoon. Men in ragged red shirts, their unkempt heads crowned with Phrygian caps adorned with a tricolour cockade, lounged against the wall, or sat in groups on the top of piles of refuse that littered the street, with a rough deal plank between them and a greasy pack of cards in their grimy fingers. Guns and bayonets were propped against the wall. The gate itself had three means of egress; each of these was guarded by two men with fixed bayonets at their shoulders, but otherwise dressed like the others, in rags—with bare legs that ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... to playing those games of mere chance which alone at that day were styled gambling. He played high and often, as was the custom then all over the world. It was his boast, even in those wild days, that he never played at home, and never had a pack of cards in his house; but when the lawyers and judges were assembled during court sessions, there was much high play among them at the tavern after the day's work was done. In 1806, when Mr. Clay was elected to the Senate, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... conversant with the literature of playing cards will be the Knave of Clubs, shown in Fig. 2, which is one of the fragments of a pack of cards found, in 1841, by Mr. Chatto, in the wastepaper used to form the pasteboard covers of a book. These cards are printed in outline from wood blocks and the colour filled in by stencilling, a method employed in the manufacture of cards down to a very few years ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a pack of cards, asked if Miss Radford would kindly select one and tell him the description. "The Queen of Hearts? Nothing," said Bulpert's second friend, with a gallant bow, "nothing could be more appropriate." Miss Radford cried, "Oh, what ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... her husband's supper, and to make the extraordinary changes in the sitting-room already noted. Only a few moments before he arrived, she had covertly brought down a piece of music, and put aside the hymn-books, and taken, with a little laugh, a pack of cards from her pocket, which she placed behind the already dismantled vase on ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... excessively sharp roof shows above the ramparts; but the massive oaken door stands open wide and is green with age; the roof is decidedly shaky; and the shingles hang loosely, so that one would think that only a moderate gale would send them flying like a pack of cards. ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... would have been gone, but the pretended Mrs. Pierpoint would by no means suffer him to go, till he had supp'd, which was a getting ready on Purpose for him, by which means he was drawn to to stay till supper was ready; and to make the time seem less tedious, the old Bawd calls for a Pack of Cards, and sets her pretended Daughter and he to play a Game of Cribbage together. At last Supper was brought in, and her Servants waiting upon them at Table, like a Person of Quality; Mrs. Pierpoint every now and then Drinking ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... I am quite sure, if I pursue it, will land me in evil. Does the drunkard take a glass the less, because he knows that if he goes on he will have a drunkard's liver and die a miserable death? Does the gambler ever take away his hand from the pack of cards or the dice-box, because he knows that play means, in the long run, poverty and disgrace? When a man sets his will upon a certain course, he is like a bull that has started in its rage. Down goes the head, and, with eyes shut, he ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... her hands, the pack of cards vanishes] How lovely the weather is to-day. [A mysterious woman's voice answers her, as if from under the floor, "Oh yes, it's lovely weather, madam."] You are so beautiful, you are my ideal. [Voice, "You, madam, ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... eyes, and his beard trimmed with scissors. No man knew his country, beyond he was of English speech; and it was clear he came of a good family and was splendidly educated. He was accomplished too; played the accordion first-rate; and give him a piece of string or a cork or a pack of cards, and he could show you tricks equal to any professional. He could speak, when he chose, fit for a drawing-room; and when he chose he could blaspheme worse than a Yankee boatswain, and talk smart to sicken ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ask Drusy to go ter the dance. Your legs may be a little longer'n mine, 'n' if we should try a race you might reach the tavern a minute before me, 'n' you might not, for I'm pretty nimble 'n' all-fired long-winded. So I say, let's have things fair 'n' square. I've got a pack of cards in my pocket, 'n' I'm fur goin' into Jones's old camp—it's only a few steps beyond here, in the edge of the woods, you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... the parcel, laid it on the table under the lamp, and—with scarcely a glance at the docket as he untied the tape—spread out the papers with his palm much as a card-player spreads wide a pack of cards before cutting. . . . He picked up a bond, opened it, ran his eye over the superscription and tossed ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... these good folk continued to play with yesterday's pack of cards and shuffle them on a threadbare tablecloth, and how it was that they had ceased to dress for themselves or others. He saw the glimmerings of something like a philosophy in the even tenor of their perpetual round, in ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... of the poor French creature, that had no other Christian employment but making these and suchlike, out of sheep-shanks and marrow bones. I never liked gambling all my life, it being contrary to the Ten Commandments; and mind of putting on the back of the fire the old pack of cards, with the Jack of Trumps among them, that the deboshed journeymen tailors, in the shop with me in the Grassmarket, used to play birkie with when the maister's back was turned. This is the first time I have acknowledged the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... the Mulligan fraternity got out a pack of cards and proposed a game to while away the time. There was a young squatter in the carriage who looked as if he might be induced to lose a few pounds, and the sportsmen thought they would be neglecting their ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... were Mrs. Golden's pack of cards for solitaire, her worn, brown Morris-chair, and accretions of the cheap magazines with pretty-girl covers which Mrs. Golden ransacked for love-stories. Mrs. Golden had been reading all the evening before, and pages of newspapers were crumpled in her chair, not one of them picked up. The ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... "I've always wanted to play shuffleboard, though I've no idea whether it's played with a pack of cards ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... the pack of cards in a slow, deliberate fashion—and then she uttered a kind of low hoarse cry, and mixed ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of Hearts were seated on their throne when they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them—all sorts of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards. The Knave was standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard him; and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the first number of the Tatler, poetry is promised under the article of Will's Coffee-house. The place, however, changed after Dryden's time: "you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires in the hands of every man you met, you have now only a pack of cards; and instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the truth of the game." "In old times, we used to sit upon a play here, after it was acted, but now the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... flocks of fleas you never saw, they are so plump and fat, And if you make a grab at one, he’ll spit just like a cat. Last night they got my pack of cards, and were fighting for the cut— I thought the devil had me in ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... and of how terrifyingly is the destiny of each person's soul dependent upon such trifles; a glass of light white wine leads not, as we are nowadays taught to believe, to instant ruin, but to edifying considerations of the life and glory of St. Peter; and a pack of cards suggests, straightway, intransigent fine points of martyrology. Always this churchman's thoughts deflect to the most interesting of themes, to the relationship between God and His children, and what familiary etiquette ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... paws, but the face of Puglioni Sin had kissed all over the mouth and chin. Their food was robbery and their pastime murder. All of them had incurred the sorrow of God and the enmity of man. They sat at a table with a pack of cards before them, all greasy with the marks of cheating thumbs. And they whispered to one another over their gin, but so low that the landlord of the tavern at the other end of the room could hear only muffled oaths, and knew not by Whom they swore ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... went back to the studio to play dummy bridge with Mac and Whitaker. A loud thump on the studio door and a Morse dot and dash announcement of identity on the bell just as he had pieced a pack of cards together, filled him ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... wretch whom he tranquilly dissected. He wished to win money of Vaudemont—to ruin this man, who presumed to be more generous than other people—to see a bold adventurer submitted to the wheel of the Fortune which reigns in a pack of cards;—and all, of course, without the least hate to the man whom he then saw for the first time. On the contrary, he felt a respect for Vaudemont. Like most worldly men, Lord Lilburne was prepossessed in favour of those ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... passed away; neat little parcels of letters, each carefully labeled with the name of the writer; fragments of old newspapers; and a little heap of shabby, dilapidated books, each of which tumbled into as many pieces as a pack of cards in Robert's incautious hand. But among all the mass of worthless litter, each scrap of which had once had its separate purpose, Robert Audley looked in vain for that which he sought—the packet of letters written to the missing man by his dead wife Helen Talboys. He had heard ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... his house, he showed him a pack of cards. 'Now here is a pack of cards,' he said; 'there seems to be nothing remarkable about it, does there?' Olivier examined the pack and declared that the cards did not appear to differ in the least from all others. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... John Derringham as if all the paltry shams of the world fell together like a pack of cards, and as if he saw truth shining naked for the first time at the bottom of the well of ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... merriest laughers known, The blackest haired of all the tribes of men. What trap can hold such cats? The Romany Has crossed such delicate palms with lead or gold, Wheedling in sun and rain, through perilous years, All coins now look alike. The palm is all. Our greasy pack of cards is still the book Most read of men. The heart's librarians, We tell all lovers what they want to know. So, out of the famed Chicago Library, Out of the great Chicago orchestras, Out of the skyscraper, the Fine Arts Building, Our sons will come with fiddles ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Mademoiselle Rondel; I was rejoiced to find that she was to relieve my solitude, and to hear from her that she had managed to hide all my papers after my capture. Our room was presently furnished with beds, table and chairs; on the following day we were given books and a pack of cards; our meals were tolerable, and except for our captivity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... anger. An expression of gentleness stole over his features. The idea was suggestive. He, too, the proud, the honourable, the upright would steal, and thus punish the world. He looked into his make-up box. It contained bitter defiance, angry scorn, and a card-sharper's pack of cards. He took them out; and thus SONOGUN, the expelled atheist, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... Their divination is worked by cutting and dealing cards or studying the palm of your hand. And the things which they tell you are the most silly and shallow babble in the world; a mess of phrases worn out over and over again. Here is a specimen, as gabbled to the customer over a pack of cards laid out on the table; anybody can do the like: "You face a misfortune. I think it will come upon you within three weeks, but it may not. A dark complexioned man faces your life-card. He is plotting ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... an English diplomatist in 1522, "is a great cause of the esteem in which it is held."[692] But, by 1523, that wealth had failed; Parliament refused to levy more taxes, and Wolsey's pretensions collapsed like a pack of cards. He played no part in the peace of Cambrai, which settled for the time the conditions of Europe. When rumours of the clandestine negotiations between France and Spain reached England, Wolsey staked his head to the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... fingers supplied the hiatus, dealing out an imaginary pack of cards with the flourishing dexterity ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... of paper with a red mark: whoever receives the marked paper undertakes the commission. All is quite fair, I say. Only you know, I dare say, the common, the pitiful trick of the conjurer who throws a pack of cards on the table, backs up. You take one, look at it privately, return it, and the cards are shuffled. Without lifting the cards at all he tells you that the one you selected was the eight of diamonds: why? It is no miracle: all the cards ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... first-rate dodge of my own, that I intend to take out a patent for. Like all truly great inventions, it's no end simple. In the first place, look straight afore you, my little dear, and you will see this pack of cards, - all made of a size, nice to hold in ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... swept some scattered magazines from a small table, and was now seated there, negligently shuffling a pack of cards in ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... 'and if you do not take yourself off, joy, I will be breaking your ugly head with the foot of it.' 'Arrah, Murtagh!' said I, 'would ye be breaking the head of your old friend and scholar, to whom you taught the blessed tongue of Oilien nan Naomha, in exchange for a pack of cards?' Murtagh, for he it was, gazed at me for a moment with a bewildered look; then, with a gleam of intelligence in his eye, he said, 'Shorsha! no, it can't be—yes, by my faith it is!' Then, springing up, and seizing me by the hand, he said, 'Yes, by the powers, sure enough it is Shorsha agra! Arrah, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... When a tin case the size of a candle-box can be brought in by two men and a million of property dumped out on a table, an immediate accounting of assets is not difficult. Once their value is fixed by the referee they can be dealt to those interested as easily as a pack of cards. ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... while I was in Amiens the German aeroplanes came over and bombed the city. Opposite the hospital a three-story house collapsed like a pack of cards, burying seventeen people in its ruins. I saw a French airman bring down one boche by a clever feat. He evidently could not aim upward to his satisfaction, so he turned upside down, and while flying thus, ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... cursedly afraid of me. You scarcely can sit still. You blame your own rashness, in venturing to spend the afternoon with me: and now you would as soon handle burning coals as a pack of cards in my company.' ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... a pack of cards in the house; the women tried to amuse themselves, and failed. Anxiety about Arthur preyed on the spirits of Miss Henley and Mrs. Lewson. Even the maid, who had only seen him during his last visit ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... was Storm's deal, the gambler had the pack of cards in his hand idly shuffling them to ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... Pont-de-l'Arche, and has subjoined to his fas-ciculus a couple of plates, illustrative of the costume and customs of the neighborhood.—In one of these plates, an itinerant male fortune-teller is satisfying a young peasant as to the probability of her speedy marriage, by means of a pack of cards, from which he has turned up the king and queen and ace of hearts. In the other, a cunning woman is solving a question by a book and key. The poor girl's sweetheart is an absent soldier, and fears and doubts are naturally entertained ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... countryman to try his skill with him, but as it was late, and the man wanted to go home, he declined, but when they were on the bridge his companion again pressed him to have a game on the parapet, and proceeded to take out of his pocket a pack of cards, and at once commenced dealing them out; consequently, the man could not now refuse to comply with the request. With varying success game after game was played, but ultimately the stranger proved himself the more skilful ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... his three friends turned back to the tent they found all three of the remaining tramps in there, smoking vile pipes and playing with a greasy, battered pack of cards. "The weather's fine again," announced Dick, "and you'll find us the most hospitable fellows you ever met. My friends, we take pleasure in offering you the whole outside world in ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... purpose or other, though I did not learn for what." He was at "the Protestant Academy" at Clonmel, and "read the Latin tongue and the Greek letters with a nice old clergyman." From a schoolfellow he learnt something of the Irish tongue in exchange for a pack of cards. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... for some time heavily, and the road has become covered with a deep layer of black mud. An old woman—a small proprietor—is sitting at home with a friend, drinking tea and trying to read the future by means of a pack of cards. This occupation is suddenly interrupted by the entrance of a female servant, who announces that she has discovered an old man, apparently very ill, lying in one of the outhouses. The old woman goes out to see her uninvited guest, and, being ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... bitterly regretted his initial error, and would have been only too thankful to repair it, but he could only put the difference between himself and the early evolutionists clearly before his readers at the cost of seeing his own system come tumbling down like a pack of cards; this was more than he could stand, so he buried his face, ostrich-like, in the sand. I know no more pitiable figure in ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... removed from the bar. Little Bailey then said, they were daily sent out to steal what they could, and bring it home in the evening. When they could get nothing else, they stole meat from the butchers, and vegetables from the green-grocers. The woman kept a pack of cards, by which she told their fortunes, whether they would succeed, or be caught by the officers. Mr. Swaby observed, that since he had attended the Office, he never witnessed a case of so much iniquity. The prisoner was ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... it!" he exclaimed. "We'll kill the time as our cabin-passengers used to kill it at sea." He looked over his shoulder at Mr. Bishopriggs. "Waiter! bring a pack of cards." ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... both plaintiff and defendant may be examined in such cases as these. What a different complexion this would have put on the suit. The whole case would have tumbled to pieces like a pack of cards. For Mr. Pickwick "put into the box" would have clearly shown that all that had been thus misconstrued, was his proposal for engaging a valet, which was to have been that very morning. He would have related the words of the dialogue, and the Jury would have seen at once how the ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... the fakir or the wandering minstrel, who improvises for you and sings for you the good things which are in store for you. We see this tendency among our own people who would have their destiny pointed out by means of a pack of cards, by the reading of the palm of the hand, in the grounds in the tea-cup, and by other signs. It was with some interest then that we glanced at the mystic words and signs which adorned the entrance to Sam Wong ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... Bunch. I tell you, this Skinski has them all faded to a whisper. He has a bunch of new illusions that will simply make the jay audiences sit up and throw money at us. And as for sleight-of-hand and card tricks, well, say! Skinski can throw a new pack of cards up in the air and bite his initials on the queen of diamonds before it hits ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh |
