"Sleight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and weeks we had loved beneath that blazing blue, Which had lost the art of raining, as her eyes to-day had too, While she told what, as by sleight, Shot our firmament with rays ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... pass in balanced motion along the edge of a sword, and along a level string, and the like;—the father performing in the presence of his two children, who encouraged him continually with short, sharp cries, like those of animals. Then there was some fairly good sleight-of-hand juggling of little interest; ending with a dance by the juggler, first as an animal, and then as a goblin, Now, there was this great difference between the Japanese masks used in this dance and our common pantomime ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... to do other than exhaustedly await the turn that never comes. Once in a while—a very long while—one meets a brilliant person whose talk is a delight; or still more rarely a wit who manipulates every ordinary topic with the agility of a sleight-of-hand performer, to the ever increasing ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... In earth and air and sea, 5 Nothing that lives from their award is free. Their names will I declare to thee, Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear, And they the regents are Of the four elements that frame the heart, 10 And each diversely exercised her art By force or circumstance or sleight To prove her dreadful might Upon that poor domain. Desire presented her [false] glass, and then 15 The spirit dwelling there Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair Within that magic mirror, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... horsemanship advance; Towne-folks my strength; a daintier judge applies His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise; Some luckie wits impute it but a ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... that stuff he used, anyhow?" asked Cecil Hedden, the lad responsible for the organization of the Deep Forest Throng. "He must be a wonder. Does he do sleight-of-hand tricks?" ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... with quick, nervous gestures. "You'll be in your grave before you know it. You can't stand this." He shot out his hand and produced his watch with the celerity of a sleight-of-hand performer. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... "Tom Sleight," answered Henry, "the chap I'm telling you about. He belonged to a good family, his father being a Magistrate for Monmouthshire; but there had been no doing anything with young Tom from the very first. At fifteen he ran away from school at Clifton, and with everything belonging ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... back again at the water in bewilderment, as if her senses were the victim of some sleight of hand. Not a speck or spot resembling a man's head or face showed anywhere. By this time she was alarmed, and her alarm intensified when she perceived a little beyond the scene of her husband's bathing a small area of water, the quality ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... him in mid-career, and they fought, he and she, a sore fight, yet sorer than the first. Bartus right soon found himself unable to cope with her might and would have sought safety in flight, but of the greatness of her prowess could not avail unto this sleight; for, as often as he turned to flee, she drave after him and still clave to him and pressed him hard, till presently she smote him with the sword in his throat, that it issued gleaming from his nape, and sent him after his brother. Then she wheeled about in the mid-field and plain where cut and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... blossomed out in a sign reading: "The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the Owners by that Absorbed Expression!" Divers revelatory incidents were arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the joke, his disapproval of it—a feeling which he expressed in an ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... Henry shook himself as if to settle the steel shirt around him, and, unsheathing the two handed sword, made it flourish over his head, cutting the air through which it whistled in the form of the figure eight with an ease and sleight of hand that proved how powerfully and skilfully he could wield the ponderous weapon. The champions were now ordered to march in their turns around the lists, crossing so as to avoid meeting each other, and making obeisance as they passed the Golden ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... but I can possess it any moment I choose. You don't know my skill in sleight of hand; I might practise as a conjuror if I liked. Mamma says sometimes, too, that I have a harmonizing property of tongue and eye; but you never saw that in ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... doting women" known as witches. The tricks and deceits of the "couseners" he was at great pains to explain. Not less than one-third of his work is given up to setting forth the methods of conjurers, card tricks, sleight-of-hand performances, illusions of magic, materializations of spirits, and the wonders of alchemy and astrology. In the range of his information about these subjects, the discoverer was encyclopedic. No current form of dabbling with ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... count them), they are but labouring to hold our thoughts so bent and intent upon those smaller quarrels, that we may forget to distinguish betwixt evils immanent and evils imminent, and that we be not too much awake to espy their secret sleight in compassing further aims. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... bullebulles Un quehacer (occupation), Unos quehaceres Pasapasa (sleight of hand), Pasapasas (sleight ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... due to Bryan to say that he fully merited the honour conferred upon him; for never, since the days of Vulcan, was there a man seen who could daringly dabble in the fire as he did. He had a peculiar sleight-of-hand way of seizing hold of and tossing about red-hot coals with his naked hand, that induced one to believe he must be made of leather. Flames seemed to have no effect whatever on his sinewy arms ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... Conjuration, sleight of hand, magic, witchcraft, were the subjects of the evening. Miss Pole was slightly sceptical, and inclined to think there might be a scientific solution found for even the proceedings of the Witch of Endor. Mrs Forrester believed everything, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... address in this design, Does now, and will for ever shine, And wants a Waller but to do him right: The whole amusement was so strong, Like fate he doomed them to be wrong, And Tournay's took by a peculiar sleight. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... had overstepped my resolution, although not feeling desperately contrite about it after the sleight-of-hand way that a declaration of love had been changed into the accusation of filching a corn cake. Yet it had been a narrow escape and I thanked my gods for the chance of pulling up, of again getting the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... busy with her progeny and her paraphernalia and impedimenta of various sorts—it was marvelous how she managed to gather them all together with only two hands—and she was ready also. But even in the midst of this sleight of hand performance, she did not forget her self-constituted guardianship ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... development, several paths have been cut, and many who are in need are walking in them, but, to the average man, the road to the best kind of muscular development still remains closed. The only training now in use is followed by sleight-of-hand performers, acrobats, or other jugglers, and that is limited to the ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... sleight-of-hand trick, and again he was non-committal—a second shrug alone expressing his views, the performance ending by his pushing a wooden chair in the direction of Harry, who ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... ladies and gentlemen. Amuses old and young; *The Album Writer's Friend*, 275 select Autograph Album Verses, in prose and verse, (new); *50 Choice Conundrums or Riddles*, with answers, (new); *13 Magical Experiments*, astonishing, including Mind Reading, Sleight of Hand Tricks, &c., Chemical Processes, Optical Illusions; *11 Parlor Games*; *Magic Music*; Order of the *Whistle and Game of* Letters. We guarantee package is worth ten times the amount we ask for it. It is the best collection of Games, etc., ever offered by any firm in America. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... cemented on again. This was done just before the trick was performed. On his way back to the stage, after having given the lady the glass of water, Joe substituted the bottle containing the guinea pig for the empty one that had held the three liquids. This was where his quick sleight-of-hand work came in. When he gently broke the bottle it was easy enough to remove the little animal, which had been used in tricks so often that it ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... of genius and a great performer, but sacrificed his art to his avarice. His mastery over the violin was almost marvellous, though he made an ignoble use of his power by employing it to captivate the mob of pretended amateurs by feats little better than sleight-of-hand. His performance on a single string, and the perfection of his harmonics, were very extraordinary; but why, as was asked at the time, be confined to one string when there are four at command that would answer every musical purpose so much better? His tone was pure, though not strong, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... adroitly, till finally, when you thought they were in a certain place, the coins turned up somewhere else: "The looker-on is deceived by such innocent tricks, being often inclined to presume the sleight of hand to be nothing more ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... that it is of no use to remonstrate with the English public. They won't listen to you. If you want to be heard, attract their attention, in the first instance, by talking of their own immediate concerns, and while they are regarding you with intense interest and anxiety, by a sleight of hand shift the dissolving view, and substitute a sketch of your own. For instance, says you, 'How is it the army in the Crimea had no tents in the autumn, and no huts in the winter—the hospitals no fittings, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... If by sleight of hand, or nimbleness of foot, all these wonders can be performed, he that shall neglect to attain the free use of his limbs may be justly censured as criminally lazy. But I am afraid that no specimen of such effects will easily be shown. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of France. This Pike, a Devonshire man, being presented prisoner to the Duke of Medina, he would needs have him fight at rapier or dagger with a Spaniard, supposing he would not stand him two thrusts: but Pyke, by a dexterous sleight, presently disarmed the Spaniard of his rapier without hurting him, and presented it to ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... This sleight-of-hand seemed to the boy the most astounding evidence of art. When would he reach the easy prestidigitation ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of Wilson, in his best moments, was as large as the valley of Glencoe. Yet Wordsworth loved intensely all the more beautiful aspects of the country, and of country-life. No angler and no gardener, indeed,—too severely and proudly meditative for any such sleight-of-hand. The only great weight which he ever lifted, I suspect, was one which he carried with him always,—the immense dignity of his poetic priesthood. His home and its surroundings were fairly typical of his tastes: a cottage, (so called,) of homely material indeed, but with an ambitious elevation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the imagination of my reader. Suffice it to say, that the incident proved my friend. The ice of indifference was broken; and I was rewarded for my sleight-of-hand prowess by something more than smiles—by words of praise that rang melodiously in my ear— words of gratitude spoken with the free innocent naivete of childhood— revealing, on the part of her who gave utterance to them, a truly ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... She sighed. "Sleight of hand," she said. "A damned fool stunt. I figured to put the money back in a day or so. If somebody else hadn't been working the same racket, they'd never have caught me. But ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... man. He began lifting the food he had been preparing from the pans, arranging it on various dishes and slipping them upon the table with a rapidity and noiselessness which suggested sleight ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... a considerable quantity laid upon the decks, and some of the sailors enjoyed the juvenile diversion of snow-balling. Woe unto the "middy" who that night went forward of the booms. Such a target for snow-balls! The throwers could never be known. By some curious sleight in hurling the missiles, they seemed to be thrown on board by some hoydenish sea-nymphs ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... truth. The playful but searching satire which the author has ever at command just touches the declamation of his opponent, and it falls like a house of cards. He sums up with a judgment as fair and as calm as if he had been speaking of a writer of some distant period. Astonished at the sleight of hand which had disarmed, and at the generosity which had spared him, M. de Pontmartin, in the first moment of his defeat,—before he had had time to recover his (bad) temper, to arm himself for more fiery assaults to be followed by fresh overthrows,—declared that, in spite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of Annawan was caught, with the dove of his nest and her squab, far from his own dwelling, and among the men of thy colour. Thy race had killed or driven away the beasts of the chace; and there was nothing upon which the red archer could show the sleight of his hand and the truth of his eye. White men would give him no food, but drove him from their cabins, saying, 'You are an Indian.' At ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... are three methods of cheating: the first by hidden cards, the second by marked cards, the third simply by sleight of hand, this being generally used in connection with marked cards. These tricks require great skill and extreme delicacy of touch, for the marks, which are generally at the edge of the cards, are so slight as to be altogether imperceptible save to a trained hand. There are also marks on the back ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... will, with particular sleight Of application, (Occasioned by some person's impertinent Exceptions.) wrest what he doth write; And that he meant, or him, or her, will say: They make a libel, ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... landscape-painting. What do I care for the birds pecking at Zeuxis's grapes, or Zeuxis himself trying to draw back Parrhasius's curtain? Imitative art is the lowest trickery. There are twenty men in England now capable of the same sleight of hand; and yet these are recorded as the very highest triumphs of ancient art by the only men who have handed down to us ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... sell by, measures to buy by and measures to sell by. Those he bought by were too big, and those he sold by were too little. If he had to do with other men's weights and measures, he could use a thing called sleight of hand. He had the art besides to misreckon men in their accounts, whether by weight or measure or money; and if a question was made of his faithful dealing, he had his servants ready that would vouch and swear to his look or word. He ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... his youth, especially when Macdonald, putting the finishing strokes to his shoe, let his hammer periodically tinkle with musical clangor on the anvil, ringing forth a tintinnabulation that chimed melodiously on the ear—a sort of anvil- chorus accompaniment to his mechanical skill. He was a real sleight-of- hand man, and the anvil ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... expanse of its tiers of seats; we need not call to mind that this place is sometimes the scene for the foolery of the mime, the dialogue of comedy, the sonorous rant of tragedy, the perilous antics of the rope-walker, the juggler's sleight of hand, the gesticulation of the dancer, with all the tricks of their respective arts that are displayed before the people by other artists. All these considerations may be put on one side; all that we need consider is this, the discourse of the orator and the ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... you 'aven't seen an' 'eard, all the syme, matey," threw in Cleek. "Done that meself, I 'as—bit of sleight-o'-'and what they'd pulled me up for out Whitechapel way when I was a kid. Seein' the master ternight, ain't ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... the evening, he sought to win her admiration by a display of all his tricks. These were familiar to this household, and the children had been sent to bed, the mother was dozing, long before the seance was at an end. But Miss Dobson, unaccustomed to any gaieties, sat fascinated by the young man's sleight of hand, marvelling that a top-hat could hold so many goldfish, and a handkerchief turn so swiftly into a silver florin. All that night, she lay wide awake, haunted by the miracles he had wrought. Next evening, when she asked him to repeat them, "Nay," he whispered, "I ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... as a wrestler. I liked wrestling better than fighting; and though a smallish man always, like my fellow Iowan Farmer Burns, I have seldom found my master at this game. It is much more a matter of sleight than strength. A man must be cautious, wary, cool, his muscles always ready, as quick as a flash to meet any strain; but the main source of my success seemed to be my ability to use all the strength in every muscle of my body at any given instant, so as to overpower ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... flowry Meddowes, and the pastures o're; Where the greene Grove its coole shade yeilds To th'stately grasse plotts, and ripe swelling fields: Straight, 'mid'st the river Swans, up hyer A winged fowle above the cloudes I'aspire; The lively Lakes below, I sleight, And with sweet straines ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... are now?' Here is a fallacy which you will be careful to detect. I know that the taxes have been reduced; that is to say, nominally reduced, but not so in fact; on the contrary, they have, in reality, been greatly augmented. This has been done by the sleight-of-hand of paper money. Suppose, for instance, that four years ago, I had a hundred pounds to pay in taxes, then a hundred and thirty bushels of wheat would have paid my share. If I have now seventy-five pounds to pay in taxes, it will require ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... his wonderful feats of Magic and Sleight of Hand in the Town Hall this evening, commencing at 8 o'clock. In the course of the entertainment he will amuse the audience by his wonderful exhibition of Ventriloquism, in which he ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... protect me." She said, "No harm shall come to thee, but tell me who thou art and who brought thee into this my apartment." Answered he, "O Princess, I am known as Ni'amah bin al-Rabi'a of Cufa and I have ventured my life for the sake of my slave-girl, Naomi, whom Al-Hajjaj took by sleight and sent hither." Said she, "Fear not: no harm shall befall thee;" then, calling her maid, she said to her, "Go to Naomi's chamber and send her to me." Meanwhile the old woman went to Naomi's bedroom ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... fourth hieroglyph of the fifth perpendicular line in which is the spell of serpents. O King, do you still need us?" said the chief of the wise men aloud. "I long to resume the reading of Hermes Trismegistus, which contains more important secrets than these sleight-of-hand tricks." ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Tancred and the terrible Argantes met, and glad of an opportunity to settle their quarrel, withdrew to a glade in the forest. Tancred, stung by the taunts of cowardice for his former failure to keep his appointment, fought bitterly. He had not the sheer strength of his antagonist, but his sleight at last overcame, and Argantes fell. Weakened by pain and loss of blood, Tancred fell senseless, and was thus found by Erminia, who had met Vafrino the spy in the camp of the Egyptians and had fled with him. They revived Tancred, and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... the chain gear, and when the first attempt at drawing water was made, the little offering of a contrite heart was jerked up, bent, its strong ribs jammed into the well side, and entangled with a twig root. It is needless to say that no sleight-of-hand performer, however expert, unless aided by the powers of darkness, could have accomplished this feat; but a luckless child in the pursuit of virtue had done it with ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as I said in 'Life and Habit,' Mr. Darwin will have made us think we know the whole road, in spite of his having almost ostentatiously blindfolded us at every step in the journey. The 'Origin of Species' would thus prove to be no less a piece of intellectual sleight-of-hand than Paley's ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... father's peat-fire one night gossiping with him about fishing-flies and tackle, I noticed the grieve, who had dropped in by appointment with some ducks' eggs on which Bell's clockin' hen was to sit, performing some sleight-of-hand trick with his coat-sleeve. Craftily he jerked and twisted it, till his own photograph (a black smudge on white) gradually appeared to view. This he gravely slipped into the hands of the maid of his choice, and then took ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... take a licking as well as the next chap, but when a team works a sleight-of-hand gag on you, ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... services; but he found a cold reception at the Treasury. He had gone down to Lancashire chiefly in order that he might, under the protection of a search warrant, pilfer trinkets and broad pieces from secret drawers. His sleight of hand however had not altogether escaped the observation of his companions. They discovered that he had made free with the communion plate of the Popish families, whose private hoards he had assisted in ransacking. When ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... merely for their mirth and revelry, Out to the Warden eagerly they cry, That be should let them, for a merry round, Go to the mill and see their own corn ground, And each would fair and boldly lay his neck The Miller should not steal them half a peck Of corn by sleight, nor by main ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... To gie them music was his charge: He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl. [squeal] Till roof and rafters a' did dirl. [ring] Coffins stood round like open presses, That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses; And by some devilish cantraip sleight [magic trick] Each in its cauld hand held a light, By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table [holy] A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns; [-irons] Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns; ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Wizard. "You saw them because they were there. They are in my inside pocket now. But the pulling of them apart and pushing them together again was only a sleight-of-hand trick." ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... so. If he played his tricks, I must play mine, and use every advantage to save my money; and there was one I possessed which his reverence did not. The cards being my own, I had put some delicate little marks on the trump cards, just at the edges, so that when I dealt, by means of a little sleight of hand I could deal myself any trump card I pleased. But I wished, as I said before, to have no dealings for money with his reverence, knowing that he was master in the house, and that he could lead me a dog of a life if I offended him, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... or that science has completely failed to investigate it. It has won over many persons of good sense and sound logic, including several prominent scientists, to a belief in the truth of its claims. Were its adherents all cranks or credulous believers, and its phenomena only such common sleight-of-hand performances as suffice to convince the open-mouthed swallowers of conjurers' tricks, it would be idle to give it any attention. But phenomena sufficiently striking to convert such men as Hare, Crooks, Wallace, Zoellner, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... delightfully enjoying our dinner upon the deck, during which our party manifested their respective characters in most charming style. One Farmer Dinmont[108] and Dousterswivel, a Dutchman, were perfect specimens. A merry Belgian Equerry to the Prince of Orange, laughed, joked, and amused us with sleight-of-hand tricks. Our Dutch beef, tho' doubtless salt far beyond due proportion, was relished by all, Dinmont excepted, who pronounced it, together with the dark-coloured bread, unfit for English hogs, and shook his head with a most significant ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... the Countrey for the most part is of a sleight sandie moulde, yet very much different one place from another, for the yeeld of such things as grow out of the earth. The Countrey Northwards towards the parts of S. Nicholas and Cola, and Northeast towards Siberia, is all very barren, and full of desert woods by reason of the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... glad to hear Thou mak'st such scruple of that conscience; And in a man so young as in your self, I promise you tis very seldom seen. But Franke, this is a trick, a mere devise, A sleight plotted betwixt her father and my self, To thrust Mounchensey's nose besides the cushion; That, being thus behard of all access, Time yet may work him from her thoughts, And give thee ample scope ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... for my bruised lip, instead of cayenne pepper. Beware, you base twelve ounces to the pound huckster, you gimlet-eyed seller of dog sausage, you sanded sugar idiot, you small potato three card monte sleight of hand rotton egg fiend, you villian that sells smoked sturgeon and dogfish for smoked halibut. The ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... quick at work, he fulfilled the other sequent of the adage likewise. His dinner was almost a sleight-of-hand performance. Arthur could hardly eat his own for concealed amusement at the gulf-like capacity of his mouth, and the astonishing rapidity with which the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; (14)that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, by cunning craftiness after the wily manner of error; (15)but holding the truth, may in love grow up into him in all things, who is the head, Christ; (16)from whom all the body, fitly framed together and compacted by means of every joint of the ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... your future wife for so much cash down to the Church. If your inamorata were your first cousin, you could remove her several degrees with five hundred dollars, and make her no relation at all for a little more. Such little sleight-of-hand performances are as nothing to a well-trained clergyman. Slip a check into one hand, and a request to marry your aunt into the other, let a clergyman shake them up in the coffers of the Church, and when one comes out gold, the other will appear as ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... laid his head down upon the desk before him, and remained in that position for some time. At length without at all raising it he began to play his knuckles against the lid, with a degree of alacrity which would not have disgraced the activity of a sleight-of-hand man. He at last rose, drew a long breath, and wore a very smiling face; but this was not all—O sanctity! O religion! Instead of going to his Bible, as one would imagine he ought to have done, instead of even taking up a psalm-book, and indulging in a ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... have been in a grievous error: we thought that we had been at war with rebels against the lawful government, but that we were friends and allies of what is properly France, friends and allies to the legal body politic of France. But by sleight of hand the Jacobins are clean vanished, and it is France we have got under our cup. "Blessings on his soul that first invented sleep!" said Don Sancho Panza the Wise. All those blessings, and ten thousand times more, on him who found out abstraction, personification, and impersonals! In certain ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... table, and he had a way of serving his family that was the admiration of the whole mill staff. If a man but held up his plate as a slight indication that he was ready for more, the host could flip him a slice of beef or pork with the dexterity of a sleight-of-hand magician. At his signals, "Here, Bob, mon!" "Hi, Peter, lad!" "Look oot, Sam!" away flew each man's portion, hitting his plate with unerring precision. He had never been known to miss anybody in ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... bass voice of Doctor Brown, "and until you show me the source of this 'occult' energy, I shall so contend. Animal magnetism and sleight-of-hand! What do you ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... white and smooth, with the gleam of a perfect skin. But Mrs. Luckett would never let her touch the salt, which will ruin the hands. Cicely, however, who would do something, turned the cheeses in the cheese-room alone. Taking one corner of the clean cloth in her teeth, in a second, by some dexterous sleight-of-hand, the heavy cheese was over, though ponderous enough to puzzle many a man, especially as it had to come over gently that the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... body, demanded an audience of the queen, and solicited reparation. A proclamation was issued, in which three hundred pounds were offered for the discovery of the author. From this storm he was, as he relates, "secured by a sleight;" of what kind, or by whose prudence, is not known; and such was the increase of his reputation, that the Scottish "nation applied again that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... great thing—wherefore should I deceive you?—a great thing and a difficult: a messenger to bear it. The woods—y' are not ignorant of that—lie thick with our ill-willers. Haste is most needful; but without sleight and caution all is naught. Which, then, of this company will take me this letter, bear it to my Lord of Wensleydale, and bring me ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an idea," he told her. "Doctors are like parsons—they can't keep up with the times. The age is outgrowing them. Only the fakirs in either profession get anything out of it, nowadays. It's all mystery and sleight-of-hand and the confidence trick—medicine is—and if you haven't got just the right twist of the wrist, you're not in it. But an artist stands on his merits. There is his work—done by his own hands. It speaks for itself. There's no deception—it's easy ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Skarphedinn bore down on them, and hews at Thrain with his axe, "the ogress of war," and smote him on the head, and clove him down to the teeth, so that his jaw-teeth fell out on the ice. This feat was done with such a quick sleight that no one could get a blow at him; he glided away from them at once at full speed. Tjorvi, indeed, threw his shield before him on the ice, but he leapt over it, and still kept his feet, and slid quite to the end of the sheet ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... debonair bearing. Banneker thought to read a haunting fear in his eyes, and was cogitating upon what it might portend, when his attention was distracted by Ely Ives, who had been requested (as he announced) to exhibit his small skill at some minor sleight-of-hand tricks. The skill, far from justifying its possessor's modest estimate, was so unusual as to provoke expressions of admiration from Mr. Stecklin, the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a woman walsin' round a cook-stove, or wrastlin' a washtub, or jugglin' pots an' skillets, same as them sleight-of-hand folks at the Bird Cage Op'ry House, an' she won't be so free to primp an' preen an' look at herse'f in the glass, an' go gaddin' after letters which she ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... furnishing much amusement with an impromptu sleight- of-hand exhibition. The black audience clustered around Jim Pink in his pinstripe trousers and blue-serge coat. They exhibited not the least curiosity as to the mechanics of the tricks, but asked for more and still more, with the naive delight of ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... Guided so well, that I obtain'd the prize, Both by the judgment of the English eyes, And of some sent from that sweet enemy France; Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance; Townfolks my strength; a daintier judge applies His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise; Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; Others, because of both sides I do take My blood from them who did excel in this, Think nature me a man of arms did make. How far they shot awry! the true cause is, Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face Sent forth the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... between these performances and the man's second trade, namely, snake-charming, is not obvious to a Western mind; but it must be remembered that the snake-charmer is not a mere, vulgar juggler, amusing people with sleight-of-hand. His feats are miracles, performed with the assistance of superior powers. In short, he is a theosophist, only his converse is not with excorporated Mahatmas from Thibet, but with spirits of another grade, whose Superior has been known from very remote antiquity as an Old ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the necessity for suppressive evidence, for they murder only to get rid of witnesses (and this is one of the arguments adduced by those who desire the abrogation of capital punishment),—these giants of dexterity and skill, whose sleight of hand, whose rapid sight, whose every sense is as alert as that of a savage, are heroes of evil only on the stage of their exploits. Not only do their difficulties begin as soon as the crime is committed, for they are as much ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... a refreshment-room, and the passengers had to purchase tickets from him before they could enjoy their ride. The boy was also a clever conjuror, and, arrayed in a brown wig and a long white robe, used to cause no little wonder to his audience by his sleight-of-hand. With the assistance of various members of the family and the village carpenter, he made a troupe of marionettes and a small theatre for them to act in. He wrote all the plays himself the most popular being "The Tragedy of King John"—and he was very clever at manipulating the innumerable ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Volscians, of whom he was gently interteigned: and lodged in the house of Accius Tullius, the chiefe of that citie, and a deadly enemie to the Romaynes. Vpon daily conference and consultation had betwene them, they consulted by what sleight or pollicie, they might comence a quarrell against the Romaines. And because they doubted, that the Volscians would not easely be perswaded thereunto, beinge so oft vanquished and ill intreated, they excogitated some other newe occasion. In the meane time T. Latinius ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... Myrtlewood was a battle-field, of which Alison used to carry her sister amusing and characteristic sketches. The two leading players were Miss Keith and Mr. Touchett, who alone had any idea of tactics; but what she did by intuition, sleight of hand or experience, he effected by calculation and generalship, and even when Conrade claimed the command of his own side, the suggestions of the curate really guided the party. Conrade was a sort of Murat on the croquet field, bold, dashing, often making wonderful hits, but uncertain, and only ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Somehow you remind me of the sleight-of-hand performer producing an omelette from a silk hat. I don't think I've ever been really ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... attended a Bunsen lecture at Marburg and complimented Tyndall by saying, "When I take up sleight-of-hand work, consider yourself engaged as my first helper." Tyndall's way of standing with his back to the audience, shutting off the view of Bunsen's hands while he was getting ready to make an artificial peal of thunder, made Humboldt ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... she by sleight, (Follow, my love, come over the strand) And all to help this forlorn knight, And she ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... introducing of Episcopacy, yet they were really doing what they disclaimed and professed not to do. And suppose that some who have an active hand in carrying on the present publick affairs, have no design either to destroy Religion, or utterly to sleight it: yet the way they are on, and work they are about as it is contrived, doth of its self, and in its own nature tend to the endangering, if not to the utter subversion of Religion, for it cannot be denyed, but the very undertaking ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... then, I will redeem thee from thy distress, and bring deliverance. Lo, take this herb of virtue, and go to the dwelling of Circe, that it may keep from thy head the evil day. And I will tell thee all the magic sleight of Circe. She will mix thee a potion and cast drugs into the mess; but not even so shall she be able to enchant thee; so helpful is this charmed herb that I shall give thee ... Therewith the slayer of Argos gave me the plant that he had plucked from the ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... mark; for to a certain point I am as orthodox as yourself. But where you begin to draw general conclusions from your own private experience, I must beg pointedly and finally to differ. You will not have forgotten, I believe, my daring and single-handed butchery of the five secret witnesses? Nor the sleight of mind and dexterity of language with which I separated Lelio from the merchant's family? These were not virtuous actions; and yet, how am I to tell you? I was conscious of a troubled joy, a glee, a hellish gusto in my author's bosom, which seemed to renew my vigour with every ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Syrian spouse; And youthful Joseph, famed for self-command, Was seen, conspicuous midst his kindred band. Then stretching far my sight amid the train That hid, in countless crowds, the shaded plain, Good Hezekiah met my raptured sight, And Manoah's son, a prey to female sleight; And he, whose eye foresaw the coming flood, With mighty Nimrod nigh, a man of blood; Whose pride the heaven-defying tower design'd, But sin the rising fabric undermined. Great Maccabeus next my notice claim'd, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... father's part, and with his cruel knife Unto the gods did sacrifice his dearest daughter's life. Ulysses wailed the loss of his most faithful men, Whom Polyphemus did devour enclosed in his den But when his hands by sleight had made the Cyclops blind, Most pleasant joy instead of former tears possessed his mind. Hercules famous is for his laborious toil, Who tamed the Centaurs and did take the dreadful lion's spoil. He the Stymphalian birds with piercing arrows ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... of them danced the tarantella; they sang Neapolitan songs; one of them performed some of those wonderful sleight-of-hand tricks so often seen on the streets of Naples; they explained the coral finger of St. Januarius which they wore; they politely ate the strange American refreshments; and when the evening was over, one of the committee said to me, "Do ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... wash down the decks. A great tub was dragged into the waist, and then one of the men went over into the chains, and slipped in behind a band fastened to the shrouds, and leaning over, began to swing a bucket into the sea by a long rope; and in that way with much expertness and sleight of hand, he managed to fill the tub in a very short time. Then the water began to splash about all over the decks, and I began to think I should surely get my feet wet, and catch my death of cold. So I went to the chief mate, and told ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... absented himself for an hour, and returned freshened by a plunge in the river and a puff in his wig. But, alas! he found that Mistress Betty, without quitting Mistress Fiddy's bedchamber, and by the mere sleight of hand of tying on a worked apron with vine clusters and leaves and tendrils all in purple and green floss silks, pinning a pink bow under her mob-cap, and sticking in her bosom a bunch of dewy ponceau polyanthuses, had ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... subordinate mere knowledge to the work of invigorating the will, energizing productive effort and clarifying moral vision. Let us make safe men rather than vociferous mountebanks; let us put deftness in daily labor above sleight-of-hand tricks, and common sense, well trained, above classical smatterings, which awe the ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... disgusted and angry with the players because their performance is not spontaneous. If she had stopped to reason about the matter she would have been less uncompromising. But in the shock of disillusionment she felt only that the man was working upon his audience like a sleight-of-hand performer; and the longer she observed, and the stronger his spell over the others, the deeper became her contempt for the "charlatan." He seemed to her like one telling a lie—as that one seems, while ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips |
