"Handiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so that when a certain gentleman should come it should be all ready for him, and he would only have to take it. Then they were loud in their praises of a certain gentleman to a certain lady, and would go to a certain gentleman full of the wonders of a certain lady's cleverness, economy, handiness, piety, and beauty. Then they repaired to the house of a certain young lady's mamma, where they had long private, important conversations, and they bearded a certain young gentleman's papa, when all their diplomatic arts were brought ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... maintained an entire crew on board whose whole duty should have been to screw, and scrub, and scour. But Jadwin would have none of it. "Costs too much," he would declare, with profound gravity. He had the self-made American's handiness with implements and paint brushes, and he would, at high noon and under a murderous sun, make the trip from the house to the dock where the "Thetis" was moored, for the trivial pleasure of tightening a bolt—which did not need tightening; or wake up in the night ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... same manner, lessons must be given on the washing of silver and the making of beds. Good servants do not often come to us; they must be made by patience and training; and if a girl has a good disposition and a reasonable degree of handiness, and the housekeeper understands her profession, a good servant may be made out of an indifferent one. Some of the best girls have been those who came directly from the ship, with no preparation but docility and some natural quickness. The hardest cases to be managed are not of those ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the handiness of the longship under oars. She was about even as I looked again from the foe to her. And her sail was hoisted, and under that and oars alike she was back on the foe; and then the men of Daffyd forgot him and us in the greater business of ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... her memoirs, I knew by an a priori argument, viz., because all scissors were bad in the year 1607. Now, say all decent logicians, from a universal to a particular valet consequentia, all scissors were bad: ergo, some scissors were bad. The second instance of her handiness will surprise you even more:—She once stood upon a scaffold, under sentence of death—[but, understand, on the evidence of false witnesses]. Jack Ketch was absolutely tying the knot under her ear, and the shameful ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... underwent many modifications during that first summer in the Valley. It seemed to her that Mrs. Templestowe and her sister were equal to any emergency however sudden and unexpected. She was filled with daily wonder over their knowledge of practical details, and their extraordinary "handiness." If a herder met with an accident they seemed to know just what to do. If Choo Loo was taken with a cramp or some odd Chinese disease without a name, and laid aside for a day or two, Clover not only nursed him but went into ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... implying suspicions of his honesty. 'I'll charge ye what's fair,' he said, 'and you and me'll not quarrel as to the price.' If my bill for labour was so moderate that it seems absurd to a townsman, it was because I had to deal with honest craftsmen, who brought not only efficiency and handiness to their work, but a high sense of honour, and a real ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... and Morris Burnet, the Boy, had the best outfits; but this fact was held to be more than counter-balanced by the value of the schoolmaster's experience at Caribou, and by the extraordinary handiness of Potts, the Denver clerk, who had helped to build the shelter on deck for the disabled sick on the voyage up. This young man with the big mouth and lazy air had been in the office of a bank ever since ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... having carefully removed all traces of his handiness, gazes with recovered courage on the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... born for the sea, Richard," he exclaimed, raising his glass high. "And I would rather have one of your brains and strength and handiness than any merchant's mate I ever sailed with. The more gentlemen get commissions, the better will be our ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... generally for the British navy, after extensive anchor trials, begun in 1885. Their advantages are:—handiness combined with a saving of time and labour; absence of davits, anchor-beds and other gear, with a resulting reduction in weight; and a clear forecastle for "right ahead'' gun fire or for working ship. On the other hand a larger hawse-pipe is required, and there ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the world. Its magnificent new harbour had been completed, and its fortifications vastly strengthened and re-armed with the new fourteen-inch gun which had superseded the old sixteen-inch gun of position, on account of its greater handiness, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith |
