"Pricking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arises out of the last-mentioned fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one. Is any such unity predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily verified facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's finger, and viewed with proper precautions and under a sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the innumerable multitude of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... another's will'? It is very beautiful, and fit for a Paradise of any kind. Here are some lines from old Lily, which your ear will put in the proper metre. It gives a fine description of a fellow walking in Spring, and looking here and there, and pricking up his ears, as different birds sing. 'What bird so sings, but doth so wail? Oh! 'tis the ravished nightingale: "Jug, jug, jug, jug, terue," she cries, and still her woes at midnight rise. Brave prick-song! ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... pride. Through four long years of repression the knowledge had rankled in my mind till now the very sight of her standing there and beseeching me with her eyes was more than I could bear. I would not have been human had I not felt the old wound pricking me again, and I certainly would not have been a Carstairs had the mere sight of her apparent contrition moved me to forgive her on the spot. I was quite willing to be friendly, I told myself, but by nothing short of a miracle could we regain the ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... his coat and sat down upon the side of his narrow bed, glancing contemptuously at his bare brown arms, which showed through the openings in his blue shirt sleeves. He was still smarting from the memory of the sudden selfconsciousness he had felt downstairs, and a pricking sensitiveness took possession of him, piercing like needles through the boorish indifference he had worn. All at once he realised that he was ashamed of himself—ashamed of his ignorance, his awkwardness, his brutality—and ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... white high road which led to Southminster. In the hot haze she could just see the two ears of the cathedral pricking up through the blue. Everything was very silent, so silent that she could hear the church clock of Slumberleigh, two miles away, strike twelve. A whole hour ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... with the Prussians, having been in intercourse with them for the past three months and making the best of men as of things. "Our business requires it," they told each other on their way, no doubt in order to ease off some secret pricking of a remnant ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... they mark how few the French, Are filled with pride and comfort, and they say One to the other:—"Their King Carle is wrong!"— Upon his sorrel steed sits Marganice; Urging him hard with pricking spurs of gold, Encounters Olivier—strikes him behind, Drives his white hauberk-links into his heart, And through in front came forth the pointed lance. The Kalif cries:—"That blow struck home! Carlmagne, For thy ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... then "Forward into line," and presently the lieutenant stood looking into the sun-tanned faces of less than twenty veteran troopers, four sets of fours with two sergeants, dusty and devil-may-care, with horses jaded, yet sniffing mischief ahead and pricking up their ears in excitement. Drummond had been the troop leader in scout after scout and in several lively skirmishes during the year gone by. There was not one of his troopers whom he could not swear by, thought he, but then the recollection ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... many of her hours and thoughts—dangerously many, as we who loved her would often say, considering that she spent herself unnecessarily upon much for which others might well have acted deputy. The sun had set early, for it was midwinter, and white points of winter stars were pricking through the frozen sky. The snow, iced over with a glistening crust, sent back pale reflections to the bars of cold green and thin rosy glows that stood for sunset, and a threatening wind began to rise, that shook down little icicles from the window ledge and made the stiff, chill branches of the ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Among the brookside rushes, Laura bowed her head to hear, Lizzie veiled her blushes: Crouching close together In the cooling weather, With clasping arms and cautioning lips, With tingling cheeks and finger tips. 'Lie close,' Laura said, 40 Pricking up her golden head: 'We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?' 'Come buy,' call the goblins Hobbling down the glen. 'Oh,' cried Lizzie, 'Laura, Laura, You should not peep at ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... "which mean ye is the counterfeit—the writing or the writer?—— Without there!—Call in Robin Hays. Sir Willmott Burrell, Sir Willmott Burrell! the Lord deliver me from such as thou art!" he continued, swelling and chafing himself into anger, 'pricking the sides of his intent,' that so he might overwhelm the dastard knight. "We doubted, sir, at first, but we doubt no longer. Sir, you have robbed that old man of his daughter! You have, by so doing, perjured your own soul, and brought most foul dishonour ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... one who is left behind. For the one who sets out there are fresh faces, new activities in store. Even though the new life adventured upon may not prove to be precisely a bed of thornless roses, the pricking of the thorns provides distraction to the mind from the ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... herself from the end of the pole of a wagon, with her children tied dangling at her heels. The men, for want of trees, tied themselves, some to the horns of the oxen, others by the neck to their legs, that so pricking them on, by the starting and springing of the beasts, they might be torn and trodden to pieces. Yet for all they thus massacred themselves, above sixty thousand were taken prisoners, and those that were slain were said to be twice ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... be rough with you, be rough with love; Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.— Give me a case to put my visage in: [Putting on a mask.] A visard for a visard! what care I What curious eye doth quote deformities? Here are the beetle-brows ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... it that you can have them at the first opportunity restored to our connoisseur in contes—your friend the Chamberlain? It comes to occur to me that the gentleman's wardrobe may be as scanty as my own, and the absence of his coat may be the reason, more than my unfortunate pricking with a bodkin, for his ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... and spellbound, a bunch of beautiful roses she had torn from her corsage. It fell almost at his feet, for in his astonishment and rising wrath he made no effort to catch it. A man, stooping quickly, rescued and handed it to him. Mechanically he said "Thank you," and took it, a thorn pricking deep into the flesh as he did so; and still his eyes were fixed on that fairy form now surely, swiftly gliding away, and over him swept the consciousness of utter defeat, of exasperation, of dismay, even ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... to occupy a pre-eminent place in war and in controversy, do thou hear and judge. If he (i.e. the man taking the oath) speaks falsely, let him fall upon thee, let him be cut and be torn, and let him be afflicted with shooting and pricking pains." The man then takes u klong or, u klong u khnam, and holds it on his head, and while in that posture utters the same invocation. U klong is then made over to the judge (the Siem or the Sirdar as ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... fresh." So the Captain took the sword, and drawing it, brandished and made a false cut with it; but, when the man of Rayy saw this, he felt sure of death and said in his mind, "I have borne the washing-slab and the boiling water and the pricking with the knife-point and the grave-niche and its straitness and all this, trusting in Allah that I might be delivered from death, and indeed I have been delivered; but the sword I may not suffer seeing that one stroke of it will make me a dead man." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... consolation from the dead parishioners, and enforcing last Sunday's text that this was what all flesh came to; a lean ass who had sought to expound it also, without being qualified and ordained, was pricking his ears in an empty pound hard by, and looking with hungry eyes ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... air," I shouted. "Friction of the air. Going too fast. Like meteorites and things. Too hot. And, Gibberne! Gibberne! I'm all over pricking and a sort of perspiration. You can see people stirring slightly. I believe the stuff's working off! Put ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... stubborn blows Deny'd his bones that soft repose, Lay still expecting worse and more, Stretch'd out at length upon the floor; 1330 And though he shut his eyes as fast As if h' had been to sleep his last, Saw all the shapes that fear or wizards Do make the Devil wear for vizards, And pricking up his ears, to hark 1335 If he cou'd hear too in the dark, Was first invaded with a groan And after in a feeble tone, These trembling words: Unhappy wretch! What hast thou gotten by this fetch; 1340 For all thy tricks, in this new trade, Thy holy brotherhood ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... as well as her family, he had previously known. On the twenty-eighth of January, in the presence of the curate of Saint Martin and of the chaplain of the Bellesme hospital, the following incident occurred. As the child could not sew without pricking herself with the needle, nor use scissors without wounding her hands, they set her to shelling peas, placing a large basket before her. As soon as her dress touched the basket, and she reached her hand to begin work, the basket was violently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... properly of the matchless curve. Only an Arab could appreciate legs like thin and carefully drawn steel below the knees; or that flow of tail and windy mane; that generous breast with promise of the mighty heart within; that arched neck; that proud head with the pricking ears, wide forehead, and muzzle, as the Sheik said, which might drink from ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... cascades while yet a faint light lingered. We were safe, and then, too, came limp weariness such as no ordinary work ever produces, however hard it may be. Wearily we stumbled down through the woods, over logs and brush and roots, devil's-clubs pricking us at every faint blundering tumble. At last we got out on the smooth mud slope with only a mile of slow but sure dragging of weary limbs to camp. The Indians had been firing guns to guide me and had a fine supper ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... and Sir Percivale sat him down under a tree, and made sorrow out of measure. Anon the yeoman came pricking after as fast as ever he might, and asked Sir Percivale, "Saw ye, sir, any knight riding on my black steed? It hath been taken from me by force, wherefore my lord will slay me in what ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... man would have volunteered to bury him. But, while evidently unaccustomed to marching, he kept at the head of his company throughout the entire day, when every step must have been torture. He uttered not a word of complaint, and at night was seen, by the light of a flaring candle, pricking the blisters on his swollen feet; then he put on his shoes, and walked away as erect as if on parade. In those few hours he had won the respect of the entire regiment, and had become one of us. Poor fellow! ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... the neck of the quivering mare, that stared at him with wild eyes, Ridge petted and soothed her, at the same time talking gently in Spanish, a tongue that she showed signs of understanding by pricking forward her shapely ears. After a little Ridge led the animal to a watering-trough, where she drank greedily, and then into camp, where he begged a handful of sugar from one ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... preposterously weak and shaky in the legs, he had for some time insisted on coming in to join them at the table at meals. The first warning Sheldon had of the other's growing interest in the girl was when Tudor eased down and finally ceased pricking him with his habitual sharpness of quip and speech. This cessation of verbal sparring was like the breaking off of diplomatic relations between countries at the beginning of war, and, once Sheldon's suspicions were aroused, he was not long in finding other confirmations. ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... women in front of them by pricking them with bayonets. The wounds were afterward ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... God... God... somewhere... away off... cactus flowers, star-yellow ray out of spiked green, and empties of sky roll you over and over like a mother her baby in long grass. And only the wind scandal-mongers with gum trees, pricking multiple leaves ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... would never have happened to the Earl or Sir Ademar. Vivian only growled at his conscience when it gave him that faint prick. He was so accustomed to bid it be quiet, that it had almost ceased to give him any hints, and the pricking was ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... call him even a sceptic, for that implies a dogma of hopelessness and definite belief in unbelief. But it would be strictly just to describe him at this time, at any rate, as a merely destructive person. He was one whose main business was, in his own view, the pricking of illusions, the stripping away of disguises, and even the destruction of ideals. He was a sort of anti-confectioner whose whole business it was to take the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... into her words, for the first had been spoken somewhat under breath. So leaving the one horse fastened to a tree-branch, the other set forward with his unwonted burden, which indeed at first he did not much approve; pricking his ears, and sidling about, with some doubtfulness of intent. But being after all a sensible horse, and apprehending the voice and rein suggestions which were made to him, he began to pick his way slowly and carefully among the stones on the bank, and then through the stones in the river; ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... and filled for use as needed. This is an especially satisfactory way to make pies of juicy fruit, as it does away largely with the saturated under crusts, and the flavor of the fruit can be retained much more perfectly. Pies with one crust can be made by simply fitting the crust to the plate, pricking it lightly with a fork to prevent its blistering while baking, and afterward filling when needed for the table. For pies with two crusts, fit the under crust to the plate, and fill with clean pieces of old white linen laid in lightly to support the upper crust. When baked, slip the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... say his name was?" said Plume, eagerly, pricking up his ears. "I beg your pardon, Sir, I didn't exactly catch ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... wanting to him who would push a roadster from the Connecticut to the Wish-Ton-Wish, between a rising and a setting sun! The stranger no longer journeys in the saddle, as is plain by the sign that his boot beareth no spur. When he worried, by dint of hard pricking, the miserable hack that proved food for the wolves, through the forest, he had better appointments. I saw the bones of the animal no later than this day. They have been polished by fowls and frost, till the driven snow of the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... was pricking[6] on the plaine, Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde, Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine, The cruell markes of many' a bloody fielde; Yet armes till that time did he never wield. * * * * * "And on his brest a bloodie Crosse he bore, The deare remembrance ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... 1/4 inch thick and cut into squares. Pare and core apples and place one in center of each square. Fill each with a portion of the seasonings, sugar, raisins and dot with butter. Bring corners of the dough to the top of the apples and seal by pricking with a fork. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. ...
— Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking • Unknown
... is engendered by a kind of invitation to grieve, when once men have imagined that it is their duty to do so. When, then, we have subtracted what is altogether voluntary, that mournful uneasiness will be removed; yet some little anxiety, some slight pricking, will still remain. They may indeed call this natural, provided they give it not that horrid, solemn, melancholy name of grief, which can by no means consist with wisdom. But how various and how bitter are the roots of grief! Whatever they are, I propose, after having ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of glass, sharp splinters of glass, first pricking, then piercing, then tearing her heart. Her heart closed down on the splinters of glass, cutting itself at ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... autumn or spring, the seeds are put in at the depth of an inch, an inch or two apart and in rows convenient for cultivation. Subsequent care consists of cultivation if the seed are sown in garden rows, and in pricking out when true leaves appear if planted in flats. In ground that crusts, an expedient is to mix grape seed with apple seed; the apple seedlings, being more vigorous, break the crust and act as nurse plants to the more tender grapes. Sometimes it is helpful ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... Terence continued. They looked together at the carpet, as though London itself were to be seen there lying on the floor, with all its spires and pinnacles pricking through the smoke. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... his revolver. The bullet would do quickly what the cold would accomplish after lingering hours of torture, yet, facing those pricking ears and the brave trust of the eyes, he was blinded by a mist and could not aim. He had to place the muzzle of the gun against the roan's temple and pull the trigger. When he turned his back he was the only living thing within the ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... had finished pricking this treasonable communication into the patient's skin, he carefully enveloped the head in bandages, which, he said, must on no account be disturbed. He kept the man shut up, besides, in the palace, until the hair had grown, so as effectually to conceal the writing, and then sent ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... briskly forward. They were now within a short distance of the pest-house, and Leonard, hearing footsteps behind him, turned and beheld a closed litter, borne by two stout porters, and evidently containing a plague-patient. He stepped aside to let it pass, when Bell, suddenly pricking her ears, uttered a singular cry, and bursting from him, flew after the litter, leaping against it and barking joyfully. The porters, who were proceeding at a quick pace, tried to drive her away, but without ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... threatening rain and the end of the world, and done in that particularly gloomy gray in which only New York afternoons indulge. A breeze was crying down the streets, whisking along battered newspapers and pieces of things, and little lights were pricking out all the windows—it was so desolate that one was sorry for the tops of sky-scrapers lost up there in the dark green and gray heaven, and felt that now surely the farce was to close, and presently all the buildings would collapse like ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... hereabouts were bright just now with the sea-daffodil, and the sea-stocks, which would blossom later, were pricking upward to the Lenten light; great clusters of southern-wood waved in the wind, and the pungent sea-rush grew in long lines along the shore, where the sand-piper was dropping her eggs, and the blue-rock was carrying dry twigs and grass to his home in the ruins ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... from behind the tea-table with a little inward pricking of conscience for wishing him gone. She wondered if he deemed her inhospitable, but if he did he disguised it very carefully, for his eyes held nothing but friendliness ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... of feeling you have to have about an adventure without which the affair doesn't come off properly. Anybody who has been much by himself in the woods has had it; or sometime, when you are all alone in the house, all at once there comes a kind of pricking of your skin and a tightness in your chest, not at all unpleasant, and a kind of feeling that the furniture has its eye on you, or that some one behind your shoulder is about to speak, and immediately after ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... knew. "Never a move shall he make that I shan't make the same; and in one thing I shall move first. Two million francs! Handsome! It is I who must find this treasure, this fulcrum to the lever which is going to upheave France. There will be no difficulty then in pricking the pretty bubble. In the meantime we shall proceed to Munich and carefully inquire into the affairs of the grand opera singer, Hildegarde ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... vomiting of the ingesta, and diarrh[oe]a; repeated vomiting, first of bile, afterwards a thin, watery fluid, having a very bitter taste, with violent pains across the abdomen. 518 to 525: oppression, pressing, creeping, drawing and gnawing, pricking, soreness, heat and burning in the stomach. 528: painful sensitiveness in the pit of the stomach, with burning, like heartburn, with bilious diarrh[oe]a, rather greenish, and almost painless. 530: violent pain and sensitiveness in the region of the stomach and epigastrium, with ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... remained uneasy all that day. When he went out to them that afternoon he found only his wife Silvia there and it was plain to him that she too was alarmed, but alas, poor creature, she could tell him nothing, only lick his hands and face, and turn about pricking her ears ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... great comfort to have aunt Madge so near. If it had been Susy instead, Prudy would have had no company but the sound of her breathing. It was of no use to try to wake Susy in the dead of night. Pricking her with pins would startle her, but she never knew anything even after she was startled. All she could do was to stare about her, cry, and act very cross, and then—go to ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... sat on the long chairs by the rail of the promenade were letting it all go by, engrossed in their own pricking dissatisfaction. "Well, what does it matter to me whether Mr. Wilson and Miss Temple look soppy over each other, or not?" said Caroline. Then she rose again abruptly: "My head aches. I'm tired of watching all these people go ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... of the best sumpitan shooters in all Sumatra, and could send an arrow with true aim a distance of a hundred and fifty yards. But to make its effect deadly at this distance, something more than the mere pricking of the tiny "sumpit" was needed. This something was a strong vegetable poison which he also knew how to prepare; and the upas-tree, that had so nearly proved fatal to all of them, was now called into requisition to effect a ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... fall on the plates; I smoke so as to purify the air of poisonous gases; I keep the door ajar so as not to make a noise in the studio; I drink beer in the evening so as to escape the temptation of drinking whisky; and I put the knife into my mouth because I am afraid of pricking ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... Modocs, indulged in the amusement called "tipping the lion" which consisted in flattening the nose of the victim on his face and boring out his eyes with the fingers. There were also the "dancing masters," who made people dance by pricking them with swords, the "sweaters," who pricked their victims with swords till they fell exhausted, and the "tumblers," who set women on their heads and mutilated their limbs.[140] Others rolled women down hill in barrels, cut the faces of maid-servants, and slit the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... following three Respects. First, In the Motion of the Hunt. Secondly In the motion of the rest of the Notes: And Thirdly, In making the Changes. Which three things being well (to omit Instance of Demonstration) and narrowly observed, will be very helpful both in pricking and ringing Courses; the first and third for directing you in Pricking them, and the first and ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... letter should have come. It came not. Nor on Friday nor Saturday. On Sunday it must come. But it did not come on Sunday. He determined to telegraph to her on the Monday morning. His loyalty, though valorous, needed aid against all those pricking battalions of ephemeral doubts. On the Sunday evening he suddenly had the idea of strengthening himself by a process that resembled boat-burning. He would speak to his father. His father's mentality was the core of a difficulty that troubled him exceedingly, and he took it into his ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... and the reaction swept away disappointment and all interest but dislike. Voice and eyes, movements and manner became hateful to her; she longed for an opportunity of upsetting his precarious composure, of pricking his conceit and hurting him. If Margaret Poynter did not put her next to him, she would walk out of the room and go home. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... little water in the hollow of his hand and then snatched it away, flinging the water over his brother's face, for he was conscious of a sharp pricking sensation as if he had scarified the ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... this particular man of the reason why Mrs Willoughby's house should be the last one on earth from which his marriage should take place. And then in the midst of these questionings, to her own surprise a sudden pricking of tears came to her eyes, and she cried sharply, "I want mother! I must have mother. She must come home. She'll come at once, when ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... pricking up his ears. Trumpet-blasts sounded in the distance, ringing from valley to valley, echoing and re-echoing against the obstacles formed by the great granite rocks and dying away to right and left, as though stifled by the shadow of ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the once eagerly swallowed morsel is all but gone, but the morsel is still sought and swallowed. Impulses wax as motives wane, the victim is like an ox tempted on the road to the slaughter-house at first by succulent fodder held before it, and at last driven into it by pricking goads and heavy blows. Many a man is so completely wrapped in the net which his own evil deeds have made for him, that he commits the sin once more, not because he finds any pleasure in it, but for no better reason than that he has already ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... are moving. Hark to the mingled din Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin. The fiery duke is pricking fast across Saint Andre's plain, With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne. Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France, Charge for the golden lilies—upon them with the lance! ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... not like to work. It must be judged that his mind was affected by a certain indolence, that he was capable enough when he addressed himself to any particular task, but not self-disposed to exertion. He felt no constant, pricking incitement to do his best; but was content to do fairly well, as well as was necessary for the immediate occasion. One of his comrades in the academy said in later years that he remembered him as "a very uncle-like sort of a youth.... He exhibited but little enthusiasm ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... declared it to be a spurious Pincini, probably the work of some pupil whom he had employed in his declining years. The evidence of Deplis on the subject was obviously worthless, as he had been under the influence of the customary narcotics during the long process of pricking in the design. The editor of an Italian art journal refuted the contentions of the German expert and undertook to prove that his private life did not conform to any modern standard of decency. The whole of Italy and Germany were drawn ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... to the thickness of the thread the lace is to be made of; for a coarse lace large point paper should be used and small, for the finer kinds of lace. The pricking of the pattern beforehand is particularly important in the case of the common torchon lace, where the real beauty of the design consists in its regularity; in the case of fine close patterns the pricking can only be ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... of common salt or sea salt to each gallon of water. The salt should first be dissolved in a cup of warm water to prevent the sharp particles from pricking the skin. The doctor sometimes orders ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... his own people to commence the work he had been about to carry out when the pirate appeared. The Frenchmen were quickly made to change their tone, and the pirates, observing that they did not work with as good a will as the English, kept pricking them on, every now and then, with the points of their swords, amusing themselves greatly at the sight of the grimaces which were made in consequence ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... cried, and soon this Indian word for "beaver" began to have its effect upon the dogs. Pricking up their ears, they began running about, until at length, with a couple of yelps of triumph, they were off. They hurried away as fast as their little legs could carry them through the light snow to a spot near ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... pondering,' cried the queen joyfully, holding up her clasped hands, and making Muffette do likewise, in token of gratitude. But in order that he may know that you have come from me I will send him a letter.' And pricking her arm, she wrote a few words with her blood on the corner of her handkerchief. Then tearing it off, she gave it to the frog, and they ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... causeway, between the two black pools, where, at every yard or two, a gin, a pitfall, or a snare awaits the passer-by—loathsome white devilkins harbouring close under the bank to work the springes, Christian himself pausing and pricking with his sword's point at the nearest noose, and pale discomfortable mountains rising on the farther side; or yet again, the two ill-favoured ones that beset the first of Christian's journey, with the frog-like structure of the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the world had suddenly dropped from under his feet and the shock bewildered him. She had been so gracious, so very sweet and gracious. He had been forgiven in advance; why such bitter offence? A single word was all he had asked—one little word. Then he flushed all over with a peculiar pricking sensation down the spine. Could it be that she expected a very different question; one whose answer might have been a Yes? If that were so—but it was absurd, and he called himself many hard names for having such an idea a single moment. To have thought such a thought of ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... of the Tower, pricking up his ears, and preparing for one of those diplomatic encounters of mutual pumping, in which he and his rival were practised. 'I suppose you have seen ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... 2 But pricking thorns thro' all the ground And mortal poisons grow, And all the rivers that are found With dangerous ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... a moment before had been all indignation, suddenly sprang into the most alert attention. There was a visible pricking up of ears as the preacher entered into his subject. He spoke first of the benefits of sleep, what it did for the worn human body and the weary human soul, then turning off into a half-humorous, half-quizzical strain, which was often in his sermons, he spoke of how many times he had to forgive ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... pictures. The European forest, with its long glades and green, sunny dells, naturally suggested the figures of armed knight on his proud steed, or maiden, decked in gold and pearl, pricking along them on a snow-white palfrey; the green dells, of weary Palmer sleeping there beside the spring with his head upon his wallet. Our minds, familiar with such, figures, people with them the New England woods, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... to Meissen Country: fairly ebbing homeward; Henri following, with Hulsen joined,—not vehemently attacking the rhinoceros, but judiciously pricking him forward. Daun goes at his slowest step: in many divisions, covering a wide circuit; sticking to all the strong posts, till his own time for quitting them: slow, sullenly cautious; like a man descending dangerous precipices back foremost, and will not be hurried. So ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... The other said "Ha!" and pounced upon his treasure. He had him by the ear and was pricking him with his sabre ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... not now to be used in sport, for the mere pricking of a horse, but in serious earnest, to be buried in the body of a man—if need be. This resolve can be read in his attitude, in his eyes, in his features. These no longer bent in the laugh of a reckless boy, but the rigid, resolute determination of a man. Badly as he sits his horse, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... jolly hard! It's a beastly shame," said Carnaby, evidently pricking up his ears and with a sudden frown that changed his face. "I say, Mark—" But Lavendar did not think the moment suitable for a discussion of Mrs. Prettyman's wrongs. Besides, he did not wish Robinette to ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Peter, kept pricking him and breaking through the stupefaction of this sudden tragedy. He kept nodding a mechanical agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. Then the little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through the dust of Niggertown with professional briskness. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... may be in at such a murder as that! I ran to a livery stable, secured a swift horse, mounted him, and spurred furiously for the reservation. The hack, with its generous start, had gone far on its way, but my horse was nimble, and his legs felt the pricking of my eagerness. A few miles of this furious pursuit brought me within sight of the hack just as it was crossing a dark ravine near the reservation. As I came nearer I imagined that the hack swayed somewhat, and that a fleeing shadow ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... raspberry bushes in plenty. From the library window can be seen the flower garden and shrubbery and a large variety of rose trees. Close by is her own special plot where she delighted to work with her own little implements, spade, trowel, hoe, and rake, planting her seeds, pricking her seedlings, pruning, grafting, and watching with deepest eagerness to see them grow. In spring-time her interest was alike divided between the opening buds of her daffodils and the breaking of the ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... dear to her have embarked, how can she be expected to tie to it? The old phrases which she may hear now and then—"the honor of the family"—"duty to parents"—only savor of cant to her. They have no pricking vitality in them. She gets no acute reaction from them. She sees herself merely as an accident in an accidental group, headed nowhere ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... had a bandage over his eyes; he allowed himself to be led like a child. The sight of that spotless and adorable Esther wiping her eyes and pricking in the stitches of her embroidery as demurely as an innocent girl, revived in the amorous old man the sensations he had experienced in the Forest of Vincennes; he would have given her the key of his safe. He felt so young, his heart was so overflowing ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... they only stick out about the tenth part of an inch, they prick the skin all over the mark, and then rub charcoal dust over the part, which enters the punctures, and leaves a mark that can never be effaced. This pricking generally gives a fit of sickness to the patient, who is obliged for some time to live only on boiled maiz. The warriors also pierce the lower part of their ears, and make a hole an inch diameter, which they fill with iron wire. Besides these ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... that he had met with a wound which materially interfered with his speed. With an unequivocal disposition to refuse taking any other course than the one he was pursuing, Nigger began to wrestle for the mastership, and being encumbered with my lance I had some little difficulty in pricking him toward the point where the buffalo, alone in his flight, was using his best energies to escape. The pointed iron, however, prevailed, and the plucky little horse, seeing the animal scramble over a conical shaped ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... you leave Armenia in the first place?" asked Gloria, for he seemed to need pricking along to prevent him from getting off the track into a maze ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... fads and fancies, the nerves and frets of a delicate, child-bearing woman; he had wondered more than once if jolly cynics like Rokeby weren't right after all; the numerous small inroads upon his pocket had been unexpected, pin-pricking sort of shocks. But all this now receded; the hour was upon them, upon him, and the woman he loved; what did a spoiled dinner matter? What did a fretful quarrel matter, if only she won through? He begged the doctor's immediate presence as ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... rain, but the most enviable part of her was her neck, which was blue in colour and of a velvet texture, and of course showed off her diamond necklace as no white throat could have glorified it. The high-born fairies obtain this admired effect by pricking their skin, which lets the blue blood come through and dye them, and you cannot imagine anything so dazzling unless you have seen the ladies' busts ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... were many. She feared the anger of her father, and owed his feelings something as well. But every time she decided she ought to stay at home, the pricking at her heart grew keener. In the end, her feelings overrode her restraint. She resolved at least to go to town. The funeral might have already taken place—it would be a relief even to learn more about ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... to make him lose money on his horse. If he had been timid he would have hesitated about backing Nemo for anything; but the ones who had been taunting him had reckoned well on his mettle, and they had succeeded in pricking his pride ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... to take heed and be careful. These stretching shapes and branches, these candle-holders and bushy twigs have sharp, hard points, and bouncing against them too suddenly might severely wound a fish, or it might slip into a crevice where it would be pricking work to get out. ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... horse seemed to understand the necessity of silence, for he did not even whinny to the touch of his mistress' hand, and trod daintily and noiselessly as she led him to the mounting block, his small ears pricking forward and backward, as though knowing ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... painful prayers that he made upon the cross, where, for all the torment that he hanged in—of beating, nailing, and stretching out all his limbs, with the wresting of his sinews and breaking of his tender veins, and the sharp crown of thorns so pricking him into the head that his blessed blood streamed down all his face—in all these hideous pains, in all their cruel despites, yet two very devout and fervent prayers he made. One was for the pardon of those who so dispiteously put him to his pain, and the other about his own deliverance, commending ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... that it fairly bred a plague. Ratcatchers! Why there wasn't a ratcatcher from John o' Groat's house to the Land's End that hadn't tried his luck. But do what they might, cats or poison, terrier or traps, there seemed to be more rats than ever, and every day a fresh rat was cocking his tail or pricking his whiskers. ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... then open in a Schollers studie." Yet after dinner, "Euphues" will still be agreeable to the ladies, adds Lyly, always smiling; if they desire to slumber, it will bring them to sleep which will be far better than beginning to sew and pricking their fingers when ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... the thorax and painted blue. This was an attention of the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... wandering till then, with the aristocratic indifference characteristic of that animal—became animated. She leaned her head over into the street; then, with a miraculous lightness and address, jumped on to the window-sill, pricking up her long-ears, and raising one of her paws. The chevalier understood by these signs that the tenant of the little room was approaching. He opened his window directly; unfortunately it was already too late, the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... and at her last going away, she went away grumbling; but what she said was not perfectly understood. But at the very same instant of time, the child was taken with most violent fits, feeling most extreme pains in her stomach, like the pricking of pins, and shrieking out in a most dreadful manner like unto a whelp; and not like unto a sensible creature. And in this extremity the child continued to the great grief of the parents until ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... Mr. Sillerton Jackson, pricking up his ears; and while Lefferts tried to turn the question with a laugh, the old gentleman twittered into Archer's ear: "Queer, those fellows who are always wanting to set things right. The people who have the worst cooks are always telling you ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... Light, what are you doing?" he asked several times, and snatched after the sparks, as one snatches after flies in a fit of impatience and boredom. It seemed to him that countless numbers of those little children of Lucifer were pricking his blood like so many dancing stars. Even the air was filled with stars. They clogged his breathing. He arose and walked ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... are, my good friend!" said de Jars, leaning one elbow on the table, and twirling the points of his moustache with his hand; "but if I were to wrap my secret round the point of a dagger would you not be too much afraid of pricking your fingers to pull ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... soon"—was Miss Clairville's inward thought, as with new fears pricking at her heart she kept silence, so unusual a thing with her that the garrulous Renaud observed it and endeavoured to correct ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... his knees changed to a hot, pricking throb. He tried to move his legs, but found he could not. Then a sudden thought sent the blood with a rush to his heart. Perhaps he no longer had any legs! He remembered to have heard of legless men whose phantom members caused them many uncomfortable sensations. He certainly had ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... both. Van and his rider flew easily along, bounding over the springy turf with long, elastic stride, horse and rider taking the rapid motion as an every-day matter, in a cool, imperturbable, this-is-the-way-we-always-do-it style, while my poor old troop-horse, in answer to pressing knee and pricking spur, strove with panting breath and jealously bursting heart to keep alongside. The foam flew from his fevered jaws and flecked the smooth flank of his apparently unconscious rival; and when at last we returned to camp, while Van, without a turned hair or an abnormal heave, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... of the house, like the sound of distant water. The long lingering of the sun slanted over Percy's brow, as she sat leaning her head on her hand, and looking away off, as if over thousands of miles. Her pretty pale fingers were purple with working on hospital shirts and drawers, and bloody with pricking through the slipper soles for the wounded men. She was the most untiring and energetic of all the young people; but they all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and snuffed the air, pricking up his ears, tossing his head, and turning it on all sides, as if he partly suspected some mischief or other. Seeing nothing, however, and hearing no sound, he soon began his antics again. At length—not ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Pricking fast over the plain were seen the glittering horsemen of the Christian reinforcements; and, at the remoter distance, the royal banner of Spain, indistinctly descried through volumes of dust, denoted that Ferdinand himself was advancing to the support ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... be most easily started and grown, at least up to the time of pricking out, in light, well-ventilated greenhouses, and many large growers have them for this specific purpose. Houses for starting tomato plants should be so situated as to be fully exposed to the sun and not shaded in any way; be provided with heating ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... sudden wild inclination to use his own arms and legs in a way he had never before known or dreamed of, yet that seemed curiously familiar. The balance and adjustment of his physical frame sought to shift and alter; neck and shoulders, as it were, urged forward; there came a singular pricking in the loins, a rising of the back, a thrusting up and outwards of the chest. He felt that something grew behind him with a power that sought to impel or drive him in advance and out across the world at a terrific gait; and the hearing of his ears ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood |
