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More "Ace" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "They've let me know as much a'ready. There be two captains to their crew; one's the smoke-dried old sinner as brought yer in; the other a big nayger, as black as the ace o' spades. You saw the swab? He's inside the tent here. He's my master. The two came nigh quarrelling about which should have me, and settled it by some sort o' a game they played wi' balls of kaymal's dung. The black ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... me," he said, addressing Captain Bannister, "that both that young jay Dimsdale and Mrs. Delaporte saw me pass up that ace?" ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hole and plant it on some tenderfoot and get mine back!' You cain't make me believe in any of those Wall Street fellers! They all deal from the bottom of the deck and keep shoemaker's wax on their cuff buttons to steal the lone ace!" ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... the sixth round the lead came to me. Now, what should I have done? Finessed for the ace, or led straight ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... certainty lost an ace in the haystack. Besides our chum and heavens knows what others, he had sniped the road along which relief parties were passing up and down; and that same night one of the soldiers of an infantry battalion of the Warwicks, winding its way to the front trenches, got ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... the other. "But I nor no man else saw him die. And we know that these Spanish tombs do sometimes open and give up the dead. I'll throw for size-ace." ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... pots with a stripped deck, the joker going as a fifth ace or to fill a straight or a flush. Several hands were dealt without any stayers. The slender Mexican was dealing when the sensation of the game was ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... during a passing shower. The assent to the Laram Kotal is easy, and though the south face of this range is somewhat denuded of both fir and pine, yet the soil is sufficiently rich to allow of cultivation on its slopes. On this pass, whilst taking some plane-table observations, I was within an ace of being detected from an unexpected quarter. Four men armed with matchlocks showed themselves. Much quicker than it takes me to record it, the rule or sight vane was run up my long and open sleeve, and I began to pretend to be looking about ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... ve'y fon' of it," responded the Creole. "I was making seve'al i'onies ad those fwen' of mine juz now. We was 'unning a 'ace. An' thass anotheh thing I am fon' of. I would 'ather 'un a 'ace than to wuck faw a livin'. Ha! ha! ha! I should thing so! Anybody would, in fact. But thass the way with me—always making some i'onies." He ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... of Youtsey and Fry on one of the principal streets and was talking to Mr. Sydney Youtsey on the sidewalk, when I saw a splendid carriage drawn by two fine bay horses coming along the street. A Sambo, black as the ace of spades, was driving with a high sense of his importance; and in fact he handled the reins and whip like a professional. In the back seat reclined a portly gentleman, dressed in faultless style, and by his side his wife of ample proportions, also ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... fact, began (February 22) by appointing Montrose his Lieutenant-Governor and Captain-General in Scotland, though Lauderdale and Lanark "abate not an ace of their damned Covenant in all their discourses," wrote Hyde. The dispute between Montrose, on the side of honour, and that of Lanark, Lauderdale, and other Scottish envoys, ended as—given the character of Charles II. and ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... sooner or later. I was within an ace of death two months ago. The gallows wouldn't have been worse than a ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... bubbles," Scotty told them. "I talked it over with Tony, and came within an ace of diving after you, although I doubt that I could have reached bottom and found you. But we watched, and we couldn't see any bubbles at all. It was too dark, and we were right where the ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... was the first to cross the stream. His horse plunged in boldly, but was within an ace of being carried away by the still almost resistless current. There goes "Shoemaker," the easy, good-natured "Ned," as he is called. Yes, sure enough, there he does go, for his horse has plunged, and the torrent ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... as he surveyed his victim, "because a man looks sad at the opening of a jack-pot, it doesn't necessarily follow that he's only got ace-high." ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... Euchre Buck, giving his neighbor Dan a nudge in the ribs to call attention to this wonderful piece of girlish innocence. "Square a deal es George Washington mought ha' made." Then, as the greasy pasteboards were turned up, and his neighbour was handed the ace of clubs, he raised his voice and yelled out, "Bully for you, Dan! Cut away ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... pell-mell onslaughts and hand-to-hand struggles. Twice we were within an ace of being driven from our stronghold, when General Harris and his staff leaped recklessly upon the ramparts and hurled the besiegers heels over ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... it. Last February two men and a woman tried to smuggle a lot of diamonds through the customs at New York. I'll not go into details now further than to say they landed from one of the big ocean liners and came within an ace of getting away with the job. The woman was the leader. She was nabbed with one of the men at a hotel. The other man got away. He was on the passenger list as George Ritchie, of Cleveland, Ohio. The woman had half a dozen photographs of him in her possession. I've got a copy of one of 'em in my ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... time, with thumb and forefinger, the Eminent Person turned over his hand with careful adjustment and alignment. After much delay, he symmetrically arranged an Ace-full, face up, and regarded ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... heafy disgoosted Mit de boledicks of dis land, Dat his friendts couldn't barely keep him From trowin oop his hand, Vhen he helt shtraidt flush, mit an ace in his poot; Vich phrase ish all de same, In de science of de pokerology, Ash ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... you might know. He's an easy boss in a good many ways and I have still to run across a job that I'd swap mine for, the pay envelopes being fifty-fifty. But say, when it comes to usin' a private sec. free and careless he sure is an ace of aces. ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... divan but with it a special slave, the Slave of the Bed.... "Dat fat feller" had one of the prisoners perform his corvee for him. "Dat fat feller" bought enough at the canteen twice every day to stock a transatlantic liner for seven voyages, and never ace with the prisoners. I will mention him again apropos the Mecca of respectability, the Great White Throne of purity, Three rings Three—alias Count Bragard, to whom I have long since introduced ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... party consisted of a gentleman and two old ladies. The gentleman (a plump, black-whiskered elderly Cupid, with a vast expanse of shirt-front like an immense white ace of hearts, and a rose in his button-hole) was standing on the hearth-rug in a graceful attitude, with one hand resting on his hip, and the other under his coat-tails. Of the two old ladies, who seemed as if expressly created by nature to serve as foils to ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... was around Frederick a day or two in disguise, and sought to see you and her. Failing in that, he sent you by the landlady the packet that was afterwards taken from your overcoat by the secret-service men; and the next thing he came within an ace of being captured by his own colonel. Escaping, he was believed to be a rebel spy, and so implicated you. It was to search for him I was sent to Boston. There Miss Winthrop formally broke our engagement, and I would be a free man to-day, ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... times, but I yielded at last; take courage from that, and 24, Pleasant Terrace, may shortly become that Elysium—a woman's home," whispered Mrs. W., as she rolled gracefully to a card-table; and accidentally, of course, cut the ace of spades, which she exhibited to Collumpsion with a very mysterious shake ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... explained the circumstances as coherently as he could. "I told you so," he said. "A maid like her couldn't stay hid long, even in a place like this. But where is Grace? Let's have her down. Here—Gra-a-ace!" ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... if you want to, but you'll have to admit, just the same, that it's helped you stay sane once or twice yourself, figurin' whether or not I had an ace in the hole. Lonesomeness like what we've both seen ain't so very different from what he was fightin' at that very moment—not if the thing you're lonesome for and the thing you're thirsty for are things ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... out his foot, but fortunately, before setting it down, he poked what he took for a log with the butt of his gun. The supposed block of wood gave way a little, and the old squatter, throwing himself back, was within an ace of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... noise being heard abroad. There rose in the Court, I know not what confused murmurs, the origin of which could not be pointed out, publishing that either the State or Chamillart must perish; that already his ignorance had brought the kingdom within an ace of destruction; that it was a miracle this destruction had not yet come to pass; and that it would be madness to tempt Providence any longer. Some did not blush to abuse him; others praised his intentions, and spoke with moderation of faults that many people reproached him bitterly with. All admitted ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... your wife—not to pit up with it a day longer," said the subdued voice of Sir Alan. "Man! ye war in an ace o' ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... son of ould Rousin' Redhead's of Tullyvernon—young Con Roe, or the Ace o' Hearts—for he was called both by the youngsters—if you remimber him. His head's as red an' double as big, even, as his father's was, an' you know that no hat would fit ould Con, until he sent ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... needless miseries. I call them needless, because thou hadst more than enough before. Thou hast set thyself against God in a way of contending; thou standest upon thy points and pantables:15 Thou wilt not bate God an ace, of what thy righteousness is worth, and wilt also make it worth what thyself shalt list. Thou wilt be thine own judge, as to the worth of thy righteousness; thou wilt neither hear what verdict the word has passed about it, nor wilt thou endure, that God should throw it out in the matter ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... got a big proposition to offer you. One that will beat Mascola's like an ace beats a deuce. Because this one ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... 2.] and no sorrow was spared to him that belonged to what the Jews and Jewish Christians called 'the pangs of the Messiah.' It is true, crucifixion does not appear among Baha-'ullah's pains, but he was at any rate within an ace of martyrdom. This is what Baha-'ullah wrote at the end of his stay at Adrianople:—[Footnote: Browne, A Year among ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... just old lightnin' on chuck-a-luck. Now the way I bet is this: I lay down, say on the ace, an' it don't come up; I just double my bet on the ace, an' keep on doublin' every time it loses, until at last it comes up an' then I win a bushel o' money, and mebbe bust the bank. You see the thing's got to come up some time; an' every time ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... accidents happened. The king pointed out to the prince the impropriety of his conduct. Radziwill added, that the bears were not cross, as whip, gold, and patience can put in order every thing; He added also, that, sometimes the ace beats the king at cards, and paid liberally the damages. After some time, he gave a splendid party, to which he invited all the ambassadors, and all the leading personages in Poland, and displayed extraordinary luxury. ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... people of that ilk are not fit subjects to discuss with you. All that I know of the woman is that she has travelled pretty well over the world; that some six or eight months ago she was in Ceylon with a—er—a certain member of her crew, and came within an ace of falling foul of the law. She had put up a plan to loot the depository of the Pearl Fisheries Company at a period when there were thousands of pounds worth of gems awaiting transport. With her usual luck she slipped out of the net and left the country before she could be arrested. But ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... troops, sepoys and sailors, some two thousand men in all. Hordes of Persian cavalry charged him through the mist, but they were beaten off, and Clive forced his way through the enemy's camp until he came near the Nawab's own tents, pitched in Omichand's garden. Sirajuddaula himself was within an ace of being captured. His troops made but a poor stand against the British, and by midday the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... a fool, Dolly. Gretchen is fair and young, and the woman is old and black as the ace ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... stopped halfway in his reach for the enormous pile of chips. The Queen laid down her four clubs—Ace, King, Queen and ten—and for the first time flipped over her ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... I had an ace full, can't I? Anybody can play poker when he's got a mitt full of big ones. Show me the man that can make two pair back an all-blue hand ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... that Theodore was so near the Abbaye," said Jacques Collin. "I came in to save a poor little chap who scragged himself here yesterday at four o'clock, and now here is another misfortune. I have not an ace in ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... indifferent grown, Still happier he who ne'er hath known! By absence who hath chilled his love, His hate by slander, and who spends Existence without wife or friends, Whom jealous transport cannot move, And who the rent-roll of his race Ne'er trusted to the treacherous ace. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... world has known nothing. But with a more or less famous man the public is thoroughly informed. Why look there! What an example you have close at hand! You are sitting back to back with the Comtesse Marie Vandenesse, who was within an ace of committing the utmost folly for a more celebrated man than Lousteau—for Nathan—and now they do not even recognize each other. After going to the very edge of the precipice, the Countess was saved, ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... waited for the local, Shoop rolled a cigarette. "Jest statin' it mild and gentle," he said, yawning, "the last couple of weeks has been kind of a busy day. Guess the fun's all over. Sundown's got a flyin' start; Loring's played his ace and lost, and you and me is plumb sober. If I'd knowed it was goin' to be as quiet as this, I'd 'a' brought my ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Therefore I turned the car into a small wood, and destroying my genuine license and hiding the genuine number-plate, I took the next train to Winchester, and thence by express to Waterloo after a very wild and adventurous night. That I had been within an ace of capture was palpable. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... shot; but the skill of Herr Rodiger, the author's father-in-law, was really wonderful. Though his hand trembled constantly from an attack of palsy, I don't know now how many times he pierced the centre of the ace of hearts. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... connected with it. We refer to the great railroad raid in Georgia during the year 1862, when a handful of intrepid heroes invaded a hostile country, deliberately stole a locomotive, and came within an ace of getting it safely delivered into the ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... expressions upon him, of which he was utterly undeserving; but my attentions were quite thrown away, and might as well, for any good they produced, have been bestowed upon a rocking-horse. At length, after a final struggle, in which we were both within an ace of falling into a water-course which crossed the park in that direction, I gave the matter up as hopeless; and with a sigh (for I love not to be foiled in anything I have attempted, and, moreover, I could not help looking upon it as an unlucky omen) dismounted, 285 and leading ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... matter of principle with all of them. They can justify themselves seven ways to the ace. Keep an eye on him, or let us do ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... theirs. This is nothing new to me; it is when one laughs out at their idols that one angers people. I do not wonder now that Sir Philip Sydney was the darling hero, when Lord Herbert, who followed him so close and trod in his steps, is at this time of day within an ace of rivalling him. I wish I had let him; it was contradicting one of my own maxims, which I hold to be very just; that it is idle to endeavour to cure the world of any folly, unless We Could ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... ace of surprising the king at Monceaux, and he never forgot, says Montluc, that "the Protestants had made him do the stretch from Meaux to Paris at something more than a walk." It was around Paris that Conde concentrated ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the ladies of Moscow and St. Petersburg, seeing that they dressed with taste, drove about in carriages in the latest fashions, and never went out without the escort of a footman in gold-laced livery. Again, they looked upon a visiting card—even upon a make-shift affair consisting of an ace of diamonds or a two of clubs—as a sacred thing; so sacred that on one occasion two closely related ladies who had also been closely attached friends were known to fall out with one another over the mere fact of an omission to return a social call! Yes, in spite of the best efforts of husbands ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... had been within an ace of discovery, but the man's mind had closed again against us in obedience to some racial or religious instinct outside our comprehension. He had been on the verge of taking ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... influence intervened and kept the New Cavalry Brigade from falling upon Strydenburg. In the present case the intervention was to be made by the elements, and even then the energy and wit of the capable soldier who was in command brought the brigade within an ace of a success which would have made all concerned famous in the history of ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... had gone home, but Rodwell stopped to tell her we had come as he went down with the cart, and she exclaimed, "Pray day come for me go see Miss Hayiut." In the morning she came early into my chamber, bright and eager. I knew Robert was black as the ace of spades, but they both of them did look blacker than anything I ever saw before, but it was good ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... of the Downs to get them, seven miles there and back, when you wouldn't think she could walk seven hundred yards, and as likely as not had lain there on the dewy grass, looking up at the sky, as he had come on her sometimes. Poor Alicia! And once he had been within an ace of marrying her! A life spoiled! By what, if not by love of beauty! But who would have ever thought that the intangible could wreck a woman, deprive her of love, marriage, motherhood, of fame, of wealth, of health! ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... perhaps, if they promenaded the street, to have the joy of seeing a light in the radiant being's window. The pretty girls of the household vanished with murmured excuses, leaving us at the mercy of the boy, who sighed grievously, dropped a sugar bowl, and spilled coffee within an ace of ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... cards apiece had been dealt, young Vaneski was ahead with a king high. On the fourth round he grinned when he got a second king and Mike dealt himself an ace. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... power they had conferred on Rome by passing the words Legatis proponentibus.[43] The principle involved in this phrase continued to be hotly disputed all through the sessions of the Council. But Pius knew that so long as he stuck fast to it he always held the ace of trumps, and nothing would induce ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... recall what I had heard of cannibals. I was within an ace of calling for help. But the mere fact that he was a man, however wild, had somewhat reassured me, and my fear of Silver began to revive in proportion. I stood still, therefore, and cast about for some ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Fred, carelessly, as he proceeded to deal the cards for Casino. "There, you have an ace and little Casino right before you. Go ahead, ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... with Yancey. We might get separated, and if I draw an ace for myself, I should give Yancey as ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... process of natural transformation, he wrote for "The Westminster Review" another important essay, "A Theory of Population deduced from the General Law of Animal Fertility", towards the close of which he came within an ace of recognising that the struggle for existence was a factor in organic evolution. At a time when pressure of population was practically interesting men's minds, Darwin, Wallace, and Spencer were being independently led from a social problem to a biological ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... "Percival, old ace," said Frederick, with admiration, "you'll rank among the world's great thinkers yet. Turn on the current again and tell me what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... 97, give or take a few out on other jobs. It gave me a chill. Not the odds, but if Council was that worried maybe there was bad danger. But I'd given my word and a Companion keeps his word. We had one ace in the hole, a small one. If the other Companies were not here in Menelaus yet, they must have rendezvoused at Galaxy Center. It was the kind of "follow-the-book" mistake United would make. It gave us a day and a half. We would ...
— Dead World • Jack Douglas
... I've just been watching, that you're in the habit of seeing farther than to the end of your own nose. However, I may as well point out to you that if you had killed yourself, as you richly deserved, and as you came within an ace of doing, the run would have been stopped for the season. We should all have been deprived of the Grand National, and I, who come up here solely to ride the Cresta, which I have done regularly every winter for twenty years, would have had my favorite occupation snatched from me at an age ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... lordship," he went on, scanning the judge still harder. "I do mind his vurry voice. It was 'im, no doubt about it. I've zeed a zight o' people, since I zeed 'im that day, but I do mind his voice, and I do mind his 'ands, and I do mind his ve-ace the zame as if it wur yesterday. Now I come to look, blessed if it wasn't ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... liquor and addle their silly pates to fill my purse. And I have something, boy, put snug away in Dorchester town that will give us bread to eat and beer to drink, even if the throws run still deuce-ace. But we must seek a roof to shelter us when the Why Not? is shut, and 'tis best we leave this Moonfleet of ours for a season, till Maskew finds a rope's end long enough to hang himself withal. So, when our work is done tomorrow night, we will walk out along the cliff to Worth, and take a ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... or Gloomy Mountain Gorge, particularly nasty during mid-river season. Just about here, in 1906, the French gunboat Olry came within an ace of destruction by losing her rudder. Immediately, like a riderless horse, she dashed off headlong for the rocky shore; but at the same instant her engines were working astern for all they were worth, and fortunately succeeded in taking the way off her ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... years, you'll learn that the value of it lies chiefly in losing. You'll try like the devil to win, of course, but you'll learn not to wish for it. To win is nothing but an endless piling up of the right cards, beginning with the ace and ending with the king, and it only means more shuffling for next time. But every time you lose you will ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... supposed successor to the house and lands of Herst, receives even more attention; while Molly, except for her beauty, which outshines all that the room contains, is in no way noticeable. Though, when one holds the ace of trumps, one feels almost ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... in this lonely, silent gorge. There were some flat stones made into a rude seat under the balsam-tree, and a swift, yard-wide stream of clear water ran by. Observing something white against the tree, Joan went closer. A card, the ace of hearts, had been pinned to the bark by a small cluster of bullet-holes, every one of which touched the red heart, and one of them had obliterated it. Below the circle of bulletholes, scrawled in rude letters with a lead-pencil, was the name "Gulden." ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... picture brings a high price. Every great book has a large sale. That is what greatness in art means." Her own brand of talk was not in conflict with what she would have called her then creed. She never said a thing was very black. She never said it was as black as the ace of spades. She always said it was as black as the proverbial ace of spades. Once I ventured to insinuate that perhaps it would be more nobly new to say "as black as the proverbial ace of proverbial spades," but the suggestion ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... married early—for love, and the issue was disastrous. Above her right temple, just at the roots of the hair, a scar was discoverable; it was the memento of an occasion on which her husband aimed a blow at her with a mantelpiece ornament, and came within an ace of murder. Intimates of the household said that the provocation was great—that Mrs. Lessingham's gift of sarcasm had that morning displayed itself much too brilliantly. Still, the missile was an extreme ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... on board the Liffy frigate, which, by a combination of circumstances, is now lying in Cork Harbour,—fortunate for us, but which might have proved disastrous to her gallant officers and crew, for she was dismasted in a gale, and was within an ace of being driven on shore. But a miss is as good as a mile; and when under jury-masts she scraped clear of the rocks, and got into port in safety. Here my letter, after wandering about for many a day, found ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... something droll." Morcerf entered, and in place of the usual target, he saw some playing-cards fixed against the wall. At a distance Albert thought it was a complete suit, for he counted from the ace to the ten. "Ah, ha," said Albert, "I see you were preparing for ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to much, For old Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it back to touch; And the whole first flight led off with the right as The Saint took up the pace, And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it there with an ace. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... my excellent model husband, if no one got drunk, or gambled, or smoked, or hunted, in a word if we had neither vices, passions, nor maladies in France, the State would be within an ace of bankruptcy; for it seems that the capital of our national income consists of popular corruptions, as our commerce is kept alive by national luxury. If you cared to look a little closer into the matter you would ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... France and Switzerland, during his last Cambridge vacation; then, in November of 1791, he crossed to France, ostensibly to learn the language, made the acquaintance of revolutionaries, sympathized with them vehemently, and was within an ace of throwing in his lot with the Brissotins, to give them the steady direction that they needed. When it came to this his relatives cut off his supplies, and he was obliged to return to London toward the close of 1792. But still ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... sighs, as with thumbs in his waistcoat pocket he seems to signify that the end of such torment is not yet even nigh at hand! Vain is the hope, if hope there be, to disturb that meagre doctor. With care precise he places every card, weighs well the value of each mighty ace, each guarded king, and comfort-giving queen; speculates on knave and ten, counts all his suits, and sets his price upon the whole. At length a card is led, and quick three others fall upon the board. The little ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... not ignorant of the fact that for some time past, Lucien Granet had been manoeuvring for his appointment to any office whatever, the most important obtainable. He was within an ace of becoming a member of the last Ministerial Coalition. He might have been Vaudrey's colleague instead of his rival. Sulpice was as glad to have him as an opponent in the Chamber as a colleague in the ministerial council. He was, however, not an adversary to be trifled with. Granet ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... they rushed on, the bows were within an ace of diving into some wave, and the keel must often have shown, but by a dexterous turn of the tiller Kenneth avoided the danger just at the nick of time, and nothing worse happened than the leaping ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... who does not personally know what a run of bad luck is judge another. What color is a lemon? Why, it is lemon-colored, to be sure. And behold, fortune produces you a lemon black as the ace of spades. When fortune goes against you, you cannot be right. The favorite falls down; the great jockey uses bad judgment for the first time in his life; the foot-ball team that ought to win is overtrained; the yacht carries away her bowsprit; your four kings are brought face to face, after ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... noticed there before. It was about the size of a wafer when she first observed it, but it speedily grew as large as the palm of her hand, and then she could perceive that it was red. The oblong white ceiling, with this scarlet blot in the midst, had the appearance of a gigantic ace of hearts. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... deliberately forced on the war. They knew perfectly well that when they put up a German Prince as candidate for the throne of Spain it would bring on a war with France. Why, we ourselves were within an ace of going to war with France when Guizot brought about the Spanish marriage, although it was comparatively of slight importance to us that Spain and France should be united. But to the French this thing was an absolutely vital question, for with Germany and Spain ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... captain was still playing cards, and whether he was winning or losing, the old historians do not tell us, but very suddenly a newcomer took a hand in the game. This was Peter the Great, and he played the ace of trumps. With a great pistol in his hand, he called upon the Spanish captain to surrender. That noble commander glanced around. There was a savage pirate holding a pistol at the head of each of the officers at the table. He threw up his cards. The ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... did not wait for a second hint, but shoved the lever over so hard that the wheels spun and the whole train came within an ace of bucking off the track. And before the caboose had passed us Ayisha was alongside Grim abusing him for not having broken the locks ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... far. This transgression of a lower law, which was no longer of the stature of mankind, had been preparing for a very long time; but it was within an ace of being hideously punished. It succeeded only by the aid of a part of those who formerly swelled the great wave which they are to-day resisting by our side, as though something in the history of the world or the plans of destiny had altered, or rather as though we ourselves had at last succeeded ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... an ace of shooting," said Joe, "before I thought of what you had said. I pulled the trigger with all my might before I remembered that you said I musn't shoot till you told me, but as good luck would have it, my musket wasn't cocked." Boone went to each of the other loopholes, and after ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... arranged that they should meet Spennie at Paddington station. Accompanied by Spike, who came within an ace of looking almost respectable in new blue serge, Jimmy arrived at Paddington with a quarter of an hour to spare. Nearly all London seemed to be at the station, with the exception of Spennie. Of that light-haired and hearted youth there were no ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... opposite direction. Lord De Roos, long suspected of cheating at cards, would never have been convicted but for the resolution of an adversary, who, pinning his hand to the table with a fork, said to him blandly, "My Lord, if the ace of spades is not under your Lordship's hand, why, then, I beg your pardon!" It seems to us that a timely treatment of Governor Letcher in the same energetic way would have saved the disasters of Harper's Ferry and Norfolk,—for disasters they were, though six months of temporizing had so ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... exercised upon them. Among the most beautiful of such cards we take the set designed and engraved by Virgil Solis, the celebrated Nuremberg artist and engraver, in which the suit signs are Lions, Peacocks, Monkeys, and Parroquets. In Fig. 7 we have the Ace of Peacocks. The aces are lettered with the distinctive suit-titles of the German cards, viz., "Grun," "Eicheln," "Schellen," and "Herzen." The pack consists of fifty-two, divided into four suits of thirteen cards each; the date of these cards is between ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... together. In playing at cross and pile, the description of cases concerned are throws, and the probability of cross is one-half, because if we throw often enough cross is thrown about once in every two throws. In the cast of a die, the probability of ace is one-sixth; not simply because there are six possible throws, of which ace is one, and because we do not know any reason why one should turn up rather than another—though I have admitted the validity of this ground in default of a better—but because we do actually know, either ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... seconds; in truth, he had been wholly unprepared for the event; for it is a singular fact, that before the public, or rather the booksellers, had given their decision, he no more knew whether he had written well or ill, than whether a die thrown out of a box was to turn up a size or an ace. However, he instantly resumed his spirits, and expressed his wonder rather that his poetical popularity should have lasted so long, than that it should have now at last given way. At length he said, with ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the General, his face as black as the ace of spades, (which, by the way, is blue.) "I might go to Nova Zembla for a quiet smoke, and some sneaking politician would crawl out from the ice with a petition. I went fishing in Pennsylvania, and I found twenty of those fellows ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... thinking of Maria Dolores? revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as his eye rested on the shimmer at the valley's end which he knew to be the lake, lifted up his hand and clapped his brow. "By Jove," he muttered, "if I wasn't within an ace of clean forgetting!" The sight of the lake had fortunately put him in mind that he was engaged to-day to lunch with Lady Blanchemain ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... Donnegan was jarred, and he came within an ace of opening his mind to her, of pouring out the truth about Lou Macon. Love is a talking madness in all men and he came within an ace ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... beyond seeing fair play. Madam Esmond has helped me many a time, tended my poor wife in her lying-in, and doctored our Betty in the fever. You ain't a-going to be very hard with them poor boys? Though I seen 'em both shoot: the fair one hunts well, as you know, but the old one's a wonder at an ace of spades." ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 'what's this?' and they looked at it, and it was a book of Hoyle's games instead of a hymn book. Gosh, wasn't the minister mad! He had started to read a hymn and he quit after he read two lines where it said, 'In a game of four-handed euchre, never trump your partner's ace, but rely on the ace to take the trick on suit.' Pa was trying to explain how the book came to be there, when the minister and the deacons started out, and then I poured the two quart tin pail full of soft soap on the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... to marry is a Custom I' the world; for look you Brother, Wou'd any man stand plucking for the Ace of Harts, With one pack of Cards all dayes ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... entrusted with a number of especially dangerous missions, and had met with considerable success in putting these through. Like most other ambitious young fliers, they hoped soon to merit the title of "ace," when they could point to at least six proven victories over rival pilots, with that number of planes sent ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... strategy. She flew up and a yard away, then returned to the attack. She flew about in swift circles over his head, preparatory to darting in again. But Eurypelma was ready. As she swooped viciously down, he lunged up and forward with a half-leap, half-forward fall, and came within an ace of striking the trailing blue-black abdomen with his reaching fangs. Indeed it seemed to Mary and me as if they really grazed the metallic body. But evidently they had not pierced the smooth armor. Nor had Pepsis in that breathless moment of close quarters ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... appearance presented by a central plate in the cuirass of the Pterichthys. It is of a lozenge form, and, occupying exactly such a place in the nether armature of the creature as that occupied by the lozenge shaped spot on the ace of diamonds, it comes in contact with four other plates that lie around it, and represent, so to speak, the white portions of the card. And Sir Philip now found, that instead of lying over, it lay under, the four contiguous plates: they overlapped it, instead ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... along the curve, then ahead down the steep mountainside. "We never could turn in this pla—ace, but it isn't possible to drive through. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... got us a big ace in th' hole—th' Range boys don't know as how I'm with Kitchell, not yet. That's how we took you so easy back to th' water hole. I jus' rode up to Jose—got that there Pima listenin' to me till Lutterfield sneaked up an' put him outta business. Lutterfield, he don't ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... shillings, which sure very large is; Yet that would not serve, but I must bear his charges; And yet for all that, rode astride on a beast, The worst that e'er went on three legs, I protest: It certainly was the most ugly of jades, His hips and his rump made a right ace of spades; His sides were two ladders, well spur-galled withal; His neck was a helve, and his head was a mall; For his colour, my pains and your trouble I'll spare, For the creature was wholly denuded of hair; And, except ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... speech. This latter is a real soldier whose life is conducted in every particular on the lines laid down in military text-books. He asks himself always, "Is it soldierly?" and never "Is it common-sense?" He is at present in trouble with his superior officer for having frozen on to his ace of trumps long after he should have parted with it. But those text-books say, "Keep your best forces in reserve," and so the little trumps must needs be put in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... or a Harrison,' he says. 'I may've read it in th' Bible, though I think I saw it in a scand'lous book me frind Rhodes left in his bedroom las' time he called on me, that ye shud niver discard an ace to dhraw to a flush,' he says. 'I deplore th' language but th' sintimint is sound,' he says. 'An' I believe ye'er intintions to presarve peace ar-re honest, but I don't like to see ye pullin' off ye'er coat an' here goes f'r throuble while ye have ye'er arms in ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... always boasted that honesty was the best policy and that he was invariably willing to put his cards on the table. The Millionaire had once professed himself likely to be satisfied if the Iron King would only remove the fifth ace from his sleeve, and a certain coolness between the two men resulted. In general, however, he had the reputation ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... understood at last what Destiny had always been trying to tell him—that love and happiness were not for him. He was consecrate to great causes: His Will, entangled with that of others, grew feeble, fruitless. Women were truly enfants du diable. He had been within an ace of abandoning his historical mission. Now he would arise, strong, sublime: a mighty weapon forged by the gods, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... upon it, Phil, if he knows how to watch for it; but there are so many men who get tired and go to sleep before their chances come to them. I've wasted a good deal of time, and a good deal of labour; but the ace of trumps is in the pack, and it must turn up sooner ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... land short of the service line, it is obviously not possible to overpower your opponent for a service ace—as contrasted to the services in Squash Racquets or ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... his hostess. His last words were an invitation to me to get into the carriage and start with him. When I suavely declined, he told me that I should regret it. It comforts me to think that his prophecy, though more than once within an ace of the most ample fulfillment, yet in the end was set at naught by ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... the nest that the Reverend Orme built by the sweat of his brow to harbor his little family, which, at the beginning of this history, consisted of himself; Ann Leighton, his wife; and Mammy, black as the ace ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... of movement. pal'ace, a splendid dwelling, as of a king. par take', share; take part in. patch, small piece of any thing, as of ground. paus'es, short stops; rests. pave'ments, coverings for streets, of stone or solid materials. peb'bles, small, roundish ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... announced that this time a Kookwes—a burly, beastly villain, not two points better than his cousin the Chenoo—was coming to play at rough murder with them. And, verily, by this time the Micmac began to believe, without bating an ace on it, that all of these tall people were like the wolves, who, meeting with nobody else, bite one another. So they were bound and bundled up as before, and put to bed like dolls. And again they heard the horrible shout, the moderate shout, and the smaller shout, until ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... him through the thin layer of snow. Under these circumstances he took a good, firm hold of the sledge-lashing, or of a special strap that had been made with a view to these accidents. But familiarity breeds contempt, even with the most cautious, and some of the drivers were often within an ace of going ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... Turkish side have suggested that the naval operations were within an ace of succeeding, and that they only had to be pressed a little further to achieve their object. An examination of the books by Mr. Morgenthau and others does not bear this out. The Turks imagined that our fleet had been beaten off by gun-fire on the 18th, and they appear to have ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... spake an elder mon, That held the Spade its Ace— "God save the lad! Whence comes the licht ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... life. We see that the rule has been that everywhere the lower forms of life precede the higher. In the plant world flowerless plants precede the flowering ones. The coal we burn to-day is mainly the remains of the wonderful growth of the flowerless vegetation of the Paleozoic Ace. When flowering plants appear, it is the lower ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... backed in, and, seizing the right moment, the men jumped on to the rock just as the water was only ankle-deep, had a good search round, and came back, to be picked up again safely, though the boat was within an ace of being capsized. ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... happened to one of the soldiers.... He called ace of diamonds, lost his reckoning and dropped his cards. He started and laughed ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... steed along the coast. She proved a very "wicked" animal, and a few yards prancing and capering made me heartily wish that I was safely on terra firma. Suddenly a volley was fired, and as suddenly the horse gave such a lurch that I was within an ace of being pitched where I wanted to get—though not quite so precipitately. Volley after volley was fired, and I lost all command over the snorting steed, which was flitting along at the rate of so many miles an hour. Had it not been for a heavy guard-cloak which I was wearing, and which by ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... venture had proved successful beyond hope. Artistic and critical London had hailed him as a newcomer of promise, amounting to genius: and Lilamani Sinclair, daughter of Rajputs, had only escaped becoming the craze of the moment by her precipitate withdrawal to Antibes, where she had come within an ace of losing all, largely through the malign influence of Jane—her evil genius during those wonderful, difficult, early ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... brother; but my efforts were paralysed by the feeling that I did not know what I had to combat, that some evil influence was at work on him which continually evaded my grasp. Once or twice it seemed as though he were within an ace of telling me all; once or twice, I believe, he had definitely made up his mind to do so; but then the mood changed, or more probably ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... Peggy's turn to be blindfolded, and a vigorous "Colin Maillard" she made, flying hither and thither, and coming within an ace of catching Gerald himself, who was rarely caught. Finally she seized a flying pigtail belonging to Kitty; and so the merry game went on till all were out of ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... kraal. He got food at a hut, and set off at once up the wooded hill above it, which is a promontory of the plateau. By this time he must have been weary, or he would not have blundered as he did right into a post of the farmers. He was within an ace of capture, and to save himself was forced back from the scarp. He seems, to judge from reports, to have gone a little way south in the thicker timber, and then to have turned north again in the direction of Blaauwildebeestefontein. After that his movements ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... a big proposition to offer you. One that will beat Mascola's like an ace beats a deuce. Because this one ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... down and taken his place at the oars, Broad grumbled: "The idea of calling me 'Lucky'! It ain't in the cards." He spat on his hands and settled himself in his seat, then cried, "Well, lead your ace!" ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... "The ace reminded him of the one God; the deuce of the Father and Son; the tray of the Trinity; the four spot of the four evangelists—Matthew, Luke, Mark and John; the five spot of the five wise and the five foolish virgins; ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... critical London had hailed him as a newcomer of promise, amounting to genius: and Lilamani Sinclair, daughter of Rajputs, had only escaped becoming the craze of the moment by her precipitate withdrawal to Antibes, where she had come within an ace of losing all, largely through the malign influence of Jane—her evil genius during those wonderful, difficult, early months ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... show myself less of a sportsman than you are; but I think I've the option of demanding a longer range. Move the mat back twenty-five yards and put up an ace of spades; it's the plainest. Three shots each should ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... of the Witheringtons! what am I, an old bachelor, to do with a baby, and a wet-nurse as black as the ace of spades, and another black fellow in the bargain? Send him back again! yes, that's best? but the child—woke every morning at five o'clock with its squalling—obliged to kiss it three times a day—pleasant!—and then that nigger of ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... camel patrols we sent out reported signs of camps but no sight of the enemy. As a consequence of these rumors our sentries were very nervous, and we scouts ran considerable risk returning to our lines before daylight. I was very nearly shot on several occasions, and once was within an ace of firing on one of my best pals. I saw a figure in the dark and, sneaking up to it, called out: "Put up your hands!" He did so, but then foolishly dropped them again. If he had not called out, "Who the hell are you?" at the same moment, ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... with much difficulty on to the rock, and dangling over from it, seized the skirt of the scrivener's gown and pulled him up, for he was still submerged beneath the surface. He had drunk his bellyful of water, and was within an ace of being drowned. I then, beholding him out of danger, congratulated the man upon my having been the means of rescuing his life. The fellow to this answered me in French, that I had done nothing; the important things to save were his writings, worth many scores of crowns; ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... It only shows that women have no particular monopoly in the realms of diplomacy and finesse; in fact, if a man really chooses to put his mind to such matters, he can make it no trumps and win out behind a bum ace and ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... queen, sir, said Mr. Perry, can do no wrong, you know. So there are two that must be good out of four; and the ace seems too plain a ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... gained his intimate knowledge of Guerre's life partly from Guerre himself, whom he had known slightly in the army, and partly from several common acquaintances. With this slender outfit of material he came within an ace of effecting his design, thanks to an exceptionally tenacious and ready memory."—Extract from notice in "New York Daily Sun," of "The Travelling Law School." D. Lothrop ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... his study, or laboratory, with a large volume, in German print, before him. He was a short, fat man, with a dark, square face, rendered more dark by a black velvet cap. He had a little, knobbed nose, not unlike the ace of spades, with a pair of spectacles gleaming on each side of his dusky countenance, like ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Laurie saw, were not just the result of these inner powers.... Look here. When one person projects his thought to another it arrives generally like a very faint phantom of the thing he's thinking about. If I'm thinking of the ace of hearts, you see a white rectangle with a red spot in the middle. See? Well, multiply all that a hundred times, and one can just see how it might be possible that the thought of ... of Mr. Vincent and Laurie together might produce ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... in the depths of Valerie's heart, and still believed himself the victim of some practical joke. As they crossed the Pont Royal, life seemed to him so blank, so utterly a void, and so out of joint from his financial difficulties, that he was within an ace of yielding to the evil prompting that bid him fling Crevel into the river and throw himself ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of the World, was the very Reverse of Renouncing it, if Words had any Signification at all? Here lies the Difficulty; and here is the true Cause of the Quarrel, and all the Spite and Invectives against The Fable of the Bees and its Author. My Adversaries will not be stinted, or abate an Ace of the wordly Enjoyments they can purchase, because the whole Earth was made for Man; Libertines say the same of Women, and with equal Justice; yet relying on this pitiful Reason, they will eat and drink as deliciously as they can: No Pleasure is denied them, forsooth, that is used with Moderation; ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... the money is as good as in Carnaby's pocket already, not to mention Chichester's—damn him! As I told you in my letter, the affair has gone the round of the clubs,—every one is laughing at the 'Galloping Countryman,' as they call you. Jerningham came within an ace of fighting Tufton Green of the Guards about it, but the Marquis is deuced knowing with the barkers, and Tufton, very wisely, thought better of it. Still, I'm ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... on the wrist that held the bottle. He shook it off angrily, and began to pour. Grim, over the way, looked anxious. It was up to me to play this hand, so I led my ace of trumps. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... and fiercer day by day, and Mr. Kruger's threat to "stagger humanity" was by some declared to be within an ace of being fulfilled. The Boer is inherently as tough as the Briton, and as obstinate: he was now well equipped for warfare, well led, and the chances of a terrific and bloody struggle seemed hourly to become more ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... reputation, went out with Sir Kit as his second, and carried his message next day to the last of his adversaries: I never saw him in such fine spirits as that day he went out—sure enough he was within ames-ace of getting quit handsomely of all his enemies; but unluckily, after hitting the toothpick out of his adversary's finger and thumb, he received a ball in a vital part, and was brought home, in little better than an hour after the affair, ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... Quilp, 'I've got him here. Such a clerk for you, Brass, such a prize, such an ace of trumps. Be quick and open the door, or if there's another lawyer near and he should happen to look out of window, he'll snap him up before ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... pro and con," he offered, "it do interfere with their game a lot. But I lay this to the fact that they all fancy they're going to be reprieved and they keep waiting and listening for an announcement which will save them from the gallows. I've known some of them to lead a deuce thinking it was an ace and vice versa. But at that I can fully recommend a good, sociable game of cards as the best way for a doomed man to pass the few hours before the arrival of ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... models; and Chantrey at once set about imitating both, studying with great industry and energy. All his spare hours were devoted to drawing, modelling, and self-improvement, and he often carried his labours far into the night. Before his apprenticeship was out—at the ace of twenty-one—he paid over to his master the whole wealth which he was able to muster—a sum of 50l.—to cancel his indentures, determined to devote himself to the career of an artist. He then made the best of his way to London, and with characteristic good sense, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... anny pollytical ambition I'd rather be a Grant or a Garfield thin a Cleveland or a Harrison,' he says. 'I may've read it in th' Bible, though I think I saw it in a scand'lous book me frind Rhodes left in his bedroom las' time he called on me, that ye shud niver discard an ace to dhraw to a flush,' he says. 'I deplore th' language but th' sintimint is sound,' he says. 'An' I believe ye'er intintions to presarve peace ar-re honest, but I don't like to see ye pullin' off ye'er coat an' here goes f'r throuble while ye have ye'er ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... it like I had an ace full, can't I? Anybody can play poker when he's got a mitt full of big ones. Show me the man that can make two pair back an all-blue hand off ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... are Riviera towns all within a few miles of each other. People of the same origin have three political allegiances. In half an hour your automobile will traverse the territories of three nations. Italians and French fight under different flags and were within an ace of being lined against each other in the war. Monegasques do not fight at all. Taxes and tariff boundaries, schools and military obligations, make the differences between the three peoples. Put them all under the same dispensation and where ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... I'll make it seven thousand each," Skinski chortled. "You two guys put up your last dollar on me, and you didn't know whether I was an ace or a polish. I like you both, for you brought me good luck. Tear up the contract and take $7,000 apiece, ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... preserve his independence. Since then, Armenia has more than once challenged fortune, but always with the same result; it fared no better under Tigranes in the Roman epoch, than under Sharduris in the time of the Assyrians; it has been within an ace of attaining the goal of its ambitions, then at the last moment its strength has failed, and it has been forced to retire worsted from the struggle. Its position prevented it from exercising very wide influence; hidden away in a corner of Asia at the meeting-point ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Surville was overtaken by a frightful tempest, which brought him within an ace of destruction, but his sailors had such confidence in his nautical ability that they felt no anxiety, and obeyed his orders with a sang froid of which, unfortunately, the Maoris were ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... have given you ocular demonstration of the fact that I can put a bullet through the ace on a card five times running at thirty-five paces," he said, "that won't take away your appetite, I suppose? You look to me to be inclined to be a trifle quarrelsome this morning, and as if you would rush on your death like ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... confidence in the correctness of their chart that they determined to enter it. Instead of the port, we came to the white caps, dashing against the rocks almost mountains high, and we came within an ace of being dashed to pieces against them. If the engineer had not reversed the movement of the engine the instant he did, we would have been wrecked. The captain was now completely befogged. In a short ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... stood still and refused to move another foot; and then we played our ace of trumps. Near by, twenty laborers were working. Calling all hands, they took hold of that outstretched rope, and heading straight for the new Elephant House started a new tug of war. Every "heave-ho" of that hilarious company meant ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... rarely encountered even off such a coast—a violent north-easterly hurricane—still known in Algiers as "Charles's gale"—such as few vessels cared to ride off a lee shore. The immense flotilla in the bay was within an ace of total destruction. Anchors and cables were powerless to hold the crowded, jostling ships. One after the other they broke loose, and keeled over to the tempest till their decks were drowned in the seas. Planks gaped; ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... ball must land short of the service line, it is obviously not possible to overpower your opponent for a service ace—as contrasted to the services in ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... ignorant of the fact that for some time past, Lucien Granet had been manoeuvring for his appointment to any office whatever, the most important obtainable. He was within an ace of becoming a member of the last Ministerial Coalition. He might have been Vaudrey's colleague instead of his rival. Sulpice was as glad to have him as an opponent in the Chamber as a colleague in the ministerial council. He was, however, not an adversary to be trifled with. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... paralyzed all growth and development in this country for twenty years if he had thought it 'nasty,'" said Job. "Foreigners can't be too particular how they express their opinions about us. Over and over again we have come within an ace of putting up the shutters and confessing that it was no use pretending that we could go on independently having a country of our own, with distinct institutions, peculiarities, customs, manners, and even productions. It would be so much better and easier to turn ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... thoroughly oriental type of Issachar, and it is within an ace of being a grand impersonation. What that ace exactly is, it is somewhat difficult to say, but what is wanting is wanting in his great scene with his daughter. If the dramatist had given him such another final chance as I have already ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... known! By absence who hath chilled his love, His hate by slander, and who spends Existence without wife or friends, Whom jealous transport cannot move, And who the rent-roll of his race Ne'er trusted to the treacherous ace. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... she did the more resolutely as she had before refused to gratify her children with tarts for their supper from the same motive. And this self-denial she was very probably practising to save sixpence, while her husband was paying a debt of several guineas incurred by the ace of trumps being in the hands of ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... man between whom and the ace of spades there was considerable rivalry. He was of that deadly night shade. He was the darkest spot on the Dark Continent. After dark he blended in with the night so that you couldn't tell which was cook and ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... and Squire, in hot dispute, Within an ace of falling out, Are parted with a sudden fright Of strange alarm, and stranger sight; With which adventuring to stickle, They're sent away in ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... of etiquette at a card-party is to be punctual, that the tables may be filled up in good season. The second rule is to keep good-natured, even if your partner fails to return your lead or trumps your ace. Some people make themselves very disagreeable over cards, and are avoided as partners. If unfortunate enough to be paired off with such a person, at least control your ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... nothing. She had an awful temper. She would throw a knife from the table at the waiting ladies, and if anything vexed her she would maybe work upon the floor. A thousand dresses she left after her. Very superstitious she was. Sure after her death they found a card, the ace of hearts, nailed to her chair under the seat. She thought she would never die while she had it there. And she bought a bracelet from an old woman out in Wales that was over a hundred years. It was superstition made her do that, and they found ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... fon' of it," responded the Creole. "I was making seve'al i'onies ad those fwen' of mine juz now. We was 'unning a 'ace. An' thass anotheh thing I am fon' of. I would 'ather 'un a 'ace than to wuck faw a livin'. Ha! ha! ha! I should thing so! Anybody would, in fact. But thass the way with me—always making some i'onies." He stopped with a sudden change of countenance, and resumed ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... his feet. "Never!" he cried. Madness seized him. Regardless of the fact that he had nothing like another thousand pounds left wherewith to repay Mrs. Errington if he lost, he shouted: "I will play again for it. Not ecarte. One cut of the cards. Ace lowest." ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... my Lord of LEICESTER?" she asked. "Wilt support a poor weak woman?" His Lordship, however, looked down his noble nose and said nothing for quite a long time. He found himself, to use a vulgar phrase, in the consomme. His hand contained the ace, king and six other spades, nothing to write home about in hearts or clubs, and one small diamond. To take from his partner the right to play the hand would be the act of a fool—the mere thought made him raise a hand to his neck as though to assure himself of its continuity. Even failure ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... Cordelia, a jet necklace for Aunt Patty, a prison-camp brooch for Helen. All afternoon he held them with tales of his adventures in the air, rolling up his sleeve to show them a scar on his arm, and bending his head down so they could see where a German ace had nicked a bit ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... cut cards. One of the Bergen County boys drew the black ace. "What do I know about ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... may be fried as chickens, or stewed in a pot with a little water. If you make a pie of rabbits or squirrels, they should be stewed first to make them tender, and then made in the same way as chicken pie. Rabbits ace very good cooked with chopped onions, in a pot with a little water, and thickening of milk and flour stirred in when they are nearly done. Squirrels ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... soul, Deacon Tubman, I don't know but that you are right!" answered the parson. "Sixty? I don't know as I am sixty." And he began to rub his own hands, and came within an ace of executing a wink ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... he was when I first knew him, when he was just hanging around Broadway, looking out for a chance to be allowed to slip a couple of interpolated numbers into any old show that came along. Yes. Put it in your diary, Mac, and write it on your cuff, George Bevan's all right. He's an ace." ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... says Zoe and turns over the trump which had been lying under the pack, wrong side up. "I'm going with forty, going with an ace of spades—a ten-spot, Mannechka, if you please. I'm through. Fifty-seven, eleven, sixty-eight. How ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... days and nights in studying the evidences of Christianity, but the ship was bare of any such books, and he never thought of turning to the most obvious of all, the Bible itself. His unbelief was shaken; it was within an ace of falling in pieces to the very foundation; or rather he began to suspect how foundationless it had been. It came at last to one point with him;—If there were a God, he would not have left the world without a revelation,—no ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... thin layer of snow. Under these circumstances he took a good, firm hold of the sledge-lashing, or of a special strap that had been made with a view to these accidents. But familiarity breeds contempt, even with the most cautious, and some of the drivers were often within an ace of going down ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... disastrous. Above her right temple, just at the roots of the hair, a scar was discoverable; it was the memento of an occasion on which her husband aimed a blow at her with a mantelpiece ornament, and came within an ace of murder. Intimates of the household said that the provocation was great—that Mrs. Lessingham's gift of sarcasm had that morning displayed itself much too brilliantly. Still, the missile was an extreme retort, and on the whole it could not be wondered at that husband and wife resolved ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... What's the matter? Oh...." the worried voice of the System's ace newscaster came in. ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... man that wouldn't give up a big slice to get him for a manager," he said. "He's in right, too. He's the ace!" ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... wipe it from yer sowl. It's a pity, too, that ye've died widout absolution from a praist, sich as I've tould ye off. Barrin' the brache of good fellieship, I could have placed yer own scalp wid the rest, as a p'ace-offering, to his Honour, the Missus and ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... purpose; thus chance circumstances sapped the foundations—But David rebelled as well. Why, then, was not David hung up by his hair? It was quite as long as Absalom's. Yes, David was within an ace of it, right up to his old age. But the innate strength in David was too great, his energy was always too powerful: it conquered the powers of rebellion. They could not drag him far away into passionate wanderings; they remained ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... iron in the ship. The government had been very shy of providing instruments of any kind for Confederate cruisers. Poor Ethan had traded off two compasses only the day before for whalebone spears and skin breeches, neither of which knew the north star from the ace of spades. And this thing proved of more importance than you will think; it really made me feel that the stuff in the books and the sermons about the mariners' ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... go with me, For him have I no care, And he shall bring you word again How that we do fare." Thus be these yeomen to London gone, As fast as they may hie, Till they came to the King's pal-ace, Where they ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... He was, indeed, 'Fairer than the sons of men,' [Footnote: Ps. xlv. 2.] and no sorrow was spared to him that belonged to what the Jews and Jewish Christians called 'the pangs of the Messiah.' It is true, crucifixion does not appear among Baha-'ullah's pains, but he was at any rate within an ace of martyrdom. This is what Baha-'ullah wrote at the end of his stay at Adrianople:—[Footnote: Browne, A Year among the Persians, ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... him for fear of the consequences. He is almost a madman in his outbursts of temper; and where Zuilika is concerned—— Perhaps you will understand, Mr. Cleek, when I tell you that once when he thought her husband had ill-used her he came within an ace of killing the man. There was bad blood between them always, even as boys, and, as men, it was bitterer than ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... against my wish," she said in a firm voice, "but I have been ordered to grant your request. Three, seven, ace, will win for you if played in succession, but only on these conditions: that you do not play more than one card in twenty-four-hours, and that you never play again during the rest of your life. I forgive you my death, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... said Fred, carelessly, as he proceeded to deal the cards for Casino. "There, you have an ace and little Casino right before you. ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... drop of power could ooze through in the opposite direction. Lord De Roos, long suspected of cheating at cards, would never have been convicted but for the resolution of an adversary, who, pinning his hand to the table with a fork, said to him blandly, "My Lord, if the ace of spades is not under your Lordship's hand, why, then, I beg your pardon!" It seems to us that a timely treatment of Governor Letcher in the same energetic way would have saved the disasters of Harper's Ferry and Norfolk,—for disasters they were, though six months of temporizing ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... theories and clevernesses; his premature man-of-the-worldness, on which he had prided himself on his travels, 'shrank like a thing ashamed' before this real sorrow. Pride, wounded honour, pity and respect tussled together daily in his heart; and now he was within an ace of throwing himself upon his father's mercy, and now of slipping forth at night and coming back no more to Naseby House. He suffered from the sight of his father, nay, even from the neighbourhood of this familiar valley, where every corner had its legend, and he was besieged with memories of childhood. ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lessened the risk of having the road pass out of the stockholders' control into a receiver's hands. Yet as bonds could have been sold more easily than stock, it increased the difficulty of finding the necessary capital. Even so, it came within an ace of succeeding. ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... least a week to show that you are not an infant, another was not to row, and the last was not to play cards all day and night. My brother's an odd kind of chap, the sort of man who doesn't know the ace of spades by sight, but it's as easy to shout as it is not to row. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... hotel in Tangier, a more pretentious establishment, owned by one Martin—surname unknown. Martin was a character. He was an unmitigated coloured gentleman, blubber-lipped and black as the ace of spades, with saffron-red streaks at the corners of his optics. He was a native of one of the West India Islands, I believe, but I will not be positive. Mahomet Lamarty pressed me to tell him in what English county Englishmen were born black, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... garden, from natural causes; yet life was a deep, deep river, death a blue sky, life was a house, death a wisp of hay, a flower, a tower, life and death were anything and everything, except this ordered insanity, where the king takes the queen, and the ace the king. Ah, no; there was beauty and adventure behind, such as the man at her feet had yearned for; there was hope this side of the grave; there were truer relationships beyond the limits that fetter us now. As a prisoner looks up and sees stars ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... pack himself in! It had a false bottom with a spring! One in hiding could escape that way!... Once closed on the person concealed within, the chair looked empty. A most ingenious hide-hole! Juve now knew the answer to the riddle of the bandit's disappearance. Within an ace of arrest, he had seized the chance offered by Juve's interchange of glances with the king, and with an acrobat's agility had slipped inside this chair! No sooner was the chair abandoned in the gallery than de Naarboveck-Fantomas had slipped out and away. When leaving his magnificent house ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... generous towards my parents; and a capital way it is to encourage liberality in children. I gave mamma a very neat brass thimble, and she gave me a half-guinea piece. Then I gave her a very pretty needle-book, which I made myself with an ace of spades from a new pack of cards we had, and I got Sally, our maid, to cover it with a bit of pink satin her mistress had given her; and I made the leaves of the book, which I vandyked very nicely, out of a piece of flannel I had had round my ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... customs of the neighborhood.—In one of these plates, an itinerant male fortune-teller is satisfying a young peasant as to the probability of her speedy marriage, by means of a pack of cards, from which he has turned up the king and queen and ace of hearts. In the other, a cunning woman is solving a question by a book and key. The poor girl's sweetheart is an absent soldier, and fears and doubts are naturally entertained for his safety. To unlock the mysteries of fate, the key is attached to the mass-book, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... has used his "ace in the hole"—had hurled the bowie knife hidden in a sheath sewn inside the back of his ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... he not to resuscitate a theme and make it immortal, because some botcher had tried his hand upon it before, and left it for stone-dead? Because he could not help throwing sizes, was he to avoid the dice which for others would only come up ames-ace? ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... came back with a long, stiff little birch, that, growing recklessly in the thin soil over a rock, had been willing to yield to the persuasion of a child and come up by the roots. And then, Margaret pushing her best, and Aladdin prying and grunting, the log was moved to within an ace of launching. Until now, for she was too young to understand about daring and unselfishness, Margaret had considered the log-launching as a game invented by Aladdin to while away the dreary time; but now she realized, from the look in ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... force. Reserving his fire to close quarters, its effect was fearful. But the Federals pushed forward; a school-house occupied as an advanced post was captured, and at this point Sedgwick was within an ace of breaking through. His second line, however, had not yet deployed, and a vigorous counterstroke, delivered by two brigades, drove back the whole of his leading division in great disorder. As night fell the Confederates, careful not to expose themselves to the Union ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... blood the virgin's cheek forsook, A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look; 90 She sees, and trembles at th' approaching ill, Just in the jaws of ruin, and Codille. And now (as oft in some distemper'd State) On one nice Trick depends the gen'ral fate. An Ace of Hearts steps forth: The King unseen 95 Lurk'd in her hand, and mourn'd his captive Queen: He springs to Vengeance with an eager pace, And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace. The nymph exulting fills with shouts the ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... perfect Nap is ace, king, queen, knave, and ten of the same suit, but as this combination of cards does not often occur in actual practice, it remains for the player to speculate on his chances with the cards ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... had wriggled herself through the thick hawthorns at the back of the fort, was within an ace of taking the flag; but, just as she had climbed up on the roof, the defender, whose face was completely hidden by his helmet, made a grab at her, and she was obliged to fly for ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... red at the insinuation. He was within an ace of seizing Lynch by the collar, and expelling him in a summary way from his premises, a feat which he was able to perform; and willing also, for he was sick of his client; but he thought of it a second ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... drawed!" rang out the voice of the masked youth. "Look—hyar they be! One is ther ace o' spades, an' ther other ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... summons, but instead of opening the gates seized a long boat-hook, and rushed towards our hero, calling upon him to mind the mill-stream, and pull his right-hand scull; notwithstanding which warning, Tom was within an ace of drifting past the entrance to the lock, in which case assuredly his boat, if not he, had never returned whole. However, the lock-keeper managed to catch the stern of his skiff with the boat-hook, and drag him back into the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... metropolis not only a special divan but with it a special slave, the Slave of the Bed.... "Dat fat feller" had one of the prisoners perform his corvee for him. "Dat fat feller" bought enough at the canteen twice every day to stock a transatlantic liner for seven voyages, and never ace with the prisoners. I will mention him again apropos the Mecca of respectability, the Great White Throne of purity, Three rings Three—alias Count Bragard, to whom I have long since ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... It happened that he was playing a game of poker in Leadville, with a notorious and unscrupulous gambler, and that at one time when there was a large amount of money on the table, this gambler deliberately displayed four aces, when Duncan held an ace which had been dealt to him in the first hand. Upon accusing the gambler of attempting to cheat him, that worthy drew a pistol and attempted to intimidate him. He was too quick for his opponent, however, and quick as a flash, he had fired upon him, and the man fell. Hastily ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... got 'is nut out o' that 'e was a sight to see! All his fine clothes—he dressed mighty blindin' those days—were spoiled everlastin'! 'Is hair was towsled and his face—what I could see of it—was whiter than the ace of lilies. 'E stared once at me, and looked away as if I didn't count; an' then there were shootin' pains chasin' one another from my bitten finger into my head, and it was Gopher to the dark. That's why I ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... movement had certainly been fostered, and probably originated, by wealthy German employers in Petrograd, Moscow and other industrial centres. They had hoped to frustrate the mobilization order, retard Russia's entry into the field, and possibly bring about civil strife. And they were within an ace of succeeding. On the very eve of hostilities reports reached Berlin and Vienna that the revolution was already beginning. But the declaration of war against Germany purified the air, absorbed the redundant energies of the people, and fused all classes and parties into ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... and urged that a priest should be in waiting to wed them so soon as he should have brought her out of the fortress. Upon that detail they were within an ace of quarrelling. Guidobaldo would not at first agree to such hasty nuptials; they were unfitting the dignity and the station of his niece, and if Gian Maria would wed her he must come to Urbino and let the ceremony be performed by a cardinal. Well was it then for Gian Maria that he ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... the aviator. "I have seen nearly two years' active service. I rank as an ace. I bear three wounds and have been cited several times. I have the Distinguished Service Cross. What more need ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... easy boss in a good many ways and I have still to run across a job that I'd swap mine for, the pay envelopes being fifty-fifty. But say, when it comes to usin' a private sec. free and careless he sure is an ace of aces. ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... electricity ran through us all. The card-players had thrown down their cards just as the plumber was about to trump an ace. The others had tossed aside their papers and laid down their cigarettes. The Turco—"Muley Hafid" he was called, because those were the only words of his any one could understand—who had been deploying imaginary troops, with the aid of matches, upon ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... and ask your pardon! And I make you my compliment upon my lord, and Mr. Will Esmond, his brother," says Harry's neighbour at the hazard-table. "The box is with me. Five's the main! Deuce Ace! my usual luck. Virtute mea me involvo!" and he ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that it is very agreeable to him not to see her pale, wretched-looking face again till morning.—Now, my son, pay attention, and you, Trude, do not presume to interrupt us again. Leberecht, play out my ace of hearts." ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... of beef, pork, mutton, and veal.[**] Beef and pork were ordered to be sold at a halfpenny a pound; mutton and veal at a halfpenny half a farthing, money of that age. The preamble of the statute says, that these four species of butcher's meat were the food of the poorer sort. This ace was afterwards repealed.[***] ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... repair in the time of the last Sir Thomas Assheton; for upon the south side are the arms of Ashton impaling Stayley. There is a tradition, that while the workmen were one day amusing themselves at cards, a female unexpectedly presented herself. She asked them to turn up an ace, promising, in case of compliance, that she would build several yards of the steeple; upon which they fortunately turned up the ace of spades. This tale may owe its origin to the following circumstances:—Upon the marriage of Sir Thomas Assheton with the daughter ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... is absurd!" protested Estermen. "There is no other man but you capable of dealing tactfully and diplomatically with my country. Your blundering predecessors brought us twice within an ace of war. If the man takes your place to whom rumor has already given it, I give Europe six weeks' peace—no more. We are a sensitive nation, as you know. You learned how to humor us. No one before you tried. You kept your alliance ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to bed, place under your pillow a prayer-book open at the part of the matrimonial service 'with this ring I thee wed'; place on it a key, a ring, a flower, and a sprig of willow, a small heart-cake, a crust of bread, and the following cards:—the ten of clubs, nine of hearts, ace of spades, and the ace of diamonds. Wrap all these in a thin handkerchief of gauze or muslin, and on getting into bed, cross your hands, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... I'll get out. Not because I'm afraid to stay, but because there's no use. She's got no eyes for me. I'm a plain impossibility so far as she's concerned. It's Vos Engo—damn little rat! Old Dangloss came within an ace of speaking of her as 'her Highness.' That's enough for me. That means she's a princess. It's all very nice in novels, but in real life men don't go about picking up any princess they happen to like. No, sir! I might just as well ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... is an American 'ace,' with eleven air victories officially to his credit. He was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and the American Distinguished Service Medal for extraordinary heroism on August 9, 1918, when he went to the assistance of a French ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... to recall what I had heard of cannibals. I was within an ace of calling for help. But the mere fact that he was a man, however wild, had somewhat reassured me, and my fear of Silver began to revive in proportion. I stood still, therefore, and cast about for ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in hearts; the hearts all lay between himself and Sylvie; the colonel won her ace, though it was protected by five ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... his sword and said, "In the King's name!" Behind the line a man in citizen clothes hovered uncertainly, and dim as the light was I made him out only too plainly. It was the Government spy, Weir. My goose was cooked. I had played for life's highest stake, and thrown amb's ace. It ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... keard afore, bless her," whispered Euchre Buck, giving his neighbor Dan a nudge in the ribs to call attention to this wonderful piece of girlish innocence. "Square a deal es George Washington mought ha' made." Then, as the greasy pasteboards were turned up, and his neighbour was handed the ace of clubs, he raised his voice and yelled out, "Bully for you, Dan! Cut away an' clar ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... with a unified purpose after their reconciliation conducted vigorously the wars which the latter waged, and conquered in all of them. It was at this time that in the siege of Corioli they came within an ace of being driven from their camp, but a patrician, Gnaeus Marcius, showed his prowess and repelled the assailants. For this he received various tokens of renown and was given the title of Coriolanus from ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... not tell you, Sir, who have so often felt it, that a Principle of strong Compassion transports a generous Mind sometimes beyond what is strictly right,—the Parson was within an Ace of being an honourable Example of this very Crime;—for no sooner did the distinct Words— Petticoat—poor Wife—warm—Winter strike upon his Ear, but his Heart warmed,—and, before Trim had well got to the End of his Petition, (being a Gentleman of a frank and open Temper) he told him he was welcome ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... I nor no man else saw him die. And we know that these Spanish tombs do sometimes open and give up the dead. I'll throw for size-ace." ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... put down, or that it was hopeless from the first, remember that I, who was concerned in it, say confidently that it really trembled in the balance, and that this handful of resolute peasants with their pikes and their scythes were within an ace of altering the whole course of English history. The ferocity of the Privy Council, after the rebellion was quelled, arose from their knowledge of how very close it had been ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I wasn't going to deny it. If these were Rakhal's enemies, my real identity should be kept as an ace in reserve which might—just might—get me out alive again. If they were his friends ... well, I could only hope that no one who knew him well by sight would walk in ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Coldstream country in a bitter temper, for the job was far beneath his professional dignity as he looked at it, and he knew that in the meantime others would get better work to which he considered himself entitled. Indeed, he had come within an ace of resigning, and had insisted, as a condition, on a definite promise of something very good in the ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... my heart is high. This is a great day. The Stars and Stripes ace flying at my gate, and they are flying over all France. What is more they will soon be flying—if they are not already—over Westminster, for the first time in history. The mighty, unruly child, who never could quite forgive the parent it defied, ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... are in is more than half mine. I am chief owner. I'll stake me share of the ship on the next game against all that I have lost.' 'Done!' said I, and shuffled, cut, and dealt. He went four on three highest trumps, and an ace, and I held four small trumps. 'It's a bad job for my creditors,' he said, as he threw his hand down. Ged! I started on that vyage a poor captain, and I came into port very fairly well off, and sailing in me own ship, too! ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... needed three points to go out, and Grief needed four. "Cards" alone would put Deacon out, and he played for "cards". He no longer muttered or cursed, and played his best game of the evening. Incidentally he gathered in the two black aces and the ace ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... difference. Why, not long ago, I yarned for half an hour with a major of the R.E., as I thought—didn't tell him much, luckily, but we hadn't parted five minutes when he was 'wanted,' and there was no end of a hunt, but he managed to get clear, and a genuine English major was within an ace of being shot in mistake for him if he hadn't been recognised by one ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... wait for a second hint, but shoved the lever over so hard that the wheels spun and the whole train came within an ace of bucking off the track. And before the caboose had passed us Ayisha was alongside Grim abusing him for not having broken the ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... be jealous. Jos Curtenty was old enough to be his grandfather, and had been a recognised "card" and "character" since before Denry's birth. But Denry, though so young, had made immense progress as a card, and had, perhaps justifiably, come to consider himself as the premier card, the very ace, of the town. He felt that some reply was needed to Curtenty's geese, and the mule was his reply. It served excellently. People were soon asking each other whether they had heard that Denry Machin's "latest" was ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... was made, and the letter was found, very small and very faint, it is true, but still legible, upon the ace square ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... combination of circumstances, is now lying in Cork Harbour,—fortunate for us, but which might have proved disastrous to her gallant officers and crew, for she was dismasted in a gale, and was within an ace of being driven on shore. But a miss is as good as a mile; and when under jury-masts she scraped clear of the rocks, and got into port in safety. Here my letter, after wandering about for many a day, found him, and he has lost no time in replying to ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... paucity; fewness &c (small number) 103; meanness, insignificance (unimportance) 643; mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight[obs3], whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, cast; grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau[obs3], screed, smack, tinge, tincture; inch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... frightful conspiracy has been planned by the celebrated Arnold: he sold to the English the fort of West Point, which was under his command, and, consequently, the whole navigation of the river: the plot was within an ace of succeeding, and quite as many chances combined together to discover it as in that affair of the Alliance, which I have so often described to you.[3] After our journey to Hartford, General Washington passed by West Point, which was not on his road; but he was desirous ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... they didn't expect Nansal to swallow the same bait a second time. Sator had another ace up ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... cannot gallop after a lady without ceremony, and command her to stand and deliver as if he were a highwayman. Yet I was within an ace of doing it—within an ace. I have beheld her! I had best ride ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... beyond me, while the golden hours glide swiftly away, and before many days have passed our visit with all its risks must have an end. I shiver sometimes, boy, as I stand close by and listen to our master's careless, light-hearted speech. Again and again he has been within an ace of betraying who he is, and at any moment some of the sharper-witted of the courtiers by whom we are surrounded may grasp the truth, and then, Denis, as Francis has said, we are in the lion's den and ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... are to sections, unless the page (p.) is given. The following abbreviations are used: ace. accusative; adj. adjective; adv. adverb; expr. expressed; ftn. footnote; inf. infinitive; intrans. intransitive; prep. preposition; trans. transitive. For Esperanto words whose use or meaning is specially explained, references are ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... says Primero is one of the most ancient games known to have been played in England, and he thus describes it:—"Each player had four cards dealt to him, the 7 was the highest card in point of number that he could avail himself of, which counted for 21; the 6 counted for 16, the 5 for 15, and the ace for the same; but the 2, the 3, and the 4 for their respective points only. The knave of hearts was commonly fixed upon for the quinola, which the player might make what card or suit he thought proper; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... waving elm boughs and a clear sky. He was aroused by a knock on his door, and, as he jumped out of bed, Big Abel, the Major's driver and confidential servant, came in with the warm water. He was a strong, finely-formed negro, black as the ace of spades (so the Major put it), and of ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... played out," he said, calmly. "One card remains in my hand, and I produce it. It is the Ace of Diamonds, and its title is The ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... not going to put me off with bones," said Roland, ringing the bell. "When a man's worked within an ace of his life, he must eat. Martha,"—when the maid ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... fits her too!" nodded Spike, warming to his theme. "Hermy's ace-high on the face and figure question! Why, there ain't a swell dame on Fift' Av'ner, nor nowheres else, got anything on Hermy as ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... die sooner or later. I was within an ace of death two months ago. The gallows wouldn't have been worse than ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... would have paralyzed all growth and development in this country for twenty years if he had thought it 'nasty,'" said Job. "Foreigners can't be too particular how they express their opinions about us. Over and over again we have come within an ace of putting up the shutters and confessing that it was no use pretending that we could go on independently having a country of our own, with distinct institutions, peculiarities, customs, manners, and even productions. It would be so much better and easier to turn ourselves over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... rather a mess of it," I equably remarked, "but, you see, Nannie had shown strength in diamonds, and I simply couldn't resist the finesse. So they made every one of their clubs. And I hadn't any business to take the chance of course at that stage, with the ace right in ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... more cable George was enabled to swing his boat close enough to the big craft to allow of Josh seizing hold; and while he thus held on clumsy Nick managed to crawl aboard, though he came within an ace of taking a bath, and would have done so, only that Herb ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... bound to put on flesh up here. To get thrown out of a canoe in the morning and to come within an ace of making a three hundred foot dive in the afternoon is just about enough excitement to make any one lose weight. I bet I lost five pounds in that minute and a half when Bob had me by the coat, and I was wondering whether ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... show you something most particular interesting! Heard of Gilderoy, that was hanged for forgery? Gad, my daughter's got a brooch with a lock of his hair in it, which he gave me himself—a client of mine; within an ace of getting him off—flaw in the indictment—found it out myself—did, by gad! Come along, and I'll get Dora to show it to you!" and, putting Titmouse's arm in his, and desirous of withdrawing him from Gammon, he led him up to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... matrimonial service 'with this ring I thee wed'; place on it a key, a ring, a flower, and a sprig of willow, a small heart-cake, a crust of bread, and the following cards:—the ten of clubs, nine of hearts, ace of spades, and the ace of diamonds. Wrap all these in a thin handkerchief of gauze or muslin, and on getting into bed, cross ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... could put 'em along faster, as it is—" His sentence remained unfinished, the sleigh bumped and lifted on to one runner. It was within an ace of overturning. There was no need to ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... games: I took notice of six that you had ten to one against you: Would any but a mad lady go out twice upon Manilio; Basto, and two small diamonds?(30) Then in that game of spades, you blundered when you had ten-ace; I never saw the like of you: and now you are in a huff because I tell you this. Well, here's two and eightpence ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... strength of purpose; thus chance circumstances sapped the foundations—But David rebelled as well. Why, then, was not David hung up by his hair? It was quite as long as Absalom's. Yes, David was within an ace of it, right up to his old age. But the innate strength in David was too great, his energy was always too powerful: it conquered the powers of rebellion. They could not drag him far away into passionate ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... shall go with me, For him have I no care, And he shall bring you word again How that we do fare." Thus be these yeomen to London gone, As fast as they may hie, Till they came to the King's pal-ace, Where ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... teach us a lesson, Roscorla," said the old general. "Gad! some of you West Indian fellows know the difference between a ten and an ace." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... or a Garfield thin a Cleveland or a Harrison,' he says. 'I may've read it in th' Bible, though I think I saw it in a scand'lous book me frind Rhodes left in his bedroom las' time he called on me, that ye shud niver discard an ace to dhraw to a flush,' he says. 'I deplore th' language but th' sintimint is sound,' he says. 'An' I believe ye'er intintions to presarve peace ar-re honest, but I don't like to see ye pullin' off ye'er coat an' here goes f'r throuble while ye have ye'er ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... and there was a general rush toward that row of lodges, and beyond them into the bushes and through the corral. It came within an ace of stampeding every pony there, and every trace of anything like a "trail" left by the feet of Two Knives and his warriors was quickly ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... and so far it seems beyond me, while the golden hours glide swiftly away, and before many days have passed our visit with all its risks must have an end. I shiver sometimes, boy, as I stand close by and listen to our master's careless, light-hearted speech. Again and again he has been within an ace of betraying who he is, and at any moment some of the sharper-witted of the courtiers by whom we are surrounded may grasp the truth, and then, Denis, as Francis has said, we are in the lion's den and ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... as you in commission sit, To rule the dairy next to Kit;[4] In each capacity I mean To sing your praise. And first as Dean: Envy must own, you understand your Precedence, and support your grandeur: Nor of your rank will bate an ace, Except to give Dean Daniel[5] place. In you such dignity appears, So suited to your state and years! With ladies what a strict decorum! With what devotion you adore 'em! Treat me with so much complaisance, As ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... pleased with this story, and said, "O Hercules, you have been within an ace of making me forget my hereditary hatred to Anytus for his behaviour to Socrates and philosophy,[116] since he was so mild and noble to his love." "Be it so," said my father, "Love also makes peevish ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... process was complete. Janet proposed a hand of bridge; Tim suggested poker, James voted for pinochle, and Martha wanted to toss a coin between canasta or gin rummy. They settled it by dealing a shuffled deck face upward until the ace of hearts landed in front of Janet, whereupon they played bridge until about eleven o'clock. It was interesting bridge; James and Martha had studied bridge columns and books for recreation; against them were aligned Tim and ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... deceased, saying "Khublei khie leit bam kwai sha iing u Blei ho" (good-bye, go and eat betel-nut in the house of god). When the body has been thoroughly burnt, the fire is extinguished with water, and the uncalcined bones are collected by the relatives in three trips. The collectors ace not allowed to turn back and pick up a bone which has been forgotten in any one of these trips. The bones thus collected are carefully wrapped in a piece of white cloth by the female relatives, and an old member of the family throws on the ground some powdered rice from a leaf, at the same ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... the party consisted of a gentleman and two old ladies. The gentleman (a plump, black-whiskered elderly Cupid, with a vast expanse of shirt-front like an immense white ace of hearts, and a rose in his button-hole) was standing on the hearth-rug in a graceful attitude, with one hand resting on his hip, and the other under his coat-tails. Of the two old ladies, who seemed as if expressly created by nature to serve as foils to one another, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... or an assembly of leagued powers may chart our course. Treaties of armed alliance can have no likelihood of American sanction, but we believe in respecting the rights of nations, in the value of conference and consultation, in the effectiveness of leaders of nations looking each other in the face ace before resorting to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... more ridiculous couple than their kind usually are. And, when the gentleman squeezed the lady, she laughed so foolishly that Archie Pennybet was within an ace of forgetting himself and heartily laughing too. It was worse still, when they began the pernicious practice of "rubbing noses." For the operation was so new and unexpected, and withal so congenial ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... started, was not so easily repressed. "Why, it was his lordship," he went on, scanning the judge still harder. "I do mind his vurry voice. It was 'im, no doubt about it. I've zeed a zight o' people, since I zeed 'im that day, but I do mind his voice, and I do mind his 'ands, and I do mind his ve-ace the zame as if it wur yesterday. Now I come to look, blessed ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... like I had an ace full, can't I? Anybody can play poker when he's got a mitt full of big ones. Show me the man that can make two pair back an all-blue hand off ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... shall furnish the explanations, not a line of them will she ever allow to be printed until she shall have approved it, accepted it, copyrighted it, cabbaged it. We may depend on that with a four-ace confidence. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it to one of the greatest, best and most learned of Divines [Rev. Joseph H. Twichell] and read it to him. He came within an ace of killing himself with laughter (for between you and me the thing was dreadfully funny. I don't often write anything that I laugh at myself, but I can hardly think of that thing without laughing). That old Divine said it was a piece of ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... spending, working all this time to give her pleasure, and this was his reward! She had been within an ace of letting him see the cruel ingratitude that was in her heart! 'What a selfish wretch I have been!' she thought; 'but I won't be—no, I won't! George shall not be snubbed, hurt, estranged from his family ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... and my heart is high. This is a great day. The Stars and Stripes ace flying at my gate, and they are flying over all France. What is more they will soon be flying—if they are not already—over Westminster, for the first time in history. The mighty, unruly child, who never ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... rolled it on the box beside him. It seemed a true and honest die, for it came up now an ace, now trey; now six, now deuce. He rolled it, rolled it, thinking of Hun Shanklin and Hun's long, ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Gods; not all the noise of Vulcan's hammers could silence the clamours of that outrageous whore his Goddess; nay, even Jupiter himself led such a life with a termagant wife, that once, they say, Juno out-scolded the noise of all his Thunders, and was within an ace of brawling him out of Heaven. But to return to ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Tantrum, enraged, had felled the old Doldrum with the nine of diamonds. Other Doldrums and Tantrums had joined in and the little cabin was soon filled with flying cards. Harstrum Doldrum, one of the younger Doldrums, lay stretched on the floor writhing in agony, the ace of hearts crammed down his throat. Jem Tantrum, standing in the doorway; ran through suit after suit, his face alight with fiendish hatred. Old Mappy Tantrum stood on the table wetting down the Doldrums ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... who can get closest to 21. You look at your cards. All face cards count for ten; ace counts for either 1 or 11 ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... poor wife in her lying-in, and doctored our Betty in the fever. You ain't a-going to be very hard with them poor boys? Though I seen 'em both shoot: the fair one hunts well, as you know, but the old one's a wonder at an ace of spades." ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heard. This den of ours opens on the river's edge, and, two days since, his Indians came within an ace of nabbing me. 'Twas just at dusk, and I made out to dodge them by doubling past ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... him with her finger. "Tis you they threaten! Your rascal and mine have laid their heads together and condemned you. But they reckoned without you and me. We make a PARTIE CARREE, Prince, in love and politics. They lead an ace, but we shall trump it. Come, partner, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... last words were an invitation to me to get into the carriage and start with him. When I suavely declined, he told me that I should regret it. It comforts me to think that his prophecy, though more than once within an ace of the most ample fulfillment, yet in the end was set at naught by the ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... Fanny, 'is she the sort of woman to say anything? Isn't it perfectly plain and clear that she has nothing to do at present but to hold herself upright, keep her aggravating gloves on, and go sweeping about? Say anything! If she had the ace of trumps in her hand at whist, she wouldn't say anything, child. It would come out when she ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... without my wishing it) how deliciously I canter'd away with it the first month, two up, two down, always upon my hanches, along the streets from my hotel to hers, at first once—then twice, then three times a day, till at length I was within an ace of setting up my hobby-horse in her stable for good and all. I might as well, considering how the enemies of the Lord have blasphemed thereupon. The last three weeks we were every hour upon the doleful ditty of parting—and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at Ship Island at noon and found about the most God forsaken, miserable hole, man ever got into. The sand was ankle deep everywhere. And such a lot of Negroes; shiftless, lazy dogs, black as the ace of spades and twice as natural. But the little "nigs" kill me outright, they looking so much like a lot of monkeys, I know of nothing so comical. I could sit half the morning watching them ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... jump while we was pullin' out of dock," said the sailor. "Just managed to get his feet on the gangplank—came within an ace ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... come if he only sits long enough. Every man has his chance, depend upon it, Phil, if he knows how to watch for it; but there are so many men who get tired and go to sleep before their chances come to them. I've wasted a good deal of time, and a good deal of labour; but the ace of trumps is in the pack, and it must turn up sooner ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... had been dealt, young Vaneski was ahead with a king high. On the fourth round he grinned when he got a second king and Mike dealt himself an ace. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... go abroad, and, as ace of trumps, you should take your wife with you. Now for the excuse: I would sit down and write such a letter as you alone can write to The Times. You should set forth how you have been insulted by the Marquis of Queensberry, and how you went naturally ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... so heavy disgootet mit de boledics of dis land, Dat his friendts could barely keep him from trowin' oop his hand, Vhen he held shtraight-flush mit an ace in his poot- vitch phrase ish all de same, In de science of pokerology, ash if he got ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... from the exhibition I've just been watching, that you're in the habit of seeing farther than to the end of your own nose. However, I may as well point out to you that if you had killed yourself, as you richly deserved, and as you came within an ace of doing, the run would have been stopped for the season. We should all have been deprived of the Grand National, and I, who come up here solely to ride the Cresta, which I have done regularly every winter for twenty years, would have had my favorite occupation snatched from ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... flashed angrily. "It's too neat, Frank. It's clever, and it's powerful, whatever we've run up against. But I think we've got an ace in the ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... tent me, Davie, ace o' hearts! [note] (To say aught less wad wrang the cartes, [cards] And flatt'ry I detest) This life has joys for you and I; And joys that riches ne'er could buy; And joys the very best. There's a' the pleasures o' the heart, The lover an' the frien'; Ye hae your Meg, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... spot, which was a wain-load of cotton bales, and upset it, cannoning off that cushion so swiftly as to come within an ace of scattering his four passengers across the landscape; and discerning, with a swift strategic eye that would have done credit to the dashingest cavalry general, that that rout was complete and nothing could be gained by ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... had some faint idea of adding, 'dote upon you.' But, happening to meet the half-closed eye, as it twinkled upon him over the turned-up collar of the cape, which was within an ace of poking it out, he felt it such an unlikely part and parcel of anything to be doted on, that he substituted, 'that ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... look rather blank for a few seconds (for it is a singular fact, that before the public, or rather the booksellers, gave their decision he no more knew whether he had written well or ill, than whether a die, which he threw out of a box, was to turn out a sise or an ace). However, he almost instantly resumed his spirits and expressed his wonder rather that his popularity had lasted so long, than that it should have given way at last. At length, with a perfectly cheerful manner, he said, 'Well, well, James, but you know we must ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... morning of the 25th such a storm sprang up as mortal mariner rarely encountered even off such a coast—a violent north-easterly hurricane—still known in Algiers as "Charles's gale"—such as few vessels cared to ride off a lee shore. The immense flotilla in the bay was within an ace of total destruction. Anchors and cables were powerless to hold the crowded, jostling ships. One after the other they broke loose, and keeled over to the tempest till their decks were drowned in the seas. Planks gaped; broadside to broadside the helpless hulks ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... is still something to fall back on; the world has known nothing. But with a more or less famous man the public is thoroughly informed. Why look there! What an example you have close at hand! You are sitting back to back with the Comtesse Marie Vandenesse, who was within an ace of committing the utmost folly for a more celebrated man than Lousteau—for Nathan—and now they do not even recognize each other. After going to the very edge of the precipice, the Countess was saved, no one knows how; she neither left her ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... help, and was convinced of the fact that he could drive a mower. Olie, who nurses a vast contempt for Percy, and, I secretly believe, rather resents his attentions to Olga, put the new team of colts on the mower. They promptly ran away with Percy, who came within an ace of being thrown in front of the mower-knife, which would have chopped him up into very unscholarly mincemeat. Olga got on a horse, bareback, and rounded up the colts. Then she cooed about poor bruised Percy and tried to coax him to come to the house. But Percy ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... the circumstances as coherently as he could. "I told you so," he said. "A maid like her couldn't stay hid long, even in a place like this. But where is Grace? Let's have her down. Here—Gra-a-ace!" ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... nowadays; but, on running his fingers through the leaves, behold! It was a bundle of thin golden plates, in which all the wisdom of the book had grown in distinct. He hurriedly put on his clothes, and was delighted to ace himself in magnificent suit of gold cloth, which retained its flexibility and softness, although it burdened him a little with ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... giving his neighbor Dan a nudge in the ribs to call attention to this wonderful piece of girlish innocence. "Square a deal es George Washington mought ha' made." Then, as the greasy pasteboards were turned up, and his neighbour was handed the ace of clubs, he raised his voice and yelled out, "Bully for you, Dan! Cut away an' clar yer ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... good shot; but the skill of Herr Rodiger, the author's father-in-law, was really wonderful. Though his hand trembled constantly from an attack of palsy, I don't know now how many times he pierced the centre of the ace of hearts. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you alive again," he said; "I had a terrible trip. I didn't think I should ever get through—caught in the snowstorm and laid up for three days. The cattle wandered away and I came within an ace of losing them altogether. When I got started again the snow was so deep I couldn't make ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... station. Therefore I turned the car into a small wood, and destroying my genuine license and hiding the genuine number-plate, I took the next train to Winchester, and thence by express to Waterloo after a very wild and adventurous night. That I had been within an ace of capture ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... Bed.... "Dat fat feller" had one of the prisoners perform his corvee for him. "Dat fat feller" bought enough at the canteen twice every day to stock a transatlantic liner for seven voyages, and never ace with the prisoners. I will mention him again apropos the Mecca of respectability, the Great White Throne of purity, Three rings Three—alias Count Bragard, to whom I have ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... if they promenaded the street, to have the joy of seeing a light in the radiant being's window. The pretty girls of the household vanished with murmured excuses, leaving us at the mercy of the boy, who sighed grievously, dropped a sugar bowl, and spilled coffee within an ace of the Cherub's shoulder. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... appearances Laurie saw, were not just the result of these inner powers.... Look here. When one person projects his thought to another it arrives generally like a very faint phantom of the thing he's thinking about. If I'm thinking of the ace of hearts, you see a white rectangle with a red spot in the middle. See? Well, multiply all that a hundred times, and one can just see how it might be possible that the thought of ... of Mr. Vincent and Laurie together might produce a kind of unreal phantom that could ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... had a dining-room waiter, who, one day, was such a luckless wight as to be very impertinent to me. He was an "exquisite," (in his way), although as black as the "ace of spades;" wore a stiff shirt collar, that looked snow-white, from the contrast, and combed his hair so nicely that it appeared as fleecy as zephyr-worsted. He had, however, a habit of going off, without anybody's knowing where, and staying a long time, ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... erupting everywhere. A carrier suddenly came charging out of the brush to his left. While Ed dealt with that one, the Harn played its ace in the hole. The two special units it had been developing to deal with Ed were not quite done yet, but they were done enough to work for the few minutes the Harn needed them. Ed heard a coughing grunt behind him ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... sahib, within an ace of being too late. They had left them in a valley bottom with a guard of but twenty or thirty men, who mistook us at first for Kurds, I suppose, for they took no notice of us. I have spent much time wondering whence they expected mounted Kurds to come; but it is clear they were ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... face of this range is somewhat denuded of both fir and pine, yet the soil is sufficiently rich to allow of cultivation on its slopes. On this pass, whilst taking some plane-table observations, I was within an ace of being detected from an unexpected quarter. Four men armed with matchlocks showed themselves. Much quicker than it takes me to record it, the rule or sight vane was run up my long and open sleeve, and I began to pretend to be looking about for stray ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... into a beginner's hands ace, queen, five trumps, to give him a taste for whist, so these lower classes have perhaps put forward one of their best cards to lead you into a false estimate of the strength ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... livid paleness spreads o'er all her look; 90 She sees, and trembles at the approaching ill, Just in the jaws of ruin, and Codille. And now, (as oft in some distemper'd state) On one nice trick depends the general fate, An Ace of Hearts steps forth: the King unseen Lurk'd in her hand, and mourn'd his captive Queen: He springs to vengeance with an eager pace, And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace. The nymph, exulting, fills with shouts the sky; The walls, the woods, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... lower forms of life precede the higher. In the plant world flowerless plants precede the flowering ones. The coal we burn to-day is mainly the remains of the wonderful growth of the flowerless vegetation of the Paleozoic Ace. When flowering plants appear, it is the lower ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... kind of hombre. Since he was knee-high he's always had an aidge on most folks, 'count of his size an' weight. But that ain't enough, he's got to have somethin' on the other man 'fo' he tackles him. He plays all his games with an ace in a hold-out. Which shows him fo' a man who figgers he ain't equal to tacklin' another 'thout he knows he's got the best of it. He thinks he's one hell of a wrastler an' rough-an'-tumble man but, if he ever mixes with Mormon, ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Money enough to stop at the farmhouse till William's eyes are fit for work again!" I almost jumped up from my chair as my thought went on shaping itself in this manner. When great men make wonderful discoveries, do they feel sensations like mine, I wonder? Was Sir Isaac Newton within an ace of skipping into the air when he first found out the law of gravitation? Did Friar Bacon long to dance when he lit the match and heard the first charge of gunpowder in the world ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... worked, all right. You see, when Mike was doin' his heavy courtin' I'd planted my ace in the hole; I'd took off the outer soles of his runnin'-shoes and filed the spikes almost in two, close up to the plate. When I sewed the leather back on, it never showed, but the minute he struck his gait they broke with him and he begin to miss ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Cornish style. For in the north they stand well apart, and try to wear down one another's strength: whereas the Cornish is a brisker lighter play—and (as I must confess) prettier to watch. So when Joan rush'd in and closed with me, I was within an ace ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... and I hike across the border with our outfit; highest cards for Miguel and my trail is blazed for the red gold of Alisal. This is Miguel's hand—ace ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Jack of clubs. He also turned a little redder as he took up his cards, looked at them, and glanced hastily at his partner. "It's no use playing," he said. "Look here!" He laid down his cards on the table. They were the ace, king and queen of clubs, and Jack of spades,—or left bower,—which, with the turned-up Jack of clubs,—or right bower,—comprised ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... wedding-day fix'd, both the parties agreed, That the peasants should dance German waltzes, And drink to the future mix'd long-and-short breed Of the Donderdronckdickdorffs and Quoltzes. To the church, then, on foot, went the ace with his size— "What's this crowd for?" cries one of the people. "For a baron, who's taking," an arch wag replies, "A morning's walk under the steeple." How I should ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... all around before that wretched affair was explained. Gleason came within an ace of court-martial, but escaped it by saying that he knew of "Burnham's" threats against the life of Lieutenant Baker, and that he went to the ranch in search of the latter and to get him out of danger. They met the Chinaman outside ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... a good shot with a rifle," Quincy replied. "I can hit the ace of hearts at one hundred ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... his whole force at the enemy's fleet without losing his hold on the army's line of passage. The movement was made immediately. The moment the French were sighted "General chase" was signalled, and Roquefeuille was within an ace of being surprised at his anchorage when a calm stopped the attack. The calm was succeeded by another furious gale, in which the French escaped in a disastrous sauve qui peut, and the fleet of transports was destroyed. The ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... frail craft was exposed to endless risks as the water rushed along between the two great walls of verdure which marked out the devious winding course of the river. Time after time they were within an ace of being swept amidst the boughs of some towering tree; at others they were brushing over the tops of the shrub-like growth; and yet amidst the many dangers the crew never flinched, but kept on for hour after hour, head to ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... shoes and clothes, because money is an essential factor in the social fabric and the form in which it comes to us seems as inevitable as the moon or our ten fingers; humanity has gone on for hundreds of years considering the knave of greater value than the ten-spot and the ace of higher worth than all the rest of the pack, because it is content to believe that the rules that have been handed down apportioning these values are the best that could be devised. With a hundred other elements and details of our daily life, it is the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... mathematical interest. There were five dice; each dice with its six surfaces had six different numbers. While he beamed into the veiled eyes of the old Mexican he was figuring upon the various combinations possible and the likelihood, the theory of chances, of a six or an ace upon the second throw. From the jump the game fascinated him; it is to be questioned, however, if ever before a man knew just the sort of fascination which enthralled him. No matter who won or lost, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... the pasting you got By the boys down in Callaghan’s store, When Tim Hooligan found a fifth ace in his hand, And you ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... associates. Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal," and, in the contemplation of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and two ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... that, growing recklessly in the thin soil over a rock, had been willing to yield to the persuasion of a child and come up by the roots. And then, Margaret pushing her best, and Aladdin prying and grunting, the log was moved to within an ace of launching. Until now, for she was too young to understand about daring and unselfishness, Margaret had considered the log-launching as a game invented by Aladdin to while away the dreary time; ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... a dark-complexioned man between whom and the ace of spades there was considerable rivalry. He was of that deadly night shade. He was the darkest spot on the Dark Continent. After dark he blended in with the night so that you couldn't tell which was cook ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... sprang upon the old mouse and squeezed him to death. Glorious death! for the hero died in the thick of the grain, and was canonised as a martyr. The shrew-mouse took him by the ears and placed him on the door the granary, after the fashion of the Ottoman Porte, where my good Panurge was within an ace of being spitted. At the cries of the dying wretch the rats, mice, and others made for their holes in great haste. When the night had fallen they came to the cellar, convoked for the purpose of holding a council to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... quare. These here that I'm a-lookin' at," said Miss Becky, "they stan' for the past. Them there, they er the present; and the t'others, they er the future. Here's a bundle"—tapping the ace of clubs with her thumb—"an' here's a journey as plain as the nose on ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... Henri, by their absence from his own hand, could measure the peril that menaced him. So, surveying the number of cards that remained in stock, he guarded carefully three aces of trumps which might help him to avert disaster. But, playing the only ace that would allow him to score again, Paul Landry announced coldly, laying on the table four queens of spades and four knaves ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and is roared at. Then the Queenstown passengers are put on board of her, with infinite plunging and roaring, and the tender gets heaved up on the sea to that surprising extent that she looks within an ace of washing aboard of us, high and dry. Roared at with contumely to the last, this wretched tender is at length let go, with a final plunge of great ignominy, and falls spinning into ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... HIRE it. And then we'll go to Rochester and buy heaps and heaps of things. Look here, let's each take as much as we can carry. But it's not sovereigns. They've got a man's head on one side and a thing like the ace of spades on the other. Fill your pockets with it, I tell you, and come along. You can jaw as we go - if ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... ever learned more quickly the meaning of the rein and the pressure of the knees. I think he soon learned to love me, and I know that I loved him; while he and Nobs were the best of pals. I called him Ace. I had a friend who was once in the French flying-corps, and when Ace let himself ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... manliness is the characteristic of sea-faring men. This often gives an appearance of want of feeling, and even of cruelty. From this, if a man comes within an ace of breaking his neck and escapes, it is made a joke of; and no notice must be taken of a bruise or a cut; and any expression of pity, or any show of attention, would look sisterly, and unbecoming a man ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... boys got up and fetched an old deck of cards. Bartley chose the ace of spades. Back of the corrals, with nothing but mesa in sight, he took up his position, while Cheyenne stepped off fifteen paces. Bartley's hand trembled a little. Cheyenne noticed it and turned to the group, saying something that made them laugh. Bartley's fingers tensed. He forgot his nervousness. ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... bad, etc. Machine shot to pieces, but Martin Dockerill has it pretty well repaired. He and the doc and I play poker every day, Martin always wins with his dog-gone funeral face no matter tho he has an ace full. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Looka pardner, they doin all dat woofin on uh queen—sendin' women to do uh man's work. Watch me stomp her wid mah king (He slams his card down and collects the trick.) Now come un under dis ace! (They all play and he collects the trick.) Now whut you want me to play ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... first chance, Sam. That proves how you stand with me. A one! Ace high! First! Nobody can ever take your place with me. Don't be a boob coming and going, Sam; you're one now not to see things and you'll be another one spelled backward if you don't help yourself to your chance when it comes. You've got your life in front of you, and your ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... dressed, you see, and I must get to the shop." Then he thought—"What an opportunity I'm losing. Have I any right to turn tail because he plays his game from the outset with trumps? No, I've a small trump somewhere about me to lay on this trick. It isn't an ace, but it'll show I'm not chicane." And smiling, though not with his usual cheerfulness, Sweetwater added, "Is the coffee all made? I might take a drop of that. But you mustn't ask me to eat—I ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... us at Lucy's didn't know anythin' a-tall about Mrs. Macy's troubles. We had our own, Heaven help us, an' they was enough, for the very first thing of all Mr. Dill caught his pocket on the corner of Mrs. Dill an' come within a ace of pullin' her off her easel. That would have been a pretty beginnin' to Lucy's weddin' day if her father had smashed her mother to bits, I guess, but it couldn't have made Lucy any worse; for I will say, Mrs. Lathrop, as I never see no one in all my born life ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... halfpenny a pound; mutton and veal at a halfpenny half a farthing, money of that age. The preamble of the statute says, that these four species of butcher's meat were the food of the poorer sort. This ace was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... has arisen respecting the legality of Second-hand Cards. It appears, however, that they may be sold by any person, if sold without the wrapper of a licensed maker; and in packs containing not more than 52 cards, including an ace of spades duly stamped, and enclosed in a wrapper with the words "Second-hand Cards" printed or written in distinct characters on the outside: penalty for selling Second-hand Cards ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... put his head in the way, then," I retorted with an angry laugh. I didn't restrain myself because her fixed stare seemed to express the purpose to daunt me. I was not afraid of her, but it occurred to me that I was within an ace of drifting into a downright quarrel with a lady and, besides, my guest. There was the cold teapot, the emptied cups, emblems of hospitality. It could not be. I cut short my angry laugh while Mrs. Fyne murmured with a slight movement of her ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Fanny Assingham's lips for the moment to reply that this was, on the contrary, exactly what she didn't see; she came in fact within an ace of saying: "You strike me as having quite failed to help his idea to work—since, by your account, Maggie has him not less, but so much more, on her mind. How in the world, with so much of a remedy, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... is that you can't just stun someone with a Yool. It's better if we both stay armed, though it isn't really necessary—so much money comes to play around here they can afford to keep the Uplands very thoroughly policed, and they do. But an ace in the hole never hurts." She considered. "Changed your mind about that ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... America produced a number of other brilliant aces, an ace being one who brought down five enemy planes, each victory being attested by at least ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... men all took to their arms, and it was within an ace that they would fall to blows. But Asgrim and his friends and their followers would have no hand in it, and rode to their booths; and now all was quiet that day, so that they had naught to do with one another. Thither were come chiefs from all the Quarters ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... my lady, but with more backbone and some pride in being at the head of my profession. I'm wanted in a dozen places; I'll spend the rest of my days in the pen, if they ever get me. Twice today I've been within an ace of being nabbed—kindness of you and your Maitland. Now—I'm desperate and determined. Do ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... the ordinary feminine suffix -iti, found in Armaiti, Khnathaiti, and the like. Astibaras is perhaps "great of bone," from Zend agta (Sans, asthi), "bone," and bereza, "tall, great." Harmamithres, if that is the true reading, would be "mountain-lover" (monticolus), from hardam, ace. of hara, "a mountain," and mithra or mitra, "fond of." If, however, the name should be read as Armamithres, the probable derivation will be from rama, ace. of raman, "pleasure," which is also the root of Rama-tea. Armamithres may ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... yer boots I am safe tew win, Es the chap thet's able tew smilin' smack The ace he's been hidin' up his sleeve Kerslap on top of a feller's jack! Es I wus sayin', the night wus dark, The lightnin' skippin' from star to star; Thar wa'n't no clouds but a thread of mist, No sound but the coyotes ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... stood still, and when he grabbed for the perch he was going for, I grabbed too, in sympathy. And he was perfectly indifferent, perfectly unconcerned, and I did all the panting myself. He came within an ace of losing his life a dozen times, and I was so troubled about him that I would have shot him if I had had anything to do it with. But I strongly recommend the view. There is more monkey than view, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the solid detached foot. With this she returned to the mantel-shelf, placing it with deliberation in the centre and then, for a minute, occupying herself as with the attempt to fit the other morsels. After she had squared again her little objects on the chimney, she was within an ace, in fact, of turning on him with that appeal; besides its being lucid for her, all the while, that the occasion was passing, that they were dining out, that he wasn't dressed, and that, though she herself was, she was yet, in all probability, so horribly red ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... opening of the season; dogs and the training of dogs; and why some go gun-shy and why some ace blinkers. From sport and its justification, they became inconsequential; and she was beginning to enjoy the freshness of their chance acquaintance, his nice attitude toward things, his ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... have been sick and tired of it this many a day, and care not now to see men abuse good liquor and addle their silly pates to fill my purse. And I have something, boy, put snug away in Dorchester town that will give us bread to eat and beer to drink, even if the throws run still deuce-ace. But we must seek a roof to shelter us when the Why Not? is shut, and 'tis best we leave this Moonfleet of ours for a season, till Maskew finds a rope's end long enough to hang himself withal. So, when our work is done tomorrow night, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... of it," responded the Creole. "I was making seve'al i'onies ad those fwen' of mine juz now. We was 'unning a 'ace. An' thass anotheh thing I am fon' of. I would 'ather 'un a 'ace than to wuck faw a livin'. Ha! ha! ha! I should thing so! Anybody would, in fact. But thass the way with me—always making some i'onies." He stopped with a sudden change of countenance, and resumed gravely: "Mistoo ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... pride in this achievement. "After you've played it a few years, you'll learn that the value of it lies chiefly in losing. You'll try like the devil to win, of course, but you'll learn not to wish for it. To win is nothing but an endless piling up of the right cards, beginning with the ace and ending with the king, and it only means more shuffling for next time. But every time you lose you will ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... lady, Took one of her maids, Who chanced to be black As the ace of spades, And said she'd have her washed white, By the other maids; She was put in a tub, And with water and towels Her skin they did rub, Through a long summer day till the night; But the more they did rub her, The blacker she got; And while they ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... to you against my wish," she said in a firm voice, "but I have been ordered to grant your request. Three, seven, ace, will win for you if played in succession, but only on these conditions: that you do not play more than one card in twenty-four-hours, and that you never play again during the rest of your life. I forgive you my death, on condition that you ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... pal'ace, a splendid dwelling, as of a king. par take', share; take part in. patch, small piece of any thing, as of ground. paus'es, short stops; rests. pave'ments, coverings for streets, of stone or ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... a pair of stary, pop eyes, a high colored beak that might be used as a danger signal, and a black, shoebrush beard, trimmed close except for a little spike under the chin, that gives the lower part of his face a look like the ace of spades. His mornin' costume is a faded blue jumper, brown checked pants, and an old pair of rubber soled shoes that Swifty had donated ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... "I did it pretty well, too. It only shows that women have no particular monopoly in the realms of diplomacy and finesse; in fact, if a man really chooses to put his mind to such matters, he can make it no trumps and win out behind a bum ace and ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... my lady, doant ye," said the honest fellow, and was within an ace of blubbering for sympathy. "We ain't a lot o' babies, to see our squire kidnaped. If you would lend Abel Moss there and me a couple o' nags, we'll catch them ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it back to touch; And the whole first flight led off with the right, as The Saint took up the pace, And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it there with an ace. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Valladolid, my master was within an ace of divulging his secret to a philosopher who knew nothing of it. I warrant you, I showed that gentleman the door, with a dose of cudgel ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... with the xylophone music of their chopping, the solid surf ace vibrating beneath the blows of the axe and giving forth a clear tintinnabulation which is most delightful to the ear. It is not all xylophonic, but there is in it, too, the clink of musical glasses and also a certain weirdness, a goblin withal that seems to ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... life—queer, queer business!—to go through it never knowing what you would do next. Ah! to be like Keith, steady, buttoned-up in success; a brass pot, a pillar of society! Once, as a boy, he had been within an ace of killing Keith, for sneering at him. Once in Southern Italy he had been near killing a driver who was flogging his horse. And now, that dark-faced, swinish bully who had ruined the girl he had grown to love—he had done it! Killed him! Killed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... then, my dear children, that Monmouth's rising was easily put down, or that it was hopeless from the first, remember that I, who was concerned in it, say confidently that it really trembled in the balance, and that this handful of resolute peasants with their pikes and their scythes were within an ace of altering the whole course of English history. The ferocity of the Privy Council, after the rebellion was quelled, arose from their knowledge of how very close it had ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... can't think of the name of that daredevil guerilla who led the jayhawkers and chased Redpath up and down the country, and, in turn, was chased by Redpath. By grace of the chances of war, the two men never met in the field, though they several times came within an ace of it. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... shouts of the runners and the clatter of the chaises men, women and children made haste to clear a track, snatching their little ones back and then staring at us as we swept past. Indeed, the teams put their best feet foremost for local effect, and more than once came within an ace of running over some urchin who either would not or could not get out of the way. Fortunately no casualties occurred. For it would have been ignominious to have been arrested by the police during our first ten minutes in the town, ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... He turned up Jack of clubs. He also turned a little redder as he took up his cards, looked at them, and glanced hastily at his partner. "It's no use playing," he said. "Look here!" He laid down his cards on the table. They were the ace, king and queen of clubs, and Jack of spades,—or left bower,—which, with the turned-up Jack of clubs,—or right bower,—comprised ALL the ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... friends of both parties, to re-establish his sister's injured reputation, went out with Sir Kit as his second, and carried his message next day to the last of his adversaries: I never saw him in such fine spirits as that day he went out—sure enough he was within ames-ace of getting quit handsomely of all his enemies; but unluckily, after hitting the tooth-pick out of his adversary's finger and thumb, he received a ball in a vital part, and was brought home, in little better than an hour after the affair, speechless ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... lifetime! With books or no books, it is quite true, however, that some men, otherwise of great intelligence, can never be taught whist; they may have had every opportunity of learning it—have been born, as it were, with the ace of spades in their mouth instead of a silver spoon—but the gift of understanding is denied them; and though it is ungallant to say so, I have never known a ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... and reduced them again to a submission. Against these did the king of Assyria send an army, and in a hostile manner overrun all Phoenicia, but soon made peace with them all, and returned back; but Sidon, and Ace, and Palsetyrus revolted; and many other cities there were which delivered themselves up to the king of Assyria. Accordingly, when the Tyrians would not submit to him, the king returned, and fell upon them again, while ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... into her room, seized her trunks without a word of apology, and dragged them downstairs like a giant; she was never so startled in all her life! It was explained to me that, as in the South only negroes handle trunks, the lady could not regard me exactly as a gentleman. She was within a short ace of being burnt up, trunks and all, but could not forget that she was from the "Sa-outh," and must ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... himself with thinking. If be could have got at the books, he would have spent his days and nights in studying the evidences of Christianity, but the ship was bare of any such books, and he never thought of turning to the most obvious of all, the Bible itself. His unbelief was shaken; it was within an ace of falling in pieces to the very foundation; or rather he began to suspect how foundationless it had been. It came at last to one point with him;—If there were a God, he would not have left the world without a revelation,—no more would he have suffered that revelation to defeat its own ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... is a Custom I' the world; for look you Brother, Wou'd any man stand plucking for the Ace of Harts, With one pack of Cards ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... eyes flashed angrily. "It's too neat, Frank. It's clever, and it's powerful, whatever we've run up against. But I think we've got an ace in the ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... uncertain, they lessened the risk of having the road pass out of the stockholders' control into a receiver's hands. Yet as bonds could have been sold more easily than stock, it increased the difficulty of finding the necessary capital. Even so, it came within an ace of succeeding. ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... or birds, may be fried as chickens, or stewed in a pot with a little water. If you make a pie of rabbits or squirrels, they should be stewed first to make them tender, and then made in the same way as chicken pie. Rabbits ace very good cooked with chopped onions, in a pot with a little water, and thickening of milk and flour stirred in when they are nearly done. Squirrels make very ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... you worry any about me. I got a ace in the hole if the weather gets wet. But I wanna tell you this: If yo're bound to go on playin' the fool, keep a-movin' and walk round a lighted window like ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... keen mathematical interest. There were five dice; each dice with its six surfaces had six different numbers. While he beamed into the veiled eyes of the old Mexican he was figuring upon the various combinations possible and the likelihood, the theory of chances, of a six or an ace upon the second throw. From the jump the game fascinated him; it is to be questioned, however, if ever before a man knew just the sort of fascination which enthralled him. No matter who won or lost, when the rolling cubes behaved in conformity with the mathematical ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... found who they were.—Then I saw no chance of getting at them. But for the rest of that year at Cambridge, I beat every bush in the university, to find some one who knew them; and as fortune favours the brave, at last I hit off this Lord Lynedale; and he, of course, was the ace of trumps—a fine catch in himself, and a double catch because he was going to marry the cousin. So I made a dead set at him; and tight work I had to nab him, I can tell you, for he was three or four years older than I, and had travelled a good deal, and seen ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... "Come on, you black-hearted ace thief!" shouted Calamity Jane, thrusting the muzzle of one of her plated revolvers forcibly under the gambler's prominent nose—"come on! slide in if you are after squar' up-an'-down fun. We'll greet you, best we know how, an' not charge you ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... partner had dealt, and having gone three in "no trumps" and found seven to the ace, king, queen in hearts lying before her in dummy, she wore a smile of beatific satisfaction. So also did Alice—for two reasons. The deal obviously spelled money, and Vere Millet could be trusted to get every trick out of it. There were four bridge tables fully ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... suddenly from free into a slave, the property of another, who is master of her body and her soul. And yet, only this very morning did I learn, how nearly I had lost thee: since thy servant that saw me in the wood, and was the cause of thy coming, came within an ace of perishing himself, before he ever got away to tell. And Atirupa said: How? And Aranyani told him. And then she said: And now I fear for thee also: for should Babhru chance to see thee, his reason will desert him. And I tremble ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... are missing any of these, they can be obtained directly from the publisher by sending the indicated sum, plus 5c handling fee, to Ace Books, Inc. (Sales Dept.), 1120 Avenue of the Americas, New ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... jaun'dice clev'er das'tard jos'tle si'lex paint'er scab'bard but'ton mas'tiff way'ward scaf'fold pic'nic sar'casm di'gest sham'bles grum'ble tar'nish light'ning tran'script hus'tle tar'tar por'trait nest'ling mur'rain ha rangue' nov'ice men'ace rum'ble re lapse' Tues'day pen'ance troub'le pro fess' cli'mate shep'herd ar'gue re venge' wrist'let whole'some ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... spoke Andy, ruefully. "I had a letter from my sister only the other day, and she mentioned some row that Mort had gotten into at Yale. Came within an ace of being taken out, but it was smoothed over. No, I'll have to rub up against him if ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... "Oi'll bet ye do; an' oi guiss ye've seen his fa-ace long about shavin'-toime in the ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... real living creatures to them. One of the players has dreamed all through his life of getting a grand slam, when, one evening, he sees he has the necessary cards in his hand. He has but to take one more card, the ace of spades, and his dream will be realized. But at the very moment when he is stretching forth his hand to take it, he falls down dead. His partners are terrified. One of them, a timorous and exact old man, named Jacob Ivanovich, is particularly struck. A thought comes to him; he quickly rises, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... collection, by the appearance presented by a central plate in the cuirass of the Pterichthys. It is of a lozenge form, and, occupying exactly such a place in the nether armature of the creature as that occupied by the lozenge shaped spot on the ace of diamonds, it comes in contact with four other plates that lie around it, and represent, so to speak, the white portions of the card. And Sir Philip now found, that instead of lying over, it lay under, the four contiguous plates: they overlapped it, instead of being overlapped by it. This, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... elbow-chair, in one corner of his study, or laboratory, with a large volume, in German print, before him. He was a short, fat man, with a dark, square face, rendered more dark by a black velvet cap. He had a little, knobbed nose, not unlike the ace of spades, with a pair of spectacles gleaming on each side of his dusky countenance, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... to be turned out of his father's house because of the disgrace of his birth. In the eye of the law he was nobody. The law allowed to him not even a name;—certainly allowed to him the possession of no relative; denied to him the possibility of any family tie. His father had succeeded within an ace of giving him that which would have created for him family ties, relatives, name and all. The old Squire had understood well how to supersede the law, and to make the harshness of man's enactments of no avail. Had the Squire quite succeeded, the ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... man-of-the-worldness, on which he had prided himself on his travels, "shrank like a thing ashamed" before this real sorrow. Pride, wounded honour, pity and respect tussled together daily in his heart; and now he was within an ace of throwing himself upon his father's mercy, and now of slipping forth at night and coming back no more to Naseby House. He suffered from the sight of his father, nay, even from the neighbourhood of this familiar valley, where every corner had its legend, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no ace of spades to show down! You discarded it. You know you did, you—cheat!" He had risen and was shaking his fist in the face ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... game, in defence of a weakness. Develop both forehand and backhand, and do not "run around" your backhand, particularly in return of service. To do so merely opens your court. If you should do so, strive to ace your returns, because a weak effort would only result in ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... how deliciously I canter'd away with it the first month, two up, two down, always upon my hanches, along the streets from my hotel to hers, at first once—then twice, then three times a day, till at length I was within an ace of setting up my hobby-horse in her stable for good and all. I might as well, considering how the enemies of the Lord have blasphemed thereupon. The last three weeks we were every hour upon the doleful ditty of parting—and thou mayest conceive, dear cousin, how it altered my gait ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Took one of her maids, Who chanced to be black As the ace of spades, And said she'd have her washed white, By the other maids; She was put in a tub, And with water and towels Her skin they did rub, Through a long summer day till the night; But the more they did rub her, The blacker she got; ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... a sequence in hearts; the hearts all lay between himself and Sylvie; the colonel won her ace, though it was ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... something most particular interesting! Heard of Gilderoy, that was hanged for forgery? Gad, my daughter's got a brooch with a lock of his hair in it, which he gave me himself—a client of mine; within an ace of getting him off—flaw in the indictment—found it out myself—did, by gad! Come along, and I'll get Dora to show it to you!" and, putting Titmouse's arm in his, and desirous of withdrawing him from Gammon, he led him up to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... just aglow; and as the door swung to, and he cast the light round to seek for a chair, he caught sight of a vacant couch, a table with bottle, glasses, and sugar thereon, and the cover drawn all on one side, so that the glasses were within an ace of being off; and then, drawing in his breath, he stepped to the other side of the table, and held down the light, which fell upon a drawn and ghastly face, while, hidden by the table-cover, there lay the ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... was to show the pass sat by the window. Of all our worthless passes our rule was always to show first the one of least value. If that failed we brought out a higher card, and continued until we had reached the ace. If that proved to be a two-spot, we all went to jail. Whenever we were halted, invariably there was the knowing individual who recognized us as newspaper men, and in order to save his country from destruction clamored ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... five hundred men that the victory of Cannae cost Hannibal, four thousand were Gauls. All Cisalpine Gaul was moved; enthusiasm was at its height; new bands hurried off to recruit the army of the Carthaginian who, by dint of patience and genius, brought Rome within an ace of destruction, with the assistance almost entirely of the barbarians he had come to seek at her gates, and whom he had at first found so ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... door into the fierce blast without. One was Doctor Schuchardt, the other Lieutenant Ennis, joint occupant with Lanier of the tiny premises. As Corporal Cassidy later expressed it, he felt "like I'd lost a bulging pot on an ace full." He couldn't run after and beg them to come back, yet he and his comrades were stiff from cold and almost breathless from exhaustion. Suddenly Number Five's carbine slipped from his frozen glove and fell with a crash ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... during his last Cambridge vacation; then, in November of 1791, he crossed to France, ostensibly to learn the language, made the acquaintance of revolutionaries, sympathized with them vehemently, and was within an ace of throwing in his lot with the Brissotins, to give them the steady direction that they needed. When it came to this his relatives cut off his supplies, and he was obliged to return to London toward ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... gave me some tips. One of them was to shout at your scout for at least a week to show that you are not an infant, another was not to row, and the last was not to play cards all day and night. My brother's an odd kind of chap, the sort of man who doesn't know the ace of spades by sight, but it's as easy to shout as it is not to row. Your name's Marten, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... brows ironically. "It's a large contract," he commented. "So you call on me to slip you the ace you need to fill. Well, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... dark-complexioned man between whom and the ace of spades there was considerable rivalry. He was of that deadly night shade. He was the darkest spot on the Dark Continent. After dark he blended in with the night so that you couldn't tell which was ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... soil over a rock, had been willing to yield to the persuasion of a child and come up by the roots. And then, Margaret pushing her best, and Aladdin prying and grunting, the log was moved to within an ace of launching. Until now, for she was too young to understand about daring and unselfishness, Margaret had considered the log-launching as a game invented by Aladdin to while away the dreary time; but now she realized, from the look in the pale, set, freckly, almost comical face of the boy, that ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... convulsive spring, fell back upon the ground writhing in the agonies of death. In striving to drag the body of his comrade back behind the rock another Tonto ventured to show head and shoulder, and came within an ace of sharing his fate, for Pike's next shot whistled within an inch of the flattened nose, and Apache number two dodged back with wonderful quickness, and did ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... been planning, spending, working all this time to give her pleasure, and this was his reward! She had been within an ace of letting him see the cruel ingratitude that was in her heart! 'What a selfish wretch I have been!' she thought; 'but I won't be—no, I won't! George shall not be snubbed, hurt, estranged from his family ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... I came within an ace of blazing away at you, but I happened to recognize your figure and step just in the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... some faint idea of adding, 'dote upon you.' But, happening to meet the half-closed eye, as it twinkled upon him over the turned-up collar of the cape, which was within an ace of poking it out, he felt it such an unlikely part and parcel of anything to be doted on, that he substituted, 'that she ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... thing more that Sir Norman said, 'A lot of money has just been laid On the mare Gavotte that no one knows.' He said 'She's small, but, my word, she goes. Since she bears no weight, if she only jumps, She'll put these cracks to their ace of trumps. But,' he said, 'she's slight for ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... into his smug face, and I was within an ace of striking him. Then I controlled myself, and ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Accounts kalkularo. Account (rendered) raporto. Accoutre (milit.) armi. Accrue kreskigxi. Accumulate amasigi. Accumulation amaso. Accuracy akurateco. Accurate akurata. Accursed malbena. Accusation kulpigo. Accusative akuzativo. Accuse kulpigi. Accustomed, to be kutimi. Ace aso. Acerbity acideco. Acetous acida. Ache doloro. Achieve plenumi. Achievement elfaro. Acid acida. Acid acido. Acidity acideco. Acidulous acideta. Acknowledge konfesi. Acknowledge (letters, etc.) avizi. Acknowledgement (letters, etc.) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... can only mean that you've got another ace up your sleeve. You know we're going to get the Nipe before I die. You either have a sure way of tracing him or else you already know ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... lace for Aunt Cordelia, a jet necklace for Aunt Patty, a prison-camp brooch for Helen. All afternoon he held them with tales of his adventures in the air, rolling up his sleeve to show them a scar on his arm, and bending his head down so they could see where a German ace had nicked a bit of his ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... fellow, this brother-in-law of mine, that is to be—takes a shot at his father's son with as little remorse as at a blackcock—what would he do with me, were we to quarrel?—Well, I can snuff a candle, and strike out the ace of hearts; and so, should things go wrong, he has no Jack Raw to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... when Russia was just at the lowest ebb in her fortunes, did the western Allies try again. Then, starting on September 25, 1915, they launched terrific drives in Champagne and Artois, came within an ace of piercing the German lines, captured some 30,000 prisoners and many guns, but in the end failed to get through. (Vol. IV, 61-131.) German troops were recalled from Russia and Russia's escape was made certain, but this was the only considerable ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... whit, not a whit; I cannot spare them a jot; I cannot bate them an ace. Let them stay in their own barren mountains, and puff and swell, and hang their bonnets on the horns of the moon, if they have a mind; but what business have they to come where people wear breeches, and speak an intelligible language? I mean intelligible in comparison ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... nodded. Surely Chance would not desert him now! He thought of the returning sun as he cut for deal, and he thrilled when he found the deal was his. He shuffled and dealt, and Uri cut him the Jack of Spades. They laid down their hands. Uri's was bare of trumps, while he held ace, deuce. The outside seemed very near to him as they stepped off the ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... mouse and squeezed him to death. Glorious death! for the hero died in the thick of the grain, and was canonised as a martyr. The shrew-mouse took him by the ears and placed him on the door the granary, after the fashion of the Ottoman Porte, where my good Panurge was within an ace of being spitted. At the cries of the dying wretch the rats, mice, and others made for their holes in great haste. When the night had fallen they came to the cellar, convoked for the purpose of holding a council to consider public affairs; to which meeting, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Mrs. Hare, we may as well throw up our cards," said the keen clear voice of Lord Vargrave: "you have played most admirably, and I know that your last card will be the ace of trumps; still ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Ace means the first time that I met you Duece means there was nobody there but us two Trey means the third party—Charlie was his name Four spot means the fourth time you tried that same old game— Five spot means ...
— Poker! • Zora Hurston
... which, by a combination of circumstances, is now lying in Cork Harbour,—fortunate for us, but which might have proved disastrous to her gallant officers and crew, for she was dismasted in a gale, and was within an ace of being driven on shore. But a miss is as good as a mile; and when under jury-masts she scraped clear of the rocks, and got into port in safety. Here my letter, after wandering about for many a day, found him, and he has lost no time in ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... Companies, not three against 97, give or take a few out on other jobs. It gave me a chill. Not the odds, but if Council was that worried maybe there was bad danger. But I'd given my word and a Companion keeps his word. We had one ace in the hole, a small one. If the other Companies were not here in Menelaus yet, they must have rendezvoused at Galaxy Center. It was the kind of "follow-the-book" mistake United would make. It gave us a day and a ...
— Dead World • Jack Douglas
... speaker was as black as the ace of spades,—being a sturdy specimen, the knave of clubs would perhaps be a fitter representative,—but the dark freeman looked at the white slave with the pitiful, yet puzzled expression I have so often seen on the faces of our wisest men, ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... said Mr. Perry, can do no wrong, you know. So there are two that must be good out of four; and the ace seems too plain a card to ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... five cents a point, he had to watch the game. On a specially big hand she piqued and repiqued. "That," she declared, "will pay you for caputting me." The jargon of their preoccupation, "A point of six; yes, to the ace; paid; and a quatorze, kings," was the only sound until Fanny rose, decidedly. "I am going to bed." She hesitated at the door. "I hope you'll be comfortable, Claire: I had some club soda and rye put in your room, since you like it ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... saith Maccabee Philippe's son of Macedon he was, That first was king in Greece the country. O worthy gentle* Alexander, alas *noble That ever should thee falle such a case! Empoison'd of thine owen folk thou were; Thy six fortune hath turn'd into an ace, And yet for thee ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Germans deliberately forced on the war. They knew perfectly well that when they put up a German Prince as candidate for the throne of Spain it would bring on a war with France. Why, we ourselves were within an ace of going to war with France when Guizot brought about the Spanish marriage, although it was comparatively of slight importance to us that Spain and France should be united. But to the French this thing was an absolutely vital question, for with Germany and Spain united their very existence ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... sowl. It's a pity, too, that ye've died widout absolution from a praist, sich as I've tould ye off. Barrin' the brache of good fellieship, I could have placed yer own scalp wid the rest, as a p'ace-offering, to his Honour, the Missus and ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... to it wi' th' rope all ready, but just as he was going to slip it over its leg it seemed to stand on its head, feint wi' its left an' get an upper-cut wi' its right under Ratty's chin. A shadow passed across th' fa-ace o' the moon, which I judged ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... at the insinuation. He was within an ace of seizing Lynch by the collar, and expelling him in a summary way from his premises, a feat which he was able to perform; and willing also, for he was sick of his client; but he thought of it a second time, and ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... it is impossible not to criticise the rash and over-confident policy which sent such a weak and ill-equipped force on so hazardous an enterprise. The action of Gedaref, as has been shown, was, through no fault of the officers or men of the expedition, within an ace of being a disaster. But there were other critical occasions when only the extraordinary good fortune which attended the force saved it from destruction. First, the column was not discovered until it reached Mugatta; secondly, it was not attacked ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... ever happened in his voyages or his memory. He details the ship's allowance, and talks to her as if she was his first-mate. Then in the mornings he carries his daughter to town to see St. Paul's, and the Tower, and Westminster Abbey; and at night disgorges all he has seen, till we don't know the ace of spades from Queen Elizabeth's pocket-pistol in the armoury. Mercy on us! And mercy on your lordship too! Why should you be stunned with that alarum? Have you had your earthquake, my lord? Many ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... a Canadian." answered the aviator. "I have seen nearly two years' active service. I rank as an ace. I bear three wounds and have been cited several times. I have the Distinguished Service Cross. What more need I ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... abroad, and, as ace of trumps, you should take your wife with you. Now for the excuse: I would sit down and write such a letter as you alone can write to The Times. You should set forth how you have been insulted by the Marquis of Queensberry, and how you ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... was trouble all around before that wretched affair was explained. Gleason came within an ace of court-martial, but escaped it by saying that he knew of "Burnham's" threats against the life of Lieutenant Baker, and that he went to the ranch in search of the latter and to get him out of danger. They met the Chinaman ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... often sold in small metal and silver boxes, those dating from the time of Queen Anne being the most interesting. The most popular card counters in the early days of the nineteenth century were brass copies of the spade-ace gold guinea, which they closely resembled, and it is feared, when gilt, were not infrequently palmed off as ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... "Welcome, Friend of the Ace," Georgie responded, and all of the other boys repeated the words, "Welcome, Friend of ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... alive, why didn't you play your Ace of Spades? If you had brought out that Ace you'd have a trump- -then you'd beat this with a trump ... ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... Hor-ace Gree-ley was the son of a poor farmer. He was always fond of books. He learned to read almost as soon as he could talk. He could read easy books when he was three years old. When he was four, he could read any book ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... boots I am safe tew win, Es the chap thet's able tew smilin' smack The ace he's been hidin' up his sleeve Kerslap on top of a feller's jack! Es I wus sayin', the night wus dark, The lightnin' skippin' from star to star; Thar wa'n't no clouds but a thread of mist, No sound but the coyotes ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... coadjutor; And, as you in commission sit, To rule the dairy next to Kit;[4] In each capacity I mean To sing your praise. And first as Dean: Envy must own, you understand your Precedence, and support your grandeur: Nor of your rank will bate an ace, Except to give Dean Daniel[5] place. In you such dignity appears, So suited to your state and years! With ladies what a strict decorum! With what devotion you adore 'em! Treat me with so much complaisance, As fits a princess in romance! ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... far from 'Mpefu's kraal. He got food at a hut, and set off at once up the wooded hill above it, which is a promontory of the plateau. By this time he must have been weary, or he would not have blundered as he did right into a post of the farmers. He was within an ace of capture, and to save himself was forced back from the scarp. He seems, to judge from reports, to have gone a little way south in the thicker timber, and then to have turned north again in the direction of Blaauwildebeestefontein. ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... bright little fellow, as black as the ace of spades, and possessing to the full the mercurial temperament of the Southern negro. Full of fun and drollery, he attracted plenty of attention when he came into the village, and earned many a penny from the boys by ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... companions; while the other was an outlaw, a half-heathen, a lover of but one thing in this world, the joyous god of Chance. Pierre was essentially a gamester. He would have extracted satisfaction out of a death-sentence which was contingent on the trumping of an ace. His only honour was the honour ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fell it would be held hanging by my tackle until I could get down to the deck again and lower it away; and that really was what did happen—only as it fell there was a bit of slack line to take up, and this gave such a tremendous jerk to the cross-trees that I was within an ace of being shaken out of them and of going down to the deck with a bang. But I didn't—which is the main thing—and I did get my mast. It was a good deal heavier than my boat could stand, and I had to spend a couple of days in taking it down with a broad-axe and in finishing it with a plane until I ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... with thumbs in his waistcoat pocket he seems to signify that the end of such torment is not yet even nigh at hand! Vain is the hope, if hope there be, to disturb that meagre doctor. With care precise he places every card, weighs well the value of each mighty ace, each guarded king, and comfort-giving queen; speculates on knave and ten, counts all his suits, and sets his price upon the whole. At length a card is led, and quick three others fall upon the board. The little doctor leads again, while ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Quiximir or Cashmire and Mount Caucasus, which divides India from the provinces of Tartary in the north. This kingdom of the Moguls now reaches to the mountainous regions of Parveti and Bagous which they call Angou [199]. As in this dominion there ace great mountains, so there are likewise very large and fruitful plains, watered by five rivers which compose the Indus. These are the Bet, Satinague, Chanao, Rave, and Rea[200]. The cities of this country are numerous and, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Wid Gardner, "it was understood that this thing was to run in your name. Now, Mis' Davidson—when it comes to fixing up a love correspondence, she's the ace! It all ain't my fault a-tall, Sim. We advertised—and we got a answer, and we follered it up. And this here letter is the re-sult. I allowed we'd ought to tell you ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... the cards as I was told. There were seven left on the table. My aunt removed two from one end of the row and two from the other, and desired me to call the two outermost of the three cards now left on the table. I called the Ace of Clubs and the Ten of Diamonds. My aunt Chance lifted her eyes to the ceiling with a look of devout gratitude which sorely tried my mother's patience. The Ace of Clubs and the Ten of Diamonds, taken together, signified—first, good news (evidently ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... secured an ace of trumps, but Sir James Fenwick, who during the whole of that day had seemed to take little interest in the proceedings, here rose from his seat, and I knew at once that he had got a tit-bit in the way of a 'point' up his sleeve. Gaunt, and unusually ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... princess who stands before us, at once so earthly and yet more spectral than her sisters; for time has marred her features, injured her skin, dotted her chin with hail-specks, vulgarized her mouth, injured her nose, making it look like the ace of clubs, and put the stamp of ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... it's no good. Then I'll buy him out and unload this Cross of Gold hole and plant it on some tenderfoot and get mine back!' You cain't make me believe in any of those Wall Street fellers! They all deal from the bottom of the deck and keep shoemaker's wax on their cuff buttons to steal the lone ace!" ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... photographs: the paper was so bad. Please keep them very private, as they are for the book. We send them, having learned so dread a fear of the sea, that we wish to put our eggs in different baskets. We have been thrice within an ace of being ashore: we were lost (!) for about twelve hours in the Low Archipelago, but by God's blessing had quiet weather all the time; and once, in a squall, we cam' so near gaun heels ower hurdies, that I really ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and heard. This den of ours opens on the river's edge, and, two days since, his Indians came within an ace of nabbing me. 'Twas just at dusk, and I made out to dodge them by doubling ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... ambition I'd rather be a Grant or a Garfield thin a Cleveland or a Harrison,' he says. 'I may've read it in th' Bible, though I think I saw it in a scand'lous book me frind Rhodes left in his bedroom las' time he called on me, that ye shud niver discard an ace to dhraw to a flush,' he says. 'I deplore th' language but th' sintimint is sound,' he says. 'An' I believe ye'er intintions to presarve peace ar-re honest, but I don't like to see ye pullin' off ye'er coat an' here goes f'r throuble while ye have ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... he surveyed his victim, "because a man looks sad at the opening of a jack-pot, it doesn't necessarily follow that he's only got ace-high." ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... hour and a half argued with B. Tchitcherin, who, I thought, talked nonsense all the time. Tatyana and Mary [Tolstoi's daughters] laid out a patience; they both wished, and asked me to pick a card out; I picked out the ace of spades separately for each of them, and that annoyed them. By accident there were two aces of spades in the pack. Both of them are extraordinarily sympathetic, and their attitude to their father is touching. The ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... this, the blood the virgin's cheek forsook, A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look; 90 She sees, and trembles at the approaching ill, Just in the jaws of ruin, and Codille. And now, (as oft in some distemper'd state) On one nice trick depends the general fate, An Ace of Hearts steps forth: the King unseen Lurk'd in her hand, and mourn'd his captive Queen: He springs to vengeance with an eager pace, And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace. The nymph, exulting, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... at Lucy's didn't know anythin' a-tall about Mrs. Macy's troubles. We had our own, Heaven help us, an' they was enough, for the very first thing of all Mr. Dill caught his pocket on the corner of Mrs. Dill an' come within a ace of pullin' her off her easel. That would have been a pretty beginnin' to Lucy's weddin' day if her father had smashed her mother to bits, I guess, but it couldn't have made Lucy any worse; for I will say, Mrs. Lathrop, as I never see no one in all my born life act foolisher ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... sez Kiss, dealin'. Black Jack, Sorr, I shud expaytiate to you, is the Ace av Shpades which from time immimorial has been intimately connect wid battle, ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... was exposed to endless risks as the water rushed along between the two great walls of verdure which marked out the devious winding course of the river. Time after time they were within an ace of being swept amidst the boughs of some towering tree; at others they were brushing over the tops of the shrub-like growth; and yet amidst the many dangers the crew never flinched, but kept on for hour after hour, head to stream, with the boat always being borne onward along straight ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... ticket is a good thing to have," Alexander said idly. "It's a useful ace in the hole. Besides, you have had three other job offers—all of which are good even though they don't pay fifteen Ems ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... sundry caresses and endearing expressions upon him, of which he was utterly undeserving; but my attentions were quite thrown away, and might as well, for any good they produced, have been bestowed upon a rocking-horse. At length, after a final struggle, in which we were both within an ace of falling into a water-course which crossed the park in that direction, I gave the matter up as hopeless; and with a sigh (for I love not to be foiled in anything I have attempted, and, moreover, I could not help ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... reaching elevations averaging ten thousand feet, there was seen, over the German lines, a flock of the Hun planes led by two or three machines painted a bright red. These were some of the machines that had belonged to the celebrated "flying circus," organized by a daring Hun aviator and ace who was killed after he had inflicted great damage and loss on the Allied service. He and his men had their machines painted red, perhaps on the theory that they would thus inspire terror. These were some of the former members of the ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... them coopered," finished he. "Well, just as I was going to grab the kitty he played the ace of spades, produced an old document he held ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... have had it as well without as with a repeal? Iowa and Minnesota, to both of which the Missouri restriction applied, had, without its repeal, each in succession, territorial organizations. And even the year before, a bill for Nebraska itself was within an ace of passing without the repealing clause, and this in the hands of the same men who are now the champions of repeal. Why no necessity then for repeal? But still later, when this very bill was first brought ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... 1906.] ... I can't think of the name of that daredevil guerilla who led the jayhawkers and chased Redpath up and down the country, and, in turn, was chased by Redpath. By grace of the chances of war, the two men never met in the field, though they several times came within an ace of it. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... smiling frankly at him; "and besides I hold all the trumps. Ace, King, Queen; and Ace, Knave and Queen ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... certain conditions, the barrier between things seen and unseen, material and transcendental, was pervious. It yielded before the push of her apprehension, sense of what it guards, what it withholds within an ace of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... contemporary metallic currency. Others were chiefly hand engraved, and often sold in small metal and silver boxes, those dating from the time of Queen Anne being the most interesting. The most popular card counters in the early days of the nineteenth century were brass copies of the spade-ace gold guinea, which they closely resembled, and it is feared, when gilt, were not infrequently palmed off as ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... whit; I cannot spare them a jot—I cannot bate them an ace. Let them stay in their own barren mountains, and puff and swell, and hang their bonnets on the horns of the moon, if they have a mind; but what business have they to come where people wear breeches, and speak an intelligible language? I mean intelligible in comparison ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... a number of especially dangerous missions, and had met with considerable success in putting these through. Like most other ambitious young fliers, they hoped soon to merit the title of "ace," when they could point to at least six proven victories over rival pilots, with that number of planes ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... we sent out reported signs of camps but no sight of the enemy. As a consequence of these rumors our sentries were very nervous, and we scouts ran considerable risk returning to our lines before daylight. I was very nearly shot on several occasions, and once was within an ace of firing on one of my best pals. I saw a figure in the dark and, sneaking up to it, called out: "Put up your hands!" He did so, but then foolishly dropped them again. If he had not called out, "Who the hell are you?" at the same ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... disgootet mit de boledics of dis land, Dat his friendts could barely keep him from trowin' oop his hand, Vhen he held shtraight-flush mit an ace in his poot- vitch phrase ish all de same, In de science of pokerology, ash if he got ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... ground, and wrapped the lump of sheets with tender care, but would not allow it to be tied with a rope for fear of breaking more of the edges. He insisted on carrying it himself too, and did so for the larger part of the way to Santa Brigida, and it was only when he was within an ace of dropping himself with sheer tiredness that he condescended to let me take my turn. He was tolerably ungracious about it too. "I suppose you may as well carry the stuff," he snapped, "seeing that after ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... you did-humph! I knew the ace lay with you; I knew that as well as if I had seen it. I suppose you have eyes—but I don't know; if you have, didn't you see Glenfern turn up the king, and yet you returned his lead—returned our adversary's lead in the face of his king. I've been telling ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... still and refused to move another foot; and then we played our ace of trumps. Near by, twenty laborers were working. Calling all hands, they took hold of that outstretched rope, and heading straight for the new Elephant House started a new tug of war. Every "heave-ho" of that hilarious company meant a three-foot step ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the straight path that drove through the garden to the door, a sheep-fish wriggling at his heels. They saw too the pastures of the rest of the island, of a rougher brine-qualified green, and the one black tree that stood against them like the ace of clubs; and past them lay the channel where the white sail of a frigate curtseyed to the rust-red rag of a barge, and the round dark hills beyond mothering a storm. And if they looked towards the window in the right-hand wall they saw a line of elms going down the escarpment to the marshes ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Landale was quite aware that Tanty was not yet convinced to the desired extent. He therefore here interrupted her to play his last card—that ace he had up his sleeve, in careful preparation for this trial of skill with his keen-witted relative, and to the suitable production of which he ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... his race, and the majority of mankind for that matter, he was intensely superstitious. Three times in succession he cut and dealt the cards, and three times the ace of hearts, the luckiest card in the pack, turned face ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... A short without either rule or reason before a Consonant or two, with e after, as ace, acre, able, unstable, father, with A long, and solace, massacre, constable, gather, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... mysterious phenomenon, have become real living creatures to them. One of the players has dreamed all through his life of getting a grand slam, when, one evening, he sees he has the necessary cards in his hand. He has but to take one more card, the ace of spades, and his dream will be realized. But at the very moment when he is stretching forth his hand to take it, he falls down dead. His partners are terrified. One of them, a timorous and exact old man, named Jacob Ivanovich, is particularly struck. A thought comes to him; he ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... chose me as being a little more friendly to him than most of the Stockbridge gentlemen. When we had ridden forward, he saluted us with great cordiality and good humor, as if forsooth, instead of being within an ace of murdering us all, he had but been trying us ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... clad in little beyond Nature's own covering, as the majority of the intruders were, and looking in the dim light as black as the ace of spades, they seemed like so many demons, come to take possession of our unfortunate ship—as indeed they were. ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... see you alive again," he said; "I had a terrible trip. I didn't think I should ever get through—caught in the snowstorm and laid up for three days. The cattle wandered away and I came within an ace of losing them altogether. When I got started again the snow was so deep ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... giving the least heed to his cards. It was true his eyes were resting on the ace, king, and queen of spades; but his mind was tortured by the belief that by his fantastic conceit in sending Helen to this Alpine fastness he had delivered her ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... grimly, "I don't suppose from the exhibition I've just been watching, that you're in the habit of seeing farther than to the end of your own nose. However, I may as well point out to you that if you had killed yourself, as you richly deserved, and as you came within an ace of doing, the run would have been stopped for the season. We should all have been deprived of the Grand National, and I, who come up here solely to ride the Cresta, which I have done regularly every winter for twenty years, would have ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... shopkeepers, the President and General Attorney of the Anaconda Airline came to Washington. The Anaconda president was a short, corpulent man, with dark skin, eyes black as beads, round, alert face, and a nose like the ace of clubs. The General Attorney was no taller than his superior officer, but differed from him in a figure so spare and starved that it snapped its fingers at description. As though to make amends for a niggardliness of the physical, Providence had ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Chevalier Creek, Surville was overtaken by a frightful tempest, which brought him within an ace of destruction, but his sailors had such confidence in his nautical ability that they felt no anxiety, and obeyed his orders with a sang froid of which, unfortunately, the Maoris ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Darby's[3] coadjutor; And, as you in commission sit, To rule the dairy next to Kit;[4] In each capacity I mean To sing your praise. And first as Dean: Envy must own, you understand your Precedence, and support your grandeur: Nor of your rank will bate an ace, Except to give Dean Daniel[5] place. In you such dignity appears, So suited to your state and years! With ladies what a strict decorum! With what devotion you adore 'em! Treat me with so much complaisance, As fits a princess in romance! ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... thing is absurd!" protested Estermen. "There is no other man but you capable of dealing tactfully and diplomatically with my country. Your blundering predecessors brought us twice within an ace of war. If the man takes your place to whom rumor has already given it, I give Europe six weeks' peace—no more. We are a sensitive nation, as you know. You learned how to humor us. No one before you tried. You kept your alliance with France, but you were not afraid to show us the open hand. ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her too!" nodded Spike, warming to his theme. "Hermy's ace-high on the face and figure question! Why, there ain't a swell dame on Fift' Av'ner, nor nowheres else, got anything on ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... dealt, and having gone three in "no trumps" and found seven to the ace, king, queen in hearts lying before her in dummy, she wore a smile of beatific satisfaction. So also did Alice—for two reasons. The deal obviously spelled money, and Vere Millet could be trusted to get every trick out of it. There were four bridge ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... marry is a Custom I' the world; for look you Brother, Wou'd any man stand plucking for the Ace of Harts, With one pack of Cards all dayes ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the gills, 'this ship that we are in is more than half mine. I am chief owner. I'll stake me share of the ship on the next game against all that I have lost.' 'Done!' said I, and shuffled, cut, and dealt. He went four on three highest trumps, and an ace, and I held four small trumps. 'It's a bad job for my creditors,' he said, as he threw his hand down. Ged! I started on that vyage a poor captain, and I came into port very fairly well off, and sailing in me own ship, too! ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... when you did," he said, "I'd likely had to eat 'em, thanks to Reynolds. Now I'll send 'em up to H. B." He peered disgustedly into the bag and removed an irrelevant ace of spades. Its hibernation there seemed for an instant to annoy him as well it might. There had been a furore in whist about it barely a week before. Then he used it irresponsibly for an I.O.U. and impaled it upon a strange looking spike that ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... more serious trouble for the near future. To a loyal henchman, Moffat merely condescended to remark, glancing disdainfully at a knot of hard riders disconsolately sitting their ponies in front of the saloon door, "We 've got them fellers roped and tied, gents, and they simply won't be ace-high with the ladies of this camp after our fandango is over with. We're a holdin' the hand this game, an' it simply sweeps the board clean. That duffer McNeil's the sickest looking duck I 've seen in a year, an' the whole blame bunch of cow-punchers is corralled so tight ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... sight among the other crowders of the quay till the bowler hat came bobbing up the gangway. Then he smote its owner so jovially on the shoulder that his monocle shot the full length of its cord and the hat came within an ace of tumbling overboard. ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... said it was a bank. I've no more idea what it is you're tryin' to run off with than I know what an ace is goin' to do when there's a joker in the pack," remarked Sibley; "but I thought I'd tell you that Bradley and his lot are watchin' you gettin' ready to run." Then he hastily ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... great in the presence of hundreds of his peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual littleness by reason of their superabundance. And when it comes to occupations, it will hardly be denied that the stranger who beholds a Senator "coppering on the ace," or a Congressman standing in a bar-room with a lump of mouldy cheese in one hand and a glass of "pony whiskey" in the other, or a Judge of the Supreme Court wriggling an ugly woman through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... have no ace of spades to show down! You discarded it. You know you did, you—cheat!" He had risen and was shaking his fist in the face ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... in a strange mood. A few minutes before I had been at Pavannes' door, at the end of our journey; on the verge of success. I had been within an ace, as I supposed at least, of executing my errand. I had held the cup of success in my hand. And it had slipped. Now the conflict had to be fought over again; the danger to be faced. It would have been no more than natural if I had felt ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... first Crow responded with another,—he trumped Tug's ace, as it were,—for though he saw that the fire was going out and would not heat the pokers much longer, he decided not to wait for this, but set his men to gathering stones and sticks to pelt the two ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... the appearance presented by a central plate in the cuirass of the Pterichthys. It is of a lozenge form, and, occupying exactly such a place in the nether armature of the creature as that occupied by the lozenge shaped spot on the ace of diamonds, it comes in contact with four other plates that lie around it, and represent, so to speak, the white portions of the card. And Sir Philip now found, that instead of lying over, it lay under, the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... understood that at least three of them were cheating at every opportunity. Henry, alone, was playing a square game; as for the heavy winner, Larry, Andrew had reason to believe that he was adroitly palming an ace now and then—luck ran too consistently his way. For his own part, he was no card expert, and he smiled as ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... some news," he declared, bluntly; in his mood of the day he was finding no good qualities in mankind. "I never heard of Eck Flagg having any friends. Well, I'll take that back! I believe he's ace high among the Tarratine Indians up our way; they have made him an honorary chief. But it's no particular compliment to a white man's disposition to be able to qualify as an Indian, as ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the vessel struck the dock and lurched William out of his reverie, coming "within an ace" of pitching the poet ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... ex-prisidint. If I have anny pollytical ambition I'd rather be a Grant or a Garfield thin a Cleveland or a Harrison,' he says. 'I may've read it in th' Bible, though I think I saw it in a scand'lous book me frind Rhodes left in his bedroom las' time he called on me, that ye shud niver discard an ace to dhraw to a flush,' he says. 'I deplore th' language but th' sintimint is sound,' he says. 'An' I believe ye'er intintions to presarve peace ar-re honest, but I don't like to see ye pullin' off ye'er coat an' here goes f'r throuble while ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... experience of a lifetime! With books or no books, it is quite true, however, that some men, otherwise of great intelligence, can never be taught whist; they may have had every opportunity of learning it—have been born, as it were, with the ace of spades in their mouth instead of a silver spoon—but the gift of understanding is denied them; and though it is ungallant to say so, I have never known a lady to play ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... half sheepishly: "My foot's asleep, that's all. I beg everybody's pardon, I'm sure. Please go on"—he had come within an ace of saying "Mr. Rudolph," and only in the nick of time ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... of companions; while the other was an outlaw, a half-heathen, a lover of but one thing in this world, the joyous god of Chance. Pierre was essentially a gamester. He would have extracted satisfaction out of a death-sentence which was contingent on the trumping of an ace. His only honour was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... That evening, and on this day, the 5th, we received none at all, and in that hard, forced march we became very hungry. An incident that occurred will show how hungry we were. As we passed the hamlet of Verdiersville, I noticed a little negro boy, black as the "ace of spades" and dirty as a pig, standing on the side of the road gazing with staring eyes at the troops, and holding in his hand a piece of ash-cake, which he was eating. A moment after I passed him, our dear old comrade ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... an even more ridiculous couple than their kind usually are. And, when the gentleman squeezed the lady, she laughed so foolishly that Archie Pennybet was within an ace of forgetting himself and heartily laughing too. It was worse still, when they began the pernicious practice of "rubbing noses." For the operation was so new and unexpected, and withal so congenial to Archie, that he risked discovery by craning forward to study it. He watched ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... was the duty of one of us to hold this paper in readiness. The man who was to show the pass sat by the window. Of all our worthless passes our rule was always to show first the one of least value. If that failed we brought out a higher card, and continued until we had reached the ace. If that proved to be a two-spot, we all went to jail. Whenever we were halted, invariably there was the knowing individual who recognized us as newspaper men, and in order to save his country from destruction clamored to have us hung. It was for this pest that the one with the newspaper ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... rather to yield it to her eyes, from a generous impulse, from an irresistible desire to save her from an unworthy husband and a wretched fate. Fortune has been dealing our cards for us, and has turned up the ace. Three to one now on the odd trick. Maltravers, too, is at home. I called at his house, on returning from my uncle's, and learned that he would not stir out all ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... questioned orders and did the best he could, And soon a corporal he came to be; He was known throughout the country as the army's fighting ace, Beloved in every branch ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... Flaherty. 'High man,' says Burke. Flaherty cut th' king iv spades. Burke, th' robber, cut th' ace iv hearts. He was reachin' out f'r th' money, whin Flaherty put his hands over it. 'Wud ye take it?' says he. 'I wud,' says Burke. 'Wud ye rob th' church?' says Flaherty. 'I wud,' says Burke. 'Thin,' says Flaherty, scoopin' it in, 'ye're a heretic; ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... without some noise being heard abroad. There rose in the Court, I know not what confused murmurs, the origin of which could not be pointed out, publishing that either the State or Chamillart must perish; that already his ignorance had brought the kingdom within an ace of destruction; that it was a miracle this destruction had not yet come to pass; and that it would be madness to tempt Providence any longer. Some did not blush to abuse him; others praised his intentions, and spoke with moderation of faults that many people reproached ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... contestants, Sinclair and Du Sang, were ordered back thirty-five paces on their horses, and the railroad man, walking over to the targets, held out between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand the ace of clubs. The man that should first spot the pip out of the card was to take the prize, a Cheyenne saddle. Sinclair shot, and his horse, perfectly trained, stood like a statue. The card flew from Smith's hand, but the bullet had ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... then, the word "illegal" brought us face to face with a crisis which was within an ace of causing a rupture of diplomatic relations. The last days of the negotiations turned out very unfortunately for us. Mr. Lansing and I had agreed upon a formula in which the word "illegal" did not occur, because my instructions ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... deep, deep river, death a blue sky, life was a house, death a wisp of hay, a flower, a tower, life and death were anything and everything, except this ordered insanity, where the king takes the queen, and the ace the king. Ah, no; there was beauty and adventure behind, such as the man at her feet had yearned for; there was hope this side of the grave; there were truer relationships beyond the limits that fetter us now. As a prisoner looks up and sees stars beckoning, so she, from the turmoil and horror ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... a matter of principle with all of them. They can justify themselves seven ways to the ace. Keep an eye on him, or let us do ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... John, I played a couple of games recently with a wide-faced young man who grew very playful and threw the parlor furniture at me because I trumpeted his ace. I fancy I must have did wrong. The fifth time I trumpeted his ace the young man arose, put on his gum shoes, and skeedaddled out of the house. Is it not considered a breach of etiquette to put on gum shoes in the presence of ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... writes me word that he'll receive you on board the Liffy frigate, which, by a combination of circumstances, is now lying in Cork Harbour,—fortunate for us, but which might have proved disastrous to her gallant officers and crew, for she was dismasted in a gale, and was within an ace of being driven on shore. But a miss is as good as a mile; and when under jury-masts she scraped clear of the rocks, and got into port in safety. Here my letter, after wandering about for many a day, found him, and he has lost no time in replying to it. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... recognised "card" and "character" since before Denry's birth. But Denry, though so young, had made immense progress as a card, and had, perhaps justifiably, come to consider himself as the premier card, the very ace, of the town. He felt that some reply was needed to Curtenty's geese, and the mule was his reply. It served excellently. People were soon asking each other whether they had heard that Denry Machin's "latest" was to buy a mule. He obtained a little old victoria ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... boasted that honesty was the best policy and that he was invariably willing to put his cards on the table. The Millionaire had once professed himself likely to be satisfied if the Iron King would only remove the fifth ace from his sleeve, and a certain coolness between the two men resulted. In general, however, he had the reputation ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... "I can't show myself less of a sportsman than you are; but I think I've the option of demanding a longer range. Move the mat back twenty-five yards and put up an ace of spades; it's the plainest. Three shots each should suffice at ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... your discard should be governed by two considerations—first, to better your own hand, and second, to cripple your opponent's. Your moderate player never thinks of this latter consideration. His only thought is to better his own hand. He never discards an ace. The mere size of it dazzles him, and he will keep aces and discard tens, forgetting that you cannot have a sequence of more than four without a ten, and that you can have one of seven without the ace, and that a king is as good as an ace, if the latter is in the discard. I am speakin' ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... afterwards, I do confess, with much eagerness, to take a couple of hours' daily sport. Ah! it was a strange place. There was an aristocracy there as elsewhere,—amongst other gents, a son of my Lord Deuce-ace; and many of the men in the prison were as eager to walk with him, and talked of his family as knowingly, as if they were Bond Street bucks. Poor Tidd, especially, was one of these. Of all his fortune he had nothing left but a dressing-case ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... AIR.—During this year warfare in the air continued to advance. Guynemer (geen-m[)e]r'), the great French ace, who was lost on September 11, had to his credit the destruction of fifty-four enemy machines. The increase in the number of airplanes led to the grouping of large numbers into regular formations (escadrilles), sometimes ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... on the continent this morning, Father Jos," said Cornelius. "Did ye learn any news for us? Size ace! ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... next brought clusters of leaves, lozenge-like in shape and bottle-green in color. In the center rose a rod at whose end a varnished ace of hearts swayed. As though meaning to defy all conceivable forms of plants, a fleshy stalk climbed through the heart of this intense vermilion ace—a stalk that in some specimens was straight, in others showed ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... never was so deceived in a pious looking young person in his life. "Why," said he, as he was thumbing over the Bible to read a chapter before morning prayers, "the tow headed cuss would draw to a pair of deuces and get an ace full. Let ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... need so long an exordium to excuse thee, poor Parson Dale, for turning up that ace of spades with so triumphant a smile at thy partner? I must own that nothing which could well add to the parson's offence was wanting. In the first place, he did not play charitably, and merely to oblige other people. He delighted in the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the sailor. "They've let me know as much a'ready. There be two captains to their crew; one's the smoke-dried old sinner as brought yer in; the other a big nayger, as black as the ace o' spades. You saw the swab? He's inside the tent here. He's my master. The two came nigh quarrelling about which should have me, and settled it by some sort o' a game they played wi' balls of kaymal's ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... king," he muttered, "now the ace. We're on the home stretch, going strong. There, it's finished. It's come out right. A great game, ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... we have a frame constructed from the ten playing cards, ace to ten of diamonds. The children who made it wanted the pips on all four sides to add up alike, but they failed in their attempt and gave it up as impossible. It will be seen that the pips in the top row, the bottom row, ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... 22) by appointing Montrose his Lieutenant-Governor and Captain-General in Scotland, though Lauderdale and Lanark "abate not an ace of their damned Covenant in all their discourses," wrote Hyde. The dispute between Montrose, on the side of honour, and that of Lanark, Lauderdale, and other Scottish envoys, ended as—given the character of Charles ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... stiff little birch, that, growing recklessly in the thin soil over a rock, had been willing to yield to the persuasion of a child and come up by the roots. And then, Margaret pushing her best, and Aladdin prying and grunting, the log was moved to within an ace of launching. Until now, for she was too young to understand about daring and unselfishness, Margaret had considered the log-launching as a game invented by Aladdin to while away the dreary time; but now she realized, from the look in the pale, set, freckly, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... to explain to you. Perhaps man is mistaken in thinking that he is obliged to resist evil and has a right to do so, just as he is mistaken in thinking, for instance, that the heart looks like an ace of hearts. It is very possible in resisting evil we ought not to use force, but to use what is the very opposite of force—if you, for instance, don't want this picture stolen from you, you ought to give it away rather than lock ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... General, his face as black as the ace of spades, (which, by the way, is blue.) "I might go to Nova Zembla for a quiet smoke, and some sneaking politician would crawl out from the ice with a petition. I went fishing in Pennsylvania, and I found twenty of those fellows to every trout. However, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... was not yet quite emancipated from the traditions of his upbringing. To create a disturbance in a public place, to draw all eyes upon himself, to look a fool, eventually to be turned ignominiously into the street—all this he was within an ace of doing and suffering, but he refrained. He sat down again quickly, feeling hot and cold with shame, just as he remembered he had been wont to feel when he had committed some gaucherie in his early days ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... the 25th such a storm sprang up as mortal mariner rarely encountered even off such a coast—a violent north-easterly hurricane—still known in Algiers as "Charles's gale"—such as few vessels cared to ride off a lee shore. The immense flotilla in the bay was within an ace of total destruction. Anchors and cables were powerless to hold the crowded, jostling ships. One after the other they broke loose, and keeled over to the tempest till their decks were drowned in the seas. Planks gaped; broadside to broadside the helpless hulks crashed ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... it was a garment of far-flung amplitude, woven on the shadowy loom of night and the sea, and from such mysterious warp and weft is often produced the sable robe of tragedy and death. It was so now, within an ace. At one instance, the restless plain of the ocean seemed to bear no other argosy than the Andromeda; in the next, Hozier's quick-moving glance had caught the pallid sheen of some small craft's starboard light. No need to tell him what might happen. A sailing vessel, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... included the Lyons electric light and gas plant. On this side trip we met an entire regiment of Algerian soldiers, black as the traditional ace of spades, but fine specimens of manhood. Their uniforms were almost identical with the uniform worn by our soldiers in the Civil War. They wore light blue overcoats, such as Governor Tod furnished the first ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... a little. She was within an ace of handing over to Karl Steinmetz the rod of power held over her by the Frenchman. There was something in Steinmetz that appealed to her and softened her, something that reached a tender part of her heart through the coating of vanity, through the ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... had worked, all right. You see, when Mike was doin' his heavy courtin' I'd planted my ace in the hole; I'd took off the outer soles of his runnin'-shoes and filed the spikes almost in two, close up to the plate. When I sewed the leather back on, it never showed, but the minute he struck his gait they broke with him and he begin to miss his ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... and see fair play, Colonel. I won't have any hand in it, beyond seeing fair play. You ain't a-goin' to be very hard with them poor boys? Though I seen 'em both shoot; the fair one hunts well, as you know, but the old one's a wonder at an ace of spades." ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... fostered, and probably originated, by wealthy German employers in Petrograd, Moscow and other industrial centres. They had hoped to frustrate the mobilization order, retard Russia's entry into the field, and possibly bring about civil strife. And they were within an ace of succeeding. On the very eve of hostilities reports reached Berlin and Vienna that the revolution was already beginning. But the declaration of war against Germany purified the air, absorbed the redundant energies of the people, and fused all ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... for help—though its meaning was not comprehended at first—brought the other boys to Clay's assistance. That is to say they paddled toward the dangerous spot and were within an ace of getting in the same fix, when ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... under your pillow a prayer-book open at the part of the matrimonial service 'with this ring I thee wed'; place on it a key, a ring, a flower, and a sprig of willow, a small heart-cake, a crust of bread, and the following cards:—the ten of clubs, nine of hearts, ace of spades, and the ace of diamonds. Wrap all these in a thin handkerchief of gauze or muslin, and on getting into bed, cross your hands, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... consequences. He is almost a madman in his outbursts of temper; and where Zuilika is concerned—— Perhaps you will understand, Mr. Cleek, when I tell you that once when he thought her husband had ill-used her he came within an ace of killing the man. There was bad blood between them always, even as boys, and, as men, it was bitterer than ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... holdin' FOUR aces when somebody else hez TWO, who don't like to let on because it's Prosper's old mother—it's gettin' rough! And dangerous too, gentlemen, if there happened to be an outsider in, or one of the boys should kick. Why, I saw Bilson grind his teeth—he holdin' a sequence flush—ace high—when the dear old critter laid down her reg'lar four aces and raked in the pile. We had to nearly kick his legs off under the table afore he'd understand—not ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... that Rose had gone home, but Rodwell stopped to tell her we had come as he went down with the cart, and she exclaimed, "Pray day come for me go see Miss Hayiut." In the morning she came early into my chamber, bright and eager. I knew Robert was black as the ace of spades, but they both of them did look blacker than anything I ever saw before, but it ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... "A wounded Ace of theirs, Anton Hupfer, was for ever hanging round. He was to take up the 'plane when it was ready. But Herter industriously chummed with him, and not for nothing. To Herter was due the 'discovery' of the inventor; and as he boasted experience in flying, ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... singular affair! First you see her in the magic caldron; then we find her dead; then, when within an ace of being buried, she comes to life; then we leave her lifeless as a marble statue, shut up in your room, and fifteen minutes after, she vanishes as mysteriously as a fairy in a nursery legend. And, lastly, she turns up in the shape of ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... why not now, my angel? Such beauty fires beyond the power of resistance.—Pshaw! the father here! My old luck: I never nicked seven that I did not throw ames ace three times ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... A carrier suddenly came charging out of the brush to his left. While Ed dealt with that one, the Harn played its ace in the hole. The two special units it had been developing to deal with Ed were not quite done yet, but they were done enough to work for the few minutes the Harn needed them. Ed heard a coughing grunt behind him and spun around to see something new crawling out of the flame and smoke ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... "knowing that in a short time I shall be certain of cash, one way or the other, I had resolved to try my luck with the L500. I went to the hazard table, and threw in seventeen times—hedged upon the deuce ace, and threw out with it—voila. They won't catch me there again in a hurry—luck like that only comes once in a man's life; but, Japhet, there is a little drawback to all this. I shall require your kind attendance in two or ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... whispering echo which was extremely weird and suggestive. Mr. Fetherbee was enchanted. He felt that he was getting down into the mysterious heart of things; that he was having something which came within an ace of being an adventure. Then, as he felt his way down, farther and farther below the vain surface of things, that intervening ace vanished, and he came up against his adventure with a suddenness that sent a knife-like thrill to his heart. His foot had lost its hold of the rope; he was hanging ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... edifice and the pity of its decay. "That's a vile job you have in hand, my friend— a bit of sheer vandalism," said the tourist; "but I suppose the Parson who employs you knows no better." Parson Jack had been within an ace of revealing himself, but now changed his mind and asked humbly enough what was amiss. Whereupon the tourist pulled out a pencil and an old envelope, and explained. "But there," he broke off, "it would take me a week to go into ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the ostrich as he surveyed his victim, "because a man looks sad at the opening of a jack-pot, it doesn't necessarily follow that he's only got ace-high." ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... me to point most clearly to the whole key of the situation. Anything which cannot be brought into such a simple number series, for instance, a colour impression, can never be transmitted. If the mother looks at the ace of diamonds, Beulah says that she sees the red of the diamond before her in her mind, but if the mother looks at the picture of a blue lake, this blue impression can never arise in Beulah's mind, but ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... a hostile incentive, and the Romans with a unified purpose after their reconciliation conducted vigorously the wars which the latter waged, and conquered in all of them. It was at this time that in the siege of Corioli they came within an ace of being driven from their camp, but a patrician, Gnaeus Marcius, showed his prowess and repelled the assailants. For this he received various tokens of renown and was given the title of Coriolanus from the people which he had routed. [Sidenote: FRAG. 17^2] FOR THE TIME HE WAS THUS ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... came a powerful change; one sollum Sunday night Occurred the tidal wave that put ol' Salty out o' sight. He win on deuce an' ace an' Jack—he win on king an' queen— Clif Bell allowed the like uv how he win wuz never seen. An' how he done it wuz revealed to all us fellers when He said he teched a ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... with a man who stood there, whose chief articles of raiment were overalls, boots, and a woolen shirt. Almost instantly, it seemed, two of the others had returned and Norton was introducing them as "Ace," "Lanky," and "Weary." These pseudonyms were picturesque and descriptive, though at the time Hollis was in a state of pained incomprehension concerning them. Later he was informed that Ace had been so named on account of having once been ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to see you again," she went on. "You came within an ace of being my husband. I might have belonged to you and counted your washing. It's ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... country solicitor, she married early—for love, and the issue was disastrous. Above her right temple, just at the roots of the hair, a scar was discoverable; it was the memento of an occasion on which her husband aimed a blow at her with a mantelpiece ornament, and came within an ace of murder. Intimates of the household said that the provocation was great—that Mrs. Lessingham's gift of sarcasm had that morning displayed itself much too brilliantly. Still, the missile was an extreme retort, and on the whole it could not be wondered at that husband ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... Grange, trance and test clairvoyant, to Hattie, the landlady's daughter. "Now keep your wish in your mind, remember. That's right; a deep cut for luck. U-um. The nine of hearts is your wish—and right beside it is the ace of hearts. That means your home, dearie—the spirits don't lie, even when they're manifestin' themselves just through cards. They guide your hand when you shuffle and cut. Your wish is about the ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... situation as it presented itself on October 31st and November 1st, 1914, I believe that the vital interests of the British Empire were in great danger on both these days. That is to say, the whole coast-line from Havre to Ostend was within an ace of falling into the ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... certain sections of the city was stronger than the law, he had a hold upon her imagination. As the inspirer of her best work, he had a hold upon her gratitude. He had, or thought he had, a chance to win her affection in open and equal competition. And, highest card of all—ace of trumps—he had persuaded her that her influence upon him was such that with all the strength of remorse he was shaping ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... traversed three times the direct distance is setting a low estimate. Throughout all those swamps the great lizards hunted, and as the country was new to me I did not know places of harbour, and a hundred times was within an ace of being spied and devoured at a mouthful. But the High Gods still desired me for Their own purposes, and blinded the great beasts' eyes when I slunk to cover as they passed. Twice rivers of scalding water roared boiling across my path, and I had to delay till I could collect ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... growing recklessly in the thin soil over a rock, had been willing to yield to the persuasion of a child and come up by the roots. And then, Margaret pushing her best, and Aladdin prying and grunting, the log was moved to within an ace of launching. Until now, for she was too young to understand about daring and unselfishness, Margaret had considered the log-launching as a game invented by Aladdin to while away the dreary time; but now she realized, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... any love left to give the woman who had despoiled him of all a man values—broken his faith, destroyed the ideals that had once been his. Moreover, she had seen clear down into his soul that day at Berrier Cove, when Ann had come within an ace of death, and she knew that on the ruins of the old love a new ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... he maintained his silence - 'You!' she cried, pointing at him with her finger. "Tis you they threaten! Your rascal and mine have laid their heads together and condemned you. But they reckoned without you and me. We make a PARTIE CARREE, Prince, in love and politics. They lead an ace, but we shall trump it. Come, partner, shall I draw ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... paleness spreads o'er all her look; She sees, and trembles at th' approaching ill, Just in the jaws of ruin, and codille. And now (as oft in some distempered state) On one nice trick depends the general fate. An ace of hearts steps forth; the king unseen Lurked in her hand, and mourned his captive queen: He springs to vengeance with an eager pace, And falls like thunder on the prostrate ace. The nymph exulting fills with shouts the sky; The walls, the woods, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... told his mother and she took it to the school board. I was a pretty tough little rascal in those days I guess and no doubt needed some lickings myself occasionally. But I remember I almost lost my nerve when I got back to school that day and came within an ace of stuffing the rose in my pocket instead of throwing it on your desk. I never dreamed the rose would be anything to you. It was only my way of paying tribute to you. You seemed to me something like a rose yourself, just dropped down out of heaven you know, you were so little and pink ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... the radiant being's window. The pretty girls of the household vanished with murmured excuses, leaving us at the mercy of the boy, who sighed grievously, dropped a sugar bowl, and spilled coffee within an ace of ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... suppose from the exhibition I've just been watching, that you're in the habit of seeing farther than to the end of your own nose. However, I may as well point out to you that if you had killed yourself, as you richly deserved, and as you came within an ace of doing, the run would have been stopped for the season. We should all have been deprived of the Grand National, and I, who come up here solely to ride the Cresta, which I have done regularly every winter for twenty years, would have had my favorite occupation snatched ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... peace. For anon the chief announced that this time a Kookwes—a burly, beastly villain, not two points better than his cousin the Chenoo—was coming to play at rough murder with them. And, verily, by this time the Micmac began to believe, without bating an ace on it, that all of these tall people were like the wolves, who, meeting with nobody else, bite one another. So they were bound and bundled up as before, and put to bed like dolls. And again they heard the horrible shout, the moderate shout, and the smaller shout, until sooel ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... round, then: here are dyce, and ile begin to ye. Have at your head, Sir John! dewce ace[206]; a doggs-head![207] The devill turnd this ace up. Farwell, velvet gowne! Thou hast mist the luckiest hand ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... king pointed out to the prince the impropriety of his conduct. Radziwill added, that the bears were not cross, as whip, gold, and patience can put in order every thing; He added also, that, sometimes the ace beats the king at cards, and paid liberally the damages. After some time, he gave a splendid party, to which he invited all the ambassadors, and all the leading personages in Poland, and displayed extraordinary luxury. The dancing was kept up in several drawing rooms. After the supper, he ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... much like your carrot-pated Poitevins, save only that all of them, men, women, and children, have their noses shaped like an ace of clubs. For that reason the ancient name of the country was Ennasin. They were all akin, as the mayor of the place told us; ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... was impeded with sobs and the oscillations of three semi-detached teeth, that waved in the breeze as he screamed: "Little Clarence Detwiller LICKED me! so he did! and I on'y p-pushed him off his sled into a puddle of ice wa-wa-water and he attackted me and kicked my f-f-Face-ace off." ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... yards below the last house in the village, and some mist overhung the river. Under cover of this a small body of horse, with one gun, from Shields's forces, had reached the east end of the bridge and trained the gun on it. Jackson was within an ace of capture. As he spurred across, the gun was fired on him, but without effect, and the sound brought up staff and escort, when the horse retired north. This incident occasioned the order to me. After relating ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... last Cambridge vacation; then, in November of 1791, he crossed to France, ostensibly to learn the language, made the acquaintance of revolutionaries, sympathized with them vehemently, and was within an ace of throwing in his lot with the Brissotins, to give them the steady direction that they needed. When it came to this his relatives cut off his supplies, and he was obliged to return to London toward the close of 1792. But still he resisted all pressure to enter any of the regular professions, published ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... When you go to bed, place under your pillow a prayer-book open at the part of the matrimonial service 'with this ring I thee wed'; place on it a key, a ring, a flower, and a sprig of willow, a small heart-cake, a crust of bread, and the following cards:—the ten of clubs, nine of hearts, ace of spades, and the ace of diamonds. Wrap all these in a thin handkerchief of gauze or muslin, and on getting into bed, cross ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... purchasing at a cost of many hours of crowded disappointment, it was as well that Mavis was ignorant of the way in which her prospects had been prejudiced by the trend of events at Melkbridge House since Mrs Devitt had replied to Miss Mee's letter. To begin with, Mavis's visit had been within an ace of being indefinitely postponed; it was owing to Harold's expressed wish that the original appointment had been allowed to stand. The reason for this indifference to Mavis's immediate future was that, the day after the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... end. He came out of his theories and clevernesses; his premature man-of-the-worldness, on which he had prided himself on his travels, 'shrank like a thing ashamed' before this real sorrow. Pride, wounded honour, pity and respect tussled together daily in his heart; and now he was within an ace of throwing himself upon his father's mercy, and now of slipping forth at night and coming back no more to Naseby House. He suffered from the sight of his father, nay, even from the neighbourhood of this familiar valley, ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... consequence of these rumors our sentries were very nervous, and we scouts ran considerable risk returning to our lines before daylight. I was very nearly shot on several occasions, and once was within an ace of firing on one of my best pals. I saw a figure in the dark and, sneaking up to it, called out: "Put up your hands!" He did so, but then foolishly dropped them again. If he had not called out, "Who the hell are you?" at the same moment, ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... time he read some of the stanzas which he had completed. Even in the first winter after Hallam's death, he wrote a few lines in the manuscript book which he kept by him for the purpose during the next fifteen years, and which he was within an ace of losing in 1850, just when the poem was completed and ready for publication. As a statesman turns from his private sorrow to devote himself to a public cause, so the poet's instinct was to find comfort in the practice of his art. Under the stress of ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... dice; each dice with its six surfaces had six different numbers. While he beamed into the veiled eyes of the old Mexican he was figuring upon the various combinations possible and the likelihood, the theory of chances, of a six or an ace upon the second throw. From the jump the game fascinated him; it is to be questioned, however, if ever before a man knew just the sort of fascination which enthralled him. No matter who won or lost, when the rolling ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... depend upon it, Phil, if he knows how to watch for it; but there are so many men who get tired and go to sleep before their chances come to them. I've wasted a good deal of time, and a good deal of labour; but the ace of trumps is in the pack, and it must turn up sooner ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... dishonesties, for at the end of the game he gave up all his winnings, and they were equally divided. Gain, as may readily be supposed, was not his object; but he always expected that fortune would grant him an ace or a ten at the right moment with the same confidence with which he looked for fine weather on the day of battle. If he were disappointed he wished nobody to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... put 'em along faster, as it is—" His sentence remained unfinished, the sleigh bumped and lifted on to one runner. It was within an ace of overturning. There was no need ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... me some tips. One of them was to shout at your scout for at least a week to show that you are not an infant, another was not to row, and the last was not to play cards all day and night. My brother's an odd kind of chap, the sort of man who doesn't know the ace of spades by sight, but it's as easy to shout as it is not to row. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... is; Yet that would not serve, but I must bear his charges; And yet for all that, rode astride on a beast, The worst that e'er went on three legs, I protest: It certainly was the most ugly of jades, His hips and his rump made a right ace of spades; His sides were two ladders, well spur-galled withal; His neck was a helve, and his head was a mall; For his colour, my pains and your trouble I'll spare, For the creature was wholly denuded of hair; And, except for two things, as bare as my nail, A tuft of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Blount asked for the family touring-car, more than half-expecting to be told that his father had taken it. The garage man nodded and laughed. "You can have it, but you came within an ace of losing out," he said. "The senator was just here, and he was going to take it, but he changed his mind when I told him the ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... horse-thief in voice softened by the vapors of his steaming dinner, "that friend of yours with the whiskers all over him is ace-high over here in this end of the dump! And say, friend, they could keep me here for life if they'd send purty girls like that one down here to see me once in a while. You're in right, friend; you certainly ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... of the numbers come as full words, seems to me to point most clearly to the whole key of the situation. Anything which cannot be brought into such a simple number series, for instance, a colour impression, can never be transmitted. If the mother looks at the ace of diamonds, Beulah says that she sees the red of the diamond before her in her mind, but if the mother looks at the picture of a blue lake, this blue impression can never arise in Beulah's mind, ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... a valuable wash-stand. Chippendale furniture ain't in it with this kind. I reckon the king of England's is ace high against a straight flush when it bucks up ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... was his lordship," he went on, scanning the judge still harder. "I do mind his vurry voice. It was 'im, no doubt about it. I've zeed a zight o' people, since I zeed 'im that day, but I do mind his voice, and I do mind his 'ands, and I do mind his ve-ace the zame as if it wur yesterday. Now I come to look, blessed ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... gravely and simply that old Bridewell watched him quizzically, half suspecting that there was a touch of irony hidden somewhere. It gradually dawned on him that a man who was flat broke was refusing money which he had won fairly on a bet. The idea staggered Bridewell. He was within an ace of putting Bull Hunter down as a fool. Something held him back, through some underlying respect for the physical might of the big man and a respect, also, for the honesty which looked out of his eyes. He pocketed the money slowly. He was never ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... press gang!" said the cook, who was a negro black as the ace of spades named Job. "Dey am comin' to take off everybody dat looks like a Britisher. Golly! do I look ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... man,' says Burke. Flaherty cut th' king iv spades. Burke, th' robber, cut th' ace iv hearts. He was reachin' out f'r th' money, whin Flaherty put his hands over it. 'Wud ye take it?' says he. 'I wud,' says Burke. 'Wud ye rob th' church?' says Flaherty. 'I wud,' says Burke. 'Thin,' says Flaherty, scoopin' ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... Scotty told them. "I talked it over with Tony, and came within an ace of diving after you, although I doubt that I could have reached bottom and found you. But we watched, and we couldn't see any bubbles at all. It was too dark, and we were right where the ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... He looked like the Ace of Diamonds when we had finished with him.... Move on there! Keep on ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... experience we lear-rn. An' th' sooner a man lear-rns, th' bether ut is fer um, that all women know more thin they let on—an' they've always an ace fer a ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... with fatigue after a long journey, sank down at the very brink of a deep well and presently fell asleep. He was within an ace of falling in, when Dame Fortune appeared to him and touched him on the shoulder, cautioning him to move further away. "Wake up, good sir, I pray you," she said; "had you fallen into the well, the blame would have been thrown not on your own folly ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... he shuffled the cards, of slily inclining the painted sides upwards. He had another knack of leaving an honour at the bottom. He made a false cut with fair dexterity for an amateur. He could, when occasion seemed to make it profitable, discard with a fair air of unconsciousness. An ace dropped out of sight a hand or two earlier, was followed by a valueless card dropped openly. The ace was taken to supply its place with a perfect smiling effrontery. But Mr. Barter's favourite trick came out when he had a weak hand. Then he smiled across at his opponent, breathed softly the ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... glance at Howle, old Stoneman shoved a stack of blue chips, worth fifty dollars, over the ace, playing it to win on Howle's ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... were the waving elm boughs and a clear sky. He was aroused by a knock on his door, and, as he jumped out of bed, Big Abel, the Major's driver and confidential servant, came in with the warm water. He was a strong, finely-formed negro, black as the ace of spades (so the Major put it), and ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... shines, and my heart is high. This is a great day. The Stars and Stripes ace flying at my gate, and they are flying over all France. What is more they will soon be flying—if they are not already—over Westminster, for the first time in history. The mighty, unruly child, who never could quite forgive the parent it defied, and never has been wholly pardoned, is to ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... of the R.E., as I thought—didn't tell him much, luckily, but we hadn't parted five minutes when he was 'wanted,' and there was no end of a hunt, but he managed to get clear, and a genuine English major was within an ace of being shot in mistake for him if he hadn't been recognised by one of the ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... spectacle, (and thinking of Maria Dolores? revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as his eye rested on the shimmer at the valley's end which he knew to be the lake, lifted up his hand and clapped his brow. "By Jove," he muttered, "if I wasn't within an ace of clean forgetting!" The sight of the lake had fortunately put him in mind that he was engaged to-day to lunch with ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... three queens and an ace. "One card," he said to Allen. Allen tossed him the card, and Hugh's heart leaped when he saw that it ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... to Beverly who had often ridden fifty in one day with Uncle Athol and her brother? Just a breather. And when there swept through the gateway of Kilton Hall a most exalted, hatless, rosy-cheeked, dancing-eyed lassie mounted upon a most hilarious steed, the gate-keeper came within an ace of having apoplexy, for she was a ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... proponentibus.[43] The principle involved in this phrase continued to be hotly disputed all through the sessions of the Council. But Pius knew that so long as he stuck fast to it he always held the ace of trumps, and nothing would ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... consisted of a gentleman and two old ladies. The gentleman (a plump, black-whiskered elderly Cupid, with a vast expanse of shirt-front like an immense white ace of hearts, and a rose in his button-hole) was standing on the hearth-rug in a graceful attitude, with one hand resting on his hip, and the other under his coat-tails. Of the two old ladies, who seemed as if expressly created by nature to serve as foils ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... almost beyond belief, and there was a general rush toward that row of lodges, and beyond them into the bushes and through the corral. It came within an ace of stampeding every pony there, and every trace of anything like a "trail" left by the feet of Two Knives and his ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... shall not have last word as you think,—all the 'risk' shall not be mine, neither; how can I, in the event, throw ambs-ace (is not that the old word?) and not peril your stakes too, when once we have common stock and are partners? When I see the unicorn and grieve proportionately, do you mean to say you are not going to grieve too, for my sake? And if so—why, you clearly run ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... receive you on board the Liffy frigate, which, by a combination of circumstances, is now lying in Cork Harbour,—fortunate for us, but which might have proved disastrous to her gallant officers and crew, for she was dismasted in a gale, and was within an ace of being driven on shore. But a miss is as good as a mile; and when under jury-masts she scraped clear of the rocks, and got into port in safety. Here my letter, after wandering about for many a day, found him, and he has lost no time in replying ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... theme and make it immortal, because some botcher had tried his hand upon it before, and left it for stone-dead? Because he could not help throwing sizes, was he to avoid the dice which for others would only come up ames-ace? ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... 'twas an undacent deed, and a hundred confessions would barely wipe it from yer sowl. It's a pity, too, that ye've died widout absolution from a praist, sich as I've tould ye off. Barrin' the brache of good fellieship, I could have placed yer own scalp wid the rest, as a p'ace-offering, to his Honour, the Missus and ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... was saying: It was a cinch to see that Sandy's girl thought you was ace high, alrightee. She kept her eyes glommed onto you ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the rule has been that everywhere the lower forms of life precede the higher. In the plant world flowerless plants precede the flowering ones. The coal we burn to-day is mainly the remains of the wonderful growth of the flowerless vegetation of the Paleozoic Ace. When flowering plants appear, it is the lower forms ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... you, you dear, brave, blessed ace of hearts in a world where hearts are trumps! If you ain't one of the right old girls, then they don't make ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... 'I've got him here. Such a clerk for you, Brass, such a prize, such an ace of trumps. Be quick and open the door, or if there's another lawyer near and he should happen to look out of window, he'll snap him up before your eyes, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... had a drop too much. That very night there was an alarm, and out we went to the front, half seas over! We did catch it, I can tell you, when Aleksei Petrovich came to hear about us! Heaven save us, what a rage he was in! He was within an ace of having us court-martialled. That's just how things happen! You might easily spend a whole year without seeing a soul; but just go and have a drop and ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... hearts, knave of clubs, ace and duce of trumps, at whist: also the lubberly seamen, put to swab, and ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... the railing before him and gasped. The second seemed an age. The lower fan of the aeropile passed within an ace of touching the people, who yelled and screamed and ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... suffix -iti, found in Armaiti, Khnathaiti, and the like. Astibaras is perhaps "great of bone," from Zend agta (Sans, asthi), "bone," and bereza, "tall, great." Harmamithres, if that is the true reading, would be "mountain-lover" (monticolus), from hardam, ace. of hara, "a mountain," and mithra or mitra, "fond of." If, however, the name should be read as Armamithres, the probable derivation will be from rama, ace. of raman, "pleasure," which is also the root of Rama-tea. Armamithres may then be compared with Rheomithres, Siromitras, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... become ice. Yes, he understood at last what Destiny had always been trying to tell him—that love and happiness were not for him. He was consecrate to great causes: His Will, entangled with that of others, grew feeble, fruitless. Women were truly enfants du diable. He had been within an ace of abandoning his historical mission. Now he would arise, strong, sublime: a mighty weapon forged by the gods, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... matter; people of that ilk are not fit subjects to discuss with you. All that I know of the woman is that she has travelled pretty well over the world; that some six or eight months ago she was in Ceylon with a—er—a certain member of her crew, and came within an ace of falling foul of the law. She had put up a plan to loot the depository of the Pearl Fisheries Company at a period when there were thousands of pounds worth of gems awaiting transport. With her usual luck she slipped out of the net and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... you pannierman's by-blow!" she cried; "you bony muckfowl, with the bony back sticking out like the ace of spades on the point of a small-sword! you lie, Bobchin, Changeling, Horseleech! 'Slid, you Shrovetide Cutpurse, I'll scald your hide ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... an Italian card-game ("the little Calabrian game") for three players. All the tens, nines and eights are removed from an ordinary pack; the order of the cards is three, two, ace, king, queen, &c. In scoring the ace counts 3; the three 2; king, queen and knave 1 each. The last trick counts 3. Each separate hand is a whole game. One player plays against the other two, paying to each or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... is a singular fact, that before the public, or rather the booksellers, had given their decision, he no more knew whether he had written well or ill, than whether a die thrown out of a box was to turn up a size or an ace. However, he instantly resumed his spirits, and expressed his wonder rather that his poetical popularity should have lasted so long, than that it should have now at last given way. At length he said, with perfect cheerfulness, 'Well, well, James, so be it—but you know we must ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... happier he who ne'er hath known! By absence who hath chilled his love, His hate by slander, and who spends Existence without wife or friends, Whom jealous transport cannot move, And who the rent-roll of his race Ne'er trusted to the treacherous ace. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... irresistible. As a delineator of types, accurate beneath the caricature, he is deadly; particularly, perhaps, when he turns his attention to the Senior Service. But his Brigadiers and his Clubmen are also always within an ace ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... seems beyond me, while the golden hours glide swiftly away, and before many days have passed our visit with all its risks must have an end. I shiver sometimes, boy, as I stand close by and listen to our master's careless, light-hearted speech. Again and again he has been within an ace of betraying who he is, and at any moment some of the sharper-witted of the courtiers by whom we are surrounded may grasp the truth, and then, Denis, as Francis has said, we are in the lion's den and the ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... awkward predicaments which occurred frequently during the ups and downs of the war. When Lord Roberts's army swept on from Bloemfontein, the Boers in a measure swept back, and our host was for months persecuted by his own people, finally made a prisoner, and was within an ace of being shot; in fact, it was only the ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... he said; 'I have been sick and tired of it this many a day, and care not now to see men abuse good liquor and addle their silly pates to fill my purse. And I have something, boy, put snug away in Dorchester town that will give us bread to eat and beer to drink, even if the throws run still deuce-ace. But we must seek a roof to shelter us when the Why Not? is shut, and 'tis best we leave this Moonfleet of ours for a season, till Maskew finds a rope's end long enough to hang himself withal. So, when our work is ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... devotion to the Great First Cause, and a strong, feeling of gratitude for the benefits which He confers, is one of the prominent traits which characterise the mind of the untutored Indian."—(Heck. Hist. Ace. p. 84.) Loskiel says, (History of the Mission of the United Brethren, p. 33) "The prevailing opinion of all these nations is, that there is one God, or, as they call Him, one Great and Good Spirit, who has ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... hope. Artistic and critical London had hailed him as a newcomer of promise, amounting to genius: and Lilamani Sinclair, daughter of Rajputs, had only escaped becoming the craze of the moment by her precipitate withdrawal to Antibes, where she had come within an ace of losing all, largely through the malign influence of Jane—her evil genius during those wonderful, difficult, early months ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... conference with the judge. The two contestants, Sinclair and Du Sang, were ordered back thirty-five paces on their horses, and the railroad man, walking over to the targets, held out between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand the ace of clubs. The man that should first spot the pip out of the card was to take the prize, a Cheyenne saddle. Sinclair shot, and his horse, perfectly trained, stood like a statue. The card flew from Smith's hand, but the bullet ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... Vulcan's hammers could silence the clamours of that outrageous whore his Goddess; nay, even Jupiter himself led such a life with a termagant wife, that once, they say, Juno out-scolded the noise of all his Thunders, and was within an ace of brawling him out of Heaven. But to ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... began a sequence in hearts; the hearts all lay between himself and Sylvie; the colonel won her ace, though it was protected ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... sections, unless the page (p.) is given. The following abbreviations are used: ace. accusative; adj. adjective; adv. adverb; expr. expressed; ftn. footnote; inf. infinitive; intrans. intransitive; prep. preposition; trans. transitive. For Esperanto words whose use or meaning is specially explained, references are given ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... Since then, Armenia has more than once challenged fortune, but always with the same result; it fared no better under Tigranes in the Roman epoch, than under Sharduris in the time of the Assyrians; it has been within an ace of attaining the goal of its ambitions, then at the last moment its strength has failed, and it has been forced to retire worsted from the struggle. Its position prevented it from exercising very wide influence; ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... "ace in the hole"—had hurled the bowie knife hidden in a sheath sewn inside the back of ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... this date he had been still the nominal owner of a small freehold farm between Pengarth and Carlisle, bordering on the Threlfall property. But he was then within an ace of ruin, and irreparable ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and having gone three in "no trumps" and found seven to the ace, king, queen in hearts lying before her in dummy, she wore a smile of beatific satisfaction. So also did Alice—for two reasons. The deal obviously spelled money, and Vere Millet could be trusted to get every trick out of it. There were four bridge tables fully occupied ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... were chiefly hand engraved, and often sold in small metal and silver boxes, those dating from the time of Queen Anne being the most interesting. The most popular card counters in the early days of the nineteenth century were brass copies of the spade-ace gold guinea, which they closely resembled, and it is feared, when gilt, were not infrequently palmed off as ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... orders, and took the fiery steed along the coast. She proved a very "wicked" animal, and a few yards prancing and capering made me heartily wish that I was safely on terra firma. Suddenly a volley was fired, and as suddenly the horse gave such a lurch that I was within an ace of being pitched where I wanted to get—though not quite so precipitately. Volley after volley was fired, and I lost all command over the snorting steed, which was flitting along at the rate of so many miles an hour. Had it not been for a heavy guard-cloak which I was wearing, and which by wrapping ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... cards as I was told. There were seven left on the table. My aunt removed two from one end of the row and two from the other, and desired me to call the two outermost of the three cards now left on the table. I called the Ace of Clubs and the Ten of Diamonds. My aunt Chance lifted her eyes to the ceiling with a look of devout gratitude which sorely tried my mother's patience. The Ace of Clubs and the Ten of Diamonds, taken together, signified—first, good ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... and endearing expressions upon him, of which he was utterly undeserving; but my attentions were quite thrown away, and might as well, for any good they produced, have been bestowed upon a rocking-horse. At length, after a final struggle, in which we were both within an ace of falling into a water-course which crossed the park in that direction, I gave the matter up as hopeless; and with a sigh (for I love not to be foiled in anything I have attempted, and, moreover, I could not help looking upon it as an unlucky omen) dismounted, 285 and leading ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Records 1. 5125—Petition of the Ship's Company of the Shannon, 16 June 1796.] in which there was conveyed a threat that afterwards, when the mutiny at the Nore was at its height, under the leadership of a pressed man whose coadjutors were mainly pressed men, came within an ace of resolving itself in action. That threat concerned the desperate expedient of carrying the revolted ships into an enemy's port, and of there delivering them up. Had this been done—and only the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... his foot. In his choler he was within an ace of striking Ombreval, and might have done so had not the broad-minded and ever-reasonable old Des Cadoux interposed at that moment to make clear to the Marquis's guests a situation than which nothing could have been clearer. He put it to them that the times were changed, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... some hocus-pocus with the cards, but in the circumstances made no protest. As it chanced he must have hocus-pocused them wrong, for though his hand was full of trumps, Rodd held nothing at all. The battle that ensued was quite exciting, but the end of it was that an ace in the hand of Anscombe, who really was quite a good player, did the business, and we ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... sailor. "They've let me know as much a'ready. There be two captains to their crew; one's the smoke-dried old sinner as brought yer in; the other a big nayger, as black as the ace o' spades. You saw the swab? He's inside the tent here. He's my master. The two came nigh quarrelling about which should have me, and settled it by some sort o' a game they played wi' balls of kaymal's dung. The black won me; an' that's why I'm kep by his tent. Mother av Moses! Only to think ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... his right hand, stood squarely in the centre of the street, with the sturdy bearing of one who has his quarrel just, and who besides can pierce the ace spot on a card ten yards further away than any other man in ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... last, looking mighty white about the gills, 'this ship that we are in is more than half mine. I am chief owner. I'll stake me share of the ship on the next game against all that I have lost.' 'Done!' said I, and shuffled, cut, and dealt. He went four on three highest trumps, and an ace, and I held four small trumps. 'It's a bad job for my creditors,' he said, as he threw his hand down. Ged! I started on that vyage a poor captain, and I came into port very fairly well off, and sailing in me own ship, too! What d'ye ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... put himselfe in Armes, the aduerse windes Whose leisure I haue staid, haue giuen him time To land his Legions all as soone as I: His marches are expedient to this towne, His forces strong, his Souldiers confident: With him along is come the Mother Queene, An Ace stirring him to bloud and strife, With her her Neece, the Lady Blanch of Spaine, With them a Bastard of the Kings deceast, And all th' vnsetled humors of the Land, Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries, With Ladies faces, and fierce ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... it may prove," was the reply; "for the company of this house ace as various at times as can be met with in any other situation. However, this appears to wear the form of one of our fashionable, high-life Gentlemen; but appearances are often deceitful, we shall perhaps hear more of him presently—he may turn out to be one of the prodigals ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... masther,' sez Kiss, dealin'. 'Black Jack, sorr, I shud expaytiate to you, is the Ace av Shpades which from time immimorial has been intimately connect wid ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the grain, and was canonised as a martyr. The shrew-mouse took him by the ears and placed him on the door the granary, after the fashion of the Ottoman Porte, where my good Panurge was within an ace of being spitted. At the cries of the dying wretch the rats, mice, and others made for their holes in great haste. When the night had fallen they came to the cellar, convoked for the purpose of holding a ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... coterie, had already met the too exclusive metropolitan—four days ago, by the lucky fluke of turning in at the Country Club at an out-of-the-way morning moment, when she might have motored straight on home, and had been within an ace of doing so. An omen, wasn't it? Five minutes she and Mr. Canning had talked, over so-called horses' necks provided by his sedate host, and before the end of that time she had perceived an interest dawning in the young man's somewhat ironic eyes. With the usual of his sex one ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... here that I'm a-lookin' at," said Miss Becky, "they stan' for the past. Them there, they er the present; and the t'others, they er the future. Here's a bundle"—tapping the ace of clubs with her thumb—"an' here's a journey as plain as the nose on a man's ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... us this time," declared little Robey, the youngest subaltern, to whom the nights were a torment unspeakable. He had been within an ace of heat apoplexy more than once, and his nerves were ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... "'Bate me an ace, quoth Bolton.' At the age at which a man commonly takes no care of himself, nor of any other belike. Nor you are not the wisest man of your age in this world, my master: don't go for to think it. You don't need to look at me in that way, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... could get no hands at all, but he never went out; sometimes he drew four cards to an ace or a queen, sometimes he took the whole five; while his losses, if steady, were not material. Occasionally he bluffed, and got a small pot; but it was risky, as he was distinctly in a run of bad luck. At last he was dealt nine, ten, knave, queen, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... and then the Quarrel rose to that Height on both Sides, that we were within an Ace ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... explain why I thought so. It sounds a silly argument even to myself; I feel I have not got it quite right. Added to which it was not my partner who played the two of clubs, it was Dummy. If I had only remembered this, and had concluded from it—as I ought to have done—that my partner had the ace of diamonds—as otherwise why did he pass my knave?—we might have saved the odd trick. I have not the head for bridge. It is only an ordinary head—mine. I have ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... forsook, A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look; 90 She sees, and trembles at the approaching ill, Just in the jaws of ruin, and Codille. And now, (as oft in some distemper'd state) On one nice trick depends the general fate, An Ace of Hearts steps forth: the King unseen Lurk'd in her hand, and mourn'd his captive Queen: He springs to vengeance with an eager pace, And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace. The nymph, exulting, fills with shouts the sky; The walls, the woods, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
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