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More "Adept" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself appointed for a work whose unknown character only heightened its importance gave point to every effort now made by this young man, and lent to his studies that vague touch of romance which made them a delight, and him an adept in many things he might otherwise have cared little about. At eighteen he was a graduate from the Sorbonne, and a musical virtuoso as well. He could fence, ride, and carry off the prize in games requiring ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... arts were represented in the making of a mediaeval book. Of those employed, first came the scribe, whose duty it was to form the black even glossy letters with his pen; then came the painter, who must not only be a correct draughtsman, and an adept with pencil and brush, but must also understand how to prepare mordaunts and to lay the gold leaf, and to burnish it afterwards with an agate, or, as an old writer directs, "a dogge's tooth set in a stick." After him, the binder gathered ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... Ly. What an adept at evasion you are, Hermotimus! How you slip through one's fingers! However, it is all the better this time; you fancied yourself out, but you have flopped into the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... her admirers among her husband's friends by the score. She grew as adept in handling them as in handling colts; and her prowess in this, too, amused Basil Kildare enormously. He rallied her on each new victim with chuckles of delight. Too confident of himself for jealousy, he knew, if he thought of it at all, that his honor was safer in her hands ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... with an enemy possessing remarkable mobility, intimately acquainted with the country, thoroughly understanding how to take advantage of ground, adept in improvising cover, and most skilful in the use of ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... soul, Duffel, you are an adept in these matters! I never dreamed of your being so deep a plotter! The world and your friends, also, have done you injustice by not giving you credit for so ample a development of such rare ability to deceive. Success to ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... neighbourhood of that organ to which is attributed so large a share in our emotional embarrassments. And it was at this juncture that Kenwick had recourse to a curious befooling of himself in which long practice had made him an adept. ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... an adept at concealing his emotions, and he stared in unqualified surprise at the long figure in brown which of a sudden intruded into his range of vision. The morning paper upon his knees fluttered unnoticed to the floor ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... other inhabitants of Sagias were summoned to Rieux, who one and all agreed in identifying the accused as the same Arnauld du Thill who had been born and had grown up under their very eyes. Several deposed that as he grew up he had taken to evil courses, and become an adept in theft and lying, not fearing even to take the sacred name of God in vain, in order to cover the untruth of his daring assertions. From such testimony the judge naturally concluded that Arnauld du Thill was quite capable of carrying on, an imposture, and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... dost love: yet one adept Brings more for Me to accept."— I mould my will to match with Thine, My wishes ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... before strangers. He is distinguished by a brutal frankness, combined with a cynical disregard for all feminine ruses. He not seldom calls up the blush of shame to the cheek of scheming innocence; and he frequently crucifies his female relatives. He is generally an adept in discovering what will most annoy his family circle; and he is perfectly unscrupulous in avenging himself for all injuries, of which he receives, in his own opinion, a large number. He has an accurate memory for all promises made to his advantage, and he is relentless in exacting payment to the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... making much progress among the young girls. Almost everything people talked about outside his cadet life was unknown to him; what he could talk about seemed to have no interest for any one, unless indeed it might interest Giselle, who was an adept in the art of sympathetic listening, never ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... comfortless to me. The books I could not get at, finding no way to open the transparent panels which seemed an integral part of the wall. I could not feel comfortable in the seats and lounges, as they were very low, requiring an oriental squat at which I am not adept. I compromised by stretching out along a hard couch raised some six inches above the floor. There were no gadgets to tinker with, the place was to me barren of necessary appurtenances ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... late upon the side that related him to social custom and usage,—to the many fictions, concealments, make-believes, and subterfuges of the world of parlors and drawing-rooms. He never was an adept in what is called "good form;" the natural man that he was shows crude in certain relations. His publication of Emerson's letter with its magnificent eulogium of "Leaves of Grass" has been much commented upon. ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... Rand could be moved to the blackest rage, but he had no surface irritability of temper. To his antagonists his self-command was often maddening. Major Churchill was as disputatious as Arthur Lee, and an adept at a quarrel, but the talk of the impeachment went tamely on. The Republican would not fight at Fontenoy, and at last the Major in a cold rage went away to the library—first, however, watching the young man well on his way up the stairs and toward ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... get a laugh by the most unimaginative means—merely conceive a recognized humorous situation, or bring several things together according to a recipe, and the thing is done. Every practised comedian, in literature or on the stage, is an adept at it. But the creation of character, the expression—in terms of the words and actions of men and women—of that "social gesture" which is laughter's source, is a much greater thing, for there we touch the symbolism which ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... this moment his features assumed a terrible expression; on such occasions, and whenever moved or even slightly irritated, he was seized with a fit of nervous trembling, which lasted long after the cause which provoked it had passed. An adept in all manly exercises and especially in horsemanship, he sometimes used to ride without stopping from Rome to Naples, a distance of forty-one leagues, passing through the forest of San Germano and the Pontine marshes heedless of brigands, although he might be alone and unarmed save for his sword ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... who are profane, Sabbath-breaking, intemperate, and unprincipled—who are given to gambling, licentiousness, and every low, brutal and wicked practice—and but a brief space of time will elapse before he will fall into like habits himself, and become as great an adept in iniquitous proceedings as the most thorough-paced profligate among them. When a young woman associates with girls who are idle, disrespectful and disobedient to parents—who are vulgar, brazen-faced, loud talkers and laughers—whose chief occupation and delight is to spin street-yarn, ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... must be a picture composed on artistic lines. That is, it must combine harmony of line and colour and above all, appropriateness. Gradually one acquires skill in inventing unusual effects; but only the adept can go against established rules of art and yet produce a pleasing ensemble. We can all recall exceptions to this rule for simplicity, beautiful, artistic tables, covered with rare and entrancing objects,—irrelevant, but delighting the eye. Some will instantly recall Clyde Fitch's dinners in this ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... examination into Aeschylus and Sophocles, he had dwelt with fresh delight on the rushing storm of spears in the "Seven before Thebes," and wept over the heroic calamities of Antigone. In science, he was no adept; but his clear good sense and quick appreciation of positive truths had led him easily through the elementary mathematics, and his somewhat martial spirit had made him delight in the old captain's lectures on military tactics. Had he remained in the navy, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... family was the first and oldest in the district; and he, though not the wealthiest, was one of the most influential men. His education had been good. In his youth, before the French Revolution, he had travelled on the Continent. He was an adept in the French and Italian languages. During a two years' sojourn in Italy he had collected many good paintings and tasteful rarities, with which his residence was now adorned. His manners, when he ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Queen-Mother to attempt the life of her son, now implored by Henry III. to assassinate his brother, the Bearnese, as fresh antagonisms, affinities; combinations, were developed, detected, neutralized almost daily, became rapidly an adept in Medicean state-chemistry. Charles IX. in his grave, Henry III. on the throne, Alencon in the Huguenot camp—Henry at last made his escape. The brief war and peace of Monsieur succeeded, and the King of Navarre formally abjured the Catholic creed. The ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the exception of that part watered by the Waveney, is not famed for its fly-fishing: therefore I was no adept in the gentle art, but in ground-bait angling I consider myself no ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... seem to a strait-laced parson. It was inevitable, therefore, that he should never avert by his words any ill-will naturally caused by his acts; that he should never soothe disappointment, or attract calculating selfishness. He was an adept in alienation, a novice in conciliation. His magnetism was negative. He made few friends; and had no interested following whatsoever. No one was enthusiastic on his behalf; no band worked for him with the ardor of personal devotion. His party was composed of those ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... it, and emulation quickened both the genius and the diligence. So we need hardly say it became to the mother a thing to be proud of, that her daughter Mysie proved herself so apt a scholar that she became an adept, and was soon known as one of the finest embroideresses in the great city. So, too, as a consequence, it came to pass that great ladies employed her; and often the narrow spiral staircase of Corbet's Land was brushed on either side by the huge masses of quilted and emblazoned silk ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... jewelry houses had in their employ lapidaries more skilled than Mrs. Dalliba. She pursued her studies for the mere love of the science, devoting a year in Italy to mosaics, cameos, and intaglios. And yet the Crevecoeur cameo had puzzled wiser heads than Mrs. Dalliba's, adept though she was. It was cut from a solid heart-shaped gem, a layer of pure white, shading down through exquisite gradations into deep green, and represented Aphrodite rising from the sea; the white form rose gracefully, with arms extended, scattering the drops of spray from her ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... adept at feigning death, playing "'possum" with a skill which would do credit to that veritable ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... in the Macchiavellian theory of politics,[1191] and, during many years of diplomatic service, had enjoyed a fair opportunity for schooling himself in its practical workings. The son of Lucretia Borgia, the grandson of Pope Alexander the Sixth, could scarcely help being an adept at intrigue. Next to this special qualification, his highest recommendations were that he was the brother-in-law of Renee of France, and so by marriage uncle of the Duke of Guise; and that he had twelve good reasons for feeling deep concern for the steadfastness of French orthodoxy, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... of John Dawkins, a young thief, up to every sort of dodge, and a most marvellous adept in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... respect to that condition." Asked the Imam, "How is it possible for you, O my lord the Emir, to learn from her face aught of her and her honour; also whether she be pure or not: indeed, if this be known to your Highness you must be an adept in physiognomy.[FN55] However, if your Highness be willing to accompany me, I will bear you to the mansion of her sire and make you acquainted with him, so shal he set her before you."—And Shahrazad ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... then plied the paddles. We appeared to be making fair progress, too, although the raft moved but slowly. But the wind soon dying away, we had our paddles alone to depend on. Manley tried to scull with the oar, but he was not an adept at the art, and it did not help us much. When we watched the shore we had left, we saw that we had made some progress; but when we looked ahead towards the side of the lake we wished to reach, it appeared no nearer than when we stood on the shore we had left, while the mountains rose towering ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... prepared to avenge by blows and by base remarks of the most personal variety. At length it became unavoidably obvious to the youth that if he was to obtain the articles in question it would first be necessary that he should become adept in the art of slaying tigers, for in no other way were the required conditions likely to be present. Although the prospect was one which did not greatly tend to allure him, yet he did not regard it with the utterly incapable emotions which would have been present on an ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... another alliance before you were twenty-one. There are so many ways of letting the life out of a woman's heart, when it is already faint from disappointment! The spirit is oftener broken by unyielding, but not seemingly cruel pressure, than by outrageous violence. And Winston would show himself an adept in such ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... command; and although warning shouts were sent at them, too, as they approached, they paid no heed, but rode carelessly by. As they came abreast of the main gate a sudden volley, which made their mounts swerve so badly that less adept horsemen would have been flung heavily to the ground, greeted them and sent them careering wildly for a few yards. But here were men who understood this kind of warfare. First, it is true, they were a little angry as they pulled up, unslung their carbines and shot home cartridges ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... well-armed men, who, in the hour of extremity, could make a formidable resistance to any foe, however numerous; but what chance had they of ultimately escaping from upwards of a thousand savages, every man of whom was an adept at bush-warfare; could dart from tree to tree, and harass and cut off in detail an enemy whom he would not dare, or did not care, to face in the open field—which latter mode of warfare was more natural ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... had to collect subscriptions, official sanction was demanded for every single coin, since people thought that it would be no use paying their money to a poor man. Nowadays charity is strangely administered. Perhaps it has always been so. Either folk do not know how to administer it, or they are adept in the art—one of the two. Perhaps you did not know this, so I beg to tell it you. And how comes it that the poor man knows, is so conscious of it all? The answer is—by experience. He knows because any day he may see a gentleman enter a restaurant and ask himself, "What shall I have ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... knows her good points physically and how to bring them out. And Mrs. Spencer was an adept in the art—though, in truth, little art was needed. To her, Nature ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... Brantford, before whom many of these little domesticities come for their due appreciation (for they disclose, often, elements of really baffling complexity) not less than their ventilation and unravelling, is an eminently peace-loving man, and quite an adept at patching up such-like conjugal trifles. He will dispense from his tribunal sage advice, and prescribe remedial measures, which shall have untold efficacy, in dispelling mutual mistrust, restoring mutual confidence, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... an occupation that his figure, manners, and propensities had made him an adept in, and nothing was further from his thoughts than the commission of any other than the crime that, according to his code, a gentleman, might be ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... not then, as they have now, in a certain lane, their regular rendezvous, called the Beggars' Opera; they had not then, as they have now, in a certain cellar, an established school for teaching the art of scolding, kept by an old woman, herself an adept in the art; they had not even their regular nocturnal feasts, where they planned the operations of the next day's or the next week's campaign, so that they could not, as they now do, set at nought the beadle and the parish officers: the system of signals was not then perfected, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... complex mental states. Primitive men likewise almost instinctively sense the feelings and designs of other men. They do not reason the thing out, but rather merely "feel" the ideas and designs of the others. The women of the lower races are more adept in interpreting these sense reports than are the men. Women are more sensitive, as a rule, than are men—on any point ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... remembering the exact spot where the crime was committed. It probably lay all the heavier from my love of dogs being then, and for a long time afterwards, a passion. Dogs seemed to know this, for I was an adept in robbing their love ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the Cato Street conspiracy were dangling before the "debtor's door," the surviving adept of the former plot, from his villa not ten miles from London, was mounting his carriage to drive to the Stock Exchange, to operate upon the effect this example might produce in the public mind, and, consequently, realising his now large ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... It was the finest compliment they could have paid her. Afterwards with many duckings of tongue and shakes of the head she bathed the swollen ankle in cold water, put some liniment on it and bound it up. She was an adept in ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... curves of the fourth decade by fashioning his garments skillfully. His coat fitted like a skin across his shoulders but hung loosely in front. The braid of a colored waistcoat was a marvel of suggestion in indicating a waist, and the same adept craftsmanship carried the eye in faultless lines to his verni boots. Judged by his profile, he was not ill looking. His features were regular, the mouth and chin strong, the forehead slightly rounded, ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... his invention had made my countryman, Dr. Auer, of Welsbach; then I should be able to travel instead of remaining in Vienna. In the dream I was traveling with my invention, with the, it is true, rather awkward glass top-hat. The dream work is peculiarly adept at representing two contradictory conceptions by means of the same mixed image. Thus, for instance, a woman dreamt of herself carrying a tall flower-stalk, as in the picture of the Annunciation (Chastity-Mary is her own name), but the stalk was bedecked with thick white blossoms ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... have found it very difficult to meet the requirements of those who are entirely ignorant of the science. It is only the adept who has already overcome the first steps as an observer, and is familiar with many of the technical terms, who can profit by a brief and concise manual. Beginners wish for a short and cheap book in which they may find a full explanation of ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... with his eloquence, and largely contributed to the spirit of republican enthusiasm, wasted away for months in a state of the most foolish languor, under the idea that he was dying of a polypus at his heart.[4] Nay, this philosopher, who presumed to believe himself skilled in the ways of man, and an adept in the character of women, who dared to expound religion and proposed to reform Christianity, who committed and confessed the meanest actions,—and yet, as if in the presence of the Supreme Arbiter of life and before the tribunal of Eternal Justice, arrogated to himself an equality ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... fixed to the glebe. If you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a condisciple: for I am but a learner; an eager one indeed, but yet desperate, being too old now to learn a new art. However, I am as much delighted and occupied with it, as if I was the greatest adept. I shall talk with you about it from morning till night, and put you on very short allowance as to political aliment. Now and then a pious ejaculation for the French and Dutch republicans, returning with due despatch to clover, potatoes, wheat, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... with his hands. Adept in the art of trickery, though the others did not know it, he had placed the cards in such position that he knew almost identically where the high and ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... value, as 20 Tun of Gold cannot exceed the price thereof. What seek you? I believe what I have seen with the eyes of Thomas, and handled as he, (but in the nature of things only) as well as the Adept Philosophers; although in this our decrepit age of the world, That be accounted a most Secret Hyperphysico-magical Saturn, and not known, unless to some Cabalistick Christian only. We judge him the most happy of all Physicians, who hath the knowledge of this pleasant Medicinal potion ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... successful methods was to flatter each one in turn into thinking that he had made a tremendous impression upon her. It was not a difficult thing to do inasmuch as long custom and repetition had made him an adept at highly-coloured lying. ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... the powers of language were wanting to express our feelings, we soon took leave. The bishop's rooms for public and private reception, consist of a billiard-room no bigger than is necessary for the due performance of the game, at which he is a great adept, a small anteroom and bedroom. His valet and chamberlain, a well-dressed Montenegrian, did the honours. In the billiard-room the walls are hung with arms, though some of these were now absent on service. I observed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... both Arnold and Harcraft were out of the air lock, each clutching a new phase unit. Harcraft called instructions to Arnold over his suit's inter-com, but within minutes the smaller man was, if anything, more adept at the business of maneuvering himself through the void than his teacher. They replaced the phase unit in the first sled—the fiftieth from the ship—with Harcraft doing ...
— Unspecialist • Murray F. Yaco
... England. At the end of the eighteenth century the vogue of the "Gothic" romance of ghosts and mysteries was at its height; and this work, written in ten weeks by a young man of nineteen, caught the public fancy tremendously, and Matthew Gregory Lewis was straightway accepted as an adept at making the flesh creep. Taste changes in horrors, as in other things, and "Ambrosio, or The Monk," would give nightmares to few modern readers. Its author, who was born in London on July 9, 1775, and published "The Monk" in 1795, wrote many supernatural tales and poems, and also several ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... loafing. Women sat on the floor, papooses on their backs, beadwork in hand. Our trade was extended to Indian shawls, blankets, moccasins and furs, for which the post found ready and profitable markets. Ida Mary became an adept at Indian trading. By that time we had a smattering of the Sioux language, although we were never really expert at it. It did not require much to ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... should think he might prove as great an adept at that as walking the tight rope," said Max. "Ah, here comes your friend Mrs. Musgrave! She went home and told her husband this morning that I was the most objectionable young man she ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... &c., p. 210. The object of the author is to show that the Swedish sage was an adept, and that his writings may be interpreted from the point of view of ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Violet Strange—an adept in more ways than one—became installed at the bedside of this mysterious woman, whose days, if numbered, still held possibilities of action which those interested in young Helena Postlethwaite's fate would do well ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... us heartily congratulate one another upon our lucky escape from the calamity of a twenty or thirty thousand pound prize! The fox in the fable, who accused the unattainable grapes of sourness, was more of a philosopher than we are generally willing to allow. He was an adept in that species of moral alchemy which turns everything to gold, and converts disappointment itself into a ground of resignation and content. Such we have shown to be the great lesson inculcated by the Lottery, when rightly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fancied himself an adept at intrigue, and his methods were often a cause of anxiety to those he befriended. His nods and gestures and meaning glances as he emerged would have been enough to arouse suspicion ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... one of these barbs to break or come loose, so adept are the blacks in securing them. The point is about 6 inches long, and on the barbless end is tightly wound successive layers of fibrous bark, until its size is adjusted to the socket in the haft. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Ozma to Dorothy, who accompanied her in her search, "how Coo-ee-oh knew the use of the magic tools she stole from the three Adept Witches. Moreover, from all reports these Adepts practiced only good witchcraft, such as would be helpful to their people, while Coo-ee-oh performed ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... vision, the cast of whose features a long black veil entirely concealed, seemed to be a creation of the very darkness itself. If pure uncanniness indicated occult power, then this veiled prophetess of destiny must surely be an adept ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... might have lost the game at that point by over-emphasis, for Tess was wavering between point-blank refusal and delay that would give her time to consult her husband. But Yasmini, even at that age, was adept at feeling her way nicely. Again she lay back on the cushion, and this time lit ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... twenty-nine when appointed to that responsible post. We became good friends. He began work at the early age of thirteen, had grown up on the railway and at nineteen was a station master. He was skilful in out-door railway work, and an adept in managing trains and traffic. Ambitious and a bit touchy regarding his office, all was not always peace between his and other departments, particularly the goods manager's. The goods manager was not aggressive, and it was sometimes thought that Mathieson inclined ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... feeling than envy. It was painted white and was gay with blue and red stripes around the gunwale. In it sat two boys. One, who sat in the stern, was about Gordon's age; the other, a little larger than Gordon, was rowing and used the oars like an adept. In the bow was a flag, and Gordon was staring at it, when it came to him with a rush that it was a "Yankee" flag. He was conscious for half a moment that he took some pride in the superiority of the oarsman over the boys in the other boats. His next ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... be which every player should possess," he added in the same tone. "For the woman, beauty—or if not this, a cleverness which is clever enough to manifest itself only in results. Also, if a woman hath not beauty, it is imperative that she be an adept at the game. Innocence, in one party, not in both, is a valuable asset, since one of the objects of the game is the winning of it. Were both to have it, it would become in very truth a child's game. Wealth is also a good thing ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while; Then, like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe had uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... Arthur and Dousterswivel left the ruins of St. Ruth, they found a casket containing gold and silver coins. These two worthies, along with Mr. Oldenbuck, set out, on another occasion to search for treasure at the ruins of St. Ruth. Arrived at the scene of operations, the Antiquary addressed the adept Dousterswivel: "Pray, Mr. Dousterswivel, shall we dig from east to west, or from west to east? or will you assist us with your triangular vial of May-dew, or with your divining-rod of witch-hazel?" This was said tauntingly, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... resentment and pity for him, Ursula very impatient. He was nervous and apparently in quite good spirits, chattering the conventional commonplaces. Ursula was amazed and indignant at the way he made small-talk; he was adept as any FAT in Christendom. She became quite stiff, she would not answer. It all seemed to her so false and so belittling. And still ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... The boy was brought up with his father on the farm. He had little education in literature; much in the development of a hardy, vigorous constitution, in his contest with the soil and the actual world about him. He was fond of athletic exercises, an adept in running and wrestling, in which he proved himself more than a match for his village companions. The story is told of his being insulted for his rusticity, on his first visit to Boston, by a youth ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... yards farther, and passed a man in a dog-cart Mary turned very red, staring in front of her with the fixed awkwardness of one not adept in the useful ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... fortune, rendered him an object of unceasing curiosity. He was deeply versed in the mysteries of the turf, and in all practical and theoretical knowledge connected with the race-course was acknowledged to be the most accomplished adept of his own time. He seems also to have been a skilful gamester and player of billiards. Writing to George Selwyn from Paris in 1763, he says:—'I won the first day about L2000, of which I brought off about L1500. All things are exaggerated, I am supposed to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... moment that Beatrice and Catherine appeared together on the scene. Captain Bertram, who thought himself an adept in a certain mild, sarcastic description, was about to gratify Lady Georgiana with a graphic account of the Bells' supper-table, when his gaze met the kind, clear, happy expression of Beatrice Meadowsweet's ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... a lonesome brook to fish for minows; they had pretty good sport, as they called it, for the first hour; but then Mr. Sharper's line happening to be entangled among some large weeds, from which he could not disengage it as he stood upon the brink; and as he was naturally too great an adept in the science of self preservation, to expose himself to danger, when he could persuade another to supply his place; he requested the favour of master Idle to ascend a sloping tree which stood upon the bank, and from thence to descend gradually upon a hanging ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... in the speaker's eyes which Alton understood, for Atkinson, who was not an adept at trailing deer, had shot more than a wapiti. Still, he was not the man to allude to the misadventures ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... whom the order was given that the taxicab be driven to the Church of the Transfiguration, proved to be an adept and skillful driver; one of those who can exceed the speed limit and then slow down his machine so quickly and quietly at the sight of a bluecoat that he inevitably escapes arrest for his transgression. As a consequence, there was very little time for conversation between these two apparently ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... the decree of the Court of Session in the schoolmaster's cause was reversed in the House of Lords, after a very eloquent speech by Lord Mansfield, who shewed himself an adept in school discipline, but I thought was too rigorous towards my client[544]. On the evening of the next day I supped with Dr. Johnson, at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in the Strand, in company with Mr. Langton and his brother-in-law, Lord Binning. I repeated a sentence ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... This is the way in which Vasava, and Yama, and Varuna, and all the great royal sages have acted. Do thou observe the same conduct. Do thou, O great king, adopt this behaviour which was followed by those royal sages. Do thou soon, O bull of Bharata's race, adept this heavenly road. The gods, the Rishis, the Pitris, and the Gandharvas, possessed of great energy, sing the praises, both here and hereafter, of that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... carefully. Each man was to have his peculiar duty: Gus Reeve, an adept with the rope, would wait until the black stallion was cantering past and then toss his noose and throw the horse. At the same instant, Ronicky Joe would shoot the wolf-dog, and Sliver Waldron would perforate ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... in size as well as in luminosity and purity of colour. Many of us know from experience that the aura of a pupil who has already made considerable advance on the Path is very much larger than that of one who is but just setting his foot upon its first step, while in the case of an Adept the proportional increase is far greater still. We read in quite exoteric Oriental scriptures of the immense extension of the aura of the Buddha; I think that three miles is mentioned on one occasion as its limit, but ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... the little octoroon darted from Milo, wriggled through the bushes, and ran lightly down to the sea. In another moment her small, black head was moving rapidly toward the schooner, her golden skin flashing warmly in the sun as her arms swept over and over in an adept stroke that carried her forward with the speed ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... The child is an adept at make-believe, but his make-believes are, as a rule, practical and serious. It is credulity rather than imagination which helps him. He takes the tales he has been told, the facts he has observed, and for the most part reproduces them to the best of his ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... to look after you, about the tragedy of being considered old when your heart and your nature are really still young, almost as young as ever they were. Adela Sellingworth would know how to touch every string, would be an adept at calling out the music she wanted. How easily experienced women played upon men! It was really pathetic! And as Craven had thought of protecting Lady Sellingworth against Miss Van Tuyn, so now Miss ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... many pleasures in life, and plenty of people to sing the praises of the sport most to their taste; but it is doubtful whether there is any manly pursuit which gives so much satisfaction to an adept in the art ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... seemed," says he, "to have attained to universal knowledge; for, in the many opportunities I have had of being in his company, almost every part of science has happened to be the subject of discourse, all of which he handled as an adept. He was a man of great politeness in his manners, free from all pedantry and pride, and, in every respect, the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... became intensely enthusiastic over it. To make even a simple chain was interesting, but when they advanced to setting polished pebbles or imitation stones as brooches or pendants, the work waxed fascinating. Some of the students proved much more adept than others, and turned ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... to strike Isobel. This was when she was nearly thirteen. Isobel replied with the schoolroom inkpot. She was an adept at stone-throwing, and other athletic arts. It caught her instructress fair upon her gentle bosom, spoiled her dress, filled her mouth and eyes with ink, and nearly knocked ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... box in that glittering repository he took, one after the other, two or three little wafers of a dark hue, and placed them successively on his tongue, and suffered them to melt, and so swallowed them. They were not liquorice. I am afraid Captain Lake dabbled a little in opium. He was not a great adept—yet, at least—like those gentlemen who can swallow five hundred drops of laudanum at a sitting. But he knew the virtues of the drug, and cultivated its acquaintance, and was oftener under its influence than perhaps any ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... did not speak to me of love [writes George Sand], and owned that he was little inclined to sudden passion, to enthusiasm, and in any case no adept in expressing it in an attractive manner. He spoke of a friendship that would stand any test, and compared the tranquil happiness of our hosts [she was then staying with some friends] to that which he believed he could swear ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... By a communication, an adept may answer, with the world of spirits. A noble privilege, it must be allowed. Some of the ancients mention familiar demons, who guarded them from danger, by kindly intimating (we cannot guess in what manner,) ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... many an adept for whose arms Life held delicious offerings perished here, How many in the prime of all that charms, Crowned with all ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... the foreigner. "I dare not turn my art to such a purpose. If I take the gold of the wealthy, it is but to bestow it on the poor; nor do I ever accept more than the sum I have already received from your servant. Put up your purse, madam; an adept ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... his father aback; it was a perfectly dignified and proper attitude to take in the face of ridicule, and Lord Ashbridge, though somewhat an adept at the art of self-deception—as, for instance, when he habitually beat the golf professional—could not disguise from himself that his policy had been to laugh and blow away Michael's absurd ideas. But it was abundantly clear at this moment that this apparently easy operation ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... in good time, and the play was capitally acted. I had hinted to Beatrice (Miss Ellen Terry) how much she could add to Lucy's pleasure by sending round a "carte" of herself; she sent a cabinet. She is certainly an adept in giving gifts ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... foot were on her native heath. Her step was light, yet never uncertain. Her progress was easy, and, although different, was quite as graceful as if she were promenading the piazza, proving that she was an adept in mountain-climbing. It was evident, however, that to Miss Wildmere a mountain was a terra incognita. She trod uncertainly, her feet turned on loose stones that hurt her, and before the first steep ascent was passed, she panted and ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... replied M'Carthy, assuming the brogue, at which, fortunately for himself, he was an adept; "it's a good man's case, boys; blood an' turf, give him a warm birth of it—he'll find it ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... requested payment for his literary labours. The Galls,[194] who were probably Saxons, refused to meet his demand, but Rumrann said he would be content with two pinguins (pennies) from every good man, and one from each bad one. The result may be anticipated. Rumrann is described as "an adept in wisdom, chronology, and poetry;" we might perhaps add, and in knowledge of human nature. In the Book of Ballymote he is called the Virgil of Ireland. A considerable number of Saxons were now in the country; and it is said that a British king, named Constantine, who had become a monk, was at that ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... interest which makes it rank so high as it does in the literature of the soul's life. He was not, however, very apt in the mechanics of his art, and in lieu of structure such as a man of far less faculty might be an adept in, he finds in his imagined tale a principle of life itself; his work is seldom well reasoned, but it has vital germs of thought, emotion, and action, and these are loosed into activity and grow of themselves, and he fosters and develops them in ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... best knew the country, was Ben Clark, a young man who had lived with the Cheyennes during much of his boyhood, and who not only had a pretty good knowledge of the country, but also spoke fluently the Cheyenne and Arapahoe dialects, and was an adept ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of a dense thicket, among a tangle of dead leaves and twigs, she may well produce a very inaccurate piece of work; but compel her to labour when free from all impediment: she will then—I am convinced of it beforehand—apply her talents without constraint and show herself an adept in ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... peculiarly contraband manner originally, which, no doubt, endeared it to him; it was little known to and often ridiculed by most Englishmen, which was another attraction; and it was extremely unlikely to "pay" in any way, which was a third. Perhaps he was not such an adept in it as he would have us believe—the respected Cymmrodorion Society or Professor Rhys must settle that. But it needs no knowledge of Welsh whatever to perceive the genuine enthusiasm, and the genuine range of his acquaintance with the language from the purely literary side. When he ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... unexpected that one has the feeling of having entered, by some extraordinary chance, the wrong building. Outside it was so garish with its coloured marbles, under the southern sky; outside, too, one's ears were filled with all the shattering noises in which Florence is an adept; and then, one step, and behold nothing but vast and silent gloom. This surprise is the more emphatic if one happens already to have been in the Baptistery. For the Baptistery is also coloured marble without, yet within it is coloured marble and mosaic too: ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... regards the Cornhill is the fact that I was able to discover three or four new writers who later made names for themselves. One of these was Mr. Patchett Martin, who, in a series of books, Deeds that Won the Empire, showed himself extraordinarily adept at carrying on the Macaulay tradition of readableness and picturesqueness in the handling of historical events. Another "find" was Mr. Bullen, a man really inspired with the spirit of the sea, and a man with a sense of literature. I remember, for example, early in my acquaintance ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... breakfast off the aforesaid bacon and eggs, with soft tack laid in the day before, and washed all down with some most excellent coffee, in the concoction of which beverage Bob was an adept, and then, as soon as he had washed up, and put matters to rights in his pantry, and made arrangements for dinner, I went below and turned in ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... to ride his own hobby horse. Would it not be wise to suggest that some of these seedlings be put in odd corners? Certainly the hickory and walnut are adept in making themselves a home in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... marriage—" Madame de Trezac was repeating, her long head slightly tilted, her features wearing the rapt look of an adept reciting ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... of course, no bark to spare, in the island; but the islanders find a substitute in the astringent lobiferous root of the Tormentilla erecta, which they dig out for the purpose among the heath, at no inconsiderable expense of time and trouble. I was informed by John Stewart, an adept in all the multifarious arts of the island, from the tanning of leather and the tilling of land, to the building of a house or the working of a ship, that the infusion of root had to be thrice changed for every skin, and that it took a man nearly a ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Sakuni replied,—'Hear how thou mayest obtain this unrivalled prosperity that thou beholdest in the son of Pandu, O thou that hast truth for thy prowess. O Bharata, I am an adept at dice, superior to all in the world. I can ascertain the success or otherwise of every throw, and when to stake and when not. I have special knowledge of the game. The Son of Kunti also is fond of dice playing though he possesseth little skill in it. Summoned to play ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... whig nobles, derived his power from influence; he had an unrivalled experience in party management and as a dispenser of patronage, and though personally above accepting a bribe of any kind, he was an adept at corrupt practices. He would have been incapable of conducting the war, for he was ignorant, timid, and vacillating, but he knew how to gain the support of parliament and how to find the supplies which the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Matching Green, and as I stopped at the village inn to refresh my horse with a pail of gruel and myself with a glass of ale, who should come up but old Tawney, Tom Cuffe's second horseman! Besides being an adept at his calling, familiar with every cross-road and almost every field in the county, he knew nearly as well as a hunted fox himself which way the creature meant to run. Tawney was a great gossip, and quite ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... lawlessness than justice. And Alcibiades fared no better. His personal beauty on the one hand incited bevies of fine ladies (14) to hunt him down as fair spoil, while on the other hand his influence in the state and among the allies exposed him to the corruption of many an adept in the arts of flattery; honoured by the democracy and stepping easily to the front rank he behaved like an athlete who in the games of the Palaestra is so assured of victory that he neglects his training; thus he presently forgot the duty ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... precision, but not colour. A few weeks after he had replied to my questions, he told me that my inquiries had induced him to practise his colour memory, and that he had done so with such success that he was become quite an adept at it, and that the newly-acquired power was a source ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... collection of testimony about visions seen in crystals by English women in 1897 might seem convincing to any one who has not had experience in weighing testimony in regard to spiritualistic manifestations, or brought this testimony alongside of that in behalf of the "occult phenomena" of Adept Brothers presented ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... that there are some traces of Ashmole in the house, but none whatever of Tradescant in either house or garden. I had a conversation with the gardener of the gentleman who now occupies it: he appeared to have an indistinct idea that an adept in his own profession had once lived there, for he observed that, "If old What's-his-name were alive now, the potato disease could soon be cured." Oh! what we antiquaries meet with! He further gave me to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... If we are lucky, we shall discover that the waiter and the steward are identical, in spite of their seemingly different appearance. A rogue, such as this Sears has shown himself to be, would be an adept ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... a carefully-kept rule that no one was to intrude if any one else was in there, unless, of course, by invitation of the one in possession. Marjorie did not like to sew, and was not very adept at it, but she had tried very hard to make this bag neatly, that it might be presentable enough for her mother to carry when she went anywhere ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... Bernhardt! I love such diversified, such picturesque gifts. Sculpture, painting, acting, writing! This is why I loved Lydia, who was an adept at numberless arts and accomplishments. She was a brunette with a clear, cream-tinged skin, red cheeks, rolling black eyes, ripe velvety lips, and hair of a beautiful hue and rich lustre—raven black, yet purple as the pigeon's wing in the sun. I believe it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... time of Cyrus the Magi had become a sort of sacerdotal caste. They were the trusted ministers of kings, and exercised a controlling influence over the people. They assumed a stately air, wore white and flowing robes, and were adept in the arts of sorcery and magic. They were even consulted by kings and chieftains, as if they possessed prophetic power. They were a picturesque body of men, with their mystic wands, their impressive robes, their tall caps, appealing by their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... veteran in the enemy's country. Every man knows his work and knows the officer above him; and each officer, too, knows just what is expected of him—from the lowest up to the colonel himself, a fine figure, tall, erect, white-haired, an adept in tiger-lore, with a hundred and fifty skins ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... think that. I don't suppose you can make them. You'd have first to learn the trade and show that you were an adept." ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... The natives proved as adept at thieving as the majority of the South Sea Islanders. One man, who had stolen some books from the Master's cabin, got off in his canoe, and being chased, took to the water, and diving under his pursuers' boat, unshipped the rudder, and got clear away. Mr. ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... worthy doctor was not only a believer but an adept in astrology. He had favored his friends with not a few horoscopes and nativities, when pressed to do so. His good nature was of the substance of butter: any one that liked could spread it over their bread. Many good men are eaten up in that way by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... loved us no less ardently than my father, but she was of a quicker temper, and less adept at conciliating affection. She must have been exceedingly handsome when she was young, and was still comely when we first remembered her; she was also highly accomplished, but she felt my father's loss of fortune more keenly ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... throw her far-away gaze into futurity, and, as far as in her lay, to adapt present circumstances to what she supposed was going to happen. It would have delighted her soul if she could have been the adept in conjuring, which she firmly believed the Widow Keswick to be; but, as she possessed no such gift, she made up the deficiency, as well as she could, by mixing up her mind, her soul, and her desires, into a sort of witch's hodge-podge, which she thrust as a spell ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the Judge, as he gravely took his stand behind his brother advocate, and studied, with the eye of an adept, the field of battle. "We were noticing it when you came in. It's a sad thing, but ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... the ladder he laughed, and he said, "I'm afraid I'm not much of an adept at tarring. It's only been my second attempt, and it takes me such an awful time to get rid of the amount of the tar which I so freely distribute over myself. But I am sure you won't mind our primitive ways, and if this abode is not as pretentious as the old castle in County Cork, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... to the flow, either by word or act. He was not especially acquainted with the ways of women, but being a close observer of nature and an adept at reasoning from analogy, he assumed that a sudden storm meant equally sudden clearing, so he held his peace and, ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... Spanish millionaire Jack went under a most radical change. He was an adept at disguises, and no one would ever have suspected in the young Spaniard who could not speak English the real Jack Alvarez, the acute detective. Our hero arranged to play a dual role, and it was as Jack Alvarez he met the baron. There had come a complete change ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... an appellation for the august William? Adept in the art of warfare he surely is; but have not the Fatherland's victories under his rule been those of peace, and those only? Has Germany been involved in strife possessing the dignity of war since he came to the throne? Has she not, on the other hand, made ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... is said to have told a representative of a daily paper, that "an adept in Theosophy uses his supernatural powers solely for his own convenience, just as ordinary people avail themselves of a messenger, or the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... were, of course, playing exactly the same game, and either because they were more adept at it, or because the Asterisks' snipers were more reluctant to give up a position after it was 'spotted' and hung on gamely, determined to fight it out, a slow but steady tally was added to the ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... secretary of state.[10] Newcastle, the most prominent figure among the great whig nobles, derived his power from influence; he had an unrivalled experience in party management and as a dispenser of patronage, and though personally above accepting a bribe of any kind, he was an adept at corrupt practices. He would have been incapable of conducting the war, for he was ignorant, timid, and vacillating, but he knew how to gain the support of parliament and how to find the supplies ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... happiness. The Emperor listened to me attentively, and frequently concurred in my opinion as to the principles of the prosperity and stability of States. One day he took my hand and pressed it affectionately, as if to assure me of his friendship and protection. Though I knew him to be an adept in the art of dissimulation, yet his affected kindness appeared so natural that I thought all his unfavourable feeling towards me was at an end. I spoke to persons by whom our two families were allied, requesting that they would assure the Emperor ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... fashion, and the world, suddenly, becomes the most delightful place of residence in all the universe. Indeed, it is her favorite miracle, this. For at work of this sort the old Philistine knows that she is an adept; and she has rejoiced in the skill of her hands, with a sober workmanly joy, since Cain first went a-wooing in ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... have many traditions regarding Solomon, invariably represent him as adept in necromancy, and as being intimately acquainted with the language of beasts and birds. Josephus, the great Jewish historian, distinctly states that Solomon possessed the art of expelling demons, that he composed such incantations also by which distempers ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... age—a love for money, which was insatiable. I must acknowledge that the company and mode of living were more to my satisfaction than the vigils, hard fare, and constant prayer, with which the old man had threatened me, when I proposed to enter the community, and I soon became an adept in dissimulation and hypocrisy, and a ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the usual character of men who are given to various exertions and many plans, he was accurate and profound. He was an adept in classical literature and the use of the classical tongues; his writings are adorned with their finest passages. He was familiar with a number of modern languages; his own style is one of the best examples of strength and perspicuity among English writers. He was ready on every ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... the supernatural as with the natural. On my way, I visited him.... Know thou next, O Emir, I too have had occasion to make inquiries of the future. The vulgar would call me an astrologer—not a professional practising for profit, but an adept seeking information because it lifts me so much nearer Allah and his sublimest mysteries. Very lately I found a celestial horoscope announcing a change in the status of the world. The masterful waves, as you may know, have for ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... on the basis of the Koran, it inculcates or expounds a kind of spiritual transcendentalism; in which the adept is raised above the necessity of formal laws, which are only requisite for those who are not capable of rising to a full intelligence of the supreme power. To gain this height, by devout contemplation, must be the personal work and endeavor of each individual. The revelation ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... decided way with the furnishing of it; and, though Lady Tranmore professed to admire it, the result was, in truth, too French and too pagan for her taste. Her own room reflected the rising worship of Morris and Burse-Jones, of which, indeed, she had been an adept from the beginning. Her walls were covered by the well-known pomegranate or jasmine or sunflower patterns; her hangings were of a mystic greenish-blue; her pictures were drawn either from the Italian primitives or their modern followers. Celtic romance, Christian symbolism, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... day, these lively debates found especial favour. The most brilliant courtiers and bravest knights, the gravest scholars and officers of state alike took part in them. Messer Galeazzo, as we have seen, was an adept at the game, and could wield his pen and challenge fair ladies in defence of Roland as gallantly as he couched his lance to ride in the lists or wielded his sword in the thick of the battle. So, too were the Marchesino Stanga and ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... be brought about—though the method is one which I do not often use—by means of a love philtre carefully compounded to suit the circumstances of the case. If you will come here to-morrow at dusk, the lady of this house—a worthy woman, though rough of speech and no true adept—will hand it to you." ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... a hearty breakfast off the aforesaid bacon and eggs, with soft tack laid in the day before, and washed all down with some most excellent coffee, in the concoction of which beverage Bob was an adept, and then, as soon as he had washed up, and put matters to rights in his pantry, and made arrangements for dinner, I went below and turned in ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... Among our quill cavalry-men was a fat gentleman from Philadelphia, who had great fear of death, and who used to "tear" to White House, if the man "Pat" shot a duck in the garden. He was a hearty, humorous person, however, and an adept ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... little way, and then on our way back go in as though we had just seen something we wanted?" suggested Angela, who was an adept at trying to spare people's feelings. "P'r'aps Mrs. Bennett won't be in her ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Thine evil doom In Golgotha and Khartoum, And the brutes, the work of Thine hands, Fill with injustice lands And stain with blood the sea: If still in my veins the glee Of the black night and the sun And the lost battle, run: If, an adept, The iniquitous lists I still accept With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood, And still to battle and perish for a dream of good: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you, and confess later. I have never lied to my wife, M'sieu—except upon rare occasions," Mr. La Branche chuckled merrily. "And even then only about trifles. So, the result? Absolute trust; supreme confidence on her part. A happy state for man and wife, is it not? Ha! I am a very good liar, an adept, as you shall see, for I am not calloused by practice and therefore liable to forgetfulness. With me a lie is always fresh in my mind; it is a matter of absorbing interest, hence I do not forget myself. Heaven knows the excitement of nursing an innocent ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... a doctor was promptly called to attend him. My mother was also a kind of doctor and often rode all over the plantation to dose ailing Negroes with herb teas and home medicines which she was an adept in compounding. In cases of [HW: minor] illness, she could straighten up the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... happened in the arrangement with Mr. Oswell, for we met him on the Zouga on our return, and he devoted the rest of this season to elephant-hunting, at which the natives universally declare he is the greatest adept that ever came into the country. He hunted without dogs. It is remarkable that this lordly animal is so completely harassed by the presence of a few yelping curs as to be quite incapable of attending to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... conceived a still more sagacious plan, on noticing Romeo. They were the best of friends; it was easy to catch him. He did so, removed the saddle, broke the girth and placed it near the prostrate figure of the quack. Nothing could have more perfectly resembled an accident. An adept in crime could not have performed this task with finer skill, and he was free now to turn to the rest of the work that he must do to conceal this ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... out a few butterflies on cork, but I never ended them, nor became an adept at skinning ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... Temptation is very often indirect. It is compact of wiles and subtleties and stratagems. It is adept at taking cover. It does not make a frontal attack unless the obvious state of the soul's defences justifies such a method of attempting a conquest. The stronger a man is, the more subtle and difficult are the ways of ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... finished, the adept is informed that the object of the degree which he has just received is to recover the word lost by the death of Adoniram, and to revenge this martyr of the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... was not making much progress among the young girls. Almost everything people talked about outside his cadet life was unknown to him; what he could talk about seemed to have no interest for any one, unless indeed it might interest Giselle, who was an adept in the art of sympathetic listening, never having herself anything ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... conversationalist. Mrs. Easterfield, who, after the confidences of the morning, could not help looking at him as something more than an acquaintance, talked to him a good deal, and tried to make the time pass pleasantly, at which business she was an adept. All this was very pleasant to Dick, but it did not compensate him for the almost entire loss of the society of Olive, who seemed to devote herself to the entertainment of the Austrian secretary. Mrs. Easterfield was very sorry that the young foreigner had ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... said to be a corruption of Habelardus, substituted by himself for a nickname Bajolardus given to him when a student. As a boy, he showed an extraordinary quickness of apprehension, and, choosing a learned life instead of the knightly career natural to a youth of his birth, early became an adept in the art of dialectic, under which name philosophy, meaning at that time chiefly the logic of Aristotle transmitted through Latin channels, was the great subject of liberal study in the episcopal schools. Roscellinus, the famous canon of Compiegne, is mentioned by himself as his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to such a degree, that Clapperton was unable to stand for half an hour after; he then suddenly got well, both as to the pain in his side, and a severe diarrhoea, which had troubled him for some time. The worthy caboceer, who had shown himself such an adept in practical pathology, was of the same opinion with others of his species, that a preventive is better than a remedy; but were this principle to be acted upon by the medical caboceers of the metropolis of England, we should not ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... quite think that. I don't suppose you can make them. You'd have first to learn the trade and show that you were an adept." ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Rieux, who one and all agreed in identifying the accused as the same Arnauld du Thill who had been born and had grown up under their very eyes. Several deposed that as he grew up he had taken to evil courses, and become an adept in theft and lying, not fearing even to take the sacred name of God in vain, in order to cover the untruth of his daring assertions. From such testimony the judge naturally concluded that Arnauld du Thill was quite capable of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... barber. The Caliph indeed can be scarcely got to submit himself to the test, but we will get an ape, and if this honest man shaves him, as he says he can, without inflicting a scratch, I will adjudge him to be a very proficient barber and an adept in each branch of his ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... have acquired this power. In them thought and will act as one. In the vast majority of human beings thought and will are not yet in entire harmony, and do not act as one. In the regenerated one (the adept) heart and head act in perfect unison. The adept thinks what he wills, and wills what he thinks. In unregenerated humanity will and thought are divided and occupy two different centres. In them the will has its seat in the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... branch by his tail or feet, turning head over heel. The more these jumps are sudden and unexpected, the surer the success. Laura understands this, and at the same time is conscious that to do this would be as easy for her as to dance on a rope. She considers me an adept in these kinds of gymnastics, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... however, there is not much reason to believe that this somewhat extravagant fashion is based upon any genuine liking, or any very widespread understanding. The truth is that, for all the adept tub-thumping of publishers, Conrad's sales still fall a good deal behind those of even the most modest of best-seller manufacturers, and that the respect with which his successive volumes are received is accompanied by enthusiasm ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Rabbi was Jose bar Chalafta, and his remark was made to a lady, possibly a Roman matron of high quality, in Sepphoris. Rabbi Jose was evidently an adept in meeting the puzzling questions of women, for as many as sixteen interviews between him and "matrons" are recorded in Agadic literature. Whether because prophetic of its subsequent popularity, or for some other reason, this particular dialogue in which ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... a Genius and mountain of mind; L a Logician expert and refined; A an Adept at rhetorical art; D was the Dark spot that lurked in his heart; S was the Subtlety that led him astray; T was the Truth that he bartered away; O was the Cypher his conscience became; N was the New-light that lit up the same; ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... of Homoeopathic admirals) would have called cholera, and not one of them died, though treated in the common way, and it is my firm belief that, if such a result had followed the administration of the omnipotent globules, it would have been in the mouth of every adept in Europe, from Quin of London to Spohr of Gandersheim. No longer ago than yesterday, in one of the most widely circulated papers of this city, there was published an assertion that the mortality in several Homoeopathic Hospitals was not quite five in a hundred, whereas, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... slow-coming tide. But the only thought that possessed him was that Steve was in trouble out there, perhaps drowning, and that he must get to him. The water splashed into his eyes and blinded him, for Tom was not an adept swimmer, and not once could he so much as sight Steve. Neither was the appeal for help repeated and Tom's heart sank. Behind him, as he was dimly aware, others were following, and he wished they would hurry. Once, when he was opposite the points, he tried ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... happened a thing that will explain, O kadi, why I have come to you this day to tell my story. I am an adept in my craft, and therefore was one of those entrusted to use the roomal. My particular victim was a comely youth, perhaps seventeen years of age—son of a landowner, he had told me in confidence, travelling with a bag of gold mohurs for his father. This lad had been in my close companionship ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... embracing a knowledge of the common and statute law authorities from Blackstone down. The address abounded in historical and literary allusions which show its author to be a person of broad culture as well as an adept in "book learning." Following came another address from Mrs. Bloomer, in which she disposed—as he expressed, to Dr. McNamara's entire satisfaction—of the stock biblical argument down from Moses ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the old captain yielded the wheel whenever it came his turn to toss, and he proved to be an adept at the game, ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... one must live, Philippe preferred it to be in America, for in no other country could an adept acquire so much money. And Philippe knew the whole dining world. With Celine and the baby, Paul, Philippe dwelt in an apartment that would really amaze madame by its appointments of luxury, in East 38th Street, and only the four flights to climb. And Paul was three, the ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... whatever a particular book-hunter's idiosyncrasy may be, not to feel interested in some of the collections which these enterprising and ruthless biblioclasts manage to get together. Mr. Purcell is an adept at this game, of which, doubtless, Mr. F. Harvey, of St. James's Street, is one of the most clever, as he is certainly the most eminent of professors. Mr. Purcell's collection of prints, engravings, press-cuttings, and so forth, cover an extraordinarily wide field. In fifty cases ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... detours, and when about to halt, a surveying gaze will locate the safest and most suitable position for his temporary camp. Such capacities serve with obvious advantage in defensive and offensive war tactics. Prompt in seizing an advantage and in avoiding danger, he has also learnt to be an adept in ruses to decoy and mislead an enemy, and as for self-help and resourcefulness, there is hardly a situation or difficulty conceivable which will not be successfully surmounted. The usual Boer can also fend for himself and cope with the minor perplexities of every-day life in the field, which ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... few funny stories—given quizzical answers to some of her questions. Quizzical, yes; but she could not be sure then there was not wisdom in them, and that humiliated her. She had never conceived of such a man. And, be it added gratuitously, Virginia deemed herself something of an adept ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... believe any one. I shall be glad, now, to hear your views on the subject of those who cure demoniacal possession; the effect of their exorcisms is clear enough, and they have spirits to deal with. I need not enlarge on the subject: look at that Syrian adept from Palestine: every one knows how time after time he has found a man thrown down on the ground in a lunatic fit, foaming at the mouth and rolling his eyes; and how he has got him on to his feet again ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... break, though neither can articulate a reason for his foreboding. The reason lies embedded, but not yet laid bare, in all the previous cases dimly suggested by the actual one, all calling up the same conclusion, which the adept thus finds himself swept on to, he knows not ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... distinction is drawn between exoteric and esoteric doctrine (the "true word") and the various phases of Buddhist thought are arranged in ten classes. Of these the first nine are merely preparatory, but in the last or esoteric phase, the adept becomes a living Buddha and receives full intuitive knowledge. In this respect the Tantric school resembles the teaching of Bodhidharma but not in detail. It teaches that Vairocana is the whole world, which is divided into Garbhadhatu (material) and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... had gone to nature, and now acted as if her foot were on her native heath. Her step was light, yet never uncertain. Her progress was easy, and, although different, was quite as graceful as if she were promenading the piazza, proving that she was an adept in mountain-climbing. It was evident, however, that to Miss Wildmere a mountain was a terra incognita. She trod uncertainly, her feet turned on loose stones that hurt her, and before the first steep ascent was passed, she panted and was glad ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... delayed their departure as did some Kenyahs who were on their way to Apo Kayan, and the people of the kampong did not go to their ladangs. The following day the sound of the gong was again heard, but this time it was occasioned by the fact that an adept had taken augurs from the flight of the red hawk, and to him it was ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... this moment that Beatrice and Catherine appeared together on the scene. Captain Bertram, who thought himself an adept in a certain mild, sarcastic description, was about to gratify Lady Georgiana with a graphic account of the Bells' supper-table, when his gaze met the kind, clear, happy expression of Beatrice Meadowsweet's eyes. He felt his heart stir within him. The Bells were ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... a work whose unknown character only heightened its importance gave point to every effort now made by this young man, and lent to his studies that vague touch of romance which made them a delight, and him an adept in many things he might otherwise have cared little about. At eighteen he was a graduate from the Sorbonne, and a musical virtuoso as well. He could fence, ride, and carry off the prize in games requiring physical prowess ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... this series of experiments you will be something of an adept at radio and are in a position to plan your final set. For this set you will need to purchase certain parts complete from reputable dealers because many of the circuits which I have described are patented and should not be used except as rights to use are obtained by the purchase ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... describes it in his article on a Deity, above alluded to, as the "Youngest Daughter of the Sciences, born amid flames, and cradled in rollers of fire." If there were any one science to which he was more specially devoted than to any and all others, it was chemistry. But he really seemed an adept in all, and shone about everywhere ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... book for children. Miss Walton proves herself a perfect adept in understanding of school-room joys and sorrows, and her name ought to become a household word amongst our ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... a great gardener, Miss Fleda, I hear," said the old gentleman. "My son says you are an adept ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... known one of these barbs to break or come loose, so adept are the blacks in securing them. The point is about 6 inches long, and on the barbless end is tightly wound successive layers of fibrous bark, until its size is adjusted to the socket in the haft. Above the swathing of bark a strong line is made fast; the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... spot. There were grids to walk on, but these more resembled greasy poles, for the slabs had been placed longitudinally on cross runners, and many of us used to slide off the end into some swampy hole. One of "B" Company's officers was a particular adept at this, and fell into some hole or other almost every night. These parties often managed to add to our general excitement by discovering some real or supposed spy along their route, and on one occasion there was quite a small stir round Cookers Farm by "something which ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... our national legislature. Three years ago, however, he was a more conspicuous personage. He was then chairman of the Board of Directors of the Brush Light Company; and according to Henry Labouchere's statements in Truth, he was a "notorious guinea-pig." He was certainly an adept in the profitable transfer of shares: so much so, indeed, that at length the shareholders revolted against their pious chairman, and appointed a committee to investigate his proceedings. Whereupon this modern Knight ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... this time become an adept in hunting, and though still very far behind his companions in skill with the rifle, was able to make a fair contribution towards the provisioning of the camp. The hunters now divided into two parties, three going out in search of game on one side of the line ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... and he doubtless seized upon the palliata form as the natural medium for the exploitation of his talents. By Cicero's time considerable technical equipment was required; the actor must be an adept in gesticulation, gymnastic and dancing.[92] Appreciable refinement had been reached in Quintilian's age, for he scores the comic actor who departs too far from reality and pronounces the ideal player him who ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... possible to man; he may even excel in them so as to be a wonder to his fellows by reason of his vast stores of knowledge, and yet know nothing of that light within the mind by which he apprehends them. Nay, more! he may even be a marvellous adept in the theory of religion, and yet, alas! alas! may never have seen its SUN—may still be in the blackness of gross darkness, because he knows not Jesus, the Light of the world, whom to know is ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... but said nothing. I fancied that she detected the subterfuge. Yet she had not tried, and did not try now to avoid us. Either she had no connection with the case we were investigating or she was an adept actress. ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... essential passion; but they drifted instead into a discussion regarding the practice of sorcery in the middle ages. She was surprised to learn that she was not only a believer, but was apparently an adept in all the esoteric arts. But the subject being quite new to her, she followed with difficulty his account of a very successful evocation of the spirit of a mediaeval alchemist, a Fleming of the fourteenth century, and wonder often interrupted ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... peculiar element, wherein she "lived and moved, and had her being," was the kitchen. Nobody's hare-ragout and geese giblets, not even those of the most experienced cook far and near, ever turned out so tasty as hers; in the preparation of sauces she was a perfect adept; vegetables, such as savoy and cauliflower, were dressed by Rettel's cunning hand in a way that could not be beaten, since she knew in a moment through a subtle unfailing instinct when there was too much or too little dripping; and her short cakes put ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Collins, who was a wondrous adept at "daping, dapping, or dibbling" with a grasshopper, and who once brought in a string of trout which he laid out head to tail on the grass before the house in a line of beauty forty-seven feet long. A mighty bass voice had this Collins also, and could sing, "Larboard Watch, Ahoy!" "Down ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... A.—: to take her for her first visit to the theatre. We got to the Lyceum in good time, and the play was capitally acted. I had hinted to Beatrice (Miss Ellen Terry) how much she could add to Lucy's pleasure by sending round a "carte" of herself; she sent a cabinet. She is certainly an adept in giving gifts ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... return to your royal island with as little eclat as you came thither? The world, my dear Countess, has changed since we were young. Men fought in the Civil War with good swords and muskets; but now we fight with indictments and oaths, and such like legal weapons. You are no adept in such warfare; and though I am well aware you know how to hold out a castle, I doubt much if you have the art to parry off an impeachment. This Plot has come upon us like a land storm—there is no steering the vessel in the teeth of the tempest—we must run for the nearest ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... did not become bolder and bolder as she continued her evil practices, but, unlike thieves generally, she grew to be more and more cautious. She acquired in time remarkable skill at showing an outwardly honest face. Indeed she became such an adept at dissimulation that the suspicion of even Jason Philip, aroused as it had been during the course of a careful investigation, was dispelled by ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... being followed in all my movements by the agents of this adept in villainy, I took care, upon leaving Mr. L——, to repair to the hotel of the sporting man I was personifying. Making myself square with the proprietor I took up my quarters in the room of my sporting friend, and the better to deceive any spy who might be lurking about, I received his ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... He blunders as much as you would do if left to your own selection. Those who have recourse to him seldom speak gratefully of his skill. He relieves you, it is true,—but of your money, not your malady; and the only branch of his profession in which he is an adept is that which enables him to bleed you! O mankind!" continued Augustus, "what noble creatures you ought to be! You have keys to all sciences, all arts, all mysteries, but one! You have not a notion how you ought ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... old Mr. Courtenay kept from time to time glancing around him, as though in fear of detection; hence I was in constant dread lest he should look behind him and discover me slinking along their path. I am by no means an adept at following persons, but in this case the stake was so great—the revelation of some startling and unparalleled mystery—that I strained every nerve and every muscle to conceal my presence while ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... descriptive power that distinguished her novels—that art of seizing grand general effects together with picturesque detail, and depicting them in a simple and straightforward manner, in which she was an adept. It must be added that the diffuseness which characterizes her fiction, also pervades her correspondence. Neither can be adequately represented by extracts. Her composition is like a gossamer web, that must ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... them once tried to strike Isobel. This was when she was nearly thirteen. Isobel replied with the schoolroom inkpot. She was an adept at stone-throwing, and other athletic arts. It caught her instructress fair upon her gentle bosom, spoiled her dress, filled her mouth and eyes with ink, and nearly ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... the Piper swept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while: Then, like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... I am a better adept in the perusal of men's countenances and manners than many, and there are signs of lowering discontent and gloomy cowardice, arguing ill for unity of measures, on which our safety greatly rests. Yet my fancies may ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... it is said, were sent for. An Italian singer strove to reproduce in the Kremlin the evening entertainments of the Tuileries. By such means Napoleon expected to dupe a government which the habit of reigning over ignorance and error had rendered an adept in ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... as of considerable utility by Sir William Thomson in his juror report at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, recommending it for award. This leading physicist of his age, afterward Lord Kelvin, was an adept in telegraphy, having made the ocean cable talk, and he saw in Edison's "American Automatic," as exhibited by the Atlantic & Pacific company, a most meritorious and useful system. With the aid of Mr. E. H. Johnson he made exhaustive tests, carrying ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... wheel. What were they, these figures? I knew not, and yet gazing upon them, thought which took no words to clothe itself mutely read their meaning. Here were the culminations of the human, towering images of the good and evil man may aspire to. I looked at the face of the evil adept. His bright red-brown eyes burned with a strange radiance of power; I felt an answering emotion of pride, of personal intoxication, of psychic richness rise up within me gazing upon him. His face was archetypal; the abstract passion which eluded ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the Armenian revolt. Early in the spring a Persian army invaded Armenia, under a general called Hazaravougd. Vahan allowed himself to be surprised, to be shut up in the city of Dovin, and to be there besieged. After a while he made his escape, and renewed the guerilla warfare in which he was an adept; but the Persians recovered most of the country, and he was himself, on more than one occasion, driven across the border and obliged to seek refuge in Roman Armenia, whither his adversary had no right to follow him. Even here, however, he was not safe. Hazaravougd, at the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Sings itself over, and so the game Re-starts itself wherein I am kept Like a glowing brazier faintly blue of flame So that the delicate love-adept Can warm her hands and invite her soul, Sprinkling incense and salt of words And kisses pale, and sipping the toll Of incense-smoke that ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... However, the gnawing means as much to the squirrel as the eating, for the squirrel's teeth grow constantly and he must continually wear them off or he dies, stabbed by his own incisors which grow in the arc of a circle. Yet the squirrel is an adept at getting at the tiny, toothsome seed and he can strip a cone of its scales far faster than I can, even if I use my knife. He holds the cone stem end upward in his fore paws which are so like hands, severs the base of the scale with ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... had accomplished the change of mood with the rapidity of a transformation scene—in which form of art, by the way, he was a great adept. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... on the broad face of the elder did not alarm Deerfoot, who had seen much more frightful countenances among his own people. He gazed calmly into the eyes of the warrior, as the two stood close together with their hands clasped. The Indian is an adept in concealing whatever emotions may stir him, but Deerfoot saw the savage was puzzled over his action. He could not but know that the Shawanoes were the most warlike Indians in the Mississippi Valley, and one of the last ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... blew out with the breeze. He and I then plied the paddles. We appeared to be making fair progress, too, although the raft moved but slowly. But the wind soon dying away, we had our paddles alone to depend on. Manley tried to scull with the oar, but he was not an adept at the art, and it did not help us much. When we watched the shore we had left, we saw that we had made some progress; but when we looked ahead towards the side of the lake we wished to reach, it appeared no nearer than when we stood on the ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... this man, through the first perilous season of youth, so abnormally safe from youth's most wonted peril,—to this would-be pupil of realism, this learned adept in the schools of a Welby or a Mivers,—to this man, love came at last as with the fatal powers of the fabled Cytherea; and with that love all the realisms of life became ideals, all the stern lines of our commonplace destinies undulated into curves of ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cold barrels of two revolvers were leveled at his head and, with the address and skill of a practiced adept, Sam passed his twisted steel wire "come alongs" around the outlaw's wrist, and Jim Cummings' career stopped short. Any attempt at escape was hopeless, and in silent surrender he held out his other hand and Chip snapped the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... deal with the problem of keeping a woman quiet. He saw that she was taking the trail toward Fred Thurman's, and that she was riding swiftly, as if she had some errand in that direction, something urgent. Al was very adept at reading men's moods and intentions from small details in their behavior. He had seen Lorraine start on several leisurely, purposeless rides, and her changed manner held a significance which he did not attempt ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... I found this adept interesting when he sat opposite me, and he incited the count to vivacity. He contributed a very good anecdote illustrative ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... vaguely recognized his many poor qualities and clearly saw his few good ones. He could shoot, when permitted, with the best; no horse, however refractory, had ever been known to throw him; he was an adept at following the trails left by rustlers, and that was an asset; he became of value to the community; he was ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... observed by a profound adept in human physiology, that if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives forever. Such promised to be the case ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... boys' story, full of incident and adventure, and told in the lively style in which Mr. Fenn is such an adept."—Globe. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... sums from the crown, usually after giving many years' credit, while many other years were needed by his heirs to get in the balance of the royal indebtedness. Philippe's younger brother, Jean Jacques Caffieri (1725-1792), was a sculptor, but was sufficiently adept in the treatment of metals to design the fine rampe d'escalier which still ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... How to begin was more than she knew, and she stayed silent a full five minutes, looking earnestly at the point of her shoe, till Lucy, who was an adept in such cases, thought it best to proceed to business at once, and save Rose the delicate operation of opening the ball herself; and so, in her own way, half ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... look nicer than any one here," Mr. Halloway added, in thorough conviction. "You must be an adept in ironing." Phebe laughed softly in pure pleasure. It was so new to have such pretty things said to her. "Would it be very wrong to slip away together for a rest?" he continued, leading her a little farther along. "Let us sit down on the steps here and recruit. I have talked my throat hoarse to ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... place without his suspecting it?" the Soudrys understood their friend's wishes. Do not forget that Soudry, for the last seventeen years chief of police of the canton, was doubly shrewd through his wife, an adept in the particular wiliness of a waiting-maid ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... not by the ancients, but by Berber cultivators of long ago. Gazing upon these venerable stones we were led to talk of past times, of buried treasures and their wondrous lore. One of his uncles, he tells me, is versed in the black arts and an adept at raising hoards; he learnt it from a Moroccan. But bad luck had dogged his footsteps lately. He discovered a treasure whose guardian jin offered to surrender it if he brought three things: a white goat, certain materials for fumigation, and "the book." ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Europeans. He is passionately fond of music, wild over poetry, inquisitive about paintings, a connoisseur in everything—I cannot remember all. He has friends who know architecture, and though skilled in his own profession, he is an adept in others. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... boys do, sound and vigorous in health, passing the winters in attendance upon the district schools, and the summers in working on the farm. "The only distinctive trait exhibited by the child was mechanical ingenuity; he excelled in caricature, was an adept in constructiveness, having made countless wagons, windmills, and weapons for his comrades, attaining the height of juvenile reputation as the inventor of what he called ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... a tunnel and something which took a great many years longer in making. We shall soon meet with a very remarkable and famous old gentleman, who is a great adept at digging, and at landscape gardening likewise; and he has dug out a path for himself through the chalk, which we shall take the liberty of using also. And his name, if you wish to know it, is ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... hands deep in his pockets, stared out among the skyscrapers and gave way to a fit of remorse. It was foreign to his nature to do petty underhanded tricks. Grand strategy—yes. At that he was an adept, and not the shiftiest, craftiest schemes he had ever devised had given him a moment's uneasiness. But to be driving a ten-dollar-a-week typewriter out of her job—to be maneuvering to deprive her of a for her brilliant marriage—to be lying to an old ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... or newsboy, he is an adept in all the tricks of the trade; and as a fast young man about town among his kind, he is worthy his white prototype: the swagger, the impertinent look, the coarse remark, the loud laugh, are all in the best style. As a lounger and starer also, on the street corners of a Sunday ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... times he would ask himself if he were equal to the task. But beneath the surface of conversation, the same thing was in the mind of the Regent, who had already managed affairs quite as difficult, and she began most cleverly to arrange the means. She sent for one of her secretaries, an adept in all arts necessary for the perfect government of a kingdom, and ordered him to give her secretly a false message during the supper. Then came the repast, which the lady did not touch, since her heart had swollen like a sponge, and so diminished her stomach, for ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... holidays in lurking about with pipes in their mouths at places where they were unlikely to be disturbed, instead of joining in some hearty and healthy game. When he began to "learn" smoking, he found it anything but pleasant; but a little practice had made him an adept, and he found a certain amount of enjoyable excitement in finding out cozy places by the river, where he and Upton might go and lounge for an hour ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... of art which is so little understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were all from the hand of the owner. My evident admiration pleased my new friend, and led to talk upon his part, which showed him no less elevated in his theories of art than an adept in the practice. Without fatiguing the reader with irrelevant criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as elucidating much of the design and character of the work which these prefatory pages introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he insisted as much upon the connection ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Government; but his intentions rambled, and his reform fancies, more mystical then political, proceeded not so much from the idea of the interests of the State as from the influence of a secret doctrine with which he was imbued. The statesman in him was but an adept in magic; for Ministers he took mere charlatans. Skilled conjurers replaced ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... possess," he wrote in the Second Part of the "Rights of Man," "more of what is called consequence in the world than any one of Mr. Burke's catalogue of aristocrats." Paine sincerely believed himself to be an adept who had found in the rights of man the materia prima of politics, by which error and suffering might be transmuted into happiness and truth. A second Columbus, but greater than the Genoese! Christopher had discovered a new world, it is true, but Thomas had discovered the means of making a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... to have towards you, the inward and spiritual gratitude and affection, though I am not always an adept in ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... occasion to observe that Mrs. Chirrup is an incomparable housewife. In all the arts of domestic arrangement and management, in all the mysteries of confectionery-making, pickling, and preserving, never was such a thorough adept as that nice little body. She is, besides, a cunning worker in muslin and fine linen, and a special hand at marketing to the very best advantage. But if there be one branch of housekeeping in which she excels to an utterly ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... rich and independent as his invention had made my countryman, Dr. Auer, of Welsbach; then I should be able to travel instead of remaining in Vienna. In the dream I was traveling with my invention, with the, it is true, rather awkward glass top-hat. The dream work is peculiarly adept at representing two contradictory conceptions by means of the same mixed image. Thus, for instance, a woman dreamt of herself carrying a tall flower-stalk, as in the picture of the Annunciation (Chastity-Mary is her own name), but the stalk was bedecked with thick white blossoms ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... plenty, reducing tete-a-tetes in a corresponding ratio. He did get one opportunity, however, and used it well. They had so many things to talk about in common, that she could not help finding him good company. She might well be pleased, for he was an adept in the curious art of being agreeable, as other people are in chess or billiards, and had made a special study of her tastes, as a physician studies a patient's constitution. What he wanted was to get her thoroughly interested in himself, and to maintain her in a receptive condition ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... whole face would light up. At other times she would stop and reread a passage with evident approbation. Page after page was covered with the mystic language of the modiste, in which Pauline must have been an adept—as what young woman is not?—for she made no erasures, and inserted ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... no pleasure in superfluity, they take means to increase the roots that are their food—diet so simple that their health is assured." Still, it is known that in their defence against the marauding Caribs the Porto Ricans were courageous, and had become adept with arrow and club, and it was believed by some of the first explorers that they ate ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... island had thus once been inhabited. After Sannikov had fetched Chenitzyn from Faddejev Island, where he had passed the summer in great want of provisions, and ordered him, who was probably a greater adept at the pen, to draw up a report of his own interesting researches, he commenced his return journey on the 8th Nov./27th Oct. and arrived at Ustjansk on ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... were others of our rival's service. I saw at once it would be difficult to have access to Hamilton. He was lying on a stretcher within talking range of the table and had one arm in a sling. Now, I hold it is harder for the unpractised man to play the spy with everything in his favor, than for the adept to act that role against the impossible. One is without the art that foils detection. The other can defy detection. So I stood inside with my hand on the door lest the click of the closing latch should rouse attention, but had no thought of ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... is shown by my remembering the exact spot where the crime was committed. It probably lay all the heavier from my love of dogs being then, and for a long time afterwards, a passion. Dogs seemed to know this, for I was an adept in robbing their ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... and airy lightness of touch, but they were mostly penned, as he himself tells us, for his own pleasure and that of his friends, not for general publication. There are, nevertheless, charming pieces in the collected edition of Hooft's poems, and he was certainly an adept in the technicalities of metrical craft. But Hooft himself was ambitious of being remembered by posterity as a national historian. He aimed at giving such a narrative of the struggle against Spain as would entitle him to the name of "the Tacitus of the Netherlands." He wished ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Mr. Hennage. Both by nature and professional training he was more adept in the science of deduction than most men, and while he had never seen Donna's marriage license he firmly believed that she had been married. He had looked for the publication of the license in the Bakersfield papers. Not having seen it, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... read, madam? Look at this envelope. Doubtless we shall find more soon, and what was inside them. I shall no doubt be gratified by learning in good time what a well-finished and full-blown adept in a ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... He was no adept at turning a neat phrase—at reeling off a pretty honeymoon welcome. Perhaps he expected her to express delight, to come to him, possibly, and kiss him, as some ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... existence, because it is discernible only to the eye of faith and cannot be brought home to unregenerate reason. I do not imagine that he will take this line, for it would come dangerously near to identifying God with Providence—a heresy which he abhors. But supposing some other adept in "modern religion" were to make this claim on behalf of the Invisible King, would it go any way towards persuading us that we owe him ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... shuffle, carrying his parcel of ginger with tight clutch lest he drop it, like one whose weariness of body must make up for feebleness of mind, dreamed what a diplomat he was in his humble walk of life, and what an adept still in doubles and turns and twists and dodges towards his own ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... general spy, Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess?— An only infant's earliest governess! She taught the child to read, and taught so well, That she herself, by teaching, learned to spell. An adept next in penmanship she grows, As many a nameless slander deftly shows: What she had made the pupil of her art, None know; but that high soul secured the heart, And panted for the truth it could not hear, With longing breast and undeluded ear. Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 14, the decree of the Court of Session in the schoolmaster's cause was reversed in the House of Lords, after a very eloquent speech by Lord Mansfield, who shewed himself an adept in school discipline, but I thought was too rigorous towards my client[544]. On the evening of the next day I supped with Dr. Johnson, at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in the Strand, in company with Mr. Langton and his brother-in-law, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Republican candidate's failure to evolve a constructive policy greatly weakened him, especially as Wilson had the advantage of the maxim that it is best not to change horses in the middle of the stream. Finally, Hughes did not prove adept in reconciling the Progressives. Indeed it was said to be a political gaucherie on his part, or that of his advisers, which alienated the friends of Governor Hiram Johnson of California and threw the electoral vote of that State ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... a Hermetic Philosopher, &c., p. 210. The object of the author is to show that the Swedish sage was an adept, and that his writings may be interpreted from the point of view ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... "blood," or dandy about town, was this young officer. Boxing, rat-hunting, the fives court, and four-in-hand driving were then the fashion of our British aristocracy; and he was an adept in all these noble sciences. And though he belonged to the household troops, who, as it was their duty to rally round the Prince Regent, had not shown their valour in foreign service yet, Rawdon ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a very adept at this sort of thing, and his skill enabled him to complete the business in such a manner that had his "griskins" been submitted to the light, no one could have told they had been "carved" in ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... self-possession, their saner weighing of considerations, their higher power of resisting emotional suggestion. The very fact that marriages occur at all is a proof, indeed, that they are more cool-headed than men, and more adept in employing their intellectual resources, for it is plainly to a man's interest to avoid marriage as long as possible, and as plainly to a woman's interest to make a favourable marriage as soon as she can. The efforts of the two sexes are thus directed, in one of the capital ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... it at all. It was an art. It took brains and a genius for disguise to make a man a successful creeper and spyer. You couldn't simply say to yourself, 'I will creep.' If you attempted to do it in your own person, you would be detected instantly. You had to be an adept at masking your personality. You had to be one man at Bristol and another quite different man at Hull—especially if, like Henry, you were of a gregarious disposition, and ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... deep vein of ingrained vice in his composition, which perpetually impelled him to crooked paths. Various ugly stories were current about him, for all of which there was doubtless more or less foundation. It was said that he had been caught cheating at play, and that he was an adept in all the rascalities of the turf. The deplorable event which led to the resignation of his commission made considerable noise at the time of its occurrence. A young brother officer whom he had swindled out of large sums of money, was forced by him into a duel, which ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... in the Girl's cheeks by the time he helped her into the cafe'. They were guided to a small room, cool and restful, close a window, beside which grew a tree covered with talking leaves. A waiting attendant, who seemed perfectly adept, brought in steaming bouillon, fragrant tea, broiled chicken, properly cooked vegetables, a wonderful salad, and then delicious ices and cold fruit. The happy Harvester leaned back and watched the Girl daintily manage almost as much ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... are beginning to believe this Petoen Waern, like his uncle, is something of an adept at this ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... of the old days, when the barber was doctor and dentist also, and made his pole represent a bandage wound around a broken limb, the Japanese barber has, in many cases, added a green or blue band. Not being an adept in the use of that refractory language which Young Japan would so like to flatten out and plane down for vernacular use, the Japanese barber is not always happy in executing the English legend for his sign-board. The following ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... wit, flushed, and laughed as heartily as they. She had spoken incautiously, as a child, and without sophistication. But she accepted responsibility for her joke. She was not in the least flurried, but was pleased at being considered an adept in the ways of marriage. At heart she was despising herself for not having been more truly observant of their clothes, because in reality she had been so concentrated upon Mrs. Perce that she had never thought to spare an eye for Mrs. Perce's husband. She was thankful to have ridden ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... be hers. There were no windows here, and his own room had an excellent lock on it already—one he'd put on himself. Izzy came back as Mother Corey finished the door and began knocking a small panel out of the connecting door. The old man was surprisingly adept with his hands as he fitted hinges and a catch to the panel, and re-installed it so that Sheila could ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... would be obstacles not shown on the map, and where streams, roads and even paths would lead to, and deduce from enemy movements forecasts which were almost always correct. In all the aspects of war, great or small, he was remarkably adept. The Emperor had often used him for reconnaissance in the past and had recommended him to Marshal Oudinot, who frequently called him into consultation; with the result that many of the laborious and dangerous jobs fell to ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... called the Bolero, which in grace and Elegance stands unrivalled, but would scarcely be admitted in the less licentious circles of our N. Climate. I shall take lessons at Cadiz, and hope to become an adept in all those dances before I see you. If you write within a fortnight—and of course you will after receiving this—you may still direct to Cadiz. There has been a disturbance at Gibraltar, which was hatching when we were there, and during our absence has Broken out. The many ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... but regard as more or less exaggerated, and so far unjust. The truth probably was that she was a wife with some blemishes mixed with some beauties. But when the blemishes were displayed, her husband, no adept in the female nature, had tried to use reason with her, instead of something far more persuasive. Hence his failure to convince and convert. The act of withdrawing from her, seemed, under the circumstances, abrupt. In ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... to argue that point with so great an adept; my remonstrances are merely limited to the results, and I can truly aver that my life in time of peace is, if possible, more miserable than in war; for what with carrying love-letters, bribing servants, attending serenades, watching the movements of venerable fathers, morose duennas, and fierce-looking ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... He was not an adept in concealing his feelings, which generally showed themselves upon his face, or were betrayed in the tones of his voice, and when he spoke as he did of his wife the two young girls glanced curiously at each other, wondering if it where possible that the grave Judge was jealous. If charged ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... filled the halls bedecked in gold, White-robed priests adept in mantra mingled with ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... but these more resembled greasy poles, for the slabs had been placed longitudinally on cross runners, and many of us used to slide off the end into some swampy hole. One of "B" Company's officers was a particular adept at this, and fell into some hole or other almost every night. These parties often managed to add to our general excitement by discovering some real or supposed spy along their route, and on one occasion there was quite a small stir round Cookers ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... words of Duryodhana, Sakuni replied,—'Hear how thou mayest obtain this unrivalled prosperity that thou beholdest in the son of Pandu, O thou that hast truth for thy prowess. O Bharata, I am an adept at dice, superior to all in the world. I can ascertain the success or otherwise of every throw, and when to stake and when not. I have special knowledge of the game. The Son of Kunti also is fond of dice playing though he ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... you would!" she rejoined—"For an 'old' bachelor, John, you are quite an adept at that ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... 'At twelve o'clock.' 'Then,' replied I, 'I have at least learnt thus much by my new acquaintance—that five hours of the four-and-twenty unemployed are enough for a man to go mad in; so I would advise you, sir, to study algebra, if you are not an adept already in it. Your head would get less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbours about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.' It is perhaps needless to add that ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... passion is a theft committed against our true grandeur. Just as you have never found your hounds relinquishing the hunted animal or failing to be in at the death, so I have never seen one of my patient disciples diverted from this great quest by the love of woman or a selfish thought. If an adept seeks power and wealth, the desire is instigated by our needs; he grasps treasure as a thirsty dog laps water while he swims a stream, because his crucibles are in need of a diamond to melt or an ingot of gold to reduce to powder. To each his own work. One seeks the secret of vegetable nature; ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... bar Chalafta, and his remark was made to a lady, possibly a Roman matron of high quality, in Sepphoris. Rabbi Jose was evidently an adept in meeting the puzzling questions of women, for as many as sixteen interviews between him and "matrons" are recorded in Agadic literature. Whether because prophetic of its subsequent popularity, or for some other reason, this particular dialogue in which Rabbi Jose bore ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... as quite proper that the teacher of philosophy should concern himself with the problems of religion, and should pry into the methods and fundamental assumptions of special sciences in all of which it is impossible that he should be an adept. The question naturally arises: Why has his task come to be circumscribed as it is? Why should he teach just these things and ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... 'An adept which as I have before said Mr. Wakefield is, in reading the weak and vicious inclinations of the human heart, he hoped not only to have rid himself of importunity from me, but, by rendering me subservient to this unholy bishop's vile propensities, to have played a deeper ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... remember as the "lady in grey" of days when she was little and grandfather alive and Mademoiselle Beauce so cross because that intruder gave her music lessons—all these confused and tantalised a spirit which had longed to find Robin Hill untroubled. But Holly was adept at keeping things to herself, and all had seemed to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Arnold and Harcraft were out of the air lock, each clutching a new phase unit. Harcraft called instructions to Arnold over his suit's inter-com, but within minutes the smaller man was, if anything, more adept at the business of maneuvering himself through the void than his teacher. They replaced the phase unit in the first sled—the fiftieth from the ship—with Harcraft doing the ...
— Unspecialist • Murray F. Yaco
... Seymour, twice brevetted for gallantry at Cerro Gordo and Chernbusco, was an excellent artillery officer, full of invention and resource, a lover of poetry, and an adept at music and painting. ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... are keen on horse racing, and among the various tribes are to be found some of the fleetest horses in the West, many of them trained to all the tricks of racing. An Indian jockey is the shrewdest of his class, and is an adept at all the tricks of ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... found good among the Europeans. He is passionately fond of music, wild over poetry, inquisitive about paintings, a connoisseur in everything—I cannot remember all. He has friends who know architecture, and though skilled in his own profession, he is an adept in others. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... a very wise man, but not from Iran. No. He is a Brahmin by birth, a Buddhist by adopted religion, and he calls himself an 'adept' by profession, I suppose, if he can be said to have any. He comes and goes unexpectedly, with amazing rapidity. His visits are brief, but he always seems to be perfectly conversant with the matter in hand, whatever it be. He will come to-night and give me about twenty words of advice, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... smiled. "Your friend performs delightfully," he continued after a pause, on seeing Bingley join the group; "and I doubt not that you are an adept in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... with the politician as with the trained diplomat is that he never goes beneath the surface. He takes appearances for realities. He has often lost that instinct of race which should enable him to understand his own humanity. To a Giolitti, adept in the trading game of political management, it must seem insane for Italy to plunge into the war against powerful allies, who at just this time were triumphing in West and East alike—all the more when ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the army, taught from early boyhood to ride and shoot, to spar and swim, spending his vacation in saddle and his schooldays in unwilling study, an adept in every healthful and exhilarating sport, keen with rifle and revolver, with shotgun and rod, with bat and racquet, with the gloves and Indian clubs, the nimblest quarter-back and dodger, the swiftest runner of his school, it must ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... you look nicer than any one here," Mr. Halloway added, in thorough conviction. "You must be an adept in ironing." Phebe laughed softly in pure pleasure. It was so new to have such pretty things said to her. "Would it be very wrong to slip away together for a rest?" he continued, leading her a little farther along. "Let us sit down on the steps here ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... Sara Bernhardt! I love such diversified, such picturesque gifts. Sculpture, painting, acting, writing! This is why I loved Lydia, who was an adept at numberless arts and accomplishments. She was a brunette with a clear, cream-tinged skin, red cheeks, rolling black eyes, ripe velvety lips, and hair of a beautiful hue and rich lustre—raven black, yet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... phases of Sorcery as it was formerly practised (according to numerous records) not only in Ancient Egypt but also in Europe, during the Middle Ages. In no case do the powers attributed to him exceed those which are claimed for a fully equipped Adept. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... and eating meals limited only by our appetites, nursing the sick woman, and chopping firewood. From the first streak of dawn till the last gleam of twilight one or the other of us chopped the firewood. Neither of us was an adept at handling an axe. But Agathemer, with his half Greek ancestry and his wholly Greek versatility and adaptability, taught himself to be a good axeman in ten days. I bungled and blundered away at it all winter. Agathemer could cut a two-foot oak log into suitable lengths ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the directress in Paris, but with a face rather more pleasant—welcomed her warmly, and before the next day had passed Jean had settled down to her duties—the same as those in Paris, the mending of linen, at which she had become an adept. ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... the stars overhead, mellowed by the light of the full moon, must infuse new life into them all—recall memories of other days to him. With such a setting, a woman of her beauty, refinement and attraction, and an adept at the game of flattery and intrigue, must shine with new luster—become doubly dangerous and irresistible to a man. Though this was her chief motive for giving the fiesta, she had ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... were not a little improved by the poets, painters, and artificers; for it would not have been very easy to represent the Gods planning and executing any work in another form, and perhaps this opinion arose from the idea which mankind have of their own beauty. But do not you, who are so great an adept in physics, see what a soothing flatterer, what a sort of procuress, nature is to herself? Do you think there is any creature on the land or in the sea that is not highly delighted with its own form? If it were not so, why would not a bull become enamored of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... similar objects, her curiosity was aroused by some large chests in which book-rolls, strange vessels, and an endless variety of raiment of every shape and size were stored, from the simple chiton of the common laborer to the star-embroidered talar of the adept. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... her, one of his most successful methods was to flatter each one in turn into thinking that he had made a tremendous impression upon her. It was not a difficult thing to do inasmuch as long custom and repetition had made him an adept at ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... his journey, hired a small but powerful car, disguised himself thoroughly. He was an adept at making up. In New York he had more than once saved his life owing to his skill. He knew the country well. He journeyed down in the daytime, passing through Little Trent slowly, saw Abel Head at the door of the ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... Poet's lips I slept Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept; Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, But feeds on the aerial kisses Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses. He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see, what things they be— ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... unobserved. It was only when his teacher showed him, at first in the slowest manner, and then gradually increasing his speed, that he perceived that what seemed impossible was easy enough when the necessary practice and skill had been attained. The man was indeed an adept at a great variety of tricks by which the unsuspecting ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... matter I will not discuss. If he were a professional faster, I would hardly hesitate to say his claim was fraudulent, for I am fully convinced that all the professional fasters are frauds. They are simply adept sleight-of-hand men. They work out some adroit trick by which they may get nourishment into their systems in spite of the always more or less negligent or suspicious watchers, and then advertise for a forty days' or sixty ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... hypocritical signs of penitence—he was always an adept in that line—and protested he would go abroad and live quietly, till his losses should be retrieved. There is little doubt that, under this laudable design, he concealed one of attaching himself closer to the Chevalier party, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... his holidays in lurking about with pipes in their mouths at places where they were unlikely to be disturbed, instead of joining in some hearty and healthy game. When he began to "learn" smoking, he found it anything but pleasant; but a little practice had made him an adept, and he found a certain amount of enjoyable excitement in finding out cozy places by the river, where he and Upton might go and lounge for an hour to enjoy the ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... sitting in his room by the window, reading in Storm's Immensee and looking now and then into the twilight of the garden, where the old walnut-tree was groaning heavily? That would have been the place for him. Let the others dance and be lively and adept at it ... But no, this was the right place after all, where he knew himself near to Inga, even though he only stood lonely and far off, trying to distinguish her voice, with its ring of warm life, in the hum, clinking, and laughter there within. Oh, your laughing blue almond eyes, you ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the pleasant little creek separating Berwick, in Maine, from Somersworth, in New Hampshire, within sight of my mother's home, dwelt a plain, sedate member of the society of Friends, named Bantum. He passed throughout a circle of several miles as a conjurer and skilful adept in the art of magic. To him resorted farmers who had lost their cattle, matrons whose household gear, silver spoons, and table-linen had been stolen, or young maidens whose lovers were absent; and the quiet, meek-spirited old man received them all kindly, put on his huge iron-rimmed ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Francklin had himself been lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia from 1766 to 1776, and seems to have kept on excellent terms with his successors. Through his influence at headquarters the government patronage passed largely to the firm of which he was the senior partner. Francklin was an adept in the art of diplomacy. During the Revolutionary war, as we have already seen, his tact and judgment prevented the Indians from becoming actively hostile to the English and restrained the New Englanders, settled in Cumberland ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... used for the carving of the cake—and anything else, when needed), no one objected to this harmless amusement on his part, provided he did not pitch the knife on to their toes; and, after long exercise, with the help of The Wild Man, who is an adept at these tricks, The Chaperon at last succeeded in "throwing the knife" to his satisfaction, and others' terror. A sigh of relief escaped the lips of those who were dodging the knife when they saw the luggage-carts looming in the distance. They at once drew the attention of The Chaperon to the ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... great deal worse than his bite. (If, indeed, he had a bite at all.) Thus snubs that made other people's ears tingle, had no effect whatever on the lady to whom they were addressed, for she knew exactly what they were worth, and had by this time become fairly adept at snapping in return. In the days when she succumbed she was occasionally unhappy, but now she and her husband understood each other, and having agreed to differ, they unfortunately agreed also to ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... next, and she was an adept, so all went well with her. I came after her, and managed to get his Majesty's ball on its way a bit. Tiresome pauses and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... began to pin out a few butterflies on cork, but I never ended them, nor became an adept at skinning ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... was demanded for every single coin, since people thought that it would be no use paying their money to a poor man. Nowadays charity is strangely administered. Perhaps it has always been so. Either folk do not know how to administer it, or they are adept in the art—one of the two. Perhaps you did not know this, so I beg to tell it you. And how comes it that the poor man knows, is so conscious of it all? The answer is—by experience. He knows because any day he may see a gentleman enter a restaurant and ask himself, "What shall ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... distributing the fried pork around the table, a performance at which he was an adept. In spite of a keen desire for money-making, Sandy was a generous man at his own table, and he had a way of serving his family that was the admiration of the whole mill staff. If a man but held up his plate as a slight indication that he was ready for more, ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... his earliest years had been constantly on the stage. He played the gamin in folk-scenes and the monster in burlesques. Besides, he was an adept at thunder and lightning; by means of cracking a whip and the close imitation of the neighing of horses, he announced the approaching stage-coach; he lighted the moon in "Der Freischutz;" and with a kettle and pair of tongs gave forewarning of the witches' hour. When I opened my ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... the fall of rain for the last twenty-four hours, we found the rain-gauge and the bottle had been removed, so we sent Kidgwiga to inform the king we wished his magicians to come at once and institute a search for it. Kidgwiga immediately returned with the necessary adept, an old man, nearly blind, dressed in strips of old leather fastened to the waist, and carrying in one hand a cow's horn primed with magic powder, carefully covered on the mouth with leather, from which dangled an iron bell. The old creature jingled the bell, entered ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... not overthrow a constitutional Government and enslave his country as Bonaparte did; and, therefore, he is favourably compared with the latter, whose opportunities he did not have. His letters show him to have been an adept in the art of traducing colleagues behind their backs. In writing he called Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse 'perfide,' and spoke of his 'mauvaise foi.' He had a low opinion of General Humbert, whom he bracketed with Mascheret. Grouchy, he said, was 'un inconsequent ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... the library was the scene of many more busy hours, and the working-force of the Happy-Go-Luckys was increased by the Ramsey girls, who threw themselves heartily into the making of tissue-paper caps, rosettes and flowers, in which Vera proved an adept, and her productions were so much admired and praised by the others that she became quite amiable, and gave them no reason to ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... ears of royalty, and how can we wonder that at last a modest expression of genuine respect does sound like rudeness to royal ears, and to speak the truth becomes synonymous with insolence? In the trickeries and mimicries of court life Bunsen was no adept, and nothing was easier than to outbid him in the price that is paid for royal favors. But if much has thus been lost of a life far too precious to be squandered among royal servants and messengers, this prophet ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... in framing and putting together a despotic and oppressive law, I would, if my slight voice could reach him, by all means say to him, Seek the laboratory of the Senator from Illinois. If he has not proved himself an adept in this kind of legislation, unconstitutional, unjust, oppressive, iniquitous, unwise, impolitic, calculated to keep forever a severance of the Union, to exclude from all their constitutional rights, privileges, and ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... with two of his wife's relatives, Jackson had opened a store in which, even while still a member of the highest tribunal of the State, he not infrequently passed tea and salt and calico over the counter to his neighbors. In small trading, however, he was not adept, and the store failed. Nevertheless, from 1804 until 1813 he successfully combined with planting and the stock-raising business enterprises of a larger sort, especially slave and horse dealing. His debts paid off, he ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... encountered by midgets. I recall that a white-haired, gray-whiskered employee of the hotel in Philadelphia, where we were quartered, persistently called Admiral Blair, our leading midget, 'Sonny Boy.' When comparisons were made, the Admiral was ten years the older. I am not very adept in guessing the ages of either grown persons or midgets, but I suspect, Brother Curtis, that I was in the fourth grade in school about the time you were born; and that when you arrived at the fourth grade, ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... proved as adept at thieving as the majority of the South Sea Islanders. One man, who had stolen some books from the Master's cabin, got off in his canoe, and being chased, took to the water, and diving under his pursuers' boat, unshipped ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... see the pilot crouched in his place, and working his gun with one hand while he managed some controls of his fleeting machine with the other, for there was only one man aboard, though German machines usually hold two. Long practice had made him an adept at this ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... Lacrymarum, just as Letheby or Taylor might do those of a new chalybeate spring. A fearful power, is it not, and fatal, if used tyrannously? Well, I remember hearing a very beautiful and charming person speak of an evening she had spent in the society of The Adept, during which she was conscious of being subjected to the action of his microscope, stethoscope, and other engines of science. She said "It did not hurt her much," and, on the whole, seemed by no means so impressed with awe and admiration as could be wished. Indeed, before they parted, if any one ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the eminently practical and direct mind of Bismarck. From reading of history he learned that chicane and force had been utilized as the roads to power, of which fact he found ample demonstration in the histories of England and Russia. He proved himself a true adept by using chicane and force to achieve German unity, after the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, where he remained till 1852, when, at the age of nineteen, he received his commission in the Royal Engineers. Although he was an adept at surveying and at fortification, two branches of military knowledge which served him well in after years, he was deficient in mathematics, and consequently did not make much progress. An event which took place here might ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... counsels must adept themselves to circumstances. All men are not alike. The lion and the frog are not more unlike than one man compared with another,—morally, I mean. Do I know to-day what will happen to you to-morrow? No; therefore ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... flour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying pan and some few other necessary articles. All these things were "packed" on the back of a led horse—and whoever has not been taught, by a Spanish adept, to pack an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural smartness. That is impossible. Higbie had had some experience, but was not perfect. He put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled the property on it and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is always at work to teach us life; but we miss the grand lessons, usually, until some human Teacher enforces them. His methods are the same as those of the artists: between whose office and his there was at first no difference;—Bard means only, originally, an Adept Teacher. Such a one selects experiences out of life for his pupils, and illumines them through the circumstances under which they are applied; just as the true artist selects objects from nature, and by his manner ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... things, studying Perestrello's and Correo's charts and accounts of their voyages, corresponding with Toscanelli and other savans, himself an adept in drawing maps and sea-charts, for a time his occupation in Lisbon, cruising here and there, once far northward to Iceland, and talking with navigators from every Atlantic port, Columbus became acquainted with the best geographical science of ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the constant study of the lawyers to discover, in acts of parliament, meanings which escaped the committees that drew them up, and the senates that passed them into laws, and to explain wills, into a sense wholly contrary to the intention of the testator. How easily may an adept in these admirable and useful arts, penetrate into the most hidden import of this prediction? A man, accustomed to satisfy himself with the obvious and natural meaning of a sentence, does not easily shake off his habit; but a true-bred lawyer ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... prominent figure among the great whig nobles, derived his power from influence; he had an unrivalled experience in party management and as a dispenser of patronage, and though personally above accepting a bribe of any kind, he was an adept at corrupt practices. He would have been incapable of conducting the war, for he was ignorant, timid, and vacillating, but he knew how to gain the support of parliament and how to find the supplies which the war demanded. Pitt was strong in ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... was a splendid specimen of the people—tall, broad-shouldered, gifted by nature and trained by wind and wave to the very perfection of his craft; positive, nonchalant, and masterful; affable when not thwarted; of fewer words than most Venetians; an adept at all the intricacies of gondolier intrigue, and fitted by intimate knowledge to circumvent the tosi. Moreover, he was in favor with the government, a crowning grace to other qualities not valueless in ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... another discovery within a few minutes. Stubby maneuvered himself close to Etta Robbin-Steele. Stubby was not quite so adept at repression as most of his class. He was a little more naive, more prone to act upon his natural, instinctive impulses. MacRae was aware of that. He saw now a swift by-play that escaped the rest. Nothing of any consequence,—a look, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... found their long staves of considerable use from time to time. Had Noodles for instance been more adept in the use of the one he carried he might have been saved from a whole lot of trouble. Perhaps this might prove to be a valuable lesson to the boy. He could not help but see how smartly the others kept ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... never wasted time on sentiment, he had been lately thinking that a marriage with a widowed peeress who had twenty thousand pounds a year in her own right might not be a "half bad" arrangement for him. So he determined to do the agreeable, and as he was a perfect adept in the art of making love without feeling it, he got on very well, and his prospects brightened steadily ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... a woman is perhaps most easily ensnared by a man who can combine passion with pleasantry and hot pursuit with social tact and diplomacy. Amadis de Jocelyn was an adept at this kind of thing—he was, if it may be so expressed, a refined libertine, loving women from a purely physical sense of attraction and pleasure conveyed to himself, and obtusely ignorant of the needs or demands ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... which she could scarcely have been expected to feel. Although she was not socially adept in concealing her real feeling, Wade saw nothing wrong. Only the Senator twisted his mouth ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... the worst is (because it was stupid in me) the worst is that I half believed you and took the manuscript to be something inferior—for you—and the adviseableness of its publication, a doubtful case. And yet, after all, the really worst is, that you should prove yourself such an adept at deceiving! For can it ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... An adept in chemistry, Nick knew how to produce a slumber from which no ordinary means could arouse the sleeper. His drug was sure and it left ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... sheer want of room, much has to be taken for granted which might readily enough be proved; and hence, while the adept, who can supply the missing links in the evidence from his own knowledge, discovers fresh proof of the singular thoroughness with which all difficulties have been considered and all unjustifiable suppositions avoided, at every ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept 100 In his quiet pipe the while: Then, like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, You heard as if an army muttered: And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... good sport, as they called it, for the first hour; but then Mr. Sharper's line happening to be entangled among some large weeds, from which he could not disengage it as he stood upon the brink; and as he was naturally too great an adept in the science of self preservation, to expose himself to danger, when he could persuade another to supply his place; he requested the favour of master Idle to ascend a sloping tree which stood upon the bank, and from thence to descend gradually upon a hanging branch, the small end ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... views; and all his prose works from the "Friend" to the "Church and State" were little more than feelers, pioneers, disciplinants for the last and complete exposition of them. Of the art of making hooks he knew little, and cared less; but had he been as much an adept in it as a modern novelist, he never could have succeeded in rendering popular or even tolerable, at first, his attempt to push Locke and Paley from their common throne in England. A little more working in the trenches might ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... his apparatus for prepared tricks. For hours and hours was I employed by his directions in what is called "making the pass" with a pack of cards, as almost all tricks on cards depend upon your dexterity in this manoeuvre. In about a month I was considered as a very fair adept; in the meantime, Timothy had to undergo his career of gymnastics, and was to be seen all day tumbling and retumbling, until he could tumble on his feet again. Light and active, he soon became a very dexterous performer, and ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... conducted to the royal presence, where the king was graciously pleased to impress a salute on her rich and glowing cheek—no mean honour from so gracious and gallant a monarch, who, though old, was yet accounted a mighty adept in the discernment of female beauty, he never being known to suffer contact of the royal lip with aught but the fairest and most comely of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... English women in 1897 might seem convincing to any one who has not had experience in weighing testimony in regard to spiritualistic manifestations, or brought this testimony alongside of that in behalf of the "occult phenomena" of Adept Brothers ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... night before, as the mutilated state of his hands arose from a shell exploding in the high-velocity Krupp gun just as he was loading it. She told me her father was one of the most valued artillerymen on the Boer side, and that he was also an adept in the art of making fireworks, his last triumph in this line having been at Mafeking on the occasion of the celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Fully appreciating the value of his services, the Transvaal authorities had from the commencement ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... qualities; and he had nobly displayed them in more than one encounter with antagonists, whose feebleness placed them at his mercy, and rendered them unworthy of his wrath. For in the use of arms, as in all manly exercises, Federico was an adept; and whether with Toledo blade, or Majo's knife, there were few men in Spain who would not have found in him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... discourse, that it emanated from the same sculptor who is mentioned, in "Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife," as having traduced Margaret Fuller and her husband Count Ossoli. As Tennyson says, "A lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies," and this fellow would seem to have been an adept in unveracious exaggeration. It is remarkable that Hawthorne should have given serious attention to such a man; but an English critic said in regard to this same incident that if Hawthorne had been a more communicative person, if he had ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... operation has to be renewed every time you relight your pipe. This involves a sad loss of time, and in my case it afforded a butt for the dull wit of visitors. Otherwise I found it satisfactory, and I was soon astonishingly adept at making paper screws. Eventually my brier became as serviceable as formerly, though not, perhaps, so handsome. I fastened on the holder with sealing-wax, and often a week passed without my having to ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... any, to declare after a momentary calculation, the exact number of pips on the first cards laid down—to the astonishment of those not in the secret. In fact, there is no possible arrangement of the cards, according to this method, which can prevent an adept from declaring the number of pips required, after being informed of the number of parcels, and the remainder, if any. This startling performance will be explained in a subsequent ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... presume that, even as a fantasia, the subject was regarded as too extravagant, and, it may be, too coarsely worded for publication. It was no doubt in the first instance a 'metrical experiment', but it is to be interpreted allegorically. The 'Rash Conjurer', the me damne, is the adept in the black magic of metaphysics. But for that he might have been like ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... preparation let me turn to a play by Mr. Sydney Grundy, entitled The Degenerates. Mr. Grundy, though an adept of the Scribe school, has done so much strong and original work that I apologize for exhuming a play in which he almost burlesqued his own method; but for that very reason it is difficult to find ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... called Hazaravougd. Vahan allowed himself to be surprised, to be shut up in the city of Dovin, and to be there besieged. After a while he made his escape, and renewed the guerilla warfare in which he was an adept; but the Persians recovered most of the country, and he was himself, on more than one occasion, driven across the border and obliged to seek refuge in Roman Armenia, whither his adversary had no right to follow ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Miss Tuttle's quiet answer. Certainly this woman was a thoroughbred or else she was an adept in deception such as few of us had ever encountered. The gentleness of her manner, the easy tone, the quiet eyes, eyes in whose dark depths great passions were visible, but passions that were under the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... papers in different parcels, and several keys for correspondence in cipher; two or three scrolls covered with hieroglyphics were also beside him, which Albert took for plans of nativity; and various models of machinery, in which Dr. Rochecliffe was an adept. There were also tools of various kinds, masks, cloaks, and a dark lantern, and a number of other indescribable trinkets belonging to the trade of a daring plotter in dangerous times. Last, there was a casket ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... would come and nose about for sugar lumps while Midnight would lay back his ears at the approach. Midnight had a temper, as was well known; but it was never let forth, for the master that had so little skill in handling men was adept with the horse. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... improve effectually, he at least gains the credit of having their names mentioned together, by a particular set, and in a particular way—which nine times out of ten is the full accomplishment of modern gallantry. Dang. Egad, Sneer, you will be quite an adept in the business. Puff. Now, Sir, the puff collateral is much used as an appendage to advertisements, and may take the form of anecdote,— "Yesterday, as the celebrated George Bonmot was sauntering down St. James's Street, he met the lively Lady Mary Myrtle ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... the true adept, seeking what spiritual ore there might be among the dross of the hermetic philosophy. What he says sincerely and inwardly was the cant of those outward professors of the doctrine who were content to dwell ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... move represents another of the dazzling devices of finance in which "Standard Oil" is adept, and brings the process of artificial expansion still further along. Control of a certain number of these savings and national banks and trust and insurance companies having been acquired, the funds of each were so manipulated by depositing those of one institution with another, and the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... sage Trinavindu and of the high-souled lord of justice, the Pandavas continued to live unrecognised by others in the city of Virata. O lord of men, Yudhishthira, as courtier made himself agreeable to Virata and his sons as also to all the Matsyas. An adept in the mysteries of dice, the son of Pandu caused them to play at dice according to his pleasure and made them sit together in the dice-hall like a row of birds bound in a string. And that tiger among men, king Yudhishthira the Just, unknown to the monarch, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... can speak several tongues, and is an adept at disguise, this Fair, with its citizens from every clime, will be a better place for concealment than London, Paris, and New York rolled ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... made racing in France what it now is: that is, they placed the turf upon a respectable footing. Lord Henry established a school of arms and gymnasium in his hotel on the Boulevard des Italiens, which became the most celebrated in Europe. He himself was an adept in the art of fencing, his skill was considered by the ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... successors there;—nay, even had his mosaics been preserved at Orvieto, I am confident the commettitura would be found more compact and polished than any previous to the sixteenth century. The secret of all this was that he made himself thoroughly an adept in the mechanism of the respective arts, and therefore his works have stood. Genius is too apt to think herself independent of form and matter—never was there such a mistake; she cannot slight either without hamstringing herself. But the rule is of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the fried pork around the table, a performance at which he was an adept. In spite of a keen desire for money-making, Sandy was a generous man at his own table, and he had a way of serving his family that was the admiration of the whole mill staff. If a man but held up his ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... been said of contrast in language, character, etc., may also be applied to contrasts in any small detail, incident, or even simile. Let us examine a few of the contrasts in Maupassant, for he is a great adept ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... for Eli to answer, who was far more adept at such matters than I, and who seemed to satisfy the curiosity of the fisher people without trouble. Perhaps they thought we were smugglers like themselves, for I suppose that almost all the men on the islands were ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... sentences and gives more force and beauty to his statements. There are a large number of different figures of speech, but such fine distinctions as the rhetoricians make are unnecessary for the ordinary student of literature. It is the meaning the figures convey that concerns us, for an adept in reading always notices the skilful use of figures, and his pleasure is heightened ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... This, with many another like awakening, was mercifully hidden from them. Could the veil have been lifted, and the girls permitted to see Edward as he would appear a short three months hence, ragged of attire and lawless of tongue, a scorner of tradition and an adept in strange new physical tortures, one who would in the same half-hour dismember a doll and shatter a hallowed belief,—in fine, a sort of swaggering Captain, fresh from the Spanish Main,—could they have had the least hint of ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... master, Peel, out of the old Tory lines into the camp of the free traders, and had been Russell's chief lieutenant, and Palmerston's financial minister for the last half-dozen years. He was a man of splendid intellectual power, sterling morality, an adept at parliamentary management, a shrewd financier, and held a deep conviction that it was the part of statesmanship to embody in law what he conceived to be the proper demands of the nation. His opponent ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... Unfortunately, however, an adept in the black art can work his fell purpose even without any personal relic of his victim. In the Banks' Islands, for example, he need only procure a bit of human bone or a fragment of some lethal weapon, it may be a splinter ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... but no one had yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went up to Countess Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly raised her hand and laid it on his shoulder without looking at him. The aide-de-camp, an adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly round her waist, with confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding first round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the room he caught Helene's left hand and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the street the Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while; Then, like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe had uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... entrance door, whose massive stone frame and lintel retained traces of rich ornamentation, almost obliterated by time and neglect, was sculptured a coat of arms, now so defaced that the most accomplished adept in heraldry would not be able to decipher it. Only one leaf of the great double door was ever opened now, for not many guests were received or entertained at the chateau in these days of its decadence. Swallows had built their nests in every ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... imagination, attributing to his hero such sentiments as he thought the average Londoner could understand, and describing his appearance with that minute fidelity of which only an eyewitness is supposed to be capable. Long practice in this kind of composition made Defoe an adept in the art of "lying like truth." When, therefore, the actual and extraordinary adventures of Alexander Selkirk came under his notice, nothing was more natural and more profitable for Defoe than to seize upon this material, and work it up, just as he worked up the lives of Jack Sheppard ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... the temperature was only endurable through the absence of wind, there was not a Gallian who could not skate tolerably well, while many of them could describe figures involving the most complicated curves. Nina and Pablo earned loud applause by their rapid proficiency; Captain Servadac, an adept in athletics, almost outvied his instructor, the count; and Ben Zoof, who had upon some rare occasions skated upon the Lake of Montmartre (in his eyes, of course, a sea), ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... himself. Mr. Brotherton continued: "The Ex was in here the other day and she says that she thinks she's going to become a yogi. I asked her to spell it, and I told her I'd be for her against all comers. Then she explained that a yogi was some kind of an adept who could transcend space and time, and—well say, I said 'sure,' and she went on to ask me if I was certain we were not thinking matter instead of realizing ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... house. This act lay heavily on my conscience, as is shown by my remembering the exact spot where the crime was committed. It probably lay all the heavier from my love of dogs being then, and for a long time afterwards, a passion. Dogs seemed to know this, for I was an adept in robbing ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... what his friends and the world styled unfortunate. In early manhood he had been a somewhat wild and reckless fellow—a noted wrestler, and an adept in all manly sports and games. But a disappointment in love had taught him very bitterly that life is not all sunshine; and this, coupled with a physical injury which was the result of his own folly, crushed his spirit so much that his comrades believed him to ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Marquis a dark and penetrating glance, as if to ascertain whether this sudden mission was not conferred for some latent and unexplained purpose. But Montrose, skilful in searching the motives of others, was an equal adept in concealing his own. He considered it as of the last consequence, in this moment of enthusiasm and exalted passion, to remove Allan from the camp for a few days, that he might provide, as his honour required, for the safety of those who had acted as his guides, when he trusted the Seer's ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... favorite for re-election as Governor, and probably would have been the choice, had not the more astute politicians put the United States senatorial "bee in his bonnet," which induced a letter, fervid and patriotic, declining the nomination. Baxter was confiding and honest, but not an adept in the wily ways of the politician. Augustus H. Garland was elected Governor, and in the United States senatorial race Baxter was "left at the stand." It was then, as it oft ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... company and mode of living were more to my satisfaction than the vigils, hard fare, and constant prayer, with which the old man had threatened me, when I proposed to enter the community, and I soon became an adept in dissimulation and hypocrisy, and a ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... nothing pleases him, and he wants to put everybody right. He cherishes a perpetual grievance against some individual or clique for a fancied slight, and goes about trying to stir up ill-feeling among the ignorant by malicious insinuations. In former times he was an adept at "parson-baiting" at the annual Easter vestry meeting, when he would air his grievance against the Vicar of the parish or ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... perceived an enemy; at this moment his features assumed a terrible expression; on such occasions, and whenever moved or even slightly irritated, he was seized with a fit of nervous trembling, which lasted long after the cause which provoked it had passed. An adept in all manly exercises and especially in horsemanship, he sometimes used to ride without stopping from Rome to Naples, a distance of forty-one leagues, passing through the forest of San Germano and the Pontine marshes heedless of brigands, although he might be ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... killed during the bombings. After that, Mom and I were alone. She only had a little talent; Dad and I were the ones who were really adept. Anyway, we stayed on the small farm we owned until last spring. Then Mom married again, and I was free to leave. I think her new husband was sorry to see me go, because it meant a lot of manual work for him that I had been doing an easier way. I decided to see if I couldn't ...
— Stopover • William Gerken
... Hermetic art the ADEPT combines The royal acid with cobaltic mines; Marks with quick pen, in lines unseen portrayed, 490 The blushing mead, green dell, and dusky glade; Shades with pellucid clouds the tintless field, And all the future Group exists conceal'd; ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... quite sure now that I must have made a nuisance of myself, for it soon appeared to be the set purpose of every member of the family to break up my efforts. Whenever my father saw me with the whistle to my lips, he would instantly set me at some useful work (oh, he was an adept in discovering useful work to do—for a boy!). And at the very sight of my stern aunt I would instantly secrete my whistle in my blouse and fly for the garret or cellar, like a cat caught in the cream. Such are the early tribulations ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... and Marlborough down from his bookshelves, all the military books of his grandfather, and the most warlike of Plutarch's lives. He and Dempster were practising with the foils again. The old Scotchman was an adept in the military art, though somewhat shy of saying ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... affectionate proprietor was smoking, or begging petty gifts from us, or telling lies concerning his own achievements, or perchance engaged in the more profitable occupation of cooking some preparation of prairie delicacies. Reynal was an adept at this work; he and Delorier have joined forces and are hard at work together over the fire, while Raymond spreads, by way of tablecloth, a buffalo hide, carefully whitened with pipeclay, on the grass before ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... wife was fifty, but it was a happy mating. They thought alike, and their ambitions were the same. Disraeli treated his wife with all the courtly grace and deference in which he was an adept, and her princely fortune was absolutely his. "There was much cause for gratitude on both sides," said O'Connell. And there is no doubt that Disraeli's wife proved the firmest friend he ever had. For many years she was his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... be a society for ameliorating the condition of the Jews; but they were found to be so much more adept than other people in ameliorating their own condition that I suppose it was given up. Mandeville says that to his knowledge there are a great many people who get up ameliorating enterprises merely to be conspicuously busy in society, or to earn a little something in a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was in the toils. After a struggle or two he yielded; and, having yielded, did it with grace. In a moment, and with a power of self-compression equal to that of the adept Countess, he threw off his moodiness as easily as if it had been his Spanish mantle, and assumed a gaiety that made the Countess's eyes beam rapturously upon him, and was pleasing to Rose, apart from the lead in admiration the Countess ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as to eat up everything that to a rodent was toothsome, and that is nearly everything green, even to the furze bushes. I had only four tooth-traps with me, and these were not nearly adequate for the number I wanted to kill, so I had recourse to wire gins. These I soon became an adept in setting, and discovered that by placing the thin wire noose close to the ground I could catch the wee rabbits, while by keeping the lower part of the noose about four inches above the turf I could ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... examined, and collections brought away by whalers and exploring expeditions. Two facts are established—namely, that the Eskimo lived formerly farther south on the Atlantic coast, and that, aboriginally, they were not specially adept in carving and etching. The old apparatus of hunting and fishing is quite primitive. The Dene (Tinneh) province in Alaska and north-western Canada yields nothing to the spade. Algonquin-Iroquois Canada, thanks to the Geological Survey and the Department of Education in Ontario, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to talk hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pleased with your notion, if it could be put in practice, because the child would be benefited by your instruction, and you would be improved in an art, which I could wish to see you an adept in." ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... heard his instructions being executed while an adept hand safely banked the bill inside her shirt-waist. Within two minutes his taxi set him down at the Grantham; and knowing that whatever risks he ran would be lessened by his acting swiftly and without any suspicious hesitation, he walked straight in and to the elevators, in the manner of one having ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... emphatically what is termed a well-informed man, for that thoroughness of his stamped his knowledge, and ruled his memory. You might not always agree with him, but could seldom floor him, the ground he stood upon being rock-solid. As both a giver and taker of chaff he was an adept. He had the courage of his opinions, and none wiser than he when it was best to keep opinions an unknown quantity. In travelling or by the waterside he was wonderfully helpful if help was good for you—perhaps, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... Emperor listened to me attentively, and frequently concurred in my opinion as to the principles of the prosperity and stability of States. One day he took my hand and pressed it affectionately, as if to assure me of his friendship and protection. Though I knew him to be an adept in the art of dissimulation, yet his affected kindness appeared so natural that I thought all his unfavourable feeling towards me was at an end. I spoke to persons by whom our two families were allied, requesting that they would assure the Emperor of the reciprocity of my sentiments, and tell ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... vigorous in health, passing the winters in attendance upon the district schools, and the summers in working on the farm. "The only distinctive trait exhibited by the child was mechanical ingenuity; he excelled in caricature, was an adept in constructiveness, having made countless wagons, windmills, and weapons for his comrades, attaining the height of juvenile reputation as the inventor of what ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... acquaintance of Professor Harmon's, he had lately arrived in Sanford, at the close of a season as leading man in a popular musical comedy, to visit a cousin. Brought up in that hard school of experience, the stage, he was an adept at reading signs, and he was by no means deceived as to the true character of the girl who stood before him. Far from being displeased with his deductions, he became mildly interested in her and ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... speak to me of love [writes George Sand], and owned that he was little inclined to sudden passion, to enthusiasm, and in any case no adept in expressing it in an attractive manner. He spoke of a friendship that would stand any test, and compared the tranquil happiness of our hosts [she was then staying with some friends] to that which he believed he could swear ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... slowly along, sometimes freshening into a moderate breeze, and occasionally dying away to a calm. The "chef d'oeuvre" of our mulatto skipper who was also cook, was conch soup, and he was not only an adept at cooking but also at catching the conch. In those almost transparent waters, the smallest object can be distinctly seen at the depth of three or four fathoms. When soup was to be prepared Captain Dick would take his station at the bow "in ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... this adept interesting when he sat opposite me, and he incited the count to vivacity. He contributed a very good anecdote illustrative ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... paddles. We appeared to be making fair progress, too, although the raft moved but slowly. But the wind soon dying away, we had our paddles alone to depend on. Manley tried to scull with the oar, but he was not an adept at the art, and it did not help us much. When we watched the shore we had left, we saw that we had made some progress; but when we looked ahead towards the side of the lake we wished to reach, it appeared no nearer than when we stood on the shore we had left, ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... his pockets, stared out among the skyscrapers and gave way to a fit of remorse. It was foreign to his nature to do petty underhanded tricks. Grand strategy—yes. At that he was an adept, and not the shiftiest, craftiest schemes he had ever devised had given him a moment's uneasiness. But to be driving a ten-dollar-a-week typewriter out of her job—to be maneuvering to deprive her of a for her brilliant ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... set out, he could predict where there would be obstacles not shown on the map, and where streams, roads and even paths would lead to, and deduce from enemy movements forecasts which were almost always correct. In all the aspects of war, great or small, he was remarkably adept. The Emperor had often used him for reconnaissance in the past and had recommended him to Marshal Oudinot, who frequently called him into consultation; with the result that many of the laborious and dangerous jobs fell ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Newcastle, the most prominent figure among the great whig nobles, derived his power from influence; he had an unrivalled experience in party management and as a dispenser of patronage, and though personally above accepting a bribe of any kind, he was an adept at corrupt practices. He would have been incapable of conducting the war, for he was ignorant, timid, and vacillating, but he knew how to gain the support of parliament and how to find the supplies which the war demanded. Pitt ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... to Fort Littleton. When James was sixteen years of age he served with his brother William on Forbes's campaign, and very likely saw further service during that war. In 1772, when he had attained wide celebrity on the border as an adept in woodcraft, he helped William settle on Ten Mile Creek, a tributary of the Monongahela; and in 1773 he and several other explored Kentucky, returning home by way of Greenbrier River. We have seen (p. 152, note) that he was surveying the site of Harrodsburg in 1774, when warned by Boone and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... grown up and become sober, calculating, accurate, relentless, cunning, and deadly mathematical. John or Ernest would now fit him better, as being more serious, or Wilhelm, as being more frightful. For Archie is a true apostle of frightfulness. There is no greater adept at the gentle art of ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... credit to the "establishment;" and these were secretly determined upon, although it was very well to promise the reward to the most diligent. She was really not aware of the falseness of this conduct; being an adept in that species of sophistry with which people persuade themselves that what they wish to ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... him," her uncle, an eminent attorney, had told her. "A very unusual young man. I might call him acutely intellectual, and he is an adept in many out of the way branches of knowledge. He would make a wonderful lawyer, but has too much imagination. Thinks more of visionary probabilities than ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... solitary woman with no man to look after you, about the tragedy of being considered old when your heart and your nature are really still young, almost as young as ever they were. Adela Sellingworth would know how to touch every string, would be an adept at calling out the music she wanted. How easily experienced women played upon men! It was really pathetic! And as Craven had thought of protecting Lady Sellingworth against Miss Van Tuyn, so now Miss van Tuyn felt inclined to protect ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... could, for a brief period, or for a critical purpose, command all the wiles for which the Greek was nationally famous, and in which Thucydides believed that, of all Greeks, the Spartan was the most skilful adept. And now, as, uniting the courtesy of the host with the dignity of the chief, he returned the salute of the officers, and smiled his gracious welcome, the unwonted affability of his manner took the discontented by surprise, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... by this time become an adept in hunting, and though still very far behind his companions in skill with the rifle, was able to make a fair contribution towards the provisioning of the camp. The hunters now divided into two parties, three going out in search of game on one side of ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... might have been less of an enigma to old Lady Arabella, to whom the jigsaw puzzle of human motives and impulses was always a matter of absorbing interest, and who, as more or less an onlooker at life during the last thirty years, had become an adept in the art of fitting the pieces ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... state of man's condition upon this earth, no one but the adepts have acquired this power. In them thought and will act as one. In the vast majority of human beings thought and will are not yet in entire harmony, and do not act as one. In the regenerated one (the adept) heart and head act in perfect unison. The adept thinks what he wills, and wills what he thinks. In unregenerated humanity will and thought are divided and occupy two different centres. In them the will has its seat in the blood (whose ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... with which this part of the gulf is filled. In the morning we fortunately found an Indian with his boat, who was just starting for Seven Islands; and after a little higgling, at which Mike proved himself quite an adept, he agreed to give us a lift for a few pounds of tobacco. Away, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... boudoir, in such circumstances, can follow the example of the primitive logician who preceded the Pyrrhonists and denied movement. Montriveau was not equal to this feat. With all his audacity, he lacked this precise kind which never deserts an adept in the formulas of feminine algebra. If so many women, and even the best of women, fall a prey to a kind of expert to whom the vulgar give a grosser name, it is perhaps because the said experts are great provers, and love, in spite of its delicious poetry of sentiment, requires a little ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... intrusion. I am a native of England and a professional swordsman. In the course of my travels through Scotland, I have not yet met with a gentleman able to cope with me in the noble science of swordsmanship. Since I came to Caithness I have heard that you are an adept with my favourite weapon, and I have called to see if you would do me the honour to exchange a few passes with me just in the way of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... affaire to repent of, and to cherish. La, la! she wasn't so stupid, Sybil there, and she was an ornament to her own sex and the despair of the other. His Serene Highness Heinrich of Saxe-Gunden fancied the task of breaking that ice, and he was an adept and an Apollo, but it broke ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... burst of laughter from the auditors did not in the least disconcert the speaker, who continued,—"Yes, gentlemen; Edward, the infant phenomenon, who is quite an adept in the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... honest specimen of Easley's early attempts at versification, it was said of him by those best qualified to judge, that had he but stuck to the pulpit and sonnet writing, he would in time have become an adept, for he could compose pathetically enough, and so regulate his points as to make his theology appear quite profound. But he had a weakness which ran to the getting of gold, and this betrayed him into the commerce of literature, where he had become a critic of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... copper bas-reliefs. Six portraits of Roman emperors contributed to the impressiveness of the Salon, and on the wall was a stucco relief of the King of France on horseback, clad like a Roman. The Salon of Peace was also decorated by Lebrun's adept brush. A ceiling piece portrays France and her conquered enemies rejoicing in the fruits of Peace. And, again, there are portraits of the ever-present Louis and the Caesars of Rome. Both these splendid ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... proof of cake as well as pudding. They talked, jested, and laughed. Catharine, too, had recovered her equanimity where the dames and damsels of the period were apt to lose theirs—in the kitchen, namely, and in the superintendence of household affairs, in which she was an adept. I question much if the perusal of Seneca for as long a period would have had equal effect ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Duffel, you are an adept in these matters! I never dreamed of your being so deep a plotter! The world and your friends, also, have done you injustice by not giving you credit for so ample a development of such rare ability to deceive. Success to your plans. I will gladly second ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... the long room, her arm around Karen, with a buoyancy of tread and demeanour in which, however, Karen, so deep an adept in her moods discovered excitement rather than gaiety. "Has it been a good day for my child?" she questioned; "a happy, peaceful day? Yes? You have been much with Tallie? I told Tallie that she must postpone ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... hearty breakfast off the aforesaid bacon and eggs, with soft tack laid in the day before, and washed all down with some most excellent coffee, in the concoction of which beverage Bob was an adept, and then, as soon as he had washed up, and put matters to rights in his pantry, and made arrangements for dinner, I went below and turned in ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... not have made out the indistinct form of the stranger anyhow. Five or ten minutes of such scrutiny of his man was all Uncle Tobe ever desired. In his earlier days before he took up this present employment, he had been an adept at guessing the hoof-weight of the beeves and swine in which he dealt. That early experience stood him in good stead now; he took no credit to himself for his accuracy in estimating the bulk of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... bootblack or newsboy, he is an adept in all the tricks of the trade; and as a fast young man about town among his kind, he is worthy his white prototype: the swagger, the impertinent look, the coarse remark, the loud laugh, are all in the best style. As a lounger and starer also, on the street ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... problem of keeping a woman quiet. He saw that she was taking the trail toward Fred Thurman's, and that she was riding swiftly, as if she had some errand in that direction, something urgent. Al was very adept at reading men's moods and intentions from small details in their behaviour. He had seen Lorraine start on several leisurely, purposeless rides, and her changed manner held a significance which he did ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... day,—having in his company one that you conceived worse than ambiguously disposed towards you,—passed you in the street without notice. To be sure he is something shortsighted; and it was in your power to have accosted him. But facts and sane inferences are trifles to a true adept in the science of dissatisfaction. He must have seen you; and S——, who was with him, must have been the cause of the contempt. It galls you, and well it may. But have patience. Go home, and make the worst of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... objects, her curiosity was aroused by some large chests in which book-rolls, strange vessels, and an endless variety of raiment of every shape and size were stored, from the simple chiton of the common laborer to the star-embroidered talar of the adept. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was soon interested by the indefatigable Mariana in the absorbing game of politics which she had been playing for so long a time and in which she was such an adept; and before many months had passed, the two women were working well together for the interests of their dear Austria, for their sympathies were identical and there was nothing to prevent harmonious action ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... is very adept, quick, and does the grafting so that it actually seems effortless. His technique is so fast, there is very little chance of the scion drying out before it ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music. "Soul"—(accept A word which vaguely names what no adept In word-use fits and fixes so that still Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain Innominate as first, yet, free again, Is no less recognized the absolute Fact underlying that same other fact Concerning which no cavil can dispute Our nomenclature when we call it "Mind"— Something not Matter)—"Soul," ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... an ultra-fashionable modiste, looked at Patty with interest, recognising in her costume the work of adept hands. ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... lips I slept Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept; Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, But feeds on the aerial kisses Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses. He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... to flatter very ingeniously; and, to me, Mr. Smith seemed peculiarly adept in the art. He managed it so adroitly as to give it all the effect, without its being apparent to the subject of ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... match, and, as I have already said in the introduction, took one more for the black and white stripes. When nearing the keeper, if he were fortunate enough to pass the backs, he generally looked about for one of his companions to follow up, and was quite an adept at the "screw-kick." Lambie appeared against England in 1888, and is now an active ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... when his accession to the German throne had not seemed probable. His coronation as Charles VI. was, therefore, one cause of the peace. Leopold, born in 1640, and educated by the Jesuits, became Emperor in 1658, and reigned 49 years. He was an adept in metaphysics and theology, as well as in wood-turning, but a feeble and oppressive ruler, whose empire was twice saved for him; by Sobiesld from the Turks, and from the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the ice at a short distance apart. The hooks were attached to strong lines and baited with deer's flesh, and soon the fishing began. The girls took great interest in the proceeding. Nelly was an adept at the sport, having generally caught the fish for the consumption of the household at home. She took charge of one of the lines, Harold of another, while Jake and one of the Senecas squatted themselves ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... Hennage. Both by nature and professional training he was more adept in the science of deduction than most men, and while he had never seen Donna's marriage license he firmly believed that she had been married. He had looked for the publication of the license in the Bakersfield papers. Not having seen it, Mr. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... me, an adept, was the writing given Which not to all its holy sense explained. When 'mid the crowd, their icy shadows flinging, I saw a form that glorious still remained, And even there, where mould and damp were clinging, Gave me a blest, a rapture-fraught emotion, As though from death a living fount were ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... aback; it was a perfectly dignified and proper attitude to take in the face of ridicule, and Lord Ashbridge, though somewhat an adept at the art of self-deception—as, for instance, when he habitually beat the golf professional—could not disguise from himself that his policy had been to laugh and blow away Michael's absurd ideas. But it was abundantly clear at this moment that ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the screw is an improvement; but, until you have acquired the knack, the operation has to be renewed every time you relight your pipe. This involves a sad loss of time, and in my case it afforded a butt for the dull wit of visitors. Otherwise I found it satisfactory, and I was soon astonishingly adept at making paper screws. Eventually my brier became as serviceable as formerly, though not, perhaps, so handsome. I fastened on the holder with sealing-wax, and often a week passed without my having ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... "Will you kindly pass me by, Laughing Water?" he said, in his full, pleasant voice. "I'm an adept, and I don't care for open Circles. If you don't mind, will you ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... have told a representative of a daily paper, that "an adept in Theosophy uses his supernatural powers solely for his own convenience, just as ordinary people avail themselves of a messenger, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... of advice to the beginner as to the variety of specimen to use in first trials. Don't begin on too small a bird until somewhat adept; unpracticed fingers bungle sadly over tiny feathered bodies. A first subject should be at least as large as a bob white to give room to work, and of some variety in which ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... Lansing, "I require a workshop to manufacture my gems. It follows that they are no true gems at all, but shop-made paste. Ask Lana Helmer; she is far more adept ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... had met with an adept versed in Arabian lore, who talked of the invaluable manuscripts that must remain in the Spanish libraries, preserved from the spoils of the Moorish academies and universities; of the probability of meeting with ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... learning languages, and read with great ease both in Italian and French. She had begun to apply herself to Latin; and having such a critical knowledge of her own tongue, and such a foundation from the two others, would soon have made herself an adept in it. ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... be her maid, or the maid of any one else. Peggy's true vocation in life was to throw her far-away gaze into futurity, and, as far as in her lay, to adapt present circumstances to what she supposed was going to happen. It would have delighted her soul if she could have been the adept in conjuring, which she firmly believed the Widow Keswick to be; but, as she possessed no such gift, she made up the deficiency, as well as she could, by mixing up her mind, her soul, and her desires, into a sort of witch's hodge-podge, which she thrust as a spell into ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... grassy rise shadowed by a huge sugar-tree. A mound of turf, flanked by two spreading roots, was the Governor's chair of state, and Alce and Molly he must needs seat beside him. Not one of his gay company but seemed an adept in the high-flown compliment of the age; out of very idleness and the mirth born of that summer hour they followed his Excellency's lead, and plied the two simple women with all the wordy ammunition that a tolerable ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... pointed to her long neck, where the fine wrinkles marked her age. 'But after all,'... you have the good looks, so what does it matter? Such was her thought, but she did not express it. A brilliant talker, perfectly trained in the fibs and commonplaces of society, a perfect adept in expression and suggestion, she was left without words for the only real feeling which she had ever experienced. And indeed she really was not one of those women who cannot make up their minds to grow old. Long before the hour of curfew—though indeed there had perhaps never been much fire ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... was Jose bar Chalafta, and his remark was made to a lady, possibly a Roman matron of high quality, in Sepphoris. Rabbi Jose was evidently an adept in meeting the puzzling questions of women, for as many as sixteen interviews between him and "matrons" are recorded in Agadic literature. Whether because prophetic of its subsequent popularity, or for some other reason, this particular dialogue in which Rabbi Jose ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... the first lessons in that art of sharping wherein he was afterwards an adept; and when he left school his head was packed with many a profitable device which no book learning could impart. His father, however, still resolute that he should join an intelligent profession, sent him to ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... world. Her forceful personality carries her into situations which she is incompetent to live up to. The immediate way out is by creating a new complication, and this may be through lies or the simulation of illness, at which she has become an adept. Altogether, Inez must be thought of as one who is trying to satisfy certain wishes and ambitions which are too much for her resources. Towards the goal to which her nature urges her she follows the path of least resistance. Being the personality ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... him. His acquirements were versatile, for he studied every subject of theology with poetic enthusiasm. Nor was he a superficial student merely; and his opponents well knew that in him they had found no mean adept in philosophy, theology, hermeneutics and ecclesiastical history. His writings bear a strong impress of Illuminism, but he contributed most to the formation of Rationalistic theology by training Semler for ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... assigned to him the old miracle of the Apostles. The languages he was supposed to know were Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Persian. He was also said to be acquainted with astronomy, and even with the Kabbalah, of which, according to the Kabbalists, he was an ardent adept. After his death, they say, he appeared to his grandson Samuel to teach him the true pronunciation of the Ineffable Name. Medical knowledge was also attributed to Rashi, and a medical work ascribed to his authorship. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... houses had in their employ lapidaries more skilled than Mrs. Dalliba. She pursued her studies for the mere love of the science, devoting a year in Italy to mosaics, cameos, and intaglios. And yet the Crevecoeur cameo had puzzled wiser heads than Mrs. Dalliba's, adept though she was. It was cut from a solid heart-shaped gem, a layer of pure white, shading down through exquisite gradations into deep green, and represented Aphrodite rising from the sea; the white form rose gracefully, with arms extended, scattering the drops of spray ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... he forgot to pay for his beer, and when he performed this duty, after having been abruptly reminded of it by a waiter, he was almost too late to follow the two black men, but not quite too late. He was an adept in the tracking of his fellow-beings, and it was not long before he was quietly following Mok and Cheditafa, keeping at some distance behind them, but never allowing them to get out ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... they hear in common conversation, is alone sufficient to alarm their imagination with some confused apprehension of difficulty. In this state of alarm they are seldom sufficiently masters of themselves, either to deny or to acknowledge an adept's major, minor, or conclusion. Even those who are most expert in syllogistical reasoning, do not often apply it to the common affairs of life, in which reasoning is just as much wanted as it is in the abstract questions of philosophy; ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... interests in Chamogo would not allow of a protracted stay. Signe was already in love with her new home. With her taste for the artistic, she soon had the place comfortable, and Rupert was never more satisfied than when he came in where his wife's adept fingers had been at work to adorn. It was the dear old home to him with an added beauty, lacking only his mother's presence to make ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... few jokes upon him, at his skill in gulling swells, and taking in flats; for he was considered an adept. Jamie chucked at the compliments, and smiled at what was before them. They then fell to the viands, and ate with the hearty gusto of robust health. The eggs were certainly boiled too hard; but that defect they took good ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... condition of the egg to an extent that the novice can hardly realize. The art of egg candling cannot be readily taught by worded description. One who wishes to learn egg candling had best go to an adept in the art, or he may begin unaided and by breaking many eggs learn the ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... him, so that I have never had any one to say to me, 'Nay,' and am therefore not at all used to the sort of thing. I hope I do not often lose my temper as I have done this evening; but really Mr. Lawless appears quite an adept in the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while; Then like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe had uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... is an adept at make-believe, but his make-believes are, as a rule, practical and serious. It is credulity rather than imagination which helps him. He takes the tales he has been told, the facts he has observed, and for the most part reproduces them to the best of his ability. And "nothing," ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... but not colour. A few weeks after he had replied to my questions, he told me that my inquiries had induced him to practise his colour memory, and that he had done so with such success that he was become quite an adept at it, and that the newly-acquired power was a source of much pleasure ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... indeed one of those beloved of time and it seemed to Christopher as he saw her in the crude flashing glare from the streets without, that the past ten years which had made of him a man had left her a girl still, but since he was as yet no adept at pretty speeches he kept the thought to himself ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... taste in music, for which he had no turn, to be disputed. His proficiency in literature has been variously stated. He had read much, but had written little. In the mechanical part he was certainly no adept; his handwriting was nearly illegible. Some would fain persuade me that that fault was intentional, and merely an artifice to conceal his bad spelling; that he could form his letters well if he chose, but was unwilling to let his readers ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... thoughts out of fear for the time. Then he had been disgusted by the affair of the boys and the little dog; the loathsomeness of it had quite broken up his fancies. He had read books of modern occultism, and remembered some of the experiments described. The adept, it was alleged, could transfer the sense of consciousness from his brain to the foot or hand, he could annihilate the world around him and pass into another sphere. Lucian wondered whether he could not perform some such operation for his own benefit. Human beings were constantly ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... true adept, seeking what spiritual ore there might be among the dross of the hermetic philosophy. What he says sincerely and inwardly was the cant of those outward professors of the doctrine who were content to dwell in the material part of it forever. In Jonathan Brewster, we have a specimen of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... are at much expence to make or mend the high ways, except just about the capital cities, they are dry or wet, rough or smooth, steep or rugged, just as the weather or the soil happens to favour or befoul them.—Now, here is a riddle for your son; I know he is an adept, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
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