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More "Finishing touch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... What the coast needs is not coddling and charity but conservation and protection against depredators from outside. The best way to begin is to protect the seabirds. And the best body to do this is the Commission of Conservation. The Province of Quebec has just put the finishing touch to a great work by establishing an animal sanctuary in the heart of the Laurentides National Park. It is also doing good work by making the game laws more effective elsewhere. But, being dependently human, it can hardly pass over the whole North Shore of voters ...
— Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... blacked the hats or whitewashed them, and have stuck feathers and flowers in them to give an air of gaiety to our otherwise sombre and sedate aspect. And thus we stand, while Old Colonial examines the regiment, giving a finishing touch here and there, where he deems it requisite. Then he draws back and proudly surveys us, and, bearing in mind the contrast we present to our customary everyday appearance, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... "do thou say what thou wilt give." Quoth the merchant in himself, "This Bedouin is an addle-pated churl. By Allah, I cannot tell her price, for she has mastered my heart with her sweet speech and her beauty: and if she can read and write, it will be the finishing touch to her good fortune and that of her purchaser. But this Bedouin does not know her value." Then he turned to the latter and said to him, "O elder of the Arabs, I will give thee two hundred dinars for her, in cash, clear ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... "If you've nothing else to do but spoil your new pink frock out there, Amelia Hampden, I wish you would come in and play with your baby-brother for awhile;" and then, as the blind and voice were lowered, I heard the usual "enough to provoke a saint," which was the finishing touch to every reprimand I either did, or did ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... boatswain was especially attractive, owing to his rugged personality and his unaffected manner. His sanguinary tales of American packet-ship life were much canvassed for, and being a good story-teller, he embellished them with incidents that gave them a fine finishing touch. He was asked by some young ladies if he had ever ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... preoccupied, KEN makes a finishing touch with color brush, then turns his board down to a more vertical position and ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... said Barnard, "let's put the finishing touch on this job while both of us are here to do it. What do you say? Shall we ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... sugar, and a sprinkling of cocoa put in "to see what it would taste like." But the boy's attention was not given wholly to the work, his mind was partly occupied with something else. He wandered over and stood at the opposite end of the table, watching Queen Mab as she put the finishing touch to her pie-crust, twisting up the edge into her ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... glance, swift as it was, came near to being his undoing. Harrigan caught him with a terrible right on the jaw. It was a glancing blow, otherwise the fight would have ended then and there. Instantly he lurched forward and clenched before the other could add the finishing touch. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... company so unattractive, and all the other drawbacks which I counted and treasured as proofs of my desperate condition, if I were to go. It needed little to decide me, and I think K—'s arrival from Switzerland, offensively sunburnt, was the finishing touch. His greeting was 'Hullo, Carruthers, you here? Thought you had got away long ago. Lucky devil, though, to be going now, just in time for the best driving and the early pheasants. The heat's been shocking out there. Carter, bring me a Bradshaw'—(an ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... perhaps, but he certainly flickered. She had to blink to restore his prismatic outlines to their proper sharpness. Already the bustle and noise of New York had begun to induce in her that dizzy condition of unreality which one feels in dreams, and this extraordinary statement added the finishing touch. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... grandfather used to say, a committee is a device by which the incompetent check the activities of the competent.... She liked Verschoyle. He was a lonely little man and she thought whimsically that only lonely people could swallow the birds and fishes which are so necessary as the finishing touch to ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... go in, please." His lamentable self-possession was wonderful; but it did not do away with the incredibility of the experience. A preposterous notion that I had seen this boy somewhere before, a thing obviously impossible, was like a delicate finishing touch of weirdness added to a scene fit to raise doubts as to one's sanity. I stared anxiously about ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... occurrence, asserts with a feeble timidity akin to falsehood, that stones were thrown by the people. Be that as it may, they were fired upon; five starving wretches were shot dead on the spot, and eleven badly wounded. To give the finishing touch to this wicked slaughter, the Lords Justices, Primate Boulter and Lord Chancellor Jocelyn, in the absence of the Lord Lieutenant, came out with a proclamation, offering a handsome reward for the apprehension of any of those who had escaped ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... add a sort of finishing touch, there was just a little ill-feeling between Dacre's and Merevale's. The cause of it was the Babe. Until the beginning of the term he had been a day boy. Then the news began to circulate that he was going to become a boarder, either ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... to the fence was an ordinary strong iron gate which Mr. Hardy had bought at Rosario, and to which strong pointed palings, six feet long, were lashed side by side, with intervals of six inches between them. This was the finishing touch to the fortification; and all felt when it was done that they could withstand the attack of ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... curtain of the second act may be said to rise on Archie strolling back from the golf-links in the cool of an August evening. From time to time he sang slightly, and wondered idly if Lucille would put the finishing touch upon the all-rightness of everything by coming to meet him and sharing his ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... charcoal fire, but from the ceiling hang numbers of beautifully-wrought lamps of metal and coloured glass. We can imagine how rich a scene such a room would form when illuminated for the reception of guests whose gorgeous Oriental costumes accord so well with its handsome interior, while the finishing touch is given by the performance of the musicians and singing girls with which the guests are entertained, leading one instinctively to call to mind many similar scenes so wonderfully described in the "Arabian Nights." Many of the adventures of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... that if only I could die and be out of the way my friends would be far better able to contrive without me. There is no convalescence in a mood of that sort, and each morning found me nearer death than the last. Then malaria developed, to give me the finishing touch, and although strangely enough I grew less instead of more delirious, Fred and Will at last made no secret of their belief that ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... yourself too much," M. Linders would reply calmly, putting the finishing touch to Madelon as a bergere standing in the midst of a flock of sheep, and a green landscape—like the enlarged top of a bonbonniere. "You are too ambitious, mon cher—you are little, and want to be great—hence ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... gain at most only a few weeks. These he felt sure the enemy would use to better advantage in strengthening himself than Austria in her poverty could do. He was therefore urgent for prompt action. Charles, on the other hand, hesitated to face the miraculous resources of Napoleon without a finishing touch to some of his preparations which were still incomplete. He therefore began in January to procrastinate, and consequently it was not until February that Francis demanded an advance. In this interval the whole plan of campaign ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... good," said the brilliant-eyed white little bride, still contemplating herself in the glass, and giving a finishing touch here and there. "The country's too horrid at this time of year. We are going to Brighton, some friends and I, a rather biggish party; and a whole heap of rooms have been taken at a hotel. That will be fun, I promise you. A dance in the ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... there, on June 1, Dr. Le Plongeon had the great satisfaction of discovering a monument, a splendid work of art in all its pristine beauty, fresh as when the artist put the finishing touch to it, without blemish, unharmed by time, and not even looked upon by man since it was concealed, ages ago, where Dr. Le Plongeon discovered it through his interpretations of certain inscriptions. It was probably hidden to save it from destruction, between ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... and while Jack was giving a finishing touch or two to his dress, the boy ran off, and began to saddle Stockings, having the little horse ready by the time Jack ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... proposal had been recommended by the Government of India, and although, during that period, four successive Viceroys, each backed up by a unanimous Council, had declared themselves strongly in favour of the change, that the finishing touch was given to the new organization, by the abolition of the offices of Commanders-in-Chief of Madras and Bombay, and the creation of four Army Corps, namely, the Punjab, the Bengal, the Madras, and the Bombay, each commanded ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... no better guide to the aspirant for forensic fame than the speeches of the turbulent tribune. Cicero dwells on the fulness and richness of his flow of words, the grandeur and dignity of the expression, the acuteness of the thought.[572] They seemed to some to lack the finishing touch;[573] which is equivalent to saying that with him oratory had not degenerated into rhetoric. The few fragments that survive awaken our wonder, first for their marvellous simplicity and clearness: then, for the dexterous perfection of their form. The balance ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... nesting-material in her beak. I keep my eye upon her. In a moment she drops down to the grassy and weedy bank of the roadside in front of me and disappears. A few moments later I have her secret—a nest in a little recess in the bank. That straw gave the finishing touch. She kept her place on the nest until she had deposited her first egg on June 24th, probably for her second brood this season. Some young vespers flitting about farther up the road are presumably her first brood. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... stockings. He appeared in the doorway buttoning one of his suspenders. The truth was he had spied the carriage in the distance, and as his linen was none the cleanest he hastened to change, and was now putting the finishing touch to his toilet. When he caught sight of the occupants of the carriage he thought to himself, "Thar's a heap on 'em. Nancy'll have to rout the whole gang of niggers, field hands and all, to huntin' hin's nests ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... dollars and went his way. When they met again in an hour and a half, they burst into smiles of delight. Burlingham had transformed himself into a jaunty, fashionable young middle-aged man, with an air of success achieved and prosperity assured. He had put the fine finishing touch to his transformation by getting a haircut and a shave. Mabel looked like a showy chorus girl, in a striped blue and white linen suit, a big beflowered hat, and a fluffy blouse of white chiffon. Susan had resisted Mabel's ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... colored glass in a sort of rose-window over the front door, and lozenges of fancy glass here and there in the facade. Each house had a little grass-plot, which Babcock in his case had made appurtenant to a metal stag, which seemed to him the finishing touch to a cosey and ornamental home. He had done his best and with all his heart, and the future ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... there work Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, and the Hoxton and Hackney Road districts. It is decently furnished and a comfortable place in its way, although, of course, it stands in a poor neighbourhood. I remember that there was even the finishing touch of a canary in the window. I should add that no cases are attended in the house itself, ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... other hand, wear many a pot-hat, pompously added to the long national robe, and giving thereby a finishing touch to their cheerful ugliness, resembling nothing so much as dancing monkeys. They carry boughs in their hands, whole shrubs even, amid the foliage of which dangle all sorts of curious lanterns in the shapes of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... he cried. "I ought to have remembered to say grace! That would have given just the finishing touch to the Uncle Ned business. However, I don't think ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... fell off their chairs in the Western House dining room, a few days later, at seeing Rob come into supper with a collar and necktie as the finishing touch of a remarkable outfit. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... done, and the jacket and trousers got done, and even a little round cap, and all before dusk. For a finishing touch Helma sewed two soft little brown feathers she had picked up in the snow one on either side of the cap,—which gave Eric, small as they were and soft as they were, a look ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... happen was worse than my worst foreboding, for first a light came flickering into the sort of companion-hatch at the head of the stairs, and finally Raffles—in his shirt-sleeves! He was not only carrying a candle to put the finishing touch to him as a target; he had dispensed with coat and waistcoat downstairs, and was ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... meadow-sweet in the fields, and the golden trumpets of the wild honeysuckle in the hedges, make the warm air a luxury to breathe; and the presence of a few tufts of bluebells by the wayside gives the landscape the last finishing touch of perfection, which is suggestive of decay, and has such an indescribable pathos about it. Nature pauses to admire her own handiwork; she ceases from her labours, and enjoys an interval of rest. It is the sabbath of the year. At such a time every object is associated with ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Exhibition finished in time, I often had to work far into the night, and on one occasion when I was thus secretly engaged in my studio upon these large pictures until the small hours, I remember a catastrophe very nearly happened which would have put a finishing touch of a very different kind to that which I intended, not only to the picture, but to the artist himself. It happened thus. About three o'clock in the morning, long after the household had retired to rest, I became conscious of a smell of burning. I made a minute ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... legs, while the tobacconist and his sweetheart seized his head and arms. A gentleman with a wooden leg and a three-cornered hat held a candle high in the air. There was something weird about the emergence of this new figure; if it stood for nothing more than a finishing touch to the horror of that night of murder, it fulfilled its aim to perfection. The wooden-legged man uplifting the candle was like an impious spirit from the nether world, and it was not necessary to dwell upon the narrow chin, the sneering ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... natives, more disposed than his companions to adopt English manners, was presented with a complete suit of clothes, which became him very well. Jonathan—so they had named him, was quite proud of his new outfit. To put the finishing touch to his manners, he desired to learn the use of a fork. But habit was too strong for him! his hands always went to his mouth! and the bit of meat at the end of the fork, found ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... stone balls on the porch. There were six of them, and the gorgeous sheen of their feathers as they spread their tails in the sunshine was a sight worth remembering. In fact, as Miss Russell often remarked, they gave a finishing touch to the whole scene, and made the Manor look more than ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... had done speaking, and I was musing with myself on the matter, Timon said, "Am I to put the finishing touch of difficulty on our subject, or am I to let him first contend earnestly against these views?" Then said I, "Why should we bring up the third wave[814] and drown the argument, if he is not able to refute or evade the charges already brought? To begin then with the domestic ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... principal objects of my ambition was to be a first-rate groom, and to make the skins of the creatures I took in hand look sleek and glossy like those of moles. I have said that I derived valuable hints from the old man, and, indeed, became a very tolerable groom, but there was a certain finishing touch which I could never learn from him, though he possessed it himself, and which I could never attain to by my own endeavours; though my want of success certainly did not proceed from want of application, for I have rubbed the horses down, purring ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... reappeared in Denmark; and the tragedies of Voltaire, with their stilted rhetoric, were the most popular dramas of the day. Johan Nordahl Brun (1745-1816), a young writer who did better things later on, gave the finishing touch to the exotic absurdity by bringing out a wretched piece called Zarina, which was hailed by the press as the first original Danish tragedy, although Ewald's exquisite Rolf Krage, which truly merited that title, had ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... won, Mr. Elliott?' cried the boys, as they raced up to the place where the rival leaders were laughing at each other's failure in bringing off the finishing touch. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... the counter, and while the florist selected and bound the blossoms into a bunch, she arrested his finishing touch. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... need had we of your assistance, the good God and I? Have you forgotten? Open your eyes and look! To-day, my child, even to-day I have put the finishing touch to my great work." ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... figured silk gown, with short sleeves. By much rolling up and pinning, she made the skirt the right length. Then she pulled out an old green silk calash and set it on her head. This she felt was a finishing touch, so she softly crept down the stairs and past the old ladies, who had entirely forgotten her, and out on the lawn; then she walked down the circular driveway and out into the road, where presently the clergyman, striding along to where his pony was ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... everyone else, and it was well known that Jim and I were married at Hay River. He came home raging and called me names. I'll never forget how they went crashing through my brain. He was a proud man, and this 'disgrace' of Jim's, as he said, was the finishing touch. But when he began to abuse Jim I raged too. I said things to him which perhaps had better been left unsaid. I was sorry afterwards, for Jim was fond of his father for all his blustering ways. I did not tell him ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... because he went unsent for by the patient. The painter, after his recovery, was one day complimenting Dr. Percy on the inestimable service he had done the arts in restoring him to his pencil, in proof of which the artist showed many master-pieces that wanted only the finishing touch, in particular a huge, long-limbed, fantastic, allegorical piece of his own design, which he assured Dr. Percy was the finest example of the beau ideal, ancient or modern, that human genius had ever produced upon canvas. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... clothes and turbans are waiting on these little chaps from home, as they drop in. They are tubbed and towelled, shirts studded and put on, and are fitted without hardly lifting a hand themselves till they put the finishing touch to hair and moustache at the glasses and dressing-tables that are fixed round the pillars—sounds like effeminacy, but it is not, for it is far more tiring for a man to be dressed here by two skilful servants than it is to dash into his clothes ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... effect with the utmost satisfaction. The room answered the purpose exactly. The burlap was thick enough to act as a screen. It was possible to see movement through it, but not form. It insured privacy and still permitted the air to pass through for ventilation. As a finishing touch we screwed a knob on the outside of the door, put a brass hook on the inside and went downstairs to count ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... figure, smiles round her lips, a sweet, bright color in her cheeks, a dewy look in her baby-blue eyes. Rosalind's toilet was all but finished; she stood before her glass now and hesitated. Should she go to the Elliot-Smiths' as she was or should she give the last finishing touch to render herself perfect? Should she wear her beautiful ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... worst; let him see all, for his punishment, and let the sword be ready to his hand; to that sword I leave the rest.' In this design I withdrew; and the sword—as I had foreseen—did its office, slew the tyrant, and put the finishing touch to my work. And now I come to you, bringing democracy with me, and call upon all men to take heart, and hear the glad tidings of liberty. Enjoy the work of my hands! You see the citadel cleared of the oppressors; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... fitted the porch-room as if it had been bought for it. The smaller rugs were quickly disposed here and there, a lovely little rose-colored silk prayer rug being forced upon Julia Cloud for her bedroom as just the finishing touch it needed, and Leslie took possession of two or three smaller blue rugs for her room. Then they turned their attention to pictures, bits of jade and bronze, a few rare pieces of furniture, a wonderful ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... mother's riding hat down on her curls. It, too, was much too large for her, and had some blond frizzes sewn across the front of it. The hat with its false front added the finishing touch of rakishness to Beth. She, however, was as proud as a ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... but with such a gracious sweetness upon it that the shyest was soon at his ease. Here was a cup, an embarrassment to the hand. She would fill its emptiness, not with Aunt Jen's currant wine, but with good Hollands—not to the brim, because the owner would spill it over and so add the finishing touch to his bashfulness. She sat down by the oldest, the shaggiest, the roughest, and in a moment (as if, like a fairy of Elfland, she had waved her wand) old Glencross of Saltflats, who only talked in monosyllables to his own wife, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... But the finishing touch was not given till Chloe came. She was the jewel for which this homely setting waited. My agriculture had some object then. The old gate never opened with such alacrity as when she paused before it. How we waited for her coming! Should I send Drewer, the colored patriarch, for her? No; the master ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... to kill Violet with a small revolver which I had bought in a second-hand place at London last winter, but Nepcote's carelessness in leaving his own revolver in the gun-room gave the last finishing touch to my plan. I could scarcely believe my luck when I found it. It seemed as though he himself were playing into my hands. I hid it away, expecting that there would be inquiries, but there were none. He had forgotten ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... of cigars thus made up, from the first sowing to the last finishing touch, the good squire (being Yankee-like, a sort of Jack-of-all-trades,) would have them put up in gorgeously labeled boxes, carry them to town, and sell them to retail dealers; not disdaining himself, twice or thrice a year, to go through the neighboring States ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Lester, all amiability and interest, gave the finishing touch to Lord Chandos' fate. When he had once spoken of the matter, there was no receding from it without a scandal that would have horrified all England. The duke's first words settled the whole matter; he held ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... was attended with more difficulties then. Meat was fried in long-handled pans, and the short-cake that so often graced the supper table, and played such havoc with the butter and honey, with the pancakes that came piping hot on the breakfast table, owed their finishing touch to the frying pan. The latter, however, were more frequently baked on a large griddle with a bow handle made to hook on the crane. This, on account of its larger surface, enabled the cook to turn out these much-prized cakes, when properly made, with greater speed; and in a large family ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... this reached Paris, the Dauphin himself, with a brilliant suite, set out for Rouen, and encamped in the fortress on St. Catherine's Hill, to the south-east of the town, between the Aubette and the Seine. A message sent him by De Gancourt, intercepted by the citizens, put the finishing touch to their resentment. Three men were picked out to rid them of the bailli. One of them was Guillot Leclerc (afterwards beheaded for his crime), but Alain Blanchart had no share in the assassination, whatever ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... paper of the outer wrapper and mixed up with the Volucella's are a large number of other eggs, chalk white, spear-shaped and ridged lengthwise with seven or eight thin ribs, after the manner of the seeds of certain Umbelliferae. The finishing touch to their delicate beauty is the fine stippling all over the surface. They are smaller by half than the others. I have seen grubs come out of them which might easily be the earliest stage of some pointed maggots which I have already noticed in the burrows. My attempts to rear them failed; ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... was probable the command would make its winter-quarters there. They would fell trees, chop off large cuts and split them into slabs. Out of these rough slabs snug shanties were made, and to put on the finishing touch, fire-places were built in them. When cold, keen winds blew fierce without, the soldier sat comfortable within, and soon our North Chickamauga camp became a semi-paradise—a home in the woods. It was here the brigade suffered ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... can be described, having forced their way in hundreds through my thin clothing, causing an annoying and painful irritation; to which, the bites of clouds of mosquitoes in a mangrove swamp which I had entered in chase of some bowerbirds, added a finishing touch, as if to test the powers of human endurance. Having expended my stock of dust shot, I tried fine sand—which I had somewhere read of as a substitute, but, although used under the most favourable conditions, the experiment proved a complete failure. Sights for rating the chronometers ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... gazed, two Bosnian minstrels, from bad memory and an indifferent ear, began playing on a fiddle and a guitar, and though their music was atrocious, the wild Turkish songs which they sang gave the finishing touch to the scene. It was not till they began playing snatches of music-hall airs, such long-forgotten tunes as "Daisy," that we hurriedly ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... execution; despatch, dispatch; consummation, culmination; finish, conclusion; close &c. (end) 67; terminus &c. (arrival) 292; winding up; finale, denouement, catastrophe, issue, upshot, result; final touch, last touch, crowning touch, finishing touch, finishing stroke; last finish, coup de grace; crowning of the edifice; coping-stone, keystone; missing link &c. 53; superstructure, ne plus ultra[Lat], work done, fait accompli[Fr]. elaboration; finality; completeness ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Council of Constance), was reared in the Baptistery by Donatello. The Holy of Holies is relatively modern, having been erected at the expense of the Guild of the "Calimala," as the men who gave the finishing touch to the woolen stuffs manufactured abroad were called. The baptismal font, in a building specially used for christening, would, as a matter of course, be intrusted to artists of great repute, and that at San Giovanni is attributed to Andrea ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... other things unexplainable even to Kent; for one, this night flitting to Gaston to put the finishing touch on an edifice of fraud which had been builded shamelessly ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... menage at the Castle of Wolf's Crag, a bickering fire roared up the cooper's chimney. His wife, on the one side, in her pearlings and pudding-sleeves, put the last finishing touch to her holiday's apparel, while she contemplated a very handsome and good-humoured face in a broken mirror, raised upon the "bink" (the shelves on which the plates are disposed) for her special accommodation. Her mother, old Luckie Loup-the-Dyke, "a canty carline" as was within ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... in this contention by a formal alliance with the Lutherans, who were undeniably heretics. It served his purpose very well to play them off against the emperor and even Francis I., but it was not his will to be bound irrevocably by any contract. When Cromwell thought to put the finishing touch to his triumphant scheme, he only effected his own doom. He boasted to the Lutherans that he would soon bring England over to their forms of faith, and on this promise the match between Henry and Anne was concluded; ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... be the prospect of studying the races inhabiting islands as yet unknown to him. The oldest writer of travels, bringing on the stage his hero-wanderer along the shores of the Mediterranean, gives the finishing touch to his character in two significant words, νόον ἐγνῶ.[2] Not only did he “visit the abodes of many people,” but he “studied their Νοῦς;” all that the term involves of its impress on character, habits, and institutions was keenly investigated by the accomplished ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... who had, at the appearance of the wagon, rushed home to give a finishing touch to her toilet, was seen crossing the little interval between the two houses with an elaborate air of unconsciousness of observation, and carrying a large white handkerchief ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... improvement. On the contrary, half the wire was dispensed with. The Government was at the cost of trying the experiment and has since heaped wealth on the inventor. My fourteen years were required in perfecting my invention without any return for time and labor. (The finishing touch to his cutting apparatus is, no doubt here referred to, and shown in his patent ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... that I could give an exact and genuine account of actual facts. Courage failed me to see all, but what I have seen can be summed up in one phrase. In the environs of Shabatz the vanquished put the finishing touch to their acts of fearful savagery by butchering their Servian prisoners, whose corpses were found heaped up in ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... confirming all previous charters of liberties, including the Great Charter (SS135, 160, 199). This confirmation expressly forbade that the Crown should take the people's money or goods except by the consent of Parliament. Thus out of the war England gained the one thing it needed to give the finishing touch to the building up of Parliamentary power (SS213, 217); namely, a solemn acknowledgement by the King that the nation alone had the right to levy taxes.[1] (See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... nerves are not too much discomposed by the exciting piece of eloquence Mr. Waters has just favored us with for my especial benefit. Gad! Waters, you'd do the heavy fathers finely on the stage. I'll write to Davidge for you, that last speech of yours was capital; couldn't you favor us with a finishing touch, we are all attention.' The agent placed his papers on the table, and wheeling his chair round, sat in imitation of his master as if in expectation of ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... powerful blows gave the inserted piece its finishing touch. The Justice kicked away the stones with which he had made the wheel fast, seized the wagon by its tongue in order to test the mended tire, and in spite of its weight hauled it without exertion diagonally across the yard, so that the hens, geese and ducks, which had been quietly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the King and his son slept in their tent, unguarded, since no enemy was thought to be near, he fell upon them with his cutthroats, bound and gagged them despite their struggles, and gathering up all the valuables that lay around, to put the finishing touch upon his villainy, fled with his prisoners "in great haste and fear," while the King's men slept. When they awoke, and tried to follow, they found their ships scuttled. The count's boat had been lying under sail all day, hidden in a sheltered ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... at that? No, better risk a finishing touch. "No harm done," he said in the same loud voice. "Hey, captain, another cup of coffee, ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... road has been reminding me of my namesake Whittington," said Richard, "and that waggon is the finishing touch. Halloa! What's the matter?" ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Cases of preserves were quickly opened. All our bread and biscuits were used, and some bowls of boiling tea comforted our guests. But leaving the harbor, the sea grew heavier and torrents of spray put the finishing touch to the inextricable disorder that prevailed aboard ship. The storm stayed with us until we made Brindisi, where we arrived at seven o'clock on the morning of the twenty-second. When Italy was sighted, the tiredness ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... be found in quantities on the baby's skin any more than you would expect to find quantities of face powder caked in the creases of the neck or behind the ears of an adult. The skin is first cleaned, then patted entirely dry, and, as a finishing touch, a bit of talcum is put on by ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... the stove was a pot half filled with a mixture of boiled rice and prunes. In the oven was some soggy bread, and on the hearth some cold bacon. A can half filled with pale brown coffee added the finishing touch to a layout perfectly familiar to me. I thanked the cook and proceeded to dish out some of the rice whose grayish color aroused Zulime's distrust. She refused to even taste it. "It looks as if it were filled ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Eri began a tale that caused the cold shivers to chase themselves from Josiah's big toe to the longest hair on his head. It was the story of two boys who ran away and shipped aboard an Australian sailing packet, and contained more first-class horrors than any one of his beloved dime novels. As a finishing touch the narrator turned back the grizzled hair on his forehead and showed a three-inch scar, souvenir of a first mate and a belaying pin. He rolled up his flannel shirtsleeve and displayed a slightly misshapen left arm, broken by a kick from a drunken captain ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... letters," he went on, "puts on the finishing touch. They have me all right on that. I can tell by the way that Sybil—er, Mrs. Brainard—acts, that she has read and reread those letters. But, by God," he concluded, bringing down his fist on the desk, "I shall ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... "pupil" was beyond him. He was invited to add a finishing touch to the Masaccio frescos; Leonardo, the courtly, had smiled a gracious recognition, and Michelangelo had sneezed at mention of his name. Bramante, back at Rome, told Pope Julius the Second, "There is a young Umbrian at ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... falling warmly upon antique furniture about us, upon by-gone worthies on the wall, and (quite as naturally, it seemed) upon a colonial girl, who now smilingly appeared in the doorway. Bringing the finishing touch of life to the old-time setting, she came, a curl of her dark hair across a white shoulder and her gown a quaintly fashioned ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... jackets and trousers—the latter having the seats and insides of the legs fended with a lining of stamped leather; boots with heavy spurs upon their feet, crape sashes around the waist, machetes strapped along the flaps of their saddles, and seraphs resting folded over the croup, gave the finishing touch to their travelling equipment. These, with the well appointed atajo of mules, made the party one of peaceful merchants transporting their ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Dalaber left Oxford it was with no idea that it would be a crisis in his life. He wished, out of curiosity, to be present at the strange ceremony to be enacted in St. Paul's Churchyard; and the knowledge that Clarke was going to London for a week on some private business gave the finishing touch to ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... after day, when at last they arrived forty-six days after they left you. Their arrival was most welcome to me. I took the greatest possible pleasure in the letter of the kindest and best beloved of fathers, but your own delightful letter put the finishing touch to my joy. So I no longer repent of dropping letter-writing for a time, but am rather glad I did so, for my silence has brought me a great reward in your kindness. I am very glad indeed that you accepted ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... from the parlour window to his little den along the passage, to put the finishing touch to his toilet—the green cutaway and buff waistcoat, which he further set off with a black satin stock—'Well,' said he, 'needs must when a certain ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... wife that he needed no answer... but he waited, he thirsted for a reply, for an explanation of this incredible, inconceivable thing. Varvara Pavlovna wrote him the same day a long letter in French. It put the finishing touch; his last doubts vanished,—and he began to feel ashamed that he had still had any doubt left. Varvara Pavlovna did not attempt to defend herself; her only desire was to see him, she besought him not to condemn her irrevocably. The letter was cold and constrained, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Richie was particularly attentive in doing all a valet-de-chambre could, so as to set off to advantage the very handsome figure of his master; and when he had arranged his dress to the utmost exactness, and put to his long curled locks what he called "the finishing touch of the redding-kaim," he gravely kneeled down, kissed his hand, and bade him farewell, saying that he humbly craved leave to discharge himself ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... all. You may suppose that nothing could be added to deepen the atmosphere of peace and content. Not so. At this moment, Mr. Bennett emerged from the French windows of the drawing-room, clad in white flannels and buckskin shoes, supplying just the finishing touch ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... insignia, wiped off his whiskey sweat in unconcealed relief. His battle of Archangel had been cut short by the Americans who had eagerly watched for the first sign of surrender by the foolish Russian soldiers. The finishing touch was added to the short-lived S. B. A. L. mutiny when the tender-hearted but severe old General Maroushevsky punished the thirteen ring-leaders of the S. B. A. L. soviet with death before a Russian firing squad. This mutiny was described in various ways and use was made of it by agitators ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... heads, and after a few words more the Colonel marched off, erect and soldierly, while the boys rather slowly and unwillingly returned to their room to give a finishing touch or two to their rather hasty ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... tonight," Malcolm said. "No one is likely to pay us a visit; but if they did, they would not notice the bars unless they went up and shook them. Tomorrow morning we can put a finishing touch ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... of New Mexico puts iron into the blood. The trail life had hardened us all, but the finishing touch for Rex Krane came in the invigorating breath of that mountain-cooled, sun-cleansed atmosphere of Santa Fe. Shrewd, philosophic, brave-hearted like his historic ancestry, he laid his plans carefully now, sure of doing what he was set to do. And the wholesome sense of really serving ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... spy, and engages to use his immense power against his former comrades and in defense of the society he has hitherto warred upon. The artistic propriety of this transformation may be questioned, but not the power and interest of the novel of which it is the finishing touch. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... night-light under it, could not have been mistaken, save by wilful malice, for anything but a copper. A waste-paper basket with two or three school dusters and an overcoat in it, and a pair of blue pyjamas over the back of a chair, put the finishing touch to the scene. It did not need the announcement from the wings, "The laundry at Beauty's home." It was so plainly a laundry ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... both on the sidewalks and in the packed, panting interiors. I liked it all, too,—for once in a way; but I soon saw that, for Raymond, even once in a way was once too often. In this last place a girl with a hand too familiarly laid on his arm gave the finishing touch; it was a coarse, dingy little hand, with some tawdry rings. Raymond never liked close quarters; neither in those days, nor ever after, did he care to come decisively to grips with actual life. "Keep off!" was what his look said to the offender. The poor, ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... be married, Willy," she said, in a low tone. It is doubtful if he could have spoken, just then. And as if to add a finishing touch of burlesque to the meeting, a small boy with a swollen jaw came in just then and demanded something to "make ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... discussion in this line was terminated by the entrance of Carry, with her good-looking face flushed and hard set, as, rolling down her sleeve and buttoning it aggressively as the finishing touch to her toilet after completing her afternoon's work, she confronted Mrs Bray, on ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... piece of work he had ever done, and he had worked on it a design of the village in which they lived. Mary's idea now was to fill this basket with flowers, and to offer it to the young Countess as her birthday present. Her father readily fell in with the plan, and added a finishing touch to it by weaving Amelia's name in on one side of the basket and the ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... at him, without reply, put the finishing touch to her dress and went downstairs. He could not make her out about this house. She had said nothing against it, and, as far as Bosinney was concerned, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thread, one stout needle, and (as I told you before, if you would please to remember things) one bad pair of scissors. Now she was ready; ready to cast off St. Sebastian's towing-rope; ready to cut and run for port anywhere. The finishing touch of her preparations was to pick out the proper keys: even there she showed the same discretion. She did do no gratuitous mischief. She did not take the wine-cellar key, which would have irritated the good father confessor; she took those keys ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... that the Constitution of the United States set aside all temporal power of the Pope in this country, and that if any doubts remain, the finishing touch is given by the following oath of naturalization, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... effect bitterness. He has too lofty a mind for strong resentment. That false impression has only brought him to the last stage of indifference. I should say it was the finishing touch to making his life a wearisome ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... literally put half a million into that man's pocket, and that he repaid me with the basest ingratitude, almost makes me lose my faith in human nature. Theodore, of course, I could punish, and did so adequately; and where my chastisement failed, Fate herself put the finishing touch. ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... whelk-seller! "Never introduce your donah to a pal." In those seven words is contained the wisdom of the ages. I could read the future so plainly. What but one thing could happen after Mortimer had influenced Betty's imagination with his stories of his friend's romantic career, and added the finishing touch by advertising him as a woman-hater? He might just as well have asked for his ring back at once. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the Gothic style, uncouth in architecture but picturesque from age. Its little steeple, tuneful with bells, seemed to have been borrowed from some other building and hastily clapped on as a finishing touch. ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... of his long linen duster. Not that they need dusting; but as a gentle reminder of the extraordinary care he has bestowed upon us, in little things as well as in bigger, during our brief acquaintance with him, he dusts them off. That last attentive flick of his coat-tail is the finishing touch of an elaborate retrospective panorama we are expected to conjure up of the valuable services he has rendered us, and for which he is now justly entitled to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... finishing touch!" cries George; "bring the turf; Fred—I'm ready!" The water of the burn is rushing violently through the narrow outlet in the "dike." A heavy stone is dropped into the gap, and ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... years is mapped out thoroughly, and when the girls reach the Senior class, all have their turn at housekeeping in the Practise Cottage of four rooms. No girl is graduated from the school without the finishing touch of the little home. Marketing, the planning of meals, table-setting, the care of table- and bed-linen, dusting, sweeping, and everything else pertaining to a well-kept house, are taught by the teacher in domestic science who is ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... shelter of the valleys. At one place we stopped to pick the mistletoe from a row of apple trees that were simply covered with the green parasite; while we watched, away to the west, a gorgeous sunset flame and die. It was the finishing touch to a day that had been almost perfect, and we tumbled into bed at the Hotel de l'Angleterre in the ancient city of Beuvais to sleep the sound sleep induced by fresh air and sunshine in those who have not been ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... them down from his lips, for in the case of such a good commander of the old English tongue that is of some importance. But the wonderful limpidness, the charming pellucidness of Ingersoll can only be adequately understood when you also have the finishing touch of his facile voice.] ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... looking down with a superior air on the donkeys, as well as pedestrians of many complexions and of varied dress—Arabs, Bedouins, Soudanese, and Egyptians,—their queerly shaped turbans and brilliant colors lending the finishing touch to the scene. Nowhere else in the Orient does such a view present itself, and ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... slightly curled, and dark brown in colour, gives the finishing touch to his fine countenance, as the feather to ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... out of the residences; houses with broken doors and windows; a raging mob, running about yelling and whistling in all directions and continuing its work of destruction without let or hindrance, and, as a finishing touch to this picture, complete indifference displayed by the local non-Jewish inhabitants to the havoc wrought before their eyes. The troops which had been summoned to restore order were without definite instructions, and, at each attack of the mob on another house, would wait for orders ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... seen that all the members of the establishment have regularly returned to their various duties, and that all the departments of the household are in proper working order, will have many important matters claiming her attention. She will, possibly, have to give the finishing touch to some article of confectionary, or be occupied with some of the more elaborate processes of the still-room. There may also be the dessert to arrange, ice-creams to make; and all these employments call for no ordinary degree ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
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