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More "Tricky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Raoul was brave, he would have sacrificed his life, like a fool; I had to make him cold and domineering, and to dispel from his mind, one by one, his exalted ideas of life; to render him suspicious and tricky as—an old bill-broker, while all the while he knew not who I was. And at this moment love has broken down the whole scaffolding. He should have been great; now, he can only be happy. I shall therefore retire to live in a corner at the height of his prosperity; his happiness ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... needn't get het up about it," said he; "I hain't to blame no matter whose daughter she wasn't. She can travel with me any time she wants to. Kind of a toppy, fast-goin', tricky little rip, with ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... than known,—that there is a queer strain of mysticism in Gorman. His arid common sense, his politics, his rhetoric, his tricky money-making, are the outside, visible things about him. Behind them, deep down, seldom seen, is a strange, emotional love for his country. When Ascher spoke as he did about the claim of patriotism Gorman understood. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... bay on which we were embarked was a water empire, fair to the eye, but tricky of wind and current. La Baye des Puants the French called it, from the odor that came at seasons from the swamps on the shore, and it ran southwest from Lake Illinois. The Pottawatamie Islands that we had just ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... I wisht there was, lad," the sergeant answered soberly. "Pass me up me rifle, like a good b'y, forinst we start! I see be the black-and-gold button on me ar-rmy mule thot he's a Landstrumer, an' they's tricky ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... have built out a shoal which, if you remember your chart, you will recall juts out in the bay over nine miles from the land. The same tides had scoured Smith's Island on the other hand—port side going out of the bay, but there are some nasty rocks in the channel. It's a tricky spot, that Smith's Point Shoal, and many a good vessel has gone to pieces ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... 'seventies, and indeed Mr. Durant's evangelical protestantism might not have relished the parallel. Boston seems, for the most part, to have averted its eyes from the spectacle of the brilliant, possibly unscrupulous, some said tricky, lawyer bringing souls to Christ. But he did bring them. We are told that "The halls and churches where he spoke were crowded. The training and experience which had made him so successful a pleader before ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... firmly, "these tricky ways do not suit me. Monsieur Arbillot proposed yesterday that I should do what you advise. He even offered to inform this gentleman of my relationship to Claude de Buxieres. I refused, and forbade the notary to open his mouth on the subject. ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... I believe it is from that tricky old woman!" And with her elbows on the table she gave herself up to the study of the telegram. "I never saw anything like it," she thought. "It looks exactly as if she wanted to frighten him without telling him what has happened. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... sent one of M. de Rambouillet's men to the stable where the deaf man's bay was standing, bidding him pay whatever was due to the dealer, and bring the horse to the south gate; my intention being to mount one of my men on it, and furnish the woman with a less tricky steed. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... paper in there than the house worth! Have to step to Con-o-way all the time. Struggle and starve myself out for these fifteen acres. Thirty miles to Con-o-way. Thirty miles back by the course I travels. All them tricky mens try to go and get old Ben's land sign to 'em. That's the mainest thing take me to Con-o-way every week. They all talk so sugar mouth till my name down; then when my name write is another thing. When ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... with the Word of God against the fanatical Anabaptists of our day; and our efforts are not entirely in vain. The trouble is there are many who refuse to be instructed. They will not listen to reason; they will not listen to the Scriptures, because they are bewitched by the tricky devil who can make a lie ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... this: there was a great 'orse of a woman just in front o' me an' I couldn't move ahead of 'er no'ow, try as I would. It was a case o' bulk, if you know what I mean, an' elbows wasn't no good. An' 'ang me if she wasn't goin' in for that there very tricky jumper you wanted! I put up a good fight for it, 'm, I did indeed. We both reached it at the same time, got 'old of it together, an'—an'—when it gave way at the seams I let 'er 'ave it," said Elizabeth, concluding her simple narrative. It sounded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... said Calhoun. "I'd made guesses. I couldn't know that they were right. When you tried to kill me, you confirmed every one. Now, when we land on Orede I'm going to get you to try to put me in touch with your friends. It's going to be tricky, because they must be pretty well scared about that ship. But it's a highly desirable ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... shall take your own time about comin', and I'll hold the job open till you get here. Now I'm allowin' to lend you that broncho, so you can get back in case the old man grows worse. He's a tricky beast; but I reckon you'll handle him without any too much trouble. The only drawback is that I can't ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... the apartment. His face was a sickly white, covered almost to the eyes with a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter's coat. Phillips's comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted and conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes were full of a hopeless, tricky defiance like that seen in a cur's that is cornered by his tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high, but a quarter inch of redeeming collar showed above it. His manner was singularly free from embarrassment when Chalmers rose from ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... hand;" but, in its stead, we could gaze at the festooned chains of Hammersmith Suspension Bridge in all its simple beauty, and see the Soapworks and the Mall on the hither and further shore. Our course led, not through serpentine canals and past Doges' palaces, gaudy with the lavish adornments of tricky Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see "lions" as historical as those which ornament the facade of Saint Mark's. However, as we glided up against the tide, in slow but steady progress, by willowy banks and osiered eyots, our boat yawning in and out and requiring a stiff weather helm ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... there was high wrath in Kostkov. The Lord John raved and swore. He blamed everybody, but most of all Stanislaus and the tricky Jesuits who, he said, were back of the whole scheme. He wrote to Cardinal Osius that he would not rest until he had broken up the Jesuit college in Pultowa and driven every schemer of them out ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... chair on each side the hearth, and between them a tiny red rocker with flowers painted on the arms of it. That was the clearest of all. There were persons in the large chairs, one a silent Scotchman who, instinct told him, must have been his father, and the other—oh, tricky memory that faltered when he wanted it to be so clear!—was the maddest, merriest little mother that ever came back to haunt a lad. By holding tight to the memory he could see that her eyes were ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... your yarn?" he repeated. "I thought when I set eyes on you that you were a tricky fellow. But this caps all!" Why, he suddenly raised his voice and stood up, "what do you mean by coming here with such a yarn? I've a mind to ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... running back, a distance of seventy miles, was not cheerful. When I got as far as Tuz I found a friend in charge of the dump there, and he let me draw what I wanted, so I turned back to try to get to the bridge by dark. One car after another got in trouble; first it was a puncture, then it was a tricky carburetor that refused to be put to rights; towing-ropes were called into requisition, but the best had been left behind, and those we had were rotted, and broke on every hill. Lastly a broken axle put one of the tenders definitely ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... know. It isn't always easy to know why you want things. You're such an inveterate liar, and so tricky that you'd ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... said the Distressed One; "I will be bail for him, and I know that Malambruno has nothing tricky or treacherous about him; you may mount without any fear, Senor Don Quixote; on my head be it if any ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... disbeliever, one who thinks that all private life will end in the all-consuming self-love of God."—Page 13. On page 13 he says further of them, that they are "never resting, never satisfied with life, often amusing themselves with jugglery and tricky witticisms, invariably victimizing others; secretly tormenting mediums, causing them to exaggerate in speech, and to falsify in acts; unlocking and unbolting the street doors of your bosom and memory; pointing your feet into wrong paths, and ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... complaints were heard from settlers over at McDowell, in the Verde Valley to the west, and other settlers away up the Verde toward Camp Sandy. Then Sowerby swore his stock was run off, and Bennett presently remained the only ranchman to stand up for them. The agent declared them contumacious and tricky. Other whites—Arizona white was then a reddish-brown—added their evil word to the official's. It was the old adage over again: "Give a dog a bad name," etc., and the department commander had ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... of himself he used the word "tramp" with a shocking lack of pride—led him inevitably into the far Northwest. Men were doing things up there. The country fairly seethed with the activity of live, virile men who were taking the first staunch grip upon the tricky wheel of fortune and were turning it to their own account. Every man was building; no man complained of conditions, for conditions were so new and so ready to hand that he who found fault was merely lessening his own chance ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... did not know; so I was anxious to make them while I could see. I looked at the moon—I could count on some light from her for an hour or so after sundown. But although I knew the last ten or twelve miles of my drive fairly well, I was also aware of the fact that there were in it tricky spots—forkings of mere trails in muskeg bush—where leaving the beaten log-track might mean as much as being lost. So I looked at my watch again and shook the lines over Peter's back. The first six miles ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... behaved in this matter much in the style of a tricky Van Buren politician, making a great bluster of words, and privately intending to do nothing. He was running for Congress at the time on the Van Buren ticket, and it is quite likely that the expenses of the campaign had exhausted his funds. That he should never have paid the bet was ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... "roped all the two-year-olds" in that first lesson, spent all evening handling them, and the Quarters looked on as he tested their tempers, for although most proved willing, yet a few were tricky or obstinate. All evening he sat, poring over the tiny Primer, amid a buzzing swarm of mosquitoes, with the doggedness all gone from his face, and in its place the light of a fair fight, and, to no one's surprise, in the morning ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... cultivated art, founded upon principles which can be readily applied by travelers and officials, so as to give them much independence of professional interpreters—as a class dangerously deceitful and tricky. This advantage is not merely theoretical, but has been demonstrated to be practical by a professor in a deaf mute college who, lately visiting several of the wild tribes of the plains, made himself understood among all of them without knowing a word ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... make Charlie's place quick, so I got busy on a short cut. Say, did you ever take a short cut—in a hurry? Don't ever do it. 'Tisn't worth it—if you're in a hurry. Of course, I lost myself in the storm, and Fate began handing me one or two. Fate's always tricky. She likes to wait till she gets you by the back of the neck, so you can't do a thing, and then passes you all that's coming to you. Guess she's had me by the neck quite awhile now, what with one thing and another. However, I mustn't blame her too much. You ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... you how you can make a lot of that money you like so much; upon condition, though—upon the one condition that you simply behave correctly. You are wise enough to understand me. If you disobey or prove tricky—well, I have but to hand you over to the law and you're settled. Do ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... not difficult to see why Marcius is considered to have been a simple-minded and straightforward character, while Alkibiades has the reputation of a false and tricky politician. The latter has been especially blamed for the manner in which he deceived and outwitted the Lacedaemonian ambassadors, by which, as we learn from Thucydides, he brought the truce between the two nations to an end. Yet that stroke of policy, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... well as in finance the South was oppressed by its system. The merchant wanted cotton, for cotton was marketable, and could not be consumed by a tricky debtor. Single cropping was thus unduly encouraged; diversified agriculture and rotation of crops made little progress. The use of commercial fertilizers was greatly stimulated, but agriculture as a ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... matters ahead of us, have perfected a pigeon post. Even so, I cannot help thinking they would have been wiser to train the birds, while they were about it, to deliver the letters nearer the ground. Getting your letters out of those boxes must be tricky work even to the average ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... down when they, see that you've caught him foul," stated the skipper, consolingly. "I've got a lot of confidence in your grit, sir. But I must say it's a terrible tricky gang we're up against, so it seems ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... know about you," Passarelli said. "But I'm going to start looking out for myself. You're too tricky, Maragon." ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... water-hole. It is short, but tricky. Teeing off from just outside the bathroom door, you have to loft the ball over the side of the bath, holing out in the little vent pipe, at the end ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... you have obviously landed in another time-track. One that is parallel to—but just a slight bit different from the one you formerly knew. To you, we seem to be the same officers as in that world; but of course, we're not. It isn't the same universe. Hyperspace is tricky stuff, as our men are finding out. You've just got bounced around by one of the ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... sartin of that. Them varmints have ways of telegraphing ahead of ye to some of thar friends, so that ye'r'll run heels over head into some trap, onless yer understands thar devilments and tricky ways." ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... very peaceful with the world, watching the fire. Whatever Farnsworth would have to show to-night would be far more entertaining than watching T.V.—my custom on other evenings. Farnsworth, with his four labs in the house and his very tricky mind, never failed to provide my best night ...
— The Big Bounce • Walter S. Tevis
... all of this he was not carried away. However great the thrill, his mind could not be diverted by the discovery of a quartz vein. He knew, too, that mining of this character was a tricky thing and that nature, as often as not, left the shelves of her storehouses empty when by all the rules of geology they ought to be laden. He would explore and develop the find, but its chief value, he ultimately decided, was psychological, and would be seen in the continued support ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... delay caused by the sledge drivers who joined us late at night from Bakaritza with oats. Left at 8:40. Billeting party given an hour's start, travelling ahead of the point to get billets and dinner arranged. Marching hard. Cold sleet from southeast with drifting snow. The Shackelton boot tricky. Men find it hard to navigate. Road very hilly. Cross this inlet here. Down the long hill and up a winding hill to the crest again which overhangs the stream that soon empties into the big Dvina. To the left on the ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... cigarette, fell behind. But the wind was tricky, and with his third match he stepped into a stone archway, lighted his cigarette, buttoned his tunic high against the chill, and emerged to a silent but violent struggle just ahead. The two men had been attacked by three others, and as he stared, the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in steel, had tasted freedom. They knew their own strength now. Was it likely that Louis of Daneshold, with the blood of Norse ancestors in his veins, and those Crusader comrades of his, every whit as sturdy fighters, would hold in great respect a tricky king, a murderer of little boys, a man who could not lead to victory in his own battle? No! a thousand times no! And iron clanged on iron when word from the King was brought to the nobles as they camped at London. Down came the mailed hand of many a ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... a stationer's shop in West Street. But the trade at that particular shop was a very brisk one; scores of people had bought note-paper there, similar to that on which the supposed doctor had written his tricky letter. The handwriting was cramped, perhaps a disguised one; in any case, except under very exceptional circumstances, it could afford no clue to the identity of the thief. Needless to say, the tramp, when told to write his name, wrote a totally ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... jackal was dead, he had left two sons behind him, every whit as cunning and tricky as their father. The elder of the two was a fine handsome creature, who had a pleasant manner and made many friends. The animal he saw most of was a hyena; and one day, when they were taking a walk together, they picked up a beautiful green cloak, which had evidently been dropped by some one ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... suggested the girl's elfish personality, with unhappy eyes. Just what did Mignon mean by intimating that several persons were "going to be surprised" when to-morrow's practice game was over? It sounded like a threat. No doubt it was. Suppose—some one were to be hurt through this tricky playing of Mignon's team! Suppose that some one were to be Marjorie! Mary shuddered. She remembered once reading in a newspaper an account of a basket-ball game in which a girl had been tripped by an opponent and had fallen. That girl had hurt her spine and the physicians had decreed that she ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... minutes the Grand Duke Vodkakoff had been engaged, subject to his approval, at a weekly four hundred and fifty by the Stone-Rafferty circuit. And in a quarter of an hour Solly Quhayne, having pushed his way through a mixed crowd of Tricky Serios and Versatile Comedians and Patterers who had been waiting to see him for the last hour and a half, was bowling off in a taximeter-cab to the ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... looking for, Bob," he said briefly, when he was in possession of the facts. "Couldn't be many families of that name around here, not unless they were related. Do you know, there's a lot of that tricky business afoot right here in Flame City? People have lost their heads over oil, and the sight of a handful of bills drives them crazy. The Watterby farm is one of the few places that hasn't been rushed by oil prospectors. That's one reason ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... he groaned, for just ahead of them he saw a rocky ridge higher than any they had passed over. Here then was the end, he thought. But the tricky moonlight had deceived him. They cleared those rocks by a hundred feet and just beyond Bruce ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... boios, that is to say houses, and treated with great respect; or again, they may be ornamented with gold and precious stones. It was noted that the breast ornaments, which they call guanines were made of copper rather than gold, and it was surmised that they dealt with tricky strangers who sold them these guanines, palming off upon them vile metal for gold. Neither did the Spaniards discover the trick till they melted these ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... two gentlemen I know not, my lord," said Lochiel, who had been standing by, "but I count the dark man the truer of the two. I like not the other, though I grant they both be brave. He is fair and false, if I am not out in my judgment, with a smooth word and a tricky dirk, like the Campbells. God grant ye be not ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... are going to beard the lion in his den. He is tricky, distrustful and savage. It may mean for us slavery, torture, or death. Meroe, let me finish alone this trip and this enterprise, beside which a desperate fight would be but a trifle. Return to my father and mother, whose ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... are so wise in the ways of those tricky things called nerves, must know that it was only a mild hysteria that made me say those most unladylike things. I have written Norah all about it. She has replied, advising me to stick to the good-fellow role but not ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... The question whether it is ever politic for a playwright to keep a secret from his audience is discussed elsewhere. What I have here in mind is not an ordinary secret, but a more or less tricky effect ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... more picking than stealing," said he. "Tricky picking too, Raffles, but innocent enough even for ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... lazy beggars going full speed," Philander was very emphatic. "Don't let 'em lag, or they'll wear you down. Don't ever let 'em get out of control, or put anything over on you, especially in sorting ore from rock. They're tricky. Use your shock-rod at every least sign of mutiny or loafing. Make 'em respect you. They know better'n to try to get away, 'cause they ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... nasty, underhand business from start to finish," said Miss Georgie, ignoring the remark. "It has upset everybody—me included, and I'm sure it isn't my affair. It's just one of those tricky cases that you know is rotten to the core, and yet you can't seem to get hold of anything definite. My dad had one or two experiences with old Baumberger—and if ever there was a sly old mole ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... A. That foxes are tricky animals; that crows are silly birds; that flattery and lying are bad; that it is foolish to trust anyone ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Finally, when the little animal's triumph seemed complete, Grant stepped into the ring and sprang upon his back. A tremendous tussle for the mastery immediately ensued, but though he reared and shied and kicked, the tricky little beast was utterly unable to throw its fearless young rider, and amid the shouts of the audience the clown at last stopped the contest and ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... he really said was: "That remains to be seen. He proved himself a rather slippery customer last night, and the chase we put up may only serve to put him on his guard. Crazy people are tricky, you know." ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... tricky trick," explained Gummy volubly. "Of course not. But mother just let Mr. Strout trick himself. When he saw what he had done he tried to hand the money back; ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... there was such an atmosphere of Paris about the stocky little fourteen-year-old chap, that we would often keep him longer with us, and treat him to a glass of anisette to hear his opinion of the writers whose work he handled. He was an amusing cross between a tricky little Paris gamin and a real child, and he hit off the characteristics of the various writers with as keen a touch of actuality as he could put into his stories of how many centimes he had won that morning at 'craps' from his friend ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... disappointed, any more than that other greater one; for on top of an open ridge, a short distance west of us, we saw a solitary horse, tethered, and feeding composedly, as if he had nothing to fear out here amongst the hills. Part of us keep our eyes upon him, lest his tricky owner should get the alarm and remove him; whilst others plunge into the coppice which fills the intervening hollow, and soon reappear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... guess not, strannger, as how should they—a mean, tricky, catchpenny, skulking set—that makes money out of everybody, and hain't the spirit to spend it! I do hate them, now, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... "No; but it's tricky stuff. You get round it, working at it, nursing it—pretty soon you'll want to own some, then you're dished. It's the first step that counts. After that you may crave to get out and see places, but you can't; you ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... condenser, the device that stored the photons so close to each other, would also serve to urge them apart. I've made the necessary changes, and now I'm trying to set up the apparatus to work on solid light-matter. It was developed for gaseous material, and it's a rather tricky thing to change it over. But I think ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... slantwise across the roads, where sentries stood with fixed bayonets, and through which no one could pass unless the laisser passer was produced. Some of those barriers were quite tricky affairs to drive through in a big ambulance, and reminded me of a gymkhana! It was quite usual in those days to be stopped by a soldier waiting on the road, who, with a gallant bow and salute, asked your permission to "mount behind" and have a ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... insect allies is really unique and thorough, and it opens a door to even more valuable research," said I, as modestly as I could. "Flint is one of its great pioneers, and he's blazing the way. Some day when the real naturalist comes into his own, he will rank far, far above tricky ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... quote him falsely, to shield the sex. Quite right. But my sister must not be tricky. Keep to the rules. You're an exceptional woman, and it would be a good argument, if you were not in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in his hands. He righted the rocket, balanced it. Began the tricky task of landing. It took all of his talent, all of his training. Ponderously, the ship settled into the iron sand; slowly, the internal ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... the tall cover grass, and Travis tensed. Mba'a—coyote? Or were these companions of his actually ga-n, spirits who could choose their shape at will and had, oddly, this time assumed the bodies of man's tricky enemy? Were they ndendai—enemies—or dalaanbiyat'i, allies? In this mad world ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... marked "Half speed," and it really meant half speed. Captain Zoradus Wass made scripture of the rules laid down by the Department of Commerce and Labor. There was no tricky slipping-over under his sway—no finger-at-nose connivance between the pilot-house and the chief engineer's grille platform. No, Captain Wass was not that kind of a man, though the fog had held in front of him two days, vapor thick as feathers in a ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... confidence. Her one idea of Him was that He could provide comfortably here and elsewhere for herself and Catharine. But to-day her conscience irritated her like a nettle. Could it be that she was at soul tricky? Could God hold her, rigorous church-member, fond wife and mother as she was, guilty of this boy's blood? Nettles, however, do not sting very deeply. She rose presently, unfolded her work, and sat sewing and singing a hymn, a complacent smile on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... winsome lass, I want no tricky wine, But amber nectar bring to me, Whose rich bouquet will cling to me, Whose spirit voice will sing to me From out the mug divine So, here's your toll—a kiss—away, You Hebe of the Rhine! No goblet's gold ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... himself can get the credit for their installation. In disposition he is stubborn and obstinate. He is also reserved and suspicious. Being of the selfish type, he will look after his own interests first in all things. No. 1 lacks straightforwardness and frankness of disposition, so he will be tricky, slippery, and do things in an underhanded way. He has very great dislike of detail and will have a tendency to procrastinate if given an opportunity, I believe he has passed the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... other part of the fence negotiable. I think that by dint of patience and tactful management, many refusers may be taught to repose sufficient confidence in their riders to make an effort when required, but that can be done only by gentle means and easy tasks. Old tricky offenders cannot be cured of this or any other vice. A lady who is hunting on a doubtful jumper should be careful not to upset other horses by letting her refuser perform in front of them, but should ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... swordsman—resourceful and extremely tricky. In fact, he seemed never to have heard that there existed such a thing as a code of honor, for he repeatedly outraged a dozen Barsoomian fighting customs that an honorable man would ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... know slick rascals as well as I do, Frank, you'll understand that they often do just what everybody never dreams they'd be silly enough to try. That's the tricky part of the game, you see. Ordinarily that woods is the last place we'd think of looking for Jules. It ought to have an evil name for him, and make him shun it. You see, that's the way we'd just ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... in a sense, yet apparently courageous enough so far as physical combat was concerned. Also, he had disclosed an unexpected subtlety, a cat-like craft in eavesdropping and underhanded contrivances. The steward I believed a mercenary soul, tricky so far as his own comfort and gain were concerned, who, according to common report, had ingratiated himself with the second mate by sympathizing with him on every occasion because he had not been given the chief mate's berth. The two men from Boston I cared ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... work in a satisfactory way was an amazing task, and no evidence is on record that he left anything to chance. Results are an eloquent answer to any doubts on that subject. In addition to policing the seas, he had the anxiety of watching the tricky manoeuvres of the French fleet, and planning for their interception and defeat should they weaken in their elusive methods. Of course, they were playing their own game, and had a right to, and it was for their opponents, whom Nelson so well represented, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... inside of the door, and, as she too entered, locked the door behind her. It was pitch-black here in the attic. Her face was set now, her lips firm. She had been waiting for this, hadn't she? It was near the end at last. She had Danglar—alone. But not in the darkness! He was too tricky! She crossed the garret to where the candle-stub, stuck in the neck of the gin bottle, stood on the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... a high nature, you become connected with people of the same mental caliber and you are able to help yourself. If your thoughts are tricky, you will bring tricky people to deal with you, who ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... prove unavailing. Ask concerning a man, "Is he active and capable?" Yes. "Industrious, temperate, and regular in his habits?" O Yes. "Is he honest? is he trustworthy?" Why, as to that, I am sorry to say that he is not to be trusted; he wants watching; he is a little tricky, and will take an undue advantage, if ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... Armies, without having any real Business for either of them. I will for some Time, at least, drop the delicate Subject of our Troops; but as to the other Point, I must say, I think it is a Curse upon us, that we can't even copy a good Example (for bad Ones we do more adroitly) but we do it in a tricky dirty Manner, and with as many Deviations as we can. Why, dost thou not know, Tom, what base filthy Jobs, Knaves, and Mean-foul'd Wretches have made, and do still make of these magnified Turnpikes. I was once fix'd to write a Book of all the Cheats, and all the Reptiles, of what Quality ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... knew quite well that such matters did not settle themselves, but he seems to have imagined that all he had to do was to sit tight and that matters would have to come his way. The tricky and shuffling behavior to which he descended would be unbelievable of a man of his standing were there not an authentic record made by himself. The suspense finally became so intolerable that the Cabinet acted without consulting the President any longer on the point. ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... in her cherished and determined ambition to ride Dale's mustang, and she was furious. The mustang did not appear to be vicious or mean. But he was spirited, tricky, mischievous, and he had thrown her six times. The scene of Bo's defeat was at the edge of the park, where thick moss and grass afforded soft places for her to fall. It also afforded poor foothold for the gray mustang, obviously placing him at a disadvantage. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... Kayerts trembled in every limb. He muttered, "I say! O! I say!" and putting his hand in his pocket found there a dirty bit of paper and the stump of a pencil. He turned his back on the others, as if about to do something tricky, and noted stealthily the weights which Carlier shouted out to him with unnecessary loudness. When all was over Makola whispered to himself: "The sun's very strong here for the tusks." Carlier said to Kayerts in a careless tone: "I say, chief, I might just as well give him a lift with ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... ones, but waited long for the broken-down motor to lift me again finally to pure air. In the days that followed I was advanced to the rank of car-boss in this same level, and found enough to do and more in keeping the tricky car-men moving. A favorite ruse was to tip over a car on its way to the chute and to grunt and groan over it for a half-hour pretending to lift it back on the rails; or to tuck away far back in some abandoned "lead" the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... you mean!" exclaimed the taller lad, immediately. "Perhaps the secret hiding place of Mendoza and his crowd of cattle thieves may be somewhere around this same old rock pile. It'd be just like the tricky rustler to have a hide-out where ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... girl's interest. Is that it?" Again Larpent's eyes, shrewd and far-seeing, were fixed upon him. They held a glint of humour. "It's a tricky job, my lord. You'll wish you hadn't before ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... had noticed the solitary diner. The Era man drifted closer, moving unhurriedly, thinking furiously. It was no good trying some tricky approach; his best bet was the straight-from-the-shoulder bit. No point in hesitating. ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... home, or was not when I was a boy—but here you can take away a man's character, rob him of his home, corrupt his children. You can break your wife's heart, be cruel, revengeful; you can lie and be tricky, and no law can touch you—in fact, you are still a respectable citizen. But if you take a dollar-bill out of another man's cash drawer, you are sent to jail and branded as a thief. And it is right—looked at from one standpoint—the protection of society. It is the absence of all mercy ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... by the king's guides through the upper part of the country, by a route unnecessarily circuitous and roundabout, and one that required many days' journeying; but, as soon as the straight road was indicated to him by a freedman, a Syrian by nation, he quitted that tedious and tricky road, and, bidding his barbarian guides farewell, he crossed the Euphrates in a few days, and arrived at Antiocheia,[384] near Daphne. There he waited for Tigranes, pursuant to the king's orders (for Tigranes was absent, and still ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... murdered out of the season," answered the little priest, with simplicity. "Don't you think there's something rather tricky about this solitude, Flambeau? Do you feel sure a wise murderer would always want the spot to be lonely? It's very, very seldom a man is quite alone. And, short of that, the more alone he is, the more certain he is to be seen. No; I think there ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... 'must be lost! must be lost! must be lost!' And the Squire would tell about his horrid dream, seeing Hornblower's ghost smuggling a chest of tea (real congou), and the Collector catching him on the spot. 'Hornblower's tricky—he larnt it of the Yankees—and I'm always afraid he'll get cotched smuggling little things for himself. What a blessing it is to have a clear conscience!' he would say: the last ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... a snare to you and an embarrassment to me. She is a singularly attractive girl. No one can face her and accuse her. Britt says she is much more mature than when I saw her; and by that he meant to convey that she had grown clever, if not tricky. There is a bad streak in her, I'm afraid, for all her charm, and you would better let her entirely alone. Upon the most charitable construction she is hysterical, and her deception probably arises, as Britt says, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... school!' interjected Lesbia. 'Tricky, flashy, chalky, shallow, smelling of the footlights ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... But wait a second. We got to be tricky about this." She was excited and tremendously in earnest. "If she gets to know I've been holding out the hat to you, we're wasting time. Give me the money, see? I'll make up a peach of a story about how it came to me,—the will of a rich uncle in Wisconsin or something, you know,—and ask her ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... PUCK, a tricky, mischievous fairy, identified with Robin Goodfellow, and sometimes confounded with a house spirit, propitiated by kind words and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... very good, the 18-hole course being exceedingly sporting, and tricky enough to defeat the very elect. Jane and I had conveyed our clubs out to Kashmir, knowing that they were likely to prove useful. I had also taken the precaution to pack up a box or two of balls, but I found my labour all in vain, as "Haskells" and "Kemshall-Arlingtons" ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... and wonderful verse; they are more powerful than ever, their religion is accepted, they have lent money to the Holy Father himself! As for Germany, a foreigner is often asked whether he has a contract in writing, and this is in the smallest matters, so tricky are they in their dealings. In France the spectacle of national blunders has never lacked national applause for the past fifty years; we continue to wear hats which no mortal can explain, and every change of government is made on the express condition that things shall remain exactly as ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... on the Bannister bench, to shivering little Theophilus Opperdyke, the Phillyloo Bird, Shad Weatherby, and several more collegians who had joined him when the half ended, was singularly appropriate. In Latham's light, fast eleven, trained to the minute, coached to a shifty, tricky style of play with numberless deceptive fakes from which they worked the forward pass successfully, Bannister seemed to have encountered, as Mike Murphy phrased it, "A team that won't be beat!" According to the advance ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... sorry I have bought him now, sir," Jonas said. "Of course I should not have done so if I had heard these things before; but I was told he was one of the finest horses in the country, only a little tricky, and as his price was so reasonable I thought it a great bargain. But I see now I was wrong, and that it wouldn't be right for you to mount him; so I think we had best send him in on Saturday to the market and let it go for what it will ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... and embraced his prospective host, and five minutes later was speeding to his ship, the bearer of glad news. For, behold, where he thought to meet an enemy, devious and tricky, he had encountered instead, ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... things is tricky. You get some of this stuff out of tolerance, it can wreck a whole ship. ...
— Alarm Clock • Everett B. Cole
... the talent displayed they have not an idea how a deliberating assembly ought to conduct its debates, and the disclosures and revelations of official secrecy and confidence have been monstrous. Thiers has all along been playing a false, shuffling, tricky part, and at last he got so entangled in the meshes of his own policy, and so confused by the consequences of his double dealing, that he evidently did not know what to do; and the King had no difficulty in getting him out of a Government that he could ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... long as both of us hope you may you'll have plenty of time. There's no rush, so go at it gradually. Be regular about it, but don't be too ambitious at the outset. Don't try to turn yourself into a tricky sprite in two weeks. For a fat man too abruptly to strip the flesh off his bones I regard as dangerous. It weakens him and depletes his powers of resistance and makes him fair game for any stray microbe which may be cruising about looking for a ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... pale, but not paler was he than the card-sharp just opposite. Redburn was no coward; neither was he accustomed to the desperate character of the population of the Hills. Should he shoot the tricky wretch before him, he knew he should be always calling himself a murderer. On the contrary, in the natural laws of Deadwood, such a murder would be ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... he. "You're a chip of the old block all right." Gertrude remembered with a twinge of apprehension what McAlister had said about her father's "pile." "But you must be prepared for war—underhanded, tricky, politicians' war," ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... what tools he'd need. It was a simple question, predicating a simple answer. Yet he didn't seem able to reply to it. He scratched his close-clipped pate and said he'd have to look things over and study it out. Windmills were tricky things, one kind demanding this sort of treatment ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... trouble, too. She and some of her sophomore friends seem to have a particular grudge against Mignon. They are forever criticising her playing. They have even gone so far as to say that we don't play fairly; that we are tricky. The idea!" Muriel looked highly offended at the mere idea of ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... occasion," said the Distressed One; "I will be bail for him, and I know that Malambruno has nothing tricky or treacherous about him; you may mount without any fear, Senor Don Quixote; on my head be it if any ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Get the men here. Have them rush Wallace's cage here. Be careful until you get out. Those people have locked us in. I shouldn't dare open the door anyway, now, for he'd catch us before we could get out. I know the ways of these tricky cats." ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... many. Some delay caused by the sledge drivers who joined us late at night from Bakaritza with oats. Left at 8:40. Billeting party given an hour's start, travelling ahead of the point to get billets and dinner arranged. Marching hard. Cold sleet from southeast with drifting snow. The Shackelton boot tricky. Men find it hard to navigate. Road very hilly. Cross this inlet here. Down the long hill and up a winding hill to the crest again which overhangs the stream that soon empties into the big Dvina. To the left on the ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... had made him homesick for the sight of the gophers by the wayside, and the endless panels of wire fencing along which we rushed. (The Prairie has nothing to learn from the Veldt about fencing, or tricky gates.) ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... business shrewdness and how it paid, and how mean and tricky in little deals we Rubes was, and yet we didn't appreciate how to manage big things, till I got kind of ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Grumpy Weasel snapped, "you're altogether too anxious over this business. Everybody knows you're tricky. And I begin to think you're trying to get ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... what worry and annoyance it was! These Great Slave Lake Indians are like a lot of spoiled and petulant children, with the added weakness of adult criminals; they are inconsistent, shiftless, and tricky. Pike, Whitney, Buffalo Jones, and others united many years ago in denouncing them as the most worthless and contemptible of the human race, and since then they have considerably deteriorated. There are exceptions, however, as will be seen ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Brigham, the daring already told tales that promised this last thing should come to pass; how he was become fat-souled, grasping, and tricky, using his sacred office to enlarge his wealth, seizing the canons with their precious growths of wood, the life-giving waterways, and the herding-grounds; taking even from the tithing, of which he rendered no stewardship, and hiding away millions of the dollars for which the faithful ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... forrard to please him. When Wee Laughlin came from the wheel at eight bells, we learned that the ship was now heading to the nor'east, and away from our port; and the old hands, with many shakings of the head, maintained that some tricky game was afoot. The Old Man and the Mate were colloguing earnestly at the break of the poop; and Jones, who went aft on a pretence of trimming the binnacle, reported that the Old Man was expressing heated opinions on the iniquity ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... silver ones—silver with a very bad alloy. Then he wanted a pretty cotton-print handkerchief for a miserable silver bead. With such people it is impossible to strike a bargain. These Barbary Jews are the hardest and most tricky dealers in the world. Ibrahim has been laid up with a bad leg for five months, and intends going to Kuka when he gets better. He wanted me to sell him some mastic, but I refused. He said he wished to have one jolly day, but the fellow is almost a ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... juts out in the bay over nine miles from the land. The same tides had scoured Smith's Island on the other hand—port side going out of the bay, but there are some nasty rocks in the channel. It's a tricky spot, that Smith's Point Shoal, and many a good vessel has gone to pieces ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... slick rascals as well as I do, Frank, you'll understand that they often do just what everybody never dreams they'd be silly enough to try. That's the tricky part of the game, you see. Ordinarily that woods is the last place we'd think of looking for Jules. It ought to have an evil name for him, and make him shun it. You see, that's the way we'd just naturally dope ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... them you simply can't believe in them. Do you remember how you divorced your wife? It's nearly twenty years ago, and I dare say you have forgotten it all; but I remember it as though I'd divorced you yesterday. Good Lord, what a lot of worry I had over it! I was a sharp fellow, tricky and cunning, a desperate character. . . . Sometimes I was burning to tackle some ticklish business, especially if the fee were a good one, as, for instance, in your case. What did you pay me then? Five or six thousand! That was worth taking ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... thoughts are of a high nature, you become connected with people of the same mental caliber and you are able to help yourself. If your thoughts are tricky, you will bring tricky people to deal with you, who will try to ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... dear Gretchen, winsome lass, I want no tricky wine, But amber nectar bring to me, Whose rich bouquet will cling to me, Whose spirit voice will sing to me From out the mug divine So, here's your toll—a kiss—away, You Hebe of the Rhine! No goblet's ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... indicator marked "Half speed," and it really meant half speed. Captain Zoradus Wass made scripture of the rules laid down by the Department of Commerce and Labor. There was no tricky slipping-over under his sway—no finger-at-nose connivance between the pilot-house and the chief engineer's grille platform. No, Captain Wass was not that kind of a man, though the fog had held in ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Cleena and I tell you to do. You'll be treated well. I'll show you how you can make a lot of that money you like so much; upon condition, though—upon the one condition that you simply behave correctly. You are wise enough to understand me. If you disobey or prove tricky—well, I have but to hand you over to the law and you're ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Sohr: these were sad experiences; ill to bear, with the Sea-Powers grumbling on you, and the world sniffing its pity on you;—but are not conclusive, are only provoking and even maddening, to the sanguine mind. Two sad failures; but let us try another time. "A tricky man; cunning enough, your King of Prussia!" thinks Bruhl, with a fellness of humor against Friedrich which is little conceivable to us now: "Cunning enough. But it is possible cunning may be surpassed by deeper ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... at my grandfather. “You old lunatic, I wish to God I had never seen you! No wonder you came back to life! You’re a tricky old devil and too mean ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... judge in reality; partly the size of the cash balance which rumor whispered he carried at the county bank, partly the fact that he was the only lawyer in that section, had earned him the title. But every trick of his tricky trade which he could invent he had brought against the owner of that little, dilapidated cottage in a vain effort to force him to sell. And yet the acre of neglect and ruin still clung like an unsightly burr to the hem of his ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... joinings and the difficulties of them, and these nevertheless afford us some pleasure, because they test the sharpness of our wits, and engross, our attention; so also these questions, which seem subtle and tricky, prevent our intellects becoming careless and lazy, for they ought at one time to have a field given them to level, in order that they may wander about it, and at another to have some dark and rough passage thrown ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... talked, the twilight had deepened into darkness, the fire had died down, and the corners of the room were filled with mysterious tricky shadows that danced with the flickering flames on the hearth. Jean looked fearfully over her shoulder. There was a creepy feeling in the back of her neck, and Jock's eyes were as round as door-knobs. The Shepherd laughed ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... 'has also proved a frost. I wandered round to Comrade Rossiter's desk just now with a rather brainy excursus on "The Eternal City", and was received with the Impatient Frown rather than the Glad Eye. He was in the middle of adding up a rather tricky column of figures, and my remarks caused him to drop a stitch. So far from winning the man over, I have gone back. There now exists between Comrade Rossiter and myself a certain coldness. Further investigations will be ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... made guesses. I couldn't know that they were right. When you tried to kill me, you confirmed every one. Now, when we land on Orede I'm going to get you to try to put me in touch with your friends. It's going to be tricky, because they must be pretty well scared about that ship. But it's a highly ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... sketched in some of the theatrical frescoes in the "Chapel of the Eucharist," and a misguided personage named Orsel, splashed out the gaudy decorations of the "Chapel of the Virgin." The whole edifice glares at the spectator like a badly-managed limelight, and the tricky, glittering, tawdry effect blisters one's very soul. But here may be seen many little select groups out of the hell of Paris,—fresh from the burning as it were, and smelling of the brimstone,—demons who enjoy their demonism,—satyrs, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... fine. Say, Bob, I ain't so darned sure that fellow'll be there so big when it comes to a show-down. He looks to me tricky rather than game. Take him by surprise. Then crawl his hump sudden. With which few well-chosen words I close. Yores sincerely, Well-wisher, as these guys sign themselves when ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... should, and left undone what I shouldn't do, my dear and lovely sister?" he asked her, half-laughing and half-abashed. "It's a tricky business being here, you know—to put it no higher than that. And it might, with truth, be put far higher. I get so horribly fearful of letting you down in any way—however trivial—before other people. I balance on a knife-edge ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... that Beth should be educated, and therefore the books were produced every morning. Mrs. Caldwell had tried in vain to teach Beth anything by rule, such as grammar. Beth's memory was always tricky. Anything she cared about she recollected accurately; but grammar, which had been presented to her not as a means to an end but as an end in itself, failed to interest her, and if she remembered a rule she forgot to apply it, until Aunt Victoria set her ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... deaf man's bay was standing, bidding him pay whatever was due to the dealer, and bring the horse to the south gate; my intention being to mount one of my men on it, and furnish the woman with a less tricky steed. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... over to Mr. Burris. I got too much of paper in that Con-o-way. Court House. Got more paper in there than the house worth! Have to step to Con-o-way all the time. Struggle and starve myself out for these fifteen acres. Thirty miles to Con-o-way. Thirty miles back by the course I travels. All them tricky mens try to go and get old Ben's land sign to 'em. That's the mainest thing take me to Con-o-way every week. They all talk so sugar mouth till my name down; then when my name write is another thing. When I in too much trouble, I just ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... was no exception to the rule.—However, he was cleverer than Christophe. Though he was uncompromising and clumsy in handling his own affairs, when it came to promoting Christophe's success he was politic and even tricky: he displayed an energy and ingenuity well calculated to win support: he succeeded in interesting various musical critics and Maecenases in Christophe, though he would have been utterly ashamed to approach them ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... tell me why you invented all this tricky yarn, complicating it by bringing in the sham journey to Italy and ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... appealed to, and asked whether many of the childish freaks with which they are familiar—pullings of hair, pinchings, slaps, throwing about of objects, piling up of furniture, playing on accordions, &c.—are not more rationally accounted for as the tricky vagaries of sub-human forces, than as the actions of "spirits" who, while in the body, were certainly incapable of ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... grass was just as pleasant to sit upon as the car seat and she knew nothing whatever about the tricky ways ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... quite plain what Mr. Shaw means, even when he is joking, and it generally means that the people he is talking to ought to howl aloud for their sins. But the average representative of them undoubtedly treats the Shavian meaning as tricky and complex, when it is really direct and offensive. He always accuses Shaw of pulling his leg, at the exact moment when ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... to have acted, in a degree, the part of a demagogue. Yet he is not to be classed with those tricky and dishonest men, so common in our times, who play upon popular prejudices which they do not share, in the expectation of being elevated to honors and office. Mather's position, convictions, and temperament alike called him to serve on this occasion as the organ, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... over it for another four days. The question was a tricky one, for malignant immortality was beyond human solution. It was not just a matter of dealing out punishment. The problem now was the protection of the race from sudden annihilation. An insolvable problem, but one that must be solved. They ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... mustache and essayed extenuation. "It was—er—unworthy of me, of course; foolish—pig-headed—tricky, I suppose. I got mad. I'd nothing to sell, and the declaration is a farce when they examine after it. So I left them to find what they chose. I'm terribly sorry, for you seem to hate it so. But it's an idiotic ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... petticoats round about. It was not unnatural, then, that my father, with his peculiar turn of mind, should set me down as being partially insane. I had also manufactured several very highly-colored verses in praise of Cape Cod; and these my publisher, who was by no means a tricky man, said had made a great stir in the literary world. And his assertion I found confirmed by the critics, who, with one accord, and without being paid, declared these verses proof that the author possessed "a rare inventive ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... she is, and will shift his helm as she shifts hers. 'Twill be a long running fight, and when one strikes, t'other won't have much to boast of. Perhaps they may sheer off after all—perhaps they may sail as consorts; God only knows; but this I knows, that Tom's sweetheart may be as tricky as she pleases, but Tom's wife won't be—'cause why? He'll keep her in order. Well, good-night; I have a ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... but spirited horses; droves of small donkeys, their masters perched on their cruppers, almost on their tails, their legs almost touching the ground, ready to be used in case the tricky animal falls or jibs, or even indulges, as it often does, in a roll in the dust of the road. In the East the ass is neither contemned nor considered ridiculous as it is in France; it has preserved its Homeric and biblical ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Bourmont and Lecourbe, the two arms of Ney as commander, through whom alone he could communicate with the troops, he not only kept with him, but consulted to the last, before he declared for Napoleon. This would have been too dangerous a thing for a tricky politician to have attempted as a blind, but Ney was well known to be only too frank and impulsive. Had the Due de Berry gone with him, had Ney carried with him such a gage of the intention of the Bourbons to defend their throne, it is probable ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Hammersmith Suspension Bridge in all its simple beauty, and see the Soapworks and the Mall on the hither and further shore. Our course led, not through serpentine canals and past Doges' palaces, gaudy with the lavish adornments of tricky Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see "lions" as historical as those which ornament the facade of Saint Mark's. However, as we glided up against the tide, in slow but steady progress, by willowy banks and osiered eyots, our boat yawning in and out and ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and enterprise, as in Quito; a proof that mental degeneracy does not necessarily result from the mixture of white with Indian blood. "There is, however," confesses Bates, after ten years' experience, "a considerable number of superlatively lazy, tricky, and sensual characters among the half-castes, both in rural places and in the towns." Our observations do not support the opinion that the result of amalgamation is "a vague compound, lacking character and expression." The moral part is perhaps deteriorated; but ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... said. "I used to pitch a tricky ball! I'll get a fuse ready, open a panel, and give it a throw. While I have the panel open, though, you fellows open up a loophole in front and do some shooting out of it to attract attention. I don't want any poisoned ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Valley to the west, and other settlers away up the Verde toward Camp Sandy. Then Sowerby swore his stock was run off, and Bennett presently remained the only ranchman to stand up for them. The agent declared them contumacious and tricky. Other whites—Arizona white was then a reddish-brown—added their evil word to the official's. It was the old adage over again: "Give a dog a bad name," etc., and the department commander had sent for scouts to coax them in, before despatching ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... see. It's a tricky place. I shall never forget the look of relief on that old fellow's face at sight of me. I believe he thinks to this day that I saved his life. He stuck to me like a leech all the way through the further caves and till we got ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... had a sly, artful eye and a way of shaking his head that was tricky—and try to catch him loose on the prairie with a bucket of oats as a coaxer! There were times on the trail when one could not see him moving except at close range. When he took such a spell, one ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... the bondsmen of a public official who made a hasty departure to Canada, one evening, leaving his business in such a shape that his securities were compelled to pay fifty thousand dollars. Two others were associated with Mr. Wyckoff, and with the aid of their tricky lawyers they managed matters so that four-fifths of the loss fell upon the estate ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... baleful glare. "You should ask—with as much experience as both of us have had with these tricky motors. I choked it down, that's all. That same little fault has sent many a pilot home in a wooden box. Go get me a piece of that wire. We'll fix the skid, somehow, and when I get to Le Bourget I'll set her down on two points. And listen! From here ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... He had been tricky again. Once out of sight of the guard, he made not for the Space Symphony, but for the Long ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... for him before going away. He saw nothing addressed to himself, but on the ground, where it had evidently dropped, was an open note. Joe could not help reading it at a glance. To his surprise it was signed by Sanford, the tricky law clerk. ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... vast bearings of the real conspiracy made Philippe a man of great distinction in the eyes of Carpentier and Mignonnet, to whom his self-devotion seemed a state-craft worthy of the palmy days of the Convention. In a short time the tricky Bonapartist was seen to be on friendly terms with the two officers, and the consideration they enjoyed in the town was, of course, shared by him. He soon obtained, through their recommendation, the situation in the insurance office that ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... eleventh, Wallace won the twelfth and lost the fourteenth, both making threes on the tricky thirteenth. Wallace took the medal lead by winning the fifteenth in another perfect three, and the sixteenth produced fours for both of them. It was Kirkaldy's turn to register a three on the next, this bringing them to the last hole all square on medal score, with Kirkaldy ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... in a certain skill. The lesson he had just received was not lost on him. He was cautious, tricky, and alert—more so than Tom suspected, and he put forth the utmost cunning of ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... saw there a head upon which the brown hair curled slightly. The eyes were turned away, but the Secretary knew they were blue and that there was something in the face which appealed to strong men for protection. He shook his head slowly. The tricky little god was making sport of him, James Sefton, the invincible, and he ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... is to detest all mannerism in language and expression; it is, not to take pleasure in, or to be arrested by, petty graces, elaborate subtlety, superfine finish, excessive refinement of any kind, a tricky ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... to light a cigarette, fell behind. But the wind was tricky, and with his third match he stepped into a stone archway, lighted his cigarette, buttoned his tunic high against the chill, and emerged to a silent but violent struggle just ahead. The two men had been attacked by three ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... him, private, that I'm setting up something tricky. He can laugh off anything his security guys report that I'm mixed up in. Joe'll see that he gets the whole picture beforehand. But he ain't to tell anybody—not anybody—that something is getting ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... flight of six steps, was a very handsome-looking door, with a projecting porch. All the windows, with smallish panes and largish frames, were relieved with stone copings; so that the house had an air of solidity and well-to-do-ness about it,—nothing tricky on the one hand, nothing decayed on the other. The house stood a little back from the garden gates, which were large, and set between two piers surmounted with vases. Many might object that in wet weather you had to walk some way to your carriage; but we obviated ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suspicions are aroused, you ought to be like a man mounted on a tricky horse, who always watches the ears of the beast, in fear of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... matched nicely—nicely, thank you. She was terribly worried over the woman's condition, and she gave herself wholly to her professional zeal and never dreamed that her manchild was at that moment riding deeper and deeper into the Badlands with a tricky devil of a man, looking for a baby ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... be perfectly awful to lose everything that way; to feel it is all an injustice, yet not to be able to prove one's own claim," said Belle. "Tricky business men are worse to watch than spiteful girls, and we always thought they were about all that we could handle. There's Ted and Jean. Just look at ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... decided that the only way to get all the wood animals to have a good opinion of him was to give a big dinner, for he had somehow got rather a bad name among the animals for being so tricky. ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... eye on Ulysses, who had now got the bow in his hands, and was turning it every way about, and proving it all over to see whether the worms had been eating into its two horns during his absence. Then would one turn towards his neighbour saying, "This is some tricky old bow-fancier; either he has got one like it at home, or he wants to make one, in such workmanlike style does the old ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... boomed,' he said, meditatively, 'but one or two are very much out. By Jove! that's a tricky bend there.' He took a bearing with the compass, made a note or two, and sprang with a vigorous leap down on ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... intelligence bureau issues the most alarming reports as to the frightfulness of the defences here I was agreeably surprised at the ease with which we passed. Von Weissman, to whom I had hinted that we might find the passage tricky, rather laughed at my suggestion, and described to me his method, which, at all events, has ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... woods is young Mink, His coat is so lovely one never would think That'd he do naughty things, but we've often been told He is tricky and ...
— Animal Children - The Friends of the Forest and the Plain • Edith Brown Kirkwood
... sense of his own importance. Instead of being ashamed of his ailments he tries to describe as many as he can think of. His specific complaint may be a touch of sciatica, but he takes pleasure in recalling a bad habit of breathing through the mouth in moments of excitement, and a tricky memory which often leads him to carry about his wife's letters an entire week before mailing them. The need for a certain amount of self-castigation is implanted in all of us, and it is satisfied in the form of confession. ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... earth is it that all girls are so tricky?" Dan asked himself savagely, taking it for granted that all girls are ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... I wrote, "who are so wise in the ways of those tricky things called nerves, must know that it was only a mild hysteria that made me say those most unladylike things. I have written Norah all about it. She has replied, advising me to stick to the good-fellow role but ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... the pony's powers. Finally, when the little animal's triumph seemed complete, Grant stepped into the ring and sprang upon his back. A tremendous tussle for the mastery immediately ensued, but though he reared and shied and kicked, the tricky little beast was utterly unable to throw its fearless young rider, and amid the shouts of the audience the clown at last stopped the contest and paid ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... audience and allow the owner to place it in the box, as shown in Fig. 1. This box should be about 3 in. long, 4 in. wide and 2-1/2 in. deep, says the Scientific American. It should be provided with a hinged cover, M, with a lock, N. The tricky part of this box is the side S, which is pivoted at T by driving two short nails into it, one through the front side and the other through the back, so that when S is pushed in at the top, it swings around as shown ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the papers were ready and the shares of stock divided between the principals, an injunction was served on Dad by a tricky company in New York which claimed prior rights to the patent. This has held up everything so that Dr. Evans is not sure whether he will ever realize anything out of his invention or not. Of course, we are fighting the legality of Ratzger & ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the army the time of the Zulu war. Great hardship we got in it and plenty of starvation. It was the Dutch called in the English to help them against the Zulus, that were tricky rogues, and would do no work but to be driving the cattle off the fields. A pound of raw flour we would be given out at seven o'clock in the morning, and some would try to make a cake, and some would put it in a pot with water and be stirring it, and it might be eleven ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... has performed this feat for about the tenth time, he concludes that it was madness for him, a mere raw amateur at the business, to think that he could manage a complicated, tricky bed of this sort, that must take even an experienced man all he knows to sleep in it; and gets out ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... his paper-knife and tapped it against the edge of the table with one of the tricky movements familiar to thoughtful men when they give themselves ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... was a sickly white, covered almost to the eyes with a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter's coat. Phillips's comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted and conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes were full of a hopeless, tricky defiance like that seen in a cur's that is cornered by his tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high, but a quarter inch of redeeming collar showed above it. His manner was singularly free from embarrassment when Chalmers ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... spot—his figure painting. The entire essay should be read, for it contains a study of the Joshua in which this most delicious of English prose writers speaks of the "wise falsifications" of the great masters. Before his death the critics, tiring of him sooner than the public, called Martin tricky, meretricious, mechanical. To be sure, his drawing is faulty, his colour hot and smoky; nevertheless, he was not a charlatan. As David Wilkie wrote: "Weak in all these points in which he can be compared to other artists," he had the compensating ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the enemy's head. If you have great luck a faint groan or a distant shout of pain may reward your efforts; but you can never be quite sure whether you have got home on your rival or not. Loophole shooting is very tricky, and the very best shots fire by the hour in vain. I ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... understand the science of eating, the wife must educate him. Remember his success means your success, his failure, your failure. If you were in charge of a highly complicated machine, you would not allow it to be ruined by careless misuse. You may have married a healthy animal, but animals are tricky and uncertain. He is still your lover and he will do anything reasonable for you, if you "go about it in the right spirit and in the right way." Be sure you "go about it in the right way." Be tactful, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... rustler's daughter," she cried. "That's so much more terrible than I'd suspected. It was tricky cattle deals I imagined he was engaged in. But only to-night I had ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... played it well, because she played her own willful, tricky self, and she kissed her taper fingers to the enraptured audience, and felt sorry to think it might be ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... clean my revolver. He always did things at queer times. I suppose it went off. It had a tricky hammer. It went off. By accident—not... He hadn't any reason to... He said, only yesterday, when he got back, that he couldn't stay away from home any longer. He said he had to come home. So, you see, there isn't any reason to think... He was cleaning it. And ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... Conway will drift by about ten o'clock or ten-thirty, Mr. Parker. I know he will not cause you any more inconvenience than he finds absolutely necessary, sir. He's tricky, but he isn't mean." ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... weeds and asked him just what tools he'd need. It was a simple question, predicating a simple answer. Yet he didn't seem able to reply to it. He scratched his close-clipped pate and said he'd have to look things over and study it out. Windmills were tricky things, one kind demanding this sort of treatment and ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... was good, although tricky. In a case of aroused interest he could absorb an astonishing number of dates, or figures, or lines of poetry, at first glance or hearing. But he could also drop them as if he had never heard of them the moment his interest was gone. And they always seemed to drop out of sight when he ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... "terror-stricken" wagons. The very touches of poetic impressionism that largely make for Crane's greatness, are cited to prove him an ignoramus. There is the finest of poetic imagery in the suggestions subtly conveyed by Crane's tricky adjectives, the use of which was as deliberate with him as his choice of a subject. But Crane was an imagist before our ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... His bold tricky eyes swept over her, and somehow she felt more gratified than by all the bulging glances of the ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... painted woman and the politely talkative young man, and passed without a word from outside for the girl whose nerves were fraying with the suspense. The old woman and the little girl had served them with a meal which would have been judged delicious in any European hotel and though Arlee's nerves were tricky her young appetite was not and she ate and talked with a determined little air of trying to dissipate the strangeness ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... patience and tactful management, many refusers may be taught to repose sufficient confidence in their riders to make an effort when required, but that can be done only by gentle means and easy tasks. Old tricky offenders cannot be cured of this or any other vice. A lady who is hunting on a doubtful jumper should be careful not to upset other horses by letting her refuser perform in front of them, but should show consideration for her companions by keeping a backward place, supposing that several ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... and 'seventies, and indeed Mr. Durant's evangelical protestantism might not have relished the parallel. Boston seems, for the most part, to have averted its eyes from the spectacle of the brilliant, possibly unscrupulous, some said tricky, lawyer bringing souls to Christ. But he did bring them. We are told that "The halls and churches where he spoke were crowded. The training and experience which had made him so successful a pleader before judge and ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... a miracle is now behind instead of at the side of the horse. And before the horse going at top speed can be reined in and turned round, the rhea has had time to recover his wind and get a hundred yards away or more. It is on account of this tricky instinct of the rhea that the gauchos say, "El avestruz es el mas gaucho de los animales," which means that the ostrich, in its resourcefulness and the tricks it practises to save itself when hard pressed, is as clever as the gaucho ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... unless he himself can get the credit for their installation. In disposition he is stubborn and obstinate. He is also reserved and suspicious. Being of the selfish type, he will look after his own interests first in all things. No. 1 lacks straightforwardness and frankness of disposition, so he will be tricky, slippery, and do things in an underhanded way. He has very great dislike of detail and will have a tendency to procrastinate if given an opportunity, I believe he has passed the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... must be taken, lest out of this freedom there grow a lazy indifference about killing the wantonness of the flesh; for the roguish Adam is exceedingly tricky in looking for permission for himself, and in pleading the ruin of the body or of the mind; so some men jump right in and say it is neither necessary nor commanded to fast or to mortify the flesh, and are ready to eat this and that without fear, just as if they had for a long time had much ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... neighbourhood." It had been otherwise with my first Expedition: a forlorn hope, a miracle of moral audacity; the heaviest of responsibilities incurred upon the slightest of justifications, upon the pinch of sand which a tricky and greedy old man might readily have salted. It reminds me of a certain "Philip sober," who in the morning fainted at the sight of the precipice which he had scaled when "Philip drunk." I look back with ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... will respond, without any doubt, but it will be after his own fashion. The boy will take that master's measure with extraordinary rapidity; he will call him by some disparaging nickname, with an unholy approximation to truth; he will concoct tricky questions to detect his ignorance; he will fling back his benefits with contempt; he will make his life a misery, and will despise him as long as he lives. Let a man of masculine character and evident ability set himself to rule and drill boys, holding no unnecessary converse ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... to bring up eggs for breakfast, but here are other things," he mutters as he rummages in his market-basket. "That memory of mine is pretty tricky; sometimes I can't remember things any better than I can find them when they are right under my nose. I've just found a line from Emerson that I've been hunting for two days—'The worm striving to be ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... always now was pure white, not so fast as Silver Star and very tricky, called The Dancer, from a nervous habit of dancing on his hind-legs at starting and stopping, like a circus-horse. He was difficult to mount, and edged away shyly as Diana tried to get her foot into the stirrup. But she ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... she did. You know how she acted; she had made up her mind she wouldn't go. Only she was tricky about it. She knew I had my eye on her, so she got this ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... word "tramp" with a shocking lack of pride—led him inevitably into the far Northwest. Men were doing things up there. The country fairly seethed with the activity of live, virile men who were taking the first staunch grip upon the tricky wheel of fortune and were turning it to their own account. Every man was building; no man complained of conditions, for conditions were so new and so ready to hand that he who found fault was merely lessening his own chance to secure his share of the vast resources that ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... ago, for clearness of statement, and for an easy and straightforward method of speech he had few superiors. His language was excellent, his manner that of a man who had something to say and was intent upon saying it. He was at no time a tricky orator, nor did he aim at rousing the feelings, but in the clearest possible manner he would make his points and no amount of prejudice was sufficient to resist his conclusions. He was a great reader, and reflected on all that ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... to see why Marcius is considered to have been a simple-minded and straightforward character, while Alkibiades has the reputation of a false and tricky politician. The latter has been especially blamed for the manner in which he deceived and outwitted the Lacedaemonian ambassadors, by which, as we learn from Thucydides, he brought the truce between the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... is one of the healthful exercises of the spiritual life. Unless we count, memory is apt to be very tricky and to snare us into strange forgetfulness. Unless we count what we have given away, we are very apt to exaggerate our bounty. We often think we have given when we have only listened to appeals; the mere audience has been mistaken ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... exploded by a spark running through a length of fuse, the length depending altogether upon the time required to reach a point of safety after the fuse is lighted. The cap is really more dangerous to handle than is the dynamite itself. The cap is a tricky thing that may go off at any jar or scratch or at a spark from pipe or cigarette. You can, if you are sufficiently careless of possible results, light the twisted paper end of a stick of dynamite and watch the dynamite ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... little best not to be. Rather tricky work, though, getting back. I've got to climb two garden walls, and I shall probably be so full of Malvoisie that you'll be able to hear it swishing about inside me. No catch steeple-chasing if you're like that. They've no thought for people's convenience ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Possibly the Germans, who are in many matters ahead of us, have perfected a pigeon post. Even so, I cannot help thinking they would have been wiser to train the birds, while they were about it, to deliver the letters nearer the ground. Getting your letters out of those boxes must be tricky work even ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... into action, they was needed very sore, To learn a little schoolin' to a native army corps, They 'ad nipped against an uphill, they was tuckin' down the brow, When a tricky, trundlin' roundshot give the knock ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... dry, hacking cough, especially irritable in smoke of camp or under stress of undue exertion. On the Thirty Mile river he found much open water, spanned by precarious ice bridges and fringed with narrow rim ice, tricky and uncertain. The rim ice was impossible to reckon on, and he dared it without reckoning, falling back on his revolver when his drivers demurred. But on the ice bridges, covered with snow though they were, precautions could be taken. These they crossed on ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... steamers! Tricky, they is, and unsyfe ... No, yer gryce, the W. Stryker Packet Line Lim'ted, London to Antwerp, charges four pounds per passyge and no ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... become tired of being good, the real Tommy appeared, and for at least a week we had really what Nurse calls a "regular time of it." There was not a trick he did not know; and the worst of it was that our boys became tricky too, and we really did not know how to bear the rough usage we all received, for we never had a moment's pleasure or peace of our lives; and what with sand in our hair, wet star-fish down our backs, and seeing our dolls shipwrecked in their best clothes ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... piece of land that was not for sale contains exactly eleven acres. Of course it is not difficult to find the answer if we follow the eccentric and tricky tracks of intricate trigonometry; or I might say that the application of a well-known formula reduces the problem to finding one-quarter of the square root of (4 x 370 x 116) -(370 116 - 74) squared—that is a quarter of the ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... V admitted slightingly. "But he's so tricky, so—so absolutely impossible! A girl friend of mine has a brother that goes in for that sort of thing. I think he invented something that goes on a motor, or something. And I know he was terribly cheated by Bland Halliday. I think Bland borrowed a lot of money, or ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... to write something about the odour and taste of this well-flavoured earth. The fact is, both the sense of smell and the sense of taste; have been shabbily treated in the amiable rivalry of the senses. Sight and hearing have been the swift and nimble brothers, and sight especially, the tricky Jacob of the family, is keen upon the business of seizing the entire inheritance, while smell, like hairy Esau, comes late to the blessing, hungry from the hills, and willing to trade its inheritance for a ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... adorable, tender prettiness of love-making leads to physical love inevitably, and I always thought and hoped and believed that after it I'd arrive at some Ultima Thule of understanding, of comradeship, of equality. Never! Ugh, they were soft! Soft flesh, soft spirit, tricky brain! Sometimes I have a nightmare of trying to get to heaven up mountains of woman-flesh—soft, scented stuff, sucking one in like quicksands. You're the only woman I've ever thought much about and not made love to! To you I couldn't ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... gazed beyond the Khatkan to the barren ground where leopard and rock ape had ceased to be. "This magic is a tricky thing, sir. It builds and feeds upon a man's own imagination and inner fears. Lumbrilo, having triggered ours, need not strive at all, but let us ourselves raise ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... girl's elfish personality, with unhappy eyes. Just what did Mignon mean by intimating that several persons were "going to be surprised" when to-morrow's practice game was over? It sounded like a threat. No doubt it was. Suppose—some one were to be hurt through this tricky playing of Mignon's team! Suppose that some one were to be Marjorie! Mary shuddered. She remembered once reading in a newspaper an account of a basket-ball game in which a girl had been tripped by an opponent and had fallen. That girl had hurt her spine and the physicians had ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... atmosphere of Paris about the stocky little fourteen-year-old chap, that we would often keep him longer with us, and treat him to a glass of anisette to hear his opinion of the writers whose work he handled. He was an amusing cross between a tricky little Paris gamin and a real child, and he hit off the characteristics of the various writers with as keen a touch of actuality as he could put into his stories of how many centimes he had won that morning at 'craps' from his friend Pierre. Pierre was another employee of the ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... involves the player in a somewhat tricky piece of cross-country work. There is a nasty ditch to be negotiated. Many an optimist has been reduced to blank pessimism by that ditch. "All hope abandon, ye who enter here," might be written on a notice ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... horribly flat, told to the absolutely simple hearted, and to the Teller, after explanations were over, it seemed that the Listener had in some way cut open modern genius and exposed a little tricky mechanism working on a view point ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... lure you on to their backs, where, unless you have a perfect understanding of the game, the joke will be on you. Instantly one is mounted, the humility departs; he plunges and starts about, or sets off like the wind, regardless of thorny bushes, tricky ground underfoot, or ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... "When the tricky raccoon heard this he hurried back and at once untied the rope from the bushes and refastened it to the post near the water. When the second brother came along he easily found the water, and filling the kettle he returned to the wigwam where he vigorously accused his brother of lying. ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... was well enough on the following Tuesday after Black Friday to attend another meeting of the W.S.P.U. at Caxton Hall, to hear one more ambiguous, tricky, many-ways-to-be-interpreted promise of the then Prime Minister. Mrs. Pankhurst pointing out the vagueness of these assurances announced her intention then and there of going round to Downing Street to ask ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... riding-switch. "It's a tricky climate," he observed, "but I am keeping an eye on the weather. I don't anticipate anything of the nature of a ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... bride answered: "I don't know about that; but the Japanese must be awfully tricky, for Pinkey says so and the captain of the ship, who hates every inhabitant of the Empire, said the banks had to ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... trim ankles showed the inflexibility of age, when she saw that the woman was not going to get out of her way. Hannah Winter swerved quickly to avoid a collision. So did the other woman. Next instant Hannah Winter brought up with a crash against her own image in that long and tricky mirror which forms a broad full-length panel set in the marble wall at the north end of Peacock Alley. Passersby and the loungers on near-by red plush seats came running, but she was unhurt except for a forehead bump that remained ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... and unlawfully, the heads of railroads met to agree on rates which by discriminating against one locality in favour of another crushed out competition, raised the cost to the consumer, and put millions in the pockets of the Trust. Here were planned tricky financial operations, with deliberate intent to mislead and deceive the investing public, operations which would send stocks soaring one day, only a week later to put Wall Street on the verge of panic. Half a dozen suicides might result from the coup, but twice as many millions of profits had ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... of the year. What, that last one hardly sank down before it was taken and this seems to be a jim-dandy of a boy too by the way he pulls. I hope I don't lose him now," and he began to play the captive as cautiously as his experience in landing tricky ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... when he comes down," suggested George Watson, who used to be a mean, tricky boy, making a lot of trouble for Bunny and Sue. But, of late, George ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
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