"Poke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leaves of the poke-berry plant when quite small and first beginning to sprout up from the ground in the spring, are by most persons considered very nice, and are frequently brought to market. If the least too old they acquire a strong taste, and should not be eaten, as they ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... counter! When a need arose, as when a birthday was suddenly remembered the day before it fell due, or an anniversary suggested the propriety of a little offering, it was the easiest thing in the world to poke about in the cupboard until a suitable ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a plenty of frigates, too. The Frenchy must have suspicioned where I was bound, for he has followed us up sharp, and as we came by South Head I seen him jest a bilin' along 'bout ten mile astarn, and now he'll poke into every hole of the bay till he finds us. Anyhow, there won't be no chance to trade long as he's round, for you folks don't dare say your soul's your own when there's ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... after it was mortally wounded, attacked Mr. Oswell's horse, and thrust the horn through to the saddle, tossing at the time both horse and rider. I once saw a white rhinoceros give a buffalo, which was gazing intently at myself, a poke in the chest, but it did not wound it, and seemed only a hint to get out of the way. Four varieties of the rhinoceros are enumerated by naturalists, but my observation led me to conclude that there are but two, and that the extra species have been formed ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... may be right, as Forby (Vocabulary, vol. ii. p. 258.) mentions Poke-Day as the day on which the allowance of corn is made to the labourers, who, in some places, receive a part of their wages in that form. Now the Pokerer might be the officer who distributed ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... unwearying industry. His quick eye detected what others passed by without notice: the Indian relic, where another would see only pebbles and fragments; the rare mollusk, or reptile, which his companion would poke with his cane, never suspecting that there was a prize at the end of it. Getting his single facts together with marvellous sagacity and long-breathed patience, he arranged them, classified them, described them, studied them in their relations, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... were HER people out there on the platform and inside the car ahead—those rough men in slouch hats, jeans and cowhide boots, their mouths stained with tobacco juice, their cheeks and eyes on fire with moonshine, and those women in poke-bonnets with their sad, worn, patient faces on which the sympathetic good cheer and joy of the moment sat so strangely. She noticed their rough shoes and their homespun gowns that made their figures all alike and shapeless, with a vivid awakening of ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... of the moon or street lamp coming in at the window and casting shadows on the sloping whitewashed ceiling; and your guttered candle. What will you try on to-night? A hat, or a dress, or the two-and-eleven-three-farthing blouse? Shift the candle. Show yourself to the looking-glass. A poke here and a pull there—and now put everything away carefully in the box under the ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... on quite long enough," said George Cannon, as he stooped to poke the morsel of fire in the old-fashioned grate, which had a hob on either side. On one of these hobs was a glass of milk. Hilda had learnt that day for the first time that at a certain hour every evening ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... home. The poor old man was put to bed, and though he tried it every morning until the end, he never could get up again. He would lie there and cough and cough, day and night, wasting away to a mere skeleton. There came a time when there was so little flesh on him that the bones began to poke through—which was a horrible thing to see or even to think of. And one night he had a choking fit, and a little river of blood came out of his mouth. The family, wild with terror, sent for a doctor, and paid half a dollar to be told that there was nothing to be done. Mercifully ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the house will look outside," asked Jack, giving the fire a poke, "or is that to be left ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... them, and gave an occasional poke with his cold nose to be sure they were there as they drove through the bustling streets of New York to a great house with an ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... of mowing machines everywhere, like the distant hum of a city. Fat cattle stood knee-deep in a stream as we passed, and others lay contentedly on the clover-covered banks. One restless spirit, with a poke on her neck, sniffed at us as we went by, and tossed her head in grim defiance of public opinion and man-made laws. She had been given a bad name—and was going to ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... pocket-picking is, of course; and you have heard of working on the 'stop,' most likely. Which means picking pockets when the party is standing still; but it is more difficult on the 'fly.' You must remember that. I remember once going along Oxford Street, and I prigged an old woman's 'poke,'[17] on the 'fly.' She missed it very quick, and was coming after me when I slipped it into an old countryman's pocket as I was passing. She came up and accused me with stealing her purse. I, of course, allowed her to search me, and ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... you to put in your two cents' worth, you old croaker?" said Herb, giving Jimmy a poke in his well padded ribs. "I'll win that prize just as well by not working as you will by working. You know you're too fat and lazy, to make up a set all ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... began to massage each other in turn, to rub and to thump, to slap and knead the limbs and muscles, then, in their intense curiosity, even the children forgot their timidity and crowded round. A pickaninny—the queerest little mite—even ventured to poke a tiny finger into the ribs of one of the three. After that there was a great pow-wow. Mr. Hume, with a man in the palm of each hand, a boy on each shoulder, and a couple hanging from each brawny arm, sent the spectators into shrieks of amusement, and they there and ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... thicker in the plates than seven pages of the Sunday paper—they know that, but maybe that is their safety. There is no getting a fair wallop at them. They evade the issue. One man compared them to a hot-water bottle. Try to swat a loaded hot-water bottle. And what happens? "When you poke it in one place don't it bulge out in another to make up for it? Sure it does. And how do you account for that other one we were talking about? A couple o' years ago—the one that had her stern cut off so that the men in the after compartment ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... thing As a hummin'-bird upon the wing, And as liable to poke his nose Jest where folks would least suppose,— And more'n likely build his nest Right in the heart you'd leave unguessed, And live and thrive at your expense— At least, that's MY experience. And old Jeff Thompson often thought, In his se'fish way, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... I began opening one after another the drawers in the chest. Each was neatly lined with paper, but otherwise empty. As though possessed by a mania for searching, I took out each paper and carefully assured myself that nothing had slipped underneath. Val, roused by my action, began to poke into the drawers of the dressing-table; but his search was just as fruitless. There was nothing to be done but to settle as to the packing of the clothes ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... skirt, and one of those funny little old-fashioned black shawls with a sewed-on border, that you seldom see nowadays. Do you know the kind I mean? It was a narrow, shawl-pattern border, and there was a short tufty black fringe below the border. And she had a gray poke bonnet, a bonnet made of silk 'gathered' on to a large stiff frame; 'drawn' bonnets they used to be called. I took in all these details of her dress in a moment, and even in that moment I noticed too that the materials of her clothes looked good, though so plain and old-fashioned. But somehow ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... undherstand that no wan iver come out iv Roscommon that cud hold up their heads with th' Hogans,' she says. ''Tis not f'r th' likes iv ye to slandher a fam'ly that's iv th' landed gintry iv Ireland, an' f'r two pins I'd hit ye a poke in th' eye,' she says. If it hadn't been f'r me bein' between thim, they'd have been trouble; f'r they was good frinds wanst. What is it th' good book says about a woman ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... asked us, and—it was dull enough to be sure, and poor Pelham was always in the way—but they were kind comfortable folks. Lady Fotheringham is a dear old dame, and I was in dull spirits just then, and rather liked to poke about with her, and get her to tell me about your ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for your pains," replied Grubb, and apprehending another pig in a poke, he bobbed down and retreated as fast as ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... string of his poke and slipped to one side, as noise reached the group at the bar of a commotion at the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... his bonnet more jauntily, and, setting out up river to Hampton, changed his scarlet clothes for a grey coat and puritan hose, and in the dark did his errand very well. He carried a large poke in which he put the larded capons and the round loaves that the cook sold to him. Later, following a reed path along the river, he came swiftly down to Isleworth with his bag on a cord and, in the darkness from beneath the walls, he slung bag and cord in at Katharine Howard's ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... reached the depot by the bright light streaming through the holes in my box-lid. I was carried up the steps into the sleeping-car, and for the next quarter of an hour it seemed to me that my box changed position every two minutes. The porter was getting us settled for the night He was about to poke the box that held me under the berth where little Elsie and her nurse were to sleep, when Stuart called him from the berth above, into which he had just climbed. So I was tossed up as if I had been an ordinary piece of ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... we call him—had his eyes on the preacher for a long time. When we got him, we had a barrel of liquor and carried him around on our shoulders, until tired of the fun, and threw him in the furnace yonder. We call him “Poke,” for that was his favourite game. Oh, Poke,’ shouted my friend, ‘come here; here's a gentleman who wants to see you—we'll give you five drops of water, and that's more than your ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... was not sure that there might not be room for a man to lie flat under some of the big slabs, and began to poke about ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... he who would poke hole in hornets nest had best be prepared with long legs." Ishie grinned. "You don't think anybody would really appreciate our doing that, do you Mike? Outside of the people themselves, that is, that aren't directly concerned with man's welfare? ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... for once to acknowledge her botany to be at fault, and, though Bess did not triumph, Francie gave Kitty a poke and the ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... great harm if you had. You'd only have bought a pig in a poke—and what then? Oh, here ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... the service is nearly over by the stray boys who steal out and round the walls to throw stones at the sparrows in the roads; they need a little relaxation; nature gets even into Bethel. By-and-by out come some bigger lads and tie two long hop-poles together with which to poke down the swallows' nests under the chapel eaves. The Book inside, of which they almost make an idol, seemed to think the life of a sparrow—and possibly of a swallow—was of value; still it is good fun to see the callow young come down ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... said a woman; "it's the only way, and the humanest. You've only to take a hedge stake and sharpen it a bit at one end, and char it a little in the fire so as there mayt'n't be no splinters to hurt, and then poke it through his stomach." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... me take the lead, Horace; I'm taller," said Larry, at the same time giving his brother a poke In the ribs as a warning ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... against that; so Halvor sat down by the ingle, and began to poke about in the ashes, just as he used to do when he lay at home in old days, and stretched ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... my feet just in time to see a big shaggy beast emerging from the surrounding darkness. I gave a poke to the fire with my foot, it made some dry leaves burst into a flame, and then Dan and I both shouted at the top of our voices. The bear, who had again scented us out, might in another instant have caught Dan or me in his unfriendly embrace; but he stopped short, and then, turning round, ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... Tom Slade that he liked to go off alone occasionally for a ramble in the woods. It was not that he liked the scouts less, but rather that he liked the woods more. It was his wont to stroll off when his camp duties for the day were over and poke ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... commissioners In awful conclave sat, Their noses into this to poke To poke them into that - In awful conclave sat they, And swore a solemn oath, That snuff should make no Briton sneeze, That smokers all to smoke should cease, They ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... political arena of France, had little to learn either of men or of affairs, even from a Peace Conference. Skeptical in attitude, a cold listener, obviously impermeable to mere verbiage and affected by the logic of facts alone, he had a ruthless finger ready to poke into the interstices of a loosely-woven argument. Clemenceau spoke but rarely, in low even tones, with a paucity and awkwardness of gesture surprising in a Latin; he was chary of eloquence, disdaining the obvious arts of the rhetor, but he had ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... Poker bold and free, And I poke the livelong day. I love the land and I hate the sea, But the sky and the clouds ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... can't do in New York, and pretty much everything goes there, or it used to, where I hung out. But here you're just your own master, and there's no law and no religion and no relations nor newspapers to poke into what you do nor how you live. You can understand what I mean if you've ever tried living in the West. I used to feel the same way the year I was ranching in Texas. My family sent me out there to put me out of temptation; but I concluded I'd rather drink myself to death on good whiskey at Del's ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the Hamelin people Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple. "Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles, Poke out the nests and block up the holes! Consult with carpenters and builders, And leave in our town not even a trace Of the rats!"—when suddenly, up the face Of the Piper perked in the market-place, With a—"First, if you ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... religion" of Ludwig Feuerbach. It is thus, e.g., that Ueberweg in his "Grundzuege der Geschichte der Philosophie," (3rd. part, "Philosophie der Neu Zeit") speaks of it. Some have even supposed that the only object Stirner had in writing his book was to poke fun at this philosophy. This supposition is absolutely gratuitous. Stirner in expounding his theory was not joking. He is in deadly earnest about it, though he now and again betrays a tendency, natural enough in the restless times when he wrote, to outdo Feuerbach ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... any horse could do that. Did you ever see such an old poke as we have, and such a bouncy, jolting rattletrap of a carriage? It squeaks ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... coast as we might a resort. It is pleasantly unreal; it is varied. Gentle breezes of sweetness; blue seas, massive rocks; and storms too. Here and there a crag, or dark castle of terrible grandeur. Is it not picturesque? Don't poke at the castles with your umbrella; you might go through the tin; but take it all in the right spirit as you would ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... selected, sharp-pointed sticks, after wading into the shallow water, they began to poke carefully around in all such promising places as mussels ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... explanation of what proggin' meant, Moses said he wasn't quite sure. He could "understand t'ings easy enough though he couldn't allers 'splain 'em." On the whole he thought that prog had a compound meaning—it was a combination of poke and pull "wid a flavour ob ticklin' about it," and ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... phytolacca decandra (Scoke, Poke, Pokeweed) Tall coarse perennial American herb with small white flowers followed by blackish-red berries on long drooping racemes; young fleshy stems are edible; berries and root ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... attire. He was universally voted "a swell dresser," and not a few of the older fellows set themselves to a modest emulation of his style. There remained, however, many unregenerate youths who continued to poke fun at "The Conqueror," and of ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... she acknowledged, with a wistful look at him, half deprecating humility. "I guess I'll poke off to bed." ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... is sometimes the shortest way home, hey, Ed?" and Frank gave him a playful poke that nearly sent him ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... in because he knew the disease of the patient. He had his remedy about him. The pills and the draught were in his pocket—yes, in his patriotic poke; but he refused to take the lid from the box—resolutely determined that the cork should not be drawn from the all-healing phial—until he was regularly called in; and, as the gypsies say, his hand crossed with a bit of money. Well, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... "ayes" or the "noes" would seem to have it! And upon this a poll would be demanded. In such cases the Speaker calls on two members, who come forth and stand fronting each other before the chair, making a gangway. Through this the ayes walk like sheep, the tellers giving them an accelerating poke when they fail to go on with rapidity. Thus they are counted, and the noes are counted in the same way. It seemed to me that it would be very possible in a dishonest legislator to vote twice on any subject of great interest; but it may perhaps be the case that there are no ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... gives me my coffee for lunch in his own little cell, looking out on the olive woods; then he tells me stories of conversions and miracles, and then perhaps we go into the sacristy and have a reverent little poke-out of relics. Fancy a great carved cupboard in a vaulted chamber full of most precious things (the box which the Holy Virgin's veil used to be kept in, to begin with), and leave to rummage in it at will! Things that are only ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... you rascals!" he roared, and began to poke at the monkeys with a sharp stick. But two of them caught the stick and, watching their chance, jerked ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... of our treatment. People were always walking about with their faces to us. One never saw anything in profile. One got an impression of a world that was insanely focused on ourselves. And when I began to poke my little questions into the Lord Chancellor and the archbishop and all the rest of them, about what I should see if people turned round, the general effect I produced was that I wasn't by any means displaying the Royal Tact they ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... incongruously, a joke out of an old Punch came into her head—not at all an esthetic one. It was a picture of a furious woman brandishing a broom, while the tips of her husband's boots showed under the bed-foot. The husband was saying: "Ye may poke at me and ye may threaten me, but ye canna break my manly sperrit. I willna come ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... and poke their noses Into our churns as sweet as roses; And to quiz MAUDLIN in clean kirtle The toffs of Town will crush ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... which I couch My plaint of him and all his works— Even from these he means to pouch, Roughly, his six per cent. of perks; This thought has left me singularly moody; I fail to join in George's joke; So strongly I resent the extra 2d. Pinched from my modest poke. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... singularly refreshed in winter when I hear of service-berries, poke-weed, juniper. Is not heaven made up of these cheap summer glories? There is a singular health in those words, Labrador and East Main, which no desponding creed recognizes. How much more than Federal are these States. If there were no other vicissitudes than the seasons, our interest would ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... handed her his umbrella and untied his cravat, and proceeded to turn one end up and fold the other across and poke a loop through and draw an end under, and thus manipulate the whole into a reproduction of the same tiny bowknot as before. She held the umbrella and contemplated the performance with an interest which was most flattering ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... surveying me, in great apparent astonishment, for some moments—"Vell, Monsieur?—and vat den?—vat de matter now? Is it de dance of de Saint itusse dat you ave? If not like me, vat for vy buy de pig in the poke?" ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and cut and cut: great purple-bodied poke, strung with crimson-juiced seed; great burdock, its green burrs a plague; great milkweed, its creamy sap gushing at every gash; great thistles, thousand-nettled; great ironweed, plumed with royal purple; now and then a straggling bramble prone with velvety berries—the outpost of a patch behind ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... scarf, and had spent some time deciding whether her red tam or the brown velvet hat was the most becoming, and finally favored the tam, because she had once heard the Doctor say that red was the color for winter, and besides, the brown hat had a sharp rim that might give a person a nasty poke in the eye ... ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... precedents. We started off in fine style, feeling like old-time emperors traveling in state; and within ten minutes we were using paddles ourselves to poke and beat our men into understanding of the laws of balance, they abusing one another while the canoes rocked and took in water through the loosely laid ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... unties the poke, Which out of it sent such a smoke, As ready was them all to choke, So grievous was the pother; So that the knights each other lost, And stood as still as any post; Tom Thumb nor Tomalin could boast Themselves of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... hearts behind them. And in this same parlour at Arbitt Lodge had that little Marmaduke learned to walk, and then to run, to gaze with admiring eyes on the treasures in the glass cupboards, to play bo-peep behind the thick silken curtains, even in his time faded to a withered-leaf green, to poke his tiny nose into the bowl of pot-pourri on the centre table, which made him sneeze just exactly as—ah! but I am forgetting—never mind, I may as well finish the sentence—just exactly as it ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... exclaimed De Pretis; "you do not ask much! After you have allowed your lady-love, your inamorata, to catch you saying you are bound body and soul to another woman,—and such a woman! ye saints, what a beauty!—you ask me to go and set matters right! What the diavolo did you want to go and poke your nose into such a mousetrap for? Via! I am a fool to have ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... taunt Reynolds. "You're tiresome, Jig," Reynolds said without heat. "Somebody's going to poke you sometime..." ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... girl gave him approving survey when he appeared that morning in his shore suit of quiet gray. With the widow's ready aid Polly Candage had made her own attire presentable once more. When they walked down to the shore she smiled archly at Mayo from under the brim of a very fetching straw poke. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... wonder he hates what he calls destructive criticism, sometimes called by free spirits the elimination of buncombe. "Above all things," says Bagehot, "our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it." [Footnote: The English Constitution, p. 127. D. Appleton & Company, 1914.] For poking about with clear definitions and candid statements serves all high purposes known to man, except the easy conservation of ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... convivial habits, and used to poke considerable fun at me because I would not drink or play poker. At the time when the select committee was to meet in Memphis, the home of Senator Harris, the prominent business men of that place waited ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... bleating and baa-ing, yet the little girl's first thought was always the flower corner. First thing on Thursday morning, sometimes before it was light, she would lie wondering what sort of dear little plants there would be this week, and hoping it would be a fine day, so that nurse would let her poke her head out through the bars a tiny bit, so as to see better, without calling to her that she would ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... until we were fairly on the back of another. Now, in a vessel of tolerable size, let the sea rage at its worst, from the ship's decks you always look down upon it, excepting now and then, when some short-lived giant will poke up its overgrown head. But I must remember that I am in tow of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... into the side of the road," said he, "and poke your batons in front of you. Keep a tight hold ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... and people never like me. There is an old saying that you should know a man seven years before you poke his fire. I want to know persons seven years before I can ask them how they do. To take me out to dine in this way was of all things ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... with a pectoral cough behind a hedge, nor a rabbit making rustle at the eyebrow of his hole, nor even a moot, that might either be a man or hold a man inside it, whom or which those active fellows did not circumvent and poke into. In none of these, however, could they find the smallest breach of the strictest laws of the revenue; until at last, having exhausted their bodies by great zeal both of themselves and of mind, they braced them again ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... ascertained. There was neither surprise nor disappointment to be feared in that respect. Situation, orientation, outline, altitudes, levels, hydrography, climatology, lines of communication, all these were easily to be verified in advance. People were not buying a pig in a poke, and most undoubtedly there could be no mistake as to the nature of the goods on sale. Moreover, the innumerable journals of the United States, especially those of California, with their dailies, ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... a clap-board in this world that I can poke my head under and lay claim to its shelter!" said she, sitting again in her low ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... molluscs, poke their heads out of the shell when feeding or moving. Oysters and their two-shelled cousins cannot do this, for the simple reason that ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... raised prow of what looked to be a genuine birch bark canoe poke in sight. In these modern days when even the Indians up in Maine manufacture up-to-date canvas canoes by the thousand, it is a rare event to run across one made of birch bark. The trees that are large enough for the purpose have about all been destroyed, so the ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... can get a snowflake in my ear when I get home. Just now let's see if we can't get inside this little house. If the door is frozen shut, maybe you can find a stick and poke it open. Look ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... we reseeved wuz when Harrison beet us. The old pollytishens in our party didn't mind it, for, sez they, 'The Treasurey woodent hev bin wuth mutch to us ennyhow after the suckin it has experienced for 12 years; it needs 4 years uv rest.' We elected Poke, and here it wuz that Sin got a complete hold uv us. Anshent compacts made with the devil wuz alluz ritten in blud. We made a contract with Calhoonism, and that wuz ritten in blud wich wuz shed in Mexico. Here we sold ourselves out, boots and britches, to the cotton Democricy, ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... of that pair, my dear captain! We're a distrustful flock, we birds of prey. Come along! Why sit there sulking, like a spoiled child? You've made an ass of yourself, following me to Paris; sadly though you bungled that job in London, I gave you credit for more wit than to poke your head into the lion's mouth here. But—admitting that—why not be graceful about it? Here am I, amiably treating you like an equal: you might at least show gratitude enough to accept my invitation ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... won't, dear. You couldn't if you wanted to—but you don't really want to, I know. Now poke up the fire and get me some tea. I hope you have something ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... village, where fish, brandy, and so forth are offered to him. Some people prostrate themselves before the beast. His entrance into a house is supposed to bring a blessing; and if he snuffs at the food offered to him, this also is a blessing. Nevertheless they tease and worry, poke and tickle the animal continually, so that he is surly and snappish. After being thus taken to every house, he is tied to a peg and shot dead with arrows. His head is then cut off, decked with shavings, and placed on the table where the feast is set out. Here they beg pardon of the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... we must give up work for the day." He also, on these occasions, often brought with him a daughter, and the two carefully looked into the decorated desk, when they were rewarded by finding the nest and eggs of a "feather-poke" (long-tailed tit), or some other rare bird, which he always took home and preserved in his study, as a trophy till the following year. No questions were asked as to how the decorations were obtained, but ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... the broom from my clutches;—I, shoving at her with all my force—like Punch and the devil at the two ends of the stick. At last, after she had held me in a corner for half a minute, I made a rush upon her, drove her right to the opposite corner, so that the end of the handle gave her a severe poke in the body, which made her give up the contest, and exclaim as soon as she recovered her breath,—"Oh! you nasty, ungrateful, ungenteel brute! You little viper! Is that the way you treat your mother—and nearly ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... To poke fun in an offhand manner at little boys and girls seemed to have been the only conception of humor to be found in the children's books of the period, if we except the "Jests" and the attempts made ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... grown-up people will poke fun of us—at you for reading these nonsense tales of the Magical Monarch, and at me for writing them. Never mind. Many of the big folk are still children—even as you and I. We cannot measure a child by a standard of size ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... boy at his side he bent a kindly look. "I have been reading a good deal of late," he said, "and old Gid has told me that I am improving, but I have found no book to speak a word of comfort to me. I took the heartache away back yonder—but we won't talk about it. We'll poke around down here a day or two and ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... passing Old Man Thornycroft's house to find Buck trying to follow him—trying to, because the old man, who hated to see anybody or anything but himself have his way, had chained a heavy block to him to keep him from doing what nature had intended him to do—roam the woods and poke his long nose in ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... and he was rejected. So was Tibby. (Cheer up, Tibby!) It's no one we know. I said, 'Hunt, my good woman; have a good look round, hunt under the tables, poke up the chimney, shake out the antimacassars. Husband? husband?' Oh, and she so magnificently dressed and ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... At the close of the exercises the students filed past the President and were introduced to him, each greeting him, "to the infinite edification and amusement of the grizzly old warrior," by his new title Doctor Jackson. The wits of the opposition lost no opportunity to poke fun at the President's accession to the brotherhood of scholars. As he was closing a speech some days later an auditor called out, "You must give them a little Latin, Doctor." In nowise abashed, the President solemnly doffed his hat again, stepped to the front of the platform, and ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... and this time there was a tear in her eye. Sanders was little better than an "orra man," and Sam'l was a weaver, and yet—But it was too late now. Sanders gave the pig a vicious poke with a stick, and when it had ceased to grunt, Bell was back in the kitchen. She had forgotten about the milk, however, and Sam'l only got water ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... away, he never did the slightest thing worth remembering; as there was no election, he did not even take part in a Whig procession. He got away two or three times. The first thing his owner would know when he pulled the chain out was that there was no coon at the end of it, and then he would have to poke round the inside of the box pretty carefully with a stick, so as not to get bitten; after that he would have to see which tree the coon had gone up. It was usually the tall locust-tree in front of the house, and in about half a second ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... he said, trying to poke the more distant potatoes toward her with his cane. He could not himself stoop; or, if he did, he could only sit erect again after the method of a ratchet wheel. "I won't do so again, Prudence. I be an onthoughtful critter, if ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Bess, "don't poke fun. It would be awful if anything should happen so that we couldn't go to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... to her for the moment, having turned to poke up the fire, and Magda raised herself on her elbow, preparatory to getting off the couch. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... look at him—the stiffening is out of his back-bone now, I tell you!" cried Ben, triumphantly. "See him a trying to poke his head under the moss just at the sight of a yaller ash leaf—ain't he a coward, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... past Harriet Burrell's hiding place so close that she might have reached out an oar and touched it. She was tempted to give the person in the stern of the boat a poke with her oar, but wisely refrained from doing anything of the sort. After the boat had passed, Harriet sat perfectly still, arms folded, a quiet smile ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... told in The Myroure of Oure Ladye, written for the delectation of the nuns of Syon in the fifteenth century: 'We read of a holy Abbot of the order of Citeaux that while he stood in the choir at matins he saw a fiend that had a long and great poke hanging about his neck and went about the choir from one to another and waited busily after all letters and syllables and words and failings that any made; and them he gathered diligently and put them in his poke. And when he came before the Abbot, waiting if aught had escaped him ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... her captivity," continued Mushymush, "she managed to stain her face with poke-berry juice, and mingling with the Indian maidens was enabled to pass for one of the tribe. Once undetected, she boldly ingratiated herself with the Boy Chief,—how honestly and devotedly he best can tell,—for I, Mushymush, the little ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... telephoned Flame almost at once, "It's—so much nearer Christmas than it was half an hour ago! Are you sure everything will keep? All those big packages that came yesterday? That humpy one especially? Don't you think you ought to peep? Or poke? Just the teeniest, tiniest little peep or poke? It would be a shame if anything spoiled! A—turkey—or a—or ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... and that the truth which lies in books, and which we wish them to assimilate, has been wrought out of human experience, and not brought down miraculously from some remote storehouse of wisdom that is accessible only to the elect. We poke a good deal of fun at book learning nowadays, and there is a pedantic type of book learning that certainly deserves all the ridicule that can be heaped upon it. But it is not wise to carry satire and ridicule too far in any ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... too much for my agreeable contemporaries, but I sometimes let myself be carried away by my argument. If any one is ashamed to be seen wearing a leathern apron or handling a plane, I think him a mere slave of public opinion, ready to blush for what is right when people poke fun at it. But let us yield to parents' prejudices so long as they do not hurt the children. To honour trades we are not obliged to practise every one of them, so long as we do not think them beneath us. When the choice is ours and we are under no compulsion, why not choose the pleasanter, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... he is off like lightning for a second; then he stops suddenly short. You return to the charge, and he starts afresh, but only to stop again. At the fourth or fifth attack he is quite out of breath; you poke him with the stick with which you have been hunting him, but in vain; there he lies motionless, in spite of his alarm. A few steps have brought him to the end of his powers, like a man whose heart is diseased and who cannot go far. This, however, is a peculiarity common ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Atkinson's expense; this by an insinuation of the neck out between his own bars and in between those of Atkinson, adjoining. But he doesn't understand the laws of space. Having once fetched his neck around the partition into Atkinson's larder by chancing to poke his head through the end bars, he straightway assumes that what is possible between some bars is possible between all; and wheresoever he may now be standing when prompted by companionable peckishness, straight he plunges among the nearest ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... ladies obtained the melons from a farmer," explained Tom Reade, giving Dan an unseen poke in the small ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... poezio, poeziajxo. Poetry, a piece of versajxo. Poignant dolorega. Point punkto. Point (cards) poento. Point (tip of) pinto. Point (to sharpen) pintigi. Point out montri, signali. Points (railway) relforko. Poise balanci, ekvilibri. Poison veneno. Poisonous venena. Poke the fire inciti la fajron. Poker fajrincitilo. Polar polusa. Pole (wooden) stango. Pole (shaft of car) timono. Pole (geography) poluso. Polecat putoro. Polemic disputo, polemiko. Police polico. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... then in a minute, "I am glad to see that you feel her loss, I am sure." Here she got half off her chair to poke the damper of the stove. "There is no loss so great as the loss ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... ever poke her nose in here to take us off do you think?" asked La Touche. "This is what you get every day of the week, if all accounts are true—this, and worse. I tell you we've come to the wrong place. There's no getting over it. We've come to the ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... habit of poking out of mobs, grazing quietly as they edge off until "they're gone before you miss 'em." Camps seem to have some special attraction for pokers, but we learned they object to interference. Poke round peaceful as cats until "you rile them," Dan told us, and then glided into a tale of how a poker "had us ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... finished her packing; then tying under her chin a silly little poke-bonnet of white chiffon and corn-flowers, still somewhat crushed from its long imprisonment in a trunk, she went back for a last glimpse of the Forest ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... Cross an error? To say so would be an outrage in this age of militarism. And what would all the Queens of Beauty think, from Sir Wilfred Ivanhoe's days to ours, if mighty warriors ceased to poke each other in the ribs, and send one another's souls untimely to the 'viewless shades,' for the sake of their 'doux yeux?' Ah! who knows how many a mutilation, how many a life, has been the price of that requital? Ye gentle creatures who swoon at the sight of blood, is it not the hero ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... then, let us go to his rooms at once. It's of no use to give the police time to poke their dirty ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... it comes to my turn. It couldn't make the thing no wuss, if it didn't make it no better. 'Drot it! what do boys have daddies for anyhow? 'Tain't for nuthin' but jist to beat 'em and work 'em. There's some use in mammies. I kin poke my finger right in the old 'oman's eye, and keep it thar; and if I say it ain't thar, she'll say so, too. I wish she was here to hold daddy off. If 'twa'n't so fur I'd holler for her, anyhow. How she would cling to the old ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... attention absorbed in the button which is just half in the button-hole, one little poke and 'there it's ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... astern, rolling now and again with a stiff lurch to port and then to starboard, and diving her nose down one moment with her stern lifting, only to rise again buoyantly the next instant and shake the spray off her jib-boom as she pointed it upwards, trying to poke a ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... or poke, or prod. He did not appear to be looking for anything. He picked up a small, cheap vase and looked at it as though it were an old friend; he rubbed his hand over the small writing desk, as though he had written many things in that familiar place; he sat down in a chair and leaned back in it and ...
— What The Left Hand Was Doing • Gordon Randall Garrett
... do to be too proud, Felicity," he remarked, giving her a poke. "You'd better not say too ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... him stop finally, and gave him a moment to get his breath. Then he set him to turning somersaults. They spread the cushions from the couch in the tent on the roof, and Jim would poke his head down and say a prayer, and then curve over as gracefully as a sausage and come up gasping, as if he had been ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... marriages; at least, that's one thing. There are others too numerous to mention. There's just one reason why a man and a woman should join themselves together in matrimony, and that is love, the love that the poets sing and the rest of us poke fun at, the love that is the nearest thing to Heaven we find on earth." The Doctor sat silent a moment, looking past the girl's grave face into the green blur of the garden. Then he stirred, sighed, and looked at his ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... an unmistakable smile. "Well, Cora, we will try to let you down easy this time. Here, Bess, you poke your nose in the cubby hole and see if ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... to take off their things. They were rather particular about complexions in those days. Some of the summer hats were really ornate sunbonnets, others were the great poke shape with a big bow on top and wide strings that were allowed to float on a hot day, so as not to get crushed by the warmth under the chin. They had long muslin sleeves to pull over their ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... reproduce just like the barrels in the mud cities; two individuals grow a third one between them. Another proof of Leroy's theory that Martian life is neither animal nor vegetable. Besides, Tweel was a good enough host to let him poke down his beak and twiddle his feathers, and ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... Cinderella, was standing lonely and hanging her head by the tiled stove at the end of the room. I forthwith hastened to her, pressed the little packet which Mistress Grosz had given me into her hand—for I had it still hidden in my poke—and, whispered to her: "I had two of them, little Ann; make haste and pour ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... utterly absorbed in her task, her pencil flying over her slate, squeaking madly, when right in the midst of "irresponsible" with one "r" and several other letters wanting, she paused. It was a poke from Rosie that disturbed her. Elizabeth was accustomed to being poked by Rosie, for her seat-mate always attracted one's attention this way; but her pokes were always eloquent and this one betokened ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... advise you not to mix yourself with people's affairs till you do know a little about 'em. What business is it o' yourn, eh, whether my children goes to Sunday-School? Sunday-School! what a poke it is!" ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... that you are the sole judge of the conditions of the purchase. I don't wish any more than you do to buy a pig in a poke. If to-morrow you authorize me, I won't say to buy, but to let these people know that you may possibly make the purchase, I'll confer with one of them on your behalf, and you may be certain that I'll stand up for your interests as ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... was the whole truth, fell weeping upon Sidonia's neck, and asked forgiveness for her suspicions. "There, that will do," said Sidonia,—"that will do, old preacher; only be more cautious in future. What! am I to poke under my bed to see if any one is hiding there? You may go, for I suppose you have often hidden a lover there, your eyes ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... really a capital fellow, used to join in the laugh himself, but still grinnin' is no proof a man enjoys it; for a hyena will laugh, if you give him a poke. So what does he do, but practise in secret every morning and evening at pistol-shooting for an hour or two, until he was a shade more than perfection itself. Well, one day he was out with a party of them same coons, and they began to run the old rig on him as usual. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... forest after all, it was just a sell-nothing but mud and weed, only Fergus would go and poke in it, and there were horrid great rough stones and rocks too, and I tumbled ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... come out of the wagons and go about the business of the hour we see the marks of the elements upon them. The women wear "poke" bonnets and gingham dresses. The men are unshaven. All are sunburnt to a rich, leathern brown. Some are thin, and at this particular time, wearing a serious expression. They are not as unhappy as they look, their principal trouble of the moment being merely ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing system. Through a simple programming strategy, it was possible for a user program to trick the system into running a portion of the program in 'master mode' (supervisor state), in which memory protection does not apply. The program could then poke a large value into its 'privilege level' byte (normally write-protected) and could then proceed to bypass all levels of security within the file-management system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous other interesting things. In short, the barn ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... them, till they snatch an opportunity to escape into some doorway; or when a poor man in a black coat and cylinder hat is whitened all over with a half-bushel of confetti and lime-dust; the mock sympathy with which his case is investigated by a company of maskers, who poke their stupid, pasteboard faces close to his, still with the unchangeable grin; or when a gigantic female figure singles out some shy, harmless personage, and makes appeals to his heart, avowing her passionate ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... nothing to cook? no fire, coal or wood to cook with? Blast my eyes, Mr. Boatswain, if I disgrease myself so much, I have had the honour, damn me (tho' I say it that shou'dn't say it) to be chief cook of a seventy-four gun ship, on board of which was Lord Abel-Marl and Admiral Poke-Cock. ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... very Roof of France! That solitude of solitude invaded by fife and drum; the wastes of Sauveterre echoing the hackneyed air, 'Hold the Fort;' Hallelujah lasses in hideous poke- bonnets parading the picturesque streets of St. Enimie; the very rapids silenced by the stentorian exordiums of these Salvationist orators! Could ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... inspiration, and all feed is taken in by the teeth, as the lips are useless. In both there is a free discharge of saliva from the mouth during mastication. This paralysis is a frequent result of injury, by a poke, to the seventh nerve, as it passes over the back of the lower jaw. In some cases the paralysis is confined to the lid, the injury having been sustained by the muscles which raise it, or by the supraorbital nerve, which emerges from the bone just above the eye. Such injury to ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... no idea of her countermoves. The scheme seemed to him in proper train, and he turned to poke out the fire. She instantly seized the glass, and poured its contents down her bosom. When he faced round again she was holding the glass ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... first ten miles of road were excellent. We then crossed a little stream known as Trout Brook, a tributary of the Boquet, and, by a somewhat rough and stony way, began to ascend the high land separating the Boquet from the Au Sable. This ridge includes the 'Poke a Moonshine' Mountain, a rude pile of rocks, burnt over, and with perpendicular precipices of some three or four hundred feet, facing the road which winds along the bottom of the declivity. This cleft thus becomes another 'Pass,' and, with the huge rocks fallen at its base, offers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... down the chimney and fell at his feet. "Holloa," he exclaimed; "only half a man answered that ringing; that is too little." Then the ringing began afresh, and a roaring and howling was heard, and the other half fell down. "Wait a bit," said he; "I will poke up the fire first." When he had done so and looked round again, the two pieces had joined themselves together, and an ugly man was sitting in his place. "I did not bargain for that," said the youth; "the bench is mine." The man tried to push him away, but the youth ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... duck-pond as soon as you're past Cape Finisterre. I'll run a Clovelly herring-boat there and back for a wager of twenty pound, and never ship a bucketful all the way. Who'll join? Don't think you're buying a pig in a poke. I know the road, and Salvation Yeo, here, too, who was the gunner's mate, as well as I do the narrow seas, and better. You ask him to show you the chart of it, now, and see if he don't tell you over the ruttier ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... she kept her eyes idly upon it as she walked on toward the house. The woman came slowly and hesitatingly toward the yard. When she drew nearer, Margaret could see that she wore homespun, home-made shoes, and a poke-bonnet. On her hands were yarn half-mits, and, as she walked, she pushed her bonnet from her eyes with one hand, first to one side, then to the other—looking at the locusts planted along the avenue, the cedars in ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... The moral is, don't poke about in your block-hole, but hit, and, when you bowl in an emergency, aim at getting wickets by any means, rather ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... jacket, with gloves buttoned to her elbows, and an immense hat, with two feathers on the back; Mr. Browne in a long ulster, and soft hat, with gloves, which his wife made him wear; and Mrs. Browne, in a Paris dress, fearfully and wonderfully made, and a poke bonnet, so long and so pokey that to see her face was like looking down ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... expected to be, more deliberate and conscious effort. Men are in a position to "try all things" before committing themselves to any. Their new-found freedom does not merely consist in the right to poke their own fires, order their own breakfasts, and use their own cheque-books. These things, which make so much impression on the mind at first, are only the outward signs of freedom. The boy who has just left school, and the thoughtless life of routine in work and play, finds himself in the midst ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang |
