"Poking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... They were poking him up on all sides, wanting him to come to a decision, and he could not see his way to it. Of course he was half asleep; he knew it himself. He felt that he wanted rest; his entity was working for him out there ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... under the constraint of an unwelcome presence, or in the shadow of constant fear and dread. What I care to see is the natural life, the free, unstudied ways of birds who do not notice or are not disturbed by spectators. Nor have I any pleasure in going about the country staring into every tree, and poking into every bush, thrusting irreverent hands into the mysteries of other lives, and rudely tearing away the veils that others have drawn around their private affairs. That they are only birds does not signify to me; for me they are fellow-creatures; ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... thoughts by walking round the room looking at the extraordinary collections of objects it contained. He was earnestly scrutinizing a lutestring picture depicting "The Origin of the Dimple"—a cupid poking his forefinger into the double chin of a fat languishing female—when the door opened and ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... cried the old man, vindictively, "has a past, if we can discover it. We must rid ourselves of him; he's a public nuisance, a dangerous, meddlesome fellow. Always poking his nose into something; always making things unpleasant. Quirk ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... irksome lessons and besides met several interesting people, including a Duchess. Alice may be considered the very John Cabot of the rabbit-hole. Before her time it was known only to rabbits, wood-chucks, and dogs on holidays, whose noses are muddy with poking. But since her time all this is changed. Now it is known as the portal of adventure. It is the escape from the plane of life ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... amuse them in this way, she suddenly unbound her hair, platted it, tied both ends together to keep it out of her way, and then stepping out into the middle of the hut, began to make the most hideous faces that can be conceived, by drawing both lips into her mouth, poking forward her chin, squinting frightfully, occasionally shutting one eye, and moving her head from side to side as if her neck had been dislocated. This exhibition, which they call ayokit-tak-poke, and which is evidently considered an accomplishment that few ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... other things," answered Foy, "every one of them true, for I am a miserable sinner. Well, all right, there is a mistake, and it is," he added, with an air of radiant innocency that somehow was scarcely calculated to deceive, "that I was merely poking a stick into Adrian's temper. I never saw him talking to Black Meg. Now, are ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... boy remarked, poking his finger at the dimple in the baby's cheek, then drawing it quickly away again with an uncomfortable expression. Tode never cared how dirty his hands were except when he saw them in contrast with ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... unmanageable—all of us indeed reeling about like drunken men—Nelson ordered his helm a-starboard, and in a jiffy there we were, all three hugging each other, running in one another's guns, smashing our chain-plates, and poking our yard-arms ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Morty, poking his head this way and that, peering into the chamber as he had peered yesterday, wished he could see Colonel John's face. But Colonel John, bending resolutely over the handful of embers that glowed in an inner angle of the room, showed ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Martha Collins said, poking at the pile of letter disks. "I suppose about half of it is threats, abuse and obscenities, and the other half is from long-winded bores with idiotic suggestions and ill-natured gripes. I'll use that old tag line, again—'hoping you appreciate ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence 'password hacker', 'network hacker'. The correct term for ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... make a top-notch reporter out of you.' 'Thanks Boss,' said I, 'you couldn't graft that job on to me, with asphaltum and a buzz saw. I'm going to be on your front page 'fore you know it, but it's going to be a poetry piece that will raise your hair; I ain't going to frost my cake, poking into folks' private business, telling shameful things on them that half kills them. Lots of times I see them getting their dose on the cars, and they just shiver, and go white, and shake. Nix on the ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Scorrier, visiting the shaft, found its neighbourhood deserted—not a living thing of any sort was there except one Chinaman poking his stick into the rubbish. Pippin was away down the coast engaging an engineer; and on his return, Scorrier had not the heart to tell him of the desertion. He was spared the effort, for Pippin said: "Don't be afraid—you've got bad news? The men ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... out here poking around in my fields and up in the hills from dawn till dark. Said he was making some soil tests. I yelled at him for stepping all ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... tailor, and when he laid down the shears, and took up the pen, the taste and curiosity for dress was still retained. He is the grave chronicler of matters not grave. The chronology of ruffs, and tufted taffetas; the revolution of steel poking-sticks, instead of bone or wood, used by the laundresses; the invasion of shoe-buckles, and the total rout of shoe-roses; that grand adventure of a certain Flemish lady, who introduced the art of starching the ruffs with a yellow tinge into Britain: while Mrs. Montague emulated her in the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... growled. "If I'd seen him, do you think he'd be writing me letters? It is your job to pinch him. If you people down at Scotland Yard spent less time poking into the affairs of honest ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... matter of minutes before we three were poking about in a tangle of wood and field, seeking to locate the spot where Kennedy's apparatus had photographed the ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... continued plaintively. "It's so discouraging to think that there's nothing more for explorers to do in this country. What fun it must have been for La Salle and Pere Marquette and Lewis and Clark to find those big rivers that no white man had ever seen before, and go poking about in the wilderness. That was the great and only sport; everything else is tame and flat beside it. I'll never get done envying those early explorers; how I wish I ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... cloak, with which the "Estudiantinas Espagnoles" have familiarised us, only in this case the Spanish cocked hat and spoon was replaced by a sort of black Phrygian cap. To our astonishment, these young gentlemen, instead of poking fun at us, got off the parapet on which they had been sitting, pulled off their caps to us, and welcomed us with the most kindly politeness. They knew, perhaps, that we too had worn our breeches out upon school benches, and thus saluted ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the traveller with the keen grey eyes, turning, and poking the fire with the heel ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... did pass us, going slowly, and the Frog kept his eyes riveted on Nyoda all the while. She never looked at him. She had unbuttoned the roof over the engine and was poking her fingers down into the dragon's mouth, but undoubtedly the trouble wasn't there. There was a repair shop not far away—all of the towns along the touring routes which have an eye to business have some sort of one—and Nyoda repaired thither and fetched a man who tinkered ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... a long pointed nose which he was in the habit of putting down to within an inch or two of his desk when he was looking for any particular paper, for he was very short sighted. It rather conveyed the impression that he was poking about with it, and that he hunted for questionable clauses or illegalities in a document, much as a pig might hunt for truffles in a wood. For the rest, he was middle-aged, with hair nearly white, and small grey whiskers. He beamed at ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... Brangwen,' sang Hermione, in her low, odd, singing fashion, that sounded almost as if she were poking fun. 'Do you mind my ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... with a wooden leg, and you might see him stumping about our grounds, minutely examining the underside of shrubs and bushes, the bark of trees, poking into corners and crannies, or scraping in the mold under the fallen leaves by the fences, for things which no longer filled him with aversion and disgust, but with the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... her new bed, and, after curiously sniffing and poking into all the nooks and corners of it, she curled up and began to purr herself ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... stumped along in front of her into the parlor, and motioned her to a seat. "Mrs. North," he said, his face red, his eye hard, "some jack-donkeys have been poking their noses (of course they're females) ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... slamming the stove door open, and poking in among the ashes and cinders with wrathful haste, "if this abominable fire hasn't gone out; I never did in all my life! burnt up a bushel of kindling, too, dear me; water in the tea-kettle stone cold, not a blessed thing cooking; no more stuff ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... could glimpse the amphibian overhead—yes, the moon, poking her nose out from behind a bank of clouds, allowed him to make certain—Jack had swung back and was circling, so as to keep the sloop ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... keeps poking with his elbows. Keep your hands to yourself! Though you are a head constable, you have no sort of right to make free with ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... moments later the staff galloped off and the escort clattered behind, minus two troopers, who sat on the edge of the veranda in their blue-and-yellow shell jackets, carbines slung, poking at the grass with the edges of ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... from ground-flat to attic, and what an exhibition of night-caps! Here elderly gentlemen, apparently in their shirts, with head night-gear from Kilmarnock, worthy of Tappitoury's self,—behind them their wives—grandmothers at the least—poking their white faces, like those of sheeted corpses, over the shoulders of the fathers of their numerous progeny—there chariest maids, prodigal enough to unveil their beauties to the moon, yet, in their alarm, folding the frills of their chemises across their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... Beppo, Giovanni, and Paolo, who had been poking about the market at their mother's heels, pricked up their ears and scurried eagerly after the ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... galley and invaded Uncle Caragol's dominions, putting his formal lines of casseroles into lamentable disorder, and poking the tip of her rosy little nose into the steam arising from the great stew in which was ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... it looks good!" said Olly, approaching a hungry finger and poking at it softly. "I'll get ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... a vine-covered patio trellis to the ground. Even after they discovered she was gone, the guard screen would keep everybody in the house for some little while. They'd either have to disengage the screen's main mechanisms and start poking around in them, or force open the door to her bedroom and get the lock unset. Either approach would involve confusion, upset tempers, and generally delay ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... with his hoe, and the minute after, found practical occupation for it in chasing two or three great swine who were poking at the fence, as if they longed for the sweet young cornstalks within. Whence the reader may perceive that Mr. Wynn had become proprietor of certain items of live stock, including sundry fowls, which were apt to keep all ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... some peas and beans last week," explained Helen, "and when they were tender I planted them. You see they're poking up their heads now." ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... to choke back the tears, but he wisely gave no sign that he saw and sympathized. He only proposed a walk over to the blacksmith shop to see the red fox that Billy Kerr had trapped and caged. But a little later, when she had regained her self-control and was poking a stick between the slats of the coop where the fox was confined, to make it stretch ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... recalling the Trojan horse, sprang suddenly a little company of black-and-tan piglets, fully legged and snouted for the battle of life. She is taking them with her to put them to school at a farm two or three miles away. So I understand her. They surround her in a compact body, ever moving and poking and squeaking, yet all keeping together. As they advance slowly, she towering above her tiny bodyguard, one thinks of Gulliver moving through Lilliput; and there is a touch of solemnity in the procession which recalls a ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... a visit to the store in the carryall for the purchase of supplies. Mr. Prout, who combined the duties of merchant with those of postmaster and express agent, was filling out a requisition for postal supplies when Wade entered. Poking his pen behind his ear, he stepped out from behind the narrow screen of ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... stump in hope to recapture Brer Tarrypin, who once was ours for a short while. Gissing (the juvenile and too enthusiastic dog) has to be kept away from the pond by repeated sticks thrown as far as possible in another direction; otherwise he insists on joining the tadpole search, and, poking his snout under water, attempts to bark at the same time, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... was much interested in Miss patience—very much so, indeed. His frequent visits to the Mayo homestead furnished no end of amusement to Captain Eri, and also to Captain Jerry, who found poking fun at his friend an agreeable change from the old programme of being the butt himself. He wasn't entirely free from this persecution, however, for Eri more than once asked him, in tones the sarcasm of which was elaborately veiled, if his match-making scheme ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... I'm sorry I laughed," said her twin brother, when he could speak. "But the idea of your poking at a ghost with ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... go, but I called him back. "Please!" I begged. "I'll only keep you one minute. I'm sure you're joking, big brother, about being an ass, or poking fun at me. But I don't care. I need some advice so badly! I've no one but you to give it to me. I know you won't desert me, because if you were like that you wouldn't have come to stop at this hotel to watch over ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... straight up on end; his pointed nose, bright brown eyes, and cunning little ears, set in the frame work of bushy hair, gave him a most sagacious appearance. And just now he was brimful of curiosity, pattering all over the room, poking his nose into a great pile of "Idol-Breakers," sniffing at theological and anti-theological books with perfect impartiality, rubbing himself against Raeburn's foot in the most ingratiating way, and finally springing up on Erica's lap with the oddest mixture of defiance and devotion in his ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... earnest? Did he really mean he had enjoyed the chorus, or was he poking fun at them? ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... theatre, upon which occasion it was arranged with Richmond that he was to be run through, from behind, without showing fight at all. But here he was, cutting and slashing with two experienced swordsman, thrusting, and guarding, and poking, and slicing, and acquitting himself in the most manful and dexterous manner possible, although up to that time he had never been aware that he had the least notion of the science. It only shows how true the old saying is, that a man never ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... poking into my back before I landed; I always get the creeps when there's death around, and that last sound had been just that—somebody's last sound. I knew somebody was going to kill me before I could find the switch. Then I stumbled over something, and my hair stood on end. I guess my own yell was ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... with his grannie, for grandfather was lunching at his club. There was no poking of the Ffolliot children into schoolrooms and nurseries for meals when they stayed with the ganpies. His face was clean and his hair very smooth, and he held back Mrs Granny's chair for her just as grandfather ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... be d—d to you for a tramp,' the old man said, poking his stick once more into the ground and resuming his way. But he was seized with a violent fit of coughing, and almost tumbled upon his turned up, cross old nose. When he recovered he turned round and fairly danced with rage, shaking his stick at the poor wayfarer, who stood ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... probably turn out to be a very disappointing person—a little wizened old gentleman with a cold in his head, a red nose and a comforter round his neck, whistling o'er the furrow'd land or crooning to himself as he goes aimlessly along the streets, poking his way about and loitering continually at shop-windows and ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... weren't even honourable enough to wait until sunset before attacking you. They pricked horribly, like pins your maid has stuck in the wrong places; and they had a horrid penchant for your ankles. I was sorry I had on clocked stockings! And I apologised heartily to Potter for poking fun at his ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... snake is undulating up the lattice-work, poking its head through betimes to look at us. It does not seem in the least afraid, nor has it much reason to be, seeing that its kind are deemed the servants and confidants of Benten. Sometimes the great goddess herself ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... Captain Plume, as he preferred being called, now opened the door, and poking his head out, welcomed Chapeau, and assured him that if he would step round to the wine shop he would be with him in ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... all too interesting to let you get sick right away. Pop was poking into two of the large mound-shaped cases that were sitting loose and open on the right-hand seat, as if ready for emergency use. One had a folded something with straps on it that was probably a parachute. The second had ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... is the easy and noble port of the head. Many very pretty ladies lose much of the effect of their beauty, and of the signal power of the first impressions, as they enter a room, or a public assembly, by a vulgar or improper carriage of the head, either poking the neck, or stooping the head, or in the other extreme, of holding it up too stiff, on the Mama's perpetually teizing remonstrance, of "hold up your head, Miss," without considering that merely bridling, without the easy grace ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... branches. Women are washing in open spaces, and long lines of whitened clothes are extended from tree to tree, fluttering and gambolling in the breeze. A pig, in a sty even more extemporary than the shanties, is grunting and poking his snout through the clefts of his habitation. The household pots and kettles are seen at the doors; and a glance within shows the rough benches that serve for chairs, and the bed upon the floor. The visitor's nose ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that labor to my own. I particularly ordered that no refuse was to be thrown in the yard or under the house. This rule was violated several times, and my patience pretty well exhausted. I stepped into the kitchen this morning just in time to see Tomas doubling over, and poking the coffee grounds down between the bamboo slats of the flooring. The American broom was handy, and the angle of Tomas's inclination was sufficient to expose a large area of resisting surface. So I promptly "swatted" Tomas with the broom with such energy that the coffeepot flew up in ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... about an hour ago, crossing the quadrangle. I asked him where he was going, and he replied, "To old Kelly. I intend paying him out for 'gating' me last week." I enquired how, and he replied: "I've a glorious plan. You know that portrait stuck over his mantel-shelf? Well! In poking about the room the other day, when the old man was out, I had a great find. Directly behind the picture is the door of a secret room, so neatly covered by the designs on the wall that it is not discernible. It ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... thin, with, a long, pale, and pleasant visage, smiling and expressive. His dress was an entire suit of brown, of the old shape; a narrow stock, tight about his neck; his wig amply powdered, with a high poking foretop. In the year, 1791, my son Tottenham and I met him in St. James's Park, (London,) at the narrow entrance near Spring Gardens. A few minutes after, we were joined accidentally by Jemmy Wilder, well known in Dublin—once the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... looks better," said Dodge, poking about the figure—"looks as much like life as most—ah, would you, you brute!" he exclaimed, springing back in alarm, for the figure had made a violent ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... is a very clever man, and might do much in London, I dare say. He often comes over to dine and sleep, returning the next morning. His energy is wonderful—and contagious. Can you imagine that he has actually stirred up the flame of my vanity, by constantly poking at the bars? Metaphor apart, I find myself collecting all my notes and commonplaces, and wondering to see how easily they fall into method, and take shape in chapters and books. I cannot help smiling when I add, that ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... read it; for I like dreams, and have a great many curious ones myself. But they don't keep me from being tired of Christmas," said Effie, poking discontentedly among the sweeties for ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... roused up by the little bears playing and tumbling over and around us. So we got up, and the bears made us go back again across the sands into the berry-bushes, and there we all ate berries, as there was nothing else to eat. The little ones kept poking their noses into our hands, and thus begged us to ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... he had left her, but the spell of her tense gaze had broken. She had laid her head upon the table to weep, and had not raised it all these hours. The night wind soughed into the room through the open window, drifting a piece of paper about the floor, poking into the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... down in a fainting-fit and when she came to herself, she said to me, 'What moved thee to do thus? Now Allah upon thee, send me after him!' But I spoke her fair for a while and pledged myself to stand in the ape's stead in the matter of much poking, till her trouble subsided and I took her to wife. But when I came to perform my promise I proved a failure and I fell short in this matter and could not endure such hard labour: so I complained of my ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... more," declared Mrs. Blanchard, escaping from her reverie. "What's to be spent landlord must spend," she continued. "A little whitewash, and some plaster to fill them holes wheer woodwork's poking through the ceiling, an' you'll be vitty again. 'Tis lonesome-like now, along o' being deserted, an' you'll hear the rats galloping an' gallyarding by night, but 'twill soon be all it was again—a dear li'l ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... hippopotamus rolling about dying in the water, and of an individual, in whom we had no difficulty in recognizing Agon the High Priest, holding up his hands in horror on the bank. Then followed a most alarming picture of a dreadful fiery furnace and of the same figure, Agon, poking us into it with a forked stick. This picture perfectly horrified me, but I was a little reassured when she nodded sweetly and proceeded to make a fourth drawing — a man again uncommonly like Sir Henry, and of two women, in whom I recognized Sorais and herself, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... you understand—begun to give out. So I flops down in the shade of a sand bank to rest, and the reverend goes poking ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a whale all right," went on Andy, playfully poking his brother in the ribs, "and it stove in my boat. If I could catch the beggar I'd sell his hide or oil or whatever is valuable about him, ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... bawling from the headquarters cook shack indicated that one juvenile investigator had come to grief. Howls emanated from little Paul Laurent, who could be seen stumbling across the road, one blue, cold hand poking the tears out of his eyes and the other holding the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... and a basket of fruit there. Poking about he contrived to disinter from various tins and ice-boxes some cold chicken and biscuits and a bottle of claret. These he wrapped hastily in a napkin which he found there, placed them in the basket of fruit, and came out ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... anything. The idea! After she has refused you half a dozen times, I may, out of pity, intercede a little. Go get your horse, smooth your brow, and be sensible, or you'll have Webb and Leonard poking fun at you. Suppose they have seen you galloping over fences and ditches like ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... very hare itself. Look now!" said she, "I'll go in again, and if any one comes out and tells you that the golden hare is not here, don't believe it, but hold him fast." So she crept into the hole again and began to beat for game, and out came an old woman, who said to the youth, "What art thou poking about there for?"—And he said to her, "For the golden hare."—She said to him, "It is not here, for this is a snake's hole," and when she had said this she went away. Presently the girl also came out and said to him, "What! hast thou not got the hare? Did nothing come out then?"—"No," ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... the door to see what was the matter. Squire Clamp was the luckless man. The dog had seized his coat-tail, and had pulled it forward, so that he stood face to face with the Squire, who was vainly trying to free himself by poking at his adversary with a great baggy umbrella. James sent away the dog with a reprimand, but laughed as he followed the angry man into the house. He always cited this afterwards as a new proof of the sagacity of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... appraisal on my own face, for, with all his iron-and-blood Prussianism, he clouded up like a hurt child. But he was too much of a diplomat to show his feelings. He merely became so unctuously polite that I felt like poking him in his steel-blue ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... poking a $20 bill out through the crack in the door, "and don't be long." The door slammed and a great stillness clapped down, broken only by the running of the taximeter, which seemed to be equipped with a ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... were the ash-heaps and tomato-cans, there were two of Mrs. Zamboni's bedraggled brood, poking with sticks into a dump-heap—looking for something to eat, perhaps, or for something to play with. There was the dry, waste grass of the road-side, grimy with coal-dust, as was everything else in the village. What a scene!—And this girl's ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... poking about, any feeble attempts to reach their honey, are sure to be quickly resented. The popular notion that bees have a special antipathy toward certain persons and a liking for certain others has only this fact at the bottom of it; they will sting a person who is afraid of ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... poking his fun at me, yer honours—for I knowed the Captain hadn't been at Ballycloran that night, and that the masther had been ating his dinner at home, so I didn't be taking much notice of what he war saying, till we war mostly half down the avenue, when Mr. Thady ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... life as herself to hear her talk in unexcited hours. Turning over my books one day, she said, 'You can never be either a poet or a painter, or a Mozart or a philosopher, Hermione? what is the use of all your labour and poking?' What could I say? I felt myself colour up, and I laughed out, 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity!' Yet certainly God has set before us the things of earth in order that we may admire and find ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... sentences, and with visible effort, for the surgeon was all the while poking and probing at the leg in a most uncomfortable manner, and De Berg was pale from pain and loss of blood. Oakley looked on with an expression of regret, and showed no disposition to ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... and bombs were got ready to drop. But the net remained motionless and, as the water was too deep for the submarine to be lying at the bottom, it seemed (although no one dared to say so) that a porpoise had been poking fun ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the morning's adventure with such gay good humor that Pa and Ma Chandler and Augustus and Almira made the walls ring again with their laughter, bringing old Aunt Susan to the sitting-room door, where, poking her head in, she had courage to say, "'Pears to me yous folks is havin' great sport over ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Zip's last visit to Miss Belinda's, he was out on one of his midnight prowls, about which the doctor had scolded him time and time again. In fact, he had forbidden him to leave the yard at night, warning him that some day he would be shot while poking around in other people's back yards, or that he would be poisoned by eating some meat that had been prepared purposely for stray cats or dogs. But Zip thought he was smart enough not to get caught, and he did not believe that anyone could put poison on meat and ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... came to the French lines the more confident was the appearance of our troops. The soldiers in their greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major and company officers were counting the men, poking the last man in each section in the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers scattered over the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and were building shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the fires sat others, dressed and undressed, drying their ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... to the room above, Joe went about the kitchen talking to himself, poking the fire violently, overturning the camp stools, knocking about the crockery on the dresser, and otherwise conducting ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... moment Helen and Van Shaw were left together. The crowd of tourists, curious, chattering, laughing, careless, flowed up the trail past them and began scattering over the village seeking curios and poking their heads into the doors of the little houses. The sun flamed out in a clear blue sky, the grey rock turned red under its hot stroke, and Helen, who lay restfully on her litter which had been placed on top of one of the kivas, indulged her romance loving ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... poking out the stem of his pipe with a stalk of grass. "He can hold out till something gives way. That's what he's in the habit o' doin', I'm thinkin'; an' he ain't goin' to break ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... a moment before, spoken quietly aside to Gutierrez. And now three or four of the men were spreading out, poking about with small hand-flashes. Searching for me! The possibility that I might be ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... replied, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Just a fancy. I guessed you wouldn't want him poking around." ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or two before, she was often missing at that very moment, and when a search was instituted she was sometimes found taking a stroll in the garret where she could have no possible business, and sometimes poking about in the darkest corner of the dark cellar, without the slightest conceivable object. If her thimble or spectacles were lost, she has often been known to go to the pantry and lift up every tumbler and ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... mustn't expect that there will be people to talk to you. You'll have to play about and look after yourself. You'll be told what rooms you can go into and what rooms you're to keep out of. There's gardens enough. But when you're in the house don't go wandering and poking about. Mr. ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... along, poking his head into the galley. He suddenly uttered a sharp exclamation and reached an arm to a black silk cap which hung from a peg on the boarding above ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... he asked sharply. As a matter of fact the little man was a miserable sailor and suspected her of poking ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... soon as they were clear of the town, Raymonde attempted to communicate the urgency of the case to Dandy. Her efforts were in vain, however. That faithless quadruped utterly refused to proceed faster than an ambling jog-trot, and took no notice of whipping, prodding or poking, beyond flicking his ears as if he ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... himself and it was no use tramping around, so I hunted a hole to sleep in. I found a place under a rock just big enough for me, where the snow didn't blow in, and I curled up on some dry leaves and snoozed off in no time. By and by something touched my face and I woke up, and there was a bear poking his head in and wondering if there was room for two. There wasn't no room and I don't like to sleep with bears nohow. Bears are all right in their place and I don't hold to no prejudices, but I'm notional about some things and I never could stand bears in my ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... specimen in which they were just then interested continued his course entirely unconcerned. Soon, however, he seemed to feel fatigue, for he drew his feet and head within his shell, which he tightly closed, and after that no poking or prodding had the desired effect. "I suspect we must depend on shank's mares for a time," said Bearwarden, cheerfully, as they scrambled down. "We can now see," said Cortlandt, "why our friend was so unconcerned, since he has but to draw himself within himself to become invulnerable ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... poking up out of the past, reminded one of disappointments and losses, of a freedom that was no more: reminded her of blue, golden mornings long ago, when she used to waken with a burst of joy at recovering ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... ye, then?" asked the saint, poking his head out at the door; "out wid ut! Did I not stuff ye wid cow-mate galore when the land was as nakud as me tonshure? But 'twas three cows an' a miracle wasted, ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fact, however, he did not come back. The bell rang with a soul-satisfying jangle for about two minutes and then died away, and no amount of poking with a hairpin did any good. It was clear that the bell ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... doubt it a mossel," said David simply, leaning over and poking the fire, which operation kept his face out of her sight and was prolonged rather unduly. Finally he straightened up and, blowing his nose as it were a ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... the time. He told it, however, afterwards to his master, a hunting man; and, on a subsequent occasion, when the same incident occurred again, one of the whips dismounted and went into the water, and, poking about the roots of the willows, dislodged Reynard, concealed under the hollow bank, and immersed under water, except his nose and mouth, by which he was hanging suspended from a fang of the tree roots. Surely Reynard’s clever ruse deserved a better ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... busy and prosperous community, there was now nothing but lines of little heaps of black and gray dust and cinders. Not a whole wall, not a beam, and not an unbroken jar remained. Here and there a man might be seen poking among the ashes, seeking for aught of value. The search was vain. Chee-chong had been wiped off the map. "Where are your people?" I asked the few searchers. "They are lying on ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... more becoming a fish-wife, than his description of Lochner's picture of the Virgin: "The neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream or hasty-pudding, that quivers when it is touched;" or of the picture of St. Ursula's companions, by the same hand: "Their squab noses poking out of bladders of lard that did duty for their faces;" not to speak of the characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... one leg when he found it a failure. Perhaps he was thinking the thing over. He did not think to much purpose, for day after day for more than a week back came the adjutant to walk like a soldier on duty up and down, up and down, poking his head through the bars each time. Sometimes he did it a score of times, sometimes only two or three. After ten days he disappeared. Where is he? Has he gone to find a blacksmith among the adjutants? or have his brother adjutants had him shut up till he has sense to know the best way for a bird ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Instead of poking his head out cautiously to investigate, he walked straight from the hollow trunk into the very jaws of the fox. There was a sharp click of teeth, and Bumper felt a terrible pain in one of his long ears. He must have leaped five feet in the air, and another five feet sideways. The ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... the stout gentleman, darting into his own tent and poking his head out through the door. "Keep the brute off. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... Mrs Pettigrew kept on poking at the goat in a timid yet cross way, he sprang forward, crying out to his trusty followers, ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... and swung his feet and regarded Luck with interest. "It's against my religious principles to go poking my nose into the other fellow's business," he said after a minute, "but I'm wondering if there's anything in this God-forsaken country to bring a fellow like you here deliberate. I'm wondering if you meant to stop, or if you just ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... that?" asked the lad. "I have plenty to do upstairs without poking my nose in where it ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... yo'se'ves in dis disrection yo' will find sufficient condiments an' disproportionate elements to induciate a feelin' ob intense satisfactoriousness," exclaimed Washington White, poking his head in from the sleeping ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... pertinacious way of poking his nose into all sorts of affairs, not at all after the manner of the usual pig, but more like a village gossip who wants to know about everything that is ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... gadgeting for mineral deposits, and Ed Reiss, hopefully on the lookout for anything alive. The Lucky Pierre was back of us, her body out of sight behind a low black ridge, only her gleaming nose poking above like a porpoise coming up for air. When I looked back, I could see, along the jagged rim of the ridge, the busy reflected flickerings of the bubble-camp the techs were throwing together. Otherwise all was black, ...
— Zen • Jerome Bixby
... interesting," observed Gouache, poking the stick of a brush into the eye of his picture. "I have painted three generations of the family, I who speak to you, and I hope to paint the fourth if Don Orsino here can be cured of his cynicism and induced to ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... of his mistress (he was dressed in a cinnamon-coloured coat with 'puffs' and a plush collar, a striped waistcoat with mother-of-pearl buttons, green trousers with straps of varnished leather, and white chamois leather gloves), when this lover pressed both fists to his bosom, and poking his two elbows out at an acute angle, howled like a dog, Maria ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... its furnishings in a hurry. I have seen the same things in the HERMITAGE when for architectural elegance, richness of ornamentation and lavishness of decoration it was unequaled by any art museum in the world.... While poking around among the piles of tables and vases that were moved over to one corner I came across a box of paintings that must have been STOLEN from St. Petersburg.[A] ... Here is the Madonna del Latte of Corregio, or a mighty good imitation, ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... my best, shouting, in English, "I am no Thargeelyah. I am no farmakos" supposing those words to be the native terms for one or other of their gods. On this the whole assembly, even the gravest, burst out laughing, each man poking his neighbour in the ribs, and uttering what I took to be jests at my expense. Their behaviour in this juncture, and frequently afterwards, when I attempted to make them tell me the meaning of the ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... she should drop some down my neck when she is talking. They would stick in to me, and hurt me like everything before I could get them out. I guess I would n't like that, would I? And if you had to stand just hours and hours, and have her cold fingers poking around your neck, and those great sharp scissors going snip, snip all around your neck, just where they would cut great pieces out if you dared move, I don't believe you would like that yourself, Ruthy Warren, even if she did give you ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... found Rhoda, with her dress tidily pinned out of harm's way, standing at a barrel, and poking vigorously with a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... room, and proceeded in his own official department, to impress the lives in waiting with a sense of his keen conscientiousness in the discharge of his duty, and the great difficulty of getting into the Anglo-Bengalee; by feeling their pulses, looking at their tongues, listening at their ribs, poking them in the chest, and so forth; though, if he didn't well know beforehand that whatever kind of lives they were, the Anglo-Bengalee would accept them readily, he was far from being the Jobling that his friend considered him; and was not the original Jobling, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... men of us for life: gold, ay, gobs of it; and writin's too—things that if I had the proof of 'em I'd hold Jack Gaunt to the grindstone till his face was flat. I'd have done it single-handed; but I'm blind, worse luck: I'm all in the damned dark here, poking with a stick—Lord, burn up with lime the eyes that saw it! That's why I raked up you. Come, out with your iron, and prise the lid off. You shall touch your snack, and have the wench for nothing; ay, and fling her in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ground; and then with much difficulty—their hands, despite all the clothes, being half-frozen—they again put the nartas in condition to proceed. Sakalar had not stopped, but was seen in the distance unharnessing his sledge, and then poking about in a huge heap of snow. He was searching for the hut, which had been completely buried in the drift. In a few minutes the whole six were at work, despite the blast, while the dogs were scratching holes for themselves in the soft snow, within which they soon lay snug, their ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... nice and cool!" murmured she, poking her little pink toes into the burning sand; till presently, a thorn, which appeared to be waiting for that very purpose, thrust its way deep into her foot. She sat down in the middle of the road and screamed. Jennie tried her best to draw out the thorn, but only succeeded in breaking it off. ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... you recognized the necessity of building up your father's family. (The Duke was listening. If you knew, Renee, what flattery lies for him in these words.) I have watched you during the whole winter, poking your little nose into all that goes on, forming very sensible opinions about men and the present state of society in France. And you have picked out the one Spaniard capable of giving you the splendid position of a woman who reigns supreme in her own house. My little ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... sinking, creeping; Hid in corners crooning; Splitting, poking, leaping, Gathering, towering, swooning. When we're lurking, Yet we're working, For our labour we must do, Shadow men, as well as you. Flicker, flacker, fling, fluff! Swing, swang, ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... and I have been poking things out of my cabin trunk, and furtively surveying one—there are two, but the other seems to be lost at present—of my cabin companions. She has fair hair and a blue motor-veil, and looks quiet and subdued, but then, I dare say, ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... "Now, you slip past me and go up stairs, to the room in front, and see if the man there can be gotten away. I want to size up the men in there. I can see them by poking my head out occasionally, but they can't ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... insects, worms, mollusca, and freshwater crustacea. In Bell's 'British Quadrupeds' its mode of poking about amongst stones in search of fresh-water shrimps (Gammarus pulex) is well described. Mr. F. Buckland states that he once dissected a water-shrew and found the intestines to contain a dark ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... little girls wanted to do, so with Freddie to help they began poking about with sticks in the leaves that were piled around the stump. They searched for some time, but could find no trace of ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... years ago. Men get terribly down at heel, mentally, morally, and mannerly, poking off by themselves in these out-of-the-way places. But she has been seeing people and steadily making growth since she gave him her promise at eighteen. The promise itself has helped to develop her. It must have ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... some way of getting down into it," said Ralph wistfully, poking at the ground, as if he thought he might force an ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... them when one does not know what they are talking among themselves; they jabber like Jews, and when they talked to me they were poking fun at me. Besides, there was some talk of ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... the yard were fast losing their yellow leaves, but the grass yet retained much of its verdancy, and as for the sky, it was as sweetly blue as on the fairest day in spring. Up one side of the yard and down the other went the sightseers, poking into dark hallways, reading tablets and inscriptions, the latter translated by West into the most startling English, pausing before the bulletins to have the numerous announcements of society and club meetings explained, drinking from the old pump in the corner, and so completing the circuit ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... literally huge bounds, seeking some haven wherein his disturbed senses might feel more at home, and eventually finding a place in an overturned wastebasket wedged between a chair and a desk, both suction-cupped to the floor. Frightened and alone, with only his nose poking out of the burrow beneath the trash of the wastebasket, he blinked back at the silent camera through which Bessie observed him, and elicited from ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... poking fun at your poor old Progenitor again,' said the old cobbler, with a merry twinkle in the corner of his eye. 'If it weren't for the jelly, and the natural affections always engendered by shoemaking, I think I should ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... he said, realizing that the others were all agog with excitement, and both Bluff and Will consumed with curiosity. "We must douse the glim, and in the dark change our anchorage. Then, if they come poking over here to-night, looking for us, they won't ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... learn stooping and poking out my chin from any one; it came of itself. It is so hard to sit up; but Mother says that much ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... was frowning deeply now. He hated to report to the sector chief that an emergency had come up which he couldn't handle. He hated the thought of Extrapolators poking around in his department, upsetting the routines, asking questions he'd already asked. He hated the forethought of the admiration he'd see in the eyes of his operators when an E walked into the room, the eagerness ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... dawdling, undisciplined, slovenly lot. We have no principles, no respectability, no business, no stake in the country, no knowledge of Mrs. Grundy. We are a parcel of Lotos-Eaters; and we know nothing, except that we are poking our way along anyhow to the Scilly Islands ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... his lieutenant, having disposed of their cigars, arose. The former, poking the muzzle of his revolver close to Hal's ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... perpetrators: none of your little bits for PUNCH—none of your insinuating cabinet gems—no Art-ful Union system of doing things—Hopkins to praise for one reason, Popkins to censure for another—and as PUNCH has been poking his nose into numberless unseen corners, and, notwithstanding its indisputable dimensions, has managed to screen it from observation, he has thereby smelt out several pretty little affairs, which shall in due time be exhibited and explained in front of his proscenium, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... go about chuckling and poking old ladylike fun at all the more eccentric Pastels, and continue to enjoy ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... was the charge that the unlucky Burl had barely time to thrust out his gun against the chief assailant, when he found himself completely beset. Wielding his unloaded rifle as he would a pike—poking, pushing, punching therewith at the infuriated dam, in throat and breast and ribs—he contrived for a time to keep himself clear of the terrible claws continually making at him in such fierce, unwelcome greeting. But the odds were against the black ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Lovett, General Van Rensselaer's military secretary, was impressed with what he saw through his field-glasses from Lewiston heights. "Every three or four miles, on every eminence," he wrote a friend, "Brock has erected a snug battery, the last saucy argument of kings, poking their white noses and round black nostrils right upon your face, ready to spit fire and brimstone in your very teeth, if you were to offer to turn squatter on John Bull's land." Influenced by these signs of "business," the United States officers were ordered to "dress as much like their men ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... all these things over when we decided to build in the suburbs, for Sarah is very nervous about burglars, and makes me get up at the slightest noise and go poking about. Only the fact that no burglar had ever entered our flat at night had prevented what might have been a serious accident to a burglar, for I made it a rule, when Sarah wakened me on such occasions, to waste no ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler |
