"Skim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... even in this court, it has not made the slightest impression on me. The highest flight of such clamorous birds is winged in an inferior region of the air. We hear them, and we look upon them, just as you, gentlemen, when you enjoy the serene air on your lofty rocks, look down upon the gulls that skim the mud of your river, when it is ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... gone—again the red-men rally With dance and song the woods resound; The hatchet's buried in the valley; No foe profanes our hunting-ground! The green leaves on the blithe boughs quiver, The verdant hills with song-birds ring, While our bark canoes, the river Skim, like swallows on ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... and the approach of spring the life of the Rangers became less full of hardship, though not less full of adventure. Snowshoes and skates were laid aside, and the men started to construct boats and canoes in which they soon began to skim the surface of the lake; scouting here, there, and all over, and bringing back news of the enemy's movements and strength even when no capture of prisoners rewarded ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrew'd and knauish spirit Cal'd Robin Good-fellow. Are you not hee, That frights the maidens of the Villagree, Skim milke, and sometimes labour in the querne, And bootlesse make the breathlesse huswife cherne, And sometime make the drinke to beare no barme, Misleade night-wanderers, laughing at their harme, Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Pucke, You do their worke, and they shall haue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the incidents rather than their absence. One day the first shoal of flying fish is seen—a flight of glittering birds that, flushed by the sudden approach of the vessel, skim away over the waters and turn in the cover of a white-topped wave. On another we crossed the Equator. Neptune and his consort boarded us near the forecastle and paraded round the ship in state. Never have I seen such a draggle-tailed divinity. An important feature in the ritual which he prescribes ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... they were on the scene of the accident, where, rounding to, the work of salvage was carried out in a most plucky and seamanlike manner. These boats have no stem, the bows, which are square and about four feet in width, sloping away underneath in a gentle curve, so that their tendency is to skim over the water like a dish instead of cutting through it. They are decked forrard flush with the gunnel for nearly half their length, when a low cabin takes up the space as far as the ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... cow for a small family like his; it did not give much milk at a time, but to make up for it gave milk all the year round. And rich milk too! When uncomplimentary remarks were made about it, Lars Peter would chaffingly declare that he could skim the milk three times, and then there was nothing but cream left. He was very fond of it, and more so for the good milk it had given the ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... reasonable, tuck up our sleeves and look after our cooking ourselves, and not insist that heaven should put itself out of the way to skim our soup. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... fact, the refined essence. Scott skims off the cream of his varied stores of popular tradition and antiquarian learning with strange facility; but he had tramped through many a long day's march, and pored over innumerable ballads and forgotten writers, before he had anything to skim. Had he not—if we may use the word without offence—been cramming all his life, and practising the art of story-telling every day he lived? Probably the most striking incidents of his books are in reality mere modifications ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... trust one o' them—not to sell a pound o' butter," said Rachel. "And by th' same token, Mrs Temperance, I mun be home to skim th' cream, or Charity'll take it off like a gaumless [stupid] lass as hoo [she] is. Hoo can do some things, well enough, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... clean pig—ain't he just right?" Then he'd grunt his thanks to the company and retire behind the shack for a nap. We used to fair kill ourselves laughing at that darned pig. He had the most wheedlin' squeal, so soft and pleadin'; and he'd look up at you with them skim-milk eyes of his so pitiful, when he wanted a chunk of sugar, that you ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... seen her through. I thought the Skylark was a big thing before, but she's nothing but skim-milk compared with this yacht," replied he. "If I had such a yacht as this, I wouldn't go ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... outfitted with surprising celerity. And at midnight a big freight canoe, loaded to the gunwale with an assortment of cheap knives and hatchets, bolts of gay-coloured cloth, and cheaper whiskey broke through the ever thickening skim of shore ice, and headed Northward under the personal direction of that master of all whiskey runners, ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... very steep, a drag in the form of a hoop of braided walrus hide would be thrown over the front of one of the komatik runners, but even then the dogs would have to run their hardest to preserve a safe distance between them and us, and out on the smooth ice of the bays we would shoot, to skim along with exhilarating swiftness. As we proceeded south we were interested in observing signs of spring. Towards the end of our journey we encountered much soft ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... his companions a characteristic of the hawk and buzzard tribe, by which these birds can always be distinguished from the true falcon. That peculiarity lay in the manner of seizing their prey. The former skim forward upon it sideways—that is, in a horizontal or diagonal direction, and pick it up in passing; while the true falcons—as the merlin, the peregrine, the gerfalcon, and the great eagle-falcons—shoot ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... of the valley are more of our trenches, with the German parapets 200 yards away beyond. And over these our shells are bursting, fired by guns on the slope of the hill beneath me; they whistle softly as they skim through the air over my head, and I hear the burst as they land. Further away to the west is one of the enemy's strongholds, and there bigger shells are bursting, throwing up clouds of black smoke and dust. These pass ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... the capital. It was sent in large baskets made of rushes, and packed in many layers of cool, fresh leaves; so that it arrived at Buenos Ayres, forty hours after leaving Mount Pleasant, perfectly fresh and good. The skim milk was given to the pigs, who had already increased to quite ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... up and cut it out. Right. I'll fix up the Mirror in the same way. Now skim through the Mail. Got it? By Jove! damn near a whole column. Here'—Maynard ran the knife down the side of the column. 'Now then, old Fensome has promised to get the thing out of the Post, and to tell Lord ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... calves| |just the same. Merely feed the perfect milk substitute— | | | | PRATTS CALF MEAL | | "BABY FOOD FOR BABY CALVES" | | | |When prepared and fed in accordance with the simple directions, Pratts| |Calf Meal will grow calves equal to those grown on whole or skim-milk| |and at less cost. | | | |This truly wonderful calf feed has practically the same chemical | |composition as the solids of whole milk. It is made of superior | |materials, carefully selected and especially adapted to calf feeding. ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... many deep things in the words, which I cannot touch in the course of a single sermon; but I wish now, at all events, to skim their surface, and try to gather some of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... market is in an unsettled state, the late rains having caused an unusual abundance. A large order for skim, for the use of a parish union, gave liveliness to the latter portion of the day, which had been exceedingly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... for flattened stones, and skim them o'er the waves; Then go where, in the piled-up rocks, the sea had hollowed caves; Or sit and feel the cooling breeze in silent happiness; Or hunt for seaweed in the clefts, and take ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... of brine strong enough to float an egg; add two pounds of brown sugar or a quart of molasses, and four ounces of saltpetre; boil and skim clean, and pour cold on your meat. Meat intended for smoking should remain in pickle about four weeks. This pickle can be boiled over, and with a fresh cup of sugar and salt used all summer. Some persons use as much soda as saltpetre. It ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... household office, so that really for the greater part of the time in your house there seems to a looker-on to be nothing to do. You rise in the morning and despatch your husband, father, and brothers to the farm or wood-lot; you go sociably about chatting with each other, while you skim the milk, make the butter, turn the cheeses. The forenoon is long; it's ten to one that all the so-called morning work is over, and you have leisure for an hour's sewing or reading before it is time to start the dinner-preparations. By ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the sunny places and go out of our way to sit and mope in the darkest, dreariest shade we can find? I believe in the Gospel of Cheerfulness. It is your duty and mine to get every drop of cream off of our own especial pan of milk. And if we do have to drink skim milk, shall we throw away the cream on that account? If it were not to be used it would not be there. God does not make things ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... presence of mind, as a beginning. I felt the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a smoothness ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... nothing; his impulse was to be alone and collect himself. He felt as might one who has been staring at the sun. Storri's picture of an enterprise so vast that it proposed to set out the world like a mighty pan of milk, and skim the cream from two hemispheres, dazzled him and caused his ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... time of year. As we stood in one of them to let the horses drink and cool their legs, I saw a huge eel hidden under the shadow of a high overhanging bank, waiting till the evening to come out and feed upon the myriads of flies and little white moths that skim over the surface of ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... Utensils. But then the private Brewer is not without his Benefits; for he can have his Malt ground at pleasure, his Tubs and moveable Coolers sweeter and better clean'd than the great fixed Tuns and Backs, he can skim off his top Yeast and leave his bottom Lees behind, which is what the great Brewer can't so well do; he can at discretion make additions of cold wort to his too forward Ales and Beers, which the great Brewer can't so conveniently do; he can Brew how and when he pleases, which ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... moose-bushes with bound after bound, flying over the fallen logs, pausing neither for brook nor ravine. The baying of the hounds grew fainter behind her. But she struck a bad piece of going, a dead-wood slash. It was marvellous to see her skim over it, leaping among its intricacies, and not breaking her slender legs. No other living animal could do it. But it was killing work. She began to pant fearfully; she lost ground. The baying of the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... some of The Times' broad-sheets. I don't exactly know whether they are good or not. It is undoubtedly a benefit to have "bits" from great writers to skim over when you haven't the time, or the inclination, to wade through a volume. On the other hand, it is intensely aggravating to experience the feeling of incompleteness that naturally results from having your reading ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the cedared ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the sugar broken into small pieces, and boil and skim for about twenty minutes longer, or until the ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... in the little room at the back of the house, in which she received her own particular friends, wrote her letters, and read; just then she was engaged in the latter occupation, for the books had come in from the library that day, and she had sat down after luncheon to skim them through before selecting any which seemed worth ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... no easy task. Three times they swooped low, to skim along just over the crest of the waves, ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... bite with their teeth so white and then with the sweep of their trailing tails smooth it again and it grows amain and amain it grows and the wind that blows tosses the swallows over the hollows and over the shallows and blows the sweet life and the joy so rife into the swallows that skim the shallows and have the yellowest children and the wind that blows is the life of the river that flows for ever and washes the grasses still as it passes and feeds the daisies the little white praises and buttercups sunny with butter ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... stormy. The day had been sultry, with a lurid, metallic-looking sky, hanging like a vast galvanic plate over the face of nature. As evening drew on, everything betokened the coming tempest. Unerring indications of its approach were noted by the weatherwise at the hall. The swallow was seen to skim the surface of the pool so closely that he ruffled its placid mirror as he passed; and then, sharply darting round and round, with twittering scream, he winged his rapid flight to his clay-built home, beneath the barn eaves. The ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Beach into the sea. It was twilight, the waves rolling in, the wind sweeping by, the crimson clouds fading in the west and the silver moon brightening above the hill; and on the bridge were you, fluttering in the breeze like a sea-bird that might skim away at your pleasure. You seemed a daughter of the viewless wind, a creature of the ocean-foam and the crimson light, whose merry life was spent in dancing on the crests of the billows that threw up their spray to support your footsteps. As I drew nearer I fancied ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was found By fishermen, or others, drowned! Or—I, a gentleman, did wed The lady I would never bed, Great Agamemnon's royal daughter, Who's coming hither to draw water." Thus gave at once the bards of Greece The cream and marrow of the piece; Asking no trouble of your own To skim the milk or crack the bone. The poets now take different ways, "E'en let them ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... look at the difference in the size of the pieces! And Aunt Olivia only gives you skim milk. ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cut from the lower part of the round; five quarts of cold water. Let come to a boil, slowly; skim carefully, and set where it will keep just at the boiling point for eight or ten hours. Strain, and set away to cool. In the morning skim off all the fat and turn the soup into the kettle, being careful not to let the sediment pass in. Into the ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... color'd feather, Please us as they skim along, But ther charms all put together, Connot equal ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... you had better take with you only books enough, and not too many? It is an "embarrassment of riches," sometimes, to find yourself with too many books. You are tempted to lay down one and take up another; you are tempted to skip and skim too much, so that you really get the good of none ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... gloomy at the end of the discussion; and a heavy silence had fallen on them. Then of a sudden the face of the Terror brightened; and he said with a touch of triumph in his tone: "I've got it; we'll feed them on skim-milk." ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... feed upon at such a time. There was a light skim of snow upon the ground, and the weather was cold. The wren, so far as I know, is entirely an insect-feeder, and where can he find insects in midwinter in our climate? Probably by searching under bridges, under brush ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... were now heard, ominously stealing along the wooded hills; and now, in the sharp, momentary rattling of the seared beech-leaves, the whole forest seemed shivering in the dead chill that was settling over the earth. The cold, indeed, was now becoming so intense as to congeal and skim over all the pools and still eddies of the river, and make solid ice along the shores of the rapid currents of the stream; while even the ground was fast becoming so frozen as to clumper and sound beneath ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... were other sides, too, to Mr Rackstraw's character, but for the moment let him go as a multi-millionaire City man and Radical politician. Not that it is satisfactory; it is too mild. The Radical politics of other Radical politicians were as skim-milk to the Radical politics of Radical Politician Rackstraw. Where Mr Lloyd George referred to the House of Lords as blithering backwoodsmen and asinine anachronisms, Mr Rackstraw scorned to be so guarded in his ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... length in the present work, but we may here note that discovery and research in its relation to the later empires that ruled at Babylon have produced results of literary rather than of historical importance. But we should exceed the space at our disposal if we attempted even to skim this fascinating field of study in which so much has recently been achieved. For it is time we turned once more to Egypt and directed our inquiry towards ascertaining what recent research has to tell us with regard to her ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... on the table—the coarse brown loaf, the pat of butter, the huge jug of skim milk, and the teapot full of weak tea. The children all came in hungry from school. Alison returned from her bedroom with red eyes. She cut the bread into thick slices, put a scrape of butter on each slice, ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... able to identify the landscape because she was still confused a little, and then walked softly on, all the time afraid lest she should awake and lose the sweetness of it all, and the sense of rest and happiness. She felt so light, so airy, as if she could skim across the field like any child. It was bliss enough to breathe and move, with every organ so free. After more than fifty years of hard service in the world, to feel like this, even in a dream! She smiled to herself at her own pleasure; and then once more, ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... the subject. She went on praising the "Letters," however, not one of which had she read, or would she read; for this young lady had contrived to gain a high reputation in her own coterie for taste and knowledge in books, by merely skimming the strictures of those who do not even skim the works ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... store of criticisms of people, and their dresses, and their physical defects. There was no conversation.—She would go home late, and take her time about going to bed (that was the time when she was most awake). She would dawdle about her dressing-table: skim through a book: laugh to herself at the memory of something said or done. She was bored and very unhappy. She could not go to sleep, and in the night there would come ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... sad that dogs, and sometimes children, have been killed by its bite; but it has not generally been fatal to men. These snakes are fond of cream, and will wind their way into the dairy, and skim the milk-pans, and sometimes visit hen-roosts, ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... along; What a story of our gladness their enticing music tells As it chimes and it rhymes with the song! Such a rollicking delight Bubbles out upon the night As their joy-creating burthen over hill and valley swells. Every voice must join the tune As we skim beneath the moon To the tinkling and the twinkling ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... always inaccessible; to know how to look at them with laboriously-acquired indifference and to practise to take no notice of them, saying to yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred, since merely to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose the unanimous anger of all the gods of ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... think it's the motion of the ship.) Here I was interrupted to play chess with the chief engineer; as I grow old, I prefer the 'athletic sport of cribbage,' of which (I am sure I misquote) I have just been reading in your delightful LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS. How you skim along, you and Andrew Lang (different as you are), and yet the only two who can keep a fellow smiling every page, and ever and again laughing out loud. I joke wi' deeficulty, I believe; I am not funny; and when I am, Mrs. Oliphant says I'm vulgar, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poetical kind. There were two or three books which Marcella had absorbed in a way it now made her envious to remember. For at twenty-one people who take interest in many things, and are in a hurry to have opinions, must skim and "turn over" books rather than read them, must use indeed as best they may a scattered and distracted mind, and suffer occasional pangs of conscience as pretenders. But at thirteen—what concentration! what devotion! what joy! One of these precious volumes was Bulwer's "Rienzi"; ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the streets, and jolted over the stones, and at length reach the wide and open country. The wheels skim over the hard and frosty ground; and the horses, bursting into a canter at a smart crack of the whip, step along the road as if the load behind them—coach, passengers, cod-fish, oyster-barrels, and all—were but a feather at their heels. They have descended a gentle slope, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... sewing-machines, who should be abundantly able to "hoe their row" with them anywhere. In short, I was extremely disappointed. I expected to see the high fashion, the very birth and breeding, the cream cheese of the country, and it was skim-milk. If that is birth, one can do quite as well without being born at all. Occasionally you would see a girl with gentle blood in her veins, whether it were butcher-blood or banker-blood, but she only made the prevailing plebsiness more striking. Now I maintain that a woman ought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... always try to profit by my superiors. She has courage: I have none. I beat about the bush, and talk skim-milk; she uses the very word. She said we have been the dupe and the tool of a little scheming rascal, an anonymous coward, with motives as base as his heart is black—oh! oh! Ay, that is the way to speak of such a man; ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... how lovely!" shrieked the girl. "And its mamma wants to rough it! She shall have every egg and chicken on the place—and gallons of cream! We shall take the skim milk." ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... missed the easiest balls, fascinated in watching the movements and graceful attitudes of his opponent. Her feet, which even in the unflattering tennis-shoes looked small and dainty, seemed merely to skim over the ground like the wings of a passing swallow; and the most daring bounds and leaps, which in others would have been grotesque, she accomplished with the ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... play, The shining waves they skim, Or round his feet they seek their food, and stay ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... the rawhide, and I swore a soft vicious oath to steady my nerves. Then drawing my bow carefully, lowering my aim and holding like grim death, I shot a beautifully released arrow. It sped over the tops of the dried grass seeming to skim the ground like a bird, and struck the deer full and hard in the chest. It was a welcome thud. The beast leaped, bounded off some thirty yards, staggered, drew back its head and wilted in the hind legs. I had stayed immovable as wood. Seeing him failing, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... just a moment,—then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "It's synonymous with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack, perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails in unison and their faces transfigured with ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... investigation of the comparative profitableness of foreign and colonial commerce, nor did he, doubtless, desire to provoke such an investigation on the part of others. With the cunning of a prejudiced partizan, he was content to skim superficially the large economical question he had not scrupled to raise from the depths of discomfiture and oblivion, in which abandoned by the colonial detractors, his predecessors, who had tried their art to conjure "spirits from the vasty deep," which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... of dislike, one pound of resolution, two grains of common sense, two ounces of experience, a large sprig of time, and three quarts of cooling water of consideration. Set them over a gentle fire of love, sweeten it with sugar of forgetfulness, skim it with the spoon of melancholy, put it in the bottom of your heart, cork it with the cork of clean conscience. Let it remain and you will quickly find ease and be restored to your ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... or four hours very slowly; it should be put in cold water, and be kept covered during the whole process; a small ham will boil in two hours. All bacon requires much the same management,—and if you boil cabbage or greens with it, skim all the grease off the pot before you put them in. Ham or dried beef, if very salt, should be soaked several hours before cooking, and should be boiled in plenty ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... and call it ice-cream, but they almost feel more like crying, with cold blue fingers, and toes that even the warm knit stockings can't keep comfortable. Never mind, the swift snowshoes will make them skim over the snow-crust like birds flying, and the merry sled-rides that brother Christian will give them will make up for all the trouble. They will soon love the winter ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... what I can while I live to increase that feeling of independence and manhood in the American people.—We can control ourselves. I believe in the gospel of this world; I believe in happiness right here; I do not believe in drinking skim milk all my life with the expectation of butter beyond the clouds. I believe in the gospel, I say, in this world. This is a mighty good world. There are plenty of good people in this world. There is lots of happiness ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Labour we mean us working men; and by Capital we mean those that derive benefit from us, take the cream off us and leave us the skim. ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... and swoop On the air, or loop Through the trees, and then go soaring, O: To group with a troop On the gusty poop While the wind behind is roaring, O: I skim and swim By a cloud's red rim And up to the azure flooring, O: And my wide wings drip As I slip, slip, slip Down through the rain-drops, Back where Peg Broods in the nest On the little white egg, So early in the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... recollection of Peggy's mischievous flight of a few days previously had occurred to him—Mortlake swung the delicate silvery machine about and dashed straight down at the boy and girl standing by the garden gate. So close to their heads did he skim in his desire to show off, that he almost came too low. For one instant it looked as if the machine would be dashed to a premature end, but it recovered buoyancy like a keeled-over racing yacht, and tore upward into the sky at ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... dozen men are watching the fords of the Lodden, and a bullet in your back would probably be the first intimation of the presence of a party of skulkers. No, sirs, unless you can skim over the surface of this bog, and then scale Mount Tarrengower, your only place of safety is on this ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... be," declared the young farmer to Mrs. Atterson. "But I believe the risk is worth taking. If we do get 'em good, we'll get 'em early and skim the cream of the local ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... long stretch of level ground then, smooth and hard; and the horses as with common consent set out to gallop shoulder to shoulder in a wild, exhilarating skim across the plain. Talking was impossible. The man reflected that he was making great strides in experience, first a prayer and then a pledge, all in the wilderness. If any one had told him he was going into the West for this, he would ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... She did, indeed, refuse hay this morning; but the only reason was that she was crammed full of oats. You have nothing to fear, neighbor; the mare is in perfect trim; and she will skim you over the ground like a bird. I wish you a good journey and a ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and the sharp-shinned hawk. Night-hawks are quite conspicuous, if one walks about after sunset. They are dusky with a white throat and band on the wing. They sail through the air without any effort, wings outspread and beak wide open, and thus glean their harvest of winged insects as they skim along. Oftentimes their sudden swoop will startle ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... back to the Monroes' for luncheon," Mrs. Dinsmore reminded her. "But Mr. Brockton is going to skim over most of the Berkshires first. I think you said you hadn't been in this part of the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... an amusement to me this first evening, scribbling as egotistically as usual about myself and my doings; so you must forgive me, as I know well your kind heart will do. I have managed to skim the newspaper, but had not heart to read all the bloody details. Good God! What will the end be? Perhaps we are too despondent here; but I must think you are too hopeful on your side of the water. I never believed the "canards" of the army of the Potomac having capitulated. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... it the Dirt, for that is what it is with us. As a spectacle, the racing lacks the definition in England which our course gives, and when it began, I missed the relief into which our track throws the bird-like sweep of the horses as they skim the naked ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... sweeping upward again. Another minute, and I saw a second bird, farther away. I watched the nearer one till it faded from sight, soaring and swooping by turns,—its long, scissors-shaped tail all the while fully spread,—but never coming down, as its habit is said to be, to skim over the surface of the water. There is nothing more beautiful on wings, I believe: a large hawk, with a swallow's grace of form, color, and motion. I saw it once more (four birds) over the St. Mark's River, and counted the sight one ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... been covered by the waters of the great inland sea that still, in places, laves its eastern borders with its briny flood. I am informed there are many miles of smooth, hard, salt-flats, over which a 'cycler could skim like a bird; but I scarcely think enough of bird-like skimming to go searching for it on the American Desert. A few miles east of Matlin the road leads over a spur of the Red Dome Range, from whence I obtain my first view of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... mountain-side.' Then plunged he in the flashing tide. Bold o'er the flood his head he bore, And stoutly steered him from the shore; And Allan strained his anxious eye, Far mid the lake his form to spy, Darkening across each puny wave, To which the moon her silver gave. Fast as the cormorant could skim. The swimmer plied each active limb; Then landing in the moonlight dell, Loud shouted of his weal to tell. The Minstrel heard the far halloo, And joyful ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... sea, is excessively difficult to navigate; its surf looks no more than champagne foam, but a thousand quicksands and shoals lie beneath: there are breakers ahead for more than half the dainty pleasure-boats that skim their hour upon it; and the foundered lie by millions, forgotten, five fathoms deep below. The only safe ballast upon it is gold dust; and if stress of weather come on you, it will swallow you without remorse. Trevenna had ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... He watched the boat skim through the moonlit water, and he floated for some little distance to ascertain whether he ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... Skim; and quite agree with you that he knows very little about us and our affairs," answered one of the swallows with a shrill chirp, like a scornful laugh. "We work harder than he does any day. Did he build ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... in low tones, and I looked at Margarita and thought of the odd chances of life, and how we are hurried past this and that and stranded on the other, and skim the rapids sometimes, to be wrecked ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... a 3-inch ladle and heat it over the fire and then dip it into the solder and skim off any ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... deliberation. He grew more and more careless toward the books he counted of little consequence, while he imagined himself growing more and more capable of getting at the heart of a book by skimming its pages. If to skim be ever a true faculty, it must come of long experience in the art of reading, and is not possible to a beginner. To skim and judge, is to wake from a doze and give the charge ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... into the fire and that will burn all the blackness out of it. Get the love of God into your hearts, and the fire of His Divine Spirit into your spirits to melt you down, as it were, and then the scum and the dross will come to the top, and you can skim them off. Two powers conquer my sin: the one is the blood of Jesus Christ, which washes me from all the guilt of the past; the other is the fiery influence of that Divine Spirit which makes me pure and clean for all the time to come. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... metal lath or any one of the various plaster boards can be used as foundation. Now comes a fine point. Present-day plasterers produce a much finer finish than was the rule a century ago, but if they understand the effect desired they will restrain themselves and possibly omit the final skim coat. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... lightly skim the air, than Marmion's steed flew along the drawbridge. The man drew rein when he had reached the train, turned, clenched his fists, shouted defiance, and shook his gauntlet at the towers where so lately he ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... for wild ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered, 'When my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... were called on deck. Now one sail and now another was added,—some rigged out so as just to skim the surface of the water, while with buckets and scoops the sails were wetted as high as they could be reached. Harry and David could see in the far distance a large ship, which from her narrow yards and the cut of her sails Harry said he ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... mountain, all rugged and stark, Ye have nests in the forest, all tangled and dark; Ye build and ye brood 'neath the cottagers' eaves, And ye sleep on the sod, 'mid the bonnie green leaves; Ye hide in the heather, ye lurk in the brake, Ye dine in the sweet flags that shadow the lake; Ye skim where the stream parts the orchard decked land, Ye dance where the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... to soak a scrap of bread in one of the pots; to which the cook made answer, "Brother, this is not a day on which hunger is to have any sway, thanks to the rich Camacho; get down and look about for a ladle and skim off a hen or two, and much good may they ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... world? what is the next world?" cried the old hag in her drunkenness: "no, in this world, here, on what we call earth. What words the fools make use of! There is no next world, you silly ninnyhammer! he who does not skim off the fat from the broth while he is here, is a wretched gull. This however is what they clack to their simple brood, that they may behave prettily, and keep within bounds, and go the way one would lead them: but whosoever believes none of their fabling, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... the card system. For I have aimed to study my authorities in a logical succession. First I go over the period in some general history, if one is to be had; then I read very carefully my original authorities in the order of their estimated importance, making copious excerpts. Afterwards I skim my second-hand materials. Now I maintain that it is logical and natural to have the extracts before me in the order of my study. When unusually careful and critical treatment has been required, I have drawn off my memoranda ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... rest, thy slave in obedience to thy command took out a suit of clean white clothes and gave it to the boy Abdullah; then kindled the fire and set on the broth. As soon as it was ready I had need to light a lamp so that I might see to skim it, but all the oil was spent, and, learning this I told my want to the slave-boy Abdullah, who advised me to draw somewhat from the jars which stood under the shed. Accordingly, I took a can and went to the first vessel when suddenly I heard a voice within whisper ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... like those which weary you now about the Declaration of Independence. It will not be the same world then. Your children will not be always children. Enjoy their fresh, youth while it lasts, for it will not last long. Do not skim over the present too fast, through a constant habit of onward-looking. Many men of an anxious turn are so eagerly concerned in providing for the future, that they hardly remark the blessings of the present. Yet it is only because ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... wild deer of the forest At the river stoop to drink, But from the rush of waters All panic-stricken shrink; And the mountain eagles sailing O'er the cataract's foaming brim Alarmed, on soaring pinions, Away, o'er Heaven's clouds skim. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... fly does a horse, always keeping at just about such a distance, though one would think, in their sky-circling and ocean-dipping, they must lose time occasionally. As these birds of the sea glide down a billow, then skim lightly up again, it would seem they must sometimes be caught in the swirl of foam and borne under, but no! Every time, no matter with what fusilade of spray the wave breaks, Mr. Seagull rises, lightly triumphant, with not so much ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... faces are here not so much for enjoyment, as to escape from dulness. None of the emotion is genuine. If you ask for nothing but court feathers properly adjusted, fresh gauzes and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair women, if you desire simply to skim the surface of life, here is your world for you. Be content with meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, and do not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor the stale intrigues which end in sub-prefectures and receiver-generals' places and marriages; or, if love comes ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... will find that you need not go far to learn the habits of birds, and know the difference between a swallow and a swift.—Learn the difference in a village, and you know the difference wherever swallows and swifts skim the air." ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... was the fertile brain, That bid him onward flee, The Indian moon was on the wane And drooped the hawthorne tree. The light canoe of rounded bark Scarce dared to skim the flood, For they had come with meaning dark To ravage ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... water-skates (1) that skim Sea-king's fields, more good as he, Shedding wounds' red stream, must stand In my way ere I shall wince. I, the golden armlets' warder, Snakelike twined around my wrist, Ne'er shall shun a foeman's faulchion Flashing bright in ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... is the toiling hand of Care; The panting herds repose: Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air The busy murmur glows! The insect youth are on the wing, 25 Eager to taste the honied spring, And float amid the liquid noon: Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some show their gayly-gilded trim Quick-glancing to ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... their solemn forms, their costly fronts rich with the spoils of kingdoms, and softened with the magic of the midnight beam. The whole city too is poured forth for festival. The people lounge on the quays and cluster on the bridges; the light barks skim along in crowds, just touching the surface of the water, while their bright prows of polished iron gleam in the moonshine, and glitter in the rippling wave. Not a sound that is not graceful: the tinkle of ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... about 1890. USNM 129789; 1934. Cooley brand creamer, used for separating milk from cream prior to churning. The milk and cream were set in a cool place for several hours while the cream rose to the top. The farmer drew skim milk off through a spigot at the bottom, after which the cream could be drawn off. Used on farms before the hand centrifugal separator came into wide use. By 1890, in butter-producing areas, the centrifugal separator had already caused the disuse of the Cooley and similar separators. ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... grim, an' wither'd hags, Tell how wi' you, on ragweed nags, They skim the muirs an' dizzy crags, Wi' wicked speed; And in kirk-yards renew their leagues Owre ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... onions in a quart of the liquor in which a leg of mutton has been boiled, skim well, and when the vegetables are tender strain them out. Pass the soup through a napkin, boil up, skim thoroughly, and when clear add the contents of a tin of Nelson's Extract of ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... of culinary processes is not often performed in perfection. It does not require quite so much nicety and attendance as roasting; to skim your pot well, and keep it really boiling (the slower the better) all the while, to know how long is required for doing the joint, &c., and to take it up at the critical moment when it is done enough, comprehends almost the whole art and mystery. This, however, demands ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... old trees in the lingering light, and, young and fine and fair as they both were, formed a complete superficial harmony with the peaceful English scene. A near view, however, would have shown that Godfrey Chart hadn't taken so much trouble only to skim the surface. He looked deep into his sister's eyes. "What was it you said that ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... or strokes, will make easy reading of Chinese impossible. It is a mistake to suppose that the Chinese have to "spell their way" laboriously through the written character so familiar to them: it is just as easy to "skim over" a Chinese newspaper in a few minutes as it is to "take in" the leading features of the Times in the same limited time; and volumes of Chinese history or literature in general can be "gutted" quite easily, owing to the facility with which the so-called pictographs, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... into three pieces there will come a messenger, to bid him to the King, so he will lay my flesh in a cauldron of brass and set it upon a brasier before going to the presence and he will say to thee, 'Keep up the fire under the cauldron till the scum rise; then skim it off and pour it into a phial to cool. Wait till it cool and then drink it, so shall naught of malady or pain be left in all thy body. When the second scum riseth, skim it off and pour it into a phial against my return from the King, that I may drink it for an ailment I have in my loins.' Then ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the froth that the fluid grows thicker You, should skim it (with glee) for it's turning to liquor! While it ferments, please continue to skim: At the end, you may murmur the Bartender's Hymn. This makes a booze that is potent enough— Seal in a hogshead—and hide it ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... came singing across their prow and they were obliged to lay to until a British man-of-war could lower a boat to investigate their errand. The coast is very shallow in this section, which permits boats of only the lightest draught to navigate in-shore, but the launch was able to skim over the surface at ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... rack! Ye riders, bronze your airy motion! Still skim the seas, so snowy craft,— Forever sail to meet the ocean! There bid the tide refuse to slide, Glassing, below, thy drooping pinion,— Forever cease its wild caprice, Fallen at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... dispersed the mist, and the little valley stood in glittering sheen, as the children turned away to the pond to skim flat stones on the water. As they passed the house the girl pressed the latch once more; but again the door did not open, nor was anything to be seen at the window. And now the children played merrily ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... rejoiced that for once he was engaged in something that absorbed him fully, and the zeal for the development of which made him careless for the result in respect to its good or evil, but only desirous that it show itself. As for Alice, she seemed to skim lightly through all these matters, whether as a spirit of good or ill he could not satisfactorily judge. He could not think her wicked; yet her actions seemed unaccountable on the plea that she was otherwise. It was another characteristic thread in the wild web of madness that had spun ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Pantin's manner was urbane but, observing him closely, Mrs. Toomey noted that his eyes suddenly presented the curious illusion of two slate-gray pools covered with skim ice. It was not an encouraging sign and her heart sank in spite of the superlative suavity of the tone in ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... sport fell out When they to spoil did fall; Rude Robin Goodfellow, the lout, Would skim the ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... seen in calm weather, but appear to follow the gale, and when it blows most heavily they are seen in greatest numbers. The colour is brown and white; the size about that of the swallow, whose motions oh the wing they resemble. They skim over the surface of the roughest sea, gliding up and down the undulations with astonishing swiftness. When they observe their prey, they descend flutteringly, and place the feet and the tips of the wings on the surface of the water. In this position I have seen many of them rest ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... he exclaimed, "when you start the propellers she is going to fly even though you may want her to skim the water." ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the drawbridge flies. Just as it trembled on the rise; Not lighter does the swallow skim Along the smooth lake's level brim; And when Lord Marmion reached his band, He halts, and turns with clenched hand, And shout of loud defiance pours, And shook his gauntlet at the towers, "Horse! horse!" the Douglas cried, "and chase!" But soon he reined his ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Jupiter should really wish to give a bonne-bouche to Juno, Leda, or Venus, or any one of his thousand and one flames, let him skim the milky-way—transform the instrumental part of the music of the spheres into 'hautboys,' and compound the only dish worth the roseate lips of the gentle dames 'in nubibus,' and depend on it, the cups of Ganymede and Hebe will be rejected for ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... to her tubs. Ellen supplied her grandmother with her knitting, and filled her snuff-box; cleared the table, and put up the dishes ready for washing. Then she went into the buttery to skim the cream. This was a part of the work she liked. It was heavy lifting the pans of milk to the skimming shelf before the window, but as Ellen drew her spoon round the edge of the cream, she liked to see it wrinkle up in thick, yellow, leathery folds, showing how deep and rich it was ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... after long illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness, but too weak to contain it. The tears well and fall as the dog barks in the hollow, the children skim after hoops, the country darkens and brightens. Beyond a veil it seems. Ah, but draw the veil thicker lest I faint with sweetness, Fanny Elmer sighed, as she sat on a bench in Judges Walk looking at Hampstead Garden Suburb. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Elderly Orphans of Defective Brain Power," I give an excellent Coffee, made of five parts chicory, and one of Mocha, supplied at a cheap rate by a House in the City, which owes me money, and is paying it off in this way, with skim-milk added, in moderation, and no sugar. None of the orphans has ever complained of my Coffee. I should like to catch them doing so. It is nonsense to say the art of coffee-making is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... when I left the convent she had to give me up. I was not of her monde; I am not now, either, but we sometimes meet. They are terrible people—her monde; all mounted upon stilts a mile high, and with pedigrees long in proportion. It is the skim of the milk of the old noblesse. Do you know what a Legitimist is, or an Ultramontane? Go into Madame de Cintre's drawing-room some afternoon, at five o'clock, and you will see the best preserved specimens. I say go, but no one is admitted who ...
— The American • Henry James
... another lot; one makes a white stock, the other brown. If the quantity is small, put them all together. Crack the bones, put them in the bottom of a large soup kettle, cover with cold water, bring slowly to boiling point and skim. Push the kettle to the back part of the stove, where the stock may simmer for at least three hours, then add an onion into which you have stuck twelve cloves, a bay leaf, a few celery tops, or a little celery seed, and a carrot cut into slices; simmer ...
— Made-Over Dishes • S. T. Rorer
... see, for here is a pot just opened, and this man with the long iron rod, called a pontil, or punty, in his hand, is about to skim it." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... be," declared the young farmer to Mrs. Atterson. "But I believe the risk is worth taking. If we do get 'em good, we'll get 'em early and skim the cream of the local market. Now, ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... potatoes in. Season with a bunch of seasonings composed of two sprigs of parsley, one of thyme, and a bay-leaf; salt and pepper to taste, and about half a pint of broth or water. Boil gently till cooked, remove the bunch of seasonings; skim off the fat, if any, and serve warm. It is served at breakfast, as well as ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... have lived in the world,' she said; after a pause, 'you are a man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach, who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn much do but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they conceive the dignity of the design—the horror of the living fact fades from their memory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember, I think, and are warned and pity. Go, rather, go now, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... level how the skaters slide, And skim the glitt'ring surface as they go: Thus o'er life's specious pleasures lightly glide, But pause not, press not ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi |
