"Sleight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sliced bread at intervals up the table, and saucers containing butter and jam. The stewards came to each person with an enormous pair of pots and, murmuring "tea or coffee?" poured something by sleight-of-hand ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... Vidal, lowering with all submission the point of his weapon—"I have already given you a proof of sleight which has alarmed even your experience—I have an ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... manipulations. It was not long before the latter saw him surreptitiously drop a considerable quantity of gold out of the scoop and into the box between his knees, then cover it up with the black sand. This sleight-of-hand was repeated several times, and when the last heap of gold had been weighed Bill estimated that Doctor Slayforth was poorer by at least a hundred ounces—sixteen hundred dollars. There was no question about it now; these were not common thieves; ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... none of him and jeered him in verse. He was an Unbeliever inwardly, though a Moslem outwardly, and had called himself Rashid al-Din;[FN290] and when Zumurrud mocked him and would not accept of him, he complained to his brother the aforesaid Christian who played this sleight to take her from her master Ali Shar; whereupon his brother, Barsum by name said to him, "Fret not thyself about the business, for I will make shift to seize her for thee, without expending either diner or dirham. Now he was a skilful wizard, crafty and wicked; so he watched ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... establishes history. Without any and against all evidence, in the license of his imagination alone, he had thrown out the suggestion that Mather attended the executions, as the ministerial comforter and counsellor of the sufferers. Then, by a sleight of hand, he transforms this "phantasy" of his own brain ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... lacking? Nay, a great thing—wherefore should I deceive you?—a great thing and a difficult: a messenger to bear it. The woods—y' are not ignorant of that—lie thick with our ill-willers. Haste is most needful; but without sleight and caution all is naught. Which, then, of this company will take me this letter, bear it to my Lord of Wensleydale, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... year are perfectly defined. The first is the fire which destroyed Covent Garden Theatre on the 5th of March, 1856. "During the operatic recess, Mr. Gye, the lessee of the Theatre, had sub-let it to one Anderson, a performer of sleight-of-hand feats, and so-called 'Professor.' He brought his short season to a close by an entertainment described as a 'Grand Carnival Complimentary Benefit and Dramatic Gala, to commence on Monday morning, and terminate with a bal masque on Tuesday night.' At 3 on the ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... that's about all thou canst do. Dost think that a man's greatness hangs on so little a thing as his sleight of hand at cutting his name on ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... the Soldier spoke; "By sleight of sword we may not win, But scuffle 'mid uncleanly smoke Of arquebus and culverin. Honour is lost, and none may tell Who paid ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... near him, upon a carved chair, turning over and over in her fingers a string of pearls as she gazed at the performances of the juggler. Two spearmen, clad in blue and scarlet and gold, stood motionless by the door, and Darius and Atossa watched the sleight-handed ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... boat had been lowered, and three sailors had jumped in. It rolled from side to side and rose on a wave. About eight or nine other persons leapt for it—Frederick thought he recognised familiar figures. It filled and disappeared. As if by sleight-of-hand, the spot where the boat with the dozen people in it had been dancing turned into empty sea with mist and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... after he had entered,—the right of expelling undesirable emigrants being constantly exercised, even by the United States. This amazed him. He had absolutely persuaded himself that I could, by some sleight of hand, transform him into an American citizen; that he could then at once begin attempts to reestablish the fine old Polish anarchy in Austria, Russia, and Germany; and that no one of these nations would dare interfere with him. It was absurd but pathetic. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the inconsistency is not a peculiar art of his own, I dare say. Even in him it was probably quite unconscious, well as he was aware of most of the refinements of his craft; and perhaps it is only a sleight of hand that might come naturally to any good story-teller. But it is interesting to follow Flaubert's method to the very end, for it holds out so consummately; and I think it is possible to define it here. I should say, then, that he deals with the difficulty I have described by keeping Emma ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... attention to himself. He was not without a certain energy, but he devoted it to small ends, to perfecting himself in little accomplishments, continually running after some new thing, incapable of persisting long in any one course. At one moment his mania would be fencing; the next, sleight-of-hand tricks; the next, archery. For upwards of one month he had devoted himself to learning how to play two banjos simultaneously, then abandoning this had developed a sudden passion for stamped leather work and had made a quantity of purses, tennis belts, and hat bands, which he presented to ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... Julian turn'd his steed half round,— 130 'What! doth not Alice deign To accept your loving convoy, knight? Or doth she fear our woodland sleight, And join us ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was approaching the abode of Circe he was met by Hermes, who said: "Come then, I will redeem thee from thy distress, and bring deliverance. Lo, take this herb of virtue, and go to the dwelling of Circe, that it may keep from thy head the evil day. And I will tell thee all the magic sleight of Circe. She will mix thee a potion and cast drugs into the mess; but not even so shall she be able to enchant thee; so helpful is this charmed herb that I shall give thee ... Therewith the slayer of Argos gave me the plant that he had plucked from the ground, and he showed me the ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Consul tells me," said Yerkes, "that the Congo government is the rottenest aggregate of cutthroats, horse-thieves, thugs, yeggs, common-or-ordinary hold-ups, and sleight-of-hand professors that the world ever saw in one God-forsaken country. He says they're of every nationality, but without squeam of any kind—hang or shoot you as soon as look at you! He says if there's any ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... down into his trouser-pocket, the reins in one hand, and brought up a handful of silver. He held his hand down to the coach lamp, separated some of the silver from the rest by a sort of sleight of hand—or rather sleight of fingers—and handed the fourteen ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... back to the stage, after having given the lady the glass of water, Joe substituted the bottle containing the guinea pig for the empty one that had held the three liquids. This was where his quick sleight-of-hand work came in. When he gently broke the bottle it was easy enough to remove the little animal, which had been used in tricks so often that ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... taken my clothes and stripped me and had been like to kill me; and when I told them that they would have killed me, they praised God the Most High and gave me joy of my safety. So consider the craft of this woman and this device that she practised upon me, for all my pretensions to sleight and quickwittedness.' ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... lance Guided so well, that I obtain'd the prize, Both by the judgment of the English eyes, And of some sent from that sweet enemy France; Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance; Townfolks my strength; a daintier judge applies His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise; Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; Others, because of both sides I do take My blood from them who did excel in this, Think nature me a man of arms did make. How far they shot awry! the true cause is, Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face Sent ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... I shall speak! Ye stranger-folk shall be free When ye give me the Flame of the Waters, the gathered Gold of the Sea, That Andvari hideth rejoicing in the wan realm pale as the grave; And the Master of Sleight shall fetch it, and the hand that never gave, And the heart that begrudgeth for ever, shall gather and give and rue. —Lo, this is the doom of the wise, and no doom shall be ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... of a monkey, flinging back his hair, tearing off his spectacles, and withdrawing from his nose by sleight of hand the two quills of which mention was recently made, and which the reader has also met with on another page of this book, he took off his face as the man ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... that, like Old Sledge in the Kentucky Court, its exponents established it to be, not a game of chance, but skill, and such, indeed, it proved to every Yankee who put up his money against the bank. With an apparently congenital gift of sleight of hand, developed by years of practice at pitch penny from toddling babyhood to cock-fighting adolescence, the native could so manipulate the tools of his game that no outsider had the faintest ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... but I can possess it any moment I choose. You don't know my skill in sleight of hand; I might practise as a conjuror if I liked. Mamma says sometimes, too, that I have a harmonizing property of tongue and eye; but you never saw that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... most versatile and entertaining of artists. He was a wit, and could also perform all sorts of sleight of hand tricks, besides being so quick with his pencil that his doings seemed miraculous. One evening, during a conversation with many friends, someone declared that in point of time Sir Edwin could do a record-sketch. One young woman spoke up and ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... over her father's peat-fire one night gossiping with him about fishing-flies and tackle, I noticed the grieve, who had dropped in by appointment with some ducks' eggs on which Bell's clockin' hen was to sit, performing some sleight-of-hand trick with his coat-sleeve. Craftily he jerked and twisted it, till his own photograph (a black smudge on white) gradually appeared to view. This he gravely slipped into the hands of the maid of his choice, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... next day. I have before alluded to the general incapacity of the Rebels to deal accurately with even simple numbers. It was never very difficult for a shrewd Sergeant to make nine sacks count as ten. After awhile the Rebels began to see through this sleight of hand manipulation, and to check it. Then the Sergeants resorted to the device of tearing the sacks in two, and turning each half in as a whole one. The cotton cloth gained in this way was used for patching, or, if ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... walking in it. For the muscles' development, several paths have been cut, and many who are in need are walking in them, but, to the average man, the road to the best kind of muscular development still remains closed. The only training now in use is followed by sleight-of-hand performers, acrobats, or other jugglers, and that is limited to the ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... afraid of venturing to Paris. He knew that his sleight of hand would be too narrowly watched in the royal presence; and upon some pretence or other he delayed the journey for more than two years. Desmarets, the Minister of Finance to Louis XIV., thinking the "philosopher" dreaded foul play, twice sent him a safe ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Zeph," spoke Ralph with a broad smile, "are you going to give us a detective demonstration of some kind, or a sleight-of-hand demonstration?" ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... From this time onward, I shall never know a weary or listless moment. I shall have always the cheering and inspiring occupation of winning the hearts of trusting and weak-minded dunces, and, by adroit sleight-of-hand, transferring the gold from their pockets ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Weber indulges in the following piece of chronological sleight of hand. In his arduous endeavour "to determine accurately" the place in history of "the Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha" (translation by Beale), he thinks "the special points of relation here found to Christian ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the gentleman whom you have so graciously permitted me to bring to your house. This is Phadrig the Adept, as he is known in his own ancient land of Egypt, a worker of wonders which really are wonders, and not mere sleight-of-hand conjuring tricks. He has been good enough to accompany me in order to convince the learned of the West that the Immemorial East could still teach it something if ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... landscape-painting. What do I care for the birds pecking at Zeuxis's grapes, or Zeuxis himself trying to draw back Parrhasius's curtain? Imitative art is the lowest trickery. There are twenty men in England now capable of the same sleight of hand; and yet these are recorded as the very highest triumphs of ancient art by the only men who have handed down to us any record ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... by listening attentively, succeeded in getting an impression that Richard through lucky dexterity and sleight had obtained some strange hold in stocks on Mr. Harley, and now in a foolish leniency was about to let him go. This excited Mr. Fopling hugely; he put in a ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... hand on the handle, and held up the other with the air of one who should say, "Excuse me, there is no thoroughfare this way." Turning abruptly to the left, Mr Jones found himself confronted by another grave gentleman of powerful frame and resolute aspect, who, by a species of magic or sleight of hand known only to the initiated, slipped a pair of steel bracelets on Mr Jones's wrists, and finally, almost before he knew where he was, Mr Jones found himself seated in a cab with the strong gentleman by his side, and the keen ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... passengers had to purchase tickets from him before they could enjoy their ride. The boy was also a clever conjuror, and, arrayed in a brown wig and a long white robe, used to cause no little wonder to his audience by his sleight-of-hand. With the assistance of various members of the family and the village carpenter, he made a troupe of marionettes and a small theatre for them to act in. He wrote all the plays himself the most popular being "The Tragedy of King John"—and he was very clever at manipulating ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... once attended a Bunsen lecture at Marburg and complimented Tyndall by saying, "When I take up sleight-of-hand work, consider yourself engaged as my first helper." Tyndall's way of standing with his back to the audience, shutting off the view of Bunsen's hands while he was getting ready to make an artificial peal of thunder, made Humboldt ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... immediately preceded, quote him and refer to him. Some admire him; others are loftily critical; most of them are a little jealous; and a few use him as a horrible example, calling him a poseur, a pedant, a learned sleight-of-hand man, a ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... twenty spectators. No one had entered the cabin. No one had come out of it. As for the dagger with which M. d'Ormeval had been stabbed between the shoulders, it could not be traced. And all this would have suggested the idea of a trick of sleight-of-hand performed by a clever conjuror, had it not concerned a terrible murder, committed under ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... little lawn at Myrtlewood was a battle-field, of which Alison used to carry her sister amusing and characteristic sketches. The two leading players were Miss Keith and Mr. Touchett, who alone had any idea of tactics; but what she did by intuition, sleight of hand or experience, he effected by calculation and generalship, and even when Conrade claimed the command of his own side, the suggestions of the curate really guided the party. Conrade was a sort of Murat on the croquet field, bold, dashing, often making wonderful ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hocus-pocus of abstraction. We have been in a grievous error: we thought that we had been at war with rebels against the lawful government, but that we were friends and allies of what is properly France, friends and allies to the legal body politic of France. But by sleight of hand the Jacobins are clean vanished, and it is France we have got under our cup. "Blessings on his soul that first invented sleep!" said Don Sancho Panza the Wise. All those blessings, and ten thousand times more, on him who found out abstraction, personification, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "I want that cayuse, an' I want it quick. You show me twenty-five dollars or I'll take it out from under you on my bid, you yaller dog! Stop it! Shut up! That's suicide, that is. Others have tried it an' failed, an' yo're no sleight-of-hand gun-man. This is the first time I ever paid a hoss-thief in silver, or bought stolen goods, but everything has to have a beginning. You get nervous with that hand of yourn an' I'll cure you of it! Git off that ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... man! Not deeper skill'd in every martial sleight, Than worn to toils, and active in the fight! This day two brothers shall thy conquest grace, And end at once the great Hippasian race, Or thou beneath this lance must press the field." He said, and forceful pierced his spacious shield: Through ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... societies in groups, and some such works of his at Haarlem are very fine. I have told a story of his rapid manner in the sketch of Vandyck. He was the first master to introduce that free, bold, sleight-of-hand manner which was afterward used by the Dutch masters, and is so strong in its effect. This painter led a merry, careless life. His portraits of single heads or figures are rare, and his small genre subjects still more so. In the Hotel de Ville ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... For the Dolphin, I stand here for him: what to him from England? Exe. Scorne and defiance, sleight regard, contempt, And any thing that may not mis-become The mightie Sender, doth he prize you at. Thus sayes my King: and if your Fathers Highnesse Doe not, in graunt of all demands at large, Sweeten the bitter Mock you sent his Maiestie; Hee'le call ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Margarita's mother, old Marda the cook. "Senor Juan Canito is pleased to be merry at the doors of his betters;" and she flung a copper saucepan full of not over-clean water so deftly past Juan's head, that not a drop touched him, and yet he had the appearance of having been ducked. At which bit of sleight-of-hand the whole court-yard, young and old, babies, cocks, hens, and turkeys, all set up a shout and a cackle, and dispersed to the four corners of the yard as if scattered by a volley of bird-shot. Hearing the racket, the rest of the maids came running,—Anita and Maria, the twins, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... none of those interesting phrenological bumps and depressions that usually are shown to such frank advantage in the Bertillon photographs. Ted had been assistant cashier in the Citizens' National Bank. In a mad moment he had attempted a little sleight-of-hand act in which certain Citizens' National funds were to be transformed into certain glittering shares and back again so quickly that the examiners couldn't follow it with their eyes. But Ted was unaccustomed to ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... father, who had no other comfort in life but this only daughter, left nothing untried to drive away her melancholy. So he sent for folks who walk on stilts, fellows who jump through hoops, for boxers, for conjurers, for jugglers who perform sleight-of-hand tricks, for strong men, for dancing dogs, for leaping clowns, for the donkey that drinks out of a tumbler—in short, he tried first one thing and then another to make her laugh. But all was time lost, for nothing could bring a smile ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... frise mantels, and gownes, clokes, hats, red caps, Spanish blankets, axe heads, hammers, short pieces of yron, sleight belles, gloues of a lowe price, leather bags, and what other ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... caused by a steam-engine. Obeying this irresistible force, in spite of his kicking, Lambernier described a dozen circles around his adversary, while the latter set these off with some of the hardest blows from green wood that ever chastised an insolent fellow. This gymnastic exercise ended by a sleight-of-hand trick, which, after making the carpenter pirouette for the last time, sent him rolling head-first into a ditch, the bottom of which, fortunately for him, was provided with a bed of soft mud. When the punishment was over, Bergenheim remounted ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... superiors, and of the Church), but he had even found out a new kind of wickedness, such as I never read of in any books of theology wherein is much to be learned. I have spoken with some, however, knights and men of this world, who deemed that he did but beguile our eyes by craft and sleight-of-hand. ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... detested him. The church in all its denominations was on terms of cool and reciprocated indifference with one who was above all else the man of this world. The press he knew how to manage. In every art of parliamentary sleight of hand he was an expert, and he suited the temper of the times, while old maxims of government and policy were tardily expiring, and the forces of a new era were in their season ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... might not get some additional clue. In the work by Robert Houdin entitled 'The Sharper Detected and Exposed' I found the statement that gamblers often neutralised a cut in a pack of cards by a rapid and dexterous sleight. This, the book went on to say, was accomplished in the following manner: When the cards are cut and left in two packets upon the table, the sharper picks up with his right hand the parcel of cards which was originally at the bottom of the pack. This is brought above ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... still walk his half mile with the help of his son and still drink his share of cider with the help of nobody—bent over the heap of corn before him, and selecting an ear, divested it of the husks with a twirling, sleight-of-hand movement. ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... quick at work, he fulfilled the other sequent of the adage likewise. His dinner was almost a sleight-of-hand performance. Arthur could hardly eat his own for concealed amusement at the gulf-like capacity of his mouth, and the astonishing rapidity with which ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... side; and when he weened to have smitten him upon the bare head, then lightly he avoided the left leg and the left side, and put his right hand and his sword to that stroke, and so put it on side with great sleight; and then with great force Sir Launcelot smote him on the helmet such a buffet that the stroke carved the head in two parts. Then there was no more to do, but he was drawn out of the field. And at the great instance of the knights of the Table Round, the king suffered ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... feet and took the weapon. She balanced it in her hand, then she spun it, rolled it, fanned it, went through a routine of lightninglike sleight-of-hand that Tom had ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... McGowan were cousins. They lived on the West Side and were talented. Singing, dancing, imitations, trick bicycle riding, boxing, German and Irish dialect comedy, and a little sleight-of-hand and balancing of wheat straws and wheelbarrows on the ends of their chins came as easy to them as it is for you to fix your rat so it won't show or to dodge a creditor through the swinging-doors of a well-lighted cafe—according as you may belong to the one ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... of deep, Luminous lashes, thick as dreams in sleep, Shone, as the sea's depth swallowing up the sky's, The springs of unimaginable eyes. As the wave's subtler emerald is pierced through With the utmost heaven's inextricable blue, And both are woven and molten in one sleight Of amorous colour and implicated light Under the golden guard and gaze of noon, So glowed their aweless amorous plenilune, Azure and gold and ardent grey, made strange With fiery difference and deep interchange Inexplicable of glories multiform; Now, as the sullen sapphire swells towards storm ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... is so intoxicating to a weak man as money acquired without toil. So Norman continued to bet, sometimes independently, sometimes in partnership with, the gentlemanly Smith. He was borne on by the excitement of varying fortune, a varying fortune absolutely under control of the dealer, whose sleight-of-hand was perfect. And the varying fortune had an unvarying tendency in the long run—to put three stakes out Of five into the pockets of the gamblers, who found the little game very interesting amusement ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... do but to occupy this seat and pound pegs. But the very next week I heard a fine preacher whose roaring eloquence, together with his easy, dignified life, caused me to think that the pulpit was the place for me. A few weeks later I chanced to see a sleight-of-hand performance and I at once decided that the art of legerdemain would be more easily learned than the Gospel work; so I began to practice along this line by extracting potatoes and other sundries from the nasal appendages of ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... and lay down on my bed. Jim's hands were white with flour. He was kneading dough, and had several low, flat pans on the table. Wallace and Jones strolled in, and later Frank, and they all took various positions before the fire. I saw Frank, with the quickness of a sleight-of-hand performer, slip one of the pans of dough on the chair Jones had placed by the table. Jim did not see the action; Jones's and Wallace's backs were turned to Frank, and he did not know I was in the cabin. The conversation continued ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... and I With joy transported, upward soare, The flowry Meddowes, and the pastures o're; Where the greene Grove its coole shade yeilds To th'stately grasse plotts, and ripe swelling fields: Straight, 'mid'st the river Swans, up hyer A winged fowle above the cloudes I'aspire; The lively Lakes below, I sleight, And with sweet straines a ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... own up to it, an' there's no use beatin' about the bush. The guilty party wot stole the locket an' transferred it by sleight-of-'and to poor Sue is no less a person than yer ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... good—even as an idea," he told her. "Doctors are like parsons—they can't keep up with the times. The age is outgrowing them. Only the fakirs in either profession get anything out of it, nowadays. It's all mystery and sleight-of-hand and the confidence trick—medicine is—and if you haven't got just the right twist of the wrist, you're not in it. But an artist stands on his merits. There is his work—done by his own hands. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Major, who was grumbling to himself at the very idea of having any pepper in his nature—"Goad, if you turn tables, mind you, you must do it better than the mesmerists. Out of this room you do not stir; no darkness—no bamboozling! Show your papers, Sir, without sleight of hand. Surrender, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the two sat side by side talking on subjects of mutual interest. The car was full; and a rough-looking sailor, of the lowest type of face, was crushed up close to Sister Mary. She sat with her back partly to him, and discoursed with eagerness to her companion. The sailor knew many tricks of sleight-of-hand—he was, in short, a kind of Jack-of-all-trades, and the laudable profession of the professional pickpocket was by no means beneath his notice. He managed to help himself to Sister Mary's purse ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... savages. When Bodb suspected his daughter of lying he cast her into a "Druidic sleep," in which she revealed her wickedness.[1117] In other cases spells are cast upon persons so that they are hallucinated, or are rendered motionless, or, "by the sleight of hand of soothsayers," maidens lose their chastity without knowing it.[1118] These point to knowledge of hypnotic methods of suggestion. Or, again, a spectral army is opposed to an enemy's force to whom it is an ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... possibility see more in the artist than they do in a juggler, who arrives at a strange end by means with which they are unacquainted. To the instructed, the juggler is by far the more respectable artist of the two, for they know sleight of hand to be an art of immensely more difficult acquirement, and to imply more ingenuity in the artist than a power of deceptive imitation in painting, which requires nothing more for its attainment than ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... only blood the angry winds would please, Forgot a father's part, and with his cruel knife Unto the gods did sacrifice his dearest daughter's life. Ulysses wailed the loss of his most faithful men, Whom Polyphemus did devour enclosed in his den But when his hands by sleight had made the Cyclops blind, Most pleasant joy instead of former tears possessed his mind. Hercules famous is for his laborious toil, Who tamed the Centaurs and did take the dreadful lion's spoil. He the Stymphalian birds with piercing arrows strook, And from the watchful dragon's care the ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... funeral tears That by the gods were to Electrum turn'd), Not flint or rock, of icy cinders flam'd, Deny the force[48] of silver-falling streams. Envy enjoyeth poetry's unrest;[49] In vain I plead; well is to me a fault, And these my words seem the sleight[50] web of art, And not to have the taste of sounder truth. Let none but fools be car'd for of the wise: Knowledge' ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... for lunch, because she gave him such miserable scraps and shreds of food. No matter how much milk he bought, he could never get thick cream for his strawberries. Even when he watched his wife lift it from the milk in smooth, ivory-colored blankets, she managed, by some sleight-of-hand, to dilute it before it got to the breakfast table. The butcher's favorite joke was about the kind of meat he sold Mrs. Archie. She felt no interest in food herself, and she hated to prepare it. She liked nothing better than to have Dr. Archie go to Denver for a few ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... revelry, Out to the Warden eagerly they cry, That be should let them, for a merry round, Go to the mill and see their own corn ground, And each would fair and boldly lay his neck The Miller should not steal them half a peck Of corn by sleight, nor by main ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... their opponents. What was to be gained but the poor interval of three months? There were clever men who suggested that Mr. Daubeny had a scheme in his head—some sharp trick of political conjuring, some "hocus-pocus presto" sleight of hand, by which he might be able to retain power, let the elections go as they would. But, if so, he certainly did not make his scheme known to his ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... demanded an audience of the queen, and solicited reparation. A proclamation was issued, in which three hundred pounds were offered for the discovery of the author. From this storm he was, as he relates, "secured by a sleight;" of what kind, or by whose prudence, is not known; and such was the increase of his reputation, that the Scottish nation "applied again that he would be their friend." He was become so formidable to the Whigs, that his familiarity with the Ministers was clamoured at in Parliament, particularly ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... followed him to the check room. Unseen by Warren, Shirley inserted a handkerchief from his own pocket into the overcoat pocket of the other with a sleight-of-hand substitution, in the withdrawal of the guest's small ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... individual, the contingent, the particular, he ascends, by induction, from the particular to the general; and then, by a strange paralogism, "the universal" is confounded with "the general" or, by a species of logical sleight-of-hand, the general is transmuted into the universal. Thus "induction is the pathway from particulars to universals."[678] But how universal and necessary principles can be obtained by a generalization of limited experiences is not explained by Aristotle. The experiences of a lifetime, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... you could trust your life with him. If he didn't, you could "look up" for trouble. He was honest and "square"—if he liked you—but he could make things disappear by "sleight of hand" in a manner worthy of a West ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... the Salug river valley Governor Bolton witnessed a most interesting ceremony which, so far as the writer is aware, is quite unknown to the balance of the tribe. His quotation follows: "One religious dance contained a sleight of hand performance, considered by the people as a miracle, but the chiefs were evidently initiated. A man dressed himself as a woman, and with the gongs and drums beaten rapidly he danced, whirling round and ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... hidden under his coat he brought dozens of skins. I believe that his religious vows did not allow him to handle animals—openly—and so he would beckon Roy into the darkness of the temple with a most mysterious air, and would extract all sorts of things from his sleeves just like a sleight-of-hand performer. He was a ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... SLOeJD (sleight), a system of manual training adopted to develop technical skill originally in the schools of Sweden and Finland; is education of the eye ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... corroding and damning vice. You must deceive your kindred, you must deceive society, you must deceive all but God, and Him you cannot deceive. Deception does not injure others so much as it injures ourselves. Marriage is too important a crisis in one's life to be decided by sleight of hand, or a sort of jugglery which says: "Presto, change! Now you see her, and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... relationship to your future wife for so much cash down to the Church. If your inamorata were your first cousin, you could remove her several degrees with five hundred dollars, and make her no relation at all for a little more. Such little sleight-of-hand performances are as nothing to a well-trained clergyman. Slip a check into one hand, and a request to marry your aunt into the other, let a clergyman shake them up in the coffers of the Church, and when one comes out gold, the other will appear as a blushing bride ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... fresh from a human jaw, though there had not been the slightest effusion of blood from the man's mouth. The thought had naturally suggested itself to us that the whole thing was a hoax, and that the patient was an accomplice; but if so, the doctor was no novice at sleight of hand, and the expression of astonishment on the other man's face when he found his tooth gone, was as perfect a specimen of histrionic emotion as it has ever been ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Revenge, throwing his bloodstained sword in thunder down, and taking the war-renouncing trumpet with a withering look." There may be a club for making things out of the Beard books, for the study of sleight-of- hand, for exchanging postcards with children in other countries and reading about the places on them. It may make historical pilgrimages to places of interest in the town or may collect stones and clay nodules, and read about ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... passage. So intent were the two men on their work that neither saw her. The tall man gave the box back to the conductor, then took the letter from between his knees, holding it in his right hand, when Jennie, as if swayed by the motion of the car, lurched against him, and, with a sleight of hand that would have made her reputation on a necromantic stage, she jerked the letter from the amazed and frightened man; at the same moment allowing the bogus document to drop on the floor of the car from her other hand. ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... indure worse luck sometime, or you will never make a good Angler. But what say you now? there is a Trout now, and a good one too, if I can but hold him; and two or three turns more will tire him: Now you see he lies still, and the sleight is to land him: Reach me that Landing net: So (Sir) now he is mine own, what say you? is not this worth all ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... the water in bewilderment, as if her senses were the victim of some sleight of hand. Not a speck or spot resembling a man's head or face showed anywhere. By this time she was alarmed, and her alarm intensified when she perceived a little beyond the scene of her husband's bathing ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... voice of Doctor Brown, "and until you show me the source of this 'occult' energy, I shall so contend. Animal magnetism and sleight-of-hand! What do ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... swinging round a piece of burning wood, and the illusion of the toy known as the thaumatrope, or wheel of life, all depend on this persistence of retinal impression. Many of the startling effects of sleight of hand are undoubtedly due in part to this principle. If two successive actions or sets of circumstances to which the attention of the spectator is specially directed follow one another by a very narrow interval of time, they ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... his head; and now Skarphedinn bore down on them, and hews at Thrain with his axe, "the ogress of war," and smote him on the head, and clove him down to the teeth, so that his jaw-teeth fell out on the ice. This feat was done with such a quick sleight that no one could get a blow at him; he glided away from them at once at full speed. Tjorvi, indeed, threw his shield before him on the ice, but he leapt over it, and still kept his feet, and slid quite to the end of the ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... him on a train going the other direction from Reuton early this morning. He thinks he'd better seek his fortune elsewhere." He leaned in heavy confidence toward Magee. "Say, young fellow," he whispered, "put me wise. That little sleight of hand game you worked last night had me dizzy. Where's the coin? Where's the girl? What's the game? Take the boodle and welcome—it ain't mine—but put me next to what's doing, so I'll know how my instalment of this serial story ought ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... Berry. "But what a beautiful bit of work! Four pounds' worth of scent for the asking. No unpleasantness, no sleight of hand, no nothing. Just a glad eye last night and a two-minute run this morning. I don't ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... on Idalia, lulled into a dream, Will I secrete, or on the sacred height Of lone Cythera, lest he learn the scheme, Or by his sudden presence mar the sleight. Take thou his likeness, only for a night, And wear the boyish features that are thine; And when the queen, in rapture of delight, Amid the royal banquet and the wine, Shall lock thee in her arms, and press her ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... them music was his charge: He screw'd his pipes and gart them skirl Till roof and rafters a' did dirl. Coffins stood round like open presses, That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses; And by some devilish cantrip sleight, Each in its cauld hand held a light, By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table, A murderer's banes in gibbet airns; Twa span-lang, wee unchristen'd bairns, A thief, new cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... sprang up, released. But Heywood, by some desperate sleight, had parried the certainty, and even tried a riposte. Still afoot and fighting, he complained testily ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... early drawings done as preliminary studies for engravings, the method of his pen strokes had changed less than the character of the forms they rendered; the conception of the design as a whole had advanced more rapidly than the skill and sleight of hand which expressed it. The engraver has by 1511 become capable of expressing a greater variety of speed in the stroke, makes it taper more finely, and can follow the tongue-like lap and flicker as the pen rises and dips again before leaving the surface of the block ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... slumber, they saw every falling crumb, they knew where we had hung our fish, and were ready as we turned our backs to make away with it. It was impossible to leave anything eatable for a single instant. Nothing but the sleight of hand of a conjurer could equal ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... sublime simplicity of barter. At one sweep were swept away all that monstrous credit system which had created an army of accountants and a Court of bankruptcy; all that chaos of single and double-faced entry—all that sleight-of-hand abracadabra of signatures—all those paper phantoms of capital. The Stock Exchange and other gambling-hells shrivelled up. There was a vast saving of clerical labour, and there were few loopholes for fraud. Everything was too simple. Swift retribution overtook ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... about quickly and adroitly, till finally, when you thought they were in a certain place, the coins turned up somewhere else: "The looker-on is deceived by such innocent tricks, being often inclined to presume the sleight of hand to be nothing more or ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... means at hand tangibly to impress upon the vulgar the fact that these inscrutable powers would do what he might ask of them. Hence, presently, a knowledge of certain natural processes which could be turned to account for spectacular effect, together with some sleight of hand, came to be an integral part of priestly lore. Knowledge of this kind passes for knowledge of the "unknowable", and it owes its serviceability for the sacerdotal purpose to its recondite character. It appears to have been from this source that ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the Jews in matters of religion and worship, but left him and them wholly to the law, will, and word of God, only he laid check upon wicked and ungodly people: that if they did things contrary to the laws of Ezra's God, or did sleight the king's law, as aforesaid, that then such penalties and pains should be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the cabinet at first is utterly gratuitous. It offers no additional difficulty to any manifestations, and appears only intended to prevent the scrutineers seeing behind her. A very simple exercise of sleight of hand would enable the gallant Colonel to cut the one ligature that binds the two wrists, when, for instance, he goes into the cabinet with scissors to trim off the ends of the piece of calico in the opening trick. The hands being once free all else is easy. The hands are never once seen ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... parent tree? In the case of cuttings from plants it is easy to elude the difficulty by making a parade of the sharp and sudden act of separation from the parent stock, but this is only a piece of mental sleight of hand; the cutting remains as much part of its parent plant as though it had never been severed from it; it goes on profiting by the experience which it had before it was cut off, as much as though it had never ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... cubes moved; faster the circle revolved; the pyramids raised themselves, stood bolt upright on their square bases; the six rolling spheres touched them, joined the spinning, and with sleight-of-hand suddenness the ring drew together; its units coalesced, cubes and pyramids and globes threading with ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... into the back of the vault, so that it was not examined at all. He had taken these bonds to substitute for others in different brokers' offices, and it so happened that there were no similar securities in the building; thus the deficiency could not be covered up even by John's expert sleight of hand. Of course, if there had been other bonds of the same kind in another vault it would have been a simple matter to substitute them. But there were not. So John pushed the remaining one hundred and fifty bonds into a dark corner of the vault and awaited ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... I had overstepped my resolution, although not feeling desperately contrite about it after the sleight-of-hand way that a declaration of love had been changed into the accusation of filching a corn cake. Yet it had been a narrow escape and I thanked my gods for the chance of pulling up, of again ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Here is a fallacy which you will be careful to detect. I know that the taxes have been reduced; that is to say, nominally reduced, but not so in fact; on the contrary, they have, in reality, been greatly augmented. This has been done by the sleight-of-hand of paper money. Suppose, for instance, that four years ago, I had a hundred pounds to pay in taxes, then a hundred and thirty bushels of wheat would have paid my share. If I have now seventy-five pounds to pay in taxes, it will require ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... are not to blame in the least, and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never will have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... him in mid-career, and they fought, he and she, a sore fight, yet sorer than the first. Bartus right soon found himself unable to cope with her might and would have sought safety in flight, but of the greatness of her prowess could not avail unto this sleight; for, as often as he turned to flee, she drave after him and still clave to him and pressed him hard, till presently she smote him with the sword in his throat, that it issued gleaming from his nape, and sent him after his brother. Then she wheeled ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... These were familiar to this household, and the children had been sent to bed, the mother was dozing, long before the seance was at an end. But Miss Dobson, unaccustomed to any gaieties, sat fascinated by the young man's sleight of hand, marvelling that a top-hat could hold so many goldfish, and a handkerchief turn so swiftly into a silver florin. All that night, she lay wide awake, haunted by the miracles he had wrought. Next evening, when she asked him to repeat them, "Nay," he whispered, "I cannot bear to deceive the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... answered her. "It's a confounded fine professional job. It takes more than sleight of hand—it takes genius, a thing ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... brother, "that you are wrong, Paul. I remember the expresshun 'pon the programme o' a Sleight o' Hand Entertainment, an' there et said 'Interval'—'An Interval o' ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thegn who knew the Romance tongue, started forth and crossed swords with the poet; but by what seemed rather a juggler's sleight of hand than a knight's fair fence, Taillefer, again throwing up and catching his sword with incredible rapidity, shore the unhappy Saxon from the helm to the chine, and riding over his corpse, shouting and laughing, he again renewed his challenge. A second rode forth and ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... arts I am at home. The whole variety in which My neighbour boasts himself so rich, Is to his simple skin confined, While mine is living in the mind. For I can speak, you understand; Can dance, and practise sleight-of-hand; Can jump through hoops, and balance sticks; In short, can do a thousand tricks; One penny is my charge to you, And, if you think the price won't do, When you have seen, then I'll restore Each man ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... not deny that Danny must have been a liberal education in that sort of sleight of hand, but the letter saved her the painful confession. While Elinor took Marty to her room and Judith explained the uses of the various conveniences, push buttons and the like, Patricia devoured the ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... bawl course quire chord chased tide sword mail nun plain pour fate wean hoard berth isle throne vane seize sore slight freeze knave fane reek Rome rye style flea faint peak throw bourn route soar sleight frieze nave reck sere wreak roam wry flee feint pique mite seer idle pistol flower holy serf borough capital canvas indict martial kernel carat bridle lesson council collar levy accept affect deference emigrant prophesy sculptor plaintive populous ingenious lineament ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... Taignoagny with others, deuised a prettie sleight or pollicie: for they caused three of their men to be attired like Diuels, fayning themselues to be sent from their God Cudruaigny, onely to hinder our ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... a girl who was not only a whore, but also a thief; and in one or other character has visited most of the Correction Houses in the West. She was born I believe in Kilmarnock,—I took the song down from her singing, as she was strolling through the country, with a sleight-of-hand blackguard. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... valley of Glencoe. Yet Wordsworth loved intensely all the more beautiful aspects of the country, and of country-life. No angler and no gardener, indeed,—too severely and proudly meditative for any such sleight-of-hand. The only great weight which he ever lifted, I suspect, was one which he carried with him always,—the immense dignity of his poetic priesthood. His home and its surroundings were fairly typical of his tastes: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... address in this design, Does now, and will for ever shine, And wants a Waller but to do him right: The whole amusement was so strong, Like fate he doomed them to be wrong, And Tournay's took by a peculiar sleight. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... who brought thee into this my apartment." Answered he, "O Princess, I am known as Ni'amah bin al-Rabi'a of Cufa and I have ventured my life for the sake of my slave-girl, Naomi, whom Al-Hajjaj took by sleight and sent hither." Said she, "Fear not: no harm shall befall thee;" then, calling her maid, she said to her, "Go to Naomi's chamber and send her to me." Meanwhile the old woman went to Naomi's bedroom and said to her, "Hath thy lord come to thee?" "No, by Allah!" answered ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Germain, "which lasts from Candlemas to the Monday before Easter;" and Fassmann one day took a walk of contemplation through the same. Much noise, gesticulation, little meaning. Show-booths, temporary theatres, merry-andrews, sleight-of-hand men; and a vast public, drinking, dancing, gambling, flirting, as its wont is. Nothing new for us there; new only that it all lies five generations from us now. Did "the Old Pretender," who was then in his expectant period, in this same ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... met, and glad of an opportunity to settle their quarrel, withdrew to a glade in the forest. Tancred, stung by the taunts of cowardice for his former failure to keep his appointment, fought bitterly. He had not the sheer strength of his antagonist, but his sleight at last overcame, and Argantes fell. Weakened by pain and loss of blood, Tancred fell senseless, and was thus found by Erminia, who had met Vafrino the spy in the camp of the Egyptians and had fled with him. They revived Tancred, and carried him home to be nursed ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... saint," sarcastically mused the old sleight of hand man, "he's a saint and that's what makes him successful as a con. Sam Weller advised his son to 'bevare of vidders,' I advise you to beware of saints. Since the days of the Bible when saints were ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the easiest examples of skill in sleight of hand is more than I know. I can only say that I never was more completely mystified by any professor of legerdemain on the public platform. After the performance of each trick, he asked leave to time himself ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... and that their worth was but an hundred dirhams. When he heard this, he was sore concerned thereat and presenting himself before the Deputy of the Sultan made his complaint to him; whereupon the official knew that a sleight had been served upon him and that the sons of Adam[FN75] had cozened him and conquered him and cribbed his stuffs. Now the magistrate in question was a man of experience and judgment, well versed in affairs; so he said to the draper, "Remove somewhat ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... will, with particular sleight Of application, (Occasioned by some person's impertinent Exceptions.) wrest what he doth write; And that he meant, or him, or her, will say: They make a libel, ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Conjuration, sleight of hand, magic, witchcraft, were the subjects of the evening. Miss Pole was slightly sceptical, and inclined to think there might be a scientific solution found for even the proceedings of the Witch of Endor. Mrs Forrester believed everything, from ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... without feeling that the fine spirit of finesse which made the reputation of the student of the Black Forest has in no way suffered from its long sleep; but, on the contrary, has risen very much refreshed for new practice. The Doctor never compassed so fine a sleight as Sir ROBERT when lately, playing the philanthropist, he struck his breeches' pocket with a spasm of benevolence, and pulled therefrom—fifty pounds! Only a few weeks before, Sir ROBERT had sworn by all his list of former cures, that he would clothe the naked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... see the whole plot. Colonel Clay was polymorphic, like the element carbon! Doubtless, with his extraordinary sleight of hand, he had substituted real diamonds for the shapeless mass that came out of the apparatus, in the interval between handing the pebbles round for inspection, and distributing them piecemeal to the men of science and representatives ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... the pleasure is as great Of being cheated as to cheat; As lookers-on feel most delight That least perceive a juggler's sleight; And still the less they understand, The more they admire his sleight ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Nay, prythee, good sweet devil, do not thou part; I like an honest devil, that will show Himself in a true hellish, smoky hue: How like thy snout is to great Lucifer's? Such talents[117] had he, such a gleering eye, And such a cunning sleight in villany. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... displacement of every object not too weighty for Coco to convey. Thus, when a wineglass or a small coffee cup is missing, it will be discovered in the most unlikely spot, such as the balcony, on the roof, or maybe in our neighbour's dusthole. By Coco's sleight of beak, slippers part company and invite us to hunt for them, as if we were playing a certain old-fashioned game. As for the spoons, knives, and forks—they are disseminated everywhere like ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... shouting of the Moors in the ambush that were ta'en. But the twain left them; on they rushed. Right for the hold they made And at the gate they halted, each with a naked blade. Then up came the Cid's henchmen for the foe were all in flight. Know ye the Cid has taken Alcocer by such a sleight. ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... is an imposing subject for a speech. If it should ever be printed on a programme, it would prove awe-inspiring. Next to making a good speech, I'd like to be skilled in sleight-of-hand affairs. I'd like to fish up a rabbit from the depths of an old gentleman's silk tile, or extract a dozen eggs from a lady's hand-bag, or transmute a canary into a goldfish. I'd like to see the looks of wonder on the faces of the audience and hear them ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... enough has been quoted to justify the tradition which Lincoln left behind him at the bar of Illinois. His weak as well as his strong qualities have been indicated. He never learned the technicalities, what some would call the tricks, of the profession. The sleight of plea and demurrer, the legerdemain by which justice is balked and a weak case is made to gain an unfair advantage, was too subtle and shifty for his strong and straightforward intelligence. He met these manoeuvres sufficiently well, when practiced ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... you everything!" said Alibaba Singh in a sudden burst of confidence. "Mr. Gubb, I am an impostor. I am a fraud. I am not a Hindoo. My name is Guffins, James Guffins. I did sleight-of-hand stuff in a Bowery show. I took up this mystic, yogi, Hindoo stuff because I thought it would pay and it was easy to fool the dames. They fell for it fast enough, and I made good money. But I'm no yogi. I'm no miracle man. I couldn't bring a man back to life in his own form ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler |
