"Thumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over the keys. His thumb reached out and tripped a lever. There was a slight hum ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... being too distant to carry relief to without incurring the risk of further loss. I cannot omit to remark the singular effects of excessive thirst upon the eyes of the horses; they absolutely sunk into their heads until there was a hollow of sufficient depth to entirely bury the thumb in, and there was an appearance as though the whole of the head had shrunk with them, producing a very unpleasant and ghastly ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... his corn-cob, picked up a live coal, and, pressing it down on the tobacco with his thumb, commenced to puff vigorously. As soon as his withered old face was half hidden in a cloud of smoke, he opened his story in his stereotyped way. I relate it just as he told it, but divested of much of its dialect, so difficult ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... self-government as a natural right. Men were united in saying, "We have the right to vote." She was not present to be an advocate of woman's rights, whatever they may be, but of human rights. The largest giant had no more rights than Tom Thumb. It was brain, not force, that governed the world. A small hand was able to discharge a musket, guide an engine, or edit a paper as well as a large one. The womanly in nature should be expressed by woman, the manly by man; the two were distinct, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and while she was making her way up the bank, and I was helping him to make the boat secure, I said, "Well! the new boat has done bravely!" "Between you and me, my dear fellow," said he, as he laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip, that I think must have left his thumb-mark on the skin, "if the boat had not behaved better than any boat of her class that I ever saw, there would have been a considerable probability of our being dined on by the fishes, instead of dining ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... perfectly lovely with their wild flower setting. There had been a fire two years before and great thickets of blackberry vines had grown up. I never saw such blackberries. They were as large as the first joint of a man's thumb. The flavor was wild and spicy. I never ate anything so good. Cranberries by the hundreds of bushels grew in the swamps. We could not begin to pick all the hazel nuts. We used to eat turnips as we would an apple. They were so sweet, they were as good. We made sun-dials ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... had materialized from nowhere. He stood beside them, a living statue of Vigilant Authority. One thumb rested easily on his broad belt. The fingers of the other hand caressed lightly a moustache that had caused more heart-burnings among the gentler sex than any other two moustaches in the C-division. The eyes above the moustache were stern ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... had been sharpened, too; she felt a certain shyness in her husband, noticed his weaknesses, and was deeply hurt when, on the second evening after her return, he went to the inn, "so that people should not say he was under her thumb." Then, Hansei, coaxed by the shrewd innkeeper, had set his heart upon acquiring the inn, now that they had "wealth," and upon thus becoming the most important man in the village. But with much tact and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... himself a Christian, coolly and deliberately tie up, thumb screw, torture with pincers, and beat unmercifully a poor slave, for perhaps a trifling neglect of duty? Or can any one be an eye witness to such enormities, without at the same time being ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... thumb and finger snapped like a toy pistol. "No law-courts talk for me. You were so close together. He took the risk. By Indra, he won't take any more such risks if I get at him! You said we would not see him here. But no doubt he has been ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... simplest abstractions. They are clumsy in putting two thoughts together for comparison; clumsy in following reasons, or in discussing underlying principles. In short, "thinking" is an art they hardly begin to practise. They can learn and apply a "rule of thumb," a folk-rule, so to speak—but there is no flow, nor anything truly consecutive, in the movement of their ideas. Elsewhere one may hear children of six or seven—little well-cared-for people—keep up ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... applied the higher criticism to the urchin's nearest ear. It was now that connoisseur's turn to be affronted. Picking himself out of the gutter, he placed his thumb to his nose, and wiggled his finger in active and reprehensible symbolism, whilst enlarging upon his original critique, in a series of ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to the Fabian than to the Bonapartean tactics, husbanding his resources and exposing his troops to no unnecessary hazards. The total loss of the victors in this obstinately contested affair was, in killed, wounded, and missing—one forefinger and part of a thumb-nail (which the late proprietor brought along with him in his hand), a severely contused arm, and a considerable effusion of blood flowing from the thigh of a chief, who had received an ugly thrust ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... hand towards Puddock, he saw his scalp dangling between that gentleman's finger and thumb, and became suddenly mute. He clapped his hand upon his bare skull, and made an agitated pluck at that article, but missed, and disappeared, with an imprecation in Irish, behind ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the sawing and towing went on busily; the Forward made about two miles of progress. On the 18th they were in sight of land, five or six cable-lengths from a strange peak, to which its singular shape had given the name of the Devil's Thumb. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... flat upon the ground near Lylda, and after a moment she climbed into it, two soldiers lifting her up the side of my thumb as it lay upon the ground. In the hollow of my palm, she lay quite securely, and very carefully I raised her up towards my face. Then, seeing that she was frightened, I ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... of Canning contains A new Easter-offering tax; And he means to devote all the gains To a bounty on thumb-screws and racks. Your living, so neat and compact— Pray, don't let the news give you pain!— Is promised, I know for a fact, To an olive-faced ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... said, "knowledge is power." But it is not like the withering curse of a tyrant's power; not like the degrading and brutalizing power of the slave-driver's lash, chains, and thumb-screws; not like the beastly, demonical power of rum, nor like the brazen, shameless power of lust; but a power that elevates and refines the intellect; directs the affections; controls unholy passions; a power so God-like in its character, ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... opening our catch, you know," Steve replied, jerking his thumb to where the little pile of mussels lay, close ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... drop of sunlight the size of my thumb," said the priest, holding up his hand, "is worth more than mines of gold. With one such drop," he continued, turning to Ali 20 Hafed, "you could buy many farms like yours; with a handful you could buy a province; and with a mine of diamonds ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... that thou art the god Tor. But what has become of my glove?" Thor then perceived that what they had taken overnight for a hall was the giant's glove and the chamber where his two companions had sought refuge was the thumb. Skrymir then proposed that they should travel in company, and Thor consenting, they sat down to eat their breakfast, and when they had done, Skrymir packed all the provisions into one wallet, threw it over his shoulder, and strode on before them, taking such ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... first servant. I was eight or nine, in velveteen, diamond socks ('Cross your legs when they look at you,' my mother had said, 'and put your thumb in your pocket and leave the top of your handkerchief showing'), and I had travelled by rail to visit a relative. He had a servant, and as I was to be his guest she must be my servant also for the time being - you may be ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... cotton, if the red color remains the fibers are linen. Whenever cotton yarn is used to adulterate other fabrics, it wears shabby and loses its brightness. When it is used to adulterate linen, it becomes fuzzy through wear. One may detect it in linen by rolling the goods between thumb and finger. Linen is a heavier fabric, and wrinkles much more readily than cotton. It wears better, and has an exquisite freshness that is ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... Fairlegh? how are you? That stupid fool has made 'em too tight for anybody but Tom Thumb, and be hanged to him. Ever read fairy tales, Fairlegh? I did when I was a little shaver, and wore cock-tailed petticoats—all bare legs and bustle—'a Highland lad my love was born'; that style of thing, rather, you know; never believed 'em, though: wasn't ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... more ascended the steps of his own home, he was so confident that his labors were now ended that he almost forgot about envelope No. 20, which he had been directed to read in the vestibule before entering the house. With his thumb on the bell button he recollected, and with a sigh ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... step, with one leg over the other, and rubbing the top of his boot with a vigor which betrayed to me some secret mirth. He looked up at me from under his straw hat with the grin of a malicious Puck, glanced toward the group, and made a curious gesture with his thumb. There were several empty pint bottles ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... to make good sculpture is to let the youth thumb and punch and dabble in wet clay, and see what he can make of it; and the way to make a painter is to give the boy now a burnt stick, and at another time a pin and a back of a looking-glass, and see what he can delineate with such materials as these and with all other materials with which a line ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... mother intend me to come with her on Saturday to the Grange? No, a thousand times no; still I came. I can twist mother round this finger. She appeals to me; I counsel her; she asks my advice; she is obliged to take it whether she likes or not. Mother is completely under my thumb. So it was with the professor who taught me; so it was with the students who worked with me; so it will be in the future with Hester, if I still wish it; and with Sir John Thornton, if I ordain it. They think very little of Antonia now; but wait ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... better take this with you?" said the marquis, offering the little note, which he had carried all the time between his finger and thumb. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... while counting their money. It was evident that Mr. Books was not in sympathy with the great enterprise his employers were developing, for he was continually saying witty but malicious things about Gusher, and would even point significantly with his thumb over his right shoulder. When a more than ordinarily verdant customer would come with his money, Mr. Books would shrug his shoulders, drum with his fingers on the desk, and hum a ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... 1).—When the thread becomes inconveniently short, and you do not want take a fresh one, it may be knotted into the needle, thus: bring it round the forefinger close to the needle, cross it on the inside next to the finger, hold the crossed threads fast, with the thumb draw the needle out through the loop thus formed, and tighten the loop round ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... his smooth chin with his finger and thumb. "A man on the market," he explained slowly, ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... I visited Prof. Sedgwick at Norwich.—On Mar. 28th the 'Sir Henry Pottinger' was launched from Fairbairn's Yard on the Isle of Dogs, where I was thrown down and dislocated my right thumb.—From Apr. 10th to 15th I was at Playford.—On June 10th Prof. Hansen arrived, and stayed with me to July 4th.—From July 6th to 10th I was visiting Dean Peacock at Ely.—From July 23rd to 29th I was at Playford, where for the first time I lodged in my own ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... safely said that the college graduate is never seen groping about in a helpless and timid way for "a position," and shrinking from the turmoil and dirt of some walks of life, without spreading among the uncultivated a contempt for culture and increasing their confidence in the rule of thumb. The mere "going to college" is recognized as a sign of pecuniary ease, and of a desire for social advancement, but not as preparation for the kind of work which the bulk of the community is doing, and thus makes mental culture seem less desirable, and cultivated ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... laughter and gay exclamations he could hardly believe his ears. He was profoundly troubled and completely bewildered—a dangerous state of mind for a man who has the power of seventy horses under the pressure of his thumb. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... calmly, nipping the flesh of her shoulder between his thumb and finger. "Heise's waiting for me." Trina wrenched from him with a sharp intake of breath, frowning with pain, and ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Her warm pressure on his hand tightened. His heart was making the maddest gladdest leaps, and timidly, with a feeling of historic daring, he ventured to explore with his thumb-tip the fine lines of the side of her hand.... It actually was he, sitting here with a princess, and he actually did feel the softness of her hand, he pantingly ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... five-year-old vocabulary was but limited; while Floss, whose name was short for Ferdinand, and who had perhaps not yet fully recovered from the shock of his tumble down the kitchen stairs, contented himself with surveying his relative with an implacable expression as he sucked his thumb. ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... have not had the curiosity to go and view the body myself. The features were all so plain that an acquaintance might easily have known him. One of the lads gripped the face of the corpse with his finger and thumb, and the cheeks felt quite soft and fleshy, but the dimples remained and did not spring out again. He had fine yellow hair, about nine inches long; but not a hair of it could they pull out till they cut part of it off with a knife. They also cut off some portions of his clothes, which were all ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... to places other than the bridge of a ship in the Indian Ocean, when he was speedily brought back to the present by a vigorous poke in his ribs. He turned hurriedly; and the officer of the watch with perfect clearness conveyed to him by a jerk of his thumb, and a quizzical expression, that the flagship was making a general signal. Mac shoved up the answering pennant, roused the other drowsy signaller, and elicited the information that the New Zealand ships would anchor ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... beat you black and blue, for making fun of old Aunt Becky,' cried Miss Rebecca, and ran a little race at her, about two inches to a step; her fan raised in her finger and thumb, and a jolly smile twinkling in her face, for she knew it was true about her waist, and she liked to be quizzed by the daring little girl. Her diamonds were on too, and her last look in her mirror had given her a satisfactory ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hands?" said the Observer, holding up two "bunches of fives," whose digits were stained near the ends with some dark brown substance, "that's pyrogallic acid—and that burn near my thumb was made by Blitz Pulver. It wouldn't take a Sherlock Holmes to discover that I had the camera ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... which in the language of Pal-ul-don means "stranger," and he pointed to the sun and said as. This he repeated several times and then he held up one hand with the fingers outspread and touching them one by one, including the thumb, repeated the word adenen until the stranger understood that he meant five. Again he pointed to the sun and describing an arc with his forefinger starting at the eastern horizon and terminating at the western, he repeated again the words as adenen. It was plain to ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... or some other place,—and might so die. Or he would surely gamble himself into farther and utter ruin. At any rate he would be well out of the way, and Augustus in his pride had been glad to feel that he had his brother well under his thumb. Then the debt had been paid with the object of saving the estate from litigation on the part of the creditors. That had been his one great mistake. And he had not known his father, or his father's guile, or his father's strength. Why had not his father ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... interested when he took the sun, he turned the sextant over to me and showed me how to take an observation; and then how to work it out and fix the brig's position on the chart—and was a good deal surprised by my quickness in understanding his explanations (for I suppose that to him, with his rule-of-thumb knowledge of mathematics, the matter seemed complex), and still more surprised when he found, presently, that I really understood the underlying principle of this simple bit of seamanship far better than he did himself. He said that I knew more ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... are at Florence, Duc Federigo d'Urbino and his wife Battista Sforza. Did you not see them in the same room with La Calomnie by Botticelli, with a landscape in the background? It is drawn like this," and he made a gesture with his thumb, "and that is what I am trying to obtain, the necessary curve on which all faces depend. There is no better painter ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... out from behind them. The moment this evanishment was complete, she rose and went to Alice, where she sat staring into the fire, unconscious of the scrutiny she had been undergoing, and, looking up in her face, took her thumb out of ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... in my head when I chose you, Babet, and the soft place was in my heart!" replied Jean, heartily. The compliment was taken with a smile, as it deserved to be. "Look you, Babet, I would not give this pinch of snuff," said Jean, raising his thumb and two fingers holding a good dose of the pungent dust,—"I would not give this pinch of snuff for any young fellow who could be indifferent to the charms of such a pretty ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... been subjected to independent misrule: while the more distant surrounding villages look cheerful, and as clean as can be expected: the appearances immediately around the chief towns are always bad. To what is this owing? is it to their being more completely under the thumb of a rapacious governor? to the insecurity of property, or to defect in the laws? or to all these ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... second, Jake's expression was stubborn. Then the little crow's feet around his eyes deepened and the dry chuckle was back in his voice. "Right, Dr. Feldman." He flipped up his thumb and went off at a shuffling run toward the tractor. Lou and the man from Einstein followed ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... boy sat watching Uncle Remus sharpen his shoe-knife. The old man's head moved in sympathy with his hands, and he mumbled fragments of a song. Occasionally he would feel of the edge of the blade with his thumb, and then begin to sharpen it again. The comical appearance of the venerable darkey finally had its effect upon the child, for suddenly he broke into a hearty peal of laughter; whereupon Uncle Remus stopped shaking his head and singing ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... to walk to him, clutch his neck with his fingers and press his windpipe with his thumb. "I needn't tell you how you strike me," he said; "of course you know that. But I should think you would be afraid of your friends—all those people you introduced me to the other night. There were some very nice people among them; you may depend ...
— The American • Henry James
... always the same, with a look in his eyes of mild protest because this had happened to him, also a look of dumb confidence that some one somewhere would make things right for him. He came either to us or to the Red Cross building across the road, according to his company. One soldier with a torn thumb cried bitterly, looking at his thumb and shaking his head at it, but he alone showed any emotion. The others suffered the sting of the iodine without a word, walking off when they were bandaged, or carried by our sanitars on ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... yours by Mr. Beach, dated Sunday. I am not a little pleased that you have the doctor (Bellamy) so completely under your thumb. Last Saturday I went a crabbing. Being in want of a thole-pin, I substituted a large jackknife in its stead, with the blade open and sticking up. It answered the purpose of rowing very well; but it seems that was not the only purpose it had ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... past-master in the grim art of conceiving new and novel methods to worry and punish those who were so unfortunate as to be under his thumb. He was devilishly ingenious and fertile in the evolution of ways and means to make us feel our position as acutely as possible. I really think that he must have lain awake for hours at night thinking out new schemes for inflicting punishment upon ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... to e'en the doctor's hood, The book of life ye thumb, And reckon o'er, in light and joyous mood, Your toils ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... care if you've 'ad her a century. They're all angels as come 'ere; but I ain't going to 'ave my thumb bit by no angels, so will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... of the pipe he had been smoking, and again set off for a stroll along the lanes. On his countenance was just a trace of solicitude, but for the most part he wore a thoughtful smile. Now and then he stroked his smoothly-shaven jaws with thumb and fingers. Occasionally he became observant of wayside details—of the colour of a maple leaf, the shape of a tall thistle, the consistency of a fungus. At the few people who passed he looked keenly, surveying ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... pulling out a sovereign, and with a twitch of the thumb, he sent it high in the air. "Heads, you win. Tails, I win." Then catching it as it fell: "By Jove, you have it. Present my compliments to Mistress Jean," he cried, with a grandiloquent bow, "and tell her how near she came to being Mrs. Dick ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... Phoenician @ and @ for the Phoenician @ turned through an angle of 90 deg. . So also if Kaf corresponds to the Babylonian Kappu, "hollow-hand,'' the Sabaean form @ which Hommel33 interprets as the outline of the hand with the fingers turned in and the thumb raised is a better pictograoh than the various meaningless forms of k (@, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five inches long and three inches wide. Along the lower edge of each strip was pasted a slip of white paper. He asked people to pass their hands through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the natural oil) and then making a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. Under this row of faint grease prints he would write a record on the strip of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... almost simultaneous in the two minds, was not wholly a failure as a thumb-nail sketch of Mr. George Crooper. And yet there was the impressiveness of size about him, especially about his legs and chin. At seventeen and eighteen growth is still going on, sometimes in a sporadic way, several parts seeming to have sprouted faster than others. Often the ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... you," went on Mr. Harker, "and when the scoundrel has been unmasked, you need have no fear of any future danger. In my master's chain of villainy there was a single flaw; but that flaw has broken the whole chain. The poor tool, whom he had had so long beneath his thumb, whom he had trodden under his foot remorselessly, suddenly regained his freedom—which he had bartered for the safety of his ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... one year ago the people of Panama lived in fear under the thumb of a dictator. Today democracy is restored. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that were available, and ever seeking to invent contrivances that added to comfort. Many of the inventions are forgotten, but some are in use in France to-day, notably the "periscope rifle" or "sniperscope" and the "thumb periscope" which is no thicker than a man's finger. It was found that our box-periscopes were always being smashed by the Turkish snipers; so one ingenious brain collared an officer's cane and scooped, out the centre. With tiny mirrors top and bottom, it was a ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... been getting "register,"—that is, moving the plates so that the headlines and the sides of the plates align properly, and that when both sides of the paper have been printed, the pages will exactly back each other. The ink fountain should also have been so regulated by means of thumb-screws that the right amount of ink will run on the rollers and be distributed evenly over the form. Where too much ink shows on the printed sheet, the thumb-screws on the fountain are tightened a little, to decrease the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... with such energy that a stranger might have concluded that whittling was his best hold. Not so, however; he whittled until he found a nail with the edge of his knife, and then varied his diversion by grasping the point of the blade between the thumb and first finger of his right hand, and throwing it at the left eye of a very flattering representation of Yankee Sullivan ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... that," was his next reflection. "Or a fly. I'd like to be a fly, and eat sugar, and say b-u-z-z-z all day long. Only then perhaps some little boy would get me into the corner of the window and squeeze me all up tight with his fum." Dickie cast a rueful look at his own guilty thumb as he thought this. "I wouldn't like that! But I'd like very much indeed to buzz and tickle Mally's nose when she was twying to sew. She'd slap and slap, and not hit me, and I'd buzz and tickle. How I'd laugh! But perhaps flies don't know ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... there," Vincent said, jerking his thumb back. "I lives there with mother. Father and the other boys they have gone fighting Yanks; but they wouldn't take me with them 'cause I aint sharp in my wits, though I tells them I could shoot a Yank as well as they ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... think it hurts. You don't think. Your head is gone, so you cannot think. It is very good. That is the way I want to die—quick, ah, quick. You are lucky to die that way. You might get the leprosy and fall to pieces slowly, a finger at a time, and now and again a thumb, also the toes. I knew a man who was burned by hot water. It took him two days to die. You could hear him yelling a kilometre away. But you? Ah! so easy! Chck!—the knife cuts your neck like that. It is finished. The knife may even tickle. Who can say? ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... the embryo bunches, a number of men enter the vineyard with switches and knock off the tender ends of the runners, which in a gentler method of cultivation would be picked off with the finger and thumb-nail. Sometimes goats are turned in to nibble off the shoots in order to save labour, and at the same time to feed the animals; they of course damage the vines, but the Cypriote thinks the system pays. The young vines ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... sat in a corner, Eating his Christmas-pie, He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, And said, 'What ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... uses the bow in a different way. If no two thumb-prints are alike, neither are any two sets of fingers and wrists. This is why not slavish imitation, but intelligent adaptation should be applied to the playing of the teacher in the class-room or the artist on the concert-stage. For instance, the little finger of Ysaye's left hand bends ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... moment, then knelt, preoccupied, and spread it upon the floor. With one finger he traced a line along it, zigzagging from one side diagonally to the foot, his lips moving silently meanwhile. Then his other hand hovered above the document for a time before he planted his thumb squarely upon a ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... covenant is said to have been signed with blood in accordance with a custom still occasionally prevalent, in which a drop of blood is drawn from the middle finger and sealed by pressing it with the thumb nail. Rein's ...
— Japan • David Murray
... the very dregs and rinsings of the human intellect; and that any man of sound head, and practised in wielding logic with a scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fungus-heads to powder with a lady's fan. At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book; and recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... flout the universe, he shows his carelessness of natural fact and needs the snubbing. It is in this range that the little critic walks triumphantly posing as a shrewd and a discerning one. He holds up inconsistencies with his deft thumb and finger and cries, "what a smart boy am I." And yet in spite of him Rubens, for the sake of a better line in the foreground of one of his greatest compositions dares to reconstruct a horse with his head ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... fair, green country. We turned westward along the sector, several kilometres within the French lines, for J. B. and I were to have a general view of it all before we crossed to the other side. The fort of Malmaison was a minute square, not as large as a postage-stamp. With thumb and forefinger I could have spanned the distance between Soissons and Laon. Clouds of smoke were rising from Allemant to Craonne, and these were constantly added to by infinitesimal puffs in black and white. ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... difficulty in obtaining permission to set up an observatory, and to take to it the necessary provisions. The stay at Guam was, however, saddened by an accident to Lutke, who wounded himself severely in the thumb with his own gun ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... they came, These songs of love and death, These dreams of a futile stage, These thumb-nails seen in the street: Ask me not how nor why, But take them for your own, Dear Wife of twenty years, Knowing—O, who so well?— You it was made the man That made these songs of love, Death, and the trivial rest: So that, your love elsewhere, These songs, or bad or good— How should ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... a grand and stately ecclesiastic of the mediaeval type, broad-chested, deep-voiced, martial of bearing. I could picture him charging mace in hand at the head of his vassals, or delivering over a dissenter of the period to the rack and thumb-screw, but not pottering among rare editions, tall copies and Grolier bindings, nor condescending to a quiet cigar among the tree ferns and orchids. Leta must and should be obeyed, I swore, nevertheless, even if I were driven to lock the door in the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... blew a long cloud and stared at the fire; at the smoke mounting and the grey ash dropping; at David Faed dealing the cards and licking his thumb between each. Long Ede shifted from one cramped elbow to another and pushed his Bible nearer the blaze, murmuring, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... second over five dollars. Almost all, though, that was found was like beans or small seeds or in fine dust. No one tried to weigh or measure such gold more correctly than to call a pinch between the finger and thumb a dollar's worth, while a teaspoonful was an ounce, or sixteen dollars' worth. A wineglassful meant a hundred dollars, and a tumblerful a thousand. Miners carried their "dust" in a buckskin bag, and this was put on the counter, and the storekeeper took out what he thought ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... made by putting the thread with which double stitches are made over a pin, and there must be one or more Double stitches between each loop. By holding the pin point towards the right hand, between the forefinger and thumb of the left, the thread can be lifted over by the 2nd finger of the right hand, and many loops made without removing it. With reversed double stitches, the thread is lifted over by the shuttle as the 2nd stitch is being made. Loops ...
— The Bath Tatting Book • P. P.
... and that pale, thin-lipped, elongated, hard-eyed visage, and that painfully precise hair, which are always associated with widowhood in low life. It is only in higher circles that women can lose their husbands and yet remain bewitching. The late Mr. Drabdump had scratched the base of his thumb with a rusty nail, and Mrs. Drabdump's foreboding that he would die of lockjaw had not prevented her wrestling day and night with the shadow of Death, as she had wrestled with it vainly twice before, when Katie died of diphtheria and little Johnny of scarlet fever. Perhaps it is from overwork ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Prince Friedrich Carl. From this station the Crown Prince telegraphed Prince Friedrich Carl, always over Berlin, "Where are you?" The answer from this station reached him, also over Berlin. The Austrians were here,' placing the thumb on the map below and between the two fingers. 'The next day Prince Friedrich Carl comes here,'—the left forefinger joined the thumb,—' and telegraphs the fact, always over Berlin, to the Crown Prince, who hurries forward here.' The forefinger of the right hand slipped quickly ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... satisfactory grind for a cloth drip bag has the consistency of powdered sugar and shows a slight grit when rubbed between thumb and finger. Unbleached muslin makes the best bag for this granulation. For dripping coffee reduced to a powder, as fine as flour or confectioner's sugar, use a bag of canton flannel with the fuzzy side in. Powdered ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... for him. When absorbed in reflection, he sits with his bill straight up in the air, as I have drawn him. Mr. A—— reads Macaulay to us, and you should see the wise air with which, perched on Jenny's thumb, he cocked his head now one side and then the other, apparently listening with most critical attention. His confidence in us seems unbounded; he lets us stroke his head, smooth his feathers, without a flutter; and is never better pleased than sitting, as he has been doing all this while, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... Between thumb and forefinger he balanced a sugar-crusted comfit of coriander seed steeped in marjoram vinegar, and having put his question he bore the sweet-meat to his mouth. The ladies looked at him, and from him to me. Then Madonna Paola spoke, and there seemed ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... attempt to reason from types or rule of thumb measurements, however suggestive, leads to indefinite conclusions. For example, the width of the type page of the S. G. issue of the first part is exactly that of the English issue of the second part, but the former has 33 tines to the page ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... Bacteria, Micrococci, etc.; Eponymic Tables of Diseases, Operations, Signs and Symptoms, Stains, Tests, Methods of Treatment, etc. By W.A.N. Dorland, M.D., Editor of the American Pocket Medical Dictionary. Large octavo, nearly 800 pages, bound in full flexible leather. Price, $4.50 net; with thumb index, $5.00 net. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... a tooth. It hurt and one dreaded it, but it was so much better when it was out. Until you jumped into the fight Stone had me under his thumb. The minute the exposure came he had no further hold on me. It is the only questionable thing I ever did in my life, and I'm glad it was exposed. I admire you for it, even though it will hurt me in a business way for a long time to come. But about this money now. How much do you ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... said Miss Fortune, who was energetically twitching off Ellen's shoes and stockings with her forefinger and thumb. "I suppose not! you were staring up at the moon ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... with a central depression, composed of a tough rock which does not belong to that region of the Pyrenees. This instrument is supposed by the Danish antiquaries to have been used for removing by skilful blows the edges of flint knives, the fingers and thumb being placed in the two opposite depressions during the operation. Among the bone instruments were arrows without barbs, and other tools made of reindeer horn, and a bodkin formed out of the more compact horn of the roedeer. This instrument was well shaped, and sharply ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... this Mrs. Budlong kept Carthage more or less under her thumb. Carthage squirmed but it could ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... and so ugly that he needs to have a new head put on him. Another story, the moral of which was "to teach girls the danger of coquetry," is told by Schoolcraft (Oneota, 381-84). There was a girl who refused all her suitors scornfully. In one case she went so far as to put together her thumb and three fingers, and, raising her hand gracefully toward the young man, deliberately open them in his face. This gesticulatory mode of rejection is an expression of the highest contempt, and it galled the young warrior so much that he was taken ill and took to his bed until he thought ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... I think so, Tummus," said the young man, turning to the dry, quaint old fellow who had spoken, and who now screwed up the bark on his face—it more resembled that than skin—showed three or four ancient, yellow teeth, and jerked his right thumb over his shoulder. ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... years old about five feet high light chestnut coller, smart active boy, and swagers in his walk. Susan is about 35 years old, dark chesnut coller and stout built, speaks rather slow and has with her four children, three boys and one girl—the girl has a thumb or finger on her left hand (part of it) cut off, the children are from 9 months to 8 years old. (the youngest a boy 9 months and the oldest whose name is Lloyd is about 8 years old) The husband of Susan (Joe Viney) started off with her, he is a slave, belonging to ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... He jerked his thumb ceilingward. "The cloth is at any rascal's beck and call. Old Holles, my Lord's man, is dying up yonder, and the whim seized him to have a clergyman in. God knows why, for it appears to me that one ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... comparisons of war, "fighting Indians" and the one "fighting Yankees," was found on the slope, just in front of the enemy's breastworks, leaning against a tree, resting on his left knee, his loaded rifle across the other. In his right hand, between his forefinger and thumb, in the act of being placed upon the nipple of the gun, was a percussion cap. His frame was rigid, cold, and stiff, while his glossy eyes seemed to be peering in the front as looking for a lurking ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... hold much stuff. But fortunately it is the happy custom in all lands to allow of overflow to any extent. And finally St. Nicholas never comes down the chimney; he pops in through the window (which should be left slightly open at the bottom so that he can get in his thumb and prize it up). Also he never drove a reindeer in his life. He rides a horse. And this is of the first importance, for the one condition attaching to his benevolence is that you must put out a good wisp of hay for the horse, along with your shoes, or else he will ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... both for India ink and colored work has a rough surface; it must be fastened firmly and evenly to the board by means of thumb tacks; the lines must be light and made with a hard pencil. Use Higgins' India ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner
... advanced, a peculiarly conical island, in a broad and ice-encumbered bay, showed itself: it was "the Sugar-Loaf Island" of the whalers; and told us that, on rounding the farther headland, we should see the far-famed Devil's Thumb, the boundary ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... is my thumb, young braggart," exclaimed Sir Gideon, "that I winna hinder ye in your choice; for to-morrow ye shall be exalted as Haman was; and let those ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... observed that as often as a gladiator brought his opponent down and appealed to the editor for a decision on the life or death of the vanquished, Caesar invariably waved his handkerchief, a sign of mercy, rather than brutally turned down his thumb, the sentence of death. After the games, the proconsul interchanged personal greetings with the more prominent townspeople. Drusus began to wonder whether the whole day and evening were to pass in this manner; and indeed so it seemed, for that night the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... young people in these days are given to conceit; it did not use to be so in my time: when I was a child, childer knew how to behave themselves; but the childer of these days are full of conceit, full of froth, like the mouth of this viper'; and with his forefinger and thumb he squeezed a considerable quantity of foam from the jaws of the viper down upon the road. 'The childer of these days are a generation of—God forgive me, what was I about to say?' said the old man; and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that the gloomy god fitted his noose, And forced forth from the prince the soul of him— Subtile, a thumb in length—which being reft, Breath stayed, blood stopped, the body's grace was gone, And all life's warmth to stony coldness turned. Then, binding it, the Silent Presence bore Satyavan's soul away toward the South. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Between these nails a fine wire is stretched free of the beam and kept taut by means of a rubber band or coiled spring on one end. Behind the wire at a point on the beam midway between the supports a steel scale graduated to hundredths of an inch is fastened vertically by means of thumb-tacks or small screws passing through holes in it. Attachment should be made on ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... cannot hold the thumb forever on the blood tube, so we make an artificial thumb, called a tourniquet, which is a pebble or other hard object wrapped in some soft material (to prevent injury to flesh), which is pressed down on the blood tube and held in place by a strip of any ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... same military genius, prompted by Mr. Whymper's experiments with the aneroid barometer after his return from his classic climbs to the summits of the Bolivian Andes. Colonel Watkins devised an instrument in which by a threaded post and a thumb-screw the spring may be relaxed or brought into play at will, and the instrument is never in commission save when a reading is taken. Then a few turns of the thumb-screw bring the spring to bear upon the ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... have hung— A noble fruit as ever swung To grace a tree so firm and strong. Indeed, it was a great mistake, As this discovery teaches, That I myself did not partake His counsels whom my curate preaches. All things had then in order come; This acorn, for example, Not bigger than my thumb, Had not disgraced a tree so ample. The more I think, the more I wonder To see outraged proportion's laws, And that without the slightest cause; God surely made an awkward blunder." With such reflections proudly fraught, Our sage grew tired of mighty thought, And threw himself on Nature's lap, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... see the day break or the moon rise, or to meet a friend, or to hear the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him with surprising joys - this world is yet for him no abiding city. Friendships fall through, health fails, weariness assails him; year after year, he must thumb the hardly varying record of his own weakness and folly. It is a friendly process of detachment. When the time comes that he should go, there need be few illusions left about himself. HERE LIES ONE WHO MEANT WELL, TRIED A LITTLE, FAILED MUCH: - surely that may be his epitaph, of ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "you know how I felt when I got my little blue envelope this morning." As he spoke he tore off the end of the envelope which he had held unnoticed. Inserting his finger and thumb into the envelope he ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... and his mouth opened, with his nose pointed toward the zenith. Just then Spooner came in. As he passed by the Major, the temptation was irresistible. He seized the venerable nose of the old patriarch between his thumb and finger, and gave it a vigorous twist. The Major was awakened and sprang to his feet, and in a moment realized what had happened. He was, as may be well supposed, intensely indignant. No Major in the militia could submit to such an insult. He seized his chair and hurled it at the head of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... office but here he crossed his legs and fidgeted. When his story was interesting he read the best, that is the funniest, paragraphs to his wife; when it did not hold him he coughed, scratched his ankles and his right ear, thrust his left thumb into his vest pocket, jingled his silver, whirled the cigar-cutter and the keys on one end of his watch chain, yawned, rubbed his nose, and found errands to do. He went upstairs to put on his slippers—his elegant slippers of seal-brown, shaped like medieval shoes. He brought up an apple ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... made of various materials, but its use is somewhat inconvenient for the Gun Captain, and he cannot feel that the vent is stopped. At the Experimental Battery of the Ordnance Yard the naked thumb is used, and experience shows that the gun is never so hot as to occasion the least inconvenience, ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... tone of one of the most bewitching as well as the most elusive of warblers, the black-throated green; a bird not so big as one's thumb, with a provoking fondness for the tops of the tallest trees, where foliage is thickest, and for keeping in constant motion, flitting from twig to twig, and from tree to tree, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... Fill a test tube one fourth full of any kind of oil, and one fourth full of water. Hold your thumb over the top of the test tube and shake it hard for a minute or two. Now look at it. Pour it out, and shake some prepared cleanser into the test tube, adding a little more water. Shake the test tube thoroughly and rinse. Put it ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... tell good stuff when I see it, and I always say it pays best in the end," said Mrs. Blondheim, feeling the heavy lace edge of Mrs. Epstein's sleeve between discriminating thumb and forefinger. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... should not have so many awkward, stupid, bungling fellows, who can not do anything for themselves. It is as disgraceful for a lad not to be able to drive a nail straight without pounding his fingers or thumb as it is for a girl not to know how to stitch on a button. But I am letting my hobby run away with me, and no doubt you are anxious to be off. You will find the lumber piled in the storeroom of the barn. Take what you need. Perhaps Leo will ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... the slip with its tip between thumb and fingers, a strong forward stroke plowed a furrow in the mellow, dry soil; then, with a backward movement and a downward thrust, planted the slip, firmed the soil about it, leaving a depression in which the mother poured about a ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... suddenly, and showing him the two notes which he had been holding by one corner between his thumb and forefinger during the conversation, he crumpled them up savagely and squeezed them tight in his right hand. "Do you see, do you see?" he shrieked, pale and infuriated. And suddenly flinging up his hand, he threw the crumpled ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a neat sandwich of water-cress and thin bread-and-butter. He paused in the act of daintily sprinkling it with salt pinched in finger and thumb, and looked at Deleah across the table, her hand hiding her face. So long he looked at her, so long she remained unconscious of him, that Franky ventured in their preoccupation to help himself to a third piece of cake, ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... true, boasted a long pedigree, with its roots in the Dark Ages; but his family had given to France only one man of note, that Cardinal de Polignac, accomplished scholar, courtier, and man of affairs, who was able to twist Louis XIV. round his dexterous thumb; and Comte Jules was the Cardinal's great-nephew, and, through his mother, had Mazarin blood ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... agitation at the vessel's sudden heave and the unexpected noise, he had let his hand slip and the creature had seized him by the thumb. With a roar of pain the professor flung it from ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... had admired her in the night before; her waist was confined by the same black band; but the chestnut hair seemed more beautiful beneath the black silk sunshade, leaned so gracefully, the black handle held between thumb and forefinger. And the little black figure seemed a part of the beautiful English park, now so green and fragrant in all the flower and sunlight of June, and decorated with a blue summer sky, and white clouds moving lazily over the tops of the trees. And the impression ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... chafing; the lotion is applied to the head and hind quarters, to the tender and dangerous parts under the wings, and especially to the leg-joints. The lower mandible is then held firmly between the left thumb and forefinger, and a few drops are poured into the beak. Every alternate day the cage is placed on loose ground in sun and wind; and once a week there is a longer sparring-bout with thick leather ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... not have disgraced Goliath. He was at the moment telling a knot of gaping youngsters of monstrous deeds of strength. Storri had crushed horseshoes in his hand; he had rolled silver pieces into bullets between thumb and finger. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... more bewitching to watch than that atom in feathers, the hummingbird mother. She was so tiny that her life might be crushed out between a thumb and finger, yet she was full of love and anxiety about her birdlings. She was thoughtful in her care of them, and industrious in supplying their wants. In a word, she was a pattern of perfect and beautiful motherhood. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... self-examination for the 'great' things, as they suppose, and let the little things often take care of themselves. What would you think of the captain of a steamer who in calm weather sailed by rule of thumb, only getting out his sextant when storms began to blow? And what about a man that lets the myriad trivialities that make up a day pass in and out of his heart as they will, and never arrests any of them at the gate with a 'How camest thou in hither?' 'Look ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... entreated. "They're teaching me things. I can't help it. This spot on my thumb is fried egg, here are three doughnuts on my arm,—see them? And here's a regular pancake." She pointed out the ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... in a blue symar, very pertly exposing her budding breast, and her limbs from feet to fork, in a style that must be very offensive to the mealy-mouthed members of that shamefaced corporation, the Society for the Suppression of Vice. She holds a flower between her finger and her thumb, crocus, violet, or primrose; and though we verily believe she means no harm, she no doubt does look rather leeringly upon you, like one of the frail sisterhood of the Come-atables. Summer again is an enormous and monstrous mawsey, in puris naturalibus, meant to image Musidora, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... herself to the last," instantly responded Miss Dow. "I see her put out a thumb an' finger from under the spread an' pinch up a fold of her sister Deckett's dress, to try an' see if 'twas all wool. I thought 'twa'n't all wool, myself, an' I know it now by the way she looked. She was a very knowin' person about ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... talked about bother, my missus says, 'I'd sooner have Catharine here, and me have tea up there with her, notwithstanding there must be a fire upstairs and I've had to send Lucy to the infirmary with a whitlow on her thumb—yes, I would, than be at ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... adds, "with sufficient candour, at my own very great peril. But truth has an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to suffer by it." Behold, again, the fairest of poets. Young's Imperium Pelagi was ridiculed in Fielding's Tom Thumb; but let us not forget that it was one of his pieces which the author of the Night Thoughts deliberately ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... large, red, and inviting that I could not resist the temptation, and before his reverence could make the sign of the cross, which doubtless would have driven the divil out of me, I made a spring at it, and seizing hold of it with forefinger and thumb, pulled hard at it. Hot and inctious did it feel. Oh, the yell that his reverence gave! However, I did not let go my hold, but kept pulling at the nose, till at last to avoid the torment, his reverence came tumbling down upon me, causing me by his weight to fall back upon ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... exclaimed Mr. Damon, "I know him! He lives just around the corner from me. Bless my very thumb prints!" ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... end of a month power was regained over both bladder and rectum, some slight movement of the left thumb was possible, and a certain degree of hyperaesthesia developed over the ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins |
