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Thumbed   Listen
adjective
Thumbed  adj.  
1.
Having thumbs.
2.
Soiled by handling.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Thumbed" Quotes from Famous Books



... gentlemen." continued the master, rubbing his hands; for, in addition to having caught the art of introduction, the honest mariner had taken it into his head he had become an adept in the principles of Vattel, of whom he possessed a well-thumbed copy, and for whose dogmas he entertained the deference that they who begin to learn late usually feel for the particular master into whose hands they have accidentally fallen. "Under what circumstances, or in what category, can a public armed ship compel a neutral to submit ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... six years after his first hunting trip to Kentucky, Boone began to colonize it and that in flat defiance of the British government. He thumbed his nose too at a menacing proclamation of North Carolina's ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... been Fanny's custom to occupy an hour or so every evening, in reading to her grandfather. But that evening she did not, as usual, draw up the little table, and open the pages of some well-thumbed, ancient volume, to read, for perhaps the twentieth time, of the valorous deeds of some famed knight of the olden time, or mayhap, of the triumphant death of some famed martyr for religion's sake. For alas! ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... laborious life, was a keen student and admirer of the ancient classical literature of his honourable profession. When an old man, it was no uncommon sight to see him whiling away a leisure hour with a well-thumbed Greek copy of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates for his sofa companion. In a home so graced by all the amenities of lettered and scientific tastes, the subject of these remarks could not but enjoy, when a youth, many and great educational ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... strenuous tourist who sets out in the morning with his well-thumbed Baedeker to examine the curiosities of a foreign town, but I do not follow in his steps; his eagerness after knowledge, his devotion to duty, compel my respect, but excite me to no imitation. I prefer ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... their say without bringing themselves within the grasp of the censors; here, rough contributors, whose hands, more accustomed to the tar-brush than the pen, turned flowing sentences by the aid of old miscellanies and well-thumbed dictionaries. There, on wooden stools, leaning over long tables, were a row of serious and anxious faces, which put one in mind of the days of cane and birch,—an Arctic school. Tough old marines ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... have been born under the same roof, sucked the same milk, conned the same horn-book, thumbed the same Testament, together:—for we have been more ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... the places he had visited during his seven weeks' stay with us. And folded in the map were scraps of newspaper cuttings, every one of them about some antiquity or other in the neighbourhood, as if such things had an interest for him. And in another pocket was a guide-book, much thumbed, and between two of the leaves, slipped as if to mark a ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... painter, instead of replying, rose, searched out from among drawings and sketches a much-thumbed manuscript, and returning ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet

... as he thumbed over the typewritten sheets in his hands, "you say there has been a murder committed here. With this tenant, Marsh, and a patrolman, getting into action so soon after the shot, a body couldn't possibly be moved out of the house—certainly, ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... and trimmer still when Grace was sole manager: in a doorless cupboard are apparent sundry coarse edibles, as the half of a huge unshapely home-made loaf, some white country cheese, a mass of lumpy pudding, and so forth; beside it, on the window-sill, is better bread, a well-thumbed Bible, some tracts, and a few odd volumes picked up cheap at fairs; an old musket (occasionally Ben's companion, sometimes Tom's) is hooked to the rafters near a double rope of onions; divers gaudy little prints, tempting spoil of pedlars, in honour of George Barnwell, the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... returned the old man humbly, 'I will compose myself with a little study.' He thumbed his gallery of notebooks. 'I wonder,' he said, 'I wonder (since I see your hands are occupied) whether ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... hombres," called the Native Son from the window, where he had been studying the well-thumbed pamphlet containing the homestead law. "If we want to play dead safe on this, we all better quit the outfit before we go. Call for our time. I don't like the way ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... for vengeance, for to him does it belong," exclaimed the convict, drawing a dirty looking and well-thumbed Testament from his pocket, and turning over leaf after leaf as though seeking for ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... subject, however easily it may be settled by the "ridiculous nonsense" school of critics. I look at the row of books upon the left of my desk as I write—ninety-six solid volumes, many of them annotated and well thumbed, and yet I know that I am like a child wading ankle deep in the margin of an illimitable ocean. But this, at least, I have very clearly realised, that the ocean is there and that the margin is part of it, and that down that shelving shore the human race is destined to ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I had the honour of being introduced to Dr. Robinson, whose Greek Lexicon I had often thumbed with advantage. He appeared to be from 45 to 50 years of age. His manners were exceedingly simple and unostentatious,—the constant characteristics of true greatness. I looked upon him with high respect and veneration. He is a man of whom ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... book; those at home had seemed almost a part of her dear mother and Little-Dad; these had belonged to Peter Westley. He must have spent a great deal of his time reading, she thought, the volumes were worn about their edges, the pages thumbed. She peeped into one or two. Peter Westley, who had shunned the companionship of his fellow-mortals, had ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... begin, that she might have useful occupation for her thoughts and time. On the appointed morning therefore, she was well pleased to meet her little pupils in the pleasant little room in the "west wing," and to begin in earnest her labors as a teacher. Such a pile of soiled, well-thumbed, and dogs-eared books, as the children produced, Agnes had never seen together, and on opening them she found that the young Fairland's had been exercising their taste for the fine arts, by daubing all the pictures ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... dinginess, perhaps, there is nothing to equal a London office, with its floors strewed with newspapers from all parts of the world, parliamentary reports, and its shelves creaking under books of all sorts, thumbed to the last extremity. Notwithstanding these appearances, however, there is discipline—there is real order in the apparent disorder of things. Those newspapers that are lying in heaps have to be accurately filed; those books of reference can be pounced upon when ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... born not far from the ocean, in Saintonge, of an old Huguenot family which had numbered many sailors among its members. While yet a mere child he thumbed the old Bible which formerly, in the days of persecution, had been read only with cautious secrecy; and he perused the vessel's ancient records wherein mariners long since gone had noted, almost a century before, that "the weather was good," that "the wind was favourable," and that "doradoes or ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... strange beings, male and female, which were called homunculi. The old philosophers doubted the possibility of this operation, but Paracelsus asserts positively that it can be done. I picked up once for a song on a barrow at London Bridge a little book in German. It was dirty and thumbed, many of the pages were torn, and the binding scarcely held the leaves together. It was called Die Sphinx and was edited by a certain Dr Emil Besetzny. It contained the most extraordinary account I have ever read of certain spirits generated by Johann-Ferdinand, Count von Kueffstein, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... exquisitely organised that the whole of its body is sensitive to light, and is as conscious of the ray as the pupil of your own eye. Here is great and good work like that of those classics, the manuscripts of which were the first to be copied by the early printers, and books like this would be well thumbed of ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... little handmaid stumped off to her bed; and white old Tamar, who had not spoken so much for a month before, put on her solemn round spectacles, and by her dipt candle read her chapter in the ponderous Bible she had thumbed so well, and her white lips told over the words as she ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... The well-thumbed books in the village library she had read, as well as those in the possession of her aunt. She had tried needlework, problems of patience, and the translation of a few chapters of an Italian novel into English ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... shortly with a well-thumbed volume, which the B.A. opened and selected Satan's famous apostrophe to the Sun for explanation. Samarendra was speechless. After waiting for a minute, the B.A. asked what text-book he studied in physics and was told that it was Ganot's Natural Philosophy. He ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... therein their home is not beautiful. The Esquimau would not exchange his blinding waste of snow and dark fields of water for the luxuriance of tropic vegetation. Why should we exchange the glories of the land we live in for the footworn and sight-worn, the thumbed and fingered beauties of other lands? If we desire novelty and adventure, seek it in the unexplored regions of the great Northwest; if we crave grandeur, visit the Yellowstone and the fastnesses of the Rockies; if we wish the sublime, gaze in the mighty ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing From the green hills, immortal in his lays. And for myself, obedient to her wish, I searched our landlord's proffered library,— A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them; Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology's Last home, a musty pile of almanacs, And an old chronicle of border wars And Indian history. And, as I read A story of the marriage of the Chief Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Leipzig. In a long letter addressed (February 13th, 1769) to Friederike Oeser he thus expounds the artistic ideals at which he had then arrived: "A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher, and he who has laboriously thumbed the pages of many books regards with contempt the simple, easy book of nature; and yet nothing is true except what is simple—certainly a sorry recommendation for true wisdom. Let him who goes the way of simplicity go it in quiet. Modesty and circumspection are the essential characteristics ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... in this calm, rose-decked room, with the quiet eyes of the simple mother looking down upon him, the resolutions in their chaplet-of-palm framing, the age-old Bible thumbed and beloved, he knew he had been wrong. He knew he would never be the same. That Presence, Whoever, Whatever it was, had entered into his life. He could never forget it; never be convinced that it was ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... describe the last musical party at which we assisted. A scramble amid piles of unbound music; the right cahier found, snatched up, and opened at the well-thumbed solo with which she has already contended for many a long hour, and now hopes to execute for our applause. Alas! the piano sounds as if it had the pip; the paralytic keys halt, and stammer, and tremble, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... with shabby rep curtains of a dull red. In one corner, behind an Indian screen, stood a narrow camp bedstead, covered with a gaudy Eastern shawl, and also a large tin bath, with a can of water beside it. Against the wall leaned a clumsy deal bookcase filled with volumes well-thumbed and in old bindings. On one side of the tiny fireplace was a horse-hair sofa, rendered less slippery by an expensive fur rug thrown over its bareness; on the other was a cupboard, whence Beecot rapidly produced crockery, knives, forks, a cruet, napkins and other table accessories, all of the cheapest ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... certain musty covers and time-worn pages; no sacred memories of quiet moments when a new love of goodness, a new throb of generosity, a new sense of humanity, were born in the ardent young soul; born when we had turned the last page of some well-thumbed volume and pressed our tear-stained childish cheek against the window pane, when it was growing dusk without, and a mother's voice called us from our shelter to "Lay the book down, dear, and come to tea." For, to speak in better words than my own, "It is the ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... these meditations it occurred to her that she had forgotten Tom's school-books, which had been sent home in his trunk. But she found the stock unaccountably shrunk down to the few old ones which had been well thumbed,—the Latin Dictionary and Grammar, a Delectus, a torn Eutropius, the well-worn Virgil, Aldrich's Logic, and the exasperating Euclid. Still, Latin, Euclid, and Logic would surely be a considerable step in masculine wisdom,—in that ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... old Philistine," returned his friend in a measured voice, "I use the word impotent in the meaning attached to it in Holy Writ, and as my beloved and well-thumbed Thesaurus uses it: impotent, powerless, unarmed, weaponless, paralytic, crippled, inoperative, ineffectual, inadequate. Think of the strong man bound for a lifetime, Goliath—of a dumb and palsied genius gazing out of a prison-house. Could even a blinded Samson equal ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... village people sitting quietly like ourselves; old Hauser, with his three-cornered hat, the former mayor, the former postmaster, and several others besides. Everybody looked sad; and Hauser had brought an old primer, thumbed at the edges, and he held it open on his knees with his great spectacles lying ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... later to The Boy: "Robinson Crusoe," and the celebrated "Swiss Family" of the same name; "The Desert Home," of Mayne Reid; Marryat's "Peter Simple"; "The Leather Stocking Tales"; "Rob Roy"; and "The Three Guardsmen" were well thumbed and well liked; but they were not The Boy's first love in fiction, and they never usurped, in his affections, the place of the true account of David Copperfield. It was a queer book to have absorbed the time and attention of a boy of eight or nine, who had to skip the ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... Clyde! Kinloch, my second, knew her as well as I did. I found him dryin' his socks on the main-steam, an' combin' his whiskers wi' the comb Janet gied me last year, for the warld an' a' as though we were in port. I tried the feed, speered into the stoke-hole, thumbed all bearin's, spat on the thrust for luck, gied 'em my blessin', an' took Kinloch's socks before I went up ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... with Angelina, in anxious expectation of her Araminta's return home. Her time hung heavy upon her hands, for she had no companion with whom she could converse; and one odd volume of Rousseau's Eloise, and a few well-thumbed German plays, were the only books which she could find in the house. There was, according to Betty Williams's report, "a vast sight of books in a press, along with some table-cloths," but Miss Hodges had the key of this press in her pocket. Deprived of the pleasures both of reading and conversation, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... be at home," she said, as the sunlight, creeping around the room, shone on the green cover of a much-thumbed book of French fairy-tales, and then slanted off to touch the edge of a blue and gold Tennyson; "how good it is ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... distance that day, and he wished to reach a particular spot before the heat of noon. So Martin and Barney despatched breakfast in as short a time as possible, and the hermit read them a chapter out of his large and well-thumbed Bible, after which they equipped themselves ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... thundered splendidly in the impassioned appeals of orators to the people. It whistled through the streets, it stole into the firesides, it clinked glasses in bar-rooms, it lifted the gray hairs of our wise men in conventions, it thrilled through the lectures in college halls, it rustled the thumbed book leaves of the schoolrooms. This wind blew upon all vanes of all the churches of the country and turned them one way, — toward war. It blew, and shook out as if by magic a flag whose device was unknown to soldier or sailor before, but whose every ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... even to himself, as he picked up his much-thumbed book on physiology and turned the pages. He was smarting not only from the indignity to which he had been treated, but quite as much from the masterful way in which Old Dut had punctuated that "funny story" with his ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... The doctor told me, if I really thought of some day arraying my manly form in a scarlet jacket and wearing a sword, I ought to put it on with my mathematics, which are not my forte, you know. So now I'm drawing circles and triangles at every available moment, and my logarithm tables are thumbed almost to death. Don't imagine you're the only burner of ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... of Roberto Devereux, which she is to bring out in Havana, but the creaking of the Norma is sadly at variance with harmony. A pale German youth, in dressing-gown and slippers, is studying Schiller. An ingenious youngster is carefully conning a well-thumbed note, which looks like a milliner's girl's last billet-doux. The little possd is burning brown paper within an inch of the curtains of a state-room, while the steward is dragging it from him. Others are gradually dropping into their berths, like ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... nearly correct as to printing; it is right that such should be in your hands in case of need. The New England Pamphlets will be greedily expected. More than one inquires of me, Has that Emerson of yours written nothing else? And I have lent them the little Book Nature, till it is nearly thumbed to pieces. Sterling is gone to Italy for the winter since I left town; swift as a flash! I cannot teach him the great art of sitting still; his fine qualities are really like to waste ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... my intimates. Behind these comes a good troop of dear acquaintances; "The Pilgrim's Progress" in the front rank, "The Bible in Spain" not far behind. There are besides a certain number that look at me with reproach as I pass them by on my shelves: books that I once thumbed and studied: houses which were once like home to me, but where I now rarely visit. I am on these sad terms (and blush to confess it) with Wordsworth, Horace, Burns, and Hazlitt. Last of all, there is the class of book that has its hour of brilliancy—glows, sings, charms, and then fades ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... every primary school as a class-book. I am not ignorant of the objections which even some good men are wont to urge against its introduction. The Bible, it is said, is too sacred a volume to be put on a level with common school-books, and to be thumbed over and thrown about by dirty hands. This objection supposes that if the Bible is made a school-book, it must needs be put into such rude hands; and that it can not be daily read in the classes without diminishing the reverence with which ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... for another scornful time, was rereading the well-thumbed copy of the Sentinel, her fine back arched like a prize cat's, George Remington in his small mahogany office adjoining, neck low and heels high, was codifying, over and over again, the small planks of his platform, stuffing the knot holes which afforded peeps to the opposite side of the issue ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... visions of future success. He was then confined to the house with his last illness. He asked me that day if I would like to have, when he was gone, the old lexicon, Testament, and grammar that we had so often thumbed together. "Yes, but I would rather have you stay," I replied, "for what can I do when you are gone?" "Oh," said he tenderly, "I shall not be gone; my spirit will still be with you, watching you in all life's struggles." Noble, generous friend! He had but little ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... have never seen nor heard; the accompaniment is played at sight from a mere figured bass, on a tumble-down instrument two hundred years old, and the singers, both the soloists and the chorus, sing from thumbed bits of manuscript parts written in old-fashioned characters on paper often green with age. No one has ever denied the extraordinary musical facility of Italians, but if the outside world knew how Italian church music is performed it would be ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... disbursed the required sum. The native thumbed it, pocketed it, lifted his coat from a nail behind the door and started across the road ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... his hold on Peter, who, adopting a ludicrous air of extreme cunning, rushed immediately around to the other table, where he burst into derisive laughter and thumbed his nose at the ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... saw a gentleman get up to speak in a public assembly, provided with a paper of notes written in pencil: during the exordium of his speech, he thumbed his notes with incessant agitation; when he looked at the paper, he found that the words were totally obliterated; he was obliged to apologize to his audience; and, after much hesitation, sat down abashed. A father would be sorry to see ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... disappeared, there is yet lacking the justness of phrase and certainty of grammar and rime, which later supply, however inadequately, the place of poetic enthusiasm. The defects of the style, with its commonplace exaggeration of conceits, the thumbed token-currency of the certified poetaster, are well seen in such a passage as ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... come out and said it. In all the years they'd worked together at the Instituto Argentino de Ciencia Fisica, that had been unmentioned between them. The families of hanged cutthroats avoid mention of ropes and knives. He thumbed the old-fashioned American lighter and held it to his pipe. Across the veranda, in the darkness, he knew that Pitov was ...
— The Answer • Henry Beam Piper

... and two eighteenth century prints of Petrograd. All the rooms were square, so Russian with their placid family portraits, their old tables and chairs, not beautiful save for their fidelity, and old thumbed editions of Pushkin and Gogol and Lermontov in the bookshelves. Clocks, old slow clocks, all telling different time, all over the house. The house was very neat, but in odd corners there were all those odd family things that Russians collect, china of the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... my girls so that they shall know everything that their grandmother taught me. They could read, and write, and cypher. They were little farmers, and gardeners, and seamstresses, and housewives. Nor had their religious and moral training been neglected. The good Book lay well thumbed and dogeared on the kitchen shelf. The sound of the "church-going bell" had never been heard by those children, but every Sunday the mother gathered them about her, and they read together from the New Testament. "It is ten years," said the matron, "since I have seen a church. I ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... and Eve still dwelt in Paradise. But with man's fall sexual desire appeared as the sign and seal of human debasement. This theory is poignantly set forth in Augustine's City of God. He furnished therein a philosophy for the monks, and doubtless his fourteenth book was well thumbed by those who were wont to ponder somewhat wistfully on one of the sins they had ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... Ben came in again, bringing actual manuscript for eight or ten stories. He was haggard but very happy. It was clear that he had sat up nights with those stories. He thumbed them over as though he hated to let them go. They were the first fruits of his Big Idea—the idea that just under the edge of the news as commonly understood, the news often flatly and unimaginatively told, ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... including a painted photograph of himself, taken recently by the first photographer in Guernsey. There were book-cases containing a number of the best medical works; behind which lay, out of sight, a numerous selection of French novels, more thumbed than the ponderous volumes in front. He sank down into an easy-chair, shivering as if we were ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... did—the waiter suddenly reversed his long carving-knife and poised himself for a blow at President Hutchinson's back. I simply pressed the little silver stud on my belt, the Krupp-Tatta popped obediently out of the holster into my open hand. I thumbed off the safety and swung up; when my sights closed on the rising hand that held ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... fumbling in his duffel bag, fished out the thumbed and dilapidated Handbook, which was his trusty friend and companion. He opened it at page 64. He knew the place well enough, for he had many times coveted what was offered there. There, standing at attention and looking straight ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... I suppose, of the dreams that most of us cultivate about old age. I, too, look forward to a cottage under the high beech woods, to a well-thumbed Boswell, and to a garden where I shall mulch my rose-trees and watch the buds coming with as rich a satisfaction as any that the hot battle of the day has given me. But there is another thing I shall ask for. On the lower shelf of the bookcase, close to the Boswell, there will have to be a box ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... usit, with some detached portions, was all that fine library contained of the Sacred Writ. The bible defect et usit speaks volumes to the praise of the ancient monks of that house, for it was by their constant reading and study, that it had become so thumbed and worn; but it stamps with disgrace the affluent monks of the fifteenth century, who, while they could afford to buy, in the year 1470,[237] some thirty volumes with a Seneca, Ovid, Claudian, Macrobius, AEsop, etc., among them, and who found time to transcribe twice as many more, thought ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... the patriarchs, the names of the sons of Jacob, the chronologies of the Chronicles, but he knew the families of Rehoboth better. These latter were engraved on the palms of his hands, and written with corroding ink on the fleshly tables of his heart. As he turned over the well-thumbed pages he made many mental calculations, sometimes smiling and sometimes sighing as his eye fell on an irreclaimable debt. Then, taking up his pencil, he entered an account on the fly-sheet of the Bible, ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... paws, tail, arms, legs and a spurt of blood. The second flicked his pencil-ray at Peter, its capsule charge faded to a mere sting before it cut into him. The third aimed a kick at the struggling dog. Vanessa Lewis snatched a box from the bureau and hurled it at the second. Peter thumbed his pencil-ray and winged the third man in the biceps. Buregarde leaped for the second man's gun hand and closed on it as the hurled box opened and scatter-shotted his face with bric-a-brac. The man ...
— History Repeats • George Oliver Smith

... mentioned, no unique incidents distinguished our voyage. I saw little of the captain. He was at work. In the library I often found books he had left open, especially books on natural history. He had thumbed through my work on the great ocean depths, and the margins were covered with his notes, which sometimes contradicted my theories and formulations. But the captain remained content with this method of refining my work, and he rarely discussed it with me. Sometimes I heard melancholy ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... Thumbed are the pages, And the print is small; Mocking the winds That from the darkness call; Feeble the fire that lends ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... to the saddle pack without taking his eyes from the moving speck and took out the radiophone. He held it to his ear and thumbed the call button insistently. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the room, behind a roulette wheel, a man who looked more like a country parson than a gambler sat reading a thumbed copy of Taine's "English Literature." Three faro layouts stretched themselves in line as if watching for newcomers, and in the rear a man was lighting the coal-oil lamps of the dance hall. It was separated ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... philosopher, and his rusty black frock coat lent him a certain simple dignity quite rare upon the race tracks of the Jungle Circuit. In the tail pocket of the coat was something rarer still—a well-thumbed Bible, for this was Old Man Curry, famous as the owner of Isaiah, Elijah, Obadiah, Esther, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Elisha, Nehemiah, and Ruth. In his spare moments he read the Psalms of David for pleasure ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... the wonderful revelations of Swift's "Directions," where the irony is too refined, while it plainly inculcates the practice. This celebrated tract, designed for the instruction of the masters, is more frequently thumbed in the kitchen, as a manual for the profligate domestic. Servants have acknowledged that some of their base doings have been suggested to them by their ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... now, doctor? Yas; I think so, too. It's tied in a right good bow for a ten-thumbed man, which I shorely am, come to ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... distinction I particularly admired); and that the lady, her condescending friend, was a grocer's daughter! Niobe, at this precise point of the conversation, bestowed a ghastly grin upon the new allies, and producing from her reticule a well-soiled and much be-thumbed volume (whether of plays, or a novel, I could not discern), commenced perusing it with an avidity apparently unchecked by its disgusting odour, the which powerfully assailed me. I, too, was allowed by my loquacious widow, now that she had fallen in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various

... page is thumbed no more, E'en Catullus has no choice! There is endless, precious lore, Such as I ne'er knew before, In the music ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... honours of Father Jerome, and of the happy marriage, or with more probability, the happier celibacy of the divine Agatha. But we cannot do so with propriety: facts, stern, untoward, cruel facts, stare us in the face, and would make even the novelist blush, were he, in total disregard of well-thumbed history, to attempt so very false ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... lady, laying aside the well-thumbed volume and taking a step forward, "the quantities are correct. I am sure this will be excellent toffy, but—Dick, you shocking boy! whatever are you doing? Licking the spoon, I declare. How very vulgar!" and ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... had done that for me." He thumbed the safety on and holstered the pistol. "None of this would be happening if he had. How many more happinesses do you think we've smashed here today? And we don't even have Dunnan's excuse ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... and thumbed the letters over dumbly, spelling out a long word here and there or scrutinizing some obscure handwriting curiously, as if it were Chinese, or an Indian sign on a rock. Then, shoving back his chair, he watched Hardy's face ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... all older than those he usually wore. Besides the Byron and Pilgrim's Progress were Scott's Quentin Durward, Captain Marryat's Midshipman Easy, a pocket Testament, and a long and frightfully stiff book on the art of fortifying towns, much thumbed, and bearing date 1863. By far the most interesting thing I found, however, was a diary, kept down to the preceding Christmas. It was a pathetic document, full of calculations of the price of meals; resolutions to be careful over this or that; doubts whether he must not give up smoking; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Bedfordshire. . . . He unpacked them in my presence . . . and there were two which attracted my attention, one being a fine copy of Florio's "Italian Dictionary," of the edition of 1611, and the other a much-thumbed, abused, and imperfect copy of the Second Folio of Shakespeare, 1632. The first I did not possess, and the last I was willing to buy, inasmuch as I apprehended it would add some missing leaves to a copy of the ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... of books, and the small store of volumes, mostly of old Scotch divinity, in the little bookcase at Dunglass was well thumbed. But reading of a lighter kind was also indulged in, and on winter nights, when the mother was plying her spinning-wheel and the father had taken down his cobbler's box and was busily engaged patching the children's shoes, ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns

... girl, and you were a big boy, you seemed to find something in me which made it worth while for you to leave the other big boys and stay with me and talk about my books. Will I ever forget how you read some of them aloud to me? I never open now my thumbed little copy of 'Cranford' without hearing your laughing voice stumbling over the mincing phrases, and as for 'Little Women,' I believe that I worshiped in you ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... person, for she made herself perfectly at home and appeared to be not in the least chilled by the official formality of her surroundings. She wandered restlessly about the room, humming a tune under her breath; she readjusted the window- curtains to her liking; she idly thumbed the books upon the shelves; finally she perched herself upon the table in the midst of the documents upon which the officer was engaged, and began a low-voiced ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... from his pocket a much-thumbed, crudely drawn map and spread it out on the table. How he obtained it, the boys never learned exactly, but they heard later that a treacherous attendant of the ivory dealer had sold it to him ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... be only too glad to do the same," said Paul, as he accepted what appeared to be a well thumbed letter ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... issued from the same; and a catalogue of the unredeemed pledges made to the electors of Westminster, and originally taken in by them—a compliment very handsomely returned by the honourable Baronet, who kindly took his constituents in in return. Very curious, though much dogs-eared, thumbed, and as far as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various

... was Straws' little bedstead cupboard! As Phazma said of it, it contained everything it should not, and nothing it should contain. But that was why it was a poet's box. If it had held a Harpagon's Interest Computer, instead of a well-thumbed Virgil, or Oldcodger's Commercial Statistics for 184—, instead of an antique, leather-covered Montaigne, Straws would have had no use for the cupboard. It was at once his library—a scanty one, for ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... borders to his kinsmen in the hope of a South Africa which should be all his own. And now what had come of it all? A handful of faithful attendants, and a fugitive old man, clutching in his flight at his papers and his moneybags. The last of the old-world Puritans, he departed poring over his well-thumbed Bible, and proclaiming that the troubles of his country arose, not from his own narrow and corrupt administration, but from some departure on the part of his fellow burghers from the stricter tenets of the dopper sect. So Paul Kruger passed away ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... intense depression. Her attic was so suffocating that she could not stay in it, but there was a general sitting-room downstairs, and she went there and contrived to make herself as wretched as she could over a well-thumbed novel which another girl had left behind her on ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade

... pretty much occupied, too," observed the captain, "for a better thumbed pack I never yet found in the forecastle ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... it's 'most likely ter be fatal," he said excitedly to his wife, who was calmly bathing a slight graze on his hand. "An' ye want ter watch me," he added, catching up a book with his uninjured hand and turning to a much-thumbed page for reference. "Now, listen. Thar's diff'rent kinds of it. They're all 'te-ta-nus,' but ye got to watch out ter find out which kind 't is. If I shut my jaws up tight, it's 'lock-jaw.' If I bend backwards, it's 'o-pis-tho-to-nos.' If I bend ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... than L1400? Of these five, the first that came to light had been preserved owing to its having taken sanctuary, almost upon publication, in a great library, where it was forgotten. But the others that passed over Mr. Ponder's counter in the Poultry,—were they all lost, thumbed and dog's-eared out of being? They are gone,—that is all you can say; and gone apparently beyond reach ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... academy for the children of pauper operatives—An automaton note-writer—A lady professing ignorance of Almack's, "a club where Swift and Johnson used to meet, but I don't profess to be an antiquarian"—"Love and Algebra," one of the common scientific novels thumbed by coal-heavers and orange-women, very well for the common people—Every thing is taught them now by means of scientific novels: such as "Geological Atoms, or the Adventures of a Dustman"—Doubted very much whether English wheat is fit for any thing but the brute creation—Dark times ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various

... distract from his commanding officer was pretty well absorbed by keeping his hard-mouthed troop-horse in hand, under pain of execration by his neighbors in the melee. By and by, when the newspapers came out, if he could get a look at one before it was thumbed to bits, he would learn that the enemy had appeared from ambush in overwhelming numbers, and that orders had been given to fall back, which was done slowly and in good order, the men fighting as ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... found in the library; for a great man has said and written that there are romances which are useful in easing people of a superfluity of tears, and which also act as a sort of swamp to cast feelings into. I remembered some of these books; they had always looked very enticing to me. They were so thumbed, so greasy, they must have been ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... Bibliomaniac"—was written in a room to which many a box stall is palatial, and his sole library was a dilapidated edition of Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," Cruden's "Concordance of the Bible," and a well-thumbed copy of the King James version of the Bible. He detested the revised version. The genius of this man at this time did not depend on scholarship or surroundings, but on the companionship of his fellows and the unconventionality of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... cabin—a comfortable room with a fine big stove—he had a picture of his wife and daughters, all very rigid and uncomfortable. He also had three books. They included neither Burns nor Scott. One was the Bible, thumbed by his grandfather and his father till the paper had worn yellow and thin at the sides. The second, I am sorry to say, was called The Beautiful White Devil. The third was an odd volume of Froude in the Everyman edition. It ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... of the old time in New England that did not contain a well-thumbed volume of the Pilgrim's Progress; and there were few children who did not become acquainted with its contents, either through its text or its pictures. I am sure that all the children felt as I did—very tired with sympathy for the poor pilgrim who was obliged to lug that ugly pack from picture ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... Fenwick thumbed through the large pile of correspondence. "I'd say anybody would likely blow his stack a good deal harder than this if he'd been trying to get your attention this long. Why didn't he ever send you one of his gadgets in ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones

... it, and examined the contents with a finely critical air. Having satisfied himself he set it down again and smiled on his twelve pupils, all ranging from ten to twelve years of age, sitting round him. He produced a well-thumbed volume from his pocket, and, opening it, laid it upon his knee. It was there in case he should stumble, for Seth was not a natural born teacher. He did it for the sake of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... beloved Julius;" and was liberally spiced with passionate protestations of her inconsolableness and yearnings for his return. Both were dated ten years back, and the paper was yellow with time, besides being creased and thumbed as by ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... latter necessaries hung upon the walls, which, in that portion of the establishment devoted to the lady of the caravan, were ornamented with such gayer and lighter decorations as a triangle and a couple of well-thumbed tambourines. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... Well, let me see," he thumbed through the clipboard, "I guess there's always room for a few laughs. How many ...
— Martian V.F.W. • G.L. Vandenburg

... I was cut out for an actor," he told himself as he thumbed the roll with a serious air and an assumed indifference which permitted Sperry to ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... mysteriously. Officials and subofficials passed hurriedly to and fro. Whispered conversations were heard. The book on rules and regulations was hopefully thumbed. Hours passed. Finally the two prisoners were pompously told that they had "obstructed the traffic" on Pennsylvania Avenue, were dismissed on their own recognizance, and never ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... man beside Lenny leaned forward, over the back of the front seat, unhooked the receiver of the scrambler-equipped radiophone, and sat back down. He thumbed a button on the side of the handset and said: "This is Seven Oh Two." After a short silence, he said: "You can call off the net. You want him brought in?" He listened for a moment. "O.K. Are we cleared through the ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett

... by the river bank; and when it was eaten, sat for a time on the scooped-out brink while Avon ran at their feet—Arthur Miles searching again in the thumbed pages of The Tempest for a hint that might perchance have escaped him; Tilda as sedulously intent on a page of a ladies' newspaper in which the ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... only a girls' teacher, and nobody would pay much for teaching girls. But lean and rusty as he was, the rebbe's pupils regarded him with entire respect, and followed his pointer with earnest eyes across the limp page of the alphabet, or the thumbed page ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... sold now for the use of flowers. A contemporary mentions orchids placed in baskets on the shoulders of Arcadian peasants; lilies-of-the-valley, with leaves as pale as their flowers, wheeled in barrows by Cupids or set in china slippers; crocuses grown in a china pot shaped like a thumbed copy of Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris;" or white tulips in a cluster of three gilt sabots, large enough to form a capital flower-stand, mounted on gilt, rustic branches. Stout pitchers, glass bowls, china bowls, and even old teapots, make pretty bouquet-holders. The Greek vase, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... alone with the dog and time dragged heavily, turned for diversion to the only book in the camp, a well-thumbed copy of "The Last of the Mohicans." He had brought it with him to read coming out from Pittsburgh, and had thrown it into his bag when leaving Medicine Bend. In camp it proved a treasure, even the troopers, when they were idle, casting lots ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... the military men let me, for the credit of my own country, after that infamous incident of the letters, indicate these six well-thumbed volumes of "Napier's History." This is the story of the great Peninsular War, by one who fought through it himself, and in no history has a more chivalrous and manly account been given of one's enemy. Indeed, Napier seems to me to push it too far, for his admiration appears ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... foaming tankard, which already surmounted his doorway. "Why, the painter man has not made an ill job," said the landlord, "but I would fain have something more connected with the book that has brought me so much good custom." He produced a well-thumbed copy, and handing it to the author, begged he would at least suggest a motto from the Tale of Flodden Field. Scott opened the book at the death-scene of the hero, and his eye was immediately caught by the ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... herself she opened a small handbag, producing therefrom many sheets of paper, a much-thumbed copy of Shakespeare, and a pencil. She was tempted to begin with a description of the particular bit of country upon which she looked, for long ago she had decided upon Bear Flat for the locale of the story. But she sat long nibbling at the end of the pencil, delaying the beginning for fear of being ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... to the coast of Japan. We sailed from San Francisco, and immediately I found confronting me a problem of no inconsiderable proportions. There were twelve men of us in the forecastle, ten of whom were hardened, tarry-thumbed sailors. Not alone was I a youth and on my first voyage, but I had for shipmates men who had come through the hard school of the merchant service of Europe. As boys, they had had to perform their ship's duty, and, in addition, by immemorial sea custom, they had ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... the schoolroom, but it is quite likely to have been given up now, or perhaps it is called by some other name. It sounds dull, but is not really, at least there was one part of it that interested me immensely, so much so that that particular page was thumbed and dirty with being turned over so many times. This was the page on which volcanoes were described. I never thought I should see a volcano, but the idea of these tempestuous mountains, seething with red-hot fire inside, and ready to vomit forth flames and lava at any time appealed to the imagination. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... little wooden drums, covered round the sides with leather, and fitted vertically in niches in the walls.[27] A spindle running through the centre, enabled them to revolve at the slightest push. They were generally in rows of eight and ten, and well thumbed and worn they looked, but others of larger dimensions were placed by themselves, decorated with the words "Um mani panee," in the Lanza character, all round ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... He thumbed his broad-brimmed hat back from his forehead and looked up at the sky. There were a few thin clouds overhead, but there was no threat of rain, which was good. In this part of Xedii, the spring rains sometimes ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett

... of knowledge on which he might base his reasoning, and his indefatigable mind welcomed any outside assistance. He knew Greek and Latin thoroughly and a number of other languages, but it is related of him that he so thumbed his copy of Johnson's Dictionary that he was continually sending it to the binder. In return for his mastery of the languages, the dictionaries are fond of quoting Macaulay. If I may depend upon a rough mental computation, no prose ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... what it was that so absorbed him, Malcolm dropped quietly on the tiller, and thence on the deck, and approaching softly peeped over his shoulder. He was reading the epistle of James the apostle. Malcolm fell a-thinking. From Peter's thumbed bible his eyes went wandering through the thicket of masts, in which moved so many busy seafarers, and then turned to the docks and wharfs and huge warehouses lining the shores; and while they scanned the marvellous ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... hopelessness of success. The scroll had evidently been more frequently rolled and unrolled in that particular part, namely, the speech of Hyperides in a matter of such peculiar interest as that involving the honor of the most celebrated orator of antiquity; it had been more read and had been more thumbed by ancient fingers than any other speech in the whole volume; and hence the terrible gap between Mr. Harris's and Mr. Arden's portions Those who are acquainted with the brittle, friable nature of a roll of papyrus in the dry climate of ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... measured Fate for five thousand coats of such quality, and Fate has lent this old coat to this old man, as one of a long unfinished line of many old men. It has always large dull metal buttons, similar to no other buttons. This old man wears a hat, a thumbed and napless and yet an obdurate hat, which has never adapted itself to the shape of his poor head. His coarse shirt and his coarse neckcloth have no more individuality than his coat and hat; they have the same character of not being his—of not being anybody's. Yet this old man wears ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... like a bowlegged man drivin' a shoat—there ain't any headin' Paloma off when her mind's made up. You mark what I say, that female spider'll sew venom into those dresses. I never seen a woman with a mustache that was any good. Look here!" Blaze drew a well-thumbed pack of playing-cards from his pocket. "Shuffle 'em, and I'll prove what I say. If I don't turn up a dark woman three times out of five ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... by Rousseau, and in his library was a well-thumbed copy of the "Social Contract." marked and re- marked on page and margin. Paine and Jefferson were the only men connected with the strenuous times of Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six who had a distinct literary style—who worked epigram and antithesis. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... V.A.A.s' distribution of moral and economic diaries of the type already referred to. The villagers, in the spirit of boy-scoutism, are "advised to do one good thing in a day." I saw several of these diaries, well thumbed by their authors after having been laboured at for a year. One young farmer noted down on the space for January 2 that he said his prayers and then went daikon[24] pulling, and that daikon pulling (like our mangold pulling) ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... summer kitchen for an ax or hatchet; but failing to find either rummaged through a table drawer until he came upon a large carving knife. This would do the job nicely. He thumbed the edge as he carried it back into the parlor ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Bible was deposited—a book which, alas! for seven years had not been opened by either of the guilty pair. Having got what she wanted, she sat down by the table, opened the volume at a place well thumbed, and began to read aloud a chapter in the Corinthians, which Thomas Dodds, the more by reason that he had heard it read two hundred and fifty times, knew by heart. This being finished, she turned up ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... old age will find it in a far-off suburb teaching boys their letters. Some hundred years afterwards the prophecy was fulfilled. Juvenal tells us how the schoolboys stood each with a lamp in one hand and a well-thumbed Horace or sooty Virgil in the other. Quintilian, writing about the same time, goes into detail, as becomes an old schoolmaster. "It is an admirable practice that the boy's reading should begin with Homer and Virgil. The tragic writers ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church

... clean. There was a rag carpet on the floor; a pine bureau neatly varnished; a half dozen plain but whole chairs; a bedstead, upon which the bedding was scrupulously neat; a pine table, upon which lay a much-thumbed leather-bound family Bible and a few religious books; and between the windows, over the bureau, hung a common engraving of Christ upon the Cross. The windows themselves looked upon the back of the stores on South Street. Upon the floor was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... handsome woman whom he addresses as "Josette." Their three girls are being educated in the convent at Fort Chipewyan. The room in which we sit reflects the grafting of red life on white. A rough bookcase of birchwood, with thumbed copies of schoolboy classics, Carlyle, the Areopagitica, and the latest Tractate on Radium, gives one a glimpse of the long, long winter nights when all race and latitude limitations fade away and the mind of the Master of Fond du Lac jumps the barrier of ice and snow to mix with the ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... some ancient author, as when speaking of the emptiness of modern writers, who depend upon compilations and digressions for filling up a treatise "that shall make a very comely figure on a bookseller's shelf, there to be preserved neat and clean for a long eternity, never to be thumbed or greased by students: but when the fulness of time is come, shall happily undergo the trial of purgatory in order to ascend the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... bed-covering was cleanly, but patched in many places, and bespeaking much poverty, and the black "soutane" of silk that hung against the wall seemed to show long years of service. The few articles of any pretension to comfort were found in the sitting-room, where a small book-shelf with some well-thumbed volumes, and a writing-table covered with papers, maps, and a few pencil-drawings, appeared. All seemed as if he had just quitted the spot a few minutes before; the pencil lay across a half-finished sketch; two or three wild plants were laid within the leaves of a little ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... Supporting Party of which no account has been published, I wrote to Lashly and asked him to meet and tell me all he could remember. He was very willing, and added that somewhere or other he had a diary which he had written: perhaps it might be of use? I asked him to send it me, and was sent some dirty thumbed sheets of paper. And ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... hopeful, frightened into frenzy, obeyed with alacrity, and Farriss, seizing the atlas from his hand, thumbed it until he found a map of Colorado. Together the ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish

... very true,' returned the old man humbly, 'I will compose myself with a little study.' He thumbed his gallery of notebooks. 'I wonder,' he said, 'I wonder (since I see your hands are occupied) whether it might ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... distinguished from "large publications." I have in my hand a little book, which those of you who are at a great distance may have some difficulty in seeing, and which I value very much. It is, I am afraid, sadly thumbed and scratched with annotations by a very humble successor and follower of Harvey. This little book is the edition of 1651 of the 'Exercitationes de Generatione'; and if you were to add another little ...
— William Harvey And The Discovery Of The Circulation Of The Blood • Thomas H. Huxley

... same. 1459: Folio. Editio Secunda. The first six leaves have been evidently much thumbed; and the copy, from the appearance of the first leaf alone, is as evidently cropt. For the colophon, both of this and of the preceding edition, examine the catalogue of Lord Spencer's library.[49] Upon the whole, it strikes me, as far as recollection may serve, that his Lordship's copy of each ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... towards Jim and Aurora several times during the evening, and he thumbed his chin in a troubled way. He had been thinking it was almost time to try fresh fields; but it was not going to be so easy a matter to shift as he ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... time. Yes, he considered quite probably that he had help rather to offer than to ask for. Still, none the less, when he again saw her free he continued to keep away from her; when he came back with his thumbed Guide it was Mr. Buckton he caught—it was from Mr. Buckton he obtained half-a-crown's-worth ...
— In the Cage • Henry James

... coveted for their rarity or their early dates, for their previous ownership or the beauty of their binding—for any reason except the one that makes them books rather than curiosities. These collections are not libraries in the intellectual or the literary sense. Three well thumbed volumes in the attic of one who loves them are a better library for him than those on which Pierpont Morgan spent ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... he illustrated a point by reference to the much-thumbed pages. He was very keen, and not very articulate. I knew just enough to be an intelligent listener, and, though hungry, was delighted ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers



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