"Cunningly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... underlying melancholy. Like other men with very high spirits, he had hours of gloom, and the sadness and the thoughtfulness that were in him came forth then and informed his later books. These are far more carefully written, far more cunningly constructed, than the old chapters written from month to month as the fit took him, with no more plan or premeditation than "Pickwick." But it is the early stories that we remember, and that he lives by—the ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... prisons in Philadelphia, and thus, by long and constant practical observation, was accumulated that knowledge of the human heart in its darkest windings, that often astonished the objects of his care, when they thought they had been able cunningly to blind his eyes to their real character and intentions. After his removal to New York, and when the occasion for his personal labors in the cause of the slave had in some measure, ceased or slackened, he threw his whole heart into the Prison Association, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... spared no trouble over The Man at Arms, and now it was luxuriously modern Elizabethan, with an old Minstrels' Gallery kept studiously dusty, and the most splendid old oak and deep fire-places with electric light cunningly arranged, and baths in every passage. Of course you paid for this skilful and comfortable romance, but Mr. Bannister always managed his bills so delicately that you expected to find a poem by Suckling or Lovelace on the back of them. When Peter had been ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... case, on account of the usual fine but vague talk about Shakspere's absolute self-annihilation in favour of the characters that he depicts. It is said that Shakspere so identifies himself with each person in his dramas, that it is impossible to detect the great master and his thoughts behind this cunningly devised screen. If this means that Shakespere has always a perfect comprehension of his characters, is competent to measure out to each absolute and unerring justice, and is capable of sympathy with even the most repulsive, it will not be disputed for an ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... rock of the Niagara cliff was this stupendous tank, and so cunningly surrounded by vacuum-chambers, that now no faintest sound of the Falls was audible. All that betrayed the nearness of the cataract was a faint, incessant trembling of the metal walls, as though the solid ribs of Earth herself were ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... and her character sketches of previous teachers, and her own relations—for she spared nobody—would have earned a white woman a long and well-merited term of imprisonment for criminal libel. She had cunningly, by straightforward and unscrupulous lying, prejudiced the principal mother and boss woman of the pa against the teacher and his wife; as a natural result of which the old lady, who, like the rest, was very ignorant and ungrateful, "turned ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... prepare a sham treaty, did forge Admiral Watson's name, did fool Omichund to the top of his bent. Omichund being thus cunningly bought over, Clive prepared for action, flung defiance at Surajah Dowlah, and marched against him. On June 23, 1757, the fate of England in India was decided by the famous battle of Plassey, or, as it should be more correctly ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... drawing room. It was lit with soft candles in many sconces; the blinds were down; across the windows were drawn curtains of Liberty silk of the palest, softest shade of rose. On the floor was a carpet of many soft colors cunningly mingled. The walls were painted a pale artistic green, large mirrors were introduced here and there, and old family portraits, all newly framed, of dead and gone O'Shanaghgans, hung on the painted walls. ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... every step; he had registered the path and it was a constant target for his machine guns and snipers. Our pet was well hidden in the hedge, with its nose poking through a hole in the leafage and so cunningly camouflaged that it was absolutely ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... of Mithridate, as Voltaire has remarked, bears great resemblance to that of the Miser of Molire. Two brothers are rivals for the bride of their father, who cunningly extorts from her the name of her favoured lover, by feigning a wish to renounce in his favour. The confusion of both sons, when they learn that their father, whom they had believed dead, is still alive, and will speedily ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... at one stretch. He had sat there for hours reading, for hours rapt in his Vision. At last material darkness began to gather round him, and he awoke with a start to realization that he had been sitting there most of the day. With a sigh he replaced his book in the hole, which he cunningly masked with a lump of hard clay, and, feeling stiff and cold, ran, childlike, homeward. In the silence of the night he took out his cornelian heart and fondled it. The day had been curiously like, yet utterly unlike, the day ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... dies! the roses are red with the matter that once reddened the cheek of the child; the flowers bloom the fairest on the last year's battleground; the work of death's finger cunningly wreathed over is at the heart of all things, ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... are not in their familiar attitudes; they lie on their sides or backs, or stand upon their heads; between the legs of library or dining tables are stuffed all kinds of minor movables, with cushions, pillows, pictures, cunningly adjusted to the environment; and mattresses pad the walls, or interpose their soft bulk between pieces of furniture that would otherwise rend each other. Carpets sewn in cotton against moths, and rugs in long rolls; the piano hovering ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thoughtfully in a corner, with her lame boy. She had, in her conversation with the priest, cunningly hit on an expedient to propitiate him for a time, but she was ill at ease. She could not at once throw off the chains of teaching that had bound her all her life; and so dim was the light that she had received, that she ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... to do to leave Robin to his fate, but for all that Tom could not make up his mind to turn back and search for him; for he felt it was quite probable he would only fall into a cunningly-devised ambush. But he could not ride all night through the forest. He might fetch a circuit all unknowingly, and find himself in the midst of the footpads again. The moon had now risen, and was giving a faint light. By its aid Tom was able to examine the nature of the ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... you have sometimes favoured me with a sight of, will not suffer me to be so sottish as to slight and undervalue so great and noble an accomplishment. But the committing of such high and brave sensed poems to a schoolboy (whose main business is to search out cunningly the Antecedent and the Relative; to lie at catch for a spruce Phrase, a Proverb, or a quaint and pithy Sentence) is not only to very little purpose, but that having gargled only those elegant books at school, this serves them instead ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... his lesson, hurling him back with humiliating harshness when he dashed his bulk against them. He had too lively a memory of past discomfitures to risk a fresh one now in the face of this insolent foe. His matted front came against the wire with a force so cunningly moderated that he was not thrown back by the recoil. And the keen points of his horns went through the meshes with a vehemence which might indeed have done its work effectively had they come in contact with the adversary. As it was, however, they ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... ablest state-papers in the archives of the capitol. Unlike some of his predecessors, with their sentences of stilted formality, he wrote easily and with vigour. His message, however, was marred by the insincerity which shows the politician. He approved canals, but, by cunningly advising "the utmost prudence" in taking up new enterprises, he coolly disparaged the Chenango project; he shrewdly recommended the choice of presidential electors by general ticket instead of by congressional districts, knowing that opposition ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... is an old saying that a shoemaker's children are the worst shod, and the display of anti-aircraft guns which has since manifested itself was then non-existent. The town was ablaze. It is still ablaze, but the lighting has been cunningly arranged to deceive nocturnal visitors, and any aeroplanes approaching Essen at a height of twelve or fifteen thousand feet would find it hard to discover which was Essen, and which Borbeck, ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... news for Uncle Andrea. And you may be sure he was too good a Venetian and too loyal a Cornaro not to turn it to the best advantage. So he stimulated the young king's evident inclination as cunningly as he was able. His niece Catarina, he assured the king, was as good as she was beautiful, and as clever as ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... herself in a cosy nook at the foot of one of the great leafless trees of the Avenue. Straw hurdles were cunningly arranged to form three sides of a square, in whose midst she was seated on a rush-bottomed chair, like a queen on a humble throne. Her head was bound by a gaily striped kerchief, and her feet rested snugly on a charcoal ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... brother-in-law, Kolbein, and I owed it to you to avenge insults heaped upon you. Long had he been faithless to you and cunningly served both you and been a treacherous follower to you both ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... begun to read the second piece of automatic writing and had only finished a few lines—enough to see that it was very different from the first—when she felt a clutch of hands around her throat and realized that Fauvette had crept up cunningly from behind. There had been a struggle in which the medium tried vainly to cry out for help or to reach the bell, but her enemy was too strong for her, and she had grown weaker; then, using strategy, she ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... soutane, but I kicked it out of his hand, and again I fell with my knees upon his chest. Then, for the first time, he screamed horribly, while I, half blinded, felt about for the sword which he had so cunningly concealed. My hand had just lighted upon it, and I was dashing the blood from my face to see where he lay that I might transfix him, when the whole coach turned partly over upon its side, and my weapon was jerked out of my grasp by ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... would be immature to hold the gauze screen of prevarication between your all-discerning mind and my own trepidation. From the moment when I first saw the expression of utterly depraved malignity and deep-seared hate which he had cunningly engraved upon his face by means of the coloured inks, I was far from being comfortably settled within myself. Even the society of the not inelegant being of the inner chamber, whom it was now my part to console with alluring ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... in doubt, even after she had approached within a few paces, whether she did not gaze on a statue so cunningly fashioned that by the doubtful light it could not be distinguished from reality. She stopped, therefore, and fixed upon this interesting object her princely look with so much keenness that the astonishment which ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... was painted starting for the goal—there an arrow aimed at a mark—one knight bore a bleeding heart, indicative of his passion—another a skull and a coronet of laurels, showing his determination to win or die. Many others there were; and some so cunningly intricate and obscure, that they might have defied the most ingenious interpreter. Each knight, too, it may be presumed, put his courser to his mettle, and assumed his most gallant seat in the saddle, as he passed for a moment under the view of the fair bevy of dames and damsels, who encouraged ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the temple, where there was a seated image of Jupiter in the apse. It had been cunningly modelled to resemble God the Father, or Moses, as he began to be represented about that time. Near and a little beneath this image stood Orpheus in the character of the Good Shepherd, with a lamb on his shoulders, and carved in relief on the pedestal was to be seen his descent to Hades, from ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... energetic. He was actually eating his breakfast at half-past eleven, and had already contrived in his mind how he would turn the wrong way as soon as he got into the street,— towards Marylebone Road, by which route Roger would certainly not come. He left the house at ten minutes before twelve, cunningly turned away, dodging round by the first corner,—and just as he had turned it encountered his cousin. Roger, anxious in regard to his errand, with time at his command, had come before the hour appointed and had strolled about, thinking not of Felix but of Felix's sister. The baronet felt ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... they in the Lesser Redoubt had caught the beat of the Master-Word, and so made reply; though it had not been they who had made the previous talk, which we had sought to test by the Word. And then they would make contradiction of all that had been spoken so cunningly; so that we knew the Monsters and Forces had sought to tempt some from the safety of the Redoubt. Yet, was this no new thing, as I have made to hint; saving that it grew now to a greater persistence, and there was a loathsome cunning in the using of this new knowledge to the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Iscariot, or even as the very Devil himself; and at Venice likewise have I seen such plays, called there Boinbaria, wherein men and women, innocent of all guilt, were made to stand for Calumny, Cruelty, and Craft; and that so cunningly that a man might swear that they were reprobate Knaves full ripe for the gallows. From this it may be seen that men are fit and able to seem other than they are by nature; nay, such feigning is a pleasure to most folks, as we plainly see from the delight taken by great and small alike ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... although counted as nothing when it is preceded by the Sakouska (i.e. a preliminary "stand up" snack which waylays you at a separate buffet as you walk into dinner and consists of all sorts of appetissants such as caviar, cunningly smoked fish, olives, etc., with Kuemmel and other liqueurs as an accompaniment) the smallest dinner resolves itself into a formidable repast that perhaps only a Russian would be capable of doing full ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... has ever written has so cunningly mingled joy-bells and death-bells in his music. Here is a realism of damned souls—damned in their merry sins—at which the writer of Ecclesiastes merely seems to hint like a detached philosopher. Villon may never have achieved the last faith of the penitent thief. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... the trail and take the cut-off, especially that part where he alluded to their going to h—l. I very much fear the little piety my mother taught me was badly strained on that occasion, and I thought of a good many swear words if I did not say them, which I suppose is about as bad. I could see how cunningly they had managed to get me to ride their horse that it might serve as the foundation for a claim on me for about all the money ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... learning and wisdom, my son, though I fear me his diet is too strong for the stomach of this degenerate age, while the dressing of his dishes is, on the other hand, too cunningly devised for their liking. But it is no marvel thou shouldest be ignorant of him, being as yet no reader of books. Neither is he a close kinsman, being of the Lincolnshire branch of ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... unknown; in fact, it underlay much of the treatment. People did not die, but they were assassinated. The murderer might belong to this or to the spirit world. He might be a god, a spirit, or the soul of a dead man that had cunningly entered a living person. The physician must first discover the nature of the possessing spirit, and then attack it. Powerful magic was the weapon used, and the healer must be an expert in reciting incantations and skilful in making amulets. On account ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... all Raymond Palmer's strength fled, leaving him almost as helpless as a child, while he gazed wildly up and down the street, vainly searching for the woman who had so cunningly duped him, for he knew, if his suspicions were correct, the firm of Amos Palmer & Co. would lose thousands of dollars by ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Prettymans, were aware that Mr Walker had been very kind both to Mr and Mrs Crawley, and argued from this that Mr Walker must think the man to be innocent. But Henry Grantly, who did not dare to ask a direct question of the solicitor, went cunningly to work, and closeted himself with Mrs Walker,—with Mrs Walker, who knew well of the good fortune which was hovering over Grace's head and was so nearly settling itself upon her shoulders. She would have given a finger to be able to whitewash Mr Crawley in the major's estimation. Nor ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... at!" cunningly retorted a fifth, and so the good but misguided Jenks was disposed of by his "troops ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... disguised under forms so dainty and fragile that, while we felt their tyranny, we never so much as suspected their share in our servitude. Silent themselves, they issued their commands in tones we dared not disregard; fashioned so cunningly, they ruled us as with iron sceptres; moving within so small a circle, they sent us hither and yon on every imaginable service. They severed eternity into minute fragments, and dealt it out to us minute by minute like a cordial, given drop by ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... throne against which wealth and force would be weak and contemptible. No human device has ever prevailed against it, no array of majorities or respectabilities; but neither Caesar nor Flamen ever conceived a scheme so cunningly adapted to neutralize its power as that graceful compromise which accepts it with the lip and denies it in the life, which marries it at the altar and divorces it ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... and whatever of Arianism may have polluted his baptism, was for the Greek Church fully neutralized by the orthodox canonization. After the solemn ceremony, he promised to live thenceforth worthily of a disciple of Jesus; refused to wear again the imperial mantle of cunningly woven silk, richly ornamented with gold; retained the white baptismal robe; and died a few days after, on Pentecost, May 32, 337, trusting in the mercy of God, and leaving a long, a fortunate, and a brilliant reign, such as none but Augustus, of all his predecessors, had enjoyed. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wampum was so cunningly made that neither Jew nor Devil could counterfeit it. Nevertheless a Connecticut Yankee rigged up a machine that so disturbed the market value of the beads that in a short time the Long Island mints were closed to the free coinage of clams. Wampum was demonetized through counterfeit, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... bed elsewhere? It would be a hard task for any man however cunning, except a god set it in some other place. Of men none could easily shift it, for there is a wonder in that cunningly made bed whereat I laboured and none else. Within the courtyard was growing the trunk of an olive; round it I built my bed-chamber with thick stones and roofed it well, placing in it doors that shut ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... God as now: those scriptures that I saw nothing in before, are made in this place and state to shine upon me; Jesus Christ also was never more real and apparent than now; here I have seen and felt Him indeed: Oh! that word, We have not preached unto you cunningly devised fables, 2 Pet. i. 16, and that, God raised Christ from the dead, and gave Him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God 1 Pet. i. 21, were blessed words unto me in this my ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... muffled tones. He looked up at his foster-father cunningly. "You won't t'rash me w'en I been ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... a favor the pageant which had been cunningly devised to impress them, followed, thronging, up the giant stairway, into the halls of the Council Chamber, into the stately presence of the Serenissimo and the Signoria, to hear their latest magnate profess his gratitude for the honor of his investiture and the magnificence ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... are that profess to have a key for the decyphering of every thing: but let wise and noble persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading interpreters to be over-familiar with their fames, who cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent malice, under other men's simplest meanings. As for those that will (by faults which charity hath raked up, or common honesty concealed) make themselves a name ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... throwing himself back. 'What dispute can there be? Do you think that I would deny my word? And do you suppose I did not know your aims, cunningly as you may think you veiled them? Would I have given up Leta to you, if she had been of any further value to myself? By the gods! had you waited a while, I do not know but what I would have made her a present to you; not however, to oblige ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Can we think it strange that our difficulties should have been great, when we consider the power, the dexterity, the experience of him who was secretly thwarting us? It is time for us to prove signally to the world that it is impossible for any criminal to double so cunningly that we cannot track him, or to climb so high that we cannot reach him. Never was there a more flagitious instance of corruption. Never was there an offender who had less claim to indulgence. The obligations which the Duke of Leeds has to his country are of no common kind. One great debt ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rat in the cellar-nest, Whom fat and butter made smoother: He had a paunch beneath his vest Like that of Doctor Luther. The cook laid poison cunningly, And then as sore oppressed was he As if he had love ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... theories had never been wholly friendless from the time of the great Revolution. The memory of the enrages of 1793 and of Babeuf and his conspiracy of 1795 had been kept green by Buonarotti and Marechal. The ruling classes had very cunningly lauded liberty and fraternity, but they rarely mentioned the struggle for equality, which, of course, appeared to them as a regrettable and most dangerous episode in the great Revolution. Yet, despite that fact, this early struggle for economic equality had never been wholly forgotten. ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... incidents is so great that we read with a sort of excitement a minute account of the conversion of an old card-table into a writing and dining-table, with the causes and consequences of that momentous event, curiosity having been first cunningly aroused by the suggestion that the clerical friend to whom the letter is addressed might, if the mystery were not explained, be haunted by it when he was getting into his pulpit, at which time, as he had told Cowper, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... two, the good Doctor transferred himself from the bed to the floor, where he stood awhile, gazing from one piece of quaint furniture to another (such as stiff-backed Mayflower chairs, an oaken chest-of-drawers carved cunningly with shapes of animals and wreaths of foliage, a table with multitudinous legs, a family record in faded embroidery, a shelf of black-bound books, a dirty heap of gallipots and phials in a dim corner),—gazing ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dragoons in lasting sleep. Two fell beneath the steel of the strong-handed Snipes; nor did my sword return bloodless to its scabbard. In short, of the whole party, consisting of twenty-five, not a man escaped, except one officer, who, in the heat of the chase and carnage, cunningly shot off, at right angles, for a swamp, which he luckily gained, and ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... of Mollwitz, and then, in contrast, the intricate Pragmatic Sanction, and what their consequences were and their antecedents, it is curious once more! This, then, is what the Pragmatic Sanction has come to? Twenty years of world-wide diplomacy, cunningly devised spider-threads overnetting all the world, have issued here. Your Congresses of Cambray, of Soissons, your Grumkow-Seckendorf Machiavelisms, all these might as well have lain in their bed. Real Pragmatic Sanction would have been, A well-trained Army and your Treasury full. Your ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... other," he answered cunningly. "Not to be in the least obscure, I am from the pretty, quiet and somewhat sequestered city of Fairberry. You ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... surmounting of obstacles, on patience, on presence of mind and on nerve, copiously illustrated from a day's triumph that will resound on the Murman coast as the unconditional surrender of the intimidated roach. He described how he had cunningly outmanoeuvred the patrols, defeated the vigilance of the pickets, pierced the line of resistance, launched a surprise attack on the main body, and spread panic in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... scruples about selling the girl for a few ducats; and as to Momola, can you wonder that her loathing of Giannozzo and of her wretched life at Pontesordo threw her defenceless into Trescorre's toils? All was cunningly planned to exasperate Cerveno's passion and Momola's longing to escape; and at length, pressed by his entreaties and innocently carrying out the designs of his foe, the poor girl promised to meet him after night-fall at the hunting-lodge. The secrecy of the adventure, and the peril ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Phoenician, I know you well!" thought I exultingly, "though I never saw you before with a harp in your hand. But were you not gathering flowers, O lovely daughter of Agenor, when that celestial animal, that masquerading god, put himself so cunningly in your way to be admired and caressed, until you unsuspiciously placed yourself on his back? That explains the garland. I shall have a word to say about this pretty thing to my ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... I have taken the common clay And wrought it cunningly In the shape of a god that was digged a clod, ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... afternoon in a far country I met one of those orchids who make it their business to imitate a fly with their petals. This lie they dispose so cunningly that real flies, thinking the honey is being already plundered, pass them without molesting them. Watching intently and keeping very still, methought I heard this orchid speaking to the offspring which she felt within her, though I saw them not. "My children," she ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... boiling oil. His feet cooked first, and then the flesh of his legs, and so on upward, while Lovain screamed. Guillaume in a loose robe of green powdered with innumerable silver crescents, sat watching, under a canopy woven very long ago in Tarshish, and cunningly embroidered with the figures of peacocks and apes and men with eagles' heads. His hands ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... human life to be steeped in such places as that. This figure was to the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood what a fact is to a fairy-tale, an interpretation to a myth. We, on our side, were to our hostess subjects of a curiosity not cunningly veiled. ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... himself. And, when he approacheth to the throne of God, he is so taken up with the Divine greatness that, in his own eyes, he is either vile or nothing. Places of public charge are fain to sue to him, and hail him out of his chosen obscurity; which he holds ofif, not cunningly, to cause importunity, but sincerely, in the conscience of his defects. He frequenteth not the stages of common resorts, and then alone thinks himself in his natural element when he is shrouded within his own walls. He is ever jealous over himself, and still suspecteth that which others ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Land went on shore to recruit and buy Provisions, and so were taken. The Chingulays that took them [Plundered by the Natives.] Plundered them of what they had, except their Cloths. Yet one of them, John Merginson by name, having cunningly hid his Money about him, saved it from the Heathen, but from his own Countrymen he could not, some of whom knowing of it set upon him and robbed him of it. But it did them little good, for the King hearing of it ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... cupboard under the stairs. It was Desmond who first realized that there must be space beyond it, who had planned a way in, and thence to cut a tunnel to freedom. They had found, or stolen, or manufactured, tools, and had cut the sliding panel so cunningly that none of the Germans who used the broom-cupboard had suspected its existence. The space on the far side of the wall had given them room to begin their work. Gradually it had been filled with earth until there was barely ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... his surmise had gone cunningly to its mark. Pride flashed to the rescue of his self-esteem. His face flared. He rose ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... person, and with this intention had proceeded to the public walks, as already mentioned. His artful and wily behavour, assisted by the distracting position of Don Lope's affairs, had betrayed the latter into that snare which the renegade had so cunningly devised, and which, if followed up with success, would lead the unwary Gomez Arias towards a labyrinth, in the mazes of which his ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... of law and order. In the Bois de Boulogne, on the previous afternoon, it had arrested that terrible scoundrel, the perpetrator of the crime in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, that Anarchist mechanician Salvat, who for six weeks past had so cunningly contrived to elude capture. The scoundrel had made a full confession during the evening, and the law would now take its course with all despatch. Public morality was at last avenged, Paris might now emerge in safety from its long spell of terror, Anarchism would ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... commenced the agreeable task of promiscuous castigation. Heavy and vindictive did his arm descend upon those whom he suspected to have cautioned the boy against his rapacity; nor amongst the warm-hearted lads, whom he thwacked so cunningly, was Thady passed over with a tender hand. Springs, bouncings, doublings, blowing of fingers, scratching of heads, and rubbing of elbows—shouts of pain, and doleful exclamations, accompanied by action that displayed surpassing agility-marked ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... M. Vassili was pleased to call his little dog-hole in the Champs Elysees was, in fact, a gorgeous house in the tawdry style of modern Paris—resplendent in gray iron railings, and high gate-posts surmounted by green cactus plants cunningly devised in ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... which, from a basket, she supported them both. The wares were dancing girls with tremendous limbs and very brief skirts of tricolor gauze,—"ballerinas," in her vocabulary,—and monkeys with tin hats, cunningly made to look like German soldiers. For these she taught him to supply the decorations. It was his department, she reasoned; the ballerinas were of her country and hers. Parbleu! must one not work? What then? Starve? Before her look and gesture the cripple quailed, and twisted and ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... was like a civil war in his palace, and their hatred towards one another was like that where each one strove to exceed another in calumnies. However, Antipater used stratagems perpetually against his brethren, and that very cunningly; while abroad he loaded them with accusations, but still took upon him frequently to apologize for them, that this apparent benevolence to them might make him be believed, and forward his attempts against them; by which means he, after various manners, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Hill under a brilliant sky to his late dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show them that he appreciated their sympathy. But it was a real relief to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones—cunningly chosen by young Bosinney for shape and colour—with night closing in around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the trees, and smelling so sweet that it made him ache. The grass was drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Had it not been so, I with mine own hand Would have outpour'd it down thy gullet, knave. See, here's a ring of cunningly-wrought gold ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... blocking, or the knees which are ineffectually protected by a fold of Russian duck. When you are reading, a mosquito will rarely settle on that portion of your hand which is within range of your eyes, but cunningly stealing by the underside of the book fastens on the wrist or finger, and noiselessly inserts his proboscis there. I have tested the classical expedient recorded by Herodotus, who states that the fishermen inhabiting the fens of Egypt cover their beds with their nets, knowing ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and the bright dust of star-spray sprinkled the sky, but whether he looked up or down Stuart Farquaharson could see only the light of victorious surrender in the eyes of the woman he loved, declaring her love for him. Now she was in the arms of another man—a man who had cunningly and patiently subordinated every lesser thing to ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Striv'd with redoubled strength; the more she striv'd, The more a gentle pleasing heat reviv'd, Which taught him all that elder lovers know; And now the same gan so to scorch and glow, As in plain terms, yet cunningly, he crave it: Love always makes those eloquent that have it. She, with a kind of granting, put him by it, And ever, as he thought himself most nigh it, Like to the tree of Tantalus, she fled, And, seeming lavish, sav'd her maidenhead. Ne'er king more sought to keep his diadem, Than ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... began to leave. There was no treading upon heels, for one was well out of the way before another was allowed to go. So cunningly was their room devised that half the exits led to one thoroughfare and half to another; and so many were they, it was said, no more than two councillors came or went by the same door. And of all who came, so say the records, not one knew another ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... of the gang can be heard all day long from the river, silenced only for meals; ay, it may happen that it goes on for days together. Then suddenly a new sound falls on the ear: the stroke of the ax; some devil of a log has fixed itself so cunningly there is no hauling it free, and it has to be cut through. It does not take many strokes to do it, for the pressure on it already is enormous; soon it breaks, the great confused mass yields, and begins to move. All the men are on their guard now, holding back to ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... to the front of the huts at the double, and examination proved that the places must have been occupied within a few hours, for the fire in one hut was still smouldering; but the people had fled, and we were in possession of the tiny village so cunningly hidden from the river. ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... whether Isaac could escape bleeding to death, or Jonah's wife, with the outspread arms, withstand the sudden shock of her husband's unexpected arrival out of the interior of the whale. There also was the splendid fireplace of wrought stone, and above it, cunningly carved in gilded oak, gleamed many coats-of-arms without crests, for they were those ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... was in his cradle, fast asleep, and Genevieve went and knelt down by the side of it, and looked at it carefully, as though she was afraid of awaking it, and then whispered to Hepsa her admiration of the little hands, which lay cunningly upon the quilt, and said how much she wanted to kiss him; would he wake, she wondered, if she just kissed his cheek, and didn't make any noise? Hepsa told her no; so she kissed him; and then, after looking at him to see how sweetly he slept,—now frowning, ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... is so Sir, And take you heed, this last blow do not spoil ye, He is not hurt, only we made a scuffle, As though we purpos'd anger; that same scratch On's hand he took, to colour all and draw compassion, That he might get into your house more cunningly. I must not stay, stand now, and y'are a ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... He has been caught red-handed from the murder of his wife. His crime is patent. He has himself confessed it under torture. His only hope of reprieve lies in the colour which he may be able to impart to it; and his speech is cunningly adapted to the nature of the Court, and to the moral and mental constitution of those of whom it is composed. His judges are churchmen: neutral on the subject of marriage; rather coarsely masculine in their ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... armour. He stole from Sir Gawain his good sword, that which he placed in its sheath was not worth twopence; he cut the straps of the harness well nigh in twain in the midst, and made a great score in the stirrup leathers so cunningly that no man might see or know aught thereof beneath the covering of the harness. And the saddle-girths did the traitor so handle that Sir Gawain was sore grieved there-for ere he had ridden a mile; he would not that it had ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... advanced, and they grew riotous. The lord and his tutor were for sporting the door of a glum: that is, breaking into the chamber of a gownsman who loves study. Hector vociferously seconded the motion, but the fellow and the master of arts cunningly endeavoured to keep them quiet, first by persuasion, and, when that was ineffectual, by affirming the students they proposed to attack sported oak: in plain English, barred up their doors. Had they been without the walls of the college, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... our clothes, fellows!" he cried to Neal and Dol. "Now we're going to have some fair fun! I guess there won't be any more fighting; and I want you to see how cunningly the raccoon will cheat the dog and escape, if he ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... a man used to being hard hit. He was steeled against cunningly and swiftly-dealt blows, such as he himself administered, but this declaration of Sir Paul's, that he intended to marry Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Lady Audley that Robert had appeared at the Castle Inn. She also explained that a bailiff was in the house, as the rent was due, and she wanted money to pay him out. Lady Audley, insisted to Phoebe's astonishment, that she herself would bring the money. She did so; and, unknown to Phoebe, cunningly set fire to the inn, hoping that Robert Audley would meet his death. She and her maid then left the inn to make the long tramp back to the Court. Half the distance had been covered, when Phoebe looked back and saw a red ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... it was money cunningly expended where it would do most good. Fifty per cent of the money the gang earned was laid away to make future returns surer. In twenty places Allister had his paid men who, working from behind the scenes, gained priceless information ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... square shut in by the ruin of the great Cloth Hall and other once stately buildings, and so to a grim, battle-scarred edifice, its roof half blown away, its walls cracked and agape with ugly holes, its doorway reinforced by many sandbags cunningly disposed, through which we passed into the dingy ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... photograph of a man in French uniform, caught here and there on its surface high lights from the shaded wall-lamp above. In the shelter of white bookcases, the backs of volumes in red and tawny and brown gave the effect of tapestry cunningly woven. Mrs. Ennis stared at the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it extends as far as Tartary; for merchants who have traded there say that the two nations are at war with each other. The Chinese are highly civilized. They work iron with tools. I have seen iron inlaid with gold and silver, as cunningly and skilfully wrought as they could be in any part of the world. In like manner they work in wood and all other materials. The Portuguese say that the Chinese are good people—that they possess somewhat of the light of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... went upstairs she was met by the servant Nicolas, declaring that she might get whom she would to wait on that there moon-calf, he would not go neist the spiteful thing, and exhibiting a swollen finger, stung by a dead wasp, which Peregrine had cunningly disposed on the edge ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nuptial couch and the artless intimacies of the nursery. She smoked incessantly, could walk ten miles at a stretch, and was as passionless as a clam. Gerald Scores, who wore a short pointed beard and looked the complete artist, was one of the chief hopes of the intellectual drama cunningly commercialized; and as capable as Clavering of shutting up his genius in a water-tight compartment, and enjoying himself in the woods. He was mildly flirtatious, but looked upon emotional intensity in the personal life of the artist as a criminal waste of force. Halifax Bolton, who claimed ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... that's whipp'd, Shakes hands with dust, and calls the worm his kinsman; Nor pleads his rank and birthright: Under ground Precedency's a jest; vassal and lord, 230 Grossly familiar, side by side consume. When self-esteem, or others' adulation, Would cunningly persuade us we are something Above the common level of our kind, The Grave gainsays the smooth-complexion'd flattery, And with blunt truth acquaints us what we are. Beauty,—thou pretty plaything, dear deceit! That ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... factor for good. The world is weary of the bald sermons of the Puritans, and of their endeavor to "point a tale" by every ordinary occurrence; it is rather inclined to a Pharisaical self-righteousness; and needs to have its sins, and the practical benefits of goodness, cunningly insinuated; but it can never fail to admire and strive to emulate the noble deeds of noble men, whether creatures of flesh or phantoms of the brain. To be sure, many of our best short stories deal with events so slight and really unimportant that they might be said to have no ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... he explained to Maisie, who urged him to rebellion, "and she is kinder to you after she has whacked me." Dick shambled through the days unkempt in body and savage in soul, as the smaller boys of the school learned to know, for when the spirit moved him he would hit them, cunningly and with science. The same spirit made him more than once try to tease Maisie, but the girl refused to be made unhappy. "We are both miserable as it is," said she. "What is the use of trying to make things worse? Let's find things to do, and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... so quaintly, so cunningly, as the Americans would say, that Kate couldn't help smiling, and abandoning her hand she allowed Dolly to examine ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... was paved with green beryl and balas rubies and emeralds and other jewels, set in the ground-work mosaic-fashion, and in the midmost of the pavilion was a jetting fountain in a golden basin, full of water and girt about with figures of beasts and birds, cunningly wrought of gold and silver and casting water from their mouths. When the zephyr blew on them, it entered their ears and therewith the figures sang out with birdlike song, each in its own tongue. Beside the fountain was a great open saloon with a high dais whereon stood a vast throne of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... look at this;" and with the tip-end of a tiny knife-blade Jimmy pointed out something in the delicate vined tendrils that had hitherto escaped notice. It was the name "R. Purcel," cunningly inwound in the tendrils. Every one crowded up ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... blank eye-sockets with a pair of eyes, which, if not exactly artistic, at least supplied a want; he pencilled the eyebrows, laid on several coats of the "Bloom," which he suffused cunningly with a tinge of carnation, and stained the pouting lips with his ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... Burden-bearer, what of those To whom thou gavest the lily and the rose Of thy far youth?... For whom, Out of the wondrous loom Of thine enduring body, thou didst make Garments of beauty, cunningly adorned, But only for Death's sake! Largess of life, but to lie waste and scorned.— Could not such cost of pain, Nor daily utmost of thy toil prevail?— But they must fade, and pale, And wither from ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... or third course. Forgetting discretion, he actually smiled. The meal, which had been prepared in anticipation of his coming, was a much more splendid entertainment than would have been got up for me had I been alone. The cook's masterpiece was a very cunningly contrived pasty—a work of local genius that I was quite unprepared for. Even M. le controleur, had he not checked himself in time, would have beamed at this achievement; but he would never have forgiven himself such an admission of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... investigated his pockets cunningly. As they finished, the man who answered to the name of Karl became articulate for the first time, following a ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... began chatting on an omnibus with a corporal of Grenadiers. When he heard that I was Danish, he remarked: "German, then." I said: "No." He persisted in his assertion, and asked, cunningly, what oui was in Danish. When I told him he merely replied, philosophically, "Ah! then German is the mother tongue." It is true that when Danes, Norwegians and Swedes met abroad they felt each other ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... with their guide Tongla, leave their father's indigo plantation to visit the wonderful ruins of an ancient city. The boys eagerly explore the temples of an extinct race and discover three golden images cunningly hidden away. They escape with the greatest difficulty. Eventually they reach safety with their golden prizes. We doubt if there ever was written a more entertaining story ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... own, is true," said Hulot; "we are older than we were. But, my dear fellow, how is one to do without these pretty creatures—seeing them undress, twist up their hair, smile cunningly through their fingers as they screw up their curl-papers, put on all their airs and graces, tell all their lies, declare that we don't love them when we are worried with business; and they cheer ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... first alarm, I craned my neck behind the window in order to see him again—and well was I rewarded! By means of a hollow cane he blew me in through the window a letter, cunningly rolled round a ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... then she was difficult finding, so cunningly had ivy and blackberry and bindweed woven snares for ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... XXX p. 794 comments My little lady as follows: "There are certain female characters in novels which remind one of nothing so much as of a head of Greuze,—fresh, simple, yet of the cunningly simple type, 'innocent—arch,' and intensely natural.... 'My Little Lady' is a character of this Greuze-like kind.... The whole book is charming; quietly told, quietly thought, without glare or flutter, and interesting in both character ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... yet snow on mountain-tops and the balmy air would carry a suggestion of a chill at sunset, there were cunningly wrought charcoal braziers set near the gilded couches, grouped around a semicircular low table so as to give each guest an unobstructed view from the pavilion. Pertinax—neither guest nor host, but a god, as it were, who had arrived and permitted the city of Antioch to ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... connatural to the Anglican people; and its grammar has passively suffered the introduction of many syntactical combinations, which are not merely irregular, but repugnant. I shall not here inquire whether this condition of English is an evil. There are many cases where a complex and cunningly-devised machine, dexterously guided, can do that which the congenital hand fails to accomplish; but the computing, of our losses and gains, the striking of our linguistic balance, belongs elsewhere. Suffice it to say, that English ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... regal splendour they arrayed The palace-hall, where feast and banquet high All in the centre of the space is laid, And forth they bring the broidered tapestry, With purple dyed and wrought full cunningly. The tables groan with silver; there are told The deeds of prowess for the gazer's eye, A long, long series, of their sires of old, Traced from the nation's birth, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... the moon shone full and bright. A waterfall rushed down on one side; he saw ferns and dear little plants leaning over the water, growing between the cracks of the rocks. There were also glow-worms cunningly arranged in groups that looked like fairy stars. On the other side, he observed to his joy rough steps leading upwards cut in the solid rock. He sighed a sigh of relief, here at least was the ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... therefore, for his defence Against the furious Queen, At Woodstock builded such a bower, As never yet was seen. Most curiously that bower was built, Of stone and timber strong; An hundred and fifty doors Did to this bower belong; And they so cunningly contrived, With turnings round about, That none but with a clew of thread Could enter in or out. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... greater than their knowledge of the enemy's dispositions, with the result that our approach was well advertised. The latter part of our advance was along the north edge of the Bois de Baudour. Immediately east of Garenne we had to cross a wide gap, and here the enemy machine-guns, which were cunningly sited and carefully concealed, got busy. As our van-guard closed with him, one Hun, whose gun was mounted at the top window of a house, waved the white flag. The ruse, however, was transparent, and the last shot of the war, as far as we were ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... are charming things in this little book.... Throughout there is a very cunning use of northern place names that stir the imagination like the sound of the Borderers' riding. "R. L. S." would have liked these names and used them as cunningly.' ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... things Manco Ccapac, the first tyrant, coming from Tampu-tocco, was inhuman in the case of his brother Ayar Cachi, sending him to Tampu-tocco cunningly with orders for Tampu-chacay to kill him out of envy, because he was the bravest, and might for that reason be the most esteemed. When he arrived at the valley of Cuzco he not only tyrannized over the natives, but also over Copalimayta and Columchima ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... He felt that he was being cunningly cheated out of his grievance. He would have had not a minute's hesitation as to forgiving the Marquis, had the Marquis owned himself to be wrong. But he was now invited to bury the hatchet on even terms, and he ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... friendly visit. He found O'Connell engaged with a shrewd-looking farmer, who was consulting him on a knotty case. Heartily glad to see his old friend, O'Connell sprang forward, saying, "My dear K——, I'm delighted to see you." The farmer, seeing the visitor come in, cunningly took the opportunity of sneaking away. He had got what he wanted—the opinion; but O'Connell had not got what he wanted—the fee. O'Connell at once followed the farmer, who had got the start by a ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... blowzy with gossip you are sure to find it; and I have little doubt that when Friday learned enough English, one of the first things Crusoe did was to tell him some scandal about the goat. Thus, though I treated the "Keredec affair" with a seeming airiness to Amedee, I cunningly drew the faithful rascal out, and fed my curiosity upon his own (which, as time went on and the mystery deepened, seemed likely to burst him), until, virtually, I was receiving, every evening at dinner, a detailed report of the day's doings of ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... his wisdom tintinnabulate against the tea-tray. These facts lead naturally to the comprehension of others. Fresh raw meat was once a dish for a king. Now refined persons scarcely touch meat unless it is cunningly disguised. Again, consider the case of turnips; the raw root is now a thing almost uneatable, but once upon a time a turnip must have been a rare and fortunate find, to be torn up with delirious eagerness and devoured in ecstasy. The time will come when the change will affect ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... came to fighting he was more than at home. He was a master. More than one corral gate he had cunningly worked ajar, and more than one flimsy barn wall he had broken down with his leaning shoulder, and more than one fence he had leaped to get at the horses beyond. With anger rising in him he took stock of the opponent. The black lacked ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... Bridgewater, and had I met him, I think it would have moved almost me to tears. You will oblige me too by sending me my great-coat, which I left behind in the oblivious state the mind is thrown into at parting—is it not ridiculous that I sometimes envy that great-coat lingering so cunningly behind?—at present I have none—so send it me by a Stowey waggon, if there be such a thing, directing for C. L., No. 45, Chapel-Street, Pentonville, near London. But above all, that Inscription!—it will recall ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... and ran the gauntlet, and filled the hollow with his cries when the shot broke his hindquarters, till the dog had him. Jays came in couples, and green woodpeckers singly: the magpies cunningly flew aside instead of straight ahead; they never could do anything straightforward. A stoat peeped out, but went back directly when a rabbit whose retreat had been cut off bolted over his most insidious enemy. Every now and then Dickon's shot when ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... of fighting men emerged from their ambush in the swamp. There was no reason for delaying the movement against the pirates. The Yemassees were eager for the fray. They were about to advance through the swamp, cunningly hidden, while the Englishmen followed at a slower pace to spread out on the flanks. Just then there was heard a sudden and riotous commotion among the pirates at the creek. It was a mad, jubilant uproar as though some frenzy had seized them all. Bill Saxby leaned on his musket and ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Paul's Cathedral. The afternoon service was about to begin, so, after looking at a few of the monuments, we sat down in the choir, the richest and most ornamented part of the cathedral, with screens or partitions of oak, cunningly carved. Small white-robed choristers were flitting noiselessly about, making preparations for the service, which by and by began. It is a beautiful idea, that, several times in the course of the day, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when Nature was offering her last resistance, and their brains were badly awhirl. Of all the four, Jefferson Locke was the only one who retained his wits to the fullest—a circumstance that would have proved him the owner of a remarkably steady head had it not been for the fact that he had cunningly substituted water for gin each time it came his turn to drink. It was a commentary upon the state of his companions that they did not notice the limpid clearness of ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach |
