"Knack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think all mischief fair, Although he had a knack of joking; He did not make himself a bear, Although he had a taste for smoking; And when religious sects ran mad, He held, in spite of all his learning, That if a man's belief is bad, It will not be improved ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Yet they pressed ever forward, and the hills grew ever nearer; while he sat a great brown charger calmly in their midst and gave them not too many orders, but here and there a word of praise, and once or twice a trumpet shout of encouragement. He seemed to own the knack of being wherever the fight was fiercest. His mere presence seemed better than a hundred men when the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... is quite easy," answered Josef. "The female silkworm spins a house which, like an egg, is a little sharper at one end than at the other. We'll choose about the same number of each gender. There is a knack in selecting good cocoons for breeding, and you've got to know lots of things about them. And after we have chosen them there will be the rest of the cocoons to sort. That will require care, too. We cannot do it as experts do, but still we can group them roughly ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... more amazing and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent speech had ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... he exclaimed, swerving the plane in a long, ascending spiral. All the art, the knack of flight came back to him, at the touch of the wheel, as readily as swimming to an expert in the water. Fear? The thought no more occurred to him than to ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... conclusions are, Mr. Betteredge. I haven't brought you out here to draw me like a badger; I have brought you out here to ask for some information. You might have given it to me no doubt, in the house, instead of out of it. But doors and listeners have a knack of getting together; and, in my line of life, we cultivate a healthy taste ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... more than to go, for example, blackberrying, and he has a knack of never scratching his face or his fingers when doing so. And he finds blackberrying, whether he goes alone or with friends, an extraordinarily good time for planning something he wishes to do or working out the thought of a sermon. ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... threatening me from the right or left, it was necessary to throw myself on the opposite side, hanging only by my hands, and swinging myself into my original position by a most violent exertion, which required at the same time considerable knack. Having perfected myself in these accomplishments to the utmost of my power, I awaited in patience ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... that. It's infidelity that is temporary. A lot of us are unfaithful for the moment—it's a symptom of our illness. You said something a little while ago about trying to regain one's lost years by violence—that's what he's doing. He's mislaid the knack of happiness with Phyllis; he's trying to recover ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... to be got rid of at all. All June was lost to me in this way, and it was from first to last a radiant month of heat and beauty; but a garden where you meet the people you saw at breakfast, and will see again at lunch and dinner, is not a place to be happy in. Besides, they had a knack of finding out my favourite seats and lounging in them just when I longed to lounge myself; and they took books out of the library with them, and left them face downwards on the seats all night to get well drenched with ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... parties are constantly to be met playing at this game; and oftentimes before the players are visible, the disk is seen bounding round some curve, to the great danger of one's legs. He whose disk whirls the farthest wins a point. It is an excellent walking game, and it requires some knack to play the disk evenly along the road. Often the swiftest disks, when not well-directed, bound over the hedges, knock themselves down against the walls, or bury themselves in the tangled ditches; and when well played, if they chance to hit a stone in the road, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... him—But I have been so much accustomed to treat him like a fool, that I can't help thinking him one. He should not have been so tame to such a spirit as mine. He should have been angry when I played upon him. I have got a knack of it, and shall never leave ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... be caught in a slight shower and he insisted on holding his umbrella over her on her way home;—once at a small party at one of the mansion-houses, where the quick-eyed lady of the house had a wonderful knack of bringing people together who liked to see each other;—perhaps at other times and places; but of this there ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of articles, apart from their usefulness, is an appetising occupation, and to exchange bald, uniform shillings for a fine big, figurative knick-knack, such as a windmill, a gross of green spectacles, or a cocked hat, gives us a direct and emphatic sense of gain. We have had many shillings before, as good as these; but this is the first time we have possessed a windmill. Upon these principles of human ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my word! An accomplished casuist! A born Jesuit! But, my dear Miss Geer, I must confess I have not this happy feminine knack of keeping out of the way of temptation. I should prefer to consult your friends, even at the risk of losing the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is true; it isn't natural to be brave. How, then, have multitudes of men acquired this sudden knack of courage? They have been educated by the greatness of the occasion; when big sacrifices have been demanded, men have never been found lacking. And they have acquired ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... knack, Bob remounted and was soon at the ranch, where he turned his pony into the corral and carried ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... from twenty-one years of age to fifty. I know no husbandry-work (mowing hardly excepted) that is not equally within the power of all persons within those ages, the more advanced fully compensating by knack and habit what they lose in activity. Unquestionably, there is a good deal of difference between the value of one man's labour and that of another, from strength, dexterity, and honest application. But I am quite ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... roared when he heard it; and he roared again at night over Peter's account of Felix attempting to milk a cow. Felix had previously acquired the knack of extracting milk from the udder. But he had never before tried to "milk a whole cow." He did not get on well; the cow tramped on his foot, and finally ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Don't you know that it is one of my temptations? You wish to know something about him. Well! I will oblige you this once, and then farewell to such vanities—something about him. I will tell you—his—skin when he flung off his clothes—and he had a particular knack in doing so—his skin, when he bared his mighty chest and back for combat; and when he fought, he stood so—if I remember right—his skin, I say, was brown and dusky as that of a toad. Oh me! I wish my ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... lost your old knack of catching a tune, Moll. Come hither, wench, and sit upon my knee, for I do love ye more than ever. Give me a buss, chuck; this fine husband of thine shall not have all thy ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... they talked of the friends they had left behind, arranged Lady Middleton's engagements, and wondered whether Mr. Palmer and Colonel Brandon would get farther than Reading that night. Elinor, however little concerned in it, joined in their discourse; and Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... knife is no easy matter. Yet western hunters and Indians can do it without cleaver or saw, in a way that would surprise a civilized butcher not a little. Joe was covered with blood up to the elbows. His hair, happening to have a knack of getting into his eyes, had been so often brushed off with bloody hands, that his whole visage was speckled with gore, and his dress was by ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You have an unhappy knack of separating yourself from every one. Look at your Uncle James. He can ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... out of the very gutters all the human waste and rubbish that the others, the wise business men, threw there and with the town's worst drunkard and half a dozen mistreated, misborn, misunderstood boys he's playing the business game and winning. He's got the knack of making his help feel like partners and he's so square and sensible in his dealings with them that they are all ready to die for him. Now if that isn't the greatest kind of a business gift ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... that one hundred blows are at times inflicted so lightly as to leave scarcely a mark behind, though the recipient howls loudly all the time. Those criminals who have money can always manage to square the gaoler; and the gaoler has acquired a certain knack in laying on, the upshot being great cry and little wool, very satisfactory to the culprit. Even were we to accept the cruellest estimate in regard to punishment by the bamboo, it would only go to show that humanitarian feelings ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... shelter from the direct violence of the wind, the bush and trees growing so thickly right down to the water's edge that close inshore we were completely becalmed; and, thus sheltered, our sense of hearing helped us somewhat despite the deep roar of the gale overhead, while we quickly caught the knack of steering along the outer edge of the narrow belt of calm, in this way avoiding to a great extent the difficulties and petty mishaps that had at first so ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... insanity—is sobriety for a Christian. The world is perfectly right when it says: 'If you believe you can do a thing, you have gone a long way towards doing it.' The expectation of success has often the knack of fulfilling itself. But the world does not know our secret, and our secret is that our humble faith brings into the field the reserves with the Captain of our salvation at their head. Therefore a self-distrusting Christian can say, and say without exaggeration or presumption, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... machine by throwing her weight on her right foot, on a pedal to the right. The girls interviewed said they did not feel this as a strain, as there was a knack in doing it easily. On consulting a neighborhood physician it was found that within the last ten years, however, several women, both at the yarding and tentering machines, had strained themselves, probably by the tread at the yarding ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... in this world more difficult to manage than a common or garden ladder; among other peculiarities it has a most unpleasant knack of kicking out suddenly just as everything appears to be going smoothly, which is apt to prove disconcerting to the novice. However, after sundry mishaps of the kind, I eventually got it reared up to the window, and a moment afterwards the Imp had ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... a flabby body. He soon makes it clear that he will not have much to do with any one who has not yet mastered the vigorous and highly complex art of not worrying. Also, he demands of his companion the knack of calm, consecutive thought. This is one reason why so many more Auto-Comrades are to be found in crow's-nests, gypsy-vans, and shirt-waist factories than on upper Fifth Avenue. For, watching the stars and the sea from a swaying masthead, taking light-heartedly to the open road, or even operating ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Heaven-directed, to the poor. Pictures like these, dear Madam, to design, Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line; Some wandering touches, some reflected light, Some flying stroke alone can hit them right: For how should equal colours do the knack? Chameleons who can paint in white and black? 'Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot'— Nature in her then erred not, but forgot. 'With every pleasing, every prudent part, Say, what can Chloe want?'—She wants a heart. She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought; But ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Colonel May, of this county, sir," the old gentleman said, smiling at the man's knack of mimicry. "My home, Arden, is but a few ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... of six years reach the top of a sixty-foot tree in a minute or so, and I have seen a man or woman stop on the way, fifty feet from the earth, and light a cigarette. Slim, fat, chiefs or commoners, all learn this knack in infancy. Men who puff along the road because of their bulk will attain the branches of a palm with the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... mayor's chair of Chicago at this time sat a man named Walden H. Lucas. Aged thirty-eight, he was politically ambitious. He had the elements of popularity—the knack or luck of fixing public attention. A fine, upstanding, healthy young buck he was, subtle, vigorous, a cool, direct, practical thinker and speaker, an eager enigmatic dreamer of great political honors to come, anxious to play his cards just right, to make friends, to be the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... You can't marry her in your present position. I could in mine, but she will never like me while you're there—possibly never. At my best I never had what the French call le don de plaire aux dames. Not that age matters, nor ugliness. I haven't the knack. I never had. I bore women. I always did. In that I've always failed, and know it. And it's the only thing I ever cared about. My failure is my tragedy." He smiled. "You have all the advantages on your side, Mr. Woodville. But you're both young, and for that very reason any fancy that ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... he had run errands, he had swept out a "candy store." He had had a few years at the public school, and a few months at a business college, to which he went at night, after work hours. He had been "up against it good and plenty," he told them. He seemed, however, to have had a knack of making friends and of giving them "a boost along" when such a chance was possible. Both of his listeners realised that a good many people had liked him, and the reason was apparent enough ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... but that did not bother him now that the position had changed. Even a consciousness of the mate's knowledge of his fallibility did not qualify his hostile remarks; indeed, the recollection of it never failed to increase his anger. As a matter of fact, the knack of doing it was a gift that no amount of training could create if it was not inborn. I have known apprentices, after they have been at sea a year or two, become really adepts at swinging ship at a single anchor, and many of the seamen ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... mentioned, that I dressed myself in a rich white satin night-gown, that had been my good lady's, and my best head-clothes, etc. I have got such a knack of writing, that when I am by myself, I cannot sit without a pen in my hand.—But I am now called to breakfast. I suppose the gentlemen are come.—Now, courage, Pamela! Remember thou art upon thy good behaviour!—Fie upon it! my heart begins ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... lasting.—The above was only one instance of his building too much on practical data. He has an ill habit of prophesying, and goes on, though still decieved. The art of prophesying does not suit Mr. Cobbett's style. He has a knack of fixing names and times and places. According to him, the Reformed Parliament was to meet in March 1818—it did not, and we heard no more of the matter. When his predictions fail, he takes no further notice of them, but ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... implements. Even long after adhesive envelopes had become common in European Turkey, their use was considered over familiar, if not actually disrespectful, for formal letters, and there was a particular traditional knack in cutting and folding the special envelope for each missive, which was included in the instruction given by every competent Khoja as the present writer well remembers in the quiet years that ended with ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... impossible. She's been over the course and knows the pitfalls. She's learnt the value of compromise. She ought to have learnt how to be kind. I think kindness is the thing that matters most. Few people are born with it. You have to have been wretched to acquire the knack of it." ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Kinsman parenco. Kiss kisi. Kitchen kuirejo. Kitchen-garden legoma gxardeno. Kitchen-gardener legomgxardenisto. Kitchen-jack turnrostilo. Kitchen utensils kuirilaro. Kite (bird) milvo. Kite (toy) flugludilo. Knack lerteco. Knacker defelisto. Knapsack tornistro. Knave fripono. Knave (cards) lakeo. Knavery friponeco. Knead knedi. Kneading-trough knedujo. Knee genuo. Kneecap genuosto. Kneel genufleksi. Knell mortsonorado, funebra sonorado. Knife trancxilo. Knife-blade ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care; Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong; Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line; Then polish all with so much life and ease, You think 'tis nature, and a knack to please; But ease in writing flows from art, not chance, As those move easiest ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... of the world,' the probabilities tell heavily against it. On the other hand, an isolated novel makes a good stick to beat the age. It is fairly certain to have something sufficiently unique about it to be useful for the purpose. Even its blemishes have a knack of being sui generis. To elevate it is, therefore, bound to imply ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Tiny ones are best, because with them you can make the flowers go farther. Strawberry baskets—the old-fashioned ones with a handle—are nice, especially if you paint or gild them. Burr baskets are pretty too; and those made of fir cones. Joe has a knack of putting such things together. He made some elegant ones for ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... rhyme and by occasionally dropping a syllable, and the correspondence between the length of line and our natural intervals between punctuation,—but gives as his final excuse for using it his "better knack at this 'false gallop' of verse." The argument is ingenious enough, but his analysis of heroic verse has only a limited application, and his last reason probably was, as he was candid enough to admit, the most weighty. George ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... he might get the assignment. He was nervous lest he should not please me, and feared I might ask for another man. But when I ran over with him the songs I meant to sing I found he played the piano very well indeed, and had a knack for accompanying, too. There are good pianists, soloists, who are not good accompanists; it takes more than just the ability to play the piano to work with a singer, and especially with a singer like me. It is no straight ahead singing I do ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... and girls deal with life aboard submarine torpedo boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, and possess, in addition to the author's surpassing knack of story-telling, a great educational value ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... I often wonder where exactly the limits of your patience are. With me they have withdrawn into infinite space—I've never been able to reach them. But every one else seems to have a knack—well, somebody must cook. You tell me Annalise won't. Perhaps she really can't. Anyhow I cannot mention it to her, because it would be too horrible to have her flatly refusing to do something I told her to do and yet ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... nominally subject to Egypt, they were well known as secret friends to Mek Nimmur; and it was believed that they conveyed information of the localities where the Dabaina and Shookeryha Arabs had collected their herds. Upon these Mek Nimmur had a knack of pouncing unexpectedly, when he was supposed to be a hundred miles in ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... having no bearing on the question before him, which had been entertained by another set of tutors—those of Christchurch—where Selwyn had many friends, and where, probably enough, he indulged in many collegian's freaks. This knack of bringing up a mere suspicion, is truly characteristic of the Oxford Don, and since the same Head of this House—Dr. Newton—acknowledged that Selwyn was, during his Oxford career, neither intemperate, dissolute, nor a gamester, it is fair to give him the advantage of the doubt, that the judgment ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... mot was when he nicknamed M'Dougal[10] the "Gallipoli Spider," and Mac certainly had a wonderful knack of gathering all things into his web. Gallipoli gave him splendid opportunity for his Autolycus-like habits, and rumour has it that, though really ill with dysentery, he took off with him from Suvla seventeen ground sheets and nearly as many blankets. At Sherika, rather than lose his share ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... at the zenith of his political career. He was one of those men not infrequently observed in public life, who, without conspicuous ability, have a certain knack for the management of men, and are able to acquire influence and even a certain degree of fame by personal skill in manipulating patronage, smoothing away difficulties, and making things easy. Nature had not only endowed him with a genius ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... occasion was near Russell's, so that the man spoke from personal knowledge: "It's my belief that if Dr. Leichhardt do it at all, 'twill be more by good luck than management. Why, sir, he hasn't got the knack of some of us; why it comes like mother's milk to some. I can't tell how or why, but it does. Mark my words, sir, Dr. Leichhardt hasn't got it in ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... sister, I'd rented the place, just as it stood, to folks of the name of Marchant, a fine couple that didn't look beyond each other unless 'twas at their son. In past times my grandmother had an old-country knack of raising healing herbs and all sorts of sweet-smelling things, along with farm truck, so that folks came from all about to buy them and doctors too, for such things weren't sold so much in shops in those days ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... although he always treated me with civility, yet he had such an ingrained and deep-rooted idea of his own superiority of position, that I suppose he would as soon have imagined the possibility of his daughter's falling in love with one of his horses. I was a great convenience to him. I had a knack of governing and carrying points in his family that it had always troubled and fatigued him to endeavor to arrange,—and that was all. So that my intercourse with Dolores was as free and unwatched, and gave me as many opportunities of ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... childish little person with a pink baby face, an affection for fairy tales, and even a sneaking weakness for her discarded dolls. Life, that to Lilias seemed a serious business, was a joyous venture to Dulcie; she had a happy knack of shaking off the unpleasant things, and throwing the utmost possible power of enjoyment into the nice ones. If innocent happiness is the birthright of childhood, she clung to it steadfastly, and had not yet exchanged it for the red pottage of ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... to radiate from his kindly, forceful personality. Of all the officers on board "Jimmy the One" was, with perhaps the exception of the Captain, most beloved by the men. A seaman to the fingertips, slow to wrath and clean of speech, he had the knack of getting the last ounce out of tired men without driving or raising his voice. Working cables on the forecastle in the cold and snowy darkness, when men's faculties grow torpid with cold, and their safety among ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... as coral reefs are built up, by a multitude of tiny creatures whose united labours are strong enough to breast the ocean; looking to the mysterious way in which the greatest events in our lives have the knack of growing out of the smallest; looking to the power of habit to make any action of the mind almost instinctive: it is of far more importance that we should become accustomed to apply this precept of seeking guidance ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... were to bowl, with Dicksee as a change when necessary, for he had a peculiar knack and twist in handling a ball, and could puzzle good players by sending in an innocent-looking, slowly-pitched ball, which looked as if it was going wide, and, when it had put the batsman off his guard, and induced him to ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... undermining knowledge. We all, from the lowest to the highest, learn many things of which we were better ignorant. The school-board infant acquires French; Arthur Agar and his like bring away from Cambridge a pretty knack of draping chair-backs. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... a knack of saying what I don't mean," he remarked, rousing himself. "I beg your pardon for this and every other rude speech that I may make, Elizabeth; and ask you to understand that I am only translating my discontent with myself into words when I am ill-tempered. Have a ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... sort of a way," replied Merriweather. "But—well, he's got a knack of telling the truth so that it doesn't scare folks. And he's managed to convince them that he isn't looking out for number one. It can't be denied that he made a good governor. For instance, he got after the monopolies, and the cost of living is twenty per cent. lower in Indiana than ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... and pray, then!" And Punch would get out of bed with raging hate in his heart against all the world, seen and unseen. He was always tumbling into trouble. Harry had a knack of cross-examining him as to his day's doings, which seldom failed to lead him, sleepy and savage, into half a dozen contradictions—all duly reported to Aunty Rosa ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... they're goin' out o' fashion," said Serena, much shocked. "I know some ain't got the knack o' makin' 'em." ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Smailli, I shall have to cut you up into parcels," said the doctor one day: "there is not enough of you to go round. You have a marvellous knack at making sick people like you. Did you really never ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... he, or they—it comes to to same thing—have the fiend's own knack of discovering a man's weak place. I confess I rather go out of my way to conciliate Number Five study. It may be soft, but so far, I believe, I am the only man here whom ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... be the judge yourself, Mr. Stewart," said Robin; and taking up the variations from the beginning, he worked them throughout to so new a purpose, with such ingenuity and sentiment, and with so odd a fancy and so quick a knack in the grace-notes, that I was amazed ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shooting, on account of the savage propensities of the animal; but I have found that, with very rare exceptions, the Anatolian wild boar always runs. It is true that they (she or he, the females are the most savage) have a nasty knack of giving a sort of jerk with their heads, when fighting or even passing an enemy, and that jerk means to a man the ripping up of his leg from his heel to his thigh, to a dog the tearing open ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... clever darling you can possibly imagine. She manages the whole house; our servants would do anything for her, and the children love her so much that it is a pleasure to them to obey her. She has that wonderful and invaluable knack in a woman, she never teases or worries; she just contrives to turn people round her little finger, without their knowing anything about it themselves. But now don't let us talk any more about Effie and me. I want to hear ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... every part of every pin for himself, each man would probably complete but one pin in a day. But if each man makes one part, and nothing else but that, thus repeating incessantly a single series of motions, each will acquire the knack of working with such rapidity that the ten together will make daily, not ten pins, but some thousands. Here we have labour divided by its different applications, but not requiring different degrees of capacity. We have the average labour of the average ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... fourteen And practise from morning to e'en; And when he's of age, If he will, I'll engage, He may capture the heart of a queen! It is purely a matter of skill, Which all may attain if they will: But every Jack He must study the knack If he wants to make sure ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... keenly developed, languages—or, in fact, anything else—can be learnt with amazing facility. The "knack" of learning languages is only due to observation; the greatest scientific discoveries have been due to mere observation; the greatest commercial enterprises are based on the practical results of observation. But it is astounding how few people do really ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... agreed Hooker, "and I suppose after I get onto the knack of it I won't have any trouble keeping ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... night, songs, interspersed with the maddest, most whimsical patter, step-dances, ventriloquism, recitations. He kept us in roars for a long time. Blended with the simplicity of a baby, he has the wisdom of the serpent, and has the knack of getting hold of odd delicacies, with which he regales the ward. He is perfectly well, by the way, but when the doctor comes round he assumes a convincing air of semi-convalescence, and refers darkly to his old wound. The doctor is not in the least taken in, but is indulgent, and ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... a knack of hiding my matches all the same," said Lancelot, somewhat shamefacedly. "Besides, I hate her for being called Mary Ann. It's the last terror of cheap apartments. If she only had another name like a human being, I'd gladly call her Miss something. I went so far as to ask her, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... a No. 1 hook was honour enough for a beginning. A red spinner, in compliment to one who was a spectator, first chosen, alighted and floated well, but swiftly came down to the fair practitioner. Some trouble followed in gaining the delicate touch of line and winch, and knack of recovery essential to workmanlike up-stream casting, but the amiable pupil, being a listener rather than a talker, was quick to learn, and the lesson was over when the vicar arrived. To him Lammy soon contrived to explain that she was left on the bank, or, rather, paddling below in ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... young woman was beloved by one, and she pouted and pretended indifference, three words from Moshup were sure to make her reasonable. And, when women were much given to scolding, he had, somehow, a singular knack at taming them. Taking every circumstance into view, it will be readily concluded that he was a favourite with the Indians; indeed some of our fathers say, that he was once their grand Sachem; the greater part, however, think he was the first governor of the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... pullies can be easily come by," answered Will; "and with a saw and a plane, I can manage that business in half a day. I love the knack of clean and secret conveyance—thou knowest it was the foundation of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... everything connected with him was lumping and rustling and tinkling under her busy poker into red black dust and grey leaves of ash. The thing beneath the oak would die too. Mary had seen death more than once. She came of a family that had a knack of dying under, as she told Miss Fowler, 'most distressing circumstances.' She would stay where she was till she was entirely satisfied that It was dead—dead as dear papa in the late 'eighties; aunt Mary in eighty-nine; mamma in 'ninety-one; cousin Dick in ninety-five; ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... has the knack, perhaps genius would be a better word, of writing in the easiest of colloquial English without descending to the plane of the vulgar or common-place. The very perfection of his work hinders the reader from perceiving at once how good of ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... little art in breaking hemp. He soon had the knack of that: his muscles were toughened already. He learned what it was sometimes to eat his dinner in the fields, warming it, maybe, on the coals of a stump set on fire near his brake; to bale his hemp at ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... walking and riding, in skating and running, in games out of doors and in, no one of us all in the neighborhood was so expert, so agile as he. For, above all things, he had what we Yankees call faculty,—the knack of doing everything. If he rode with a neighbor who was a good horseman, Theodore, who was a Centaur, when he mounted, would put any horse at any gate or fence; for it did not occur to him that he could not do whatever was to be done. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... a body as big as an ox, and a heart as big as his body, but he was slow and dull in everything but one thing—that was his carpenter work. He was well enough at that, and more than well enough, for he had always had a fancy and a knack for it from the time when as a boy he had worked in his uncle's vineyards and tilled his fields and fed his beasts. His uncle had been counted a rich man among his neighbors, but when his sister and her husband died and left the two children, Jose ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of Mr. Bowman of Toronto, scarcely any English work has appeared that is based on the official records of this period. Yet they are of great interest and value. Our diplomatic agents then had the knack of getting at State secrets in most foreign capitals, even when we were at war with their Governments; and our War Office and Admiralty Records have also yielded me some interesting "finds." M. Levy, in the preface to his "Napoleon intime" (1893), has well remarked that "the documentary ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... very sad, because I am sure he was devoted to her, in his way. But he could not do the sort of things she wanted him to do; she was so romantic. He did try. He used to go to all the poetical plays and study them. But he hadn't the knack of it and he was naturally clumsy. He would rush into the room and fling himself on his knees before her, never noticing the dog, so that, instead of pouring out his heart as he had intended, he would have to start off with, 'So awfully sorry! Hope I haven't ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... my finances looked up. I had news that some of my Yankee speculations were turning out well, and I unexpectedly found myself a man of means again. Rimbolt, who certainly has the knack of making ill-timed suggestions, proposed that that would be a good opportunity for making good what properly belonged to my ward. I urged in vain that my ward was lost, and that the money properly ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... honest, I like Senator Hoar's speeches. He once quoted in the United States Senate some of my remarks on the curse of civil service, and, though he didn't agree with me altogether, I noticed that our ideas are alike in some things, and we both have the knack of puttin' things strong, only he put on more frills to ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... him as uncommon in moral action as in philosophic speculation. To the English reader a striking parallelism suggests itself between him and his contemporary Oliver Goldsmith. Both were afflicted with generosity above their fortunes; both had a "knack at hoping," which led frequently to their undoing; neither could subscribe easily to the "decent formalities of rigid virtue"; and, as of the latter we may also say of the former, in the language of a reviewer, "He had lights and shadows, virtues and foibles—vices ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... We took two-hourly spells at the tiller. The men who were not on watch crawled into the sodden sleeping- bags and tried to forget their troubles for a period; but there was no comfort in the boat. The bags and cases seemed to be alive in the unfailing knack of presenting their most uncomfortable angles to our rest-seeking bodies. A man might imagine for a moment that he had found a position of ease, but always discovered quickly that some unyielding point was impinging on muscle or bone. The first night ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... armorer, was feared most because of his brain, and his knack of using his mind to the undoing of others. And he taught me all that he knew; taught me all that he had learned in a lifetime of fighting for the emperor, of mending the complicated machines in the armory, of contact with the chemists who wrought the secret alloy, and the chiefs ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... their way carefully; we do not give them as wide a berth as formerly, for the wakes they turn are no longer savage—but wakes, even when sent out by stern-wheelers at full speed, now give us little trouble; it did not take long to learn the knack of "taking" them. Whether you meet them at right angles, or in the trough, there is the same delicious sensation of rising and falling on the long swells—there is no danger, so long as you are ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... way; talent commands, tact is obeyed; talent is honored with approbation, and tact is blessed by preferment. Place them in the senate: talent has the ear of the house, but tact wins its heart, and has its votes; talent is fit for employment, but tact is fitted for it. It has a knack of slipping into place with a sweet silence and glibness of movement, as a billiard ball insinuates itself ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of well in the floor—with a handy water bucket for quenching fires. Whatever the floor, eternal vigilance was the price of safe bacon—you looked at the smokehouse fires first thing in the morning and last at night. They were put out at sundown, but had a knack of burning again from some hidden seed of live coal. Morning smoke could not well be too thick, provided it smelled right—keen and clean, reminiscent of sylvan fragrance—a thick, acrid smoke that set you sneezing and coughing, was "most tolerable and not to be endured." It ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... be. Women are supposed to have a knack at the business; but my father is so patriotic that ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... counter herself and fixes up a drink to suit the occasion. She's all sorts of fancies about what's what for all kinds of times and conditions, and you bet she can just hit the spot! Ain't a clerk here can put up a drink to touch her. She's a sort of knack at it. Every once in a while, when the Boss sees her, he calls out to her ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... turkeys, we find exactly opposite conditions. The price of turkeys has risen with the price of chickens and eggs, until one would think that there would be great money in the business, and there is, for the motherly farm wife who has the knack of bringing the little turks through the danger of delicate babyhood. But just as the duck is more domesticated than the chicken, so the turkey, which yet closely resembles its wild ancestor, is less domestic and has as yet failed to surrender to the ways of commercial reasoning, ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... have shown them their danger.' 'So I did,' he replied, 'but I seemed to them as one that mocked.' Now, this of talking, and, especially, of talking about religious things to children, is one of the most difficult things in the world,—that is, to do it well. Some people have the happy knack of talking to their own and to other people's children so as always to interest and impress them. But such happy people are few. Most people talk at their children whenever they begin to talk to them, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... was hot of head and ready of hand. He had a knack also of getting into tight places and extricating himself therefrom with amazing agility; which knack served to procure for him the admiration of his friends and the respect of his enemies. It was his first Frontier campaign, but it was not apparently destined ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... perceiving, abolished differences; and the poet would confess that his creative imagination gave him no deep advantage, but only the superficial one that he could express himself and the other could not; that his advantage was a knack, which might impose on indolent men but could not impose on lovers of truth; for they know the tax of talent, or what a price of greatness the power of expression too often pays. I believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for boys and girls deal with life aboard submarine torpedo boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, and possess, in addition to the author's surpassing knack of storytelling, a great educational value for ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... still there were reversals in a good many cases," was the reply. "But from everything that I've heard, suggestions from Washington seem to have had the knack of being just about exactly the right thing. They certainly were in this case. I sent the lad his ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... may always know the Great A. Co.'s Tea from the circumstance of it's never having either odor or flavor. We find, after ample experience, that the presence of either of these qualities directly injures the sale. Give it plenty of Astringency (an easy knack) and it will be sure to go down in this country. It is our experience (and that of many other Operators of our kind—or upon our kind, if you prefer the phrase,) that people like to be imposed upon, and can always be taken with the Economical ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... some time to assort the babies and make sure of tying the right one on the right mother's back. Not by one shaved head could I see the slightest difference in any of them, but mothers have the knack of knowing. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... always poor, always worried and in ill-health. A few years later his mother died, but his sister, an ineffectual neurasthenic, remained on his hands. His own health gave out, and he had to go away for six months, and work harder than ever when he came back. He had no knack for business, no head for figures, no dimmest insight into the mysteries of commerce. He wanted to travel and write—those were his inmost longings. And as the years dragged on, and he neared middle-age without making any ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... that in which the typical plays of his second period are written, would be, if it were possible to imitate, the most absolute pattern that could be set before man. I do not speak of mere copyist's work, the parasitic knack of retailing cast phrases, tricks and turns of accent, cadences and catchwords proper only to the natural manner of the man who first came by instinct upon them, and by instinct put them to use; I speak of that faithful and ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... any sand in you. You have, and considerable muscle, or knack, as well. I'm not saying ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... me like that!" she said, with gay imperiousness. "You pale-eyed folk have a horrible knack of making one feel as if one is under a microscope. Your worthy uncle is just the same. If I weren't so deeply in love with him, I might resent it. But Nick is a privileged person, isn't he, wherever he goes? Didn't someone once say of him that he rushes in where angels fear to tread? It's rather ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... perfect little dinner-parties as Aunt Marjorie. She had a knack of finding out each of her guests' particular weaknesses with regard to the dinner-table. She was no diplomatist, and her conversation was considered prosy; but with Mr. Merton to act the perfect host and to ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... passage; but Jackson, with great activity, seized him by the wrist of the left hand, and, all powerful as the ruffian was, sent him dancing some few yards in front of the threshold before he was aware of his intention, or could resist the peculiar knack with which it was accomplished. The Aid-de-Camp, meanwhile, had deposited his saddle in a corner near the fire, and on his return to the door, met the inhospitable woodsman advancing as if to court ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... and he drew closer. Beasley always had a knack of so blending truth with his personal venom that it stung far more than downright insult. He wondered what the Padre's generosity had been, and wherein lay its connection with their present purpose. The explanation ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... person—particularly if that person be standing in a dim light. Looking closely, he will see the peculiar vibratory motion, like heated air, at a distance of about two inches from the body of the person. It requires a little practice in order to acquire the knack of perceiving these vibrations—a little experimenting in order to get just the right light on the person—but practice will bring success, and you will be repaid for your trouble. In the same way, the student may by practice acquire the faculty ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... the three were less contented in confinement. No one had come near them and Van Rycke had not returned. Which fact the crew clung to as a ray of hope. Somewhere the Cargo-master must be fighting their battle. And all Van's vast store of Trade knowledge, all his knack of cutting corners and driving a shrewd bargain, enlisted on their behalf, must win ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... general Lee was extremely splenetic, other than which, such a miserable old bachelor and infidel could hardly be, yet he certainly had a knack of telling people's fortunes. By virtue of this faculty he presently discovered that general Gates was no Fabius; but on the contrary, too much inclined to the fatal ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... occasion to apply his knowledge in the household and the courts, there was little else for any one to do than engage in farming, fishing, and trading with the Indians, or turn carpenter and cobbler according to demand. The artisan became a farmer, though still preserving his knack as a craftsman, and expended his skill and his muscle in subduing ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... sergeant. I jest laughed at him an' went to t' other feller an' took the papers out o' his pockets. I see then a number o' British boys was makin' fer me on the wobbly top o' the river. They'd see me goin' as easy as a hoss on a turnpike an' they was tryin' fer to git the knack o' it. In a minute they begun poppin' at me. But shootin' on logs is like tryin' to walk a line on a wet deck in a hurricane. Ye got to know how to offset the wobble. They didn't skeer me. I went an' hauled that runt out o' the water an' with him under my right arm an' the two rifles under the left ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... a knack of monopolising Hubert, and since his return from London, her desire to do so had become almost a determination. Hubert showed no disinclination, and after breakfast they were to be seen together in the gardens. Hubert was a great catch, and there were other young ladies eager to ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... Orleans, and hence I shall not give a long account of the journey. What a contrast it was to that which Nick and I had taken five years before in Monsieur Gratiot's fur boat! Like all successful Creole traders, Monsieur Vigo had a wonderful knack of getting on with the Indians, and often when we tied up of a night the chief men of a tribe would come down to greet him. We slipped southward on the great, yellow river which parted the wilderness, with its sucks and eddies and green islands, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... but not less useful than that assigned to them in fiction, through the mere fact of giving their parents no leisure to dwell on irremediable grievances. Though her own apprenticeship to family life had been so short, she had already acquired the knack of rapid mental readjustment, and as she hurried up to the nursery her private cares were dispelled by a dozen problems ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... took my opera-glasses to watch her proceedings. Oh! they were very simple: first of all a glance, then a smile, then a slight sign with the head, which meant: 'Are you coming up?' But it was so slight, so vague, so discreet, that it required a great deal of knack to succeed as she did. And I asked myself: 'I wonder if I could do that little movement, from below upwards, which was at the same time bold and pretty, as well as she does,' for her gesture was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the whole thing will flash into one's mind at once, and after that there will be little or no trouble. If you are able to witness the demonstrations of some good mind-reader, professional or amateurs it will help you to "catch the knack" ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... the Emperor. As a lad at Cassel he was fond of playing charades, and is reported to have had a knack of quickly sketching the scenario and dramatis personae of a play which he and his young companions would then and there proceed to act. One of these plays had Charlemagne for its subject, with a Saxon ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... but he's just as good as the real. He's a natural knack at putting bones in their places, and all that sort of thing. There was a man broke his leg horribly at Thirlwall the other day, and Gibson was out of the way, and Marshchalk set it, and did it famously, they said. So go, Ellen, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... to obey, but he had not the knack of it yet; besides, his hand shook at the thought that his father was coming. In fact, he was so awkward that ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... to draw Napoleon best Because one hand is in his vest, The other hand behind his back. (For drawing hands I have no knack.) ...
— Confessions of a Caricaturist • Oliver Herford
... mean to insinuate that a really well-dressed Frenchwoman is not better dressed than most English women, or that the French have not a peculiar knack of putting on their clothes to the best advantage; for there is no doubt upon the matter. But, if we maybe allowed to judge from the examples brought over to us in the shape of bonnets and head-dresses, and other articles of a ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... carry off the child with her, she gave a hundred francs extra, as a present, while her husband drew up a paper. And the young woman, radiant, carried off the howling brat, as one carries away a wished-for knick-knack ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... curls of thread laid on the material. They can be used as a variation from French knots, and even for the representation of petals and small leaves. To be satisfactory they must be firm, stout, and tightly coiled; some knack is required to make them properly. To work the bullion knot (fig. 59)—Bring the thread through at the required place, insert the needle one-eighth of an inch from this point and bring it through again ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... later my father came back panting, followed by the doctor. This was a big, black-bearded man; added to which he had the knack of looking bigger than even he really was. He came down the kitchen stairs two at a time, shaking the whole house. He brushed my mother aside, and bent over the unconscious Susan, who was on her ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... did in this reply. For really he did not know how it was. He did not try very hard to be a good penman. He did many other things well, which did not cost him very much effort. It was easy for him to get the "knack" of holding his pen and cutting letters. He would do it with an ease and grace that we can only describe by saying it was Nat-like. It is another instance, also, of the advantage of that principle or habit, which he early cultivated, of doing things well. As one of ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... my arms about her to console her, but she wept so that, for all my seventeen years and pride of manhood, it set me weeping also, and with such a hiccoughing noise, since I had not a woman's knack of quiet tears, that it finally turned ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for one or two of the minor songs in the famous operas was not entirely of Arthur's own unaided invention. And so, from one subject to another, they passed on so quickly, and hit it off with one another so exactly (for Hilda had a wonderful knack of leading up to everybody's strong points), that long before lunch was ready, the Progenitor had been quite won over by the fascinations of the brazen hussey, and was prepared to admit that she was really a very nice, kind, tender-hearted, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... marriage is never improbable. You women have a knack of tripping up the most unlikely subjects! In this case, I had the details from an old friend of mine. She happened to be stopping at the same hotel as Lenox at Zermatt. Then one morning he disappeared; and, as she had taken rather a fancy to him, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver |
