"Knuckles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conjurer, at length discovering that most practitioners on cards, now-a-days, know as many tricks as himself, {40}and finding his slights of hand turned to little or no account, now practises on notes of hand by discount, and is to be found every morning at twelve in Duke's-place, up to his knuckles in dirt, and at two at the Bank coffee-house, up to his elbows in money, where these locusts of society, over a dish of coffee and the book of interest, supply the temporary wants of necessitous men, and are sure to out-wit 'em, had they even ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... this question, the first fact to appear is that the apes and lemurs are plantigrade animals. Their natural tendency is to walk on the sole of the foot, a habit which few other tribes of animals possess. Most of the larger animals walk on the knuckles or the toes, and develop claws or hoofs, but the ancestral form of the ape, ages in the past, was doubtless a sole-walking quadruped, its toes apparently provided with nails instead of claws. What the story of this ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... the contrary, his face was convulsed like the face of one in an extremity of fear, and great beads of sweat stood upon his brow. It was as though he knew his danger, and yet was utterly powerless to avoid it. He lay upon his back. One heavy arm, his left, hung over the side of the bed, the knuckles of the hand resting on the ground; the other was thrown back, and his head was pillowed upon it. The clothing had slipped away from his throat and massive chest, which were ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the wood—(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery: otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a fish)—and rapped loudly at the door with his knuckles. It was opened by another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all over their heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all about, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... seizes the box, brings it up to him, puts it irritatingly in front of him; he seizes it, they struggle for it, trying to take it out of each other's hands; she screams, he tries to get it; there is a scuffle round the room; he tries to rub her knuckles; she makes a little feint to bite him; in the struggle the box drops on the floor a ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... rushed at Ellis, but Ellis knocked him down and tried to stamp on his face. Vandover and the Dummy tried to hold his arms and pull him off. He turned on the Dummy in a silent frenzy of rage and brought his knuckles down upon his head again and again. For the moment Ellis could neither hear, nor see, nor speak; he was blind, dumb, fighting drunk, and his fighting was not the fighting ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... brought the Queen thither 'to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus' torment.' Another time he protested that he must disguise himself as a boatman, and just catch a sight of the Queen, or else his heart would break. He drew his dagger on his keeper, Sir George Carew, and broke the knuckles of Sir Arthur Gorges, because he said they were restraining him from the sight of his Mistress. He proposed to Lord Howard of Effingham at the close of a business letter, that he should be thrown to feed the lions, 'to save labour,' as the Queen was still so cruel. Sir Arthur ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the bewildered Max sighed, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, as though hardly knowing whether he were awake ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... wiry, nervous, black-haired girl of 'Lias Hoover's, Polly Ann. She married a man by the name of Brubaker. I guess you didn't know him. His folks moved here from Clarke County. Polly Ann's eyes glittered like a snake's, and she kept putting her knuckles up to the red spots in her cheeks that burned like fire. Old John, he didn't seem to care a cent. And what do you think Polly Ann missed on? "Feoffment." A simple little word like "feoffment!" She hadn't got ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... who, when rowing on the river, saw a drowning man laying hold of his boat and nearly upsetting it. "Providentially," he explained, "I had brought my umbrella, and I had presence of mind enough to hit him over the knuckles. He let go, sank, and never rose again." Nobody, I imagine, would have vouched for the truth of this story, but it was so often repeated that it provided the old gentleman with a nickname, that ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... bringing them into order headed them back again to their grim work. I have been pleased to see that this brave lad has received a well merited distinction from his Sovereign, but at the time the only comment made upon his behaviour by his O.C. was, 'The young beggar ought to get a rap over his knuckles for exceeding his duty.' Such feats are constantly occurring, so often indeed as ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... time I had zigzagged it into the back chamber, Halicarnassus loomed up the back stairs. I stood hot and panting, with the inside of my fingers tortured into burning leather, the skin rasped off three knuckles, and a bruise on the back of my right hand, where the trunk had crushed it against a sharp edge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... movement. McEachern was staring straight in front of him. There was a look in his eyes that Jimmy had never seen there before, a frightened, hunted look. The rugged aggressiveness of his mouth and chin showed up in strange contrast. The knuckles of ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... on it the evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street drawing-room. All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on his sleeve, and he said to himself: "If it were only to see her hand again I should ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... up for it next afternoon, that conscientious Englishman; which was fair enough to our parents, but not to us. And then what extra severity, as interest for the beggarly loan of half an afternoon! What rappings on ink-stained knuckles with a beastly, hard, round, polished, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the middle of the trail; and if the windfall had been opaque, one of the two wore an expression on his face as if he had guessed. He was tossing a handful of little pebbles up from his palm and catching them on the backs of his knuckles. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Daniels appeared at the door, a heavy Colt in his hand. For a moment he stood dumbfounded, but then, with a cry, jerked up his gun—a quick movement, but a fraction of a second too slow, for the hand of Dan darted out and his knuckles struck the wrist of the old cattleman. The Colt rattled on the floor. He lunged after his weapon, but the voice of Buck stopped ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... the whole stupendous ruin, as seen at a distance of a mile eastward, is cleanly cut as that of a marble inlay. It is varied with protuberances, which from hereabouts have the animal aspect of warts, wens, knuckles, and hips. It may indeed be likened to an enormous many- limbed organism of an antediluvian time—partaking of the cephalopod in shape—lying lifeless, and covered with a thin green cloth, which hides its substance, while revealing its ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... trying to feed us two Elijahs so hard that if we turned 'em down again we ought to have the Audubon Society after us. It won't do to put the crown aside too often. I know this is something like paternalism, but don't you think Opportunity has skinned its knuckles about enough knocking at ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... to say that Cuckoo did not meet his father with an affectionate embrace, but at first positively refused to go with him; and when compelled to accompany him as a prodigal son and wanderer, he dug his knuckles into his eyes and began to cry. Poor little Cuckoo knew that the days of beef and good cooking had passed away. He expressed his determination to run away from his father and to return to us; but as his home was on the west bank ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... grumbled resignedly; and tossing the man a five-franc piece, applied his knuckles to the door of an outwardly commonplace hotel particulier in the rue Chaptal between the impasse of the Grand ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... entirely on what is customary; and there is an immodesty that hides, as well as one that exposes. Unconsciousness is modesty's triple shelter against shame. See here, the dissolute Marguerite of Navarre, visible only at head and hands; the former from the chin upwards, the latter from the knuckles downwards; and here, La belle Hamilton, rightly named, as chaste as beautiful, and so modest in her carriage that she escaped the breath of scandal even in the court of Charles II., and yet with a gown (if gown it can be called) so loose about the bust and arms that the pink night-gown ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Brodrick and I dined together on board the Triad with the hospitable Vice-Admiral. We were all very cheery at the happy turn of our fortunes; outwardly, that is to say, for there was a skeleton at the feast who kept tap, tap, tapping on the mahogany with his bony knuckles; tap, tap, tap; the gunfire at Helles was insistent, warning us that the Turks had not yet "taken their licking." But when I get back, although there is nothing in from Hunter-Weston there is an officer from Anzac who has just given me the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the basement floor and halted before a door in a little passage that looked like the entrance to a coal cellar. On this he knocked in peculiar fashion with the knuckles of one hand, while with the other he pressed the button of an electric bell concealed under the paper on the wall. The bell sounded faintly as though some distance off, and as it rang the footman said abruptly ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... of bears had made Aunt Lizzie Philbrick so nervous that as an extra precaution she pinned the flap of her tent down securely with a row of safety-pins and Mr. Stott not only slept in more of his clothes than usual but put a pair of brass knuckles under his pillow. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... insane as the rest of the company. I strode aimlessly to and fro, striving at every coign to pierce with my eyesight the white drift. I pushed back my hat; I gnawed my knuckles; I felt that I could not stay still, yet knew not for what point to make. Almost I felt that in another moment I should screech out—when a breath of sea air caught the skirt of the cloud, and rolled the bulk of it up and ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... stood there, I remember, with those seventeen-year-old hands that were all knuckles and bone and chapped skin, twisting those hands and shifting his weight from one foot to ...
— With a Vengeance • J. B. Woodley
... as I approached, I heard a sweet but tremulous voice singing a melancholy air, which I have never since heard anywhere; the same voice repeated the romance to which I was listening several times. When it had entirely ceased I profited by the silence to tap with my knuckles against the door, but so feeble was the signal, that even Henriette, who was close behind me, could not hear it. She begged I would permit her to ring a bell which hung near us; and, having done so, a step was heard approaching the door, and, in a minute ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... you try to shut me up. I won't have it. I'm a gentleman, and I want people to drink with me. And I want 'em to drink with me now. Now—do you understand?" He rapped the bar with his knuckles. ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... professor will be at the house about half-past two, so you won't have too much time to spare. He is a tall, lanky fellow, six feet two, with a straggling black beard, goggle eyes, and spectacles. He looks awfully bad-tempered, but I suppose he can't do more than rap your knuckles with a pencil, and they all go ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and, to her own intense surprise when she thought of it afterward, Mrs. MacDonald gave hers. Over the prominent knuckles the old skin lay soft and loose. The grim woman was vaguely pathetic to Somerled in his youth and strength and full tide of success. The touch of the would-be iron hand in the velvet glove of faded age ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of having noticed nothing, I resumed my meal, but out of the corner of my eye I watched his left hand on the table near the flask. It was most interesting, all the veins stood out like ropes, and his knuckles ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... chair beside one of these windows sat Mrs. Meyerburg with her hands idle and laid out along the chair sides. They were ringless hands and full of years, with a great network of veins across their backs and the aging fingers large at the knuckles. But where the hands betrayed the eyes belied. Deep in Mrs. Meyerburg's soft and scarcely flabby face her gaze was straight and ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... surveyed the present, and forecast the future. Truly, if hell ever does begin to men on earth, it began that day to the pirate, as he sat in the twilight on the gnarled root, with one of his feet dangling in the slimy water, his hands clasped so tight that the knuckles stood out white, and his eyes gazing upwards with an expression that seemed the very ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... received a blow, which neither of them had the courage to return, though their opponents were little better than boys. Fired at their pusillanimity, I darted by and seized the little gownsmen, one in one hand and the other in the other, pressed my knuckles in their neck, shook them heartily, and dragged them out of the box. The two other collegians of our squadron, seeing this intrepid advance, followed up the victory; Hector and Andrews again blustered and lent their aid, and the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... everybody is," agreed Fanny with that joyous, bubbling, luxurious note that Grandma knew so well. "I saw Mary Hagley polishing her very knuckles off on that second-hand stove Mert bought from that watery-eyed man from Spring Road who drives through here with the lame buckskin horse and pieced-out harness. Lutie Barlow's got her fall tinting and painting all done. She's painted the ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... diplomacy of thrust and parry to be gained by living in society. Her stepmother, who was apparently as good-natured as she seemed brainless, was prepared to be gushing, but that was nipped in the bud by the way Dawn extended her pretty, firm hand with the dimpling wrist and knuckles and exquisitely tapering fingers. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... I dined with him, and could hardly leave him at eight, to go to Lady Jersey's, where five or six foreign Ministers were, and as many ladies. Monteleon played like the English, and cried "gacco," and knocked his knuckles for trump, and played at small games like Ppt. Lady Jersey whispered me to stay and sup with the ladies when the fellows were gone; but they played till eleven, and I would not stay. I think this letter must go on Saturday; that's certain; and it is not half full ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... hand to make it do the tapping, thinking it would please her to give her a share in the invitation, but in her touchy frame of mind it was only an added grievance to have her knuckles knocked against the pane, and her wails began afresh as the old man, answering the signal, shook his bell at her playfully, ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Spartan lady. She cured me of it by rapping my knuckles with the handle of a silver-plated knife. My, how it hurt! I feel it yet! I wonder that they were not enlarged by ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... again and strode toward the window, where he stood like a statue framed in the luminous gloom. The only part of him that moved was his long fingers, weaving together behind him until the knuckles cracked. ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... got a job as a dog anywhere. He spent all his time at this kind of thing. In his spare time at the office, he used to lie on his stomach on the floor and see if he could lift himself up with his knuckles. If he could, then he tried some other way until he found one that he couldn't do. Then he would spend the rest of his lunch hour on his ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... observed that as he spoke his companion flushed. A wave of warm colour surged over her face and bare neck and receded again, leaving her very pale. Her hands closed over the book lying in her lap, as if glad to hold on to something, and their knuckles were ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Nance of the slums who spoke—the Nance whose small bare fists had fought the world too long for the knuckles to be tender. She had drifted a long way from the carefully acquired refinements of Forest Home, but its influence, like a dragging anchor, still sought to hold her against the oncoming gales ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... Yes, Mrs. Burlacombe; and I shall give some of these good people a rare rap over the knuckles for their want of charity. For all they look as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, they're an un-Christian lot. [Looking very directly at Mrs. BURLACOMBE] It's lucky we've some hold over the village. I'm not going to have scandal. I shall ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... slowly, smilingly forward. She saw Raymond's knuckles grow white and hard as his hands gripped the back of his chair. His eyes dilated, and for a moment he could ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... head with his knuckles, and they laughed together as young happy things do at trifles. Then he stretched himself for sleep under the stars and almost within arm's reach of the girl—the girl who had ridden to meet him in the night, ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... gleamed bare behind the taut, white lips. The trapper's law knows neither hate nor love. You watched it paw, Frantic with lust of life, the yielding air And were amused. God's Image! Did you care, pitying one moment, see the swift hands claw For life and darkness, know and hate your trap? I saw your knuckles gleam, your hand swing free; A cry; The blind face crashed against the wall. Then death and stillness and—— You grinned. Mayhap, Snaring the blind mole of humanity, God made you in His ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... clearing with painful anxiety. Once he thought that he heard a voice, but it was only the moan of one branch against another as the wind bent some tree. He stepped back from the window and rubbed his knuckles across his forehead, obviously puzzled. It might be that, after all, he was wrong. So he turned back once more toward the main room of the cabin to make sure. Instead of opening the door softly, as a suspicious man will, ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... said, "she's drumming with her knuckles on the floor in the corridor. She says that it is against her principles to knock on the door when it has an engaged sign on it. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... mufflers I'll carefully pull O'er my knuckles hereafter, to make them, well-bred; To mollify digs in the kidneys with wool, And temper with leather a punch ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... she laughed again and the door closed upon her with a bang. She hammered the glass with her knuckles to attract his attention, flung back her head as she laughed ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... arms of his chair. His knuckles grew white with the strain. "Where—where did you find it?" ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... amid the bluebells, one hand outstretched before her and resting lightly upon a little mound of moss. It was a small brown hand and she held it in such a manner, knuckles upward, and imparted to it so cunning and peculiar a movement that it assumed quite an uncanny resemblance to a tiny and ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... knew that there had been a serious accident, but no one moved from the table. The Duke sat like a rock in his place and finished what he was saying, though no one noticed it. Miss Skeat clutched her silver fruit-knife till her knuckles shone again, and she set her teeth. Mr. Barker, who had a glass of wine in the "fiddle" before him, took it out when the sea struck and held it up steadily to save it from being spilled; and Lady Victoria, who was not the least ashamed of being ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... but vicious fight. There was no time to aim or fire a paralo-ray gun. It was a matter of bare knuckles and feet and knees and shoulders. One by one, the green-clad men were laid low, and finally, Connel, out of breath, ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... the great master-lever, protected by its bell of glass. (At least it looked like glass, for it was crystal clear and reflected gleamingly the blue light from the nearby coils). He tapped it experimentally with his knuckles.... ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... up into such a hysteria, crying, and tearing her hair, and hitting her head with her knuckles, that at last she fell into a faint. It took some time before Mrs. Pelz, with the aid of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a silence of supine idleness. His wife and children acknowledged, indeed, his head and his hands—those it were impossible to overlook; but his head stopped with the rim of his collar, while his hands—those long, lean hands, freckled, tufted goldishly between joints and knuckles—they never followed beyond the plain gilt sleeve-buttons (marked with a Roman M) which secured the overlapping of his cuffs. No, poor old David Marshall was like one of the early Tuscan archangels, whose scattered members are connected by draperies merely, with no ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... drinking and insisted that he drink and refill his glass. Pete downed the raw red wine and presently complained of feeling sleepy. Flores grinned. "I do not sleep," he asserted—"not until this is gone"—and he struck the jug with his knuckles. Pete felt that he was in for a long session, and inwardly cursed his luck. Flores's eyes brightened and he grew talkative. He spoke of his youth in Old Mexico; of the cattle and the women of that land. Pete feigned a heaviness that he did ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... same time delicately featured. Her dark blue eyes, veiled by lashes, smiled on him lazily as he approached; and lazily, too, her left arm stretched out, the palm of the hand downward, and she did not move. He kissed her knuckles, in orthodox fashion. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the silence that followed on Billebedam's departure by heaping the dirty plates higher on the table and drumming a tattoo on the cleared space with his knuckles. Hutchinson snuffed the smoky candle and reflectively rubbed the soot from the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... be sought and found. Its brilliancy attracted the attention of a devious youth, who dashed his fist through the glass and upset my modest luminary. All he got by his vivacious assault was that he left portions of integument from his knuckles upon the glass, had a lame hand, was very easily identified, and had to pay the glazier's bill. The moral is that, if the brilliancy of another's reputation excites your belligerent instincts, it is not worth your while to strike at it, without calculating which of you is likely ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bruised knuckles, splinters in fingers, torn clothes, and rubbed shoes, were the only wounds received, while a great deal of fun was had out of the maltreated logs, and a lasting peace secured between ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... Master Pfriem dreamed he was dead, and on his way to heaven. When he got there, he knocked loudly at the door. "I wonder," said he to himself, "that they have no knocker on the door,—-one knocks one's knuckles sore." The apostle Peter opened the door, and wanted to see who demanded admission so noisily. "Ah, it's you, Master Pfriem;" said he, "well, I'll let you in, but I warn you that you must give up that habit of yours, and find fault with nothing you see in heaven, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... on the companion ladder and a bunch of horny knuckles rapped at my state-room door. "Come in," I cried, and as the door opened Jones ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... from ivory; Cut-glass bottles for wines and brandies, Sticks once flourished by bucks and dandies; Deep old glasses they drank enough in, And golden boxes they took their snuff in; Rings that flashed on a gallant's knuckles, Seals and lockets and shining buckles; Watches sadly in need of menders, Blackened firedogs and dinted fenders; Prints and pictures and quaint knick-knackery, Rare old silver and mere gimcrackery— Such was the shop, and in its middle Stood an old man holding ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... blow on my knuckles yet— He feels it more on his brow. In a thousand years we shall all forget The things that ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play with him any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should sometimes come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes come and see me on a Wednesday, he revived; ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... yet vibrant with the cadence of the song You might have been.... 'Twas a great night... With never a waste look over a shoulder Curved to the crook of the wind... And a great word we threw For memory to play knuckles with... A word the waters of the world have washed, Leaving it stark and without smell... A world that rattles well in ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... ring, whose line formed the base; and another with holes, three or five, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, which was called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and in knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw your toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment with the savage pluck ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... of the "Half-way House," with an inquiry if they wished anything further, had seized him, but the remembrance that he had always meekly allowed that duty to devolve upon his aunt, and that she would probably resent it with scriptural authority and bring him to shame again, stayed his timid knuckles at the door. In this hesitation he stumbled upon his aunt coming down the stairs with an armful of blankets and pillows, attended by their small Indian ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... platform he stood erect and unadorned, his hands hanging folded in front, save when he changed the leaf of his manuscript, or emphasized his words with a gesture: his customary one, simple but effective, was to clinch his right fist, knuckles upward, the arm bent at the elbow, then a downward blow of the forearm, full of power bridled. It was accompanied by such a glance of the eyes as no one ever saw except from Emerson: a glance like the reveille of a trumpet. Yet his eyes were not noticeably large, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... man have I been. But my dead Minna has helped me, and here I give again to thee what I stole from thy chest—I who was a robber." Then Gottlieb covered his face with his hands, and presently each of his bony knuckles sparkled with ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... heard such a howl of terror as these men gave vent to when this misfortune befell me. They rushed upon deck with their hearts in their mouths, tumbling, and peeling the skin off their shins and knuckles in their haste; and it was not until they heard the laughter of the watch on deck that they breathed freely, and, joining in the laugh, called themselves fools for being frightened by a ghost story. I noticed, however, ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... there an't—my old father always used to say it was of no use hitting it for it always broke his knuckles. Well, it was kind of you to jin mande after so many years. The last time I think I saw you was near Brummagem, when you were travelling about with Jasper Petulengro and—I say, what's become of the young woman you used ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... perhaps a vice, but it is a natural one. Instead of pulling the door to its place, I pushed it a little, knocking with my knuckles at the same time. But as no one answered, I pushed it further, and put in my head. It was a disagreeable thing ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... sudden Fitzpatrick the Bad Hand nudged me gently with his knuckles, and I nudged Jed Smith, and Jed passed it on, and it went around from one to the other, so we all knew. Somebody was coming! We could hear a stick snap, and a little laugh, off in the timber; it sounded as though somebody had run into a branch. We waited. The enemy was stealing upon our camp. ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... too, the Prince suffered a little from his eyes, an irritation caused by grains of steel that had blown into them while viewing the works at "Soo." His right hand was also painful from the heartiness of Toronto, and the knuckles swollen. To set these matters right, the doctor went up from the train, and by the Indian canoe that carried the mail and the daily news bulletin, reached ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... wooden that you do not see the loathing you inspire me with? Is it possible you can suppose me willing to continue to exist upon such terms? To think,' he cried, 'that a young man, guilty of no fault on earth but amiability, should find himself involved in such a damned imbroglio!' And placing his knuckles in his eyes, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... convinced all efforts were useless, that portion of the rope which confined his wrists suddenly loosened sufficiently to enable him to withdraw one hand at the expense of no slight amount of skin from the knuckles. ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... on his lips, for the brown thing behind the chair had slipped upward with the silent undulation of a panther, and a deadly roomal (towel) had flashed over the Chief's head and was now a strangling knot about his tawny throat; the hard knuckles of Hunsa were kneading his spine at the back of the skull with a half twist of the cloth. He was pinioned to the back of the chair; he was in a vise, the jaws of which closed his throat. Just a stifled gurgle escaped from his lips as his hand clutched at a dagger ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... have not stiffened by becoming stronger, but find yourself more flexible. When you first came here, you could not touch your fingers to the ground without bending the knees, and now you can place your knuckles on the floor; then you could scarcely bend yourself backward, and now you can lay the back of your head in a chair, or walk, without crouching forward, under a bar less than three feet from the ground. You have found, indeed, that almost every feat ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... schoolmistress to her offspring. The cruelty of the teacher was almost as unendurable to him as that of a bad father or husband. He would not hear of any justification for rapping school-children over the knuckles with a ruler. If one ventured to say that there were such things as demon- children and that they had a power to probe and prod even the best of good people into a kind of frenzy in which they were hardly accountable for their acts, the plea roused his deepest indignation. Indeed, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... effort to control himself. His knuckles tightened on the edge of the vat. "I don't know what you've been talking about," he grated wildly. "But I want to get out of here! I want to go back where I came from! Do you understand—whoever, ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... into my face and clung to my hair, and I have a great dislike of bats. At last, after some minutes of jerking and dangling, I found myself standing in a narrow passage by the side of the worthy Ali, covered with bats and perspiration, and with the skin rubbed off my knees and knuckles. Then another man came down, hand over hand like a sailor, and as the rest were told to stop above we were ready to go on. Ali went first with his candle—of course we each had a candle—leading the way down a long passage about five feet high. At length ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... and a little bewildered, she looked to the right and left, trying to remember which stateroom Hugh occupied. The left, she concluded, and forthwith applied her pretty knuckles to the panel; vigorously. The door flew open, almost taking her breath, and a tall, dark man stood before her, but he was not Hugh Ridgeway. He looked askance ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... not altogether a happy looking set of boys, and many of their cheeks were stained with tears and begrimed with dirt from the knuckles which had been used to wipe them away; for there was in the year 1807 but one known method of instilling instruction into the youthful mind, namely, the cane, and one of the chief qualifications of a schoolmaster was to be able to hit hard ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... came back to the motor his handkerchief was bound about the knuckles of his right hand, and his face wore a faint smile that had in it more of ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... The branches of the cherry trees gleamed—not with flowers, but with icicles—as they leaned against the windows of the bed-chamber under the roof. Sometimes as the winter blast stirred them, they knocked against the panes with a sound the knuckles of a skeleton might have made. There was not the slightest suggestion of the soft-voiced "Ligeia" in ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... in bed, rubbed her eyes with her dimpled knuckles, nodded her tangled curls towards her aunt, and, sweetly smiling, murmured, "Mornin'!" to which cheery greeting ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... stick with furious whack upon the youngster's scalp; his blow was unfailingly parried. It was soon evident to the man that the boy was playing with him, and when twice or thrice he received a rap on his shoulder, his arm, his knuckles even, his fury got quite beyond his control, and he struck out blindly and viciously, forcing the lad backwards towards the edge ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... contrary, they partook of the good things of the table with a well-bred slowness, that would have been beyond his endurance to bear, had Mars been thundering with his iron fist at the gates of his fortress. But as it was Cupid, only tapping with his rosy knuckles at the casement of his heart, that dinner seemed no longer to him than, no, not half so long indeed as, the shortest snack he had ever eaten on horseback in the hurry of a forced march. The dinner over, Washington seemed in ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... here. That is according to the statistics, I believe. But to the best of my recollection, our previous captain brought us through eighty-eight skirmishes before anyone got hurt." He shook his head and thoughtfully contemplated the big, raw knuckles of ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... cries another, and presently the "Omnibus" in his black apron hurries to your table, holding between his knuckles, by their necks, half a dozen bottles of different aperitifs, for it is he who ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... notary continued to face the young man. He set his cup down and clasped his hands about his knee. The knuckles ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... I was examining the box. It was at least well made. It weighed certainly under two ounces. I struck it with my knuckles; it sounded hollow. There was no hinge; nothing of any kind to show that it ever had been opened, or, for the matter of that, that it ever could be opened. The more I examined the thing, the more it whetted my curiosity. That it could be opened, and in ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... comin'. I couldn't stand it—to be a burden like that. Of course, if you CARED—like mumsey here—" He threw out his hand, choked back a sob, then turned his head away again. "I'm not the Jamie you want. I—can't—go," he said. With the words his thin, boyish hand fell clenched till the knuckles showed white against the tattered old shawl that covered ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... disposed a blond goatee. The cheeks were fatty. The continually perspiring forehead exhibited innumerable pinkish pock-marks. In conversing with a companion this being emitted a disgusting smoothness, his very gestures were oily like his skin. He wore a pair of bloated wristless hands, the knuckles lost in fat, with which he smoothed the air from time to time. He was speaking low and effortless French, completely absorbed in the developing ideas which issued fluently from his mustachios. About him there clung an aura of cringing. His hair whiskers and neck looked as if ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... mind, after all, it is only like a game of marbles, played with a little leathern ball instead of a stone, and a stick instead of one's knuckles," sneered Blackall. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... through puddles, sinking in soft ground, or stumbling over stones. It seemed an interminable tramp before at last they struck the end of a wall, and, feeling their way with their hands, groped along till they reached a gate. The next moment they were rapping with their knuckles on ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... her as she read. Ringing salvos of laughter greeted the play and stirred the sleigh-bells on the startled horses beyond the door. The programme over, somebody called for Squire Town, a local pettifogger, who flung his soul and body into every cause. He often sored his knuckles on the court table and racked his frame with the violence of his rhetoric. He had a stock of impassioned remarks ready ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... a rough, half unwilling tenderness in his voice, and his big bony hand rested gently on the fat lady's shoulder, as he spoke. She bent her head to one side, till her large red cheek touched the brown knuckles. It was, in a way, almost grotesque. But there was that something in it which could make youth and beauty and passion ridiculous—the outspoken truthful old rake and the ever-forgiving wife. Who shall say wherein pathos lies? ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... too late. It fell to the ground and bounded away, with its proprietor in passionate chase. Arthur snorted and gently chafed his knuckles. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the lad, with the desperation of a cornered rat. "But I got a right to live. And I've lived worse'n a dorg on this bloody schooner. I'm fair striped an' bruised wi' boots an' knuckles an' ends o' rope. I'd 'ave chucked myself over long ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... want to see a little imp from Smaaland?" Pelle covered his face with his arms and kicked to be let down; and he also made an attempt to bite. "Eh, and he bites, too, the little devil!" Gustav had to hold him firmly so as to manage him. He held him by the collar, pressing his knuckles against the boy's throat and making him gasp, while he spoke with derisive gentleness. "A clever youngster, this! He's scarcely out of long clothes, and wants to fight already!" Gustav went on tormenting him; it looked as if he were making a display ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... confused recollection of the time when we were first initiated in the mysteries of the alphabet. We almost fancy we see the pin's point following the letter, to impress its form more strongly on our bewildered imagination; and wince involuntarily, as we remember the hard knuckles with which the reverend old lady who instilled into our mind the first principles of education for ninepence per week, or ten and sixpence per quarter, was wont to poke our juvenile head occasionally, by way of adjusting the confusion of ideas in which we were generally involved. The same kind ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Western giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it; - This little speck the British Isles? 'Tis but a freckle,—never mind it! - He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till they crack their iron knuckles! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... in the passage; he had just come out of the kitchen, and the fact that he had been washing his hands in the sink was made evident by his rolled-back shirt-sleeves, and by the shiny redness of the knuckles he was running ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Up with 'em, or I'll shoot the knuckles off of 'em! I'll make a jumpin'-jack of you or ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... she spoke of the people whose houses she washed out and whose staircases she scrubbed down, and her old-ivory face flamed from her black hair and her deep, dark eyes whirled and became hard and motionless as points of jet, and her hands jumped alternately into knuckles and claws. ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... explained to her at least. She had let down her long waving glossy hair, and was standing absorbed in thought in the middle of the room, when she heard a round clumping knock at her door, different from that given by the small knuckles of delicate fingers, and in walked Sally, with a judge-like severity of demeanour, holding in her hand two widow's caps of commonest make and coarsest texture. Queen Eleanor herself, when she presented the bowl to Fair Rosamond, had not a more ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... English shoregoing institutions are based on conformable strata of absolutely impervious inaccuracy. I reflected and became aware of a drumming on the back of the front seat that Pyecroft, bowed forward and relaxed, was tapping with his knuckles. The hardly-checked fury on Hinchcliffe's brow had given place to a greasy imbecility, and he nodded over the steering-bar. In longs and shorts, as laid down by the pious and immortal Mr. Morse, Pyecroft tapped out, "Sham drunk. ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... more freely than ordinarily, breathe rapidly, lag and go lame, usually in the hind limbs. It trembles, shows evidence of suffering severe pain by turning its head and looking around toward the flanks, knuckles over in the hind pasterns, and may fall down and be unable to get up. The affected muscles appear to be swollen and feel unusually firm when pressed upon with the hand. If the horse does not go down recovery may occur within a few hours, ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... first," said Grant doggedly. His knuckles were bleeding and his forearms were sore from the treatment he had received from Sam's boots. The pain made him angry and more determined than ever to accomplish ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... mind with you there. That's the thing for me. I want no other doctor. If I don't get to sea to-morrow I'll have an illness. There are no two ways about it." He drank off a tumbler of lime juice, and clapped his two hands with his knuckles doubled up into the small of ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Scotty's knuckles met the door-panel with a bang. "But I do feel like it," he responded; "and the inclination is increasing every moment. You would try the patience of Job himself. Come, I'm waiting!" and he shifted from one ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge |
