"Middle finger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the white hand, what was his surprise to see upon the middle finger the ring he had given to the maiden he loved. Then he looked into her face and recognized her, and in a flash he understood that she had come to court as a huntsman, only to be near him. The King was so touched that he kissed her white cheeks till they grew rosy, and her blue eyes ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... beside her, covered up with a purple and yellow Mexican blanket. She ran up the gulch and called to Mrs. Tellamantez. The Mexican woman held up a warning finger. Thea glanced at the blanket and recognized a square red hand which protruded. The middle finger twitched slightly. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... "he played the little man to start with. He did so. He scared that old horse-thief, Adams, just about dead. Then he went to kill me, that kep' him from bein' buried early to-morrow. I've been wild that way myself, and wantin' to shoot up the whole outfit." Jones looked at the place where his middle finger used to be, before a certain evening in Tombstone. "But I never—" He glanced towards the ditch, perplexed. "What's that mean? Why in the world does he git to cryin' for now, do you suppose?" Jones took to singing without knowing ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Ickkeega. A woman Meanako Innago. Fish net Ya Sheebee. Tobacco pipe Tsheeree Shirree. Water Wakha Meezee. To drink Horopsee Noomoong. A book Shoomootza Sheemootsee. The finger Yewbee Eebee. The thumb O yewbee Hoee eebee. The thigh Momo Moomoo. The arm Oondee Teenoo. The middle finger Nagayewbee Nackkaeebee. Paper Kame Kabee. A dog Enoo Ing. A cat Necko Mia. A child Vasasso Warrabee. The foot Assee Shanna. The chin Olongyse Ootooga. The ear Meemee Mimmee. Yes O Oo. No Ny Oongba. Hair Kamu Kurrazzee. A boat Timma ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... The middle finger is the Friar. Those on each side of him touch each other and make the door, the little finger is the Lady and the thumb is ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... in the dining-room. The Count took out of his pocket a little case, and asking Esperance to give him her hand, slipped on to her middle finger a magnificent engagement ring. Somehow her hand went cold as death as Albert held it, and her face ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... traditions of him, and can he have any connection with the name bestowed by children on the middle finger, in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... replied Mr. Curtis, "and all I can remember of him is that he is rather short, fair, thin, and clean-shaven, and that he has lost the middle finger ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... the dangers lurking among the hundreds of islands of the Archipelagos straight to the land of Lacedaemon. This is the central of the three peninsulas in which the Peloponnesus ends, and might be called the middle finger of that large hand of which Arcadia is ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... clicked and Mrs. Moore hurried down the back steps. She was very tall and slender, with Roger's blue eyes and a mass of red hair piled high on her head. She carried one of Roger's stockings with a darning ball in the toe in her left hand and the thimble gleamed on the middle finger of her right hand as she put ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... Is the free edge or the root the thickest? Trim closely the thumb nail and the nail of the middle finger of one hand and try to pick up a pin, or other minute object, from a smooth, hard surface. The result indicates what use of the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... had found wool there, not carded, but a hank of it, soft, white and most delicate to touch. To handle it had given her the queerest sensation. She had shut her eyes, and it had seemed to weave itself into the daintiest garments—very small, you understand, and with sleeves no longer than a middle finger. But it was a silly imagining, for not many days afterward, looking down from the canvas, she had seen the old lady, with her clicking ivory needles, knit the wool into an ugly pair ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... clatter as her god-daughter advanced to greet her. Yes, Pennie certainly poked out her chin and shrugged up one shoulder. She had none of the easy grace which adorned the Merridews. All her movements were abrupt. Worst of all, on the middle finger of the hand she held out was a ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... ticked it off on his middle finger. "The Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company owns two fine bodies of redwood timber widely separated—one to the south of Sequoia in the San Hedrin watershed and at present practically valueless because inaccessible, and the other to ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... bum as the dark one," said I. "There is nothing more like that, look through it." I opened the book again; under her eyes was a picture of a woman undressed, laying at the edge of the bed, her legs open, her middle finger on her cunt; by her side a man with trowsers down, his prick out stiff and crimson-tipped, one hand on the woman's thigh, and ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... made a scene of enchanting beauty. The nesting-site was on a low swampy piece of ground grown over with a semi-aquatic plant called durasmillo in the vernacular. It has a single white stalk, woody in appearance, two to three feet high, and little thicker than a man's middle finger, with a palm-like crown of large loose lanceolate leaves, so that it looks like a miniature palm, or rather an ailanthus tree, which has a slender perfectly white bole. The solanaceous flowers are purple, and it bears fruit the size of cherries, black ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... head. And coming out of the tent, they saw a youth with thick yellow hair upon his head, fair and comely, and a scarf of blue satin upon him, and a brooch of gold in the scarf upon his right shoulder as large as a warrior's middle finger. And upon his feet were hose of fine Totness, and shoes of parti-coloured leather, clasped with gold, and the youth was of noble bearing, fair of face, with ruddy cheeks and large hawk's eyes. In the hand of the youth was a mighty lance, speckled yellow, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... possessed himself of her hand. She pulled it from him gently, but he paid no attention to the little muscular protest, and examined the hand critically. On the back of the middle finger he pointed out a ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... against nature in seeking to give equal power to each finger. On the contrary, each finger should have an appropriate part assigned it. The thumb has the greatest power, being the thickest finger and the freest. Then comes the little finger, at the other extremity of the hand. The middle finger is the main support of the hand, and is assisted by the first. Finally comes the third, the weakest one. As to this Siamese twin of the middle finger, some players try to force it with all their ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... He extended the middle finger of his left hand and Penrod promptly seized it, but did not twist it, for he was instantly swung round with his back to his amiable new acquaintance: Rupe's right hand operated upon the back of Penrod's slender neck; Rupe's knee tortured the small ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... would be quite ruined, too," said Manuel, looking at it more carefully. Upon the middle finger was a copper ring, in which was set a largish black stone: this was Schamir. But Manuel looked only ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... make the same claims we do. But somewhere, Greta, you have to trust." He put out the middle finger ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... sneezes dexter. For two years John Pike must have been whipping the water as hard as Xerxes, without having ever once dreamed of the glorious trout that lived in Crocker's Hole. But why, when he ought to have been at least on bowing terms with every fish as long as his middle finger, why had he failed to know this champion? The answer is simple—because of his short cuts. Flying as he did like an arrow from a bow, Pike used to hit his beloved river at an elbow, some furlong below Crocker's Hole, where a sweet little ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... asked Lasse, anxiously, holding up his thumb, forefinger, and middle finger. Truth to tell, Pelle had seen nothing, but his ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the cubit of the Hebrews was the length of the forearm from the elbow to the end of the middle finger; and the smaller scriptural dimensions are expressed in hand-breadths and spans. The Egyptian cubit, which was similarly derived, was divided into digits, which were finger-breadths; and each finger-breadth was more definitely expressed ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... on her middle finger, and held up her hand, and her bright eyes glanced at it, through her veil, with that delight which her sex in general feel at the possession of a new bauble. She recovered herself, however, and told him, soberly, the ring should return to his family at her ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... listened in dead silence. No feet shuffled. Mr. Gresley looked patronizingly at Dick's splendid figure and large, outstretched hand, with the crooked middle finger, which he had cut off by mistake in the bush and had stuck on again himself. Then the young Vicar glanced smiling at the audience, feeling that he had indeed elicited a "lay opinion" of the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... from that of the contemporary hand-books of the "Art," and the leading lines are just the same. The heavenly bodies are as potent here as in Horoscopy. The thumb is given to Mars, the index finger to Jupiter, the middle finger to Saturn, the ring finger to the Sun, and the little finger to Venus. Each finger-joint has its name, the lowest being called the procondyle, the middle the condyle, and the upper the metacondyle. He passes briefly over as lines of little ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... reigned amongst us. It was Monday, a fast day, and so the usual absence of noise at meal times had to be observed still more strictly than on any other day. Usually a man who is compelled to break the silence by some emergency or other hastens to plunge into water the middle finger of his left hand, which till then had remained hidden behind his back, and to moisten both his eyelids with it. But a really pious man would not be content with this simple formula of purification; having spoken, he must leave ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... eye. Keiotot, a tooth. Mutchatet, the head. Chewat, an eare. Comagaye, a legge. Atoniagay, a foote. Callagay, a paire of breeches. Attegay, a coate. Polleuetagay, a knife. Accaskay, a shippe. Coblone, a thumbe. Teckkere, the foremost finger. Ketteckle, the middle finger. Mekellacane, the fourth finger. Yacketrone, the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... wrath, he perceived that he must have himself in hand to deal with the matter. He took a long draught of whisky-and-soda, rose, walked across the room and back again, grinding his teeth, rolling his eyes, and snapping the middle finger and thumb of his right hand. Never had the flush of rage been so deep in his face. It was almost purple. Never had his eyes protruded ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... said, "j'ai grande envie de vous le dire." She hesitated the fraction of a moment, glanced at a tiny watch set in a ring upon the middle finger of her right hand, took Rose by the arm as if to keep her from getting away, and turned ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... hard woody circumference of the stalk with its strong incisor teeth; but it is said also to devour certain species of wood-boring caterpillars, which it obtains by first cutting down with its teeth upon their burrows, and then picking them out of their retreat with the claw of its attenuated middle finger. It constructs large ball-like nests of dried leaves, lodged in a fork of the branches of a large tree, and with the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... that's all," was the answer. "Z—— tries to get the best of everything. Give ye a drink from 'is water bottle when your own's empty; 'e wouldn't. I wouldn't trust 'im that much." He clicked his thumb and middle finger together as he spoke, and without another word he vanished into ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... observed Cleek, bending over the spurious gem and focussing the glass upon it; not, however, for the purpose of studying the fraud, but to examine something just noticed—something round and red and angry-looking which marked the palm itself, at the base of the middle finger. ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... most peculiar instance of hypertrophy of the fingers in a sickly girl. The middle and ring fingers of the right hand were of unusual size, the middle finger measuring 5 1/2 inches in length four inches in circumference. On the left hand the thumb and middle fingers were hypertrophied and the index finger was as long as the middle one of the right hand. The middle ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... thumping his bed. I knew that women had a different and less satisfactory method, for I remembered that my mother had spanked me and Aunt Deel had a way of giving my hands and head a kind of watermelon thump with the middle finger of her right hand and with a curious look in her eyes. Uncle Peabody used to call it a "snaptious look." Almost always he whacked the bed with his slipper. There were exceptions, however, and, by and by, I came to ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... in countenance to an almost absurd degree. She also presents another and very curious resemblance to him, namely, by practising a singular trick. When she impatiently wants something, she holds out her little hand, and rapidly rubs the thumb against the index and middle finger: now this same trick was frequently performed under the ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... observing the person and gesture of him that was to speak. He appeared to be of a middle age, and taller than any of the other three who attended him, whereof one was a page that held up his train, and seemed to be somewhat longer than my middle finger; the other two stood one on each side to support him. He acted every part of an orator, and I could observe many periods of threatenings, and others of promises, pity, arid kindness. I answered in a few words, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... at him, and winked too, while he laid his huge white hand on his watch-pocket, tapping with his middle finger on the spot which, as he knew, the average layman dedicated to the heart. He trusted to Larry's quickness, and did not ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... coat, who had already directed four or five letters, and was cleaning his middle finger with a lemon over the glass bowl, had just opened a lofty geographical discussion with the bluebottle. I cannot express how eagerly I, as a theorist of some pretension in Comparative Geography, awoke to a discussion in which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... Conington's Satires of A. Persius Flaccus, I extract the following notice of it:—"Look here—a grandmother or a superstitious aunt has taken baby from his cradle, and is charming his forehead and his slavering lips against mischief by the joint action of her middle finger and her purifying spittle; for she knows right well how to check the evil eye. Then she dandles him in her arms, and packs off the pinched little hope of the family, so far as wishing can do it, to the domains of Licinus, or the palace of Croesus. 'May he be a catch for my lord and lady's ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... new, but graphic, expression to him; and he often remembered it afterward, and how quaintly it fell from her lips as she stood there in the light of the kerosene lamp, slim, self-possessed, in her faded gingham gown and apron, the shapely middle finger of one little weather-tanned hand resting on the edge of ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... leads a man into temptation, if you notice, never the universal;—Woman, not women. I have studied Atlas profoundly, and he is nearly as blind as a bat. He paid no attention to my new travelling-dress last week, and yesterday I wore four rings on my middle finger and two on each thumb all day long, just to see if I could catch his eye and hold his attention. ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Aldborough, and you allow Mrs. Lecount to make her suggestion. The next day you accept the suggestion. And the next day to that you go to St. Crux. Once more, my dear sir! Thumb—works of Art. Forefinger—cut me on the Parade. Middle finger—tired of Aldborough. Third finger—take Lecount's advice. Little finger—off to St. Crux. Nothing can be clearer—nothing can be easier to do. Is there anything you don't understand? Anything that I can explain over again ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... are apt to be more delusive than a mere collection of words, or even of short sentences. The instances of "a dead policeman" as a Non-aryan equivalent for the abstract term "death" which the inquirer wanted; of the rejoinder of "what do you want?" for the repeated outstretching of the "middle finger," a special term for which was sought, and numerous other mistakes, are often perfectly avoidable, and it was therefore desirable that the traveller, armed with an inexhaustible patience, should not content himself with a collection ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... wits and find the depth of them with your middle finger. They are cream-bowl, or ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... doctor, to him was assigned the thumb. A sailor, the finger next the thumb. A fool, the middle finger. A married or diligent person, the fourth or ring finger. A lover, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... in the ordinary way. Sight and touch agree that it is single. Now squint, and sight tells you that there are two marbles, while touch asserts that there is only one. Next, return the eyes to their natural position, and, having crossed the forefinger and the middle finger, put the marble between their tips. Then touch will declare that there are two marbles, while sight says that there is only one; and touch claims our belief, when we attend to it, just as imperatively ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... was troublin' them," he said, playing with the diamond ring on his middle finger. "They was talking round and round it, but they never named it right out. But it seems the younger one has been paid off. He looks bad, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... a loud "Peace be upon ye!" to which H. H. replying graciously, and extending a hand, bony and yellow as a kite's claw, snapped his thumb and middle finger. Two chamberlains stepping forward, held my forearms, and assisted me to bend low over the fingers, which however I did not kiss, being naturally averse to performing that operation upon any but a woman's hand. My two servants then took their ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... o'clock, and I received complete relief; my body calmed; my sleep placid; but when I awoke in the morning, my right hand, with three of the fingers was swollen and inflamed. The swelling in the hand is gone down, and of two of the fingers somewhat abated, but the middle finger is still twice its natural size, so that I write with difficulty. This has been a very rough attack, but though I am much weakened by it, and look sickly and haggard, yet I am not out of heart. Such a bout; such a 'periless buffetting' was enough ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... eyebrows,—three straight lines running up and down; all the probate courts know that token,—"Old Age, his mark." Put your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, and your middle finger on the inner end of the other eyebrow; now separate the fingers, and you will smooth out my sign-manual; that's the way you used to look before I left ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... those fellows are holding their bows - with the left hand, presumably for the pictorial effect of the composition. Well, let that point pass. One fellow has shot his arrow. The other is holding his arrow between the fore finger and the middle finger. Well, it won't go very far. The Indians know better. They let the arrow rest on the thumb to give it plenty of freedom to fly. One of those bows, by the way, has no string. Brangwyn probably thought ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... which the deer were feeding. Returning from camp, not 100 yards from it, we jumped two bucks. We killed both of them, each getting one. Just about then, we began to think things were coming our way. We drew the deer, and in hanging them upon a small oak tree, I pressed a yellow-jacket with the middle finger of my right hand. Before I got the stinger out, my upper lip swelled up to enormous proportions, and both my eyes were swollen shut. Chauvin looked at me with open-eyed and open-mouthed astonishment. In a characteristic ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... tobacco, and in their making the sign of the cross with the thumb, the ring finger, and the little finger, while the orthodox Russians, on the other hand, make it with the thumb, the forefinger, and the middle finger. All Samoyeds are baptised into the orthodox faith, but they worship their old idols at the same time. They travel over a thousand versts as pilgrims to their sacrificial places. There are several such places on Vaygats, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... white handkerchief—the middle finger thrust through a hole in one corner—in all their dances; we have, elsewhere, described the dances as we have seen them performed, ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... oyster I found that it contained several small pearls; the third was opened, and it also contained several; the fourth had none, but the fifth on being opened revealed three beauties, each as large as the top of my middle finger. To be brief, I was soon satisfied that I had stumbled upon a bed of pearl-oysters, about half of the bivalves yielding when opened more or less pearls, the greater quantity being small, such as are set in rings; but several good-sized pearls were also found, and ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... the southern end of it. The harbour is of a very peculiar shape, and if the reader should not happen to possess a chart of it, he may form one by placing his left hand on the table, with the fingers separated as widely as possible from the middle finger: then let him bend up the third finger of his right hand, and place, widely apart, the tips of the others over the forefinger of his left hand. The middle finger of his left hand is Valetta, with Saint Elmo Castle on the ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the middle finger with aqua ammonia, and afterward with plenty of water, and then dip it into a drinking glass in which a fragment of camphor is rapidly moving, and the gyration will not be stopped. But it will be made to stop instantly if the finger in its natural state (that is, covered with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... joint of bamboo, close at both ends, with a hole near each, and four others; two of which, and one of the first only, are used in playing. They apply the thumb of the left hand to close the left nostril, and blow into the hole at one end with the other. The middle finger of the left hand is applied to the first hole on the left, and the fore-finger of the right to the lowest hole on that side. In this manner, though the notes are only three, they produce a pleasing, yet simple music, which they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... "coronary," and "coffin" bones of veterinarians answer to the joints of our middle fingers, while the hoof is simply a greatly enlarged and thickened nail. But if what lies below the horse's "knee" thus corresponds to the middle finger in ourselves, what has become of the four other fingers or digits? We find in the places of the second and fourth digits only two slender splint-like bones, about two-thirds as long as the cannon-bone, which gradually taper to their lower ends ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of Marmora, Cousin, and here it is. I've had my middle finger on it ever since we found it, ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Lanley. His heart sank. It is not easy, he thought, to explain to a person for whom you have just conceived a liking that her son had aspired above his station. He tapped his long, middle finger on the steering-wheel, just as at directors' meetings he tapped the table before he spoke, and began, "In a society somewhat artificially formed as ours is, Mrs. Wayne, it has always been my experience that—" Do what he would, it kept turning into a speech, ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... not likely to insist on any other details, knowing that it will be difficult for you to attain perfection in these. An English master might give you a single rein to be passed outside the little finger, and between the forefinger and the middle finger, the loop coming between the forefinger and thumb, and being held in place by the thumb. Then he would expect you to keep your right shoulder back very firmly, but a French master will tell you that it is better to learn to keep the shoulder back a little ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... remember it all, now—big man, clean shaven, nothing very particular except one thing. Wraye, according to Brake, had a bad scar on his left jaw and had lost the middle finger of his left hand—all from a gun accident. ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... had gone I went to the window. The man stood beside the church-railing with both hands on the gate, but I hastily retreated to my easel again, sickened and horrified, for I saw that the middle finger of ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... conversation run in the channels already selected, and stupid enough I found them. I was considering whether I should not give a signal to my friend and withdraw, when the Baron stretched his hand across the table for a bottle of Affenthaler, and I caught sight of a massive gold ring on his middle finger. Instantly I remembered the ring which "B. V. H." had given to Otto Lindenschmidt, and I said to myself, "That is it!" The inference followed like lightning that it was "Johann Helm" who sat beside me, and not ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... people of high rank, and that he himself would deliver the said message. The merry fellow pushes open the door, shapes the fingers of his left hand into the form of a sheath, and moves gently therein the middle finger of his right, at the same time looking at the lady of Valennes, and saying to her, "Come, all is ready." Those who did not understand the affair burst out laughing to see Madame get up and go to the vicar, because she knew he referred to the pudding, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... had answered in the affirmative. Mr Felix was told to take his coat off, he did so, and then he was bidden to tuck up his shirt above his elbow. Mr. Jenkins then took a yarn thread and placing one end on the elbow measured to the tip of Felix's middle finger, then he told his patient to take hold of the yarn at one end, the other end resting the while on the elbow, and he was to take fast hold of it, and stretch it. This he did, and the yarn lengthened, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... met with but rarely—is that of keraphyllocele. This is a tumour-like growth of horn, varying in size from the thickness of an ordinary quill pen to that of one's middle finger, growing down from the coronary cushion, and attached to the inner side of the wall of the hoof. With this lameness is always present, and more or less deformity of the hoof results. This condition will be found described at greater ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... volume of Beechey's Voyage, page 324, is mentioned a throwing-stick from Eschscholtz Bay, with a hole for the forefinger and a notch for the thumb, the spear being placed in the groove and embraced by the middle finger and the thumb. This last assertion is very important. When I first began to examine a large number of the implements, I could not explain the cavities for the finger-tips until this note suggested that the shaft rides outside ...
— Throwing-sticks in the National Museum • Otis T. Mason
... his moustache with the middle finger of his right hand, by way of saying that he quite assented to his wife's proposition; and Victoire remarked that 'Madame was a leetle anxious, just a leetle anxious; not that anything could be wrong with M. Tudere, but because ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... thieving practised when Moll was enrolled a humble member of the gang. Yet nature had not endowed her with the qualities which ensure an active triumph. 'The best signs and marks of a happy, industrious hand,' wrote the hoyden, 'is a long middle finger, equally suited with that they call the fool's or first finger.' Now, though she was never a clumsy jade, the practice of sword-play and quarterstaff had not refined the industry of her hands, which were the rather framed ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... was what is known as the common or natural cubit, "containing," says Sir Walter, "one foot and a half, or a length equal to that of the human fore-arm measured from the sharp of the elbow to the point of the middle finger;" others contending that it was the palm-cubit, "which taketh," adds my authority, "one handful more than the common;" yet others, the royal or Persian cubit of twenty-one inches; and so on; for there are, it seems, five several ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... said: It is a joy to me to see thee so valiant, but herein may I help thee somewhat; here is a gold finger- ring, see thou! fashioned as a serpent holding his tail in his mouth; whenso thou goest on this quest, set thou this same ring on the middle finger of thy left hand, and say thou above thy ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... arrow, and it has been remarked by many persons who have seen the Red Indians' arrows, that they have invariably been a yard long; the reason of this would seem to be that their measure for the arrow was the arm's length, that is, from the centre of the chest to the tip of the middle finger, that being the proper length to draw the bow—the latter was about five feet long, generally made of mountain ash, ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad
... in a tone impossible to describe, and accompanying the word with that movement of the middle finger and thumb, commonly called a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various |
